Team Management

We conducted a Q&A interview with Paul Heywood, Founder and Managing Director of Halcyon Life, regarding resilience programmes and employee engagement.

1. Could you introduce yourself and what you do?

I am Founder and Managing Director of Halcyon Life. Previously, I was IT Director at 3i, a FTSE100 Private Equity firm, and at the law firm Fieldfisher. I have also held senior positions at Allen & Overy, WHSmith, L’Oréal, EY and Ford Motor Company.

The first challenges are cutting through the noise and getting to the heart of the matter. The IT sector pretend transformation is all to do with technology (usually the box of tricks they’re selling). They frequently publish blogs and articles to convince you to “transform your business by moving to the cloud”. Most mainstream IT advice will create operational efficiencies at best, but not transform the organisation.

I had a client once with a member on his senior team who was known for his destructive and upsetting behaviour. The team was in disarray, and each of the other members pointed to Charlie as the central cause.

We conducted a Q&A interview with Cherron Inko-Tariah MBE, Founder of 'The Power of Staff Networks' and Consultant, regarding staff networks and diversity and inclusion.

Could you introduce yourself and what you do?

We conducted a Q&A interview with Roderic Yapp, Director at Leadership Forces and TEDx Speaker, regarding leadership and the generational gap.

Could you introduce yourself and what you do?

In 1943 Abraham Maslow first brought his Hierarchy of Needs theory to the world in which he looks at what motivates individuals.

He claimed that people are motivated by things and circumstance that range from basic survival up through up to the ability to reach and achieve one's full potential.

That sounds like something which could be applied in the workplace to elevate employee's motivation from simply being there to get a paycheck all the way up to performing at a very high level...

...and actually, enjoy doing it.

I'm going to argue here that many organisations using HR analytics to improve their people programmes are fooling themselves.

Let me explain: evidence-based HR analytics relies on a model something like this:

HR programme --> Competencies --> Employee performance --> Org performance

That is, you invest in workforce programmes to increase employee competencies ("the how") which in turn delivers increased employee and organisational performance ("the what").

Have you ever responded negatively to a text or a written message?

I have.

Nine times out of ten I’m able to stop myself from responding.

But then there is that odd time where I do respond. I ‘flash’ and although it feels good for about ten seconds I almost always regret it.

Why do we do this?

Professor Steve Peters explained why we do this in ‘The Chimp Paradox’ where he explained about the three parts of the brain.

Building an environment for success 

Digital transformation is a buzzword that has increasingly been doing the rounds in business circles. The reality is that almost every true business ‘transformation’ taking place at the moment involves a large amount of digitising a process or stored information. If you’ve still got stacks of paper in filing cabinets, it’s guaranteed you’re not far off from a digital transformation.

The need for culture change