Hats off to Dr Lynda Gratton, who managed to wow the audience at last night’s keynote conference speech despite her burnt orange outfit clashing remarkably with the bright orange stage behind her.
The professor of management practice at London Business School described to an audience of hundreds of HR professionals how they can go about creating ‘hot spots’ in their organisations – epicentres of debates, thought and imagination so that anyone within the company can come up with solutions to problems.
To run that past you again: basically, a management technique which captures feedback from staff across the company so they feel included in corporate decisions, and so management teams can understand their staff better.
My immediate assumption was to think 'hot-spots' thinking may be a little too far fetched for the practically minded managers and directors watching her for an hour and half, pacing up and down the stage talking about, well, hot spots – and ‘the big freeze’ (the opposite of hot spots) and many other jargony terms in between.
But how wrong I was.
When I came out of the speech I caught up with a few HR professionals who couldn’t tell me enough just how inspired they were.
One public sector worker said he would go back immediately to introduce more 360 degree feedback tools into the workplace to encourage a culture of sharing and working with colleagues more.
Another said there was real practical advice from Gratton which he could implement – saying he, like, totally got the ‘hot spots’ scenario. He was ready to break down silos in his business and make sure everyone across the company had a say in management issues.
One lady said she was a little daunted as to whether she would have the time to carry out hot-spots measures – i.e. who would manage the feedback coming back from thousands of people in her business, what would you actually do with the information - but clutching her free copy of the orange Hot Spots book, written by Gratton, she truly enjoyed the session.
So the future truly is orange: an orange outfit, an orange stage and an orange book...
