(highlight:: 25sec Snip
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Hey everybody, welcome back to our new-ish, I guess it's still new, mini-series, all about the ready and the future of HR. It's me, Rodney, and Sam. Hi, Sam. Hi, Rodney. We are also joined today. I'm super excited by one of our really amazing co-workers at the ready. She is a member of the future of HR mission-based team. She is one of)
- Time 0:00:00
-

(highlight:: HR Maturity Model 1-3: Adaptability & Experimentation, Contracting & Communication, UX
Summary:
To progress from level one or two to level three in HR maturity, focus on adaptability and experimentation, contracting and communication, as well as user experience and decentralization.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
But for today, we're going to talk about the three that Meg just mentioned that will really take you from level one or level two to level three. Those three are adaptability and experimentation, contracting and communication, user experience and decentralization.)
- Time 0:09:59
-

(highlight:: Team Contracting Makes Explicit: Working Agreements, Role Chartering, Decision Rights
Summary:
Contracting in organizations involves defining communication and collaboration between components of a system to meet specific goals.
This is achieved through practices like working agreements, decision rights, and role chartering. Strengthening contracting enables decentralization and pushing authority to the edge, speeding up the organization.
In HR, contracting helps make roles explicit, moving HR away from simply keeping everyone happy and freeing up cognitive bandwidth.
Adopting a contracting mindset is crucial for teams evolving their models.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So Meg, tell us about contracting and comms. Yeah. So the way I think about contracting is how you define the space between components of a system. So like how to roles communicate, how a team communicates with another team in an HR context, like how an HRVP communicates with their internal client. So it's really like how you define the collaboration and shape that collaboration and that relationship in order to meet a specific end. So in practice, what that looks like, people use practices like working agreements, decision rights, role-chargering, there's things like that that you can use to really start to Get tight and kind of clarify bright lines what this partnership is actually going to do and how we're going to do it together. And the why behind it, which I think is probably what you notice, Rodney, about how it really unlocks stuff, is that the stronger you get at contracting is it allows you to lay the foundation For decentralization that allows you to lay the foundation for pushing authority to the edge, such enables your organization to speed up. And specific to HR, it starts to be a way of making things explicit that pulls HR out of the role of keeping everyone happy. So HR as a function is often like kind of spread and it's everywhere and there's a lot of different partners to keep happy and there's kind of, you can get pulled in so many different directions And a lot of the time, one of the quickest ways to start unwinding that is to go into this really contracting mindset of how do we make things explicit and clear and that just frees up a lot Of cognitive bandwidth for people. So that's how I think about contracting and why it's such a critical capability for teams as you're trying to evolve your model.)
- Time 0:11:56
-

(highlight:: Orgs Tend to Be Reluctant to Setup Contracting Due to General Conflict-Avoidance
Summary:
Workplaces and educational institutions often avoid setting up contracting due to a general tendency to avoid conflict.
Institutions train individuals to steer clear of conflicts by not specifying boundaries, saying no, or agreeing on different terms. HR, often viewed as a cost center, focuses on not upsetting stakeholders rather than setting up clear contracts.
Training programs on negotiation and influencing are used as a way to circumvent the need for contracting, but the crucial step is to have direct conversations about goals, trade-offs, and decision-making.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
I think the reason that we don't learn to do it in most workplaces and in most educational institutions is that they're very conflict-avoidant and so it can be a bit frightening to actually Approach the space where it's like, well, whose decision is this and what's our actual goal? So that is my instinct is that a lot of our institutions train us to be more avoidant – what do you think about me? Yeah, I agree. And I think that because HR is so often seen as being a cost center or being overhead or not being strategic, the whole first principle of existence is like, don't make them more mad. They're already mad that we have to be here and that they're hearing from us. You know, like, don't make it worse by creating specific boundaries or by saying no to things or by agreeing on different kinds of terms and what's interesting is I have seen in a number Of clients of ours, large-scale HR trainings rolled out and I took some of these when I worked in HR that are like about like influencing the business and how to negotiate and whatever. And to me, all of that kind of skill building is basically how you get around contracting so you don't have to do it. But just doing it is the move. Like all of that stuff is noise. All of the stakeholder-y in fluency stuff is to paper over something that's fundamentally broken, which is our ability to have a direct conversation about what our aim is and what that Means that we're trading off in order to have it.)
- Time 0:14:23
-

(highlight:: Proactive Stewardship of An Org's Emotional System and Continually Uplifting Issues Until Resolution
Summary:
Emotional stewardship in HR involves being intentional about receiving and managing emotional aspects in the system while also knowing when to disengage to maintain boundaries.
Role mix, decision rights, and creating an ecosystem for collaboration are crucial. MBTs and dynamic teaming can help distribute the emotional burden and ensure sustainability in HR.
By framing problems, involving other functions, and addressing issues collectively, HR professionals can effectively address and resolve challenges in the workplace.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
I think you're really skilled in still being boundary and doing contracting around to the work even as you are holding the emotional stewarding role. How do you do that if you're an HR? Oh man. Well I think there's a few things and I don't know how much control people have over the conditions that they're working in. One thing certainly for me is consenting into it. And so it's really kind of being intentional about like where are the spaces where I can receive whatever is emotionally present in the system and then where do I get to shut that off and Not focus my attention on that. So for me that looks like a role mix. And I think that in you know in a lot of HR contexts is another reason why MBTs and dynamic teaming is like so much healthier. It would allow people to not be always in the place of having the hard conversation because most of us can do it to some degree but we shouldn't be doing that 90% of our work life. It's just that's not sustainable. So I think a big part of it is role mix which mission based aiming accomplishes. I think the second piece is around decision rights and having the ability to actually make some choices about the information that you're taking in. And then the third thing which is really connected to contracting is having an ecosystem that you're in where you can kind of frame the problem, frame the question and then hold it up To the other functions and say hey like we have an issue here and I keep hearing about it and you know it is but it is our kind of collective responsibility. So I think about it as like containment and then also having open lines with other functions to say I will not continue to avoid this for your comfort. We do need to resolve it. So obviously the way people can do that is based on their context but those are to me the ways to start crying out of that will. Yeah. One thing that I've seen you do in my opinion to really great effect compared to how I did this when I was in an HR role is I think you have done a pretty exceptional job of getting out of triaging Only and staying in like the never ending world pool of individual discontent. And what I mean by that is like there is emotional processing work to be done in any complex system and I am certainly the first person to say we have to do that kind of stuff at work because We're humans and we can't just leave it at home. And there are points at which that actually becomes like quite destructive and it's cyclical and it's not going anywhere and the frustration is increasing with every conversation. It's not being channeled into something that is beneficial to the individual or to the system. And what I've seen you do is create very specific containers to be like this is when you can come and unload. This is when you can come and figure out what the fuck to do about it. And this is when you can deal with it yourself. And like I think that is a level of contracting that I rarely see HR people do. Most of us live more in the universe of like picking up the phone and just hearing someone go you got a minute. And then that being like okay now we're on a journey to whatever fucked up situation that person is doing. Yeah.)
- Time 0:18:26
-

(highlight:: Applying a UX/Product Design Approach to HR: Get Clear on Who You're Designing For
Summary:
To effectively implement a user experience (UX) approach in HR, it is crucial to identify the specific user and their needs at different moments.
Without clarity on the end user, designing processes becomes challenging and leads to vague solutions. HR needs to involve a diverse team including users, designers, and operations from the outset to sprint and test solutions iteratively, ultimately leading to a pilot before full implementation.
This contrasts with traditional HR practices that involve extensive planning and focus groups resulting in toothless rollouts.
Responding promptly to user needs, rather than appeasing the loudest voice, is key in transforming HR product and service delivery.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So what does it look like for an HR team or function to start focusing on UX as something they're really going to take seriously? Well the first question that usually has to come up is which user? So which user in which moment which specific problem? One of the things that happens I worked for a period of time kind of within an adjacent to an HR function at a big institution, big university and we were constantly pinging between different Users because we were trying to keep everyone happy and I could never get clarity about who was actually supposed to be the user of a particular process that I was supposed to hold. It just was really hard. It was really hard. I was constantly, I would try to design something that was fairly context agnostic so that I could at least use it in different ways and then I'd be constantly pulled by the OS of that system In different directions because we didn't know who our end user ultimately was. What about you, Rodney? Think about when you think about how does an HR actually learn to implement UX? I mean this is so core to the problem and what you just described and I've had this conversation recently with HR folks and this totally squares with my experience in HR. It's like okay, we need to redesign, let's call it how we do succession planning and it's like cool. HR, go figure this out. So I go away and I do a bunch of research and I'm like here's how I think the best way is to do that and they're like great. Now go talk to the stakeholders about it and it's like okay. So I go and talk to Jeff and he's like take out bullets two and three and then I go and talk to Marsha and she's like I don't actually think this is right. We should do it this way. And then I go and talk to Brian and he's like I just, I think that this won't really be that useful. And so like I chip away and chip away and chip away in all of these little one on one conversations until I have something that is vague enough to be unobjectionable to everyone and not Useful to anyone. And that is like the heart of what isn't user design and user experience design. And so what I want to see instead, even though it's much more poky and much more hard to accomplish is okay, I am going to potentially in a mission based team have those people in the mix And some other users and someone who's a designer and someone who's in operations and the person who knows where this thing is going to live from a tooling perspective. And we are going to sprint on this thing testing from an MVP as we build it out until we have something that we can then pilot in a team of teams or a function and then we can spread across functions, That's the way we bring HR product and service to the internal marketplace. What generally happens is the inverse of that, which is tons and tons of planning, tons and tons of like focus grouping to the bottom and then a completely toothless rollout. And we want the exact opposite of that thing. And I can see how this is connected to our previous conversation around contracting because inherent in this conversation is what we're not doing, which is responding as quickly as Possible to whoever is the maddest and loudest right now to get them whatever will make them less mad and less loud.)
- Time 0:28:36
-

(highlight:: Center-Out Approach to Org Decentralization: HR Produces Artifacts That Teams Adapt to Their Context
Summary:
HR teams can create MVP artifacts from the center for teams to use at the edge, allowing for high configurability by individual teams.
These artifacts include tooling, default workflows, and templated communications that can be customized by different business units. The approach involves providing a baseline and then empowering teams to adapt the artifacts to fit their specific context, avoiding overcomplication and catering to individual team needs.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
I also think this really I want to bring this to decentralization because one of the big ahas that I see HR teams having in our workshops is this idea that you can create things from the Center like in a mission based team that are MVP that are defaults for everyone to use but that are highly configurable at the edge or in this case by the business. And so what I mean by that is again, taking my succession planning example or Meg maybe after you could take your benefits example is like, okay, here's an MVP of this. It includes tooling that should work for everyone. A default workflow that we think is pretty good and some templated communications that you all can make your own. Here's a timeline that we would like to make sure that everybody has some conversation. I shouldn't be using succession planning because I don't really believe in it, but you get my point. And then from there, it's like, okay, we push this now to the edge and like finance sales prod and like now make it your own like now you do the last 20, 40% of configuration to make it fit For your context in a decentralized way. We're not going to try to figure out every eventuality and overcomplicate things.)
- Time 0:31:58
-

(highlight:: Risk tolerance in org change: When 1 bad thing happens, don't pave over it with rules
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Two is, and Sam, like you and I have talked about this a million times, like there is such a bias around risk where it's like this thing happened once. Now we make a rule for it. Now we have to uphold that rule in perpetuity. And that is what we call work debt. We don't even know if that one thing would ever happen again. But now we have hours and time and money and cycles and cycles and cycles probably forever because let's be honest, we're never going to unwrite that rule for what might have been a one Off. And so on the one hand, I think like that person's perspective is really valid. On the other hand, I'm like, if you want to be strategic, you have to learn to look at risk a little bit differently, which is that you can never eliminate it. You are always doing stuff with the issue in the rear view.)
- Time 0:36:32
- 1socialpost-queue,
- [note::See also: people v.s. process problems]

(highlight:: 25sec Snip
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Hey everybody, welcome back to our new-ish, I guess it's still new, mini-series, all about the ready and the future of HR. It's me, Rodney, and Sam. Hi, Sam. Hi, Rodney. We are also joined today. I'm super excited by one of our really amazing co-workers at the ready. She is a member of the future of HR mission-based team. She is one of)
- Time 0:00:00
-

(highlight:: HR Maturity Model 1-3: Adaptability & Experimentation, Contracting & Communication, UX
Summary:
To progress from level one or two to level three in HR maturity, focus on adaptability and experimentation, contracting and communication, as well as user experience and decentralization.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
But for today, we're going to talk about the three that Meg just mentioned that will really take you from level one or level two to level three. Those three are adaptability and experimentation, contracting and communication, user experience and decentralization.)
- Time 0:09:59
-

(highlight:: Team Contracting Makes Explicit: Working Agreements, Role Chartering, Decision Rights
Summary:
Contracting in organizations involves defining communication and collaboration between components of a system to meet specific goals.
This is achieved through practices like working agreements, decision rights, and role chartering. Strengthening contracting enables decentralization and pushing authority to the edge, speeding up the organization.
In HR, contracting helps make roles explicit, moving HR away from simply keeping everyone happy and freeing up cognitive bandwidth.
Adopting a contracting mindset is crucial for teams evolving their models.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So Meg, tell us about contracting and comms. Yeah. So the way I think about contracting is how you define the space between components of a system. So like how to roles communicate, how a team communicates with another team in an HR context, like how an HRVP communicates with their internal client. So it's really like how you define the collaboration and shape that collaboration and that relationship in order to meet a specific end. So in practice, what that looks like, people use practices like working agreements, decision rights, role-chargering, there's things like that that you can use to really start to Get tight and kind of clarify bright lines what this partnership is actually going to do and how we're going to do it together. And the why behind it, which I think is probably what you notice, Rodney, about how it really unlocks stuff, is that the stronger you get at contracting is it allows you to lay the foundation For decentralization that allows you to lay the foundation for pushing authority to the edge, such enables your organization to speed up. And specific to HR, it starts to be a way of making things explicit that pulls HR out of the role of keeping everyone happy. So HR as a function is often like kind of spread and it's everywhere and there's a lot of different partners to keep happy and there's kind of, you can get pulled in so many different directions And a lot of the time, one of the quickest ways to start unwinding that is to go into this really contracting mindset of how do we make things explicit and clear and that just frees up a lot Of cognitive bandwidth for people. So that's how I think about contracting and why it's such a critical capability for teams as you're trying to evolve your model.)
- Time 0:11:56
-

(highlight:: Orgs Tend to Be Reluctant to Setup Contracting Due to General Conflict-Avoidance
Summary:
Workplaces and educational institutions often avoid setting up contracting due to a general tendency to avoid conflict.
Institutions train individuals to steer clear of conflicts by not specifying boundaries, saying no, or agreeing on different terms. HR, often viewed as a cost center, focuses on not upsetting stakeholders rather than setting up clear contracts.
Training programs on negotiation and influencing are used as a way to circumvent the need for contracting, but the crucial step is to have direct conversations about goals, trade-offs, and decision-making.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
I think the reason that we don't learn to do it in most workplaces and in most educational institutions is that they're very conflict-avoidant and so it can be a bit frightening to actually Approach the space where it's like, well, whose decision is this and what's our actual goal? So that is my instinct is that a lot of our institutions train us to be more avoidant – what do you think about me? Yeah, I agree. And I think that because HR is so often seen as being a cost center or being overhead or not being strategic, the whole first principle of existence is like, don't make them more mad. They're already mad that we have to be here and that they're hearing from us. You know, like, don't make it worse by creating specific boundaries or by saying no to things or by agreeing on different kinds of terms and what's interesting is I have seen in a number Of clients of ours, large-scale HR trainings rolled out and I took some of these when I worked in HR that are like about like influencing the business and how to negotiate and whatever. And to me, all of that kind of skill building is basically how you get around contracting so you don't have to do it. But just doing it is the move. Like all of that stuff is noise. All of the stakeholder-y in fluency stuff is to paper over something that's fundamentally broken, which is our ability to have a direct conversation about what our aim is and what that Means that we're trading off in order to have it.)
- Time 0:14:23
-

(highlight:: Proactive Stewardship of An Org's Emotional System and Continually Uplifting Issues Until Resolution
Summary:
Emotional stewardship in HR involves being intentional about receiving and managing emotional aspects in the system while also knowing when to disengage to maintain boundaries.
Role mix, decision rights, and creating an ecosystem for collaboration are crucial. MBTs and dynamic teaming can help distribute the emotional burden and ensure sustainability in HR.
By framing problems, involving other functions, and addressing issues collectively, HR professionals can effectively address and resolve challenges in the workplace.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
I think you're really skilled in still being boundary and doing contracting around to the work even as you are holding the emotional stewarding role. How do you do that if you're an HR? Oh man. Well I think there's a few things and I don't know how much control people have over the conditions that they're working in. One thing certainly for me is consenting into it. And so it's really kind of being intentional about like where are the spaces where I can receive whatever is emotionally present in the system and then where do I get to shut that off and Not focus my attention on that. So for me that looks like a role mix. And I think that in you know in a lot of HR contexts is another reason why MBTs and dynamic teaming is like so much healthier. It would allow people to not be always in the place of having the hard conversation because most of us can do it to some degree but we shouldn't be doing that 90% of our work life. It's just that's not sustainable. So I think a big part of it is role mix which mission based aiming accomplishes. I think the second piece is around decision rights and having the ability to actually make some choices about the information that you're taking in. And then the third thing which is really connected to contracting is having an ecosystem that you're in where you can kind of frame the problem, frame the question and then hold it up To the other functions and say hey like we have an issue here and I keep hearing about it and you know it is but it is our kind of collective responsibility. So I think about it as like containment and then also having open lines with other functions to say I will not continue to avoid this for your comfort. We do need to resolve it. So obviously the way people can do that is based on their context but those are to me the ways to start crying out of that will. Yeah. One thing that I've seen you do in my opinion to really great effect compared to how I did this when I was in an HR role is I think you have done a pretty exceptional job of getting out of triaging Only and staying in like the never ending world pool of individual discontent. And what I mean by that is like there is emotional processing work to be done in any complex system and I am certainly the first person to say we have to do that kind of stuff at work because We're humans and we can't just leave it at home. And there are points at which that actually becomes like quite destructive and it's cyclical and it's not going anywhere and the frustration is increasing with every conversation. It's not being channeled into something that is beneficial to the individual or to the system. And what I've seen you do is create very specific containers to be like this is when you can come and unload. This is when you can come and figure out what the fuck to do about it. And this is when you can deal with it yourself. And like I think that is a level of contracting that I rarely see HR people do. Most of us live more in the universe of like picking up the phone and just hearing someone go you got a minute. And then that being like okay now we're on a journey to whatever fucked up situation that person is doing. Yeah.)
- Time 0:18:26
-

(highlight:: Applying a UX/Product Design Approach to HR: Get Clear on Who You're Designing For
Summary:
To effectively implement a user experience (UX) approach in HR, it is crucial to identify the specific user and their needs at different moments.
Without clarity on the end user, designing processes becomes challenging and leads to vague solutions. HR needs to involve a diverse team including users, designers, and operations from the outset to sprint and test solutions iteratively, ultimately leading to a pilot before full implementation.
This contrasts with traditional HR practices that involve extensive planning and focus groups resulting in toothless rollouts.
Responding promptly to user needs, rather than appeasing the loudest voice, is key in transforming HR product and service delivery.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So what does it look like for an HR team or function to start focusing on UX as something they're really going to take seriously? Well the first question that usually has to come up is which user? So which user in which moment which specific problem? One of the things that happens I worked for a period of time kind of within an adjacent to an HR function at a big institution, big university and we were constantly pinging between different Users because we were trying to keep everyone happy and I could never get clarity about who was actually supposed to be the user of a particular process that I was supposed to hold. It just was really hard. It was really hard. I was constantly, I would try to design something that was fairly context agnostic so that I could at least use it in different ways and then I'd be constantly pulled by the OS of that system In different directions because we didn't know who our end user ultimately was. What about you, Rodney? Think about when you think about how does an HR actually learn to implement UX? I mean this is so core to the problem and what you just described and I've had this conversation recently with HR folks and this totally squares with my experience in HR. It's like okay, we need to redesign, let's call it how we do succession planning and it's like cool. HR, go figure this out. So I go away and I do a bunch of research and I'm like here's how I think the best way is to do that and they're like great. Now go talk to the stakeholders about it and it's like okay. So I go and talk to Jeff and he's like take out bullets two and three and then I go and talk to Marsha and she's like I don't actually think this is right. We should do it this way. And then I go and talk to Brian and he's like I just, I think that this won't really be that useful. And so like I chip away and chip away and chip away in all of these little one on one conversations until I have something that is vague enough to be unobjectionable to everyone and not Useful to anyone. And that is like the heart of what isn't user design and user experience design. And so what I want to see instead, even though it's much more poky and much more hard to accomplish is okay, I am going to potentially in a mission based team have those people in the mix And some other users and someone who's a designer and someone who's in operations and the person who knows where this thing is going to live from a tooling perspective. And we are going to sprint on this thing testing from an MVP as we build it out until we have something that we can then pilot in a team of teams or a function and then we can spread across functions, That's the way we bring HR product and service to the internal marketplace. What generally happens is the inverse of that, which is tons and tons of planning, tons and tons of like focus grouping to the bottom and then a completely toothless rollout. And we want the exact opposite of that thing. And I can see how this is connected to our previous conversation around contracting because inherent in this conversation is what we're not doing, which is responding as quickly as Possible to whoever is the maddest and loudest right now to get them whatever will make them less mad and less loud.)
- Time 0:28:36
-

(highlight:: Center-Out Approach to Org Decentralization: HR Produces Artifacts That Teams Adapt to Their Context
Summary:
HR teams can create MVP artifacts from the center for teams to use at the edge, allowing for high configurability by individual teams.
These artifacts include tooling, default workflows, and templated communications that can be customized by different business units. The approach involves providing a baseline and then empowering teams to adapt the artifacts to fit their specific context, avoiding overcomplication and catering to individual team needs.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
I also think this really I want to bring this to decentralization because one of the big ahas that I see HR teams having in our workshops is this idea that you can create things from the Center like in a mission based team that are MVP that are defaults for everyone to use but that are highly configurable at the edge or in this case by the business. And so what I mean by that is again, taking my succession planning example or Meg maybe after you could take your benefits example is like, okay, here's an MVP of this. It includes tooling that should work for everyone. A default workflow that we think is pretty good and some templated communications that you all can make your own. Here's a timeline that we would like to make sure that everybody has some conversation. I shouldn't be using succession planning because I don't really believe in it, but you get my point. And then from there, it's like, okay, we push this now to the edge and like finance sales prod and like now make it your own like now you do the last 20, 40% of configuration to make it fit For your context in a decentralized way. We're not going to try to figure out every eventuality and overcomplicate things.)
- Time 0:31:58
-

(highlight:: Risk tolerance in org change: When 1 bad thing happens, don't pave over it with rules
Transcript:
Speaker 1
Two is, and Sam, like you and I have talked about this a million times, like there is such a bias around risk where it's like this thing happened once. Now we make a rule for it. Now we have to uphold that rule in perpetuity. And that is what we call work debt. We don't even know if that one thing would ever happen again. But now we have hours and time and money and cycles and cycles and cycles probably forever because let's be honest, we're never going to unwrite that rule for what might have been a one Off. And so on the one hand, I think like that person's perspective is really valid. On the other hand, I'm like, if you want to be strategic, you have to learn to look at risk a little bit differently, which is that you can never eliminate it. You are always doing stuff with the issue in the rear view.)
- Time 0:36:32
- 1socialpost-queue,
- [note::See also: people v.s. process problems]