Good talent is worth fighting for. At senior levels of an organization, the ability to adapt, to make decisions quickly in situations of high uncertainty, and to steer through wrenching change is critical. But at a time when the need for better talent is increasing, big companies continue to find it difficult to attract and [...]

We are delighted to introduce Allan Freed as a guest author.  Allan Freed is a principal consultant with The RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping leaders and organizations deliver results and increase value. Allan’s current work helps organizations identify and build capabilities required for the execution of strategy through leveraging human resources and [...]

“I would tell you to go to Hell but I work there and I don’t want to see you every day.”

The above quote is apparently available as a fridge magnet in the USA …. no comment required!

Writing in the FT recently Lynda Gratton asked readers if they could feel the wind of change heading for [...]

The prominence of demographic change and skill shortages has recently been overtaken by the financial crisis of the past two or so years. With unemployment at record highs during that period, it would be easy to assume we no longer have a skills shortage problem. However, skills shortages still exist in many industries, and the [...]

Transatlantic from Bloomberg BusinessWeek to Sky News reportedly Nokia is looking to replace its chief executive as it struggles to compete in the smartphone market against the likes of Apple and Google. Interesting cover near on three years ago from Forbes back in 2007 on 1 billion customers can anyone catch the cellphone king? around [...]

HRN are long time fans of award winning business reporter and researcher Stefan Stern of the FT. Stefan leaves the Financial Times in August for a leadership post as Global Head of Strategy at PR giant Edelman. We are delighted to have Stefan both Chair and input his expert opinion at this year’s talent [...]

HR professionals have been fast adopters of social media, why for example HR and OD professionals on LinkedIn represent the largest group alongside sales & marketing and ICT professionals. HR are not just using Social Media for networking but for improving their value as a profession. Clearly in many cases, many identify social media channels as [...]

The FT’s management columnist, Lucy Kellaway, is always well worth following for a down to earth, sharp and often wryly amusing approach to management. Her most recent column “Principles for living that we could all do without” takes a highly critical look at the set of Principles that the CEO of Bridgewater [...]

The prophet Cassandra warned the city of Troy to beware of Greeks bearing gifts, but Cassandra was cursed to foretell the future yet never be believed. The city’s citizens took in the famous wooden horse, and the rest as they say is history. Over the past few weeks many leaders in Europe [...]

For many people “work” still remains a necessary evil – it’s too often a case of doing something that has to be done, like it or not, to survive in the modern world. The dark satanic mills evoked by William Blake in Jerusalem may have almost disappeared in the developed economies, and employers constantly [...]

Competing for the attention of the talented is a something of a challenge these days, and in the online soundbite world you need to grab attention fast; first impressions count. Beyond first impressions, attracting people today, particularly those young talented high potentials we read so much about, companies are having to contend [...]

Coaching is a crucial management skill. Unfortunately, there are still many misconceptions about the subject. Here’s a list of 30 tips from Jeroen De Flander and Sir John Whitmore. The  post has been reproduced by kind permission of Jeroen De Flander, author Strategy Execution Heroes. Jeroen will respond to comments on this post.

Ask open questions. [...]

Or aquisition? Thanks to better human resource management practices over the last few years, HR will merge/marry with other functions such as marketing and communications. Social media and emerging web technologies in general are used for recruiting (finding prospective employees), marketing (creating business opportunities), building relationships (getting connected with the community) and in general feeding relevant [...]

The media reported last Monday that the “UK is officially out of recession”, business sentiment and a reality check by the end of the week on Friday suggested that leaders now fear a W-shaped recovery. Over the weekend some better news from Austria, where the manufacturing output expanded at fastest pace since March 2008 (Key Points: [...]

Marge: “Homer, the plant called. They said if you don’t show up tomorrow don’t bother showing up on Monday.”

Homer: “Woo-hoo! Four-day weekend!”

Recently, I became a very proud father. The positive affect of our new arrival in the first few months – to say that it was difficult to concentrate on work, is an understatement. Our [...]

Marc’s previous post discussing “the very fat and lazy” put me in mind of the HR Director at BKV, Eleonóra Szilágyi Szalainé. I have met many HR Directors over the past several years; and I don’t recall this one as being either exceptional or typical, but it appears that she did develop a uniquely personal [...]

Speaking to Nokia’s HR-OD team over the past few months, I have learned a great amount on their strategy and approach to social networking, generational diversity, and some of their new HR-OD projects for 2010.

One of the first things to point out is that cultural change at Nokia is ongoing, what is considered a viral [...]

Much is written and spoken on the subject of recent generations – Boomers, Generation X, Generation Y and now Generation Z!

There are far too many generalisations and assumptions being made based on generational classification.  Stefan Stern writing in the Financial Times Management blog discusses that it is life stages that make the difference [...]

HRN Europe recently polled the Top 10 Strategy Failures in Corporate Europe based on intel from a select number of global HR, OD and Leadership surveys which focused on the main reasons why strategies fail. We benchmarked against a total of “23 key reasons” offering 5 indicators ranging in frequency.

Strategy execution took the No. 1 [...]