“Are you the person shocking the dog? Or the dog being shocked?” That provocative question was put by psychologist Dan Cable, professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School (LBS), to participants at LBS’s annual HR strategy forum in February. The question referred to an infamous experiment in which dogs were given electric shocks without the opportunity to learn a method of escape, leading the researchers to coin the term “learned helplessness”. Cable was interested in the way that some organisations also foster learned helplessness – by denying people the opportunity to solve problems creatively.
Giving a sneak preview of his new book, Alive at Work, Cable’s talk applied some of the ideas of neuroscience to the world of work. The “seeking system” as he called it – relating to the reward system known as the ventral striatum – is the part of the brain that “urges us to be curious, to try to understand the boundaries of our environment and push on them a little bit, to see our impact on the world and see why things happen”. When we follow those urges, Cable added, it gives us a little hit of dopamine.
However, the brain also has a “fear system” that overrides the seeking system, leading to more conformist behaviour or inhibiting (your own) potential. Businesses of today need staff to be more curious and willing to push boundaries than before – within the past decade we’ve seen apparently bulletproof businesses such as RIM, Kodak and Saab knocked sideways by the speed of change. The top-line message? Organisations – and HR departments in particular – need to allow employees to feel free to come up with new ideas, without risking ridicule or retribution.
Cable’s talk was one of four thought-provoking keynote speeches at the one day forum at the Institute of Technology in central London. The day also included a panel discussion and breakout sessions, providing the opportunity to listen to influential thinkers share views on how HR leaders can support their businesses to respond to a rapidly changing world.
Proceedings were started by Michael Davies, visiting lecturer in strategy and entrepreneurship at LBS, who identified five key technologies that, in combination, are “driving a radical and disruptive shift”: artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones, the cloud, robotics and the internet of things (IoT).
The businesses doing well, said Davies, were those exploiting these new technologies to the full. Trak Global’s insurance company Carrot, for example, uses IoT (data collected from sensors and sent over the internet) to monitor young drivers’ behaviour, and offer cheaper insurance to good drivers – and has succeeded in reducing young driver accidents by 40%. Cogito Health, meanwhile, uses AI to monitor the mental health state of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. The new world is characterised by “ruthless and relentless automation of routine tasks”, Davies argued, while employees look for more creativity and collaboration in their work. “Born digital businesses thrive in this environment,” he said – but for traditional workplaces “becoming digital is a difficult and hazardous journey”.
The theme was continued in the panel discussion, in which Davies, along with Sharon Doherty, people development director of Vodafone and Hein Knaapen, chief HR officer of banking multinational ING, considered the challenges for traditional businesses, which have younger, born-digital competitors snapping at their heels. Even a large, modern business like Vodafone, with the biggest IoT platform in the world, Doherty said, started its transformation with “the feeling of threat” and “the sense that someone is going to eat our lunch”. “The best thing we can do is make sure we will always learn faster than anyone else,” Knaapen said.
Tammy Erickson, adjunct professor of organisational behaviour at LBS, took audience members through 10 major shifts she predicted would happen by 2028. The connecting theme was agility: organisations would employ fewer people, hiring staff on a project basis and paying by outcomes. Businesses would build a community of workers, bringing together people with different experience to spark new ideas. It would be the job of an organisation’s leaders to create a context in which innovation could thrive, she argued. “Leaders create an environment where talented people choose to work,” she told the audience. “As leaders, you should be disruptive. Ensure there’s a continual infusion of fresh air in the organisation.”
In the afternoon, participants split into three breakout sessions led by three LBS experts. Randall Peterson, professor of organisational behaviour, talked about the importance of diversity in an organisation, and how to manage collaboration in a diverse team. Marketing professors Simona Botti and David Faro looked at linking customer and brand value, while Ioannis Ioannou, associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship, discussed the era of responsible organisation.
The day closed with Lynda Gratton, professor of management practice at LBS, who used characters from her book The 100-Year Life, co-authored with Andrew Scott, to illustrate the way we should respond to demographic and technological change. Take Susan, for example, a 55-year-old woman who works for a professional services firm, but has been asked by her firm to consider retiring. Or Tom, a truck driver who knows that within a few years his job will no longer exist. Or Christian, a man in his 20s, and Gratton’s real-life son, who will need to work to 80 if he wants to retire on 70% of his salary. What happens to them as the world faces what Gratton describes as “the largest and fastest transition that mankind has ever gone through”?
The three-stage model to life – “full-time education, full-time work, full-time retirement” – has been replaced by a new model, in which people go through multiple stages that can include going to university when they’re older, becoming self-employed, or taking a gap year in middle age. Everyone – governments, universities and corporations – needs to respond to that change. We should “stop stereotyping people over 55” and realise that they will need to continue working, because the postwar baby boom means there are fewer young people to take their places. We also need to build in more flexibility to accommodate people’s different choices and, finally, Gratton argued, we need to make it possible for people to carry on learning throughout their lives.
After wide-ranging talks that covered everything from technological change to neuroscience to demography, attendees left reflecting on the challenges summed up by Davies: “If we perpetuate these old ways of doing businesses, we will be swept away in a perfect storm of creative destruction. If, on the other hand, we recognise and respond to the challenge, we’ll seize the opportunities and create lots of new, different, better work.”
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