HR Magazine

It started with Ted Hughes.  A fellow student referred to a wonderful poem of his that I remember from school, The Thought Fox, in relation to the evolving, exciting but somewhat frustrating and elusive process of writing an essay of 5,000 to 10,000 words or so. It’s a quick and lovely read (the poem, not my essay – certainly not my essay), and I recommend looking it out if you haven’t come across it before.  The overall gist (and I do it no justice here) is that Hughes uses the metaphor of a fox to describe the magical process of going from blank sheet of paper to perfectly formed finished work.

I start to notice that there are animals everywhere.  They seem to have completely infiltrated the field.  Over in the behaviourism camp, they start with Pavlov’s dogs and move on to rats and mazes;  we discuss power and organisations at Roffey and our Set Advisor shares a model that uses four different animals to illustrate its point; over in the wilds of self-development, Anthony Robbins is talking about training your own behaviour as you might train a dolphin to perform.  Even Professor John Kotter of Harvard Business School has chosen to put across his 8 step model of change through a rather heart-warming fable about penguins.

Well, wherever the animals have come from, I have to crack on with my critical review, which is looking at different tools and techniques for change used in the field, across both personal and organisational development.  I have found to my surprise that the thing about 10,000 words is that it’s not actually that many words at all.  I have no trouble writing 10,000 words – in fact by the time I rocked up at the last set meeting I had somewhere getting on for 25,000.  The problems I have are simple: a. cutting down the words and b. getting them to make sense.  Once I’ve conquered these, I’ll be fine.

With this in mind, I book in for an overnight stay at Roffey, hoping for inspiration.  After a really useful set meeting I feel a bit clearer about what I might be trying to say in my essay, and head up to my room, my laptop, and the beautiful view of Roffey’s grounds with hope in my heart and a Roffey-baked chocolate chip cookie in my hand.  As I sit down and start up my computer, I spot a large, glossy fox scampering across the grass in front of my window.  I hope it is a thought fox.  My computer sputters and the screen goes black.

Fortunately, Roffey has other computers, and even more helpfully multi-talented Learning Resource Centre staff who are able to talk me through a first aid process that magically revives my ailing laptop.  By the end of my stay I have less than 12,000 words and only appear to be trying to write 2 or 3 different essays instead of the 6 or 7 the last version probably contained.  I might just meet our set deadline of the end of this week for a coherent first draft after all.

I just hope the animals are on my side.

Our last set meeting felt like a lovely break, sitting around a picnic table at Roffey for the day, debating and giving feedback in the rather stunning recent sunshine.

Now, with the ever-approaching deadline of 24^th September for our next 10,000 word piece looming over us, I have been enjoying some of the recent sunshine from under the shade of some shiny new books from Roffey’s ever-helpful Learning Resource Centre. Back at work, I’m sure my team must think I’m a total saddo, as going to Starbucks to read academic books and papers is currently my idea of a good evening.

Just back from the second residential, and feeling pleasantly stuffed, both with lovely Roffey food and with the new information and perspectives from the various speakers and conversations that we have experienced over the past few days.

I was struck again by the feeling of ‘away’ that being in the physical surrounds of Roffey can generate.  Sitting in a meeting room looking out through a floor to ceiling glass window at squirrels and deer bounding by in front of a forest backdrop has a tendency to put a bigger picture perspective on most topics of discussion.  But of course this is Roffey, so as well as covering the traditional territory of learning theory, research methods and so on, we and the squirrels are also treated to a real brain stretch with Ralph Stacey sharing insights and thoughts from complexity theory.

I have some practical things I can take away and start using immediately – a useful checklist for best practice in designing e-learning for example – and I am still processing a lot of the newer and more reflective parts of what I have learnt.

One of the things I am still reflecting on is a discussion the group had about using particular models in the workplace.  One of the speakers -a senior practitioner in the financial world - discussed a particular model of change and how and whether this was used in, and applied to, the workplace.  She pointed out that a lot of the language for this model of change (‘guiding coalition’; ‘create short-term wins’; ‘get the vision right’) was pretty much common parlance in organisations talking about large scale change – but that the majority of people wouldn’t be aware of the link to this particular model (Kotter’s for anyone interested).   

This rang very true for me - a lot of the language and concepts were very familiar from my time on large scale change projects working at one of the large consultancies.  And at the time – with impending deadlines and often ridiculously long days delivering – there wasn’t much space or possibility for the luxury of questioning where these ideas and approaches came from, what assumptions were inherent in them, what they might be missing altogether.  I would be interested in others views and experience of using different models in the workplace.  Are there particular models that you currently use in your work?  Do they actually translate into practice?  Are you aware of the debates on the pros and cons of the models you use and of the alternatives?

So I left our second residential with plenty of food for thought. Now I just need to work out how to fit in the next piece, a 10,000 word critical review of the field of People and Organisational Development, alongside the day job.  I am hoping that the impromptu 45 minute ‘speed’ speed-reading course put on by Course Director Andy Smith on the Tuesday night will help with that...

For the next two years, I will be reporting back from my experience of undertaking an MSc in People and Organisational Development.  So far, I have spent four days on the first of this year’s three residential parts of the course in the beautiful surroundings of Roffey Park, the organisation with which (in conjunction with the University of Sussex) I am taking the degree.  Roffey originated as a stress retreat for workers in the 1940s, and it shows.  The grounds are more like a five star country hotel than a management training centre, and there is that real sense of ‘away’ that you get with an escape to the country.

Between now and September, I will be working on the first two key pieces of work to submit: a position paper examining what has shaped me as a practitioner to date, and a critical review of the field of People and Organisational Development.  The degree is ‘self-managed’ which although it sounds a bit scary actually means that I get to decide what I focus on within the field, rather than following a set programme.

For now, they have been breaking us in relatively gently, although some of the discussions have already been making my head hurt a bit (but in a good way).  We looked at models of critical thinking, overviews of the field, and had some excellent and thought-provoking input from one of the external examiners on the course. 

One of my favourite questions so far was thinking about how we would define a ‘person’.  It seems like a really obvious place to start if you are working as a developer of people, but I have to confess I have never sat down and thought about it before.  For me, I think of people as having a particular ‘shape’ which consists of things like their strengths (and conversely weaknesses), their interests and passions (what really excites them) and their motivators (for some it might be money, someone else recognition from the team, someone else a sense of professional pride etc).  That means that as a developer I focus a lot on helping people to understand what shape they are and make the most of that.

 I’m not sure if this has been shaped by the fact that as a coach working with MBA students from a real variety of environments, I work with a really wide range of people so am more aware of differences.  I would be really interested to hear about how others would answer this question.