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I do enjoy a crossword puzzle, but I remember setting about a particularly tough one. All was going well, just a few clues left to solve, even “mithridate”- the poison antidote – failed to stall my progress. Then along came ten across, which singularly brought my preened and coiffed crest tumbling down in frustration and, quite frankly, ruined my afternoon. The clue was short and to the point, it just said “foresight”.

Article by Graham White, HR Director – Retired

Every word I tried, failed to fit; “prediction”, “prophesise”, “prognostic”, and even “divination”, nothing seemed to fit. So finally, I turned to the cowardly option and reached for my iPad and instantly discovered, thanks to digital technology easily trumping the failures of the human brain, that the answer was “prescience?” Ironically, the definition was “the fact of knowing something in advance; foreknowledge:” Coming from the Latin word praescientia, it literally means ‘fore-knowledge’ or knowledge you know before anyone else. This got me thinking, it’s not suggesting that anyone with the gift of prescience has a crystal ball or the power to see into the future, but what it does do is create a state of mind, a level of expertise that allows for excellent foresight and planning based on knowledge and information. Until now I had known this simply as authentic leadership, an approach to leadership that emphasises building the leader’s legitimacy through strong engagement, building honest relationships and working with a wealth of analytics to ensure good decisions are made and crisis are averted based on knowledge not prerogative. Whilst I may not have known the word “prescience” I have had the privilege to work with some great HR professionals who operate within an environment of prescience and would challenge me regularly to do the same.

“Mark Twain understood the value of prescience when he wrote; “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”. Twain reminds every HR professional that, if we wait for the crisis to erupt, it is already too late.”

Whilst I am fed up hearing other writers tell me HR is at a crossroads, I do accept that, what employees and organisations need from HR, has shifted drastically in recent years, leading to big changes in what organisations now expect from HR. Consequently, I believe we need to ensure that HR professionals see the competence of prescience as a pre-requisite for all who wish to be part of the HR fraternity. As holders of the stewardship of the human capital of our organisations HR’s contribution will be greatly enhanced if we implant the benefits of foresight and agility into our organisations. However, too many senior HR leaders are still following outdated paradigms that don’t fully appreciate the unique competitive advantage that divination brings to HR and instead, they are content with a mediocrity within their approach to; recruiting, development, reward, benefits, performance management and employee engagement.HR has the potential to divest itself of transactional activity and rebrand itself as a centre for solutions and foresight orientation.

It’s not just in organisational terms that prescience is being ignored. We don’t have to look too far to see that these skills are being ignored by everyone, from our previous PM to leaders of industry and commerce. When David Cameron in his manifesto promised an In/Out referendum, didn’t anybody think to say isn’t there a prognosis, was there really no one prepared to advance a suggestion indicating alternative potential outcomes? All it would have taken was for someone to say “David, for the last couple of years, everything that has happened from the banking crisis to MP expenses would conspire to make sure that enough people will vote in a way that delivers the greatest impact”. In the absence of a prescience influence at that point ensured Brexit was guaranteed. The same applied to recent leadership struggles and of course, the appointment of the “most powerful man in the free world”.

Thankfully, a new generation of HR leaders are emerging who are going beyond the current norms, these new HR trend setters are reaching out for information, developing tools and techniques that will equip them with the skills and capabilities necessary to support their organisations as they capitalise on insights from behavioural analysis, regular engagement information and real time people analytics to do cutting edge HR foresight. I recall on a recent visit to New York reading in a guide about a little shoe store in Manhattan. This little shop was sitting next to some of the greatest names such as Macys, Bloomingdales and a range of other high-end stores. How could such a little endeavour survive in such a competitive environment? The owner was prescient, he had a knowledge of events before they took place and he addressed the issues head on. He put a sign above his door that simply said ‘Main Entrance’.

With companies increasingly aware of the fragility of their credibility the need for prescience in HR to predict potential people related issues is paramount. Whilst I accept that not every corporate disaster can be blamed on HR, I can say with certainty that in almost every case the cause included the actions of individuals. Whether it was BP (criminal negligence), Toyota (product recall), Barclays (industry offer rate manipulation) or G4S (failure to deliver) in every case the gift of hindsight has empowered those charged with reviewing these disasters to say, unanimously, that these incidents happened as a consequence of the actions of individuals, people were at the heart of each incident. In each case the information needed to stop the incident developing was known to someone in the organisation but a lack of credible employee engagement and an absence of regular analysis of HR data analytics meant that the walls dividing the communication channels remained uncrossable, creating an imposed ignorance on those who should have known better.

Mark Twain understood the value of prescience when he wrote; “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes’. Twain reminds every HR professional that if we wait for the crisis to erupt it is already too late. By the time the problem is in existence the opportunity to minimise damage is significantly diminished. I can’t say with certainty that in each of the cases listed above the problem could have been removed if HR had acted sooner but I can say with certainty that if HR had been reviewing its data and assessing the levels of employee engagement they would have been aware that something was wrong and been able to influence management decisions earlier and the extent of the crisis could have been reduced. I still shudder at the memory of the headline in a HR journal that stated soon after the RBS crisis that their HRD claimed HR was “only a support service”. For many in HR their response to my view is that we should mind our own business, that we should not interfere in areas where we do not understand the business. The reality is we know people and we know what makes them act and react. Max Deupree once said “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” Leaders need to have a good picture of what is really going on around them. And they need to help others take an honest look at this reality.”

I still remember a board meeting in which the operations director attempted to publicly discredit the contribution HR made to the organisations objectives. As I sat in the full Board meeting I listened as he extoled one tirade after another at me never letting a word end before he breathlessly started the next. After he had exhausted his catalogue of HR criticisms there was sudden silence and the rest of the room waited and watched for my reaction. No one else in the room knew what I knew. I had access to staff engagement reports, recent staff survey results and a comparison of HR analytics and operational performance figures. I let the silence hang in the air to ensure everyone was listening then turned to the director and simply asked “let’s talk privately outside” In a fraction of a second he showed every possible emotion you could imagine, from anger to sadness and from crisis to relief. He got up and walked out of the room followed closely by me and we spent the next few hours reviewing a number of very personal issues that were affecting his ability to perform and within a few weeks we had carved a temporary working arrangement that addressed his whole life issues.

For many outside of HR they sit in meetings making key internal and external decisions, whilst not explicitly recognising the reputational and structural consequences on those that these decisions will impact on. The management systems of many organisations dealing with risk, safety, operational and investment decisions frequently adopt an overly insular view and fail to consider the impact on staff. In the isolation of a senior management meeting decisions that appear to make perfect sense from the narrow perspective of a business plan, or of financial performance, can create unintended damage. A prescience approach preserves and develops a company’s ability to deliver. Prescience is much more than narrow risk management or simple damage limitation. It is about ensuring the organisation’s messages are both credible and appropriately tested. The value of prescience, if used well, is considerable, and is realised in terms of brand equity, share price, and even regulatory goodwill.

www.linkedin.com/in/graham-white-50823OA

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