Francesc Xavier Galván París: Interview with ELMUNDOFINANCIERO.COM

“Are companies prepared to face the future?”

A large majority of companies are structured to meet the needs that employees had in the 90s and early 2000s, but not for those of 2020. For example, people management used to focus on setting variable compensation based on objectives and annual performance. With this structure, one could more or less objectively know if they were going to get a salary increase and bonus. Considering the desired job stability at the time, companies often offered pension plans as part of compensation. Various mechanisms were used to retain talent.

Today, new social values and trends are focused on different areas. Many people no longer want to be tied to fixed working hours. They want to work from any geographical location (remotely). They want to know how their company supports sustainability and the environment or what it does to reduce the gender pay gap. They want to set daily work goals, not an annual objective tied to a bonus. Marcus Buckingham, in an article published in The Harvard Business Review, tells us that less than 4% of people who have goals set at the beginning of the year ever revisit them throughout the year. This means that more than 96% of employees don’t care about their goals during the year.

“And what do companies do to manage these new needs and social values?”

Generally, companies implement isolated solutions that provide positive results in the short term. What happens is that if these solutions are not implemented from an integrated perspective, they are just patches. Fruit in the mornings, 2 days working remotely, a recreation room with a foosball table, gym discounts, etc. These are actions, sometimes costly, that ultimately fail to retain talent.

“So, based on your experience, what should companies do?”

In my opinion, the entire organization must evolve. It’s not about putting in a ping-pong table if the managers still engage in micromanagement. You can’t say you want people to come to the office to build a team if the company culture is one of control and supervision. You can’t talk about salary increases if it’s based on a subjective system that only demotivates. Take a look at what Paul Caron tells us via The Wall Street Journal in his article “Annual Reviews and OKRs Are a Terrible Way to Evaluate Employees.” One of his recommendations is for companies to ask their managers to sit down for 15 minutes a week with the people they directly report to. When I tell this to companies, 95% usually respond: “There has to be another way to reduce turnover, Francesc. That’s not feasible, it’s a utopia.” Continuous evaluation and development is something employees demand, but organizations find it difficult to implement it effectively because they don’t deepen the mindset change.

“Companies, employees, evaluations, management processes, etc. And now you talk to me about mindset?”

Of course, Edward. That’s the key. We can create all the processes and mechanisms we want, but if we don’t change the mindset, the company culture, there’s little we can achieve. Remember the iconic phrase by Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Let me give you a personal example. When I founded my company, the first initiative was to create a continuous evaluation software. It seemed innovative, but no one wanted it. Eventually, I understood that the problem wasn’t the software. The problem was that it wasn’t accompanied by a mindset change to make people want to use it.

In past decades, organizations focused on defining and implementing policies, processes, and software to manage people. They designed excellent performance management systems but didn’t think about how to entice employees to use them. Corporate universities were created for people to be trained, but the foundation was rooted in a company culture like this: “If you take those courses, you have no work to do; if you don’t take them, you’re a good worker because you’re so busy.”

“Tell me more about this necessary mindset change.”

Let me make an analogy. Think of a chemistry experiment—like the ones shown on the TV series CSI—with test tubes, beakers, and Erlenmeyer flasks. Years ago, the focus was on finding the best arrangement of these elements to ensure optimal decision-making about people. The test tubes represent the leadership model, the beakers represent training, and the Erlenmeyer flasks represent the evaluation processes and systems. The goal was to create perfect containers and improve their arrangement and interconnection.

Today, we need to focus on the content that will be poured into those beakers, not just on the measure or arrangement. If the arrangement is perfect, simple, and easy, but the content is unreliable, the result will never meet expectations. If the performance management system is perfectly designed, but the information the leader provides is subjective, biased, and based solely on their opinion, the result will be unsatisfactory, and therefore the decision-making will be inadequate. When this happens, the arrangement, the number of test tubes, or flasks is usually reviewed, but today, when this happens, we also reflect on whether the substances being poured are appropriate and reliable.

“What exactly is this chemical substance?”

The chemical substance being poured is the management that leaders provide in their daily work. It’s the continuous training on the job, the type of work or project, relationships with colleagues, workload, delegation based on trust, continuous feedback, the ability to innovate and have the company listen and support you, the ability to make decisions, etc.

We like to conduct an analysis, a comprehensive audit that shows us what the organization needs to achieve certification as a Talent Paradise. That’s why we created the Human Revolution people management model.

“How does it work? What is it about?”

Its appearance is simple, but behind it, there’s a lot of analysis and a very solid structure. Einstein said that the brightest mind is the simple one, meaning the one capable of explaining the most complicated things in an understandable way. With this philosophy in mind, by studying other models from top companies and universities, interviewing, observing, asking, and organizing information, we obtained four key pillars: People, Company, Environment, and Systems (PCAS).

• • People delves into that mindset, that idea of launching people managers into the 21st century. We train and support them to identify and enhance talent in their teams continuously and daily. Additionally, we strengthen HR departments to support, from behind, the leadership of people managers.
  • Company represents the policies and people management processes that respond to these new social needs and values. The performance management system, organizational structure, Agile philosophy, leadership model, and values.
  • Environment is that culture, the unwritten way of doing things that resides in every organization, which is hard to change and creates a particular work climate. We like to orient it towards Organizational Happiness.
  • Systems are the intranets, apps, websites, and ERPs that organizations use to manage people. Sometimes, we find companies that manage their employees in such a way that everything “fits” into the current ERP, rather than finding and adapting any system to what the organization actually wants.

Together with our partners at Talent Paradise, we cover all 4 pillars to support both people and organizations comprehensively.

“Tell me, where does your passion for changing the way companies manage people come from?”

Throughout my career, I’ve learned a lot from my bosses, colleagues, clients, etc. I’ve analyzed carefully what I like and what I don’t. I even realized that some projects could be carried out differently. As a result, when I had the opportunity to drive that change (based on a different way of doing things), I jumped at it and founded Talent Paradise with other partners.

Moreover, the best part is that we were deeply convinced and felt backed by the criteria of gurus and top universities. The more I analyzed new management trends, the more time I spent reading and studying, the more convinced I became that we needed to create something to drive change in organizations. Simon Sinek, Marcus Buckingham, Peter Capelli from Wharton, Josh Bersin, and Matthew Boyle from Bloomberg, as well as major consulting firms like Quantum Workplace, Awards of Happiness, Josh Bersin Academy, and Gallup, confirm that what we’re doing is right—working to improve the well-being of all the people within a company in the 2020s.