With organizations now having to navigate the rapid changes brought about by geopolitical instability, economic uncertainty, the ongoing climate emergency, and the surge in technology, it is clear that different ways of thinking about talent are needed.
So, how can organizations adapt to this complexity and prepare for a future where the old rules no longer apply? What should they consider when redefining their talent strategies in such a dynamic context?
My guest this is week is Graham Abbey, Professor in Practice at The University of Bristol Business School and CEO of Farleigh Performance.
From the importance of understanding the difference between complicated and complex systems to the potential of AI in reconnecting us to our humanity, Graham provides deep insights into creating the conditions for engagement, leadership, and performance and building an antifragile organization.
In the interview, we discuss:
• Challenges and forces driving change
• Thinking differently about talent
• Changing to the organization metaphor
• The difference between a complicated and complex system
• How well are employers responding to change and uncertainty?
• Skills based organizations
• Discovery connectivity with AI
• Talent Acquisition and hiring
• Higher purpose, agency, relationships, and disruptive learning
• Building an antifragile organization
• How will we be talking about talent in five years time
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Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:01:04]:
Hi there. Welcome to episode 659 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. With organizations now having to navigate the rapid changes brought about by geopolitical instability, economic uncertainty, the ongoing climate emergency and a surge in technology, it’s clear that different ways of thinking about talent are very much needed. So how can organizations adapt to this complexity and prepare for a future where the old rules no longer apply? What should they consider when redefining their talent strategies in such a dynamic environment? My guest this week is Graham Abbey, professor in practice at the University of Bristol Business School and CEO of Farleigh Performance. From the importance of understanding the difference between complicated and complex systems to the potential of AI in reconnecting us to our humanity, Graham provides deep insights into creating the conditions for engagement, leadership and performance and building an antifragile organization.
Matt Alder [00:02:14]:
Hi Graham, and welcome to the podcast.
Graham Abbey [00:02:16]:
Thanks Matt. Great to be here.
Matt Alder [00:02:18]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Graham Abbey [00:02:24]:
Yeah. Thank you. I’m Graham Abbey, Professor Graham Abbey. Oh, feels a very grand thing to be. I really do two main things. I lead an organization development consultancy. We do work in there as a culture, teams, leadership and so on. And I’m also a professor in practice at the University of Bristol Business School where my focus as Director of Executive education is really developing the next generation of leaders for this ever complex and challenging world that we’re in.
Matt Alder [00:03:03]:
Absolutely. And obviously it is a very complex and very challenging world from a sort of a talent perspective. What do you think the sort of the main challenges are or the main drivers of change are for organizations at the moment?
Graham Abbey [00:03:17]:
Yeah, I mean that’s a big question and I mean, I’m going to start to answer that. I think it is the complexity and uncertainty itself. I mean, I think we are, to use an Americanism, we are on the on ramp to increasing uncertainty and complexity. I think if we just look back at the last five years, be it pandemics, be it geopolitical instability, wars, economic crises and so on, all of that before, without even mentioning climate and the impact that has, the world is accelerating in its uncertainty and complexity. And I think for talent to ground that a bit more, I think the challenge for all of us is that what we’ve known in the past isn’t going to be a reliable predictor of what we need to do in the future. So if we think of our entire education systems, our ways of recruiting, ways of individuals deciding what we do or don’t do, it’s often based on what’s gone before, and that’s just not going to be a reliable predictor of what’s needed going forward.
Matt Alder [00:04:38]:
Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with you more. So how do you think organizations need to start thinking differently about talent in the context of this complexity and for want of a better way of saying it, the old rules not applying anymore?
Graham Abbey [00:04:54]:
I think the thinking is a really. It’s a great question because I think how we think about things and how we talk about things is a really critical part of what shapes what we do. My PhD was in looking at organizational change, but looking at it from a narrative or storytelling perspective, and what that takes you into is recognizing the way in which we make sense of the world is through positioning what we see in stories, in narratives. We need plot, we need characters, we need drama, we need to make sense of it in all those kind of ways. And therefore, how we think about talent, and maybe a bit broader than that, how we think about organization really shapes the way in which we then act. I think one of the big challenges is to link to this point around complexity, is to recognize that organizations are not just very complicated things, they’re complex. And there’s an important distinction between complicated and complex that I don’t think is always appreciated. And there’s great. There’s great work that’s done in this space. Dave. Dave Snowden would be somebody to reference here around his Cynefin framework. But I love Mary Albine’s story around this, around the distinction between jumbo jet being complicated, but mayonnaise being complex.
Matt Alder [00:06:42]:
Interesting.
Graham Abbey [00:06:43]:
So things, you know, and I was an aeronautical engineer originally, so I love an aircraft. I got to bring an aircraft into the. Into the conversation somewhere. And I’ve had the privilege to be on a Jumbo jet on a Boeing 747 whilst it’s being built. I got to be out in Seattle and see it. And there are millions of parts that go into this aircraft. It’s an incredible phenomenon to see, but it does only go together one way. If you put it together that way you can take it apart again. And if something’s not working, you can take a part out and you can put another part in. And that’s what complicated looks like. And I think that’s become our, that is our dominant metaphor. It’s very mechanical metaphor for how we think about organizations. Mayonnaise, on the other hand, you take a couple of ingredients, largely eggs and oil, and you mix them together and something magic happens, something, something different emerges. So a third thing emerges and that emergence is, is a, you know, definitionally what a complex system is about. You know, something that wasn’t there before appears. And it is almost as if by magic something appears and you can’t then go back to the things before. You can’t find the eggs and the oil in the mayonnaise, you can’t find the grapes in the wine. That something has shifted and changed. And I think when we think of the many of the things in the talent space that we’re looking for, be it engagement, leadership, performance, these are all our emergent properties. These are things that come out of the complex interaction of a whole bunch of stuff. And of course that interaction is getting faster, is getting more uncertain. But that’s the first piece around. How do we need to think differently? I think we need to think and start to recognize that we are working in complex systems as well as complicated systems.
Matt Alder [00:08:58]:
And how do you think employers are responding to that? Are they understanding that? Are they moving quickly enough? Obviously, lots of talk about things like skills based organizations, is that the, you know, is that the solution in terms of changing thinking, what’s kind of happening in the market at the moment that you’re seeing?
Graham Abbey [00:09:19]:
I think the risk of what happens when faced with what, what is quite a fundamental shift is the risk is we double down on what we know. Peter Senge, in this sort of systems thinking world, talks about a system’s archetype of shifting the burden. And it’s about shifting the burden of something new onto something that we know. And I think there’s a risk. We’ve seen that happening. We see people driving for better metrics to measure engagement. Engagement, I think, is a really good example in this space that the idea that we can quantify engagement, I think is conceptually quite Tricky because again, it’s the mayonnaise, right? It’s this emergent property that appears out of this complex set of, of contextual factors in any organization. And the idea that we can then break it down again and measure it, I think is, personally, I think is a flawed, is a flawed idea and risks us giving us something that can be useful. I wouldn’t deny there’s some use here, but it’s probably not what we’re looking at. Things that are probably not quite what we think they are in this space. Again, we start to build a new and different narrative around it. So I think there are some really interesting, you know, the skills based organization, the sort of, the kind of moving away from the reliance on old habits and patterns like people’s qualifications and jobs and what we’ve done before. You know, the idea that we can look what’s gone before as a measure of what’s going to be successful again is one of the things that in a way we’ve doubled down on that we need to release ourselves from here.
Matt Alder [00:12:04]:
Obviously the other factor here that we’ve not kind of really addressed yet is technology and the explosion in the, in the acceleration of the development of AI. How does that add to the mix of everything? What’s that in terms of? Is that another complicating factor? Is it a potential solution?
Graham Abbey [00:12:23]:
I mean, I imagine it’ll be both of those things. One of the phrases I like is a Gregory Bateson phrase, which is that it’s never just that and nothing more. And I think as we talk about each of these issues, of course it is never just that and nothing more. There’s always more. And I think that’s a nice one of the ways to think about if we bring together those skills, ideas and AI, if we try to hold more than one idea at a time around this, I think what I notice is becoming important is beginning to recognize the connectivity between everything. And of course, it’s that connectivity that leads to this emergence. And it’s a deeply human thing to connect and to build relationship and to find ways to see the beauty in things and the joy in things. And again, all of these sort of emergent properties that might come from our interactions. So I think one of the Things that we have not given sufficient attention to in our organizational world because of that machine metaphor we talked about at the beginning of this conversation, is the deep human connection that exists in organization. In many ways, our organizational systems interrupt that, break that down, put us into jobs, put us into processes that measure, share and dehumanize. Whereas I think what this complex world is requiring of us is to rediscover our humanity, rediscover our connection. And I think an interesting question becomes the degree to which how we use AI in what we’re doing. Can we use AI in a way that enables us to refine our humanity rather than, again, that doubling down phrase, deepening our commitment to a worldview that has been reducing our humanity, has been reducing our connection?
Matt Alder [00:14:50]:
I think that’s such an interesting point because I think a lot of commentary around AI defaults to the robots are taking over, we’re losing the human touch and everything. We’re sort of heading to this, this kind of technology dystopia. But what you’re saying there is actually we have a technology that allows us in some way to understand some of the complex systems that we have in a way that’s not kind of reductive and kind of imposing. Imposing something. Something on it.
Graham Abbey [00:15:23]:
Absolutely. I mean, I think. And also, whether it’s a good thing or not a good thing is a bit of a moot point because it’s, it’s with us and it’s not going away anytime soon. So I think a better question is the one I think that you’re alluding to there, which is, well, how do we position AI in the context of what we’re doing? For me, it’s a very significant part of the conditions that we’re creating for, you know, productive joy, joyful lives in our organizations. How do we think about it alongside other conditions? So I think that’s where this, if you hold a more complex view, rather than just a complicated one, it leads you as a leader or, you know, a participant in any context, to really give more attention to the wide range of factors that are influencing the context. So how do we think about AI in the context of our relationships? How do we think about AI in the context of the way in which we think about skills in organizations and people in organizations?
Matt Alder [00:16:55]:
And I suppose from that perspective, the way that organizations sort of need to evolve their thinking, do you think that that is going to sort of fundamentally reshape the talent function in organizations? So at the moment, these things tend to be sort of very much split into silos. Talent acquisition, talent management, learning and development, those kind of things. Is this kind of going to drive a sort of a fundamental change in that way of thinking?
Graham Abbey [00:17:24]:
I mean, I’m going to say I hope so, to kind of come down on the side of it. It’s fascinating. I have an HR background. I got into, in spite of being an engineer, as I said before I got into human resources. I think it was even called personnel in those days. In the late 80s when working at what was then called British Aerospace, there was a recognition that big manufacturing sites with large personnel functions were developing specialist HR people. You were a recruiter, you were a trainer, you were an industrial relations person or whatever. And they created this opportunity for a generalist HR professional, which I stepped into and that was the start of my HR career. So this idea of integrating specialties into more holistic ways of looking at the world isn’t a new thing. It’s back to that metaphor again. If we hold that sense that we need to maximize the efficiency of the parts of any system, it leads us to specialize. So and of course that deep domain knowledge on particular things is hugely important. And at the same time we need to be able to hold things more holistically, you know, and I think that could be one of the things that AI helps us positively to disrupt. How do we balance this need for doing and being? I think that might be an interesting. That’s something that we use a lot in our work both at the University of Bristol and also at Farleigh Performance. This idea that as we think about what we, how we have an impact, it is important around what we know, but it’s also important about what we do. How do we bring that together. But it also is important about who we are, how are we being in any situation? And I think there’s definitely a need to hold all of these. We do need specialisms, we do need deep know how, but we have to be able to hold those in a much more integrated picture, a much more holistic set of relationships to the, to the world. And in many ways that’s what developing maturity as individuals is about. How we make our, our own meaning, making more complex, more richer. But that’s also how we need to evolve organizations.
Matt Alder [00:20:12]:
So lots of people listening are running talent acquisition functions, going through huge changes at the moment in an attempt to address some of the issues that we’re talking about. So I suspect that everyone is either going through some kind of transformation process or is about to in the next sort of weeks and months. What would your advice be? To them. Do you think this looks like from a talent acquisition perspective, from a hiring perspective, what should people be thinking about as they’re trying to sort of evolve their functions?
Graham Abbey [00:20:43]:
I mean, it’s a great question and a really challenging one because in many ways there’s always a temptation, a desire here to have the ready answer. And of course, having the ready answer is something that’s much more akin to the complicated worldview than it is the complex one where there are really are no ready answers. So there is something fundamental here about the way in which talent functions are thinking about the world, the degree to which we can all begin to embrace more of this complexity and wonder what the hell that might mean in practice. Having said that, that would feel a very dissatisfactory end to our convers. What do we conclude? We include. It’s all very difficult. So I think for me, if I look at the work that we do, one of the questions we keep coming back to then is, so what are the conditions that we want to. That we believe create a foundation for the things that we want to emerge? Engagement, performance, leadership, etc. We have a little acronym to help us with that, which is hard is the acronym, which I guess is slightly an antidote to the idea that this is the soft stuff. Actually, this is where it really happens. These are about conditions that we find are the outcome of much of the work that we do and provide a platform for performance in organizations. So H Higher purpose We’ve done a lot of work and I know there’s a lot in your podcast around this question of what’s the bigger thing that we’re connecting to? How do we bring meaning to work? How do we think about why we’re doing what we’re not doing, not just what we’re doing. The A is for agency or autonomy would be another. Another word in that space. You know, how do we create greater freedom to act for people? Again, that very mechanical mindset. And I go back to my early HR days, I was definitely in this space of creating job descriptions, designing organizations, putting people in boxes, all of that. Really reducing the ability of people to self organize, to act, to see what’s most important in any moment and go after it. But of course the antidote to that is the R, which is you need to be in relationship to do that. So you don’t want to create an environment of lots of autonomous agents running around without there being clear and quality relationships between them. And the final one there is around, however good you get at all of those things, you’ve got to be able to disrupt that. That’s the D is for disruptive learning. How do we use what’s going on in our environment as a positive catalyst for change? Nassim Taylor talks about the anti fragile organization. The idea that the opposite of being fragile, and we saw how fragile some of our supply chains were during COVID for example, is not a robust system. That’s a kind of middle ground. It’s an antifragile and you had to invent a word because there isn’t one, which is systems, organizations, people that thrive in uncertainty rather than collapse in uncertainty. So how do we develop our ability to learn faster than the environment is changing, you know, and that’s all you know. So, you know, if I was in those, those, those talent roles now I’d be looking at what I’m doing and thinking about, you know, how are we building higher purpose, how are we increasing agency for people, how are we really focusing on the relationships that exist between people and in the context that we’re in, you know, and how do I, you know, maximize the amount of learning that can go on in this environment? And I think if you hold those, those conditions, you probably come up with some quite radically different ways of approaching talent acquisition, talent management and learning and development.
Matt Alder [00:25:53]:
Absolutely. As a final question for you, what do you think the future looks like? What do you think, how do you think we’re going to be talking about talent in, in five years time or how do you hope we’re going to be talking about talent in five years time?
Graham Abbey [00:26:06]:
I think it’s a fascinating question and I would love to know what the answer to that is.
Matt Alder [00:26:12]:
Me too.
Graham Abbey [00:26:13]:
You know, and I think it’s, I mean, it’s an interesting question and it’s a very useful question. It’s also potentially a wrong question in the sense that it also has a. The thread of our current mindset, as it were, in that more predictable world, that complicated world that we’ve got very good at operating in. The way you operate is to predict what’s going to happen in the future, put a plan together to respond to that and execute that Now, I think quite fundamentally the world is changing at too fast a rate to have a decent answer to that question. So the thing that I guess I find myself wondering about is how do we operate now when we can’t know what the future will look like in five years time.
Matt Alder [00:27:14]:
Interesting, interesting. Graham, thank you very much for talking to me.
Graham Abbey [00:27:19]:
Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed it. Matt, thank you for having me.
Matt Alder [00:27:22]:
My thanks to Graham. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify, or via your podcasting app of choice. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Recruiting Future Feast, and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
