John Scott: The people stuff is really difficult and in my long experience, leaders don’t want to have the difficult conversations that need to be had.

Leaders will therefore look for any excuse or indeed anybody to have those conversations on their behalf. And then it’s a failure on the part of HR folks not to make it clear to managers and leaders that the problem lies with them. 

Lawrie Philpott: Well, today’s subject is for me, a very interesting one because it’s the subject of human resource management as it’s now known.

And in that sense, it’s my very great pleasure to introduce somebody that I’ve known for, I think it is over 35 years. This is John Scott, with whom I have worked together, he in an HR role and me running a division in one of the big four accounting firms. So, Johnny, very welcome. I’m gonna flatter you right from the outset by saying you are one of the sharpest HR people I’ve ever met and one of the best feedback people.

It’s always gonna be straight and nicely delivered. And so I’m sure we’re gonna get a fair bit of that today as we talk about the HR function. Do you wanna spend a couple of minutes just telling us about where you came from in the HR sense, your HR journey? 

John Scott: Thank you, Lawrie. Thank you very much for your kind introduction.

My HR journey started almost exactly 40 years ago when I traveled south to train as a personnel practitioner as they were known at the time. I took a bit of a detour into public sector industrial relations work and quickly decided that wasn’t for me and joined what was then Deloitte Haskins and Sales.

And I’ve worked in various HR roles at various levels of seniority in typically client facing organizations ever since my last two roles before starting off my life as a mediator and then investigator these past 12 years or so. My last two roles were with Lazard in London before enduring the financial crisis, and then with PWC in the Middle East before enduring what came to be known as the Arab Spring, where I ran a team of about 60 folks covering 12 countries providing HR services to about 2,700 partners and staff.

And as I say, I’ve been practicing as a mediator and an investigator workplace disputes these past 12 or 13 years. I’ve also enjoyed a goodly handful of sabbaticals over that period of time, and we may or may not come back to that later. 

Lawrie Philpott: There was one very interesting one, which was walking the Appalachian Way, I think, which is 2000 miles, 

John Scott: 2162.3.

Lawrie Philpott: Oh, excellent. And there’s a little book about it, which if anybody wanted to read it is well worth a read. So, back to HR as we know it, as you and I might know it, a very strategic organizational function, albeit that strategy and strategic, arguably overused words these days. And I think you’ve said it’s a difficult job at the headline level and it’s difficult to keep everybody happy from an HR perspective, there’s not much sort of thanks in it.

So why on earth, I suppose, would people want to do that thing? 

John Scott: You know, if one is interested in that Venn diagram where organizations, people, and a wider economy come together, there’s no other better role really. And I think it was that that attracted me and it was that that kept me there just because of those fascinations and the capacity and the opportunity to do great work in that space.

But you’re right, it is a difficult role. And oftentimes when I’m talking to particularly younger HR practitioners or teaching on various courses as I do, I’ll be very frank with them and I’ll say, you know, it’ll be a cold day in hell when somebody walks up to you and says, thank you very much for doing a great job.

Because when organizations are growing quickly, you can’t get enough people in the door. You can’t retain them, you can’t pay them enough, you can’t develop them quickly enough. And then when the organization or the economy’s tanking, you can’t get them out the door quickly enough and people come to fear you.

And also it is the case, partly because there’s no core skills that are particular to HR that everybody, including the office dog, thinks they can do HR or at least they’ve got a view on it. And that’s particularly prevalent in partnerships and professional partnerships as you and I know, but that’s also been my experience elsewhere.

So it is a fairly demanding job almost regardless of where you operate in the world and regardless of what the external environment is like, because you’re never going to keep people happy. And my sense is that that dynamic has worsened over the past 10 to 15 years. But we might, we may come back to why that’s the case.

Lawrie Philpott: I think we will actually. And I like the idea that, um, the sort of the, the range of skills required in HLR is a sort of matrix of a number of things which, you know, done properly and recognized in the first place could be really interesting as a career to go forward. And I think it’s fair to say we both want people management in an organization to be done properly.

And I’ve been known to say that at one level people have a right to be well led in organizations. And that’s an interesting proposition, which we might debate on another day. But today we want to lift the lid on the subject of human resource management. I think we want to be constructively critical because.

Leadership Listening has always said we want to be constructive relative to leadership, but at the same time, it’s quite possible we won’t be able to avoid being uncomplimentary because from our conversations, I know that there are degrees of satisfaction with the subject, but there’s degrees of dissatisfaction and I think HR has grown over the years.

I don’t where you go back to in the early days, John, but you mentioned the word personnel, which interestingly is an ex forces, Armed forces, military forces expression. And when I first became aware of HR, it was because I think Marks and Spencer were doing a sort of staff welfare function. Where were your earliest wakenings to the subject?

John Scott: It was probably mid eighties where things were starting to move a away from that welfare type role and more into something that had this, that’s starting to take shape of what we see now. But quite a focus on industrial relations, interestingly. And then, and then it changed remarkably quickly in the late eighties and early nineties.

But certainly my public sector experience was, was very much staff welfare and industrial relations. That was it. Oh, and lots of committees, which helps to explain why it wasn’t a great experience for me. 

Lawrie Philpott: Yeah, and public sector is where we also in earlier lives coincide because that’s where I started many years ago in what was then known in the public sector as the establishments function.

You had an establishment of staff and then you could populate the establishment with people who were in certain grades, and there was a thing in local government called the Purple Book, which was the terms and conditions of service. Thank God we’ve gone on a little bit since then. Arguably not far enough, but more of that anon my recollection, John, is that then in the nineties HR went through something that approximated, or what they described as the consulting model. In other words, we are going to be the people in an organization who consult as regards the subject of HR with people who are in line management, the people who run organizations, the people in the C-suite.

But I don’t think that lasted very long, 

John Scott: lasts terribly long. Because HR people tend not to have consulting skills and their bosses don’t necessarily want to listen to them. 

Lawrie Philpott: Yeah. 

John Scott: There we are. There we are. 

Lawrie Philpott: And more recently then, quite a couple of decades ago, I suppose now we had the advent of the HR business partner model.

John Scott: Yes. 

Lawrie Philpott: Which is a good bunch of words and sort of intimates. I still think you know the consulting skills because you are a service function, but also intimate that you’ve gotta be the trusted business advisor. And that’s where I think we begin to come into that notion of trusted business advisor because, you know, obviously with people dimensions, but what might we say about the HR business partner model to open the subject?

John Scott: I never got it. I think your interpretation of it is right, but it seemed to me to become one of effectively descaled HR practitioners and made them expensive post boxes really, between the business as it were and a whole bunch of practitioners and services and functions that lay behind the business partner.

I struggled to understand it and I struggled to understand why it’s still around. To be honest. It seemed to me to add no value whatsoever. And if the objective was to put the business part there into a sort of trusted advisor to those folks around them, then in my view, the success of that is partial at best.

And at worst non-existent. Partly because if you’re going to be a business partner with some pretty senior people you need to have been around the block a few times and you also need a whole bunch of skills starting in my view, with substantial interest in what the business is about and some commercial insight in the capacity to feed that commercial insight on a regular basis.

And that’s not your typical HR practitioner In my experience. 

Lawrie Philpott: Well, suffice to say, I’ve been around over a hundred leadership team tables over the years and there are many occasions when the HR person isn’t around that same leadership table. So they’re absent. 

John Scott: Yeah. 

Lawrie Philpott: They might sometimes, I seem to remember sit on the sidelines. But not around the table, which I think is terrible.

John Scott: terrible. 

Lawrie Philpott: It’s and they might also be deputed. To take the minutes as part of their presence. And I think that’s terrible too. So I think it’s been, this top table thing, has been an issue for, I think, more than 40 years to mind knowing.

John Scott: And it’s a bit tedious, isn’t it?

Lawrie Philpott: It’s definitely tedious to be at that level of thinking. And I suppose the question is obviously between line management and human resources, and it’s a judgment maybe of the function. I suppose. It could be a judgment of the individual who holds the HR position and whether they’re really seen as somebody who can be justifiably around the table.

But in the public sector, for example, over 70%, normally, of the revenue costs of an organization go to the people I mentioned. So how you wouldn’t have some kind of specialism called human resources around the leadership team table is a very interesting point, I think to ponder. 

John Scott: It is and here’s some observations.

I mean, some leadership teams just don’t give a flying one for the people piece. And if, if they did, then they would probably have some heavy hitting HR person sat next to them on the leadership teams. Oftentimes it’s delegated away and it just belongs somewhere else in the organization. Or there is some around the leadership team who’s just not terribly effective because they’ve not got that line of sight of what it is that drives the business.

And they don’t necessarily have the sort of relationships where they can have a sensible conversation with the chief executive and other senior officers to say, here are the people challenges. This is what you need to understand. This is what we’re going to do. Can we have the conversation? Let’s get going because I’m interested, for example, in talking to you about workforce planning, hiring, leadership development, engagement, and the use of technology and all of that will fit very neatly into your strategy.

And if it doesn’t, there’s something wrong with your strategy or if it doesn’t, you haven’t thought about the people bit. And there’s very few businesses apart from those that treat people typically at minimum wage, treat them nearly badly or pay them a bucket load of money and treat them badly.

There’s very few businesses that don’t have at the heart the people. It’s difficult to think of them. It’s really difficult to think of them. 

Lawrie Philpott: It is the common denominator in most organizations. A big lever. And I can say, just to mirror your thoughts there, John, that when I’ve been working with the leadership team natural process is to talk to each one of the individuals on a one-to-one confidential, non-attributable basis.

And boy oh boy does that process itself tell me something. And that might well include the human resources person. And then we begin to engage. Obviously you are running team development sessions and so on. And I have to say that there have been far too many occasions when it becomes clear that my kind of one week, 10 day knowledge of the real inside of the workings of the commercials of the organization are probably somewhat ahead of the HR person around the table. Sorry to say it, but I think 

John Scott: No, no, no. I think you’re right. I think you’re right and I think you’re being polite, to be honest, Lawrie. So I think one of the key skills of senior HR people, apart from the commercial insight is being able to influence, they’ve very rarely got any organizational power, but they have to be able to influence and they can only influence if they develop long-term profitable, and you can define that how you like, but they can only work at a senior level if they develop those long-term profitable relationships. Because people, challenges facing your finance director will be much different to the people challenges facing your marketing director or your chief executive officer, and it’s minus those relationships, you’re never really going to get that level of insight.

Lawrie Philpott: And it’s interesting that people talk. There’s a constant joke about human remains instead of human resources. And a very, very, very influential mentor in my development 20 or more years ago, somebody who knew more I think about organizations and people than most people I’ve ever met, described HR as the administrative handmaiden and the toilet flusher of organizational life.

And you have to say. Goodness, what about that? 

John Scott: Yes. Well, that, I mean, I’ll go straight to, I think that’s terribly old fashioned and deeply reactionary, but there we are. There we are. Perfectly entitled to a view.

Lawrie Philpott: It was said. And of course more recently there was the, and we won’t go into this in any detail, the Coldplay incident where an HR director was focused on at a Coldplay concert in, shall we say, difficult conditions.

And I think we need to leave it at that. 

John Scott: Yes, I do. I do recall from a, you know, brief stay  in the public sector. I worked for an institution of higher education. One of the few reasons you could get rid of academic stuff was gross moral turpitude. 

Lawrie Philpott: Marvelous stuff. If we come back to HR and line management, the C-Suite, I think my proposition very firmly is that human resource management is a line management subject. Rather like somebody in the C-suite needs to have a bit of financial knowledge and, and a lot of financial knowledge if you are the CFO obviously, but you are required to have a bit of strategy and planning and project management and so on and so forth. You are a generalist and of course the CEO is the ultimate generalist, but I often wonder then whether the line accepts that HR is a line management subject, and I wonder at the same time whether the human resource practitioners, human resource directors, leaders recognize that it’s a line management subject.

HR as a department, for example, or as a function, has no real right to exist because it’s a support function. It’s there obviously because there are lots of specialist jobs to do, whether it’s attract, retain, or motivate, and all the other subjects that go with that. But there’s this gap I think that is a difficult gap to go along with Johnny.

John Scott: I agree. I’m absolutely with you on that, Lawrie. And here’s a thing. What about leaders and then stepping away from their responsibility for people stuff? The people stuff is really difficult. It’s really difficult. And in my long experience, leaders don’t want to have the difficult conversations that need to be had.

And they’re not unusual from anybody else. We could walk up and down the main street and we would be surrounded by folks that don’t want to have difficult conversations. Leaders will therefore look for any excuse or indeed anybody to have those conversations on their behalf. And I’ve walked into senior HR roles where that’s exactly what, the chief executive has said to me, you’re gonna be doing the difficult stuff. I’m not. So they step away from it. They don’t necessarily hold accountability for the people stuff. And I find this in the work that I do now, because when I’m mediating, I want somebody in the chain of command, as it were, above the folks that are in dispute to take responsibility because they’re accountable for the train wreck that I’m helping them resolve. Oftentimes they won’t necessarily put their hand in the air and take that accountability. So I think it’s a failure of managers and leaders  to own the people’s staff because it’s really difficult. And then it’s a failure on the part of HR folks not to make it clear to managers and leaders that the problem lies with them.

And then on occasion, HR folks will get themselves into situations that they shouldn’t get into, where they’re seen to own, for example, a disciplinary or a grievance. Nothing could be further from the truth. Like nothing could be further from the truth. So I think there’s faults on both sides, but  I’m with you.

Responsibilities for people in a team lie with the leader of that team. How server described whether or not it’s the chief executive for  a local manager or what. And you’re right, the HR function is a support function, but I tell you, when it motors, when it’s really powerful, it can be a powerhouse.

It’s no longer becomes a support function. It becomes a powerhouse that drives change. It drives organizational change. It drives business success. It earns a place at the table and it keeps going. But it’s rare.

Lawrie Philpott: So are we effectively saying then that it’s HR not really core, not really strategic, and that’s partly because the line management, the C-suite, don’t grasp that and partly maybe because at least in some cases,  because there is good HR management in numbers of places. 

John Scott: Yeah. 

Lawrie Philpott: But in many instances that inclination to be strategic and to force the pace. Strategically from a a human resource point of view, from a people point of view just isn’t coming from the HR director 

John Scott: Exactly.

They’re either, they’ve walked into jobs where the chief executive isn’t up for it, or alternatively they don’t have the wherewithal to drive it.

Lawrie Philpott: And in that sense, I often use the expression that. HR is a little bit like a secret garden, you know? Especially if all the HR people are in one place in the organization.

And I think in a moment or two we might just talk about where they should be in one place or out in the business, for example. But back to the secret garden, which is convenient to the sort of people, HR people very often are, this is HR, it’s our space. We know it. And you have to conform at the margin in many ways. And if you don’t, we’ll certainly be wagging our finger at you and you might well end up in a tribunal. So the secret garden is there. And I think if you look then from the C-suite perspective, they for their part see it as a secret garden that they don’t quite understand. 

John Scott: They don’t quite understand. Yeah. Yeah.

And into which they throw issues that they don’t want to deal with.

Lawrie Philpott: How? Tell me more, Johnny.

John Scott: Well, oft oftentimes with disputes or grievances, it gets tossed over the fence into the secret garden and it sort of disappears and eventually some sort of solution emerges over a period of time.

I remember I did a piece of work with employment law firm some years back, and myself and this senior partner suspected that grievances just weren’t working. So we had to look at his caseload and average length of a grievance before it was finalized, six months. So that’s something that’s been tossed over into the secret Garden of HR.

It effectively disappears from the folk that actually own the problem. It disappears from the folk that have say, raised the grievance and then it emerges six months later with a result. That’s probably not satisfactory to, to anybody. So I like the secret garden thing. I, frankly, if it was up to me, I’d flatten the walls, rip out all the weeds and scatter HR folks to all sides of the organization. 

Lawrie Philpott: What we are saying is that there’s a sort of schism between HR and the C-Suite that really needs to be joined up much more properly, much more strongly. 

John Scott: I think so. And I mean, it’s not a universal schism because as, as we both know sometimes it works wonderfully well, but Yes. When you ask any chief executive what happens in the finance function, the marketing function, they’ve probably got a good idea. I wonder if they know what goes on in in HR. It’s not necessarily their fault that they don’t know. And of course, many of them don’t care.

Lawrie Philpott: Yeah. 

John Scott: And many of them don’t care. You know, they’ll, they’ll talk the talk, but, and you know what, when it comes down to it, it’s always really helpful looking at how people are paid and what they’re paid for. Because that drives behavior. And you know, for all the chief executives I’ve worked with or for, there’s very rarely been a massive people bit that defines their comp or their bonus or their career development or whatever.

And, you know, for organizations with a board, I do wonder. I could probably take a good guess at this, how often the chair and chief executive has a conversation about people stuff. 

Lawrie Philpott: Yeah. And it’s interesting, John, if you accept my proposition that, which is many in various as regards to the role of the CEO, and lots of that will be coming out in the Leadership Listening podcast, believe me.

But one of the core propositions is that the CEO’s job is to create the organization to do the work and keep it up to date. And I think therefore, I can logically say that if the CEO creates the organization and creates an HR function, it’s the CEO who ought to have some thinking about why am I creating that.

What is it for? How do I want it to contribute? Why is it valuable? And so on. So I think the incumbents is on the CEO to make the running. Because it is their job to create the organization to do the work. And they’ve created HR by virtue of having it. 

John Scott: Yeah, exactly. And if they can’t see a meaningful strategic function for it, then they should just close it down and outsource it.

Lawrie Philpott: And that’s interesting in its own right because there are various pushes in various organizations these days to move on let’s abandon the whole classical proposition around HR and let’s feed it into the business and have much more accent on our C-suite, our line managers below the C-suite doing the people things much more vigorously, much more involved.

John Scott: Mmhm. 

Lawrie Philpott: Which takes me, I think, John, to another sort of conundrum, which is around the sort of people side of life in organizations, and I call it The in and on conundrum because it seems to me that when you get to the top team, the leadership team, the C-suite, you need to work both in the organization and on the organization.

And all I can tell you is that all too often there is an imbalance. And the imbalance is the on stuff. Is very much the poor relation to the in stuff. So let me explain. If we are talking about any organization, doesn’t matter whether it’s a retail or a airline or a bank or a law firm or whatever, let’s stick to banking.

You work in banking and you start at the bottom and you work your way up and your aim is to be a good banker. There are some interesting questions around that, of course, especially when we have problems a la 2007, 8, 9, 10. So eventually as you work in the organization, you end up perhaps on the leadership team of a very big bank with a hundred thousand people in it and you still have to be working in the organization and a great banker ideally.

The conversations I have with them around the leadership team table when I say there’s some on the organization stuff, which is the poor relation here. And they look at me a bit gone out and say, well, what do you mean? And I say, well, there is the external business environment and all the strategic analysis that goes with that.

What’s the data? What is the trending of the data? How do you put all that into your direction setting process and put in place strategy and plans that you’re gonna deliver. You’ve got the culture, the values, the behavior, the core management practices, the teamwork, the leadership, the communication, the motivation, the connection between reward and performance, the training, the development, et cetera.

I’m gonna stop there. There’s a bit more, but I’ve stopped there and they say Yeah, Laurie go down the, the driveway and there’s a porter cabin just before the exit gate and you’ll find the HR people in there just go and talk to them about it. And of course I refuse because I think around that leadership team table, we’ve gotta have both the in conversation.

John Scott: Yes. Great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lawrie Philpott: Great banking in my example. And the on conversation and the on is always the poor relation and the proposition is that if you bring the on up to be reasonably close in terms of level of sophistication to the in, and they may be integrated here and there. You’ll have a happier, more profitable organization.

John Scott: Agreed. I’m absolutely with you on that. And I think to find a senior HR person, that’s actually working that model and helping their C-suite. To grasp the on bit it would be like looking for he’s teeth in my view. Yeah, partly because they don’t necessarily have the skills. And I have to say the training of HR practitioners in this country is shocking and they don’t necessarily have the willingness and neither would they think strategically or would they think in organizational design terms about the issues that you’ve just walked us through.

Lawrie Philpott: at the paradox I think John and I’ve had it with lots of individuals and with leadership teams, if you start talking about the on stuff. So I’ve got in my mind a very significant, very high level derivatives boss. So massive mathematics and complex financial perspectives. We started to do the on stuff and it was, you know, a complete blank sheet as far as this individual was concerned. And I have to tell you that, and it’s not unique by any means, when they go down the on track, they say, this is really interesting. Why hasn’t anybody told me about this before?

John Scott: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Lawrie Philpott: And I say, well, you went to business school, but quite often business school was 20 years ago. 

John Scott: Yeah. 

Lawrie Philpott: You might still have learned about it 20 years before. And certainly your HR people might want to make you learn about this stuff so that the odd stuff is dealt with properly in your organization. But my message is they really get, I’d use the word fascinated by it. And it’s shining a light in, in on them.

John Scott: And that’s partly because, I mean, it is terribly easy just to let the end stuff overwhelm, but also it’s that capacity to step away from the end stuff and explore that on stuff can be really illuminating.

Because it, it, you know, it’s fundamentally, it’s what’s your operating model? It’s big questions like that. How do you organize yourself in order to maximize whatever it is that you want to maximize? And the people bit will be a large part of that. So, you know who’s thinking, for example, about the impact of AI in respect of the on stuff for the legal profession?

Any organization that has an apprenticeship model call it what you want, call it what you want, where there’s long periods of study leading to somebody emerging as a qualified X, Y or Z, or an accredited builder or whatever, whatever they need to be thinking very seriously, partly as a consequence of working from home, but more importantly, as a consequence of the impact of AI, how are they going to develop future partners?

You know,from our old life. I read an analysis today that some AI tool was much more effective at calling the shots than pretty seriously experienced investment banking analysts on a particular piece of work. Now that’s not unusual and that’s going to continue. So where do the HR practitioners thinking about the on stuff in respect of that rather than just thinking, well, okay, how do we use AI to find next year’s graduate recruitment trainees?

And that’s that sort of interesting, although we’ll come back to, I still think there’s a need for high touch in HR and doing everything automated just doesn’t work. That’s more or less irrelevant. What’s really relevant, and if it brings us back to the whole place of workforce planning.

Where is that thinking going on and where is the change happening? And I can almost put money on this. It won’t be happening in big organizations because they’re too slow, they’re too profitable, and they’re too insulate. The interesting stuff will be going on in much smaller organizations and in startups, and that will almost inevitably mean that they’re going to come along and start to eat the lunch of these big profitable organizations.

Who are so profitable, they think life will continue. Butit’s not going to, it’s just not. 

Lawrie Philpott: I hope you are enjoying this episode of Leadership Listening. Please don’t forget to like and subscribe. Put your feedback and ideas in the comments and visit our website leadership listening.com for more information. You can email us too on podcast@leadershiplistening.com It’s great to have you here.

Lawrie Philpott: And interestingly, I was at a seminar last week run by Zenon Gray of the Nicer Group. Interesting organization. And one of the many stats that came out of that session was that they’d done a survey and they’d asked a big bunch of people. Was there anybody in your history of work who really, you know, made a mark on you positively in the sense of developing you, you know, in a very memorable, practical, useful way? Do you know what the percentage was? 

John Scott: If I’m thinking, if I think for my own example, I’m guessing it would be relatively low.

Lawrie Philpott: It was the numbers they got between 15 and 20%.

John Scott: Oh, okay. Oh, right. That is low.

Lawrie Philpott: Very low indeed. So leadership needs to look to its laurels in sense. 

John Scott: Although you and I did a pretty good job and we, both of us plotted our escape from what was then Coopers and Lybrand in a wine bar just off High Holborn as I recall over a period of months.

Lawrie Philpott: We did. And it turned out magnificently in the form of my consulting operation at Philpott Black over the last 29 years and then led on to the Leadership Listing podcast. Yes. Which is an interesting tour, to say the least.

Back to HR and leadership. So if I’m the HR people director, and I’ve gotta relate to the CEO, I think it’s very interesting, John, because, I have quite often been introduced to a CEO directly. So I’m there, I might be doing the second or third session. Things are warming up, I’m talking about the on stuff, and things are looking good. And all of a sudden somehow the HR director comes into play and says…

John Scott: and then, and then gets pissy with you with regards to why you’re there.

Lawrie Philpott: Yes. What, who’s he, what’s he doing here and why? And of course there’s an answer to that, that I’m talking about things that really the CEO doesn’t talk about with the people director. So what might we say about the relationship between, how should A CEO and I in our Coopers and Lybrand time, ran the biggest of the 22 divisions in the general practice, and you were the HR director and I think we got on famously and the division was successful. So what might we say about that relationship between the HR director and the CEO? 

John Scott: Well let me say something about external consultants. External consultants have a easy Lawrie because they’re brought in for a particular reason and because they’re bright and new and shiny, chief executives look upon them differently than their own folks.

And I know from my own experience, you know, I walk into a room as an independent who’s been around the block a few times, and immediately I get people’s attention and the way that in-house folks don’t, and because of that, I can tell them things that the in-house folk can’t tell them otherwise they might be sacked or demoted or whatever.

So let’s just recognize that for what it is. I think the crucial relationship for a senior HR person is whoever it is that they report to in the business. And that’s key. That’s absolutely key. You need to get to know them really well.

You need to get to know what their people objectives are at some level of detail. You need to be able to impress upon them when you think they’ve got it wrong or it’s not quite right. You need to have that exchange and that capacity and the space to be able to create change. And you can only really do that if you start from their agenda.

You know, I sat the chief executive the other day there who was in a spit of sack in the entirety of her very significant HR function for the size of the organization that she was running. And she was talking to me about some of the conversations she was having. It’s all sort of compliance risk averse nonsense.

And this is stuff that’s getting brought to the chief executives table as it were. She’s not interested in it. She doesn’t want to hear about it. She wants it fixing. She doesn’t want to hear about it. And yet, that’s what her head of HR is bringing to her. A number of senior people that need to be got rid of.

And rather than the HR director taking them for a walk around the park and having a cup of coffee and saying, this isn’t quite working out. Let’s do something about this. It all ends up back on chief Executives desk. That’s not the way to do it. The way to do it is to build that relationship. It’s an absolutely crucial relationship. And if folks can’t do that or if they’ve got a CEO that’s resistant to that, assuming they’re reporting to the CEO, then the HR director has either got to suck it up or leave. And my view would be, there’s no good reason to suck up that sort of nonsense. Working with somebody who’s hired you but actually isn’t interested in the people stuff, get the hell out, or work on finding a replacement to the chief executive, which is pretty high risk.

Lawrie Philpott: Yep. Got it. I see.

John Scott: But you know, if it’s a people driven organization, then we’ve agreed that most organizations are. You can’t have a chief executive who’s got no sense about that whatsoever, who’s got no interest in it, who chooses to delegate it to others. That’s just fundamentally not good enough. And I think. For those organizations that you and I think are well run and look after their people and it shows in terms of customer service or clients or whatever, whatever, you can almost guarantee that the chief executives all over it like a rash. 

Lawrie Philpott: Interesting then it seems to me from what we are saying and what you are saying in particular is that the conversation that the HR director needs to be able to have with the CEO is around where are you taking this organization and why, and how strategically? Where are we? Because I think there’s some kind of partnership there between a HR director and a CEO. Where are we relative to each of the direct reports to you on the C-suite? Because I think there’s an absolute that it has to be a team game these days. And again, John having worked with over a hundred leadership teams, I think it’s fair to say that from going into the room and saying, is this a team? The answer is generally no. And sometimes to, and quite often actually to a very significant extent, not a team. And so what are we go, you know, what have we got as the direct reports to you, and how do we operate as a team to deliver stuff in complex circumstances? 

John Scott: It’s difficult to think about an HR person who’s made it into the chief executive seat.

In fact, I can’t think of anybody, therefore, us HR folks are not a threat to the chief executive, unlike any number of other folks around his or her table. 

So that gives you a license to have a sort of conversations with the chief executive that he or she might not issue to other senior colleagues.

And I think the measure of a good HR director is the capacity to have tough, constructive, meaningful conversations with the chief executive about their leadership team. 

Lawrie Philpott: And does that mean, Johnny, that the CEO needs to be proactive with the chief personnel officer, chief, the HR whatever, needs to almost give them license that not only do I want absolute feedback from you, absolutely the best advice, absolutely no punches pulled.

Otherwise, I don’t think you’d be doing your job properly, and I think you would be failing against one of the maxims that I think is imported in the, on the organization sense, which is to stand in reality if in our conversations between the HR director in the CEO we are not standing in reality and you are not giving me very direct feedback, no punch is pulled.

I will never know quite what you are editing and what you are not editing.

John Scott: I think that’s right and sometimes it will be the chief executive giving license. On other occasions, and you know me well, it’s a question of the HR director taking the license. 

Lawrie Philpott: Yes. Yeah.

John Scott: You know, making that space. And you know what, you know, you can have a conversation with your chief executive, say, well, you know, the team’s not working is it? There’s something wrong. You know, we’re about to spend a ton of money on a new acquisition and the board direct, uh, sorry, the, the leadership team person who’s got responsibility for doing that, but more, more importantly, for integrating that business into. Other businesses it were, isn’t up to scratch.

What are we going to do about that? Absolutely. Because now is the time to act. If you don’t act, it will be a shit show and it’ll reflect badly on you because ultimately you’re accountable for the success of this acquisition. And we know fine that, you know, signing the deal is the easy bit.

Integrating it is a remarkably difficult bit. And you’ve got somebody on your team for just by way of example, who’s not up to scratch. 

Lawrie Philpott: And I’ve got four sort of roles for an HR director relative to the CEO. And by the way, most of this applies to the C-Suite team as well. 

John Scott: Mm-hmm. 

Lawrie Philpott: The roles are expert, advisor, coach and mentor and I wonder whether we should just spend a few seconds on each one of those. Expert. Are you really top draw in terms of your knowledge of human resource management more generally? Strategy and how it works? Implementation and how it works? Project management and how it works and so on. Or are you as an HR director? Sort of more confined? I only do the people thing, which is the legal thing, and we’ve got HR processes and we’ve got an HR manual. Incidentally, some of the best organizations I have these days are saying, we don’t have an HR handbook. No. You’re expected to behave properly and if you don’t, somebody will have a word with you, 

John Scott: Which is terribly refreshing.

Lawrie Philpott: Absolutely. But expert. Do you think they’re expert enough these days in the kind of realm of the things that I’ve mentioned just now, which run into broader management and broader leadership?

John Scott: Unless they come from a consulting background or they’ve had experience elsewhere or a lot of their professional life has not been doing HR stuff. Then the short answer’s no. 

Lawrie Philpott: An advisor then, you know, knowing the nature of advice and how to give advice and to receive advice, again, I’ve seen quite a lot of different psychological models carried by CEOs, let’s put it fairly and nicely like that, where they wouldn’t take advice from almost anybody, let alone somebody who might actually, as the HR director be almost the best equipped person in the organization. So advice?

John Scott: That’s a decision for them to take really, and for the HR director to work on. And if they’re working for somebody that doesn’t want to hear advice or indeed doesn’t want to give it, then, you know, I come back to an earlier point, you suck it up or you leave and the best thing to do is leave.

Lawrie Philpott: What about coach then? Because I think my position is if you have some kind of coaching relationship on an internal basis, that’s better than not having it provided it’s reasonably standing in reality not smoke and mirrors and all the rest of it.

But a piece of good advice from an HR director ought to be that the top people in this day and age really do need a coach. External?

John Scott: It depends. It depends. I wouldn’t necessarily make it a shopping list for everybody to be on it at any particular moment in time because there’s a lot of money wasted on coaching.

A lot of money’s really well spent. There’s a lot of money wasted. I’m just thinking if have I ever had a coaching or a mentoring? Let’s roll them both together. I’ve had what might well look like a coaching and mentoring relationship with some of the senior people I’ve worked with normally when they just want to go offline and kick something around, typically when there’s an issue that’s pretty major and that they just want somebody to talk to to work out a solution.

And then I’ve occasionally had conversations again with chief executives, where I’ve been able to say, to listen, there’s something going wrong here in terms of how you’re leading the team. Can we talk about it? It seems to me the following is the case. Can we talk about this? If I’m wrong, you will tell me and I’ll wind my neck in.

But I don’t think I am wrong. If I might be right or if I on to something, then what can we do about it? What can I do to help? What is the issue? What might the organization do to help you? None of these discussions are off the table in my view. In fact, they should be on the table.

And if you’ve started in a job and you’ve misjudged the senior person that you’re reporting to, it needn’t necessarily be the chief executive and then not up for that sort of conversation because you tried to have it, then you know. And you could continue to work on it because some people will be immediately up for it. Others, it will take time and discussion and experience and just doing stuff together. And then others will be remarkably resistant. And there’s very little you can do with the folks that are remarkably resistant. Occasionally there’ll be a breakthrough. I can think of one or two over 40 years, but then those two populations of people that would be up for it and then capable of being persuaded, there’ll be some fruitful stuff.

And if it’s not the chief executive, it might be other senior colleagues. Yeah. Who again, just want to have a conversation that’s off the record. I think this is your phrase, like you said to me years ago, John, you do your best work in the shadows.

And that’s true. And it’s, it’s true. A lot of it is invisible. 

Lawrie Philpott: Absolutely. It’s very interesting in that sense. And, moving then we couldn’t do a conversation like this, without mentioning the CIPD, which I have to say I never ever joined. Um, it was difficult for me to join way back when, and then my career iterated and I never really got round to it.

I think it was offered at one point, but it never happened one way or another. They say CIPD, that the HR profession needs to be expert in people, work and change. Interestingly, from the point of view of Leadership Listening. They say in one of their reports, there’s no real single agreed definition of leadership, which may be true, but certainly I think one could articulate an awful lot about it, which is part of the purpose of Leadership Listening. So thoughts on the CIPD and whether the CIPD ought to be coming outta the corner may be, especially with what’s gonna happen to organizations in the next one, two, or three years in particular and beyond. But I’m going only to a three year time horizon.

Massive change like we’ve never seen before. 

John Scott: I think that like any membership organization, Lawrie, they’re sort of irrelevant. I was a member because I had to be in order to get my qualification and certification. Call it what you want. I think I was a member for a few years thereafter. I was under education committee for a couple of years and that was potentially one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had.

And then when I look at the curriculum that they’ve forced upon universities for the students to get their HR qualifications, I despair really? So I don’t think they’re unusual in the membership organization. They’re just deeply, irrelevant and boring.

I mean, you sent me along one of their reports on leadership I think. I made it to page three or page four and that was it. And interestingly, I was following a debate on LinkedIn where somebody, maybe not my generation, maybe late forties, early fifties, was just saying, actually, I’ve had enough.

And I’m gonna stop this in any number of other folks who piling in and seeing exactly the same. But it’s a bit, it’s a bit like jumping back to my old industrial relations experience. It’s a bit like a pre-entry closed shop. You know, if you don’t have the qualification at an early stage in your career, then you’re going nowhere. So they’ve got no incentive to change, but I look upon them as utterly irrelevant. 

Lawrie Philpott: Well, John, you were kind enough to share with me your markers for the HR profession going forward. And it may well be that somebody from that or august body would, um, like to get into some kind of discussion about it, provided the discussion was gonna go somewhere.

And I’ll just run through them and if you wanna say anything on those. 

We should then move on to one or two things about, finally, towards HR in the public sector and the private sector. Before that, your markers, first of all, commercially literate and knowledgeable. Secondly, well-developed influencing skills. Thirdly, highly numerate. Fourthly, digitally savvy, Fifthly. Driven by metrics and finally, excellent communication skills. And by the way, John, from my point of view, I always say I have never met an organization that over communicates your markers. Are they within reach, do you think?

John Scott:If any number of HR folks and, and potentially it’s through no fault of their own, they are within reach, but people want to be, people are going to have to want to reach them.

None of them are impossible. I mean, most HR folks are not numerate and I could I include myself in that. Am I digitally savvy? I’m probably not of a generation to be honest.There’s a generational gap here. I think it’s all within reach, but people need to be able to want to go there.

And I think if you take those markers, which I think are, are pretty realistic, you could probably find other people doing other stuff that’s not HR that have those skills. So why not go and hire them into HR? And then fundamentally change the face of HR and how it’s delivered. So whenever I meet students for the first time, I’ll say to them, who reads the FT? Who reads The Economist? What are you reading online? What happened in the markets overnight that just might affect the organizations you’re going to work for? It’s a rare day when anybody puts their hands up and say, actually, by the way, I’m doing all that stuff.

Lawrie Philpott: Well, it’s interesting, John, then if we think about that in that very practical sense, because if I look around the organizations that seem to be doing quite well at the moment in the private sector, people like Unilever, John Lewis, Rolls Royce, Jane Street, Gregg’s, all doing well, and I, it’d be interesting to get a bit closer to the influence of HR in those organizations.

John Scott: Mm-hmm. 

Lawrie Philpott: But at the same time, I also look at the ones not doing so well. And the very lurid Post Office story, one of the worst scandals to hit this country ever. Thames Water Bankrupt. And you wonder, obviously there’s an awful lot of goings on in both of those organizations.

Not only people related, but an awful lot of employees have been affected and more effect may be yet to come in Post Office and Thames Water. So one wonders about the impact of the HR function in organizations that are encountering difficulty as well?

John Scott: yes. Yeah. Well the post office is a good one.

I mean, one wonders, I mean there’s been a lot of press commentary about the role of in-house lawyers in the Post Office scandal. One wonders whether HR people have been Really interesting. There’s clearly not been a voice at the table holding leadership to account.

Lawrie Philpott: And as we draw to a close John, it would be wrong, I think not to ask a few questions about the public sector, and I don’t mean this in any way, shape, or form as a political point. I speak of somebody who is a public sector enthusiast, I gave it 16 years of my life. I’ve worked for both Conservative and Labor administrations including one of them which was extremely bright red with the leadership of Ken Livingston in the early eighties.

So interesting times, but I wonder about the profile, if you like, of human resource management in the public sector, in the civil service and in local government. Any thoughts? 

John Scott: You don’t feel it, you don’t sense it. It’s almost as though it’s absent. And there’s clearly any number of industrial relations disputes.

So you know, they’re not cutting the cake there either. And my, my guess is that it’s sort of in crisis mode. 

Lawrie Philpott: Yeah. And when you look at the NHS, which didn’t have a staff planning function for over 10 or 12 years, I think. And at the time of the one that was done a couple of years ago, I think there were 130,000 vacancies in the organization.

Where’s the HR function there? Where is the HR function relative to the police service? Either for the uniform side or the non-uniform side.

John Scott: HR folks in the HS are saying we are paying shockingly high sums of money to agencies. What do we do to bring, what do we do to bring that to a whole?

Lawrie Philpott: Absolutely. So another day maybe we’ll do something on the on the public sector and get somebody to talk to Leadership Listening about that subject. 

John Scott: I think that would be really helpful. Because you and I have been out of it for far too long and we’re observing it at a distance, but I think your question, where are the HR folks? Is, is a very good one. Yeah. I mean Rory Stewart’s book talked about his time as prisons minister. And he pointed out that one of the defining features of a successful prison was the person running it. Therefore, it should be incumbent upon whoever it is that hires those leaders to be very clear as to what good looks like and then put people like that into every single prison in the country.

Lawrie Philpott: Yeah. And interestingly, a very good friend of mine now, no longer with us, was the HR director of the prison service. So he took me through all sorts of the inside story of that. And it is yet another thing in the public sector that needs it’s, needs, attention. No, it’s not pretty. So John, I think the summary of what has been for me a really fabulous engaging conversation. Thank you. Is that HR is not really where it needs to be. It’s not really ground breaking and I think the line needs to get its act together and initiate more because ultimately they’ve created the HR function. And they ought to know what to do with it much more.

John Scott: And it may be, LaWrie, there’s some great stuff going on out there and, and it may be for another subject. Another one of these sessions where somebody comes along and says, actually look at these examples. This is fantastic. But for the moment I share your conclusion. 

Lawrie Philpott: Well, John, I’d be very happy to have a three-way conversation with that person if they wanna put themselves forward on Leadership Listening.

Because there’s a real debate. We need an HR futurologist, if you like, to talk about the impact of artificial intelligence, quantum computing. And I think it’s fair to say, as you’ve said to me, you know, technology needs a human touch. As Frank Zappo once said, it’s all very well to understand technology, but where’s the eyebrows? And one of my favorite 

John Scott: Quite. And one of my favorite guitarists even if we were alive, would never be replaced by a piece of technology. 

Lawrie Philpott: Yeah, absolutely. There is a debate needed on HR in the future. Its meaning and its role and Leadership Listening is happy to take part in that. If viewers and listeners have got views that they want to put forward, our email is podcast@leadershiplistening.com

And John, final point before we close your pet hate and your secret passion,.

John Scott: my pet hate are leaders who don’t fess up to what’s going on around them and are honest and transparent and things that have gone wrong and what they’re going to do to fix it. And I attach that to politicians, but I also attach it to business leaders.

I, you know,if it was a business leader who came along and said, you know what, we didn’t quite get that right and that’s on me and this is what we’re gonna do to fix it. That would be such a breath of fresh air. I’d probably weep and shout and joy at the same time because it’s absolutely lacking in the public discourse, absolutely lacking, and it’s so, so unfortunate there.

That’s my pet hate for the moment. It’s been my pet hate for a long time, in fact.

Lawrie Philpott: And your secret passion?

John Scott: I’ve recently discovered Dark & Stormy, which is rum with ginger beer. My God. And it’s quickly becoming a secret passion. Well, it’s less than secret. Because I’ve told you, and also I’ve had a few recently.

It is just, it’s amazing. I recommend it to everybody, partly because when I grew up in a coal mining community in Scotland, the miners would either drink whiskey, cheap whiskey, or really dark rum, which was disgusting. You could barely smell it little or drink it. So I never thought that there was ever the possibility of a good quality rum.

Which I discovered many years later. And then I never thought there might be the possibility that a combination of rum plus ginger beer would be so fantastic. But it is. 

Lawrie Philpott: Marvelous, John. We will have a a Wera, I’ll even buy it. How about that? 

John Scott: Oh, thank you.

Lawrie Philpott: But John, today’s discussion has lived up to everything that I hoped it would be.

It’s been fantastic, and thank you so much On behalf of the viewers and listeners of Leadership Listing. Bye for now.