Neil Morrison

Nobody is ever going to thank you for coming up with a ridiculous project name that impacts their lives. Branding is intended to make you remember, in people change we want people to forget.

Our role as leaders of organisations is to operate within the law of the land. We need to let the law makers make law and the business leaders run businesses.

(NOTE: I love hearing different perspectives and points of view, but any comments that aren’t respectful to others or are off topic…well,…

Mistakes are the things that make us

How we handle and process mistakes after they've happened can be key to our performance as leaders. Too little or too much reflection can both be bad.

Thanking you Emma!

Non fiction reading suggestions very welcome. I read so much serious stuff, a bit of levity wouldn’t go amiss.

Poor decision making doesn’t get better in time. Five years on from the first “WFH” announcement, why are so many companies rowing back on their decisions making everyone unhappy.

Sadly. Apparently on Hull Trains they make an announcement telling people to only use headphones etc. Although that assumes people follow requests!

I know this makes me sound old…but the noise pollution on public transport these days is quite something else.

#getsomeheadphones

Leadership isn’t a game of two halves, it is a constant. There are no rehearsals, no practices and your mistakes will happen live and in real time. That’s ok, if we embrace that as a strength.

We talk a lot about fairness at work. But how often do we consider what we need to give up or compromise on in order to create a fairer workplace?

Job titles...they don't matter and yet they matter A LOT. It is time to drop the ego and simply describe what you do.

Commentators on ITV rugby berating people from leaving the rugby in Rome early. Then put the game on at a time that suits the crowds attending and not the TV schedules. It’s nearly 6pm on a Sunday there.

Happy Sunday @sbrownehr.bsky.social

Surprised?

Overhearing the most middle class “Who Am I?”, on the train. They’re guessing the job and the current winner is the younger daughter with, “interior designer” after the mother went down the rabbit hole of “creative arts” guesses.

The big admin blob that drains us all

I was struck the other day by a post that Tim Baker shared on Linkedin suggesting that one in three HR professionals in the UK were considering leaving the profession, with 41% suggesting unnecessary admin as one of the causes. Now, of course, the company…

It’s Friday…anything could happen…

The train conductor just announced we’d be stopping, “Hampton in Ardenne”.

What was the point in Brexit?!?

Fast news is bad business

When I was starting off in business, we didn’t know a lot about what other organisations were doing. Of course there were newspapers, there were magazines and there were conferences, but the speed at which we learnt what was going on was…slow. You might get the odd piece…

I think I danced around it in the post because last time I took this on (a couple of years ago) it became nasty

There are a number of activists who, for example, would argue that majority groups shouldn’t express a view on D&I. I’m not sure this drives inclusion and I think actually drives alienation which then leads to the extreme counter positions.

D&I isn’t dead, it just smells funny

The desire to make workplaces more diverse and inclusive has been going on for at least as long as I've been in a job. As a Personnel Officer, one of my early tasks was completing diversity returns to the Government, I'm not sure they ever achieved anything but…

Sometimes things change

One of the very few things that GPs and HRDs have in common, is that people tell us their personal woes. Actually, I suspect the other thing we might have in common is that people complain about the service they get from our profession, but that's a whole other post for a…

Culture is complex

Culture is a funny thing, people will tell you they can measure it, improve it, encode it, decipher it. I’m really not that sure they can. Culture is so many things, moving in intertwined ways throughout organisations, it is complex and ethereal and yet most of us will be able…

It’s ok to say, “I don’t know”

If you were asked direction to a location you didn't recognise, what would you do? You might get out your phone and go to a source of information - a mapping app - and see if that might provide the data you need. You might suggestion the person speak to someone with…

Bargain!

Shh don’t tell them

Leadership is…

Probably not this.

Every now and then an article pops up that says the HR profession is unnecessary, an inhibitor of productivity or something equally headline catching.

It’s true. We have CEOs, ExCos and Boards completely under our spell. They know not what they do…

It’s a curious article. Mixing multiple arguments and data points to come to a predetermined conclusion. I think it makes some good points, but it’s a bit confused. And her experience is entirely within the public sector.