By Jason McRobbie

While the mark of a great conference is often considered to be the answers or solutions found, what continues to distinguish the BC HRMA Annual Conference and Tradeshow is the calibre of the questions asked from the main stage.

Inspire. Influence. Innovate.

If only it were so simple.  What if it is?

It was a question posed by Marshall Goldsmith, the Forbes-dubbed ‘rock star’ of the the executive coaching scene at the start of BC HRMA 51st Annual Conference and Tradeshow which attracted more than 1,000 HR and business professionals to the Vancouver Convention Centre West on May 1-2, 2013.

Goldmsith takes a tough line with leadership, hand picks his clients and has been inspired by the best in return.

“Coaching used to be a ‘fix losers’ activity. It has become much more of a ‘help winners’ activity today: something good for people who want to be a success,” said Goldsmith.  “I had the privilege before he died of spending 50 days with Peter Drucker, the world’s greatest authority on management. I was on his Board for 10 years. Peter Drucker said, ‘We spend a lot of time helping leaders learn what to do. We do not spend enough time helping leaders learn what to stop.” That one comment led to my book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.”

As a result, he works only with winners who want to face up to their failings, an approach to coaching which speaks to the heart of individual and organizational change alike.

“How much do we learn talking about how smart, special and wonderful we are? Nothing. How much do we learn listening to that? Nothing. How much do we learn talking about how dumb everyone else is? Nothing. Listening to that? Nothing,” said Goldsmith.

“If you are going to get better at anything, the motivation for your improvement is going to come from one and only one place. Where would that be? From your heart. If it doesn’t come from in here, you won’t do it anyway and if you try to do it you are just going to look like a hypocrite or a phony—why bother?”

Six Questions to Activate Change

Instead, consider asking six simple queries every day for the next ten days. Goldsmith’s most recent endeavour, embarked upon with his daughter, takes aim at inspiring change with active questions.

1. Did I do my best to be happy?
2. Did I do my best to find meaning?
3. Did I do my best to be fully engaged?
4. Did I do my best to build positive relationships?
5. Did I do my best to set clear goals?
6. Did I make progress toward goal achievement?

The impact of those six questions is powerful. The exercise of asking those six questions takes less than a minute a day—and the results are inspiring.

“So far we have 1,493 participants in 19 different studies. Thirty per cent of the people in our research so far have said, ‘I got better at everything. I feel happier, more engaged, my life feels more meaningful,’” Goldmsith shared. “Sixty per cent said, ‘I got better on at least four out of six.‘  Eight per cent said they got better on something and 14 per cent said they did not change.”

A Question of Choice Architecture

Behavioural economist and author of Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely provided an illuminating counterpoint with his closing address on the first day.

“In standard economics we have this beautiful view of human nature. Shakespeare wrote, “What a piece of work is man. How noble in reason.” Now, we don’t know if he was serious or not, but this is the view of standard economics,” said Ariely. “In behavioural economics, we are much less generous to human ability. We think of people as myopic, vindictive, easily confused, not really sure what they want and having a hard time viewing the future.”

Fortunately, Ariely is as committed to finding solutions as he is to exposing our collective foibles. For Ariely, the answer lies less with the individual and more at the opposite end of the telescope—where HR might just be poised to make the world of work a better place.

“We have almost no evidence in the history of human life that providing information helps. On the other hand, you can think about what we call choice architecture. If you provide the environment in which people make decisions, you can actually shape their decisions,” said Ariely.

“We need to think about the (work) environment. Let’s think about small bumps in the road. If we try to eliminate those small bumps in the road what kind of behaviours could we get people to engage in.  This is basically a big part of your job. Think of the behaviours you are trying to engage and the points of friction. Even if they are very small points of friction, think of how you can eliminate them.”

Would It Work For Homer Simpson?

As per his research, Ariely is expertly versed in the many examples of irrationality, and how they impact the decisions made in both our personal and professional lives.

“In some way this is a sad view of human life. It’s basically saying we’re all less rational and wonderful than we think we are. But I also think it’s an optimistic perspective. It’s optimistic in the sense that if we understood our true nature, what kind of world would we design?” asked Ariely before flashing to a familiar slide of a cartoon character not renowned for workplace motivation.

“If you were going to design a world for Homer Simpson, what kind of HR practices would you design and how different would they be from the ones you have running right now?  I suspect it would actually be more compatible with our true abilities and yield better results,” said Ariely.

As Ariely points out, as a species we struggle with decision-making: our brains are hardwired with systematic biases regardless of age, gender or culture.  Those biases show in sharp relief when he shares a number of visual illusions, and affect far more than our vision.

“Vision is our best skill by far. We have a huge part of our brain dedicated to vision. Nevertheless, we have systematic biases in how we view the world.  The question is, if we have so many mistakes with vision, what are the odds we don’t have more mistakes in financial decision-making or decision-making about health?” asked Ariely. “How much do you know for sure and what is just intuition? And is your intuition correct?”

For Ariely, the answer is most often a resounding NO. The question is, what can HR do about it?

“People need help and you are in the business of helping people. The question is what kind of help do people need and how much of it?  I would suggest they need much more help than you think and have much less capacity than you realize to make the right decisions.”

A Problem with Productivity

Just how much less capacity was addressed directly in terms of productivity by award-winning business journalist and author Amanda Lang at the start of the second day of the BC HRMA Conference and Tradeshow.

“As Canadians, we’re a polite bunch. We do what we’re supposed to do. We do the right thing. It turns out when it comes to capital markets and banking regulations, that’s a good trait, certainly in times of crisis. But the time for smugness or complacency about our role in the world is well past because we face an economic crisis that predates the credit crisis by many, many years,” said Lang. “I think everybody in this room knows we have a productivity problem.

“So what is productivity? I spent a lot of time talking to a national news desk about productivity and why it matters. What I would say is it’s the single most important economic term we’ve got. Productivity is a measure of our wealth. If it’s going up, we’re getting richer. If it’s going down, we’re getting poorer.”

It is that collective wealth of Canada that has Lang concerned. Coming from CBC’s senior business correspondent and co-host of The Lang & O’Leary Exchange, the news flash on productivity is a call to action.

“For the first time in Canadian history, we are poised to be a generation to leave our kids poorer than we are. Not a good story. The good news is, it doesn’t have to end that way.  We don’t have to accept that as our story,” said Lang. “And when I say we, I don’t mean the government or academics or big corporations. I mean we—literally the people in this room. We can change this story.”

How Do You Define Innovation?

As per Lang’s book, The Power of Why: Simple Questions That Lead to Success, the key to that change resides in the language we use and the questions we ask.  “I was really excited as a business journalist to be shown that innovation and productivity are two sides of the same coin because unlike productivity, innovation is a term people do want to talk about,” said Lang. “It’s just as hard to define and it’s just has hard to get as productivity, but for some reason, people like it better.”

So while productivity can be increased by asking more from an existing workforce or investing in technology and equipment, the type of productivity that comes from innovation is what inspires Lang’s hope for the future most.

“My favourite definition is that innovation is quite simply an old idea meets a new idea and something changes. That’s it. Something has to change,” said Lang. “So how do we get there? Businesses really want to do this. Everyone in this room wants to do this. Some people walk around with cards that read Chief Innovation Officer and even they don’t really know how to get it.”

After years of conversations with CEOs and renegade innovators alike, some interesting answers emerged. “Years ago, I asked a guy at Sysco in Canada, where they have a pretty inherently innovative culture, how they managed to do it. He said, ‘It’s dead easy. All you have to do is create an environment that allows for why and why not. That’s it,” shared Lang.

Diversity factored highly in the mix, but one particular take on diversity resonated deeply.  As one far side of the pendulum innovator said to Lang, “The last bastion of diversity is style of thinking. We’ve done everything else, and yet we have not even touched the way we think.”

The way we think lies at the heart of Lang’s The Power of Why, just as the questions we ask lie at the heart of the way we think.  For Lang, those questions lead to the core of who we are, where our passions lie and how integral a role they play in defining productivity and happiness alike.

“You’re you in a way nobody else can be. So the idea that brains should receive the same information and reach the same conclusions isn’t just wrong, it’s demoralizing on some level,” said Lang.

Are You In Your Element?

Those words would resonate throughout the closing plenary presentation by Sir Ken Robinson, PhD, an internationally-recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human potential.  As author of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, thinking differently comes as naturally to Robinson as a baseball player finding the sweet spot on the bat—where everything just connects and the sky is the limit.

As per the wisdoms within the pages of his book, “Finding your ‘Element’ is essential to your well-being and ultimate success, and, by implication, to the health of our organizations.”

“We are all born with extraordinary powers of imagination, intelligence, feeling, intuition, spirituality, and of physical and sensory awareness. For the most part we use only a fraction of these powers, and some not at all. Many people have not found their Element because they don’t understand their own powers.”

Peer groups, culture and education systems can further compound the challenge—and herein lies the opportunity for HR to affect change both within and throughout their professional lives.

Are You Ready For Change?

The 52nd Annual BC HRMA “Change—It Starts Here” Conference and Tradeshow brings a return to the Vancouver Convention Centre West on April 15-16, 2014.

(PeopleTalk Summer 2013)