When people thrive, organisations do too. The tagline for this year’s All About People conference caught our eye, so one of our Lead Consultants, Kat, took a 2-day trip to the glamorous Bournemouth seaside to see what it was all about.
Kat found herself immersed in stimulating and energising presentations, conversations and breakout sessions with likeminded people from the worlds of HR, internal communications, business leaders, founders and innovators. Not surprising as the events curator @AndySwann is well known for his extensive network of work rebels, thought leaders and human-centred thinkers.
There were many highlights, including the food. Sadly that’s long gone but the food for thought remains.
6 people who really rocked our world:
- Sanjay Patel, Global Innovation SME at The Coca-Cola Company
- Heather Taylor-Portman, Head of Learning at Ustwo
- Mark Catchlove, Director Insight Group EMEA at Herman Miller
- James Curtis, Founder at Fieldwork
- Tony Mildon, Diversity and Inclusion Lead at BBC
- Dave Chapman, Happiness Hero at Buffer
The 6 stories that hit home:
- Have you really designed for every employee and customer touch point?
Sometimes the most common touch points are easily missed. A powerful reminder to continuously review customer and employee touch points in our ever-changing worlds. - Heather told many stories that brought the Ustwo culture to life. It was particularly inspiring to hear how embedded learning and ‘relentless reflection’ is in the organisation – the key? Match your learning process to your business process. At Ustwo they use a lean approach to product development and so that transfers to learning too. They also find out what matters to their customers and give them a personal experience, brightly coloured invoices with pictures of bulldogs on are not unheard of!
- The soul of Herman Miller can be found in the story of the Millwright’s Poem – this film is worth 2 minutes of your time. More recently, a 2-year intensive study led by Herman Miller has revealed the 6 fundamental needs of people at work – Purpose, Autonomy, Achievement, Belonging, Security and Status.
- James Curtis shed light on the real everyday experiences of the people and organisations he shadows. These were brought to life through an immersive display using photography, voice recordings, original compositions and storytelling. A great reminder of how much meaning we can uncover during the discovery phases of our own projects – what are your people thinking, feeling, saying, doing, intending? How can we unleash the power of your people?
- This quote sums up Tony’s talk – “diversity and inclusion needs to become the plumbing in organisations. Like health and safety, it needs to just be a given.”
- Some simple concepts from Buffer that we can all start doing straight away:
- shift feedback to feedforward
- use our values as a toolbox
- always remember “happiness never decreases by being shared”
- default to transparency, always, with everything
We believe in unleashing the power of people-fuelled brands, and that starts with people-centred mindsets and practices like these. Whether it’s leadership development, performance management, recruitment or learning everything we do both internally and for our clients starts with the humans in the business.
If you’d like to hear how we do this, or want to talk to Kat about her time at All About People, give us a call.