231. When HR goes rogue, with former Adidas VP of HR, Tony Cooke

0:00Right. Imagine you're the head of an HR team and you get asked to present the team's vision for the future workforce of the largest sportswear company in Europe. But instead of sitting down and putting together the usual dull PowerPoint slide presentation, you instead decide to make a James Bond style movie. You have the MD kidnapped. He's tied up. He's stuffed into a chest and he does multiple takes until he's bruised and battered. No, that's not the plot of some kind of comedy drama film That's what actually happened at the world's second biggest sportswear company, Adidas Where our guest, Tony Cook, was running HR The idea we had was that we'd make it into a movie In a James Bond sort of way And we brought in our own people to be actors Whereby the MD was actually hijacked and kidnapped And he played his part And he was a good sport, he was a great sport because it meant he had to be tied up and rumbled into an old chest somewhere.

0:59And we had to do about four or five different takes. And he was full of cuts and bruises at the end of it. Tony spent 20 years transforming HR from the inside out, creating everything from Adioscars to speed dating for talent. His approach was so successful that other markets started to copy his initiatives without asking permission. And he did all this without a huge budget. In fact, it often cost nothing. And I have to tell you how cost effective the HR team were when we done this video. Because when we brought a group in from our production team from outside, he felt that we would need six barely hard cases to hijack RMD at a rate of£350 a day, which I thought was outrageous.

1:42So I went and got my own friends that I go to the football with and they did it for free. But here's the thing. Adidas HQ called Tony and his team the North Mafia because they consistently overperformed while doing things their own way, usually without asking for permission. This is virtually unheard of in a£20 billion corporation. So today we're asking, what happens when HR goes rogue? Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioral science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

2:22My name is Leanne and I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. My name is Al and I'm a business owner. And we are here to help you simplify the science of work. Now our guest today is Tony Cook. He's the author of Waggish Chronicles of a Maverick in a Corporate world and a former VP of Human Resources at Adidas who spent decades proving that HR doesn't have to be the department that everyone dreads. His approach was to make HR more human by appealing to people's sense of humor and showing genuine personality. What makes Tony's story really interesting is that his waggish approach didn't just improve employee engagement, it created a talent factory that is still producing leaders across the globe today.

3:02His initiatives were so effective, the HQ kept stealing them and rolling them out worldwide. After this very quick break, we're going to join Lian as she interviews Tony. We'll discover why HR has become the villain of the workplace and what happens when you decide to change that reputation from the inside out. See you in a second. My name is Tony Cook. The 20-odd years in a huge sportswear company, So the role was HR. And interesting enough, the brand is a household name. But the interesting thing was that whilst the brand and the product was leading edge, it was then the personnel function wasn't.

3:44And you're also now an author. Yes, that much is true. This is the result of maybe four, five, six, maybe six years worth of work. and it came about because the the the vp in global had challenged me to do it and she suggested that because i was a good storyteller i'd write a good book and what i've tried to do in the book is two things really it's half memoir so it's my story since i joined the organization but also it's i hope it's going to be a handy resource book for people as well that they can click into various chapters if they were either about to do something similar or they didn't know how to do it or they wanted to learn i'll be very honest about it we've made big mistakes and to use a footballing terminology i say we've made some own goals uh so one one of one of the the chapters is called own goals and other calamities so stuff that we had a go at and we didn't work quite well stuff that we've done and made mistakes along the way people can learn from that if they've got hr functions that are much much smaller than ours and they're trying to do things themselves so it's hit the streets uh it's on amazon it's also in waterstones uh so it's for hr people it's for people managers it's for leaders and it's written lean purely with a smile on people's faces it's nothing heavy i want to carry on with what you were saying that in terms of this stereotype we have around hr people being quite rigid bureaucratic probably a little bit uninspiring at times where does that come from?

5:22Personally, I think there's still some remnants of personnel in people's veins. I think it's a convenient positioning for businesses. I often think of HR as a, you know, at Christmas you have the pantomimes and there's always a pantomime villain. And I think sometimes it's convenient in any organization for someone to be the one who gets the blame, for someone who's the baddie of the pantomime. And I think sometimes HR allows itself to be that way, where they're the ones who are being beaten over the heads. But it's convenient for HR as well, because if they want to be the lawmakers and they want to be the ones who put the rules in place, fine.

6:08But be careful because you're making a position for yourselves that does lend itself to being humorless and does lend itself to not being flexible or creative. I watched a movie last night called The Assassins. And even in that now, there's a part in it where they say, it's a good job we haven't got a HR function. So even on TV movies, the positioning HR as the baddies and the pantomime villains, if you're naughty, you'll go into HR. If you are doing not the right thing or you're not being woke enough, we'll send you into HR. and I think that's our fault. So what I'm trying to get people to have a think about is, look, you can be human the same as everybody else.

6:56If you want to go and stand up and belt out Oasis at a karaoke and make a complete show of yourself, why not? Because you're human the same as everybody else. And I think sometimes people forget HR people are human and they have frailties, but they should have colour about them, they should have personality about them. But I'm worried that we are all saying, well, HR are the lawmakers. And HR, if you're naughty, you go into there. Let's show a bit of personality as well. And let's partner with the business and champion people. We could do two things. We could champion people and partner with the business at the same time to get a win-win.

7:33I think there's a lot of perception of HR that we are for the business and not for the people. So if people say, well, you know, I was thinking about putting a grievance in about something that isn't right in the business, but I won't because HR is on the business's side. That's our fault because that's the positioning and the brand that we are creating for ourselves. So I'm big on brand within HR. I don't think we spend enough time thinking about the way we brand ourselves and what our brand values are because we think our branding must be for marketing. And it's not marketing. We want to be able to go out to our internal people.

8:12I like to call them customers, not staff. I hate that word, staff. But they're internal customers because if we never had them, we wouldn't be here. There'd be no need for us to be here. So I want us to go out and ask them what they think of us. How brave would that be if we go to the punters and say, what do you think of us? What should we keep doing that you like? What should we stop doing that you don't like? And what should we start doing? all of this notion of actually being brave enough to go to people lean and say we want to partner with you we we are human beings the same as you how can we work together tell us what you think of us and we'll create a brand that's in line with our corporate values but also what what our internal customers are wanting us to be because ultimately we're a support function we're back of house we're not front i want to ask you why is it why is it important that we make this shift Why is it?

9:07What does it mean to the business commercially and the people in it if HR becomes a partner rather than, as you say, the villain? The pantomime villain, yeah. So when they say, yes, our engagement levels are through the roof and everybody loves working here, and you say to them, says who? And they've got no evidence to show you. The only people who can tell you that are the employees. And you'd be surprised that I think sometimes it's convenient to say, from a people point of view, we're in great shape. Yeah, but it says who? And then you go and ask the employees and the employees say, that's not the case.

9:42So it's a very, very dangerous assumption that companies make. Yeah, everyone's fine. Well, how can you tell us that? Well, nobody leaves. And I think the fact that people don't leave, they might just be just treading water and just staying in the same job, picking the pay up. So don't tell me that because nobody leaves that engagement is through the roof. If we had better profile in an organization and a more front-facing profile, I think it helps from the minute that we bring new people in. Because invariably, when we recruit, HR will be there at some point when an individual starts in our organization.

10:22So HR have got an opportunity to be a brand ambassador. So if we bring somebody and they start on Monday morning, probably the first person they're going to see at some point is HR and the impression they will gain of that organization is through us and that's where we get the chance to be front-facing rather than back office so if you ever have a look at a welcome aboard session that you do an onboarding session you'll have a look and you'll see is it overly administrative and box ticking or is it more hearts and minds where people learn about the business and what the business is trying to do spending time talking about the mission the vision the values of the organization because i look sometimes at the values of organizations and people pay lip service to it and i you get you see them stuck on a wall or the the you see that the pieces of paper curled up at the end where people have probably put on the wall for years and years and i look at some of them leanne and They could be a home in any organization, be it a four-motor company, Boots the Chemist.

11:32They could belong to Greggs the Bakers because they're all the same. But HR's job, in my opinion, is to help individuals understand how they can help bring these values to life. So I think HR should wear several hats. Some of them, they don't like wearing hats. But apart from being the lawmakers, they should be brand ambassadors as well. they should be sales people also for the organization and then i'm thinking also from a recruitment point of view you know we need to make make people want to be hr people and not not just at the moment in time people i think they love being working in sales or they love working in merchandising there's not many people who are desperate desperate desperate to be hr and when they do become hr in an organization why can't we develop them to be more commercial so they can go into commercial roles because they just stay in that role and that's it so from a developmental point of view they become specialist and not generalist but it would be brilliant if we had people with an HR who bothered their arses more to learn about the business and to be more commercial and then to have an appetite to go and take bigger roles in in the business I think that would be brilliant that if people call themselves HR business partners and you sat them down and said well tell me about the business um what your your key strategic priorities are i did a talk for the cipd not so long ago and for fun it was only for fun uh i asked them could they tell me what the turnover of the business was simple question in other words how much revenue do you generate you'd be surprised the number of people you didn't know what the turnover was of their own business so i think there's a lot of work to do that if you want to be a hr business partner learn about the business stop just thinking that you are hr and you're a rule maker go in there and try to understand what the who's the business's competitors uh what obstacles are put on the business in terms of the way of driving new numbers through uh winning new accounts i think that would be exciting for hr rather than just allow themselves to be categorized and pigeonholed as oh they're hr we go in there if we're in trouble or if we have a query on our pension So Tony's just explained why HR has become the convenient scapegoat in organisations.

13:55The pantomime villain that everyone blames when things go wrong. But here's where his story gets really interesting. Tony didn't just complain about HR's reputation. He decided to completely reinvent what it means to be waggish. And that led to some pretty unconventional initiatives that drove engagement through the roof. Including something called Dive In that had HQ thinking Tony had finally lost his mind and built a swimming pool. So let's just start off with what waggish actually means. Can I ask you, I've heard you described HR as waggish. What does that mean? The waggish piece is in a fun sort of way, getting the best out of people by appealing to people's senses of humour.

14:39So there's been a lot of times, occasions where I've seen lots of confrontational situations where you can take the sting out of them by being human and being lighthearted about stuff. So waggish for me means taking formality out of things. Clearly, there'll always be times when you have to be official and formal and straight-faced, but I've found that you can do an awful lot more. You win an awful lot more hearts and minds by showing that you're human, and that's why I come up with the word waggish. In other words, it's an informal way and Chronicle also in the title, Waggish Chronicle, is informal ways of telling stories and telling the news.

15:24What's your advice to HR leaders today? How do they prepare for the workforce of 2030? Yeah, well, for 2030, embrace technologies by all means, but no matter what organisation you're in, there's one common denominator, private sector, public sector, and it's about the frailties and fragilities of people. And whatever there is people, there is politics. So there's always a place for HR. I think my view for 2030, yeah, embrace all that's good. Embrace working from home. Embrace flexible working and everything else. But start working hard now to create a brand within your organization in HR where people can readily see what you're about that you mean business, that you are a genuine business partner.

16:15You know the business inside out, back to front, upside down. And you're best mates with sales, with marketing. You don't have any foes. And this is another big one. Go out of your way to establish relationships where you're being proactive rather than wait and sit in an ivory tower to people and knock on your door. What's our policy on handling grievances? That time's gone now. We need to start being far more proactive and making, another thing we should do, by the way, is set fire to the words HR and come up with a new title for 2030. We have personnel. We got battered over the heads with that.

16:53We've now got HR. People are toying with the idea of, I don't know if you've seen it, Leon, people and culture is the sexiest one at the moment that I've stumbled upon. Culture's always on everybody's lips now. And the one I'm noticing more and more now is managing performance and getting good tunes out of people to drive the business forward. Well, you shouldn't be in charge of culture. Don't put yourself on as being in charge of culture because there are people within the business who quite willingly will say, well, it says that in your title, so therefore you're in charge of culture. It's nothing to do with me.

17:27And they wash the hands of it. Put templates in place by all means, but you're not in charge of culture, HR. I'm awful sorry. It's the whole business that's supposed to be in charge of culture. Those stories about the Adioscars and speed dating show exactly what Tony means by being waggish, using humour and creativity to solve real business problems. But here's the crucial question. How do you balance innovation with getting permission from HQ? Because Tony learned the lesson the hard way. When his initiatives became so popular that other markets started copying them, suddenly HQ wanted to know why they weren't consulted first.

18:03So when Tony was finally given permission to be creative, to make that James Bond movie about Workforce 2020, the results were spectacular. But it taught him something important about the difference between asking for forgiveness and asking for permission. We're going to hear that story after this very short break. Tony, in terms of this way of working, you call yourself a maverick and that you tested the patience of the senior leaders that you worked with. What was it that you were actually doing differently? We felt that we weren't doing enough from a reward and recognition point of view, Leanne.

18:38And we felt that we were taking people for granted when they were doing early birds and late shows almost every day to be able to drive a number. And I didn't want the people thinking we were taking them for granted. So we created something called the Addy Oscars. and the adioscars was essentially at the end of every year we'd pick up the values within the organization and we'd make a fuss of the people who had demonstrated these values the most and we didn't put any money involved or we didn't send them to honolulu for a fortnight or anything at all it was just the thought of them being made a fuss of and recognized in front of their peers which is probably the best way to recognize anyone ever.

19:28And it gathered pace and people looked forward to it every December. And the hall where we did it would be packed to the rafters and people were desperate to see if they'd get a mention or if they'd actually win something because it would be the employees themselves who would nominate a Leanne Elliott. So with nothing to do with Leanne Elliott, it would be the people who you work around who would say, she's a brilliant collaborator. She's got so much respect. She's always willing to muck in with other people. She always bags of ideas. Let's put her in for collaboration. So like on the Oscars, we would talk to the people who nominated Leanne Elliott and we'd put it on a big screen and we'd say in the short list, the nominations for collaboration are, first one, Leanne Elliott.

20:19And it might be me, or it might be Al who nominates you. And we waxed lyrical about the great things from a collaborative point of view, Lian has done. Yeah. And it was brilliant and people loved it and we put it on our internal comms. But it's something that we did in North York or another one we did was speed dating. We put speed dating in place. And the idea was we'd ask other markets if they needed any talent that we might have. and we'd say we're looking for these talents in merchandising or sales and they might have talents that we could bring on board brilliant idea cost effective again all it costs is the flight to get in feed them put them in a hotel and they go home so no big investments uh but again because it was an initiative that we put in place i think people were copying it and people wanting to take it on board.

21:15But the mistake we made, and it is a mistake, is that we never went and got holy water first and said, I'm going to do this if you don't mind. Let me sell it to you. Let me make sure you think it would work in other markets. We didn't. We just got on with it and done it. But not because we were baddies or because we were mischievous. We just thought it was the right thing to do in our minds. So our area of responsibility. But we didn't get permission for it. and we didn't ask anybody was it okay to do it uh don't forget we're not paying any money out i think the only money we paid out was to give people a cappuccino and a lemon drizzle muffin at the end but there was no one got any any awards so it was cost neutral uh anyway the guys in group found out about it and i was carpeted because we didn't ask for permission to do a reward and recognition type initiative.

22:07I think what, if I may say this, can I say pissed off? Yeah. Frustrated? Yeah. What pissed the group off, I think, most was I never went and asked for permission to do it because I just thought it was the right thing to do. Our guys loved it. But I think the straw that bugged the camel's back was other markets, Leanne, started asking about it and how we did it. So they copied it. So half of Europe had Adi Oscar's, And the group didn't know anything about it. So I had to tell them what it was. And then they pinched it off me. And they changed it from Adioscars to Superstar. And then it become then a global HQ initiative.

22:48But that's an example of something that we did. Another one we did was the numbers weren't quite good enough. So myself and the MD at the time came up with an idea called Target Busters. so we said if we can quickly get a little bit more sales in uh we'll reach budget we'll reach our target uh and it'll put us back in good shape for the rest of the year uh a short initiative that paid for itself uh but it meant it was an initiative we put in place and we didn't get blessing and and my learning is and i put it in the book if you're going to do new initiatives as a market while you're working for a HQ.

23:29You're going to have to play the game and give the impression that you want holy water over these initiatives rather than do it yourself. And we're not doing it ourselves because we're gangsters. We're doing it ourselves because we just thought it was the right thing to do. One of the values was creativity. So we thought, well, let's be creative. We never, ever went crazy with cash. And the things were always novel ways of doing things that meant that employee engagement went through the ceiling in terms of numbers. But the guys at group would much prefer us to do more staid, more streamlined ways of doing things that the guys in HQ liked.

24:11The funniest one was when we created a thing called diving. Now, diving was because I felt that we weren't embracing diversity and inclusion enough. And I wanted to make sure that the people we had in the business were reflective of the consumers. So it meant that all of our employees, I didn't want them to be stereotypical white males. I wanted them to be a complete mix right across the patch of all of our consumers. So I asked people to join me and created a team called Dive In. Now, you probably worked it out. a pinched dive from diversity and a pinched in from inclusion. And the idea of diving was you immerse yourself, you take chances, you throw yourself in.

25:00And we launched that. And the good thing was it was a coming together of people from every background you could think of, every single background. And we brought them in and we said, right, how are we going to fix things here? How can we make ourselves more diverse and inclusive? So we had a first meeting. We brought the board of directors in. They loved it. Great idea. And everybody bought into this notion of diving. And it was our initiative. But the people loved it. And everybody had a voice. All it was was a movement to bring, in a fun, lighthearted way, the sometimes very difficult notion of diversity and inclusion to life through the people.

25:43And everything we always did, it was the people, not the management team who brought the stuff to life. So if it was no good and it fell on its arse, it was because of us. If it was a great success, it was because of the people who brought it to life. Some didn't work, but I wanted to share them with people just to try and change this perception of HR as being very staid and very formal and humorless. So be assured there are HR people out there who've got a sense of humor. So I can remember a case when we were brought in as all HRs into Germany. And the challenge was paint a picture of what workforce 2020 will look like.

26:25So this might have been 2018. We were given the task, you know, what will it look like in 2020? What will HR look like? And the challenge was given to us by the head of HR Europe at the time, Lazy. And rather than do slides and paint pictures, the idea we had was that we'd make it into a movie in a James Bond sort of way. And we brought in our own people to be actors, whereby the MD was actually hijacked and kidnapped. And he played his part. And again, same story. And he was a good sport. He was a great sport because it meant he had to be tied up and rumbled into an old chest somewhere. And we had to do about four or five different takes.

27:17And it was full of cuts and bruises at the end of it, but it was a good sport. Now, she gave us permission to do that at that time, whereas previously we didn't. Now, because it was done with their blessing, it then became a group initiative. So we used that video that we made about a secret ingredient for what Workforce 2020 would look like and gave a James Bond feeling spies. And we brought people in from Holland and somebody else came in from Prague to start. And because she'd give us permission, I think she found some money for me, you know, to get it edited and directed and stuff like that.

27:53That seemed to be a bestseller. But the learning for me was she told me to do it rather than me go and do it without getting permission first. I have to ask you, what was the secret ingredient for Workforce 2020? Well, the idea was that there was a, a nefarious gangster who'd heard about it, this secret ingredient, and he wanted to pinch it. And to pinch it, he went away and hijacked our MD. And unless we gave him the secret ingredient, he was going to kill the MD. And it was well received by everyone to tell you the truth. But the ingredient was about developing people. The ingredient was about succession plan, about engagement, about people becoming generalists and not specialists.

28:39The ingredient was about not keeping people in the same role, maybe for more of four or five years. The ingredient was about zigzagging people developmentally. So rather than just develop vertically, they develop horizontally and in a zigzag sort of way because it would be quicker to get them developed rather than just sit and wait in the same department and just wait for opportunities to grow. And we'd say, no, we're going to intervene and we're going to zigzag you across all of the business. So that was the ingredients. And this nefarious gangster was desperate to get hold of it. So we could take it and he could go out and recruit the best people and have the best company and have the best numbers ultimately.

29:20We feel as though we have an obligation from an EVP point of view. So our employer value proposition, I wanted it to be leading edge. So anyone who went on to our EVP, I wanted them to see this video to see, Christ, these people mean business here. They are good business people. They're embracing and bringing to life all the great things about people development. And you can see it in your very eyes. But rather than have 349 slides about what we do, we thought it would be a good idea to bring it to life. And I have to tell you, by the way, Leanne Elliott, how cost effective the HR team were when we done this video.

29:56because when we brought a group in from our production team from outside, to be able to get the MD hijacked, he felt that we would need six barely hard cases to hijack our MD at a rate of£350 a day. Six at£350 a day, which I thought was outrageous. So I went and got my own friends that I go to the football with and they did it for free. so we were all the time we were all the time trying to be cost effective at everything that we did and I mentioned to you earlier that the MD because he was that proud and excited of some of the stuff we were doing he would naturally tell his colleagues and his counterparts when he was in MD meetings oh by the way we're doing this by the way we're doing that and the MDs clearly went back to their HRDs and said there's a great idea there you might want to go and see how it works or reach out and ask for some advice or some tips, which they did, but they probably would remold it.

30:58So when we'd done the Adioskers, I'm sure they put their own little spin on it. And then before it was taken off us, don't forget group called it Superstar. So I think it's a model that we would create and we'd say, well, it's here. If you want to use it, by all means, use it. But we never had ownership of it. These are ideas that we were just taking off the conveyor belt and then the guys would get them and mold them. look at them, learn from them or do something themselves in a similar manner. You're clearly the type of guy, Terry, that asks for forgiveness rather than permission. So if you don't mind me asking, how did you manage to balance this innovation and actually keep your job?

31:36Was there any points where you're like, might have took that to the wire a little bit? Yeah, there's been fallouts. There's no issues with that. And I think it was more frustration because in the cold light of day, they would probably say when I was thrown back on the aeroplane to go home from Germany, it's a good idea. It really works well. It's cost effective. It does engage with the world of goods. It aligns people with our commercial objectives. The difficulty I had was I had a real stone in my shoe that we weren't encouraging people to be innovative and creative. So why have a value of creativity if you don't work hard to bring it to life or you give people license to bring it to life.