Passion, Purpose, Performance – World Class People Management

Gillian Hibberd, President of PPMA

Welcome to the beautiful city of Manchester which also happens to be my home city so I am particularly happy to be holding this year’s PPMA Conference here.

I stand here feeling very humble and honoured that you have trusted me to act as your President and to represent your views on behalf of PPMA. It is a task that I do not take on lightly, and, I give you my commitment today that I will do my very best to continue to build PPMA’s reputation and deliver change.

In the run up to this year, I looked for advice from trusted advisers and friends on how I should approach the role of President. One particular piece of advice I received from a former President, Susan Thomas, stuck in my mind.

It was “to be true to yourself”.

As this advice resonated strongly with me, you will be seeing a lot of me, my values and my style, not only in the words I say today but also in the content of the conference over the next couple of days.

But…., before I share with you my views on the future for our profession, I would first like to pay tribute to our outstanding past President, Stephen Moir. Stephen has not only been an inspiration, an outstanding President and a strong advocate for our organisation. On a personal level he has also been a fantastic friend to me.

Stephen has worked tirelessly for PPMA throughout the past year and a half, and I would like to formally put on record our thanks to him for everything he has done to take our organisation to a higher level of recognition and respect.

He is a very tough act to follow and I am so grateful for his support, professionalism, sheer brilliance and friendship.

I also know that he will continue to work closely with PPMA to ensure the continuity that is so important to our progress and continued development as an Association. Thank you so much Stephen.

I would also like to take a few moments to thank some of the other people who have supported me.

Firstly I would like to thank Dean Shoesmith for carrying out the ‘bridesmaid in waiting’ role so beautifully and I am delighted that he has now officially accepted the role of Vice President. I know that Dean will be a superb ambassador for PPMA and that together we will work to ensure that our voice continues to be heard loud and clear at a national level.

Next, I would like to thank my Chief Executive, Chris Williams, who is quite frankly the best Chief Executive anyone could possibly hope to work with – an outstanding leader and a really fantastic boss . Also my superb team back at Buckinghamshire, in particular, Ann Cobban, Debbie Cairns, Sarah Ashmead and Jacqui Knock, without whom I could not have contemplated taking on this role and who I know will rise to the challenge of the next twelve months brilliantly.

Next there are two people who have really taught me everything I know about HR and are ultimately responsible for me being here. Not only am I very lucky to have worked with two of the most impressive HR people in the Country but I am also lucky to count them both as close friends - they are Angela O’Connor from the NPIA and Alan Warner from Hertfordshire County Council. Thank you to you both for being so generous and for guiding me so brilliantly.

Next I would like to thank the PPMA Team – Steve Traynor, Kim McInery, Carol Sands, Lisa Bayley and the unique and wonderful Mr John Tonks who work tirelessly behind the scenes to deliver our flagship conference and to keep PPMA on track. Thank you to you all.

Finally, my thanks go to our key sponsors who contribute far more to PPMA than financial support. They are often our closest allies and advisors on critical issues. They help keep the organisation’s profile high and keep us in business. We value your support a great deal and I look forward to building even closer relationships with you over the next twelve months.

Now, on to business. I now want to share with you my view on the future. What we face in the next few years and how we, as a profession, need to rise to the challenges ahead of us.

Stephen’s Conference last year was entitled Evolution or Extinction? The unanimous verdict was that we needed to change and that we need to be far more radical than we have dared to be before. But at the time we all debated this issue down in Brighton who could have predicted what was about to happen to the global economy?

It is said that a week is a long time in politics……..

Well, what a difference a year makes in the world of HR.

Day by day, the full extent and depth of the global economic downturn continues to unravel:

the Pound has literally taken a pounding,
banks that ‘liked to say yes’ now say no,
property prices continue to tumble,
hundreds of companies are closing or reducing output with consequent job losses and knock-on effects to local economies and public services.
Public spending is predicted to drop to ‘Armageddon’ levels in the coming years.

Officially, the Government recently admitted what many of us have known for months – that Britain is “in deep recession”. However, the really scary question is: have we reached the bottom yet? Or have we still got a way to go before we see those promised green shoots? I am not sure anyone really knows for certain – we really are in uncharted waters.

Public sector finance settlements will undoubtedly be some of the most challenging in a generation. And, as if we needed any further convincing, we saw the chancellor in last week’s budget slashing 14 billion pounds of public expenditure. This, I am sure, is just the beginning.

It all adds up to a very tough agenda for very tough times.

So, the time for all public services to think differently and, most importantly, act differently is well and truly upon us – carrying on doing what we do now, the same way that we are doing it now, is simply not an option.

Whether we like it or not this means massive change – change to our organisations, change to our roles and change for our people. The pace of change is not just fast, it’s frantic, and those that are savvy will be grasping the opportunities that this brings to play a lead role in designing and creating the future

There quite literally is a revolution going on around us but especially so in the world of public service.

In the same way that we hear people speak of the trinity of mind, body and soul. I would like us as a profession to pursue another trinity to lead us through the difficult times ahead of us …… that of Purpose, Passion, Performance.

To survive, we have to be far more radical than we have dared to be in the past. Our thinking needs a complete mind shift from evolution towards transformation, mutation and reconstruction.

At all times we need to be grounded in clarity of purpose, to show a great deal of passion for what we do and above all be ruthlessly focussed on the performance of the organisation.

In short we need to mark out a role for ourselves as unique leaders who take a rounded view of the organisation rather than falling into the trap of being parochial and defending our profession and our positions. Our role is to be daring, to lift people’s spirits and become more altruistic.

They say that the true test of a nation’s character is not in the good times but in the bad times. I think the same applies to the People Management profession. It is during the most difficult periods that we show our true colours and lead organisations through the hard times to build more resilient and flexible organisations for the future.

So, what do we need to do to rise to this challenge?

Firstly Purpose – this requires us to have :

vision
ideas
to demonstrate innovation
to plan carefully
to show accomplishments.

Our future is about making organisations slicker and our processes faster and cheaper. We have quite simply failed to do this so far. I see on a daily basis process and paper laden organisations that are blinkered in their thinking and drowning in bureaucracy.

We need to focus on doing fewer things well, rather than spreading ourselves too thinly. That means having the courage to stop doing some of the things we are currently spending time on.

We need to get away from hiding behind lame excuses for inadequacy or ineptness in the profession and develop more ‘attitude’.

We need to ditch the jargon, get amongst our managers and really understand their worlds – what it feels like and the challenges they face.

HR policy should be used as an enabler rather than a disabler. How many times do we as HR professionals complain that we need to become more strategic? Frankly we don’t – we just need to get better at executing the many strategies we already have in place. The last thing organisations of today need is even more strategy.

There are lots of fantastic examples of where this type of shift in mindset is paying dividends. Where HR and people management is leading the way in shaping organisations through a clear sense of purpose.

The fantastic work that Louise Harrington and her colleagues from Hertfordshire County Council are doing on the ‘Way We Work’ is being showcased in a solutions workshop at the conference on Thursday. The project will not only deliver £3.8million savings per annum, it will also deliver a new workstyles fit for the next decades and 21^st century accommodation that will define Hertfordshire as an employer of choice.

The groundbreaking work that Richard Crouch and colleagues have been doing at Somerset to deliver South West One – a multi partner shared service centre with IBM which is due to deliver £200 million savings over 10 years. The project will deliver a new partnership approach to support services that will bring County Council, District Councils and the Police Service together into a single organisation. It will free up significant resources to protect front line services for the benefit of customers. The project is being showcased in a master class at the Conference on Thursday.

Next we need to show a sense of Passion for our sector and our work – this requires:

Emotion
Desire
Pride
Ambition
Commitment
Optimism

To succeed, we have to believe in ourselves and the contribution we make to our organisations. This is no time for modesty.

We need to be willing to recruit for attitude rather than just skills. Take a few seconds to think about the high performers in your own organisations. The reason that you rate them so highly is likely to be for reasons other than just their professional or technical skill. It’s also about how they approach their work, their attitude, the fact that they have a ‘can do’ approach, they are fearless in trying out new things and are only too willing to work beyond their role for the good of the team. These are the attitudes we not only need to model ourselves, but also to recruit for.

We need to show more passion about the sector we work in, after all most of us choose to work in the public sector because of our sense of civic pride or desire to contribute to the wellbeing of our local community.

We need to show passion about our profession and the interventions we design. We need to believe that we can genuinely drive organisations forward. To do this we also need to demonstrate our value in a variety of ways that make sense to the business and not just to ourselves.

We need to trust our instincts more, be challenging and innovative and manage risks effectively. We have to have belief in our abilities, be decisive - especially when there are difficult decisions to be made, but also empathetic in the way we carry out those decisions.

We need to get more savvy about using our 6^th sense – our ability to pick up on subtle, but potentially destructive, organisational discord. Then have the self belief to be able to act upon it and challenge the behaviours that can undermine the cultures we need for success.

I’ve seen some great examples of where people have been passionate about what they are doing and how this in turn has produced outstanding results.

The National Leadership Strategy for Policing was delivered to a great extent through solid ambition, commitment and an absolute passion in the importance of leadership. Angela O’Connor, Shelagh O’Leary and their teams have displayed so much conviction in their work that the Leadership Strategy has now been launched to major national acclaim by the Home Secretary. The strategy and its impact is being showcased in a masterclass by Angela, Shelagh and Cathy Butterworth from Greater Manchester Police straight after this session.

Equally, the great work taking place on the Birmingham Best programme by Raffaela Goodby and her team shows how passion about the services local government provide can help rebuild engagement and commitment of a workforce. This is being showcased in a masterclass this afternoon.

Finally, performance – to show how we add value we need to:

Measure
Achieve
Review
Learn

We need to expect the best from ourselves, our teams and our organisations. A focus on performance within our profession and team is important but we also have a vital role to play in terms of driving up overall organisational performance.

Processes underpin most of what we do but many of them are low value from a customer perspective. We have to move away from our obsession with process at the expense of outcomes and focus more on high value added activity.

Let us not forget the scale of change we all face in the coming months and years. Given that we are all operating in people intensive services, the importance of change management will be given an even higher focus by our organisations in order to ensure improved performance. We all have a vital role in keeping our organisations and their people focussed, exploring new ways of looking at problems getting the right people into the right jobs and creating a sense of optimism about our futures.

We have seen some outstanding examples of where strong people management has produced dramatic performance improvements in organisations.

George Bishop and his team at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea have introduced new web-enabled HR processes that deliver improved services to customers, save time and space and deliver cashable benefits of half a million pounds per annum.

We will also be hearing more about how Mandy Coalter and her team from the Heart of England NHS Trust have delivered a significant merger and change programme resulting in major reorganisation with minimal impact on people through effective forward planning and performance management. Mandy will be talking about the change in a masterclass on Thursday afternoon.

So, finally, today I am making a ‘call for action’ for us all to operate with purpose, passion and performance. For us as HR professionals to grasp control rather than be followers. To be at the forefront of change rather than sitting in the wings. To strip our organisations of the HR Bureaucracy we have created, which is stifling the very innovation and freedom we now need to succeed in the future.

As your President I am also committing myself in the next twelve months to campaigning to raise our status as a profession by delivering more thought leadership enhancing our value proposition to our organisations, and developing a stronger commercial approach.

I am launching the first of the PPMA Thought Leadership Papers today in conjunction with Deloitte’s. The paper will be distributed as you leave the room and covers the very contemporary issue of the future shape and size of our organisations in the context of economic downturn. I would like say a very big thank you to Chris Stirling from Deloitte for partnering with PPMA in the production of the paper and I can commend it to you, not only for your own consumption but also for sharing with your Chief Executives.

I will be launching new thought leadership products for our members throughout the year, continuing our programme of commercialisation of PPMA, continuing the drive to increasing our membership level, and, continuing to build strong relationships with key players at a national level in order to ensure that our influence is strong.

So, my final words to you today are to challenge you all ‘to dare to be different’. Let us be proud of the difference we make to our organisations. Let us continue to deliver world class public services and let us operate with purpose, passion and performance.

Gillian Hibberd

President of PPMA