2021 – A year in which HR can excel
HR now has an opportunity to excel, to build on the credibility that 2020 has given us, and to strike out a new path on the journey to achieving management excellence By Clinton Wingrove
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mance management and remuneration systems, all predicated on a relatively stable state. Yet, the companies who have survived best even benefited from, the current turbulence, are those that previously invested in management excellence. They had clear long-term goals and strategies. But, they underpinned these, not with unrealistic long-term operational plans, but with: • Many very specific shortterm goals supported by highly tactical plans which they reviewed and adapted routinely to address rapidly changing demands and evolv-
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ver the past few months, we have all been bombarded with predictions of what is going to happen during 2021. Many of those predictions are preposterous, some are interesting, and a few potentially useful. But, all of the authors are on safe ground. Nobody knows what is going to happen – 2020 has certainly taught us that. We don’t have any modern-day Nostradamus! And, by the time we know what did happen, we will have forgotten or lost
the articles that all got it wrong. Yes, the authors are on safe ground. So, why am I bothering to join the motley crew of futurists? Because I believe we should work on the basis that we don’t know what is going to happen, and not over-invest in trying to predict it. Instead, we need to equip ourselves to excel in the face of unpredictability. For many organizations, it was their obsession with planning for what they believed would happen (and believing it!) that made them less agile. Despite this, so many organizations are still setting annual goals and tweaking out-of-date perfor-
I believe we should work on the basis that we don’t know what is going to happen, and not over-invest in trying to predict it. Instead, we need to equip ourselves to excel in the face of unpredictability APRIL 2021 |
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