Freethinking HR | WHAT IS IT?

HR without fluff

“As with so many things that I feel passionate about, the idea of Freethinking HR emerged over lunch. 

I met with a group of former HR colleagues, now wonderful friends, on the back of a meeting with a prospective client who had started the conversation with, “It’s a bad day when HR comes.”

This wasn’t the first time I had heard this comment, and it’s always disheartening. As I recounted this, we all cringed, each of us remembering similar situations in our respective corporate HR careers. Despite taking great pride in the strong collaborative and pragmatic partnerships we have built with all our client groups, breaking down these preconceived barriers has often been a struggle.

In our experience, there have been two key reasons for business leaders’ reluctance to engage.

Firstly, in the context of growing regulation and the desire to build large conglomerates, HR has increasingly positioned itself as a compliance function.

Secondly, in an effort to pitch for a seat at the board table by the function and the need for academics/consultants to differentiate themselves, HR has undergone a process of over-intellectualisation, which simply puts off most plain-speaking business drivers.

Our lunch-table discussion coincided with the publication of Marcus Buckingham’s latest book “The Nine Lies of Work”. Together with Ashley Goodall he had created the idea of  Freethinking Leadership resulting from their work researching what it is that really engenders excellence in the workplace. Their aim has been to challenge leaders to question the old ways - “that’s just the way it is” - and inspire them to look again at “how things really are”.

Much of what has long been considered gospel in the world of people management is being dispelled with the research presented in this book, and to us around the table it did not come as a surprise. We had long seen it in our day-to-day work, but did not have the evidence nor the courage to set it out as bluntly, let alone in a book. However, now it was there, we were thrilled - feeling reaffirmed in our views and experiences – and now we had a name for our approach: Freethinking HR.

We believe in the power of insight gained through research and know that business is complex. We accept that structures, processes and tools facilitate efficiency, consistency and adherence to regulation. However, HR professionals make their meaningful contribution not through using increasingly bigger words and expanding models, but in distilling the complexity of organisational dynamics.

It is our aim to show business leaders in commercial environments that they can look to HR specialists for two things: to act as a sounding board to help them successfully lead the organisation and to help in getting things done.”