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With organisations now having to navigate the rapid changes bought about by geopolitical instability, economic uncertainty, the on-glowing climate emergency, and a surge in technology, it's clear that different ways of thinking about talent are very much needed. So how can organisations adapt to this complexity and prepare for a feature where the old rules no longer apply? What should they consider when redefining their talent strategies in such a dynamic environment? My guess this week is Graham Abbey, professor in practice at the University of Bristol Business School and CEO of Farley Performance. From the importance of understanding the difference between complicated and complex systems to the potential of AI in reconnecting us to our humanity, Graham provides deep insights into creating the conditions for engagement, leadership and performance and building an anti-fragile organisation. Hi Graham and welcome to the podcast. Thanks Matt, great to be here. An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do? Yeah, thank you. I'm Graham Abbey, professor Graham Abbey. Oh, she's a very grand thing to be. I really do two main things. I lead an organisation in development and consultancy. We do work in there as a culture, teams, leadership and so on and also a professor in practice at the University of Bristol Business School. You know, where my focus as director of executive education is really developing the next generation of leaders, you know, for this ever complex and challenging world that we're in. Absolutely and obviously it is a very complex and very challenging world. From a sort of a talent perspective, what do you think that sort of the main challenges are or the main drivers of change are for organisations at the moment? Yeah, that's a big question and I'm going to start to answer that around. I think it is the complexity and uncertainty itself. I mean, I think we are to use an Americanism. We're on the on-ramp to increasing uncertainty and complexity. I think if we just look back at the last five years, be it pandemics, be it geopolitical instability, wars, economy, economic crises and so on, you know, all of that before, without even mentioning climate and the impact that that has, you know, the world is accelerating in its uncertainty and complexity. And I think for talent to ground that a bit more, I think the challenge for all of us is that what we've known in the past isn't going to be a reliable predictor of what we need to do in the future. So we think of our entire education systems, our ways of recruiting, you know, ways of individuals deciding what we do or don't do, it's often based on what's gone before. And that's just not going to be a reliable predictor of what's needed going forward. Absolutely, I can agree with you more. So how do you think organizations need to start thinking differently about talent in the context of, you know, this complexity and, you know, the, for one of a better way of saying it, the old rule is not applying anymore? I think the thinking is a really, but it's a great question because I think how we think about things and how we talk about things is a really critical part and what shapes what we do. My PhD was in looking at organizational change, but looking at it from a narrative or storytelling perspective. And what that takes you into is recognizing the way in which we make sense of the world is through positioning what we see in stories and narratives. In, you know, we need, we need plots, we need characters, we need drama, we need to make sense of it in all, all those kind of ways. And therefore how we, how we think about talent and maybe a bit broader than that, how we think about organization is, you know, really shapes the way in which we then act. So I think one of the big challenges is to link to this point around complexity is to recognize that organizations are not just very complicated things, they're complex, you know, and there's an important distinction between complicated and complex that I don't think is always appreciated. And there's great, there's great work in that's done in this space. Dave Snowden would be somebody to reference here, you know, around his framework, but the, I love Mary Albein's story around this, around the distinction between jumbo jets being complicated, but mayonnaise being complex. Interesting. So, you know, and I was an aeronautical engineer originally, so I love an aircraft, I've got to put an aircraft into the, into the conversation somewhere. I've had the privilege to be on a jumbo jet, on a Boeing 747, whilst it's being built. I got to be out in Seattle and see it. And there are millions of parts that go into this aircraft. It's a, it's an incredible phenomenon to see. But it does only go together one way. If you put it together that way, you can take it apart again. And if something's not working, you can take a part out and you can put another part in. And, and that's, that's what complicated looks like. You know, and I think that's become a, that is our dominant metaphor, it's a mechanical metaphor for how we think about organizations. Mayonnaise on the other hand, you take a couple of ingredients, obviously eggs and oil, and you mix them together and something magic happens. Something, something different emerges. So a third thing emerges and that emergence is, is a, you know, definition of what a complex system is about, you know, something that wasn't there before appears. And it is almost as if by magic something appears. And you can't then go back to the things before you can't find the eggs and the oil in the mayonnaise, you know, you can't find the grapes in the wine, you know, that something is shifted and changed. And I think when we think of the many of the things in the talent space that we're looking for, be it engagement, leadership, performance, these are all emergent properties. You know, these are things that come out of the complex interaction of a whole bunch of stuff. And of course, that interaction is getting, is getting faster, is getting more uncertain. But that's the first piece around how do we need to think differently. I think we need to think and start to recognize that we've got this, we are working in complex systems as well as complicated systems. And how do you think employers are responding to that? Are they understanding that? Are they moving quickly enough? Obviously, lots of talk about things like skills-based organizations. Is that the, you know, is that the solution in terms of changing thinking? What's kind of happening in the market at the moment that you'll see? I think the risk of what happens when faced with what is quite a fundamental shift is the risk is we double down on what we know. Peter Sangay in the sort of system thinking world talks about a systems archetype of shifting the burden. And it's about shifting the burden of something new onto something that we know. And I think as a risk, we've seen that happening. You know, we see people driving for better metrics to measure engagement. Engagement, I think, is a really good example in this space, you know, that there is the idea that we can quantify engagement, I think, is conceptually quite tricky. You know, because, again, it's this, it's the mannaise, right? It's this, it's this emergent property that, you know, appears, appears out of this complex set of contextual factors in any organization. And the idea that we can then break it down again and measure it, I think, is a personally, I think, is a flawed idea and risks us giving us something that can be useful. I wouldn't deny this abuse here, but it's probably not what we're looking at things and probably not quite what we think they are in this space. Again, we start to build a new and different narrative around it. So I think there's some really interesting, you know, the skills-based organization, the sort of, they're kind of moving away from the reliance on old habits and patterns, like people's qualifications and jobs and what we've done before. You know, the idea that we can look what's gone before as a measure of what's going to be successful, again, is one of the things that, in a way, we double down on that we need to release ourselves from here. Obviously, the other factor here that we've not kind of really addressed yet is technology and the explosion in the, in the acceleration of the development of AI. How does that add to the mix of everything? What's that in terms of, is that another complicating factor? Is it a potential solution? I mean, I imagine it'll be both of those things. One of the phrases I like is a Gregory Bateson phrase, which is that it's never just that and nothing more. And I think, as we talk about each of these issues, of course, it is never just that and nothing more. There's always more. And I think that's a nice one of the ways to think about if we bring together those skills, ideas and AI, you know, if we try to hold more than one idea at a time around this, I think what I notice is becoming important is, is beginning to recognize the connectivity between everything. And of course, it's that connectivity that leads to this emergence. And it's a deeply human thing to connect and to build relationship and to find ways to see the beauty in things and the joy in things. And again, all of these sort of emerging properties that might come from our interactions. So I think one of the things that we have not given sufficient attention to in our organizational world because of that machine metaphor we talked about at the beginning of this conversation is the deep human connection that exists in organization. You know, in many ways, our organizational systems interrupt that, break that down, put us into jobs, put us into the processes that measure and dehumanize. Whereas I think what this complex world is requiring of us is to rediscover our humanity, rediscover our connection. And I think an interesting question becomes the degree to which how we use AI in what we're doing. Can we use AI in a way that enables us to refine our humanity rather than, again, that doubling down phrase, deepening our commitment to a world view that has been reducing our humanity, has been reducing our connection? I think that's such an interesting point because I think a lot of commentary around AI defaults to the robots are taking over. We're losing the human touch and everything. We're sort of heading to this kind of technology dystopia. But what you're saying there is actually, we have a technology that allows us in some way to understand some of the complex systems that we have in a way that's not kind of reductive and kind of imposing something on it. Absolutely. I mean, I think and also whether it's a good thing or not a good thing is a bit of a moot point because it's with us and it's not going away anytime soon. So I think a better question is the one I think that you're alluding to there, which is how do we position AI in the context of what we're doing? For me, it's a very significant part of the conditions that we're creating for productive, joyful lives in our organizations. How do we think about it alongside other conditions? So I think that's where if you hold a more complex view rather than just a complicated one, it leads you as a leader or a participant in any context to really give more attention to the wide range of factors that are influencing the context. So how do we think about AI in the context of our relationships? How do we think about AI in the context of the way in which we think about skills in organizations and people in organizations? And I suppose from that perspective, the way that organizations need to evolve their thinking. Do you think that that is going to fundamentally reshape the talent function in organizations? So at the moment, these things tend to be very much split into silos, talent acquisition, talent management, learning and development, those kind of things. Is this going to drive us a fundamental change in that way of thinking? I mean, I'm going to say I hope so, to kind of come down on the side of it. It's fascinating. I have an HR background. I got into, in spite of being an engineer, as I said before, I got into human resources. I think it was even called personnel in those days, in the late 80s, when working at what was then called British Aerospace, there was a recognition that big manufacturing sites with large personnel functions with developing specialist HR people. You were a cruder, you were a trainer, you were an industrial relations person, or whatever. And they created this opportunity for a generalist HR professional, which I stepped into, and it was the start of my HR career. So this idea of integrating specialties into more holistic ways of looking at the world isn't a new thing. It's back to that metaphor again. If we hold that sense that we need to maximize the efficiency of the parts of any system, it leads us to specialize. And of course, that deep domain knowledge on particular things is hugely important. And at the same time, we need to be able to hold things more holistically. And I think that could be one of the things that AI helps us positively to disrupt. How do we balance this need for doing and being? I think that might be an interesting, that's something that we use a lot in our work, both at the University of Bristol and also at finally performance. This idea that as we think about how we have an impact, it is important on what we know, but it's also important about what we do, how do we bring that together, but it also is important about who we are, how do we be in any situation. And I think there's definitely a need to hold all of these. We do need specialisms, we do need deep know-how, but we have to be able to hold those in a much more integrated picture, a much more holistic set of relationships to the world. And in many ways, that's what developing maturity as individuals is about, how we make our own meaning making more complex, more richer, but that's also how we need to evolve organisations. So lots of people listening, running talent acquisition functions, going through huge changes at the moment in an attempt to address some of the issues that we're talking about. So I suspect that everyone is either going through some kind of transformation process or is about to in the next sort of weeks and months. What would your advice be to them? What do you think this looks like from a talent acquisition perspective, from a hiring perspective, what should people be thinking about as they're trying to sort of evolve their functions? It's a great question and a really challenging one. Because in many ways, there's always a temptation to desire here to have the ready answer. And of course, having the ready answer is something that's much more akin to the complicated worldview than it is the complex one, where there are really are no ready answers. So there is something fundamental here about the way in which talent functions are thinking about the world, the degree to which we can all begin to embrace more of this complexity and wonder what the hell that might mean in practice. Having said that, that would feel a very satisfactory end to our conversation. What do we conclude? We include it all very difficult. So I think for me, if I look at the work that we do, and one of the questions we keep coming back to then is, so what are the conditions that we believe create a foundation for the things that we want to emerge, engagement, performance, leadership, etc. And we have a little acronym to help us with that, which is hard, is the acronym, which I guess is slightly an antidote to the idea that this is the soft stuff. Actually, this is where it really happens. And these are these are about conditions that we find are the outcome of the work that we do and are provide a platform for performance in organisations. So H, higher purpose, we've done a lot of work and I know there's a lot in your podcast around this question of what's the bigger thing that we're connecting to? How do we bring meaning to work? How do we think about why we're doing what we're not doing, not just what we're doing? The A is for agency or autonomy would be another word in that space. How do we create greater freedom to act for people? Again, that very mechanical mindset. And I go back to my early HR days, I was definitely in this space of creating job descriptions, designing organisations, putting people in boxes, all of that, really reducing the ability of people to self-organise, to act, to see what's most important in any moment and go after it. But of course, the antidote to that is the R, which is you need to be in relationship to do that. So you don't want to create an environment of lots of autonomous agents running around without there being clear and quality relationships between them. And the final one there is around however good you get at all of those things you've got to be able to disrupt that. That's the D is for disruptive learning. How do we use what's going on in our environment as a positive catalyst for change? And I seem tailored talks about the anti-fragile organisation, the idea that the opposite of being fragile, and we saw how fragile some of our supply chain supply chains were during COVID, for example, is not a robust system. That's a kind of middle ground. It's an anti-fragile and he had to reinvent a word because there isn't one, which is systems, organisations, people that thrive in uncertainty rather than collapsing uncertainty. So how do we develop our ability to learn faster than the environment is changing? If I was in those talent roles now, I'd be looking at what I'm doing and thinking about how are we building higher purpose? How are we increasing agency for people? How are we really focusing on the relationships that exist between people and in the context that we're in? How do I maximise the amount of learning that can go on in this environment? And I think if you hold those conditions, you probably come up some quite radically different ways of approaching talent acquisition, talent management and learning a development. Absolutely. As a final question for you, what do you think the future looks like? What do you think? How do you think we're going to be talking about talent in five years' time? Well, how do you hope we're going to be talking about talent in five years' time? I think it's a fascinating question and I would love to know what the answer to that. Me too. I think it's an interesting question and it's a very useful question. It's also potentially a wrong question in the sense that it also has a thread of our current mindset, as it were, in that more predictable world, that complicated world that we've got very good at operating in. The way you operate is to predict what's going to happen in the future, put a plan together to respond to that and execute that now. I think quite fundamentally the world is changing at too fast a rate to have a decent answer to that question. So, the thing that I guess I find myself wondering about is how do we operate now when we can't know what the future will look like in five years' time. Interesting, interesting. Graham, thank you very much talking to me. Thank you. I've really enjoyed it, Matt. Thank you for having me. My thanks to Graham. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com. On that site, you can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast and get the inside track on everything that's coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I'll be back next time and I hope you'll join me. This is my show. [Music] [ Silence ]
With organizations now having to navigate the rapid changes brought about by geopolitical instability, economic uncertainty, the ongoing climate emergency, and the surge in technology, it is clear that different ways of thinking about talent are needed.
So, how can organizations adapt to this complexity and prepare for a future where the old rules no longer apply? What should they consider when redefining their talent strategies in such a dynamic context?
My guest this is week is Graham Abbey, Professor in Practice at The University of Bristol Business School and CEO of Farleigh Performance.
From the importance of understanding the difference between complicated and complex systems to the potential of AI in reconnecting us to our humanity, Graham provides deep insights into creating the conditions for engagement, leadership, and performance and building an antifragile organization.
In the interview, we discuss:
Challenges and forces driving change
Thinking differently about talent
Changing to the organization metaphor
The difference between a complicated and complex system
How well are employers responding to change and uncertainty?
Skills based organizations
Discovery connectivity with AI
Talent Acquisition and hiring
Higher purpose, agency, relationships, and disruptive learning
Building an antifragile organization
How will we be talking about talent in five years time
Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Follow this podcast on Spotify.
