ResearchTalk

Produced by the wonderful folks at the RSA

In the final part of our series on talent and development Danny talks about some trends he’s seeing in HR.

Trends such as employer branding, social networking, technology as both liberator and jailer, and the rise of blended learning.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the series and found it useful, inspiring or both. If you’ve missed any parts or simply want to revisit them then pop here for the archive.

We’d like to thank Danny for doing this series. Find out more about the wonderful training and development work he does by popping over here.

In a continuation of the theme in part 5, Danny looks at how to measure performance in a meaningful and useful (actionable) way.

He says, for example, “What is the point…of knowing that each individual employee receives on average 5.5 training days a year. So what? Could you get a similar impact with fewer training days…doing something else?”

It contains more useful questions, tips and tricks if you’re a manager or help to manage talent. You can find all the previous episodes here.

Find out more about Danny here.

Dan Pink speaking at this year’s TED Global in Oxford.

He takes us through a wealth of evidence – built up over four decades – which demonstrates that financial incentives tend to focus the mind and as such only tend to be productive on left-brain tasks, i.e. “problems with a clear set of rules and a single solution.”

In contrast, when financial incentives are offered to people to solve more right-brain tasks – those that are more conceptual in nature and require greater use of cognitive power – the incentives actually make the problem harder to solve because they narrow the focus when the solution tends to be on the periphery and so the solver needs to be thinking more holistically and laterally.

The issue, says Pink, is that we’ve known about these flawed links between problem-solving and financial incentives for decades, and yet despite that they endure. And more and more of the work we do is shifting to right-brain thinking as we delegate the routine, rule-based stuff to computers and outsourcing agents.

The solution: offer incentives based on intrinsic motivators. Specifically, autonomy (e.g. Google’s 20% time), mastery, and purpose.

After the brief hiatus, we’re back with Wain’s World!

And in part 5, Danny looks at the tricky area of performance management which he says is “more than the dreaded annual appraisal!”

As always, this is just 2-3mins long and contains useful tips and tricks if you’re a manager or help manage talent. You can find previous episodes here.

More about Danny here.

Part 4 of our series on developing talent. In this episode, Danny looks at building trust – which he categorizes as part credibility, part reliability and part intimacy.

Just spend 2-3mins watching to get some useful tips and tricks if you’re a manager or help manage talent. You can find previous episodes here.

You can find out more about Danny here.

Part 3 of our series in which Danny looks at strategies to convince the board and leadership to invest in initiatives that develop talent.

As always, good tips and tricks and only 2-3 mins long.

You can find out more about what Danny does here.

You can find previous episodes here.

This is the second part of our seven-part series on HR and talent.

This week, Danny Wain looks at how to draw inspiration from Google to innovate in HR and talent management.

Remember, each episode is a mere 2-3 mins long, short enough for the busiest managers or talent folks. And do drop us a line if you’re interested in sponsoring this series.

You can find out more about what Danny does here. Next episode goes up next week.

Two-and-half years ago we did this podcast with Danny Wain who, at the time, was in charge of learning and development at research firm RI.

Ever since then we’ve wanted to capture his considerable experience on how to get the most out of talent and share it with you in bite size chunks, something we can finally do today. We’ve filmed seven episodes which we’ll put out weekly (with a hiatus during August).

Each episode is a mere 2-3 mins long, short enough for even the busiest managers or talent folks out there (that’s right, these are aimed at anyone with line management responsibility or whose job spec involves nurturing talent). Moreover, the series will cover all sectors, not just research.

The series begins with a look at ways to make a business case for learning and development. Next week we look at how you can take advantage of Google’s approach to innovation. And then we’ll tackle some other challenges including persuasion, trust and measurement. All good stuff

This initiative has involved a significant amount of our time which we’re bringing to you free. So if there’s any potential sponsors out there who’d like to support this effort plus get your name in front of a bunch of thought-leaders, drop us a line as we’d love to work with you.

By the way, Danny’s now set up his own talent and learning and development consultancy, do check it out.

As always, we hope you enjoy this. And do please share this with as many people as possible through twitter, Facebook, email etc.

 ESOMAR CONGRESS ‘07  In the second of three preCasts ahead of this year’s Berlin-based Congress event, well known industry figure David (DVL) Smith chats with Orange’s Nick Bonney and CRAM International’s Peter Cooper about the fuss around new research techniques and the skills needed to move the sector forward. All three gents will be speaking at Congress

CAUTION: We apologise for the below par audio quality

Listen to other podcasts in this series

 STARRING 

• DVL Smith, Director, DVL Smith Group (Host)
• Nick Bonney, Head of Market Insight, Orange
• Peter Cooper, Chairman and CEO, CRAM International

This is an ESOMAR sponsored podcast and is published according to our yumminess policy

Listen to the podcast here

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