Episode 85: How to Help Individuals and Organisations Successfully Navigate Change (Interview with April Rinne)
This week’s podcast guest is April Rinne, Change Expert and Author of her fantastic new book, Flux: Eight Superpowers For Thriving in Constant Change. April is on a mission to get us to think differently about our relationship to change. It is not something we can necessarily control, but it is something we need to be very comfortable with.
Throughout this episode, April and I discuss:
The eight superpowers to help individuals and organisations successfully navigate change, as well as April's number one piece of advice to organisations going through change
The power of portfolio careers for workforce planning, for the individual to have a meaningful, satisfying work life and on a societal level, to provide unparalleled access to opportunities
The shifting relationship between employee and employer and how the concept of a job is swiftly becoming extinct
Support for this podcast is brought to you by Degreed, to learn more visit degreed.com.
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Interview Transcript
David Green: Today, I am delighted to welcome April Rinne, World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, one of the 50 leading female futurists in the world, and Author of a terrific new book, Flux: Eight Superpowers For Thriving In Constant Change, to The Digital HR Leaders Podcast. Welcome to the show April, it is great to have you on. Can you provide listeners with a brief introduction to you and your work?
April Rinne: Thank you, David. I am delighted to be here. So first and foremost, just a lot of gratitude and sure I am glad to be here.
It's interesting, my professional background is not easily summed up in one sentence like saying I am an accountant or a teacher. Today, most people do know me as a futurist, so I am helping organisations better understand where is the world heading and what is our place in it?
But previously I have been an attorney. I am trained as a lawyer, don't hold that against me. I am an investor. I have been a travel guide, a hiking and biking guide. I have been chief strategy officer at a boutique advisory firm. I am a certified yoga teacher. So, I have what, I think we are going to talk about in a little bit, more of an eclectic career, more like a portfolio of interests, but the futurism, what I love about that is that it really does harness everything I have done before. I spent more than 15 years in global development. I have spent time in the legal world, in the financial world, in the spiritual and psychological world, et cetera, et cetera. And all of that comes together as we are trying to figure out, where is the world heading and how are we going to fare in it.
David Green: Well, I would love it if you could answer that question, where the world is heading. I think it has become even more complex, obviously, over the last 20 months or so.
We had Heather McGowan, who is a futurist as well, looks at the future work, and she was saying that really the pandemic has almost accelerated the future of work. So, I would love to get your take on that before we dive into Flux?
April Rinne: Oh, absolutely. And Heather McGowan is a dear friend and colleague, so we have known each other for quite some time. I am thrilled you were able to host her, she is fantastic. I agree completely, a lot of people would say those of us looking at the future of work, and in Heather's case also the future of learning and education and skills building, that we saw I would say, at least a decade of future of work projections compressed into about two to three quarters. Now that is primarily around remote work, I gave keynotes back in 2014, about how remote work was really this trend that was going to continue to take root and they were like, yeah, maybe we will deal with it when we have to. And that is not part of the keynote I have to give anymore, but other trends around workplace flexibility, the need to recalibrate how we think about work and life. And are we trying to fit life into work or work into life? That sort of thing.
Obviously, automation, which is a kind of disruption I was looking at long before COVID hit, but some people would say that that has accelerated as well.
So yes, absolutely what Heather was saying, I would echo that. And more really, for me, it is all about what does this mean about how we relate to change in general, not just around the future of work, but just in pretty much every aspect of our lives.
David Green: So, I know you started writing the book before the pandemic, I know that it was already planned, and I guess a lot of the ideas in it are maybe coming to fruition a lot quicker than we thought.
I would love for you to talk to listeners a little about Flux. What is the big idea behind Flux and having a Flux mindset?
April Rinne: The basic premise of Flux is that in a world of constant change and uncertainty, that we as humans individually and collectively, we need to radically reshape our relationship to change an uncertainty in order to have a healthy and productive outlook.
And so, to your point I have actually been writing the book since 2018, so it is sort of three years in active creation. But I like to say it is more like three decades in the making, in terms of when I peel back the layers of the onion and what led me to write the book, what had I been observing, and what had been making me increasingly concerned about human’s relationships to change. And it is this notion that I think a lot of humans, we still sort of think we can control what is going to happen in the future. We still think we can engineer change and we certainly can manage change.
But I will give a caveat, a lot of people have said, oh, you wrote a book about change? Or especially, you wrote a book about change management? And I am like, no, I did not write a book about those things. I wrote a book about human’s relationships to change and how we relate to change from the inside out. Because one of my big concerns is that we spend so much time trying to, not just manage change, but react to it. So, like something happens and we sort of triage it, but we assume that if we react to change, then things will go back to normal. That is not the world we live in and even more so, that is not the future we are going to be living in. So that requires this more holistic reshaping of how we relate to change and lean into uncertainty which is not what many of us have been taught to do. It is not what many of us assume, it goes against a lot of our assumptions and expectations, but I think it is totally necessary to be able to thrive in this future which, the way I like to put it is, there is no end game. There is no steady state, other than more change. And that is a big change, change, pun intended, from, again, what we typically think.
David Green: Yeah, it is interesting because organisations used to talk about a transformation and there was a start and an end, and they would transform. I am not sure if that was ever really the case, but it is certainly not the case now. Transformation is continuous and organisations are continually having to adapt and almost reinvent themselves, in many respects, whether it is products or services that they deliver, they have got different competitors or new competitors coming in and digital enables people to attend to markets in a big way and radically change them. That is in the organisational sense, I guess, and then from an individual sense, whether you are an employee or a citizen, then that impacts you as well.
But we have proven, almost, that we are quite adaptable beings, the human race, aren't we? We proved that we can adapt, over the last 20 months or so, in many respects.
April Rinne: Yes. And I would say, humans, we are adaptable when we are forced to. When our back is against the wall and it's like, hmm, I need to do this otherwise I might not survive. That is typically painful and typically things break in the process. I am not talking about some kind of kumbaya lala, make it all easy and fluffy, but there has been a lot of pain over the last 20 months. You look back and, as a futurist, I think anybody in the futurism world would say a pandemic, that was not unforeseen, we knew something like that was going to happen. Yet it caught a lot of us by surprise and there was a sense of like, oh my goodness, I have to adapt. But it wasn't something we naturally leaned into; we did it because we had to.
What I am looking at is, we want to do this, we want to opt in to this sense of, to your point, perpetual transformation. And I love that you bring that up because I recently wrote a piece where we talk about, like chief transformation officers or where does chief change officer come up, in an organisation? And in my experience, if you have a chief change officer or chief transformation officer, 99 times out of 100 that is about digital transformation. Making your products and services appropriate for the digital economy. And I'm like, wow, that is very siloed thinking, but it is also not the kind of broader transformation we really need.
So, I love riffing on, what does the chief change officer for a future in Flux look like? Which is much more cross functional, it is much more like the connective tissue of an entire organisation, but again, it gets a lot into the human dynamics of this. This goes far beyond processes and what products and services are we going to develop. I mean, this is about the humans in an organisation and so back to your point, looking at the kinds of changes that we are experiencing individually, organisationally, and societally. A big piece of what brought me to write this book, I was interested as a futurist, I realised every single organisation struggles with change in some way, not necessarily in the same way, but like every organisation can use some help. But also, in my travels and work and so my entire career has been international, I have been to more than a hundred countries. I have worked in more than 50 and that has given me this huge exposure to different cultures. One of the things I also realised was that every single culture and society on the planet, also struggles with change in some way but also has developed different ways of seeing it, talking about it, concepts and rituals and traditions around change. And it is not that one place has figured it out, but there is a lot we can learn from one another.
And so, it is all of those pieces and then the human piece too, just my own lived experience with change and uncertainty that I was sort of exhibit A for a lot of this stuff. But then as I started to look around, I was like, this is endemic and this is a big wake up call for us, but it is also, I think, a warmup for what is ahead.
David Green: Yes. And in Flux, I love it, you call it the eight Flux superpowers, so we are going to have to talk a little bit about those. I like superpowers. I was a Batman and Robin fan when I was a little kid.
I know we are going to talk in a bit more depth around creating portfolio careers, but what are the other eight Flux superpowers? Just sort of a brief overview to wet people's appetite if they haven't read the book.
April Rinne: Yeah, sure. So real quick and let me give a little bit of preface to how we ended up with the flux superpowers. And I love that you mentioned superpowers because we played around with disciplines and practices, and the superpowers require discipline and practice, but I really love this sense of they are superpowers because they will help you thrive in a world in Flux. I spent years, decades, honing and refining which ones made the cut.
So just very briefly though, this notion of Flux. Flux is both a noun and a verb. As a noun, it means continuous change. As a verb, it means to learn to become fluid. So, the world is in flux, we all need to learn how to flux. Now, the first concept upon which the flux superpowers depend, is what I call a flux mindset. So, I want to just introduce that concept because a flux mindset is basically, one, it's the acknowledgement that your relationship to change needs help, but two, as a mindset, it is that state of mind that can see all change. Because again, keep in mind we love certain changes. We hate certain changes. We expect certain changes. We don't expect others. So, without judging what kind of changes, having a flux mindset means, being able to see all change, good or bad, expected or not, you name it, as an opportunity to learn and to grow and to improve.
So, it is this notion that how we think about change is changing and I need to upgrade my state of mind, my mindset. So, it requires you to have that kind of premise, that sense of like, okay, we are up for a transformation personally, organisationally, etc, so how do we do that? What do we do? And that is what the flux superpowers are.
The flux superpowers are what I call the, how to thrive in constant change. And there are eight of them and I can easily give a quick overview. Keep in mind though that a lot of these flux superpowers do go against the grain of what society often tells us we are supposed to do. They are a bit counter-intuitive. They are a bit contrarian, so I will run through all eight. They are provocative in a healthy way, they force us to reconcile and really think about our assumptions and expectations and how so many of those things get thrown upside down, in a world in flux.
So, the first flux superpower is, run slower. Which is all about anxiety and burnout and how do we make wiser decisions?
The second superpower is, see what is invisible. Which helps us identify blind spots and how are we discover new opportunities, new insights, new sources of value.
The third flux superpower is, get lost. Which focuses on how de we stretch beyond our comfort zone, which change often asks us to do, and what is our relationship with the unknown.
David Green: And it is all right not to know everything basically. Be comfortable with not knowing everything.
April Rinne: And what we are typically told exactly, the radical comfort with not knowing and not just that but embracing it, actually seeing that is where the answers are to be found. Because when you think about what society typically tells us, it tells us that getting lost means failure. You are supposed to focus, stay on the path, know where you are going, have sort of certainty, achieve success, etc. You are not supposed to take detours. You are not supposed to get lost, getting lost means you have done something wrong. And yet when change hits the people who actually are very comfortable not knowing and who are comfortable taking that off-road, that detour. Candidly blazing a new trail, not going the path that has already been drawn, but blazing something new. They are the ones who will thrive. So that becomes this kind of superpower.
So, the fourth one is, actually start with trust. So, this is all about how do we nurture trusted relationships and navigate change together. And we may want to come back to this one. I do admit that, starting with trust, I call that a sort of super, superpower because it fuels so much else.
The fifth one is what I call, know you’re enough, which digs into our obsession with more and what is our quest for true happiness. Change throws a lot of that up into the air, but the punchline here is that when we are always after more and that might be more money, or more power, more love, more likes or more clicks, or more clothes, like more everything. When we are always after more, we will never find enough and that is by design. But when we know our enough, we will immediately begin to see abundance. So, this relates to both your enough, like your point of sufficiency and wellbeing, but also knowing that you are enough. It is both Y O U R and Y O U ‘R E.
The sixth one is, portfolio careers. So, I will simply put that off for later, but this is about professional identity and how we look at and thrive in a future of work that is itself in flux.
The seventh one is, be all the more human. Which digs into our relationship with technology and the tension that we have today, around the fact that we are spending ever more time with our devices and ever less time with one another.
And last but not least the eighth flux superpower is, let go of the future. Which is all about our relationship to control. Something that I find is tricky for almost everyone today. And again, back to this counter intuitiveness, letting go of the future to be clear, it doesn't mean giving up. It doesn't mean failing. It doesn't mean doomsday. It is actually really empowering, when I get to explain the deeper context behind what it means.
David Green: Great. That is really helpful, and I think you are right, let’s definitely come back to start with trust and I am sure we will cover some of the other eight throughout the rest of our conversation as well, April.
So, we paused a bit on creating portfolio careers. I think that is really important to our audience, which is predominantly HR professionals.
To start with, can you explain that superpower in a bit more detail? What it is and why it can help individuals navigate change better?
April Rinne: Creating your portfolio career. What is a portfolio career? Back up for a moment and think about what I call, our script. What is the narrative? What is the story that we are told about our professional development, our career development, and our professional identity?
For most of us, myself included, I was taught to study hard, get good grades, go to university, get a good job, do said job, retire. Kind of this linear career right, here I am channelling Heather McGowan as well, it is linear.
Now today, every single one of those nodes is breaking. It is cracking for lots of different reasons, both supply and demand side if you will. So, you have got companies who, with automation and other forces, we don't know what the jobs of the future are going to be, companies don't know exactly what roles they are going to hire and so forth. That is very challenging for individuals to kind of, will I have a job, will I have a meaningful career, etc. But you also have a lot of talent saying, I don't want that.
I look at my parents and older generations, that is not the life I aspire to. Most of those people are miserable. And I say this not to generalise, well, I am generalising. There are people who have had very, very meaningful careers, but there are a lot of young people saying, the system is not what I want to opt into, but they are also looking around at a world in which there are so many new ways to work, to earn income, to create livelihood. So, they are saying that is just one option in this menu, if you will.
So back to this notion of a career path, we have been taught it is linear. We have been taught you climb the ladder up and that is kind of how society defines success. And you look at this and you go, hmm, maybe. I am not saying a career path is completely dead, I am saying it only applies to a fraction of people and we need a holistic rethink, and reshaping, and reframing, of what a meaningful, successful career looks like. And that is where a portfolio comes in.
So, the difference between a path and a portfolio. A path is a singular pursuit, in a straight line ahead and a portfolio, what I love about this, and I have had lots of conversations about this, is that you can think about it in a few different ways. Most people that I talk to like to think about a portfolio either as an investor would, or as an artist would, right? So, investors have portfolios of investments. Why do they have that? So that they can diversify and mitigate risk. An artist has a portfolio. Why do they have that? So that they can put all their best works in it, in one place, but those works can be quite different from one another.
Then you have got executives that have portfolios and BCG’s portfolio theory. You have office managers who have portfolios to keep things co-ordinated and organised.
But this notion is that a portfolio is something that is uniquely yours, it has everything that you are capable of doing, far more than what is simply on your resume that goes into it. And if you are good at curating it, which means finding the connections between the varied things that you do, understanding which skills are appropriate in which places, and to be clear, your portfolio could help you get a job, but your portfolio can also help you launch your own business. It can help you pivot. It can help you basically navigate this future of work, that is full of uncertainty. So really for me it is this concept of, how do we think about our careers?
And obviously this is really important for talent, individuals, but organisations and this is the piece I want to bring home for the audience as well. Organisations need to figure out how do we help our talent create and curate their portfolios too? That will be key because what you are helping an individual do is have agency and responsibility over their professional future. Because I am going to be really candid, organisations are so focused on, we just want to keep our talent. We want to acquire and retain them. Those are very outdated words to use. You are speaking about owning your talent. You are speaking about possessing them, which is not something that most talent wants these days, but also you have no idea what kind of disruption is happening to you. You know you are going to be letting people go, down the road as well. How do you prepare that if you really care about your talent, you are going to help them succeed and thrive wherever they may be, not simply when you “owned them” in their time while they are at your organisation.
So, I know I have just said a whole lot, but let me pause there.
David Green: No, no, no. I agree. You see that you see that happening. It is funny because a lot of people are talking about the great resignation at the moment. And as you say, sometimes as organisations we should celebrate great people moving on to develop their careers, wherever they want to go, whether it is another organisation, or starting out their own company and everything else. Providing we provide opportunity for people to develop as people, as well as professionals, then talent will tend to stick around a little bit longer.
April Rinne: The irony is that if you help people develop their portfolios, yes you will lose some people along the way, because they are going to go and do what they are truly passionate about doing, that should be a win for you. But the irony is more talent is more likely to stay because they actually see that you have an interest in and want to invest in them as human beings, not simply them and their hard or technical skills, or again, just their resume and just as, again generalising, but just as a cog in a wheel kind of thing.
So, it is fascinating, but yeah, the great resignation is fascinating. This is one of those things too where thinking about validation and acceleration of some of my ideas, the great resignation is really underscoring just how many people, for whom, this old way of thinking about work and career and professional development wasn't working.
So, for me, I am sad to see so many organisations struggling, but I would much rather have a wake-up call like this, that allows us to do things better, than have people continuing to muddle along without taking action on how miserable they are.
David Green: Yeah, and it is interesting, I think we have seen throughout the pandemic, in a lot of organisations, their number one priority has been employee wellbeing. Which is probably different from maybe if this has happened 15/20 years ago. And it is about keeping that, isn't it? Because if you put the employee at the centre of what you do, whether that is within your company or elsewhere, number one, if you help them develop then they may come back at some point later in their career anyway. I suppose we see people cultivating alumni programs as well now. So really fascinating.
April Rinne: You have just made me think of a couple other things, because I think of this often as a kind of revolving door phenomenon as well. I have seen so many cases in which individuals have worked in an organisation, and it is not that they were miserable there, but they wanted a new challenge, they wanted to build new skills, so they left.
But then if the company did their job well and if the company supported their departure and didn't make them feel stigmatised or something, then they actually came back as a consultant. It wasn't always as a full-time employee, but it was more like, and this speaks directly to trust, this speaks directly to agency and a few other superpowers. That lo and behold, you find that actually the kind of meaningful talent retention, so to speak, it is there but it requires you being able to let go a little bit.
And actually, I wanted to pick up also on the mental health piece there as it relates directly to superpower number one, of running slower, where there has been this huge focus on employee wellbeing but also there is this notion of, when we are just running ever faster. And I think a lot of people over the last 20 months, yes, we are focusing on wellbeing, but we are running as fast as we possibly can, when is this going to end? And there is this bigger narrative around if we know, and the way I like to frame it is around the pace of change. The pace of change has never been as fast as it is today, never mind the pandemic, just in general, and yet it is likely to never again be this slow. Think about what companies and society, again, tell us to do when the pace of change quickens, you are supposed to keep up and run faster.
And I'm looking at this as a futurist and as a human and I am going, wait a minute, so if I know today that the pace of change is going to be faster tomorrow and faster next week, faster next month and next year, and faster for the rest of my life. Like, I'm sorry, timeout. That is not a life I want, but more broadly, more importantly, it is not a future in which any human, under those circumstances, can thrive.
And so, I feel like the last 20ish months, of companies waking up to the importance of mental health it is a precursor of what is coming. Because simply focusing on mental health, it is fabulous, but if you are still on this treadmill of running faster and haven't grappled with that, you still have a bigger problem to address.
And what I love is talent can help you figure this out. It isn't all up to you as a HR professional, talent has ideas, but it requires inviting them in and kind of co-creating the solutions together.
David Green: Which we are starting to see more I think in HR now, around that co-creating programs with employees rather than just developing them for them. So, it is quite interesting.
Let's talk a little bit about some of the business benefits. We talked about a couple of them already, but let's talk a bit about the business benefits of encouraging portfolio careers. So as an organisation, as an HR professional servicing and helping that organisation to cultivate talent, as it were.
So, businesses encouraging portfolio careers and a more agile approach to work, what can companies hope to gain? What are some of the things that they can expect to gain or benefit from?
April Rinne: Yeah. So, this plays out in a few different ways. On the one hand, you can think about people with portfolio careers as diversity of talent. And there I mean, diversity of background, diversity of experiences, diversity of skills, diversity of perspectives, diversity of contacts, right? All of those things are really valuable to an organisation. And I think in particular, diversity of perspectives and like, how do you look at problems and how do you think about change?
Now, I am looking at this from the context, for me, the grounding question is what does this mean when change hits? So, for me, the more diverse your team and the more diverse their portfolios, the better equipped you are to navigate change, because you have access to so many more skills, perspectives, backgrounds, etc. In particular, when we don't know what to do and candidly, no one knows what to do and we are having to blaze new trails. Having that kind of access is invaluable versus a team that is primarily siloed, and each person has their one area of expertise and that is kind of what they know. Not that you can't muddle through change, but really everyone is very set in their thinking, it becomes much harder to adapt and react and move through change.
So, there is that kind of piece, just in terms of what do you have access to when change hits, how do you make your way through.
Now I would say it plays out more broadly in terms of what kinds of products and services that you develop, how you understand your markets, your audiences, where those might go in the future. From a culture perspective, do people feel like they have ownership of their career, or do they feel like they are doing something for you? You want for your talent to feel like they have ownership and agency over what they are doing and what they are building. Portfolio career helps build that.
So, its role for culture is really, really important. It also turns out that people who have a portfolio career, naturally find a sense of more meaning in what they do because they know that no one can take one's portfolio away from them versus someone who gives you a job can take that job away, whether you want that to happen or not.
So, there is that kind of sense, and again, there is not a disconnect, you can have a portfolio and have a full-time job at a company. It is how we think about our careers. And then I think more broadly, it is the sense for an organisation to recognise that when you have people with portfolio careers in your organisation, you are helping them with this professional identity that is much more fluid and malleable and evolving over time.
And at the end of the day, you are helping them become an automatable, as I like to say it.
But also, I think about that from an organisation's reputation perspective, how will they be seen in the public light? And when you have got this kind of give and take, and you help people develop their portfolios, you have done a lot to boost your goodwill. You have done a lot to boost your reputation and standing in broader society. And that will go a long way not only, but including, when change hits.
David Green: And actually, helps act as a magnet to attract great talent.
April Rinne: Absolutely. So, quick point on this. It is fascinating because I am working with a wide range of organisations. Large ones are fortune 100 companies, but a lot of start-ups and non-profits and public sector and private sector. And what is fascinating to me, so there are companies out there for whom the great resignation is not an issue, they are fine, they are the minority, but they are out there. And they are figuring out, how do we make sure that we attract? We are already in the great attraction. And each of the flux superpowers actually have this list of fluxi leaders and what that looks like in practice. Organisations that have strengths in flux superpowers, they are the ones who have the seeds of this culture that is exactly, to your point, a magnet for top talent.
David Green: They are some of the organisational benefits you touched on, is there a more broad, societal level, incentive for encouraging this kind of flexibility as well? You have touched on some of the things around mental health, for example.
April Rinne: Yeah, absolutely. So, I do happen to be somebody who believes that business has a broader role and responsibility in society. I have always felt that. I remember decades ago, in my twenties, when I was starting out and going, like, how can they not think they do. That was just me, but I remember feeling that that was almost an awkward conversation to have. And my own decisions were very much rooted in that sort of thing and people gave me flack for it, at the time. Kind of like, why wouldn't you just focus on making a bunch of money kind of thing. I was like, because I don't think that money is what defines our contributions to society at the end of the day.
So anyway, fast forward, and it is very refreshing that we are having lots of conversations about businesses broader role in society. I look at the societal mandate or responsibility opportunity you could say, of portfolio careers. One is, from the individual level, the idea that each and every one of us, or at least as many individuals as possible, could actually have a career of meaning and purpose and dignity and integrity and all of that, but also a hand in creating their own future in a way that works for them, that is marvellous. I get kind of goosebumps, that speaks to me of humanity, of really the kind of world we want to live in and help thrive and help one another thrive. And I want for you to be able to bring your very best and do the things that you care about most, that means helping you develop your portfolio career, and I would hope that you would want the same for me.
A lot of employers are like, I just need you to do this one task. And it's like, that is just not very inspiring. So, there is that piece.
And then the more macro-ish piece I would pull out here is around automation. And the fact that automation is one of the biggest forces of flux moving forward. I think climate and automation are two of the biggest flux to come, get ready, buckle up. And if you are an organisation, if you are an employer and you want what is best for people you need to help them, as I like to say, become un automatable, or at least make sure that they are going to have the ability to move forward in their careers, even if whatever they are doing today, changes dramatically or even disappear tomorrow.
So that kind of societal mandate, I think too, in the face of technology that is going to do much more than just disrupt, it is going to make entire professions, maybe not entirely obsolete, but transformed to the point that it won't be able to support labour and talent like they do today. So that is where that factors in.
David Green: Yeah. I think on the societal side, we are seeing moves and investors are now very much interested in, not just how much profit are companies making but they are looking at other elements, that broader impact on society. We have seen the business round table, just from memory it is about 183 of the CEOs of the biggest companies in the US talking about, now it is not all about profits. It is about our impact on all stakeholders, including the society and the community. So, we can see, hopefully, the path in which this is going, which comes in very well to what you are talking about.
But we are talking quite substantial change in talent management, for most organisations. Not all organisations because some are out there trying to do this. What are the biggest blockers you see in your research and how are they overcome? If you have got some examples, that would be great to hear.
April Rinne: Specifically, and I have been part of the conversations around stakeholder capitalism for quite some time and I love seeing that. I am also keenly aware, and I say this respectfully, press releases don't translate into action, and we can invest in things, but we have a lot more to do.
I want to keep this simple as well because there are lots of blockers actually. But one of the biggest ones that I see is that, particularly around portfolio careers and just HR, is that it is around organisational design, and it is around the systems we have. And again, we designed them so we can re- design them, it is not like a force of gravity that we have no control over, we can do better. But this notion that there is a real hunger, and I should mention too, this factors directly into organisations diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates as well, so it is all linking. But this notion of, we want more diverse talent, we want for people to have meaning and purpose and evolve as they grow professionally. We want all of these things and again, it is even in policies and manuals and stuff. And again, I am speaking more in the traditional sort of jobs environment, and yet when push comes to shove, we are going to hire the person with 20 years’ experience in that one vertical.
And it is like, wow, you just have this huge disconnect between what you are saying, and I genuinely believe HR managers, they want this. And yet there is a huge block in the design of what is needed and how they are currently filtering decisions.
If we zoom out for a minute, I love to frame this more broadly, it is not just portfolio careers. But so many parts about living in a world that we think, many of us have been taught to believe, that we can predict and control and command what is going to happen. Like humans somehow have this ability. And when we are waking up to the reality of like, wow, the world we were taught we might inhabit is very different than the world we are actually living in, when it comes to change.
So, we sense that we are in the early stages of these big shifts that need to happen, and we want to get there, but the problem is we are still filtering our decisions through this very old script. And so, the block is we need to start, not just writing the scripts but actually testing and experimenting and iterating and doing it. Some organisations are taking baby steps towards that end, but that is a huge block because we can see the change that we want to have happen, but we are still basically in a strait jacket, we are in these old models and boxes, if you will, that have not adapted to where talent is, but also where constant change is going to take us.
So yeah, that is probably the biggest blocker that I see right now. It is not lack of interest and it is not a lack of good intentions, but those alone do not carry the day.
David Green: We are seeing in some organisations at the moment, they are creating talent marketplaces, is a phrase that the listeners will understand. And it is not just about, I do this job today, I can do that job tomorrow. It is more, I am doing this role today and I have got these skills and I would actually like to use some of those skills maybe for six, seven hours a week. And it is helping people get projects within the organisation as well. So, okay, you are still working for an organisation, but you are spreading your skills across a number of different roles.
April Rinne: Very much so, yeah. And also, I will link this to the future of learning and education. Very interesting. I am doing some work, not nearly as much as Heather McGowan, but I dabble a little bit in the future of higher education and preparing young talent for their careers.
Still there is this huge focus on jobs, which I think is misplaced because there are lots of other options out there. But to their credit, many universities now are rebranding their career services centres, basically how to get a job. They are rebranding them into life design centres, which is how to build something that is not just a job you are going to do for X hours a day.
There is a definite overlap here between, and life design gets a lot of press sometimes it is an overused term, but this notion that you are not defined by your job. I think that is really, really important. Obviously the last 20 months have been part of that wake-up call, but for people to recognise that when you are not defined only by your job, what are the different ways that you would like to be defined? And then what are the skills that you want to develop, in order to help that identity flourish.
David Green: And is this an opportunity for organisations to rebalance that relationship between employer and employee? I think we are seeing the shift towards the employee anyway, to be honest, or is it time to actually think about it in a completely new way?
April Rinne: I mean, yes, to some degree. I get really interested, this is probably a different conversation for a different day, but I get really interested in thinking about the future of “jobs”.
We have this term “job” which is okay, it is a way to define that you deliver services, and you get money for them, kind of thing. But what is a “job” in the future going to look like? I think a fraction of people will be working in “jobs” like we think of them today, even the talent marketplace you were just describing. Yes, we could call those “jobs” but there is something different, they are not 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, and they are not something you do for a decade.
So that piece I think, there is a discussion just right there. When we call things “jobs” we sort of have this idea of what a “job” is. And this goes back to my work many years ago, even in global development, in which it wasn't about jobs, it was about livelihoods. And I love that term livelihood. A livelihood is how you create a life. A job is how you earn an income. But livelihood, what brings you alive?
And so, I think that part of where we are heading with this is a shift towards, what does it mean to have a talent pool or a labour force that has livelihoods? That brings something alive, that a job doesn't necessarily.
I will bring up though and I mentioned it briefly before, but I will echo it again here. The language that we use around employment, I think that is up for an upgrade, a refresh. And why I say that, go back to what I mentioned before, this notion that we talk about talent acquisition and talent retention. Those words on their own are not good or bad, they are just words. But when you look at what it means to acquire talent, it means to possess them. Talent acquisition and talent retention are extremely employer centric terms. They speak to a one-way relationship where the employer has the power, and the employee does not. And I don't want to go too far here, but there is an element of it that is a little bit like slavery, somebody is going to own somebody else. And that is not the world we live in today.
Much preferred for me and for many others, talent attraction, talent engagement. If I want to attract you, I am like a magnet, I am irresistible, you want to work with me. I think that talent attraction isn’t employer or employee centric, it is kind of neutral. But from an employee perspective, it is like, ooh, I would like to be attracted.
And engagement, yes, see me as a whole human. Don't try to retain me, try to engage me, try to see me for all that I am.
And so, I do think that language is powerful. Language carries. And I think there is a lot of language that we use in modern day society, in the workplace and beyond, that we kind of take for granted and we need to stop taking it for granted because the undercurrent, the subtext, of what we are saying doesn't really align with what we are after. So, a couple of ideas there.
David Green: They are some great ideas, and actually you are right, language is so important. Depending on the words you use in an advert to attract someone, I use your language there, it can have a big influence on if you attract females to apply for it by using certain words. And actually, it is only when we have started to really analyse some of those words that we can see that some of those words put off certain groups from applying, which is quite interesting.
April Rinne: Exactly. And I will be clear, sometimes it is very conscious. It is offensive, it will repel somebody. A lot of times it is unconscious, but it is picked up and what is fascinating to me, and I don't want to generalise here, but there are a non-trivial number of companies who use this language, but they have never actually tested it amongst talent, right. They just sort of put it out there and they assume it is what is going to work. And yet I work with young people, young people are picking this up and they take offence, they don't like it. And yet it is like, gosh, that was not rocket science for you to maybe think about what you are putting in some of your marketing materials and recruitment materials. And again, this is both with regards to how we talk about hiring and recruitment, it is also how we talk about diversity, inclusion, belonging, what kind of talent we want to attract, etc.
I love this too because this is pretty low hanging fruit. Like the recommendations I am making here, they don't require any technology we don't have. They don't require a bunch of money you may or may not have. They are right at our fingertips; we can start making these changes today with what we already have.
David Green: Which leads nicely on. We have got a couple of questions April, I know we could talk longer, but Ian will definitely shut us off at some point.
You recently wrote in article for Harvard Business Review. The time to prepare for change is not when it hits, it is before it hits during times of relative calm. We haven't had much calm over the last 20 months. What is your number one piece of advice for organisations preparing for change as we continue to operate in times of uncertainty, and will continue to operate in times of uncertainty?
April Rinne: Yeah, so my number one piece of advice goes back to, not what we talked about in detail but a small piece of what I was saying earlier, it has to relate to the difference between mindset and management. And this notion that if we want to manage change, we cannot manage change well without bringing mindset into the mix.
And when we seek to develop change management strategies or invest in uncertainty, we are trying to do something in the outside world. If we try to do that without acknowledging what is our inner relationship to change that is shaping and filtering those decisions and strategies and investments, then we are getting things backward. We are putting the cart before the horse.
So, my number one piece of advice is remembering that mindset drives strategy, not the other way around and start there.
David Green: Mindset before strategy, I think that is a good take away from there. So, this is a question we are asking everyone on this series, and we touched on some of this already, but maybe bring it together in a nice, neat summary. How can HR help the business identify the critical skills for the future?
April Rinne: So, HR is all about humans. Talent, capital, the skills of the future, are going to be the human ones. The human, our shared humanity, human skills, keeping humans at the centre of what is going on, that is going to be what helps us thrive.
And so that right there, it is this sense of keeping humans central and the way I also like to just frame this from the human and cultural perspective is, that when everything is in flux, I think there is very little that's not these days. When everything is in flux, that everything can benefit from a flux mindset.
And so, what does that mean to bring into the HR discipline, if you will, but also, I look at this and I'm like the talent, the skills, you are going to need for the future, I’m a little bit biased here, but you bundle them together and they are in a flux mindset. The ability to navigate and be comfortable with ambiguity, and uncertainty, and change, is I think going to be the number one skill required for years to come.
David Green: And also, again from HR, I guess it is to support your employees to learn continuously, whether that is for careers, if they want them, within your organisation or to help them develop their capabilities for their portfolio careers elsewhere.
April Rinne: Absolutely. And that we need employers and employees alike, have vested interest in success and they don't always see eye to eye. But we have to have an employee centric mindset. If you can't keep your employees, you have no business. So, we need to be able to see closer eye to eye, than I think has been the norm in the past.
David Green: Well, April, I have really enjoyed our discussion and learning more about a flux mindset and the superpowers that you have got in the book. Thanks for being a guest on the podcast.
Can you let listeners know how they can stay in touch with you, follow you on social media, and find out more about your work and find out more about flux as well?
April Rinne: Absolutely, delighted to. So, to learn more about flux and a flux mindset and all of that, go to www.fluxmindset.com. And there are lots more resources. I have tried to really make a lot of this just publicly available, articles and whatnot. So fluxmindset.com.
My personal website is aprilrinne.com and that is just a bit more about me and also my email april@aprilrinne.com.
I am @aprilrinne on all social media handles. I like to say no one else, as far as I can tell, has my name so that makes it very easy to find me. And I would welcome hearing from you, keep in touch.
And thank you, David.
David Green: Thank you. You don't have the problem I have, which is lots of people have my name and I even wear a green jumper, so people see me.
April Rinne: Isn’t it funny that as a kid, you kind of grew up thinking like, gosh, I wish I had a name that wasn't quite so unique, you just wanted to fit in and as an adult, I love the name. Very few people can pronounce my last name, but you can, so thank you again.
David Green: Thank you. It has been a pleasure having you on the show.