 So, this talk now is basically just talking you through a bit of a project that we've been doing as a preamble to this conference, where we wanted to kind of map what the current landscape is of agility in people practices, so in HR. And what we used is Dave Snowden's tool called SenseMaker. How many of you have heard or seen about SenseMaker? Okay, I'll give you. So this is basically what we were hoping to do is to have a bit of a report ready for you guys at the conference, but we only managed to gather 55 stories, which isn't really enough for us to say anything definitive. So I'm going to basically show you what we did, give you an idea of what SenseMaker is about, show you some of the emerging patterns, and then hopefully get you guys on board to help us gather a few more stories so that we can actually get more of an idea of what is going on. So firstly, just quickly want to go through just some of what we did manage to gather. So we ended up gathering 55 stories from 21 countries, and the majority was from the UK, Sweden, and South Africa. So we kind of, Mikael from CRISP was involved, as was Pia Mia. So I think our personal networks played a bit of a role in terms of where we managed to get stories from. Typical organizational profiles of those who responded, so 64% were from large multinational organizations, and then the majority were managers. So what's quite interesting is that most of the stories we got were from people who were not in HR, but telling us stories about the impact of HR on their organization's ability to be agile. Most of the respondents were from centralized HR functions, 71% told us stories about centralized HR functions that were basically organized in functional teams. And our question was, were HR working in cross functional teams, or were they in HR, OD, L&D, I want to call them silos, but I'll just say functional teams for now. But so mostly were centralized functional teams. And before I show you some of the patterns, because that's I think where it gets really interesting, I just want to quickly tell you something about SenseMaker. So you all heard Dave Snowden this morning. SenseMaker is a software, piece of software that he developed, it's probably been around now for almost 10 years, and it's based on all of the thinking around complexity and narrative that he's been doing in the last 30 odd years. So you would have heard him say, you engage people in changing narratives, not in pursuing goals. And SenseMaker is basically the tool that we use to try and understand what that narrative landscape is. And so basically what it does is we've got narrative that provides context. So this is an actual screenshot of the question we asked. And you would see that we try and be as open as we possibly can in these questions. So in this instance, we just ask people, have you had experiences that you can share with us that would enable us to understand the impact that HR's agility or non-agility has on your ability to do your work or in your organization? You'll see that there's no hypothesis built into that question. It's quite open. When we do this, for example, to understand culture, one of our favorite questions that we like to ask is if your best friend told you they'd been offered a position in your team or in your organization, what experiences would you share with them to encourage them to join or to discourage them from joining? So there's no hypothesis. It's actually a very great question to ask. And then the next thing that we do is we ask them to give their stories a name. That is the first kind of active meaning making. If you name your story, you are already adding a new layer of meaning to the story. And then we ask them to self-interpret their story into a series of questions that are quite different to what people are normally used to answering. So you'll see there that we ask questions in a triad form. We also have typical multiple-choice questions. And then we have these dyad questions. It's not quite similar to a Likard scale. It's almost more like a slider. But I think the most important thing here is that the storyteller has the power to interpret their own story. And this is really important because if you have analysts interpreting other people's stories, inevitably their bias creeps in. And there is power in the act of interpretation. So one of the things that makes sense, make it different, is that the storyteller gets to tell us what the story means. So you will see kind of what the data looks like once it gets distributed across these. But what you'll see, for example, in that triad question there, in my story, the HR focused on maintaining stability and following process, satisfying business needs or transformation. All three of those are positive. There's not a right or a wrong answer. There's not a positive or a negative. So what we try to do is either give people three negatives or three positives. Because what we've seen is if you show people what the right answer is, they gift it to you. So you try and make these ambiguous. You would have heard Dave talk about this idea of abstraction this morning as well. So we try to increase the levels of abstraction. And then we find interesting results that you don't necessarily find in a typical survey. And then the multiple choice questions up there in the end, we apply them, we use them to filter the results. So that allows us to say, show me all of the stories that were told by, for example, people in HR that was highly positive or highly negative and that happens all the time. So remember those outliers that Dave spoke about, it also enables us to find those ones. So what are some of the stories that happens rarely? And which are the stories that happens all the time? And that in the end gives us a clue of where we can actually start intervening in the system. So this is just a very brief introduction to what SenseMaker is. So into some of the results, I think in short, it wasn't pretty. It isn't pretty, let's put it that way. So basically 80% of the responses were negative or highly negative. So those two slices that you see, the big slices, that's where the majority of the stories sit. What was really interesting, so this is the impact of HR. So what we've done here, this is one of our questions was around, in your story, did what HR was doing, did it impact our ability to remain relevant in the market, staff engagement or morale, or our ability to satisfy client needs? That was one of the questions we asked. I've color coded it now according to positive or negative. And as you can see, there's quite a strong pattern towards high impact on staff engagement and morale. If we go into the actual stories, some of the words that get used quite a lot are things like silo, unethical, slow, rigid. So some of these stories are actually pretty confronting. And what was quite interesting is that the HR people or people from the HR community who also contributed stories, even their own stories weren't very positive. But then we only have 55 stories in the data set. So we can't go out and say, this is a really grim picture. That's why we really want to gather some more stories so that we can make sure that what we've got there is representative. Here is one or two of the stories. So I'll show you the live data now so that you can see how it works. But basically what we can do is we can click on any of these dots or highlight any of these patterns and see the story that sits behind it. So there's one. You can see that it's not a story about a very ethical HR person. There's another one, I'll leave it up there, I'm not going to read it for you. But I think what is really interesting with our sense maker works is, very often if you just do a normal survey, you end up with quantitative patterns. But you don't really understand why that pattern is there. So we could have ended up in this data set with something that says 80% of people feel very negative about HR. If we didn't have the stories of actual experience to give us context, we still would not know how or where to intervene. I always like to say to people, this is similar to, I don't know how many of you are married or have got significant others. You get home and they give you this blanket opinion. You don't care about my career, you don't support me. It's interesting to have the opinion, I can't really do much with that. If I get home though and my husband says to me, if I get home, and you're just on your phone all the time, and you don't even ask me about how my day went, I feel that you're not supporting me. Can I act on that? I think that is what we're trying to get to with this data set, is to see where can we actually start nudging the system when it comes to creating more agility in HR or in people practices. So just one or two more. In this one, one of the questions was, how would you describe HR? You know, and we had those as the options, a key enabler, a significant obstacle, a minor irritation, a partner on the journey, irrelevant or other. And most of the people chose significant obstacle. And you can again see the, even on the, so the positives and the negatives are both towards morale. So it definitely looks as if, you know, the biggest impact from a people perspective still lies in that area of how people feel about working in the organizations. HR focus is another one that was quite interesting. So now on this side, we've got the positive stories, on that side, the negatives. So when HR focuses on maintaining stability and following process, it leads to very negative stories. They were quite a few about, you know, it was quite interesting, you know, if you look at the topic or the theme of this conference, which is about basically people, you know, individuals and interactions over processes and tools. I think what the data is showing us is that HR is not quite there yet. Still a very strong focus on process. These are some of the diads that we asked. So again, so yeah, we had the, it's almost like polarity. So we asked, did HR in your story, did they value formal structures and hierarchies or collaborative networks? So you'll start recognizing some of these from the responsive.org list of values, control and empowerment. And again, you can see, so orange and blue, very negative, and it's towards formal structures and hierarchies and control. It's also where most of the stories were signified towards. Another one, planning and predictability, experimenting and learning, and then adding value versus following rules and policies. And again, the rules and the policies are coming out quite strongly. We don't have enough to create the fancy landscapes that Dave showed you guys this morning, but this is one that's quite interesting. So what we did was put HR focusing on transformation over just policies and tools and on that side on individuals. And you can see that the positive stories are towards this corner where there's a focus on transformation and on people. Whereas the negative stories are mostly sitting towards focusing on process and focusing on the status quo. Then what we also asked people for are metaphors. I love metaphors. I think sometimes we underestimate. It feels like a very innocent question if we ask people for an analogy or a metaphor, but often it can be very insightful. And I think even with just the small amount of data we've got, some of those metaphors are very compelling. And for all of you, if you do go into the tool and I'm really going to encourage you to do that, you will get a copy of the full report where all of this data will be in. But so we asked people, agile is like and HR is like to just generate some analogies. So this is from non-HR respondents. So this would be managers, business people, agile coaches, anyone who answered our questionnaire who is not in HR. And you'll see, so agile is like water flowing. HR is like a rock or a wall. And that theme, I only pulled out a few. That theme was very, it was pervasive. This idea of rigidity in HR. Agile is like a spider's web. People get very creative when they come up with these. I love this one. So agile is a spider's web. HR is like an old Fort Fiesta engine. Not great, follows a process and fails regularly. So, yeah, I guess. Though that would have been a Volkswagen engine, I think. Okay, agile is like a curvy mountain road. HR is like a straight road full of potholes. Agile is like sailing or surfing. HR is like government. You can start seeing the pattern coming up. Agile is a magical silver bullet, also not too positive. And HR is like the police. So can you see how the, you know, focusing on structures and policies and creates this idea of rigidity? And then this is one of the, this is also interesting. There were two ones that I would, you know, is quite positive. And they were quite similar. So this one is from non-agile or non-HR. So agile is like a racing car. And HR is like a member of the pit crew. So there's this idea of it being, you know, a support function that is truly supportive. You know, this is the other one that I'll show you just now is very similar. I love this one. HR is, agile is a baby, quickly learning and growing by trying things out. HR is an old person slowly going into dementia and forgetting purpose and passion. I don't know how people come up with these things, but they're very entertaining. So this is how HR sees it. So from the few people from HR. So agile, again, you've got the water. So it's fluid, powerfully, deceptively soft and simple. And then a stone structure. So it's quite similar to how non-HR people see it. And this is the one that's actually quite similar. So agile is the new toy in the shop. And then it's this idea of when you've got this team of people on a bicycle race, the support car. Can you see how it's quite similar to the racing car and the pit crew? So again, it's people who are kind of along for the journey, but they're really supporting the purpose. And it's fluid. You know, if you look at people in a pit crew, it's quite a fluid. They're not too stuck on processes. And then agile is like a cheetah and HR is like an elephant. Is another one this one came from HR. So I think there's some pretty strong themes emerging, but I don't want to say that this is how things are. Because with only 55 stories, I don't think that this, we can in any way claim that this is representative. Some potential nudge points coming out of here, I do think that there is something in this idea of partnering and working with those metaphors of what does it look like to be a pit crew or to be the support vehicle for a bicycle race? How does that work? What do we need to change if we want to have more of those stories and fewer of these stories of being like a rock or being like a wall? When HR values collaboration and networks over hierarchies, people over process learning over rules, then we get the positive stories. So I do think that there are quite distinct things that we can focus on. And in one of our tryouts, we also saw, we ask people, is there a need for different thinking, for different ways of working or for different policies and processes? And the very dominant pattern there was for different thinking. So I think there's a need for a shift in paradigm. So where we'd like to get to, you already saw this this morning, this is the same landscape that Dave showed. And as he said as well, we want to be able to apply this theory of change. So what do we need to do to get fewer of these kinds of stories and start moving to these adjacent possibles? And for that, we really need to get more stories. So this one he didn't show, but this is all of these are different factories. So imagine if we could have this for different countries, for different industries, we could potentially even deploy this SenseMaker framework into organizations and you can have your own landscape that looks like this. But it will allow us to act in ways that are contextual, to start shifting stories or shifting creating change based on stories from the actual organizations. So I really want to, I hope it's interesting for you to see these beginnings of the potential results that we can get. And we would really love, I see Mikal is in the room as well. So we collaborated on this with Crisp. If you guys would commit to go into the survey and share your own stories, you can, if you want, you can share more than one, you can share positive or negative, but then when you go back to your organizations, if each of you can maybe just conscript three of your colleagues to do the same, so that we can just start getting the word out and actually get enough stories so that we can have some meaningful results that would be really great. That is it from me. I started a bit late, so I don't want to keep you from lunch, but I was, I wanted to, do you have any questions, any comments? I think we've got a few minutes if you do. Yes. As many as we can get. I think if we can get up to, let's say 700 or maybe a thousand stories, and then it also depends just on, if we want to be able to say, for example, what the difference is between Sweden and South Africa for argument's sake, we would need more or less equal numbers, but I think just to get a general idea of, in the global context, how people are seeing this, I think if we can get to a thousand stories, it'll already be better than 55. Yes. So what we wanted to do, this was a crazy idea, and Mikal and I had last year when he invited Dave and I to come, is to see if we could basically create a report that maps the current state of agile in people practices and to potentially then repeat it annually, almost have a report, but then also to use it as a bit of a test to see if we can't create an instrument that can then be potentially be used inside organizations as a bit of an auditing tool, I guess, to create these landscapes that informs a completely different theory of change as Dave described this morning.