Problem-solving shouldn't happen in the Boardroom, according to the Group HR Director of Penguin Random House.
Speaking at this year's annual CIPD conference, Neil Morrison talked about the recent merger of Penguin and Random House, and how the key to its success was trust.
In times of change, problems need to be solved quickly. “If every decision needs a Board meeting and to be presented on PowerPoint you will never be agile,” he says.
Morrison told HR Grapevine that it is a “concept around trusting experts, and the fact that if people are empowered and allowed to think-through problems they are probably going to come up with the best answer.
“As an executive team your job is to maybe question it, build on it and improve it - but not constantly try and second-guess it - that's what makes quick decision-making."
He says Boards need to recognise that those below have probably done most of the thinking behind a problem already, and therefore they don’t need to waste time doing it all again. The C-Suite may have questions, for clarity purposes, but should trust the experts.
“That concept of trusting experts is one of the things that allowed us to make a lot of changes very, very quickly, because we didn’t have that narrow funnel of Board and Exec time.”
For more from this year's CIPD conference click here.
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