ensuring workplaces remain
innately human places
has perhaps never been
more important.
In light of ever-higher levels of
automation and tech and the
erosion in some quarters of nineto
five face-to-face working,
“purpose has really risen up the
ranks to be a hot topic for
leadership teams and boards,”
says WTW’s Scott. “They’re
looking for HR to really help
evolve organisations to a higher
state; so it’s helping them be
more human.”
Which brings us to our 2019
HR Most Influential thinkers list,
and the individual awarded the
HR Most Influential Strategic HR
HRMI book club
top spot this year principally for
her work on psychological safety.
Amy Edmondson, Novartis
professor of leadership and
management at Harvard
Business School, represents the
perfect combination of offering
invaluable insight into big highlevel
topics while also making
this accessible and relevant day
to day for HRs.
“You wonder how it took so
long for someone to cover
these things as well as she has,”
comments HRMI thinker
ranking panellist, director of
EPIC HR Gary Cookson. “In a
world where ethical behaviour
is increasingly important in
Just in…
The Fearless Organization:
Creating Psychological
Safety in the Workplace
for Learning, Innovation,
and Growth by Amy
Edmondson (John Wiley &
Sons, £22.99)
Why Do So Many Incompetent Men
Become Leaders?: (And How to Fix It)
by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic (Harvard
Business Review Press, £14.99)
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in
a World Designed for Men by Caroline
Criado-Perez (Chatto & Windus, £16.99)
Humane Capital: How to Create a
Management Shift to Transform
Performance and Profit by Vlatka
Hlupic (Bloomsbury Business, £25)
The Joy of Work: 30 Ways
to Fix Your Work Culture
and Fall in Love with
Your Job Again by Bruce
Daisley (Random House
Business, £20)
Speak Up: Say what needs to be said
and hear what needs to be heard by
Megan Reitz and John Higgins (FT
Publishing International, £14.99)
business, and where mental
health and wellbeing are ever
more in focus, Amy has given
me serious food for thought.”
“Occasionally a concept
comes along that manages to
make discussion about
something very complex very
easy through simplifying it,”
comments fellow panellist
and civilian HR director at
the Ministry of Defence
Siobhán Sheridan. “Her work
has arrived at a moment in
time when many
organisations and HR
professionals are engaged in
seeking to make workplaces
more effective, inclusive and
Have you read..?
Option B:
Facing
Adversity,
Building
Resilience, and
Finding Joy by
Adam Grant and Sheryl
Sandberg (WH Allen, £16.99)
Power Of
Onlyness,
Make Your
Wild Ideas
Mighty Enough
to Dent the
World by Nilofer Merchant
(Viking Press, £22.99)
Who Can You Trust? How
Technology Brought Us
Together – And Why It
Could Drive Us Apart by
Rachel Botsman (Portfolio
Penguin, £14.99)
Organisation
Development:
A Bold
Explorer’s
Guide by
James Traeger
and Rob Warwick (Libri
Publishing, £22)
Older classics…
Organization Development:
A Practitioner’s Guide for
OD and HR by Mee-Yan
Cheung-Judge and Linda
Holbeche (Kogan Page,
£36.44)
Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader by
Herminia Ibarra (Harvard Business Review
Press, £22)
Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull
Together and Others Don’t by Simon Sinek
(Penguin, £10.99)
Transformational HR:
How Human Resources
Can Create Value and
Impact Business Strategy
by Perry Timms (Kogan
Page, £19.99)
Dialogic Organization Development: The
Theory and Practice of Transformational
Change by Gervase Bushe and Robert
Marshak (Berrett-Koehler, £53.95)
Why Good People Can’t
Get Jobs: The Skills Gap
and What Companies
Can Do About It by Peter
Cappelli (Wharton Digital
Press, £13.99)
Purpose has
really risen
up the ranks
to be a hot
topic for
leadership
teams and
boards
hrmagazine.co.uk October 2019 HR 21
/hrmagazine.co.uk