About the Work with bioss

Speaker A Did a lot of work in the 80s with public sector organizations that were going through privatization and that was quite exciting because we were involved in mapping the potential of the organization, obviously current and future. So that information was being used in terms of the new structures. The whole notion of levels of work was being fed into the organizational change, the organizational design. So we would work with in house groups and there were two or three organizations that we were very involved in that and some of that also was around thinking about regulation because as they were privatized, obviously they were utility companies, then they came under a different form of regulation. So that was quite interesting. That was in the mid 80s as BIOS started to grow, one of the things that BIOS International was doing was setting up entities in different parts of the world. And so one of the things that I was asked to do was to develop BIOS Europe. Now to start with that was primarily UK, so we can talk about BIOS Europe but having traveled so much, I didn't particularly want to be marooned in the UK. So we'll have Europe if we're going to develop it. So we started BIOS Europe and like a lot of our clients there's been a change process. So moving very much from an academic base to developing a consultancy where we could raise the profile in the marketplace without losing our core values. Because I think one of the things that binds the BIOS community together is a very strong set of values and ethics and I'm sure everybody would say the same but I think that's certainly the glue around the BIOS community. And so within BIOS Europe we've certainly done quite a lot of work to understand where the market is in terms of what are the issues that organizations are addressing. Because when you have such a robust integrated model there is a danger of trying to be all things to all people but actually you can bring in other things with that solid framework, with that integrated model to work with. So we've actually also been developing a range of services. So it's not just around identification of potential, it's the whole talent bank, talent management, succession planning process that organizations need. And we've been really lucky because one of our clients outsourced the whole of their talent bank process to us which was great fun and a lovely piece of work because you're then quite involved in the organization and developing leadership development and coaching, the whole organizational design. And also we're often asked to do recruitment and selection, sometimes internal positions, sometimes external, so developing those four key services but then obviously things fall from that. So things like competency frameworks whereas we've got a client at the moment that has decided it needs to do a lot more to develop its internal talent. The organization is going through a huge change. It's bought lots of companies all over Europe. It's trying to integrate those companies, develop a one, but to change the culture, because the culture has been quite complacent, or the organization has been quite complacent. So thinking about they have a competency model, but actually it isn't particularly exciting, it's not stimulating people to use it. So working with them to think about what are the frameworks for development and how is that going to deliver, where the organization is trying to go. Strategically, we've been quite lucky, although jokingly, we decided we wouldn't take any more clients. Most of our current team have been clients, so we decided we wanted clients to go to other organizations rather than join us. But seriously, we have a lot of our clients. So our consultants, we have an older profile, but I think that's partly because of the we work at quite senior levels within BIOS Europe. We have been fortunate in the last two or three years to start to have some slightly younger people coming in, which has been really great. But all of our consultants have significant experience both in consulting and also in senior line roles, older profiles that mean over 50. Lot of them over 50, yes, but we now have three or four consultants who've joined us in the last two years who are under 50. Late thirty s. Forty s. Although I think that if you have very I think across BIOS, the same with I think all consultancies who are using these frameworks is that we do have able people. Because as you're saying, you have to be able to engage in a particular way of looking at the world, particularly if you're going to help senior people to develop and you're going to be involved in coaching. So there's a lot of that, but a lot of the organizational design work, particularly the data collection analysis, we can use younger people on that. And increasingly so we're quite lucky in that we tend to have more people wanting to join us than we've necessarily got room for. Although if people are very good at marketing, bringing in work, then that's great. We have fairly flexible models of associateship within BIOS. Two of the younger consultants would have been in level three operational roles in employment. Everybody else would have been working at four and above in their organization. So I suppose primarily four, because there aren't I suppose we don't have that many clients where they have HR at five and above, but certainly high four, they had HR roles at four. What's interesting is that they've had both HR and line roles. So that's been really, for us, really exciting. So not everybody has a psychological background, very strong people background, but not necessarily a psychological background. Within the UK has worked with a handful of very large clients over very long periods of time. So, for example, I started doing some work with ICI, I think 1985, and I suppose every three, four five years. Since then there's been pieces of work that we've been doing and I'm talking to them about some things now. So we've had those long one of the things we've done in the last five years is to broaden that client base because I think the whole consultancy market is changing. And obviously if we take a business hat, you're much more vulnerable if you only have two or three, obviously major clients, particularly given the way organizations are merged and acquired and change of CEOs. If you look at all the literature, average length of time of a CEO in a role now is two and a half, three years. Now, we could put forward a very strong case for saying that really is nonsense because the work that they need to do is over a much longer time frame of that. But that's the reality and that's what's happening. So we have worked quite hard to broaden that client base and we work right across. We've got a lot of experience in mining, in manufacturing, in financial services, beginning to do more public sector work, which is interesting because bias, of course, when it started was 90, 95% a public sector work. So starting to do more of that. And of course we do pro bono work. So there are two or three charities where we work with them on their strategic planning, the recruitment of people, and charge very obviously very low fees for that workbook.