How Women Thrive in International Business

Andrea Adams, Triumpha’s MD, joined Forward Ladies for their conference, ‘Celebrating Women in International Business’ at the International Festival of Business 2016 in Liverpool.

Speaker views on how women push boundaries and thrive in international business including some tips from Andrea were captured in this feature published in the Times.

Transformation To The New Triumpha

How does one transform a transformation company? And more importantly, why?

The simple answer is that we didn’t change all that much. We aren’t changing who we are, what we do, or how we do it. What we are changing is how we show up in the world.

It’s a re-brand so that our outside image represents what we always have been on the inside.  Although WHO we are hasn’t changed, we are changing the ways in which we can be of service. We are focusing on ways to better support you, our clients.

Our new website, new complementary resources and new services were all transformed into something better than they were so that people can better understand who we are, what we do, the value of what we do, how we do it, and perhaps most importantly, why we do it.

Like any transformation, the first steps afterward can be uncomfortable. As people who deal with transformation on a daily basis we also understand that progress never comes comfortably.

We welcome you to peruse our new website, download our new reports and resources, and to reach out to us with your thoughts and feedback. We love our new brand, and we hope you do to.

To your success,

Andrea Adams

Triumpha article one of the most popular in Strategic HR Review

The article, ‘Mapping a Strategic Approach to HR Leadership’ is amongst the most frequently downloaded in Strategic HR Review. Receiving over 700 downloads since publication in 2012.

 

How pleased am I? Thrilled actually, and wanted to share this news.

 

I started to write when I founded Triumpha. There were things to say about what matters in organisations and what works in practice, and I was ready to fuel my ambition. Namely, helping others develop extraordinary leadership, leadership teams and breakthrough organisation performance led by people.

 

I believe that strategic HR has significant potential for modernising management practice, bringing it into line with the needs of the twenty first century organisation. The strategic HR role is typically understood, but there is a difference between this understanding and what happens in practice – the ‘knowing-doing gap. Unfortunately, this means that the potential for HR leaders to make an impactful difference is often never realised.

 

Mapping a Strategic Approach to HR Leadership uses a case study about our work with a leading retailer and shows:

  • How we closed the ‘knowing-doing’ gap.
  • Five crucial conversations that strategic human resources leaders must catalyse within their organisations.
  • How human resources leaders can build their confidence and strategic capability by working through a planned change process.
  • How to build appetite and expectation for a strategic Human Resources contribution among line colleagues.
  • A staged approach for developing and embedding strategic human resources capability in an HR team.

 

To read more, download a copy of the full article below.

Enter your details to download "Mapping a Strategic Approach to HR Leadership"

45k challenge to raise money for mental health charity Mind

In 2013, Andrea Adams, Triumpha’s Managing Director, is going the extra mile for mental health.

She says, I will be running 45k for the mental health charity Mind. I chose 45k because it is 35k more than I ran last year and I want to celebrate that I have now reached the unmentionable age of 45 and can still drag myself around a race track with a smile on my face – well most of the time anyway!

Mind is an amazing charity. One in four of us will experience mental health problems and when we do Mind is there to make sure that we have somewhere to turn to for advice and support.

My 45k challenge is spaced over four 10k races being held in May, June, August and September, and will finish on December 1st when I complete the Liverpool 5K Santa Dash.

Listed below are the races I am taking part in:

  • 26 May – BUPA Great Manchester 10K Run
  • 02 June – Jane Tomlinson’s Pennine Lancashire 10K
  • 04 August – Jane Tomlinson’s York 10k
  • 29 September – Preston 10K
  • 01 December – Liverpool Santa Dash 5k

Mental health problems touched my family over this last year. So I understand first hand the impact these types of problems can have on individuals and their families. People with mental health problems shouldn’t have to suffer in silence. The more money we raise, the more help and support will be available to people when they need it most. Let’s break down the wall of silence and end the discrimination people with mental health problems so often face.

Please donate whatever you can and help me to support this incredible charity on my Virgin Money Giving page – www.uk.virginmoneygiving.com/AndreaAdams

Strategic Talent Management

Few CEOs today question the importance of talent to their business. But how many genuinely align the organisation’s strategy with its talent needs? They may say that human capital is their primary concern but too often, ‘talent management’ is relegated to the HR department. This allows vital decisions about the organisation’s future to evolve in siloes – and it’s an outdated approach to organisational transformation.

”Work in the human capital dimension underpins many of the company’s most important decisions about where and how to compete,” according to a recent article by Accenture consultancy.

Selection firm Heidrick & Struggles even notes the emergence of a new discipline, ‘strategic talent management’, among FTSE companies. However, it is a role that has yet to find its place among senior executives.

This is perhaps the only consistent thing about talent management in organisations: there is little direct connection between big-picture strategy and human capital requirements. A KPMG report found that while 81 per cent of business leaders claimed to regard talent as key, only 17 per cent believed HR did a good job in leading that strategy.

This does both HR and the organisation a disservice: “The only route to improved performance is by placing your human resource at the centre of your strategic decision-making,” according to author and London Business School professor Lynda Gratton.

What is needed is a more strategic approach to talent that moves the discussion beyond HR and into the boardroom. It means hardwiring ‘strategic talent management’ into the overarching business plan, and placing it under the leadership of the CEO.

Thinking and acting strategically about talent gives strategy
focus. It’s about getting the right people in the right places at the right time. It is outdated to relegate concepts such as ‘culture’ or engagement to any single division within business: as the recent banking scandals have amply demonstrated, corporate culture is at the heart of any organisation that employs people.

“Talent sits with all parties on the board. It doesn’t matter what role you have: you cannot ignore what is going on in other parts of the business,” says Jon Coverdale, UK HR director at Inchcape former group HR director (CS&S) at BAE Systems. “If only the HR person is interested in talent, that’s a worry – it indicates a degree of myopia on the board.”

There is absolutely a role for talent at the boardroom table and good CEOs will have an HR director there, but it’s a collective responsibility. This, argues Harvard Business School’s John Kotter, is what separates leaders from managers: leadership, he says, is about “taking an organisation into the future, finding opportunities that are coming at it faster and faster” and successfully exploiting them. But it is also “about people buying in, about empowerment and, most of all, about producing useful change.”

Traditional views of strategic talent management have one thing in common: they relegate it to the domain of Human Resources or organisational development (OD) practitioners. CEOs may well acknowledge the importance of talent, but many still see it less in terms of strategy and more in terms of tactics and role filling.

We believe it is essential to hardwire strategic talent management into business planning processes and place it under the direct leadership of the CEO and the senior team.

‘FIVE STEPS TO STRATEGIC TALENT MANAGEMENT’, OUR BREAKTHROUGH APPROACH IS AVAILABLE IN THREE NEW FORMATS:

  • A CEO’s Guide
  • An HR Leader’s Guide
  • White Paper

If you would like a copy of these materials, please email reception@triumpha.com quoting ‘STM’ and we will send you the download links.