Build Perspective
Constant dialogue with the business and stakeholders, and acting accordingly to build perspective
To build Perspective, ask yourself these questions:
- Who are the key stakeholders in the people decisions your organisation needs to make?
- How can you best engage them so that they support you later?
- How could you build the hard and soft data that will help you?
Build Perspective strategically
This involves taking a real step back so that you can get the full picture. Take a deep breath from daily pressures and book time in your diary to scope out three key areas:
- Context – how to make sure you truly understand how your business works and what drives success;
- People – who your key stakeholders, influencers and decision-makers are;
- Process – how to get plugged into your organisation’s decision-making cycle and key strategic discussions.
Every organisation is unique, so we help you to work out what information you need. A question that is potentially even more important, is – whose perspective do you need to view this from?
Build Perspective tactically
We continue to build our picture of our organisation and how it works day by day. We build the relationships gradually that open the doors to the information that we need. We can then deploy our wisdom and skills during meetings, and during conversations that demonstrate our grasp of the situation.
Broadening and deepening your Perspective means continually soaking up information, patterns and clues. Sometimes we need to act in the moment with credibility and business savvy. Sometimes we store up insight quietly and save it for the right occasion. We help you with both the intellectual, and the behavioural, aspects of this.
Winning a seat at the table
From our experience, it’s the questions you ask that get you invited to key meetings. This is also backed up by opinion leaders and CEO’s. They value HR even more when we help them to think things through. We have a unique opportunity to work with our partners in the business to help them develop the kind of insight that opens up ideas and opportunities.
Building credibility as partners in the business as well as adding value as HR experts
This is a shift in mindset, building on our valuable contribution as specialist advisors. It demands taking our expertise a stage further, because we’re using our own insight to ask questions that are designed, consciously, to open up the right kind of conversation.
If we can facilitate a conversation where our perspective can be debated, robustly, with the perspectives of others, this is healthy and powerful. Let’s face it, the responsibility and the budget for the decision is most often held by the Board, by functional Directors or by line managers. This adds complexity to our influencing challenge, but with effective skills and behaviours, and preparation, our Perspective can enable the business to make the right decisions.
Organisations we’ve worked with
