People and Organisational Effectiveness

My name is Philip Stiles. I’m a faculty member at the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. My subject area is organisational behaviour, which includes themes such as teams, people, culture, change, performance, and motivation. Like my colleagues, I do three things.

I research, I teach, and I advise. My major research interests are effective people management, the management of culture, and the management of high performance teams. The programme for people in organisational effectiveness is aimed at all those people who work with other people, either as a leader of other people or as a colleague of others, or for those who are interested in what makes people and organisations tick. The programme looks at the major areas of people management and how they impact the strategy and the culture of the organisation.

We aim to look at a number of those core areas that contribute to effective people and organisational management. First, what is the strategy of the organisation? Second, how are the dimensions of talent management working and how do they support the strategy? Third, what are the best ways to manage the performance of employees looking at the performance equation of performance as a combination of ability, motivation, and opportunity.

Fourth, how do we develop ourselves and our employees to the best effect? And last, but not least, how do we develop the organisation through changing culture and building innovation? Our basic model is of vertical and horizontal integration.

Vertical integration is the link between the strategy of the team, or the organisation, with the process of people management. If this link is good, then organisational performance will be the result. But what does this mean?

Then we need the horizontal integration. This means that the people process has to be unpacked into four aspects: talent management, performance management, individual development, and organisational development. If these four elements are linked, then the organisation will be characterised by effective people management and organisational effectiveness can be seen.

The main frameworks used are models, first, of talent management, looking at talent segmentation, the A player, A player, and A player and talent acquisition, looking at building the funnel for talent. In performance management, we look at the performance equation of ability, motivation, and opportunity. In individual development, we look at performance and potential and the latest models of career development. And in organisational development, we look at models of culture change and innovation.

Cambridge, as one of the world’s leading research universities, is the place to come to get the latest research led insights but with a very practical slant. Our vision at Cambridge is rigour and relevance. And we have a Socratic approach to learning, meaning that we learn through dialogue. We hope to engage all participants in discussion within the groups, to maximise our potential for learning. We really look forward to seeing you on the programme.