In our research on the execution of strategy (Research Reports) we found that communication and collaboration were two of the keys to success. But what does that mean in practice and who is ultimately accountable for the success of the initiative?

Well that depends on how your particular organisation has structured roles and projects, but one thing that we know that is always true is this: success comes when people take accountability, not just for what is written in a job description or project plan but ultimately for what the client experience is when dealing with HR.

This is about mindset. How you think and behave – not what you are asked to do. There are behaviours that tell you if someone is being accountable or not. Sometimes it can be hard to call others on this. In fact the first place to start is yourself. Look at our material on being accountable and check your own behaviours against the examples. Are you being accountable? Click here.

We all slip up on this at times. The important thing is to be aware and take action to get back on the accountable track.

These weekly tips form part of the HR Success Kitbag service.
If you would like to find out more about the Kitbag, click here

In it we will have a range of interviews with people who shape the talent agenda today. From a range of sectors and perspectives, we have some thought provoking comment and some predications on where the future might be heading. To maximise our readers ‘hit’ of insight, we set them the same questions and cut the waffle. See what you think…

For our third interview we were really pleased to have the chance to talk to an organisation that is at the heart of global growth right now, with its’ focus on emerging markets, Standard Bank. We spoke to Elizabeth Warren, who leads their global HR function from Johannesburg and London. That’s her in the picture.

She leads HR for the whole Group, which has a major presence in Africa, particularly with retail banking and its Liberty Life insurance business. It is also a leading player in providing corporate and investment banking in Africa, London, Hong Kong and Latin America. Her patch includes over 1000 HR staff in HRBP teams, a large SSC in Johannesburg and global CoEs (including Organisational Effectiveness and business architecture).

What is the purpose of your role?

“There are a number of levels to that. Overall to ensure that we have the right people processes to achieve business goals, to ensure we have the right people performing in the way we need, and that we have the right bench strength for the future. Also at the executive level to challenge the assumptions we have made around strategy, particularly from a people perspective, and be the confidant of senior execs so they feel that they have the opportunity to get support in a pretty lonely place.”

How do you join up the talent levers in your organisation, and which have the most impact?

“Let me set some context. For us talent requires a focus on specialist talent as well as leadership. We have been building our infrastructure to manage this. However our focus is in the on the buy, build or borrow question for talent management. We are looking to achieve an integrated approach across resourcing, development, reward and the other areas with a focus on future need. The ultimate way we join this up is through a clear strategic workforce plan, focusing on a 3-5 year time horizon. This keeps it all linked to business strategy. Some examples of that playing out are our focus on graduates and school leavers in retail banking, where we need to influence the sources of talent earlier in developing markets.

Keeping talent activities aligned across the different disciplines and to strategic goals is difficult. However the way you develop talent interventions plays a big role in keeping it aligned. Making this happen involves joint programme design with a supplier, but design ownership is never outsourced, and executives need to play a role in that design.

We do this in development for example, by avoiding buying generic leadership programmes, as good as they are. They often had their own leadership frameworks embedded, we needed to start from the demands of our strategic workforce planning analysis, look at the leadership requirement there, and then design programmes specific to that. We can then run tailored programmes against clear business need, and then check that gaps are being met. Keeping the programmes rooted in our leadership context also makes sure that people are not being sent with lots of bright ideas into an environment where those are not recognised and therefore not supported. Leaders have a real role to play in developing further learning in the workplace, and need clarity and an instinctive feel for the learning that they are supporting. That goes all the way back to using a common language that fits Standard Bank in every area, not using individual Talent CoE “technical” or external suppliers’ language.

Then of course the tools need to be aligned as well and we also need the right metrics. Getting this right can feel like boiling the ocean when you start, so you have to pick the things off in steps, and get the foundations right. First check that there is a clear business strategy! It may not be clear enough to plan against, with the people implications well worked through. Then get the leadership behaviours framework right, for us this drives everything. Next be clear on the kind of organisation structure your strategy needs (team structure, ways of working etc). That allows you to see where you can focus and get the best results for the talent interventions. This business architecture is really important to get a hook that allows you to join up your talent interventions and avoid having great, but slio’ed, talent thinking.

Finally the structure of the CoEs matters in joining it all up. I am the head of the CoEs as much as the wider HR team. I have also hired CoE leaders who are not so much deep experts in each area, a role their teams can provide, but people who understand the interdependencies across HRBPs and other CoEs. We have also grouped them to maximise the opportunities to promote collaboration. For example under our Head of Talent we have talent management, resourcing, and learning and development. We are looking to bring the internal and external talent pools together. We also work in cross CoE project teams as much as possible. We recently redesigned our international assignment strategy with the talent and compensation teams working together. We then use monthly reviews with the whole CoE leadership team to keep the plans aligned across each area.”

How do you know you have made an impact in executing your talent strategy?

“Fundamentally it is about ensuring people in the right jobs by asking; are they performing as expected, are we retaining the right ones, is there a good pool of succession talent, and knowing why you might need to go outside. Ultimately it will come through in business results. We have metrics around all these areas aligned to the business strategy and architecture we are trying to drive. This is just so important as people are really a key differentiator in developing markets, where the customer interaction is still very locally specific. In some ways it is more important than in a developed market requirement where there is a much greater focus on getting the right capital allocation.”

What do you think will be talent strategy challenges for the future?

“There are some specific challenges we have in our emerging markets. There are no two ways about it: talent shortages are the big issue. That means that we have to get involved much earlier on in the education system that produces your talent. That takes resources. Trying to attract back diaspora into countries for targeted roles is another strategy we use, but we cannot rely on that alone. We have to devote the resources to education that in the end helps build an economy that needs our services, so we need a long-term view of out talent investments and a more outward looking team.

That is very different from developed markets, where it sometimes feels like you can almost sit back and expect that people will train your graduates for you. In places likes Africa and Latin America you need to invest to make sure you have them from the start of their careers, and invest in mid career development to retain them.

In developing markets keeping the pipeline full to hire from also needs to be balanced with the pressure to hire local staff, for good business and political reasons. That pressure will only grow. Banking also used to be flavour of the decade everywhere and it was easy to get talent in. Now a different perception is making that harder. We are having to work hard at outlining a new career in banking and using that in retention as well.”

A great insight from an organisation at the heart of global growth. There is more to come. We have a range of views from organisations yet to come including from a leading telecoms group on global talent challenges in technology. Stay with us…

Click here to see all the interviews in this series…

As we considered the various options, we realised that the approach that we had already taken to HR and business support services (developed with “critical friend” input from Orion Partners) could give us the force-wide transformational approach we were seeking.

Click here to read the full story in The Guardian Friday 17 February 2012 

Probably not high. At least that is the conclusion reached by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney in their forthcoming book Willpower: Rediscovering the greatest human strength. They tell the amazing story of how the time of day and the amount of food parole judges have had makes a significant difference to the chances of prisoners, with the same crimes and sentences, getting parole.  The science behind this is based on a view that our brain quite quickly gets tired making decisions and it doesn’t have to make many decisions for this to start to be a problem. This fatigue is exacerbated if we are hungry or lack sleep.  Brain fatigue is not noticeable in the normal course of the day but will result in poor decisions, impulsive behaviour and a general inability to resist temptations, be that shouting at employees or eating too much cake! The causes are the result of depletions in glucose levels in the brain.  Imaging of the brain has found that when we lack glucose that is more activity in the brain’s reward centre and less in the areas responsible for inhibiting impulses. A lack of glucose causes more activity in some parts of the brain and less in others; in short the brain stops doing some things and starts doing others.  Unfortunately, it starts doing more of responding to immediate rewards, and less of paying attention to long term goals.  A lethal combination when making decisions.

Extending this thinking to business adds a whole new dimension to executive decision making and self awareness and suggests HR should be concerned about the working habits of the most senior team (as well as their own habits). Making several decisions in a row is particularly wearing. So taking breaks, knowing when you are making a poor decision and waiting until the brain is fresh are all skills that executives need.  As are good habits like structuring the day so that the hard or most important decisions are made at the start and when breakfast has been consumed.  To quote Baumeister “the best decision makers are the ones who know when not to trust themselves”

Maybe with a little help and coaching from HR!

I personally am a great supporter of the games being in London but a lot of good will is going to be lost because the Olympic authorities just do not understand how the brain works.

Sorry what has that got to do with ticket sales you say?  Well it has everything to do with ticket sales. Well at least the tactics and policy around ticket sales for the Olympics. You see the way this has been handled is guaranteed to create a poor reaction in the brain and hence anger and bad feeling.

Lets review a few facts about the brain that every Olympic official responsible for PR and policy should know, as well as HR people and leaders in business!

The brain is hard wired to notice threat and reward at a neurological level. When we feel threatened we move away from the threat and the rational thinking part of the brain the Prefrontal cortex closes down. When we feel reward we move towards and are more open and receptive. These reactions happen in nano seconds and we will start to feel angry (threat) or good (reward) before a logical reason can be made for the feeling. Neuroscience has found four main areas of social interaction that create threat or reward.  The approach to selling Olympic tickets creates threat in all of these areas. We call these CORE and it stands for:

Certainty: the brain seeks certainty. This is part of how the brain manages energy and efficiency. When something happens that is what we expected we feel rewarded when the unexpected happens we feel threatened. People were told 75% of Olympic tickets would be on sale. People naturally assumed that was 75% of all tickets, the high profile events as well as the obscure events. So when people applied for their tickets it was a shock that so few people got tickets at all but even less people got the high profile events. Then when Dispatches reveals that in fact only a little over 30% of tickets for high profile events were offered to the general public there is a threat response. Certainty is challenged.

Options: This is the one area where the Olympic authorities have not done too badly. People have had more than one option to apply for tickets (although the duel applications process probably impacted certainty). But there has been little ability to make a choice, to let your options be known. For example to say I would rather have seats to the swimming over the relay. Maybe that would have been too complex but again the lack of options creates a threat response.

Reputation. This is where the real threat comes. Dispatches presenter kept saying that the tickets had gone to ‘rich people’ a sure threat to most people’s sense of reputation and a guaranteed threat.

Equity:  The brain looks for equity of treatment. On many levels this sense of fairness has not been present in the ticket sales policy. This is exacerbated by the lack of transparency about how tickets have been allocated and late breaking news about allocations to companies who are selling packages for corporate hospitality and the like. All in all most people’s sense of equity has been threatened.

These kinds of mistakes happen all too often both in public policy and business. CORE is a simple tool for checking policy and communications. Maybe the Olympic authorities can use is to undo some of the threat, create more reward and regain good will. After all there are good opportunities for us to feel certainty of a games well run, the stadium is already done, options to be involved if not at the events in other ways, a sense of enhanced reputation from success at the games and greater equity…well I am having trouble with that one but maybe someone will come up with a brain friendly solution to the perceived lack of fairness.

Click here to see our Neuroscience blogs…

The Talent Software market M&A frenzy continues but, when you peel away the headlines how similar are the recent SAP and Oracle acquisition announcements?  And, what really matters in all this?

It wasn’t really the biggest surprise of the year, hearing the news that Oracle had made an offer to acquire Taleo.  Unlike SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors that came out of the blue for many (QED the Talent software provider share prices in early December)  Some may be inclined to think “So what?  More software whales gobbling up the little fish?  Same old, same old”.  But maybe, on closer inspection, there is more to this.

On the face of it, these two acquisitions look the same.  Both companies are grabbing large chunks of the market with both Customer numbers and functionality and spending $Bns in a bid to dominate the accelerating software market.  The prize is to capture the annual subscription revenues that increasingly underpin integrated talent processes and the alignment of talent strategy with business strategy execution.  But, don’t be fooled, these two businesses have started from very different places and these acquisitions show signs of being launched for different reasons.

When SAP announced the acquisition of SuccessFactors, not only was it entirely absent from the Talent SaaS market, but it also had no clear product development in play to get it there either.  SAP therefore seems to have sought out, arguably, the most complete of the specialist Talent SaaS providers.  The only noticeable hole remaining in Lars Dalgaard’s complete HCM and Talent suite appears to be a credible global SaaS Payroll that can compete with Oracle Fusion and Workday products.  The question is, will this be a partnership of the sort that PeopleSoft had with ADP in Europe 15 years ago or will he buy one?  For SAP, the high price tag (almost twice that offered by Oracle for Taleo) probably represents SAP’s urgent need for an ‘off the shelf’, functionally complete suite in a solid SaaS business model with a respectable number of Customers.  Add to this the fact that a good proportion of SuccessFactors’ largest Customers are also using SAP’s R3 ERP platform (or derivatives) and one sees an interesting situation developing as acquisition concludes and integration starts.

But before we move on, there is one nagging question here.  A question that marketing and sales must be asking in both SAP & SuccessFactors right now.  “How is this going to work exactly?”  What will be the coherent message to the market where one specialist HCM sales & marketing machine is goaled on selling On-premise solutions (‘old’ SAP) in apparent competition with the ‘new’ SAP SuccessFactors SaaS team?  What will be the sales model where two potentially competing sales teams turn up at the same organisations – both from SAP?  Whilst this may not be a pretty thought for the respective sales & marketing teams, it might be a great opportunity for any customers willing to play a divide and conquer procurement strategy!  Overall, though,  the phrase SuccessFactors (an SAP Company) and the accompanying creation of a separate global business unit makes sense in order to create a SaaS incubator business with the room and cheque book to grow fast where total integration within an ‘old’ SAP might otherwise crush it.  So, as they move through the final stages of acquisition and integration, we can watch with interest to see how the potential ‘wrinkle’ of internally competing sales & marketing messages irons out.  The rest of the story seems to stack up.

So what about Oracle, who, in contrast to SAP, have already invested $Ms into a SaaS Fusion HCM and Talent product with some signs of market success?  Oracle’s Fusion product has emerged two years late but has nonetheless gathered momentum thanks to an Early Adopter Programme.  Oracle continues to position Fusion SaaS in preference to the ‘old’ On-Premise e-business suite and PeopleSoft product suites wherever and whenever possible but ultimately still sends a strong message of “Fusion – You choose the environment, we won’t dictate to you”.  Fusion appears to be available in an amazing variety of delivery forms:  SaaS Single Tennant, Single Multi-Tennant, old-style On-Premise and traditional hosted.  In the SaaS options, Fusion can be in the Oracle cloud or someone else’s cloud (as long as it’s an open-defined cloud and not what Mr Ellison called a “Roach Motel”!) and will operate in harmonious coexistence with or as a replacement to an existing Oracle E-Business Suite / PeopleSoft / competitor’s ERP.  Oh boy! – that’s a lot of choice!

But, by majoring so much on choice, a potential dilemma could emerge for Oracle in relation to a Taleo acquisition.  Where exactly does the Taleo product fit where it is currently a Multi-Tenant SaaS solution.  Period?  Where exactly can Taleo’s architecture fit the multitude of Fusion options, let alone splice neatly into Fusion functionality?  Sure, we get the way Taleo’s functionality elegantly fills in Fusion HCM / Talent recruitment and Learning Management gaps, we understand the lure of an immediate and large Customer base with a market leading position in Talent acquisition and we appreciate how sweet Oracle must feel about taking out a recruitment Partner from it’s new best HCM enemy (Workday).  But the questions remain.

We can therefore look forward to seeing how the products are combined to form a fully integrated offering and where the question of choice ends up.  And, unlike SAP’s announcement, we can expect Taleo’s sales and marketing teams to be integrated with the current and growing Oracle Fusion HCM sales and marketing teams post acquisition.  It is not Oracle’s style to dilute the brand by introducing a phrase such as Taleo (an Oracle Company).  One doubt might linger in Oracle Exec’s minds though.  The last time Oracle executed on one of those kinds of integrations with an Oracle sales team in situ in this market was 2005, and the acquired company was PeopleSoft.  The result was, let us say, sub-optimal in the short term, proven by the fact that they haven’t done something that large in that way again.  It will therefore be interesting to see how that lesson was learned and how Oracle (much more experienced now, of course) handles this one.

So, over the next few months we will see how these two old adversaries face up to one another again and how Mr Duffield and team respond with Workday as they line up the company for IPO – expected by many this year.  Workday may have lost a key recruitment ‘in-fill’ Partner (equivalent to the role Saba continues to play for Workday in the Learning arena) but Oracle’s purchase of Taleo could simply pave the way for Cornerstone or Lumesse or AN Other to take a stronger market position now as a Workday Partner.

And let’s not forget Salesforce.com who have been making Performance and Talent noises with Rypple, led by John Wookey; the same John Wookey, who headed up PeopleSoft’s Product Strategy when Oracle acquired the company in 2005.  And there are still many smaller players who may well be hoping to be acquired so that their boards too can cash in on this current M&A frenzy.  Being a relative minnow in this sea of whales could get tough!

But, of course, the most interesting part of all of this software market excitement will be to see how well organisations can set their sights on implementing and using this new generation of software in a radically different way to the way they used ERP in the heyday of in-house HR & Payroll ERP – mainly SAP, PeopleSoft, e-business suite and Infor.

This generation of talent software solutions is different because it is fundamentally HR Software for the business, as well as the HR function; or perhaps one should say, this is software focussed on helping managers and executives run their businesses better with the people and talent at their disposal.  As exciting as the software market might look right now, the transformation in how this generation of software should and will be used to achieve competitive business advantage is much, much more interesting.

This market has been and continues to evolve fast and is unlikely to slow down any time soon.  There is still more to come, of that we can be sure.  That is why we’re keeping a close eye on events, their implications, the reality behind all the smoke and mirrors and most of all, how organisations evaluate, assess and exploit this exciting new generation of software.  In common with everything we do as a truly vendor-independent business, we’re making sure that people and process work in harmony with the software.  Without that, as we all know, the software will achieve nothing, whatever it’s called.

So, how do you challenge without damaging the relationship?

Firstly, you need to know whether this is indeed a battle worth fighting. Look at our risk assessment to help you analyse the risks and rewards of taking this action. Once you have done this you will be clear of your own view and this will help your confidence.

Secondly, think about how you will challenge. Remember, if you tell someone that they can’t do something their brain will hear this as a threat. So a good way to raise your concern without doing this is to ask questions and get your clients to think more deeply about the impact of their proposed action. A powerful question will shift their perspective and broaden their thinking. Click here to find out more about this.

One final thought, think about what you are telling yourself about this challenge. This may come as a surprise but when we ask business stakeholders to tell us how HR can add value they often tell us “they want more challenge”.

These weekly tips form part of the HR Success Kitbag service.
If you would like to find out more about the Kitbag, click here

In it we have a range of interviews with people who shape the talent agenda today. From a range of sectors and perspectives, we have some thought provoking comment and some predictions on what the future might have in store. To maximise our readers ‘hit’ of insight, we set them the same questions and cut the waffle. See what you think…

If you would like to hear what previous interviewees had to say, click here…

For this interview we wanted to delve into the challenges of managing talent in the public sector, a world that demands real discipline and creativity right now. We spoke to Martin Rayson, that’s him in the picture. Over the years we have known him he has always been a challenging and forward thinking voice. His role as Vice-President of the Public Sector People Managers’ Association (www.ppma.org) is a reflection of his colleagues acknowledging that.

What is the purpose of your role?

“Barking and Dagenham is a Borough with real social challenges, but great opportunities, with events like the Olympics coming up. The Borough has to focus on increasing household incomes, and the quality of opportunity for residents. To do that we need to be a well run council. As the owner of the Council’s people strategy and agenda for talent, my focus is on helping the Council make more impact in the community at a time when we have fewer resources, via having talented people. That does mean we have to consider the talent that everyone has and try to get more from people in their everyday work. It also means that we have a focus on key roles that can make a difference to our agenda.”

How do you join up the talent levers in your organisation, and which have the most impact?

“Like many boroughs and councils we provide a very diverse range of services. That means it is a real challenge to ensure we act in a joined-up way, where it makes sense to do so. The same is true of talent management. It is not always easy for leaders in say Children’s Services to recognise that linking talent development with another specialism, for example Revenue and Benefits, can be beneficial and make a difference to overall performance. There are real wins here if we can do that, so we focus on joining up the talent agenda of our future leaders looking for connectivity across functional areas and across the departments.  That provides a potential great feed into the executive team.

Within our talent approach, we place a lot of emphasis on the internal appraisal process, and the leadership and management development programme. We have to be mindful of costs and we want to keep decisions close to local managers. The key is to have a good dialogue in the appraisal conversation about opportunities and aspirations. However in a shrinking organisation that gets harder. People can easily move on inLondon, both within and outside the public sector. That means succession planning is an area which we focus on to counter that and keep our best people. Competing in a pay bidding war is not something we can afford to do!

Our investment in the appraisal process has paid off, with 95% of appraisals being completed each year. Managers make it happen. Having got a high participation rate, we are now placing a specific focus on the quality of the event and set out expectations for all involved. We are using critical conversations training for managers to equip them to explore issues fully. We also want the organisation to have a common language for discussing aspiration, and we now use a four box model to assess potential as a simple tool. Staff engaging with line managers in a discussion about their potential and aspirations is a key part of joining up our talent strategy.

With a need to get the most from everyone in the organisation we don’t talk about talent management as such, but about fulfilling potential, succession planning and maximising customer experience and efficiency. For those that want to they talk about career development.”

How do you know you have made an impact in executing your talent strategy?

“We use staff surveys to examine the quality of management and leadership across the whole organisation. With a reliance on managers to join up our talent agenda, this is a key measure. Also we look at turnover rates, particularly in specific areas where we need specialist staff. Turnover rates are also important when we are looking at  succession planning. Management teams discuss whether they are keeping the people they want to keep. The succession discussion is also widened to include staff representative bodies and groups like diversity forums. This dialogue itself across all these groups has a positive effect in joining things up. Staff recognise that there is concerted effort being made to generate a talent and career management environment that everyone can benefit from.

Finally we have to acknowledge our financial constraints. This means that we need to accept that some staff will always move for more money or career development, and we therefore need to ensure there is a pipeline of talent to replace them. Retention of people for us is less about offering more money and more about access to L&D, proactively clearing blockages to career movement, and actively looking to give those in our succession plan richer roles. Arguably this is more effective than money in the medium to longer term. It creates a sense that talented people will not get stuck.”

What do you think will be talent strategy challenges for the future?

“One challenge is certainly the image of the public sector. The portrayal of the public sector in parts of the press could dissuade talented people from making a career in the sector. The image presented is inaccurate and it is a great place for talented people to build their careers. The challenges we face make it very stretching work environment and it demands real creativity. There is a unique opportunity to do things differently.

The is also a lot of uncertainty about the future and how the Borough and wider public sector will be structured. For example will the mutual agenda really take off, with third sector mutual groups running local services? Opportunities for talented, creative people who wish to work delivering public sector services, may lie in entirely new organisational structures. This means that what we as business and HR leaders mean by managing talent may need to adapt. It may be right for our best people to spend time outside the Council working in different kinds of organisations. Also the skills needed in future leaders will increasingly be about commissioning, community engagement, and developing new relationships with the other stakeholders serving the community.

Defining what this means in any detail at the moment is difficult. We are on a  journey and in a transitional state. It certainly challenges the way leaders have been developed to date. We are now looking among our potential leaders for a mindset that enjoys ambiguity, not necessarily people who are keen on stability and are simply focused on developing technical skills. The need for technical skills has not gone away, but what we need more than anything is people with the right attitude. People making appointments and managing succession are starting to see this, but in the sector we have some way to go before this is fully translated into action on the ground.”

A great insight from a sector brimming with challenge and creativity. There is more to come. We have a range of views from organisations yet to come including from a leading telecoms group on global talent challenges in technology; and a major bank on the view of Asia and Europe from their base in Africa. Stay with us…

See all our Talent related blogs…

What has this got to do with HR and talent you ask? Well this habit of nesting eight stories up is one that is not serving the ducks, yet they keep doing it.  Given that we are just into February this may well be reminiscent of your New Year resolutions. You started with good intent to stop a habit that was no longer working for you but have reverted to old behaviour.

Social neuroscience is beginning to reveal better ways of keeping resolutions by unpacking how we create habit and how to utilise that insight to better help leaders and employees embed learning. Drawing on the work of several colleagues Kevin Ochsner from Columbia University has summarised the steps for creating habit. Ochsner says we need to use both the thought parts of the brain and the reactive parts of the brain to form new habit. That is use the thinking brain to train the reactive brain. The steps are:

• Pick a goal - what you want to change and how you can make the change. Identify the rewards and obstacles of the goal. He recommends doing this by listing the positives and the obstacles one after the other. This method was created by  Gabriele Oettingen at NYU.
• Create triggers to remember your goal Once you have the goal clear and understand the rewards and motivation you need to help yourself notice when you may slip in to old ways of behaving.  One way to do this is to create ‘If /then’ intensions. For example “If… ‘X’ happens, then I will do..Y. ”   An example might be “if I am offered desert then I will take coffee instead.”  If /then intensions are the idea of Peter Gollwitzer also at NYU . He has found that writing clear intensions heightens their impact more than just telling yourself you will do something. This is probably because you are creating stronger neural pathways and are therefore more likely to remember your intensions. You can also prime yourself by putting positive thoughts and words around the goal.
• Engage the Dopamine system. Dopamine is part of the reward system. The ability to stick to a goal until a new habit is created needs to be rewarding (neurologically). You have to trick your brain into seeing goals and achievement or progress towards the goal as rewarding.  For example by associating perseverance with reward. Every time you complete a goal or make a significant step, visualise yourself getting a reward of dopamine. You can trick yourself into boosting your dopamine by looking at everything you do as a small achievement. Congratulate yourself and boost your dopamine. Even winning at computer games boosts the reward circuit. It is also worth tapping into belief. Neuroimaging has shown that believing something changes the brain in the same way as actually taking a pain killer for example. So make sure you believe you can meet the goal.
• Create a strategy . Finally Ochsner recommends picking a strategy to keep you on track. He uses The James Gross framework.  Gross identifies a number of strategies from avoiding the situation to putting attention elsewhere.  Most people need a combination of these strategies. For example if you crave biscuits cease to buy them ( the avoid strategy) but you may also need to occupy your mind so you stop continually fanaticising about biscuits ( the distraction strategy).
• Keep at it. Until you form a new habit, a new way of behaving. Most of us give up too soon or stop when we make one error. From a neurological point of view one laps is not going to undo all the past good. So provided it is one laps there is no need to give up. Just reinforce the above. There are different views on how long it takes to form new habits.  Three months is the most mentioned period. Personally I think you need to make the judgement for yourself. You will know you have a new habit when you do it automatically every time.

Not sure my ducks are up to understanding all of this but hopefully the missing flower pot will be enough for them to adopt a new habit and encourage them to find a nesting place nearer the water.

See all our Talent related blogs…

In our experience, when developing strategic approach, successful HR people often draw heavily on their intuition as well as their analytic skills and understanding of the business. Often it is intuition which leads us to explore a particular idea or which helps us choose a direction for further analysis when faced with multiple options. We are all constantly gathering information unconsciously through our experiences and interactions, and this can pave the way for intuitive insights, often when we least expect them.

However, taking a systematic approach to using intuition is important if you want to make the most of it. We like this exercise which will help you reflect on and identify when and how your intuition works, in order to harness it most effectively in your strategic thinking.

These weekly tips form part of the HR Success Kitbag service.
If you would like to find out more about the Kitbag, click here