The Dignity Of Work

近日听到了这句话 – 生命不止，探索不息。引发了一连串的联想。现今工商的进步就在于探索不息，也因有了不息而驱使了生命力的源源不止。相反，主管层次上呆滞的往往就是应为探索滞闭，运作硬化。探索是创作的根本，窒息了探索便是灭绝了心跳，使工业走向老化。道理简单但处理不易。对创作的长期淤滞便是引导了大众的憋闷。这也是我最近学会的词汇 – 憋闷。 尊敬职业操守与人力资源发挥极尽的相同处在于人才的发挥。像是人体在大自然的环境中，自由呼吸，运作，发挥所长。相反在雾障咽气的环境中便是憋闷，呼吸不畅，欲言又止。 憋闷 腐旧的呈现方式 1）流程不变 – 管道不通 所有大机构的共同点便是时间累积的战绩。尤其与2000年代之前开创的机构便有累积的流程有法治。以现今科技发展的速度，老旧的流程已不能应变现有的工作程式。坚守腐旧的程式便是企管上层躲在法治和合规之后的借口。其实便是畏怯改进所需要的坚定与力气，也是不屑做持久战，害怕失去建立的职位。缺少大刀破斧的毅力，保留的陈旧的流程便集体压制的进展的速度。捷径无法实行。也就迟钝了市场回应。 2）人才流失 – 浮躁郁闷 机构创作核心在于有不同的思想碰撞而保持中心思想概念，新城代谢，不断求进。不管时代有多少的更动与变迁，老旧的意识还是回绕着所谓的自然条规 – 人性的动力。基本基础建立在个人对职业与自己的尊重，想做自己能骄傲的事。在没有发挥的环境中，委屈求全，为生活而畏缩，人才流失不止于人才离职而是渗透个层的憋闷，无心进取，自保形成工作定义。恶性循环，为自保而无胆迈前或改变，也形成了集成厚厚不透，维护守旧的遁甲。 3） 自我攻击 – 癌细胞蔓延 面对坚而不朽的守旧遁甲，任何新的冲击与思想就会被排斥，现有文化细胞围攻。呈现了群体结合，智商拉低的群体动作。若果没有足够的冲击力量就无法突破现状而迈前。所有新进的动力有一定的免疫能力与为理想而做的冲刺。效期过后便融入多数文化，大众化了思想。在前卫的文化，这种动力成了不断前进的鼓励。在腐败的文化，这种动力若是被排泄若是被纳为疮痂。 企业的生命不止无不意外，需对探索保持不息。而主宰企业命运的基层便是能维护新城代谢的健康细胞。主管基层有务对自己与企业人员要求前进。但这也是最难的。这需要： 保持理念与远视 – 花更多的时间与探索远方而迈进，任命下层时间近期前进策略 缩短客户与底层距离 – 花更多时间与新一代交流与客户交谈，对人才进入注视 坚定简化流程 – 花更多时间披荆斩棘缩短对市场回应的时间 高层人员对探索必须树立榜样，不外包创作而是进口新血，取入先进的冲刺。

Women in Leadership – A Deliberation
I am humbled to meet a class of uniquely strong women in their own class, who brought their expertise and knowledge and opened their hearts to learning and growing themselves and others. Continue reading →

Sometime towards the end of 2017, beginning 2018, I read the book Lean In: Woman, Work and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg. In many ways, reading this book now, in my 40s had shed light on many things I was experiencing but was unable to express in words exactly. As a woman, I was … Continue reading →

To mark the end of the year 2018, I spoke at Agile Vietnam. Speaking has always been a clarifying process and this year’s theme was especially apt – learn, unlearn, relearn. And this year has been a year of unlearning. I came across the Dunning-Kruger effect in a meet up by an experience and humble … Continue reading →

Building first teams at every level to give voice to all the considerations. Continue reading →

When agile transformation is at scale, coaching has to be at scale too. Continue reading →

Using HR competences in an agile setting to co-create competences for product owners and scrum masters. Continue reading →

Thinking about scrum gathering, continuously reinventing and updating our craft in agility. Continue reading →

Agile change is not a 1-person job. It’s requires a whole set of expertise for deep change. Why then do we expect 1 agile coach or 10 times of the same agile coach to achieve it all? Continue reading →

Moving to Singapore – Practicing agile in life and how I kanban the s**t out of it. Continue reading →

This week in Paris, I hosted a session of Agile HR meetup. It’s our autumn edition before I return from Asia for the winter session. We had more than half of the participants from HR! It’s truly encouraging to have more and more HR coming to share and exchange. It was also liberating to talk … Continue reading →

For a few months now, I’ve been running experiments. And I’ve been running Agile HR meetups in various places, Brussels, Paris, Hong Kong, with various people. And I’ve been speaking, at conferences, meetups and coffeeshop conversations. And I’ve asked questions and asked more questions. So, here is a summary of the meetups and reflections. In … Continue reading →

And this is where my heart lays – the dignity of work. Talking about happiness, talking about scrum, kanban, waterfall is just describing the waters when we are drowning. If we look at the spirit and essence of agile and the manifesto, it’s about communicating and gaining understanding among people, producing things that works and hence has value, working along side each other to achieve a goal, ability to adapt to seek improvements. How does that not describe the human spirit and being a human being in an ecosystem of people? Continue reading →

The title is a mouthful and a way I round up 2014 into 2015, with a few hours to spare. The world of work has changed progressively and even more so with the latest financial crisis. According to a Deloitte report, non-employee workers can reach up to 40% of a company. And it will likely … Continue reading →

I was torn. One of the biggest debate I had encountered when presenting in agile tours was the concept of job descriptions and competences. In an auto-organised world of agile, why do we need job descriptions? Isn’t that too limiting and will be outdated? While I agree that HR tools are traditional and lack innovation, I … Continue reading →

A HR that is misguided (even with the best intensions) can obstruct, obscure and obliterate efforts. And OOOps is a heavy price to pay in talent drain and loss of momentum. Continue reading →

Last week, I spoke at the Brussels Agile Tour 2014. It was an impressive event with great organisation and a few great things that should be kept as traditions. Firstly, the speaker teaser to introduce their topics is a really fun way for every one to decide which session to go to. Some of the … Continue reading →

Last week I spoke at Agile Tour in Toulouse and Montpelier. It was my first speaking event in agile tour and it was in French. I was glad I had a rehearsal in a meetup event in summer. So this was easier. Speaking about HR in an agile tour is a risk for so many … Continue reading →

“When you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping, and the mask falls, so that the real person appears.” Philippe Halsman I don’t know of any young people who wants to be in Human Resources. Then again, I don’t know all the young people in the world. … Continue reading →

While speaking about HR, human resources recently, someone said to me, “RH est pour rendre heureuse (RH) aux salaries”. Some linguistic explanation required. Human resources is “ressources humains” in French, thus the acronym RH, the same for “rendre heureuse” which is render or make happy. So is HR the new Happiness maker in the company? It’s … Continue reading →

It was 29°C outside, 7pm in the evening and one of the 2 days in between the world cup matches. I thought everyone would be off somewhere in a bar, movie theatre or somewhere cool. But it was a full turn out. And it was in front of some very lovely and patient french people … Continue reading →

Recently I was involved in a project that uses agile methodologies and gave me the opportunity to deepen my understanding and see agile in action. Agile methods originated in software development. “It promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a time-boxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to change.” In agile, I found … Continue reading →

Often when I introduce my company, I’ve been asked, “Do you mean human resources?” Actually. Not. Fundamentally, there is a philosophical difference in the 2 concepts, thus a huge difference in the type of services and solutions. Without getting too technical, conceptually, the difference lies in the word “capital” and “resources”. While we may think … Continue reading →

My journey to start my own company in France is an incredible adventure. Though it’s not directly related to recruitment matters dedicated for this blog, I hope it can help to provide a perspective for companies aiming to start operations in another country. As a non-european foreigner in France, it took me 18 months before … Continue reading →

As companies grow, a natural evolution is expansion in different geographies and/or business lines. For recruitment companies, this can also be governed with changes in the way people work and how companies engage people. In the 50s, we see a build up of temporary work, in the 80s, outsourcing became a new cost reduction trend … Continue reading →

Talk about coding and it provokes all kinds of emotions from recruitment consultants to knowledge professionals. The purist will argue that knowledge cannot be coded. On the other hand, coding is the only way to find things in a database. Let’s consider the most important asset other than the consultants themselves in the recruitment industry … Continue reading →

Coming from Asia and working in Europe, I’ve had the occasional discussions where companies look to expand in the east. Most of them are companies doing well in UK with a portfolio of international clients also looking to expand in Asia. Some are opportunistic especially when the recruitment market in Europe has slowed and others … Continue reading →

It is incredible how quickly a company can fall. Currently, I am reading “Too big to fail” by Andrew Ross Sorkin. As I flip through the pages that document the incredible downfall of big financial institutions, the stories of such downfall is not limited to the financial industry. For a recruitment company, the rise and … Continue reading →

I’ve been asked several times, “how can we specialize when we are (5, 10, 15) people in the company?” It’s a catch 22 situation. In recent days, specialization is no longer an accessory in marketing communication of recruitment firms. It has become a harsh reality. Let’s face it, if a company is willing to pay … Continue reading →

On Friday, 10/2/2012, Spain has announced several labour reforms approved by the cabinet. Spain’s unemployment stands at 23% and 50% for those under 25 year olds. The policies were mainly targeted to make firing cheaper for companies. In an attempt to reduce cost of firing, these include: Reducing from 45 days per year of work … Continue reading →

Google has recently changed its privacy policy. Instead of different policies for different products and in different countries, it has created a single policy. For a recruitment company that maintains a candidate database, privacy policy is also a key consideration. Typically, a recruitment company has to have approval of a candidate before they can use … Continue reading →

Often, when the term knowledge management is mentioned, the next part of the conversation is followed either by “what do you mean?” or “do you mean the data base system?”. The mistake will be to spend time trying to explain it. Too often, explaining about knowledge management only end up labelling it ultimately as a … Continue reading →

No business is foreign to metrics or key performance indicators. For the recruitment profession, this is integral to avoid month end shock or quarter end nasty surprises. More importantly, it is to provide a line of sight for management in a service industry where delivery is not as predictable as the manufacturing of goods. It … Continue reading →

I had a flash thought the other day that recruitment is a dying profession. Or maybe it is not the profession but the professionals themselves. I have a doubt.The world has gone through many changes. From the industrial revolution to the technological revolution, these changes have affected all industries including the recruitment industry. Recruitment started … Continue reading →

A friend exclaimed one day, why do the French need all these meetings? For which I respond, why are the Americans so agreeable? I used to say, generalisation is the basis of all jokes. So it is with much tongue in cheek and humour that I use the following examples to explain cultural differences. In … Continue reading →

There is no need to gasp, there is no need to frown, there is no need to point fingers. Because modern day slavery exist and is rampant in modern economies. There is no controversy, except irresponsibility. I refer back to Dan Rivers’ report on CNN which is part of the modern day slavery series of … Continue reading →