There is something truly exquisite about a really insightful insight. It stops you in your tracks, almost takes your breath away with its truth and immediately turns from something seen to ways forward. It’s like patching a huge chasm in a road or bridging a crevasse; suddenly the road is clear and the barriers gone.
But like the hole in the road now patched, a good insight is often quickly forgotten - we just drive over it without marvelling at the ease of our path. In the same way our new insights quickly turn into the obvious and the widely understood in organisational life – although sometimes they become a mantra that everyone quotes and no-one quite knows the origins of. I’m not sure which is best: should an insight be ephemeral, caught in a moment in time and then gone, or recorded and remembered for posterity?
The difficulty of generating insight has been a constant conversation on the Next Generation HR leaders’ programme. The leaders we’re working with have been noticing how hard it is to turn facts into new ways of seeing. One of the problems, ironically, seems to be the amount of effort put in. It may seem obvious to you but we’re beginning to realise that focussing hard, and then harder still, doesn’t really help. Coming up with insight is like cooking, the data are our ingredients steeped in the marinade of our experience and expertise. The dish can only really be cooked on a back burner in a nice clean mind. Insight doesn’t come into any state of tension; it’s more likely to come in the bath.
So how do we get insightful together? I don’t think football club size bathtubs are really an option... We have to find ways to hang out together in increased relaxation - not social mindlessness, but not intense, focused meeting scenarios either.
This difficulty leads to many of us grabbing at easy answers instead, and not being patient enough to wait and tightening up their thinking. There is a time/anxiety equation here that means if we cannot find the requisite relaxed state of mind before the deadlines approach, we never adequately crystallize a new way of seeing. We might as well have blasted our soufflé in a far too hot oven, opening and closing it several times - and we all know the mess that can make!
Without great insight, there is no next generation HR leader
Without great insight, there is no next generation HR leader. After that, it’s all about what they do with what they see, but without the seeing in the first place there is really nothing to do, just a kind of service where you sweep up behind people.
How do you create the space for insight?
Jane Sassienie, Director, Bridge
"If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants"
It has to be an active process - that is driven and valued. For me it's a bit like 'active seeing' which I liken to 'active listening'.
Insight comes when you are constantly 'present'. This means you can't deal with working life in silos. We need to think holistically.
Your disciplinary case today may have emanated from a customer complaint caused by inefficient working practices driven by the discuplined person's manager who has no control over making things more efficient because there is no upward communication process because senior management culture is focused on short term revenue by any means because the new owners of the business are short on cash right now.
If you are not present to what's going on across the organisation and how things are linked, you will not be able to generate insights.
In a more formal way, you can generate insights bu undertaking a good root cause analysis on issues and problems that arise - especially those that arise regularly.
Finally, another way to generate insight is to just keep asking 'Why?'
Your disciplinary case today may have emanated from a customer complaint caused by inefficient working practices driven by the disciplined person's manager who has no control over making things more efficient because there is no upward communication process because senior management culture is focused on short term revenue by any means because the new owners of the business are short on cash right now.
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