Why you don't need permission to do HOP

Big enough to learn from, but small enough to get away with. Here's how to do HOP without a major rollout.

Human & Organisational Performance (HOP) isn’t an instruction manual.

It’s a way to see the world. While many of us can agree on that, it doesn’t give you permission to run an initiative, get sign off from your boss for a massive budget, or jumpstart your staff to get going.

Although well-intentioned, HOP can sound vague and unclear on what it will produce. That doesn’t suit how many of our organisations work.

So how do we grow more HOP-inspired approaches, practices, and tools?

The core challenge here is that we seek permission from our superiors to do something. To do that we need a bigger initiative to be a meaningful ‘thing’ on their desk. This inflates the size of our idea, which means we need to think about cost, the level disruption to business as usual.

The list of reasons to pause goes on.

We’re now in a discussion about risk or priorities or clarity. Governance groups may need to meet. Where we end up is a long way from HOP – looking away from the people doing the work, and not even talking about the work people do.

What if there’s a different way? What if we started in a different place? What if we started with a few people who ‘got’ what we’re trying to do, where people were willing to try something differently?

What if we found a challenge that was big enough to learn from, but small enough to get away with without needing projects, permissions, and budgets?

A workplace wellbeing problem

I worked with a company that was stuggling with workplace wellbeing: the place was tough with so many factors affecting the work – there were high standards caused by pressure from competitors, and lots of short notice scope changes.

This pressure meant that people were allocated to work and then moved off it. At the end of each project, another one started. It was relentless. Little time to debrief or learn. People were burning out.

The solution was clear – a better system for allocating work to people. However, this would have meant closing the business for a month to design it and get it implemented. Leaders couldn’t deal with a problem that big, not when they had more immediate profit and loss issues, and a short runway for new projects and clients. They just couldn’t hear it.

While the problem was being reframed, re-presented, and delayed to next month’s agenda, the staff were still struggling – and the situation was getting worse.

Faced with this impasse, the Health & Safety team tried something different. What if we made this big problem lots of small ones that we can do something about?

Workshopping 50 small solutions

A half day workshop broke apart this big challenge into 50 small things we could do. Some were simple, like check ins, noticing people who were particularly sruggling. None of these single-handedly fixed the overall issue, but they helped.

What emerged alongside these small ideas were some tangible things that were within the managers control: knowing people's strengths, weaknesses and capacity. While the system didn’t allow for it, the manager chose to. Spare budgets emerged that could be pooled to bring on extra support.

Nobody needed the senior leaders' permission. Nobody needed to brief them. They just made the problems big enough to make a difference, but small enough to not need permission, sanctioning, or outside support.

How HOP happens in small ways

This is exactly what HOP is about – focusing on operational learning and improvement, with the people who do the work.

The advantage of this small-scale approach is that the set-up is easy – find a few like minded people (even one or two) who are happy to spare a little time to create an improvement on something they care about.

What this creates is curiosity – people will see something happened and want to know more.

What this builds is a case study – what HOP looks like in practice in your own organisation.

The next thing you have the licence to try will be a bit bigger.