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As we continue this fascinating series in partnership with The Business Transformation Network, around Leading into the future, we welcome Ian Hardie (Founder at Hardie & Company). 

This conversation brings to life Ian’s view on how we can create more ‘pull learning’ situations through technology rather than the historic classroom push learning. Learning needs to be happening in the workplace, in which case for a lot of organisations, video is now a large part of the workplace. 

Technology has always however been a large barrier to virtual learning. Individuals have to be taught technology first before getting them to do the learning you need them to do. Despite this, the advantage of everyone now using technology is that everyone now knows how to work, operate and connect virtually, and therefore those barriers of technology can be voided. 

As the technology barrier is down, organisations need to think about what the triggers are. How can they encourage and motivate people to want to learn and identify what the impact of learning is? On the other hand, face to face learning will not completely die out and therefore, there will be some occasions where you have to meet in person to be successful 

Ian then goes on to discuss whether the move to more virtual environments has created a new challenge for learning, in which he explains that having a learning mindset is key.

“Everyone does their best when they are motivated to do their best.”

This is one of the responsibilities of people who deliver training, learning is to ensure that the brand and desirability is built into the provision they create. Organisations need to ensure that their people are drawn into it. 

A phrase identified by Ian is ‘Learning works’ – If people see what impact learning has, then they are motivated and drawn to it even more. The key is that individuals need to understand what will happen once they are engaged in learning and what will happen if they don’t. They need to identify what the missed opportunity is which enables them to want to learn and do things themselves. 

Ian acknowledges that we are seeing a variety of trends. Some include: 

1. The modularisation of learning – Learning is being broken down into smaller and smaller chunks. However, with this in place, there is also the risk of taking away that interest and fascination of long term learning.
2. We will see this facilitation and connection with a coach, mentor or expert which will mean there is more facilitated learning going forward. 

In this interview with Jerry Pico, Co-Lead, Global Culture Initiative at Daiichi Sankyo Co., he talks about his company’s purpose – “To contribute to the enrichment of the quality of life around the world” and how his pharmaceutical firm has a social mission to ‘give back’ through the three core values of “integrity, accountability and innovation”.

Next Jerry explains that, as part of the company-wide culture change they are in the middle of, they administered a diagnostic that led to the ability to link each person’s individual purpose to the company’s purpose, values and strategy.

Another value emerged. Instead of the leadership being more HQ centric, thanks to the pandemic global leadership can be exercised virtually and is more fluid. By embracing diversity and inclusion a leader can contribute whoever they are and wherever they are based. 

Jerry ends by describing how pleased he was when a senior leadership group chose to vote for self-awareness as the number one most important leadership competency. A leader cannot be authentic without this. And what does being authentic mean in practice? It means asking questions, listening well, ‘exuding empathy and compassion’ and being true to oneself.

As we continue our ‘Leading Into The Future’ TV Series, in partnership with The Business Transformation Network, we are eager to welcome and hear from Jerry Pico, (Co-Lead, Global Culture Initiative at Daiichi Sankyo Co), who will be discussing the ‘Power of Purpose’.

With great clarity, and based upon his years of experience in the corporate world, Jerry Pico shares his view that of course it’s OK for a leader to have his or her one values that are not included in the company’s set of core values.

But it IS vital that the leader supports the purpose and strategy and, above all the CORE values of their company.

The leader cannot lead authentically if they do NOT believe in those core values. They must ‘walk the talk’ and the culture must encourage people to call out and give feedback to those who don’t do this.

Jerry Pico says there should be consequences for not doing so and if they do not truly believe in the company’s core values they should leave the organisation.

When asked if there was any potential downside to a purpose driven organisation Jerry says that people could lose sight of their own purpose and blindly follow a leader who does not have the right values, a leader who only wants to control, manipulate and degrade people and the organisational culture.

In this Part 2 of Martin Barner’s interview about ‘Building a Learning Community’ he poses some key questions including “What do you want to learn?” “What’s the purpose you’re striving towards?”. Martin feels it’s important for people to take ownership of their own learning and answer the question “Where and how do I want to learn?” 

A benefit of virtual learning is that it has become more accessible and even ‘democratised’ through being more scalable and not limited by travel. Martin mentions the Novartis ‘Unbossed Leadership Experience’ (a self-awareness program) that is now being rolled out to five thousand leaders a year at the company thanks to the virtual nature of the program. 

Another question Martin answers is: “Will the rise of remote working widen or narrow the talent pool?” He says that it does widen that pool and explains with concrete stories how it can broaden it. Integral to this expansion is remote and flexible working conditions.

Join us in this episode, in partnership with The Business Transformation Network (The BTN) to know more about building a learning community and some of the initiatives that Novartis rolled out internally to develop their employees.

For the next episode in our ‘Leading into the Future’ series, a partnership with The Business Transformation Network (The BTN), we are eager to invite Martin Barner (Head People & Organisation Global Product Development, Sandoz at Novartis) to share his thoughts about building a learning community. 

Martin starts by talking about the way the virtual environment will align with a lifestyle of learning culture & the role of self-service culture and the enablement of technology. 

Join us in this episode to know more about building a learning community and some of the initiatives that Novartis rolled out internally to develop their employees.

In the 3rd and final part of this series with Sabine Weishaupt, we explore the role of trust within virtual environments. 

Sabine shares her knowledge about building trust across teams within virtual environments and how empathy and the right skill set can operate in physical and virtual contexts. Sabine also highlights the emotional capacity and the sense of self-awareness that a leader should have. 

We know, by now, that listening capabilities and digital literacy are essential attributes to help leaders bring their employees together. 

Please join in on the 2nd part of our video interview series where Sabine Weishaupt shares examples that facilitate employee growth and examples that Deutsche Telekom has been implementing to empower their employees to help them work together within teams and produce better results.

As part of PeopleSmart’s focus around Leading Into the Future, in partnership with The Business Transformation Network (The BTN), we are eager to bring you Sabine Weishaupt (Chapter Lead Future Leadership Design at Deutsche Telekom).

Sabine is passionate about empowering, encouraging and energising people to grow for success and happiness. In her current role she a team of leadership development, learning and transformation consultants spread over 7 countries and with a broad range of backgrounds from engineering to sales to HR.

Sabine joins this Leading Into The Future series, to share some of the challenges and opportunities for the hybrid leaders.

One of the first topics that Sabine mentions is the important role of certain set of skills that the digital leader needs to have, as opposed to an in-person leader. Sabine highlights the importance of listening capabilities and digital literacy as essentials attributes to help leaders bring their employees together and shares examples that facilitate employee growth.

Sabine also shares a few examples of what Deutsche Telekom has been implementing to empower their employees to help them work better within teams.

Continuing PeopleSmart’s focus on Diversity and Inclusion for the second quarter of 2021 we heard more from Charlotte Forsyth, Chief People Officer at WorldRemit.

Strength in Diversity & Inclusion with Charlotte Forsyth (Part 2) from Business Transformation Network on Vimeo.

“What leadership behaviours do employees need to see to truly believe in an inclusive culture?” Charlotte says leaders must recognize that different groups have different experiences. She has been in many meetings designed to promote women to be leaders in which the majority group, white male leaders, has been completely absent! Leaders should also recognize the differences within each group. Charlotte herself is a mum with kids but a single woman from the LGBQ community may have a very different experience. To ascertain which leadership behaviours mattered most, employees were invited to provide qualitative responses to the question “What kind of culture currently prevails and what’s needed for the future?”

“How are D&I efforts measured?” World Remit is an international organization so they use their employee data and people’s feedback from around the world to look at to what degree groups are represented well, poorly or not at all. Charlotte is proud to say that in November 2020 an inclusion survey asking the question “Am I treated with respect regardless of who I am and where I come from?” came in second highest as a global metric for World Remit.

The third question was “How has your D&I agenda evolved through 2020 and beyond?” and Charlotte’s response highlighted the increased need to address mental health and well being. The institution of a quarterly ‘Recharge’ day, launched in August 2020, has landed really well and signals to everyone at World Remit how important the company takes mental health.

At PeopleSmart ‘Strength in Diversity and Inclusion’ is more than just the ‘topic du jour’. It is one of our core values and central to the way we are constituted and how we act as an organization. With a diversity of experienced consultants spread across the globe we embrace the spectrum of genders, cultures and backgrounds. This allows us to serve our international clients in a way that suits the constituents of their various populations. Our specialist consultants bring deep experience and knowledge of Diversity and Inclusion to our clients’ need for solutions in this critical aspect of the contemporary business world.