In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, join host David Green, and guest Nick Dalton, previous EVP of HR at Unilever, and co-author of the groundbreaking book 'The HR (R)Evolution: Change the Workplace, Change the World', as they navigate the historical landscape of Human Resources.

Dissecting its evolution over the decades and envisioning its trajectory into the future, David and Nick bring forth insights and reflections, offering listeners a unique perspective on the past, present, and future of this dynamic and ever-evolving field.  

• As they peel back the layers of HR’s transformation, expect to learn more about:

• The seven waves of HR and how they have shaped the HR landscape over time;

• The role of people data in HR's evolution and its impact on decision-making;

• Navigating the paradox wave in HR, especially in the context of rapid technological advancements and global uncertainties;

• The characteristics of a paradox HR leader and the scarcity of such leaders in the current landscape.

• How HR can play a pivotal role in steering organisations towards the 'Planet' wave, especially in light of pressing global climate concerns;

• Anticipated changes in HR titles and roles as it continues to adapt to data-driven decision-making and paradoxical leadership, helping to shape the workplace and the world.

Tune in for a captivating and informative exploration of HR's evolution, its potential for transformative leadership, and its critical role in shaping the future of work and the world. 

This episode is brought to you with the support of strategic workforce management tool, eQ8. To discover more about eQ8’s innovative solutions, visit: eQ8.ai/Insight222

[0:00:03] David Green: When you study the history of human resources, it's clear that as a profession, we've come a long way.  In today's episode, we delve deep into this evolution, tracing the path through seven waves of change that have shaped and continues to reshape the HR landscape, and explore the pivotal role HR plays today in empowering modern workplaces. 

Joining us for this enlightening expedition is Nick Dalton, formerly Executive Vice President of HR at Unilever and co-author with Alan Watkins of the HR (R)Evolution: Change the Workplace, Change the World, a distinguished HR leader with over 35 years of experience.  Homing in on his own experiences throughout his successful career, Nick will be our guide as we navigate through the twists and turns of HR's remarkable transformation.  So, stay tuned for a captivating conversation that will unveil the past, present, and future of HR. 

Nick, welcome to the show.  I'm really excited to chat to you today about all things HR and how it can help drive business.  But before we get started, could you share a little bit about you and your background?

[0:01:32] Nick Dalton: Yeah, David, thank you, and it's great to be here.  I'm really looking forward to our discussion.  So, yeah, I was in Unilever for 35 years.  I sort of did every single job there was to do in HR, I think, including introducing a PeopleSoft system at one point.  That wasn't my best hour, to say the least.  I also did a little bit of time in production supervision, but I think I was costing far too much money, so they got me back into HR rather quickly.  And actually, my favourite HR job was when I was Factory Personnel Manager at a factory in Grimsby making fish fingers, but I did all the jobs.  And latterly, just before I was hired, I led the future-of-work programme at Unilever.  Prior to that I was basically EVP HR for Europe and for Global HR Partnering, so I used to say to Leena Nair, who I know has been on this podcast before, that I did Europe Monday to Sunday and the rest of the time I would look after Global.

[0:02:33] David Green: I think we'll be touching on things related to future of work.  I'm particularly keen to talk to you about the evolution of HR and, if this fits on the video, I highly recommend that anyone in HR and business leaders read the book that you co-wrote with Alan Watkins, The HR (R)Evolution.  So we're going to look at HR, we're actually going to look at how it started, where it is now, and where it is, or where it should be heading.  Obviously, you've mentioned 35 years' experience in Unilever, certainly an organisation where HR is leading, not reacting, and co-author of the book, as I mentioned.  How would you say the role of HR has changed over the last century and up to now? 

[0:03:15] Nick Dalton: Yeah, so just before I left Unilever, I had this great opportunity really.  I was 20 years abroad and then I came back to the UK, and Alan and I started to write the book.  And I'm a bit of a politics and history geek as well as an HR geek.  So for me, actually starting where HR started, or managing people, managing large groups of people started, and thinking about the past, the present, and the future of HR, it was really fun, to be honest.  I did some research, drew on my own experience.  So we came up with this concept of the seven waves of HR, which are all beginning with P, surprisingly. 

As an HR guy, one of the questions I always used to ask myself, and we were trained to do in Unilever was, what problem are we solving for here; what is it we're addressing?  And if you go back to the start of the Industrial Revolution, it was the first time people had come together in large groups to work in that way.  And the problem to solve was, how do you get people to turn up to work on time and not be drunk, basically?  And the people's strategic answer to that, because HR didn't exist then, of course, it wasn't a term we used, was paternalism.  So, I was really surprised when I researched this how many of the early industrialists had built model villages.  And I, having come from Unilever, which of course Lord Lever had built Port Sunlight, which is, even if you visit it today now, it's in the north-west of England, close to Liverpool.  So he didn't do that alone, Cadbury did it, the Calvé family in the Netherlands and we had the Lowell mills in the USA, it was really quite remarkable.  And of course this sold for that problem. 

The early days of the HR profession was welfare, and the Institute of Welfare Officers was set up in the UK, which was probably the first institute of its kind.  And the role of people leadership was about providing the family figure, looking after people, making sure people were fit and healthy, making sure they could work effectively.  Now, that was the first wave and you actually still see it today.  During COVID, you remember that horrible March 2020, when we all thought the world was falling apart, a number of companies, Unilever included, took the paternalistic move, "We will not make any redundancies during this time.  We will carry on paying you your full wages.  We will look after you". And so in that time, when people needed and felt the need for care when they were scared, the paternalistic strategy was reborn, and it still exists in many parts of the world today.  You still see it. 

But what happened in terms of the developing world, I think, was when the first boom and bust cycles happened, and the early industrialists became the early capitalists, and they couldn't afford paternalism anymore.  Of course, they started to cut back and to try and get people to work harder, they started to flood their operations with nasty supervisors who typically were quite aggressive.  This led to the rise of the trade union movement and this led to the era of power.  Because the new problem to solve wasn't getting people to work, it was to manage conflict in the workplace.  This power approach to the workplace became called industrial relations.  Again, you still see it today.  You still see companies and organisations making power moves.  It's the most common strategy in the world, actually, in terms of managing employee or industrial relations. 

Then, probably after the Second World War, we all decided these power leaders weren't such a good idea.  Bear in mind, during that era was the era of Henry Ford, was the era of electricity development, we made great progress because of people taking charismatic and decisive action as leaders.  But it ran his course.  And so, we went through an era of process after the Second World War.  And so, the era of process was really when functions were born, when multinational companies started to get their act together, started to build training centres.  It was the era of job evaluation, it was the era of paying for the job.  That era, I think, brought us a fair degree of stability.  It solved the problem it was asked to solve, but like all of these waves, the upside gets met by a downside. 

The downside again was around the end of the 1970s, that it was a little too slow.  And so, really politically, this was the Thatcher-Reagan era, and the problem to solve for in that era was, how do we bring back entrepreneurial spirit and innovation?  I went from, actually, one week I got called on a course, I was taken off to France for a week.  And I went as a Manager and I came back as a Transformational Leader.  So, that whole era again brought positives, but the negatives came and they really hit us around 2008 with the Great Financial Crash.  We saw the difference between the CEO's pay and the pay of the lowest earner, assuming you could identify the lowest earner, being excessive.  We saw excessive use of temporary precarious labour. 

But from 2008 we started to see another worldview emerge, which was the people wave.  Now, what you'll notice here David is quite interesting; you notice the way the HR name changes.  So, I was an Industrial Relations Manager, I'm old enough.  I was then a Personnel Manager because I got promoted, and that was a more senior job at the time.  And then, one Wednesday afternoon, I was in Grimsby and I got a phone call from my boss who said, "Oh, you're now called an HR Manager".  I thought, "Oh, that's good".  Of course I didn't realise it was deeply ideological; it was.  But at the time it was just a snazzy American title.  But have you noticed now everyone's calling themselves People Officers?

[0:09:07] David Green: Yeah.

[0:09:08] Nick Dalton: Chief People Officers.  It's because we're now in the people wave, or at least leading edge companies are in the people wave, or companies that are actually in the profit wave like to think they're in the people wave.  So, we're now using this terminology.  And the people wave is really, I think, in most large organisations now, the leading-edge practice, but it is fundamentally unstable, because companies during this era will often talk about purpose.  I think it's more values than purpose.  And you're faced with the reality that on Tuesday, your CEO's standing up and saying what a wonderful business you are, what you do for the environment, how you're making a positive social impact.  And on Thursday, you're managing 2,000 redundancies.  And there's this massive say-do gap. 

The reason there's say-do gaps is because the world's just complex.  If you want to address issues like child labour, it isn't as easy as just saying, "Oh, we're going to stop using the people who do child labour", when you find out, because the children could be then "Disappeared".  What do you do about that; how do you deal with that complexity?  And when I present this stuff, I always say at the start, "Look, this stuff's wrong".  But I think it gives us questions we can ask.  I hope that we will transcend the people wave and go into the paradox wave. 

Now, the paradox wave is where we actually accept that we live in a world that you're going to make the Tuesday-Thursday thing happen.  The Tuesday, you'll be trying to do something good, and on Thursday, you'll be looking after your business basics.  You're going to have to do both.  We are in a world where we're going to have to manage decentralisation and centralisation.  This is the Annan, the holy grail of organisational design, it was always called.  But the paradox wave is where I think we start to systemically and gradually solve for some of these issues, and no one is doing it in my view yet. 

I think after the paradox wave, now this will happen I think after I'm dead, so let's get really depressed here, I hope if we can go through the paradox wave, I hope we'll get to the planet wave.  And the planet wave, I have no idea.  In the book, Alan and I wrote a chapter on the planet wave, but in all honesty it's blah, blah.  But the planet wave I think is about where we start to regenerate the planet, not exploit or extract.  I think it will involve completely new business models than the ones we have today, or let me call them organisational models, because I think the concept of business will change.  But I believe we've got to go through the paradox wave to get there, because we need to create the types of leaders who can do that, the types of organisations that can face into the level of complexity that will be required.  And I think most business thinking today stops at the people wave. 

So, since I finished at Unilever, I've been spending my time doing two things, helping companies think about how they can navigate people and paradox, and also trying to learn what companies and organisations are doing, so I can flesh out what this paradox planet thinking might be. 

[0:12:04] David Green: I think it's fair to say the world of work is changing pretty rapidly.  How will a paradox HR function help businesses navigate during this change of time uncertainty?  And it's a great quote in your book that you said that one of your purposes of the book is that, "It's a call to arms for HR professionals to stop following and to start leading [or] stop reacting and start leading". 

[0:12:26] Nick Dalton: You know, if you're going to call yourself a profession, I think you have to have an underlying purpose.  And the HR function I think is a function today rather than a profession.  I think we become a profession when we do have a point of view and the ability to prosecute a point of view.  So, let me give you an example.  For every wave, I think there's a series of not only HR, but leadership responses that are appropriate for that wave.  So, I often talk about managing change, and in the paternalistic wave, the way leaders manage change is to say, "I'll look after you".  In the power wave, the way people manage change is to say, "Just do it". 

Elon Musk classically, I think he's a paradox power thinker, but he applies the power wave in his organisational philosophies.  In the process wave, we'll follow the process.  The profit wave leadership says, "Let me share my vision with you".  The people wave is, "Let's ask the people".  Classically, Airbnb during COVID made people redundant, and they said sorry and everyone said, "Oh, aren't they nice?"  Now, that's fine and they did it very well, but you're still making people redundant.  Now, what I see is different types of leaders actually come forward with these world views during times of change, and they often confuse the hell out of the workforce, because it might well be that actually the change needs to be done in a power mode, because it's urgent and you've just got to do it.  And you'll often get leaders up who can't do that and they start talking, "Oh, we'll try and look after you, we'll try and do this", because they can't handle conflict.

So, I think the role of HR is to recognise what wave your business is in, because I think actually these waves also follow business cycles and business growth, what that means for how you should do it, what that means for the types of leaders you need to lead for different things in your organisation, and the most sophisticated HR people actually will be able to probably run a number of waves going in a number of parts of their organisations at the same time.  So, it is the ability to integrate.  It is not the centralised one-size-fits-all corporate HR policy.  It is, look we're on a journey here, there's a series of best practices we need to use, there's a professional way of doing this.  And I think it's in the paradox wave where purpose actually comes alive, because then purpose is systemic.  It's something you're doing in every bit of your organisation, every nut and bolt, every function, it's aligned, it's systemic, it's out there and you're not doing it on your own, you're doing it with others.  So, I think HR needs to have that type of approach.

I don't know, David, if we want to talk about what HR looks like, because I think HR looks and organises itself differently.  Not only does it call itself different things, but I think it looks and organises differently in each of those ways.  So, I think we need to be doing that, that's what we need to be doing, what problem are we solving for; is it aligned; is it coherent; what's the best practice; what's the upside of these waves; how are we going to move this organisation forward onto the next wave or waves; how are we going to develop the leaders who can do this; how are we going to change the way we talk to our employees; how are we going to reward people differently; how are we going to train people differently as we move through these waves?

[0:15:46] David Green: If we think, and I appreciate that the companies are in different eras and in fact sometimes transitioning between different eras, depending on the problem that it is they're trying to solve or the business situation at the time, in terms of HR, how do you see HR looking, maybe if we look at the profit, people and paradox eras; how do you see HR looking different for companies that are in each of those eras? 

[0:17:04] Nick Dalton: Yeah, I mean I think it's going to be fascinating, because it's whether the current cadre of us HR people are going to be the ones for the future or not; I think it's still up for grabs.  So, the paternal era was welfare officers, it wasn't us; the power era was industrial relations people, people like me still have that skill, and it's still very common around the world, and it's still within the function; but in the power era, it was the only thing.  In the process era, it was personnel, and that's where we started to take management development seriously and other associated sort of sub-specialisms; profit era was the Ulrich model, wasn't it, where we started to split the function apart into HRBPs, and I think we were rarely business partners actually, into service centres which is now developing in terms of the whole employee engagement and becoming cross-functional and becoming more end-to-end and exciting. 

[0:18:00] David Green: And that's actually where most companies still are, isn't it? 

[0:18:02] Nick Dalton: Oh, absolutely.  And even so, a lot of companies are still bringing stuff back in-house now, because in a lot of cases, they lost that ability to connect with people, which actually is a strategic capability.  If you're seeing people every day, dealing with people every day, you start influencing people.  I have something called a 2% rule.  I joke that General Petraeus, the US Counterinsurgency General, who wrote the US Counterinsurgency Manual, stole it off me.  Clearly he didn't steal it off me, but I claim he did!  But I used to do it in Grimsby.  There's 2% of the workforce, typically, who influence everyone else.  Our job is to know who that 2% are and speak to them every week.  That's how you influence the system. 

So, I think in the people era, what you're seeing is this little bit of confusion.  It's, what do we call it, Ulrich PLUS?  And you see the McKinseys and the others and the Bains and all the rest of it start to model it, but it's a little bit confused.  And I think in the paradox era, we are going to go, what I would call, a full modern-day Premier League football performance coaching.  And the role of the football manager is to draw on these specialisms, some of which they employ directly, some of which they contract in, to ensure that their squad of 25 people are at the highest level they can be.  I think that's the role for whatever we call HR moving forward. 

One of the books I recently read about a year or two ago, bought at Schiphol Airport, was Behave by Sapolsky.  It's a big interdisciplinary book about the human being.  Every HR person should read that because that's what paradox HR is going to need; that's the book you need to read to see paradox HR.  And when I was back in Unilever, you know, with Placid and others, and I used to say to the HR team that reported to me, "Guys, are we sure we are paradox people, not process people?"  Because actually that process space is also developing its ways forward into the whole employee engagement area, with the use of AI, with the use of tech, some really sexy stuff there, but it's going to be different.  

So, I think it's going to go that direction, I think the world of sport, the world where human beings have to really stress their performance, is the places to look to see how those people who support those people doing that are going to have to develop our game. 

[0:20:24] David Green: Yeah, and I guess if we need to move performance, we need to understand performance, we need to understand what drives performance, how to improve.  And as you said, that's where analysts come in, that's where behavioural psychologists come in, and we're seeing some of those areas growing in HR certainly, but there's going to be more people with those skills aren't there?  They're not just the people that can do the analysis but the people that can take the insights from the analysis and then coach leaders in the sort of paradox era.  So, I mean quite fascinating really and I guess we're seeing early signs of it. 

One question, Nick.  Unilever has got a pretty good reputation in HR, you know, Leena, but not just when Leena was there, but Leena and the whole leadership team.  I've met many of them over the years, and there's no way that that group of people or individuals are followers or reacting, they have been leading and then are helping the organisation evolve.  Why do you think you were able to do that at Unilever; and what advice would you give to HR professionals listening, who are maybe more in a reactive mode, so they can actually start leading? 

[0:21:35] Nick Dalton: Look, I think we've been lucky in Unilever, those of us who practised our profession there, because when you think about the waves and you think about the history of Unilever, Lever built this village that was remarkable, he was probably the richest man in the world at the time, to be fair, so he started with a clear point of view.  He invented pension schemes and things, it was quite remarkable.  So immediately, what we call the HR function today, the sort of people bit, was at the front of Lever's agenda.  And obviously, when you go into the power era, I don't know whether many of your listeners will be old enough, but there was a time during the power era where the big, classic, real sexy job was the person who dealt with the trade unions, at least in the UK and in northern Europe.  They were the guys.  And Unilever went through that period. 

When I started in Unilever, unless you could manage industrial relations, you were a nobody in the eyes of both your colleagues and in the eyes of the line.  And when you're handling difficult industrial relations situations, and we did do, the line does get respect for you.  Because, believe it or not, a lot of line managers are scared of that stuff, they really are.  And so, Unilever has always been, in terms of a business, that's put the people agenda strategically, it's always been strategic.  So, we've always had a place at the table, this whole place-at-the-table debate, it's always been there.  Every general manager in Unilever would talk about their co-pilots, which was the finance person and the HR person.  I was an HR person, but I was doing this stuff.  I was managing and thinking about complex change. 

The other point, David, which I think people often overlook is some of the processes are really important.  So, Unilever runs every year an HR planning process, where every single leader is discussed at different levels of the organisation.  So, you will have the CEO of the company spending a huge amount of time meeting with each of the business units to go through their top 100 managers.  Now, what I found, and this is a little bit of the sort of power leadership piece, when your line colleagues know you're at that table, it doesn't half help; believe me, it really helps!  So, if I was wanting to sort of cement an HR organisation into place, one of the first things I would do is put in an HR planning process to make sure that I had a seat at the top table, which was discussing people's careers.  You'll be amazed then how many phone calls you get when people know that, how many people want to speak to you. 

When I was doing the supply chain, I did the global supply chain and had to do industrial relations.  And there were some dreadful industrial relations problems, and line managers would really go on and on, sometimes really.  I can understand the pressures they were under.  But when they know you're sitting with the Chief Supply Chain Officer deciding who gets what promotion and drawing up a succession plan, it doesn't half help them taking your advice.  So, luckily for us in Unilever, we walked into that environment, that context, and it allowed us to, I think, practise the profession of HR, not just do an HR job.

[0:24:58] David Green: So, thinking then about HR and thinking about trying to shift into the paradox era, two parts of this question, you know, you've talked a little bit about this, but maybe a little bit more, what does a paradox leader look like; and how can HR help develop these leaders?

[0:26:05] Nick Dalton: Yeah, so I think that people often say to me, "How many paradox leaders have you met?  Can you name some?"  Honestly, in business it's difficult, because I think the business world is still very much in this people wave at tops.  I think some companies are experimenting with paradox, but it's very early days.  So, people say to me, "What does a paradox leader look like?" I often refer them to the film, Invictus.  I don't know, David, have you seen the film, Invictus?

[0:26:33] David Green: I haven't actually, no.

[0:26:35] Nick Dalton: Well, it's worth watching.  So, it's a Hollywood film, stars Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman, and it's a dramatisation of the South African rugby team winning the Rugby World Cup.  Now, at one level you think, "Okay, it's a sports film".  Well it's not.  It's a film about paradox leadership, because I won't put any spoilers in, but everyone knows what probably happened.  But if you don't know what happened in that, it makes it even more exciting.  But Morgan Freeman plays Nelson Mandela.  And, oh, honestly, it's a superb illustration of what being a paradox leader looks like, absolutely superb. 

The final paradox in the film for me is this guy was jailed for 25, 26 years by the regime, the regime who basically represented themselves with the green shirt of the Springboks rugby team, and he wears that top.  Now, there's a paradox for you.  So, what we need to develop are the Nelson Mandelas of the business world.  So, easy said, difficultly done.  But it's more complex than that as well, because not everybody needs the paradox wave leader now.  There's lots of parts of our business, lots of parts of the world of Unilever, needed the power leader or paternalistic leader or the process leader or the profit leader, depending what was going on and the phase.  The key is getting the right type of leader, and of course it's not this simple, is it, no one's one thing.  

So, I think the paradox leader is a leader who can generally lead without hierarchy, lead from networks, doesn't have the ego where they need to be praised, is the invisible-hand leader, who is incredibly effective, and that's again the paradox leader, because people don't see them as leaders, because they're doing stuff in the background.  This is the paradox.  The people leader we all know; the people leader is very nice to people.  And often when a people leader enters an organisation for the first time, everyone loves them, and then they're very disillusioned with them by year two, because they don't really get anything done, but they have lots of nice discussions, which is good.  And some organisations, by the way, need that for a couple of years before they can move on. 

The profit leader we all know well is the GE, it's "Let me share my vision with you", it's the whole American business school playbook.  The process leader, dreadfully undervalued.  These people are the experts who really know their stuff and actually make the cogs of the machine work, and deliver on the physical stuff, on the stuff that matters.  But to develop paradox leaders, I think, I wanted to do this in Unilever but we could never get to it.  I used to have an annual medical.  I would like an annual leadership medical, where my levels of leadership, my leadership development, is worked on, because I think leaders are made; they're not born, leaders are made.  And I think if I was in an organisation, even if it's a power organisation, that's probably where I'd like to manage it from, but I'd be developing leaders who could handle more complexity over time bit by bit by bit.

[0:29:43] David Green: Actually, one thing listening to you, Nick, basically now, if we're thinking that some companies are striving to get into the paradox era, so that's six eras that have gone and with an eye on maybe the planet era that you were talking about as well, which is maybe somewhere in the future.  So essentially, as a leader, you're expecting them to transition between all those different phases depending on the problem it is you're trying to solve.  So actually, by definition, that means that leadership is getting more complex because you've got to be more adept at being able to transition between different eras, depending on what the problem is you're trying to solve.  And then as HR professionals, that's more complex for us, because to actually guide leaders to take the right mode is harder as well. 

So, maybe that's why, I mean this is just a hypothesis based on listening to you, maybe that's why companies are struggling to truly transition into the paradox era, although that's clearly what, in many businesses, is required at the moment. 

[0:30:43] Nick Dalton: Yeah, I mean this stuff is complex, isn't it?  I mean, I've spoken with great confidence about all of these waves and everything else and as I say, I'm absolutely acutely aware it's probably wrong, but that's not the point.  I think the point is the questions you ask, and I think as HR professionals, sometimes we think about we've got to be able to give a view on marketing or we've got to be able to give a view on this or that.  Well no, we're not really expert in it.  But actually, what we've got to be able to do is have a framework and a world view where we can ask the right questions about all of these subjects and link things together. 

The function of HR is uniquely placed, it's HR and finance actually, and a little bit of IT, but IT have never really played this space, where you're the integrators of the organisation, you can see across the organisation and you can leverage it.  But when I was a young HR practitioner, I didn't have a clue how to leverage it.  As you get mature, as you develop, and as you get your frameworks, you get your point of views, you can then start asking intelligent questions.  And once you can start doing that, you're part of the team, and then you start working with the individuals in your team to make sure they're the best they can be.  And I mean, there's not a better job in the world, in my view, than doing that.  

You'll have seen it, David, as well, when you're working with a team.  I call it the spirit coming into the room.  It's when suddenly everything clicks and bang, and that's when you're going to perform, that's the flow moment.  And that's what we should do, that's what we're about making.  No one else does it.  And if we don't do it, if we don't develop out of process or out of profit, if we don't develop out of that, then someone else will do it, because it has to be done.

[0:32:30] David Green: Very good, Nick, I really enjoyed this conversation, and I think HR professionals listening hopefully should be absorbed in this conversation.  We're getting towards the end, Nick, and this is the question that we're asking everyone in this series and you certainly would have touched on it a little bit, but please feel free to sort of summarise as well here.  What is the role of HR in helping companies plan effectively for the future of work?

[0:32:56] Nick Dalton: I think that whole future-of-work agenda is about facing into the fact that work is going to change so quickly and even since we spoke last, David, which was only a couple of months ago, as you said, what's going on with ChatGPT.  What we've got to do is prepare our workforce, not by saying, "We'll look after you", not by saying, "Just do it", but what we're going to have to do is say to people, "We've got to face into this".  Now I think part of that solution is, we stop looking at managing change within silos of our individual companies.  We start looking at managing change within a wider community aspect with networks of other companies, so that we can share employees, we can share training opportunities, we can share agendas.  We start measuring change as a community resilience measure as well as a company resilience measure, and we start to really commit to people's livelihoods.

Up until now in the Industrial Revolution, the employment contracts been transactional, "You come to work, we'll give you money, you go home".  Well I think now, the employment contract's got to be developmental, or actually more empowering.  It's not even developmental, it's a bit top-down, it's got to be about empowering people.  But not only empowering, because I don't buy the, "It's up to the individual", we've got to empower people within the collective concept, which will involve the government sector, the voluntary sector, the trade unions and the private sector.  And it's only paradox leaders and paradox thinkers who will have the ability to pull those systems together.  Traditional leaders will fail to do that. 

So we, as HR, I think need to look for the opportunities where we can manage change in a paradox way, be wise enough to understand that there are types and parts of the world in certain circumstances where you can't, choose the right way of doing it, and then manage it with a view to the future, not with a view to the past.

[0:34:45] David Green: So, Nick, I can't believe we've already come to the end of our conversation.  Time does actually go fast when you're learning, and I definitely learned a lot in the last 45 minutes or so.  Finally, Nick, thanks obviously for being a guest on the show.  Can you let listeners know how they can find you on social media, find out more about your work, and find out more about the book, The HR (R)Evolution as well?

[0:35:06] Nick Dalton: So, I mean the book is available at Routledge, and of course it's available on Amazon.  The best way to get me on social media is LinkedIn.  So, I don't know, David, as I've entered this world of consultancy, I've sort of realised I'm a content guy, I'm not a seller.  So, I'm sort of LinkedIn, and that's about it on social media, which is exactly what you shouldn't be doing, I suppose, but that's what I do, because I like to spend my time on the content, and I like to work with businesses that are grappling with these complexities, because I think you get points for trying, to be honest, in today's world, and it's important to try.

[0:35:42] David Green: Well, I'm only on LinkedIn and Twitter and I'm only just about on Twitter, so we're probably of a similar era, Nick, because we don't do TikTok and other stuff; we'll leave that to our kids!  All right, Nick, it's been an absolute delight to speak to you and, yeah, look forward to hopefully seeing you again and having another conversation as well. 

[0:36:03] Nick Dalton: David, it's been great, thank you.  And I'd be really interested in any learnings and feedback people are having, any thoughts about how we can make the paradox wave more practical.

[0:36:13] David Green: Great, well there we are, there's an open invitation then for listeners to get in touch with Nick to talk about the paradox wave and how we can make it more practical.  Nick, thank you very much, look forward to speaking again soon. 

[0:36:24] Nick Dalton: Thank you.