We should all be familiar with the concept of plan, do, review. Yes? Certainly from our experience at InFocus HR, people teams are spending more time on planning. We’ve facilitated the delivery of our first people plan back in 2010 for the Asian businesses of a large global bank. At the time it wasn’t new for the bank but it was certainly new for the people team in the region, and of surprise to Business and Finance colleagues!
Since then we’ve facilitated, supported and delivered countless People plans and we know from various discussions with peers in other organisations that people leadership teams are planning more frequently. So that’s all good, right?
Well yes and no…..
Planning is great, but the question is how effective is the plan and in reality how much gets delivered to budget and the expected standards – the Do(ing) bit? Well research by the Standish Group in their 2015 Chaos Report suggested that 71% of projects fail to deliver against those key criteria. To be fair, the report is across all projects but if that’s the average, we could assume a similar percentage will apply to People Plans?
So, what goes wrong?
Firstly, we are probably too ambitious with the size of the plan we try to deliver within any given year. Planning for the year has historically been the norm as most finance teams drive an annual budget cycle. However, that shouldn’t stop us thinking about shorter timeframes. So for example, focusing on three months at a time and perhaps one or two priority projects?
Secondly, People teams are always busy. The day job can be time consuming. Often because we don’t have the plan, time and/or budget to implement the technology, shared services or outsourcing which could save us time. Organisational demands also mean being pulled in multiple directions. Consequently, the doing often gets pushed down the To Do List when reprioritising.
Recently though we’ve been wondering whether the right people are delivering the plan? Often at year end when items on the plan haven’t been delivered the question gets asked around why? We’ve heard comments such as ‘well that person had the right technical skills to improve our process‘ or ‘we’d been asked to deliver a more innovative policy approach and the person leading it was our policy expert!‘ However the change still hasn’t happened.
So how do get the right people?
So, what else could be causing this lack of delivery? Using insights gained from The GC Index Ⓒ it may well be that those individuals had the skills, experience and behavioural capability. However, they may have been missing the energy required to for them make an impact and contribution.
What do we mean? So for example, implementing and driving innovation firstly requires someone to have that ability to pluck a random idea out of nowhere. Secondly having the determination (obsession) to drive it forwards. The GC Index provides an assessment of either an individual and/or team to provide additional insight. This allows the People Director to see who’s a:
- Game Changer – someone who can transform the future (they have the good ideas)
- Strategist – someone who can maps the future (they use data and insight to support decision making)
- Implementor – someone who builds the future (they make it happen)
- Polisher – someone who creates a future to be proud of (they make things better)
- Playmaker – someone who orchestrates the future (they bring the right people together)
This isn’t a silver bullet for success. However, having access to insight on a persons energy and contribution means better alignment of resources. As a result this which should lead to improved outcomes.
How we can help you with successful planning
For more information on ‘Assessing a Team for Successful Delivery’ of a people plan either click on the link or get in touch
Assessing a Team for Successful Delivery
InFocus HR can also help with adopting a business management approach to running your people team.