Interview with Martin Tiplady

Citation

(2006), "Interview with Martin Tiplady", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 20 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/dlo.2006.08120baf.001

Interview with Martin Tiplady

Interview with Martin Tiplady

Since 2001 Martin Tiplady has worked as Director of Human Resources for the Metropolitan Police Force after working in various senior Human Resources roles at The Berkely Group, Westminster Healthcare Holdings Plc. and The Housing Corporation. He was named Personnel Director of the Year for 2004 by the Daily Telegraph and was named in 8th place in Personnel Today’s list of the top 40 power players for 2005. Here he talks about his work.

What is the most influential book you have read and why?

Any of the books by Charles Handy. I wouldn’t like to single out any one of them to be honest. I think the thing that attracts me to Handy’s writing and views are the fact that he still has a fantastic insight into what makes organizations and leaders tick. Somehow there is a freshness about what he says and why. Despite the fact that he might be regarded as probably one of the biggest management gurus of them all there is sometimes a sense he is yesterdays person. However, I still however find him very topical and relevant.

What attracted you to working in this field?

I fell into it by accident. I was a general manager and very early on in my working life in local government I got involved in the resolution of a nationwide dispute that went on for nine months. This gave me a taster for it and I had begun to develop a reputation. It was about nine or ten months later that I was approached to become personnel director of what was then the housing corporation. I am now on my forth HR directorship so I guess you could say I’m tried and testing after 18 or 19 years in HR roles. If I think about the skills and attitudes needed to become a good HR leader within an organization I have to say I’m not sure had I come up through a HR background that I would be as equipped as I am. At my heart I am an operator and if you have operated you tend to take things from a more pragmatic rather than theoretical base and I have a strong sense of what is achievable. There’s a very different reaction one gives to almost every single issue if you have been a manager of things. If you had to account for profit you take a different attitude from that if you haven’t and organization credit comes with it. If you look at the FTSE 150 and the HR directors within there, there are an increasing number that haven’t come from a HR background.

What do you see as the biggest challenge in your current role?

Delivering cultural change that is meaningful and not superficial. I’m HR director of an organization that employs 48,500 people and is the single biggest employer entirely located in London. It’s also an industry that whatever we do is always in the media before we’ve even spoken to our own people. There is also a diversity challenge. I am not a shrinking violet where this is concerned and don’t like arguing about targets. These are a distraction and are not the reason why we want diversity in our organization. The reason why we want diversity in our organization is that for any organization that needs to deliver what it needs to deliver it needs to make sure it has the staffing with the right skills in order to do that. We have a very skilled workforce. London is 30 percent ethnic minorities and four in ten people out of London’s working population are ethnic minorities. We do not yet have four in ten people who are ethnic minorities. I think it is very important that we look like London in the work we do. By looking like London we will inspire confidence in that population that we are sensitive and sympathetic to the fact that London in such a cosmopolitan city. If people regard the organization policing London as fair and objective then that will make policing London a lot better.

Who do you consider to be the key influencers in this field?

I think there are a number of champions in terms of learning and developing organizations and leadership in general. I’m a real fan of Alan Leighton who is a significant name who has championed leadership and I listen to him. I actually also want to name my current Commissioner Sir Ian Blair. I’ve worked for two Commissioners with the other being Lord John Stevens. Both are very strong leaders despite being chalk and cheese in where they come from. John had a charismatic sort of presence whilst Ian is much more thoughtful and sensitive to how leadership might actually influence delivery. Both though are great leaders. During my career it has been my real privilege to work with some powerful chief executives and people around the industry who I really respect. Many years ago I met John Harvey Jones and was lucky enough to spend an afternoon and evening with him and his fanaticism that was his leadership of going into organizations and turning them round.

Where do you see development and learning in organizations in, say, ten years time?

It will not be organizations that reinvent themselves or take the learning and then carry on doing what they are doing. I would like to think we have moved into an era where we want learning. We want to take the learning from the things we do wrong and experiences we get and say “what can we extract out of that and influence the way I do something”. For example we have recently employed people who work more or less full time on unemployment tribunals. We’ve taken on someone recently who is not looking at the tribunal itself, but the fact that a tribunal occurs in the first place. Were there any clues that came out in the appraisal process? Was the relationship going wrong somewhere? What were the signs and if we had read them would we have done something differently? That is a very practical way we are trying to take some of the learning in a part of our business and use the learning to turn something around and change it.

What would you consider your biggest achievement to date in the learning and development field?

In my current life I’m proud of the way in which we organize the training of new police recruits. When people come into the police they go through an 18-week police recruit process. They go out onto the streets for 10 weeks so 28 weeks in effect is the period of training. We have constructed an alternative model of probationary training where only the first 5 weeks is actually run in a classroom with the rest actually done out in the borough where you will be located with other police officers. I have to say the results are stunning in terms of the real engagement of the community to what is happening. I think we have always had a good caliber of recruit, but this is turning out an even better caliber through a more diverse, sensitive training process. Culturally it is a very significant program.