Partnered with global brands including Dyson, HSBC, GSK & Accenture to design and transform customer and employee experiences at scale.

I design connected experiences the systems, journeys, and mechanisms that shape how customers and employees feel, behave, and stay loyal. My work blends experience strategy, service design, innovation, and transformation, bridging the worlds of customer and employee experience into one coherent operating model.

Across 15+ years, I’ve partnered with global brands including Dyson, HSBC, GSK, O2 Telefónica and Accenture, leading work that reimagined journeys, redesigned services, and built new experience-led ways of working. My sweet spot is solving fragmentation: connecting frontstage and backstage, culture and customer promise, digital and human touchpoints.

I’ve redesigned Dyson’s global EVP and experience system; built innovation incubators at HSBC and GSK; and helped O2 Telefónica become both #1 in mobile customer satisfaction and a Great Place to Work, proving that customer and employee experience rise together when the system behind them is coherent. I’ve led cross-functional journey redesign, prototyped new service experiences, shaped new operating models, and built capability programmes that shift teams from project thinking to experience-led delivery.

Organisations bring me in when they want to break out of service sameness, design experiences people actually feel, and turn strategy into something tangible. My approach is direct and practical: I challenge assumptions, connect the dots others miss, and help teams design experiences that move metrics and meaning.

What drives me is simple: building experiences with coherence where brand, behaviour, and experience finally align, and where the people using the system can feel the difference.

Danny Seals

I have a bit of time on my hands so I am thinking of creating a video course…

Something that’s low overwhelm, value and outcome drive and probably below £100 

What do you lovely folks want and need let me know below

People & Culture Strategy | HR Transformation | People Product

I have a bit of time on my hands I am thinking of create a video course. What would you want?

Most organisations are leaking revenue 
they just call it employee experience.
Most organisations don't see it that way yet… they will.

Every broken handoff, every opaque promotion process, every onboarding that lands like lead balloon all revenue leaks slowly drip by drip all compounding and causing rot in your foundations 

Then things start to break high performers leave, cohorts go through your onboarding and disengage before they have even delivered on their first year of value

Eventually you becomes second or third to your competitors

That's experience leak is debt and most organisations are carrying more of it than they realise.

The best CPOs and CHROs I’ve worked with are the one who have a open mind to stop seeing experience as just some nice to have instead want to ended it into their strategy through compounding value streams that compound returns


Here's what that shift looks like in practice:

1. Map the macro, meso and micro

Find where experience compounds, most px teams operate in silo at a micro level on 
individual moments and isolated touchpoints. Senior leaders need to see the full picture where do experience failures create the biggest drag on performance, retention and growth? 
Where is the transformation happening on the business and the people in it That's where your strategy starts so identify the value chains and design for compounding value.

2. Make experience legible in business language.

Engagement scores don't move executives, revenue loss does spend extra time in tanslating experience into cost, retention, performance and competitive advantage. When you can show that a broken offboarding process is costing then 100s of thousands in lost rehires and damaged client relationships, you're not advocating for experience anymore. You're presenting a solvable business problem.

3. Own the economic narrative before someone else does.

If you can't quantify the cost of broken experience, finance will and they won't frame it in your favour they are special creators and we love them but narrative crafting needs work especially when something like experience that isn’t just black or white building the case study will protect you from having one built against you and also help in th transformation form cost center to value creator

Experience strategy is a set of decisions about where experience matters, where it doesn't, and what you're willing to stop doing.

The leaders who get this right won't just have better engagement scores. They'll have a competitive advantage that's genuinely hard to replicate remember you can put all the bell and whistles on a EVP design but if its nit lived experiece your leak will turn into a flood.


Ps finance folks if your reading this, I actually enjoy working with you 🤗

Perry Timms

Founder and Chief Energy Officer: People & Transformational HR Ltd - a Certified BCorporation

I'm the Founder & Chief Energy Officer of PTHR. In 2022 I was ranked Number 1 Most Influential HR Thinker by HR Magazine. In 2023 I was inducted into the HR Most Influential Hall of Fame. In 2024, I was given the Lifetime Achievement Award from WorldBlu for service to self-managed and democratic, freedom-centred work.

My short form bio is 30+; 20+: 10+. 
30+ years experience in Change and Transformation through technology, 20+ years as an HR Professional and 10+ years since founding PTHR.

My personal mission is to see more people flourish through their work and help shift organisations into a force for societal good (not just profit machines). 

PTHR's mission is defined as "Better Business for a Better World". 

In October 2017, my first book, Transformational HR, was published by Kogan Page and The Energized Workplace was published in August 2020. The 2nd Edition of Transformational HR was published in July 2021.

In 2021 our first research report "The State of HR" was published with HR Zone, and refreshed in 2023. PTHR, the OD Academy and HR Zone also published "The State of OD".

I am a 5x nominated HR Most Influential Thinker 2017-2022 (4x Top 10). I was also named the most influential HR and Transformation Professional by Corporate Vision Magazine.

I am a Chartered Member of the CIPD, advised them on HR’s use of Digital & Social Media, and was a Guide for the 2013 CIPD HR Hackathon (with Professor Gary Hamel’s Management Innovation Exchange).
  
My client work now includes Organisation Design & Development, project and work effectiveness & efficiencies, self-managed and Agile systems, behavioural change, business transformation and creating innovative ways of working, delivered through close collaboration with HR and OD teams, Change Agents and Innovation teams.

I am a Global and 2x TEDx Speaker, Adviser and Conference Chair on the Future of Work and HR, a Certified Semco Style Institute Expert on Self-Managed Systems and a Qualified GCOlogist with the Game Changer Index.

I am also a Visiting Fellow at Cranfield School of Management and Sheffield Hallam University, a Fellow of the RSA, was a Guest Professor at GEA College in Slovenia, and am part of the Adjunct Faculty at Ashridge Executive Education and Guest Professor at Hult International Business School - as well as an Associate at the Work Foundation.

Founder + Chief Energy Officer: PTHR

People and Transformational HR. (www.pthr.co.uk) was formed in 2012 and became a Certified B Corporation in 2021. Now, we're a connected, collaborative enterprise of conscious business activists, with audacious dreams of creating better businesses to build a better world 

Using
- Human-centred, Design & Systems Thinking approaches to transform the People Profession 
- 21st Century Organisation Design, Development & Effectiveness method to upgrade the work Operating System
- Agile, Inclusive & Self-managed ways of working for lasting People Powered Change

Our Manifesto states: 
We exist to:
- Help clients, partners and fellow positive activists transform, adapt and reinvent themselves through assisted systems of designing, facilitating, coaching, teaching and experimenting with us; 
- Know as much about the next stage in human, organisational and work evolution to help others learn and be enlightened about the ways to craft better lives through good work;
- Bring together as many key players as we can in creating a coalition that builds a better future of work; and
- Place more business imperatives towards the climate emergency and regenerative activities for our planet.

We are a Gold Accredited 4-Day Working Week and Living Wage Organisation.

We are Climate Positive since 2021 through our Ecologi certification and a certified BCorporation.

We are a Flexa verified flexible workplace, earning a Silver award in 2024 for emerging enterprises.

I started today like most others, checked the inbox, diary, hydration nearby etc. And then during the day, something hit me. So I'll share this as a bit of a teaser, and more will come soon, I promise.

I sensed that I was about to do the best work of my entire life.

Yep, not just something cool, interesting, smart or stretching.

The best work of my entire life.

The story goes like this:

2004 - I discovered Scrum and Agile. I'd worked with technologists for a long time and seen all manner of ways of working, scoping projects, building programmes of change and installing digital systems. This excited me. But where did all this come from? I dug in (it was internet days - just) and found stuff that this came from, and one thing in particular stood out - managerless, self-organised teams. 

And one name: Ricardo Semler and the story of Semco in the book "Maverick". I'd found what I'd been looking for but couldn't name or frame. Aligned Autonomy. Choice and agency. Participation and innovation.

2007 - I went to see Gary Hamel live at the QEII Conference Centre in London. His book, "The Future of Management," was published. WL Gore, Morning Star. More of this stuff.

So by now, I was hooked. I'd seen the future, and I liked it.

2010 - L'Enterprise Liberté (AKA Freedom Inc.) by Isaac Getz and Brian Carney. FAVI, Sun Hydraulics. More of this.

2012 - What Matters Now - Gary Hamel again. Traci Fenton and the WorldBlu | Lead with Freedom fraternity of amazing enterprises.
Also, the year I broke my own job and stepped into freewheeling independence.

2014 - Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux. Buurtzorg, ESBZ and now I was really into something bigger than I'd ever hoped for.

Since then, I have been on an absolute mission: To bring the organisational, work and enterprise machinery into a more humanist, smarter, sustainable and soulful way of being.

I've been affiliated with good folks on a similar quest, like Tuff Leadership Training, the Semco Style Institute, and the Corporate Rebels. 

And People & Transformational HR Ltd has been a self-managed enterprise in the spirit of all of this. And to this day, we have one rule: We will be self-managed. We've been recognised as one of the world's Top 50 Self-Managed enterprises in 2024 by the Haier Model Institute. I've been awarded (by WorldBlu) with a lifetime achievement award for my work in self-managed, democratic enterprises. So I've had loads of highs and some recent hard yards.

And in those harder yards, you realise something - that this was simply the universe's way of saying "hold your nerve". You don't know for how long or what for. And then, like the 2004 bolt, something seismic happens, and that's how I'm feeling as the tectonic plates are shifting.

Watch this space, and sorry it's a teaser, but there's some stuff to get sorted first. And yet I know I'm standing at the starting line of the biggest race of my life.

And it goes like this...

Chief Energy Officer and Founder: People & Transformational HR Ltd - a self-managed Certified B Corporation

Through 2024 into 2025 I had a Friday thing: #appreciationrollcall - people who'd helped make my week what it was.

It drifted with a crazy world distracting me, but it feels apt to put it into play today, as people really did make my week an epic.

So the #appreciationrollcall this week is:
Victoria Flynn
Charlotte Marman
Idris Arshad
Sarah Eglin (nee Chambers)
Colin Butler
Alice Power  MCIPD
Julie Griggs FCIPD
Michelle Clark FCIPD
Matt Phelan
Matthew Jenkins
Kevin Green
Sarah Sen MCIPD, MAPP, ICF, EMCC, Strengthscope
Nebel Crowhurst
Victoria Anthony FCIPD, FIRP
Mariska Van IJzerloo
Mark Hendy FCIPD
David James
Julian Stodd
Nicola Bennett
Becca Guinchard
Natalie Quilter
Ian Hodson MScChMCIPPdip
Tracy Plant - Chartered Fellow (FCIPD)
Neelam G.
Gosia Syta
November Walker
Clemens Siegfanz
Becky Statham
Givanny Madsen
Charlotte Johnson
Jon Barnes
Emily Bunting
Jill King
Sonia Mooney
Fiona Hogg
Obi Abuchi
Missy S.
Sven Prevoo
Tamar Kaplan-Salomon

(and I've reached my mentions limit). Of course, also to my work co-conspirators, Katy, Kirsten, Victor, Ricardo, Christiaan, and Dong.

This week has been about stories, so here's a quote I like to finish these posts with about stories but first the person behind the quote.

Joan Didion was one of the most precise observers of human life in the 20th century. Through essays, novels, and memoirs like The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan showed how people use narrative to make sense of chaos, grief, and change. Her work reminds us that stories are not decoration - they are how we construct meaning in uncertain times.

Here's Joan's quote - thank you all for this week, and Joan Didion for this:

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

oh blimey and shucks what lovely words (thanks) but more so what a wonderful opportunity via the most thoughtful practitioners and activists in the self-management space.

 Jon and Gabrielle have given us a space to explore, shape and build our understanding of the evolutionary shape of enterprises and people-driven creation of a better way to be with our work.

Sincerely honoured to be part of this and bring on June 3rd.

We're thrilled to announce that Perry Timms is Co-Curating the Pala Summer Gathering! 🥳 

As well as being top guy, Perry is so experienced in the field of self-managing teams and democratic organisations. Him joining us to co-design the event will mean all the participants will get even more from the day we spend together.

Here are just some of his achievements (the list is too long):
• WorldBlu Lifetime Achievement Award for his work with self-managing and democratic organisations
• Semco-Style Institute Expert in Self-Managed Systems
• #1 Most Influential HR Thinker
• 2x TEDx Speaker & Award Winning Author

We're really happy to be designing the event with Perry and so look forward to hosting everybody on the 3rd of June, in East Sussex 🌞 

If you're looking to spend a day in beautiful surroundings with amazing people building truly pioneering workplaces that blow your mind, come join us! https://lnkd.in/eJkyVx5c

#autonomy #selfmanagement #teal #culture #leadership #change #organisationaldevelopment

Saturday listening? Or whenever really.

Nick Court is one of the smartest and most generous People-tech enterprise founders and professionals in our field. And his podcast Workplace Stories for The People Experience Hub is a mine of fabulous insight, opportunities and realisations that are aimed at helping us understand this complex adaptive system that is work, workplace, organisations, leadership, culture, belonging, inclusion, learning, purpose and performance.

In this podcast we explore the concept I've coined as Organisational Oscillation - the sense that we are NOT one organisation transforming and performing, we are TWO. The legacy one and the future one oscillating between those paradigms/modalities.

We talk through how people navigate change, how it's often something that most people cannot fully participate in and how much we are gripped by emotions when change "comes to town".

Change - now more than ever - is omni-present. Programmes of change seem like futile attempts to "manage" it when in reality it is as much of the work as stable, replicable "legacy" operations is. If not more so. And how Boundaryless is a now often desired state that allows us to not be myopic around change and think it happens in the lines and boxes we draw.

Nick and I explore all manner of things around change and also, Nick coined this great phrase for HR/People & Culture - "if it were a colour, it would be tartan." Loved that.

As always with Nick, it's rich tapestry (tarten of course) of thoughts, experiences, ideas, observations and ideologies.

https://lnkd.in/eAS2WSE7

Worth a listen since we recorded it some months ago. I've unpacked more on the Organisational Oscillation concept and change more generally - links to my Substack Chronicles (about the concept of bringing to life Polymorphic Organisations) in the comments.

Thanks Nick and for the work you do with the team and products at The People Experience Hub.

Open video: Perry Timms: Rethinking HR Through Organisational Oscillation on youtube.com

Perry Timms: Rethinking HR Through Organisational Oscillation

I've been fortunate enough to go to a lot of Leadership Conferences in my time. Some of the more memorable include people like Gary Hamel, Malcolm Gladwell, Clayton Christensen, Vijay Govindarajan, Bob Chapman, Kjell Nordstrom, Dan Pink, Traci Fenton, Magnus Lindkvist, Rita McGrath, Dan Heath, Nilofer Merchant, Jaideep Prabu and Rich Sheridan.

Last May, I went to a Leadership Conference as a speaker and participant with none of those epic names on the bill, but one of the most deeply moving and thoughtful experiences of all.

Obi Abuchi and Peju The Spark🔥curated, guided and illuminated the depth of leadership required in the modern era. Through their CORE Leaders International enterprise, they put on a SHOW!

And they're doing it all again this year at London's iconic City Hall on 11 May.

I'll again be on the "faculty" for this, hosting a panel with three incredible professionals in their specialist fields: Alice Power  MCIPD, Richard Etienne, and Liseli Sumbwanyambe around Visionary Thinking for a Changing World.

Tickets will go so quickly, so please secure yours via the link in the comments.

I hope to see you there to get at the core of Leadership in the now and future of the world's enterprises and be part of something that you'll learn from, connect to and reshape your core; for what leadership means to you and the world.

I see the headlines, I see the confusion and I feel the pressure. HR and People Professionals are in a tough position and it isn't an easy ask.

There's so much complexity, care and consciousness under the surface of it all. What HR REALLY wrangles with isn't always seen, felt or heard.

Yesterday was another quiet, exploratory space with 4 people (including me) "doing" HR-related work. But it wasn't HR-related work, it was the work of business drive and performance, enterprise realities and possibilities, capability, spirit, culture, craft and mission-led strategy.

What came up was rarely HR practice. It was business with the heart of purpose and meaning. It was leadership with the soul and spirit, technical excellence and results. It was tools, tech and talent combining into commercial edge and a sense of value and mattering.

It's what work should be about. Not the shallow transactional, numbers-only focus. Capability, creativity, momentum, morality and meaning.

That's how I experience HR professionals. Maybe I'm lucky and maybe I am biased. But before judging anyone in any role, consider what might be going on underneath the top layer.

The Polymorphic Organisation Part XXIV - Give and Take.

Wharton School of Business Professor Adam Grant published his book "Give and Take" in 2013.

The book fundamentally challenged the "shark-at-the-top" myth. He argues that your personal style of interaction - how you navigate giving and receiving value - is a massive predictor of your long-term success.

The Three Styles of Interaction Grant categorised put people into three distinct groups based on their "social reciprocity":

- Takers: They aim to get as much as possible from others while contributing as little as they can. They see the world as a competitive, zero-sum game.

- Matchers: They operate on the principle of fairness. If they do a favour for you, they expect one in return. This is the most common style in the professional world.

- Givers: These rare individuals provide support to others with no immediate strings.

In exploring this work and the concepts unpacked in the previous chronicles on the Polymorphic Organisation, something really fascinating emerges: Takers thrive in the fixed, more static Industrial Era world, whilst Givers - and even Matchers - are exhausted by it.

Maybe not for that much longer. In an economy increasingly shifting towards regenerative value, that paradigm could be moving into a more Giver-oriented world.

I unpack that as best I can with a shifting tide towards reciprocity, sovereignty and the decay of the old ways into newer forms of an operating system for enterprises: Polymorphism.

Read here

Open article: The Polymorphic Organisation Part XXIV - Give and Take (HT Adam Grant). by open.substack.com

The Polymorphic Organisation Part XXIV - Give and Take (HT Adam Grant).

The Polymorphic Organisation - Part XXV - Flywheel Teams, Hidden Flow and Self-Managed Enterprises.

Inspired by others, I couldn't resist putting this together. 

I've wanted to touch more on self-managed/self-organised teams throughout these posts. 

9 months ago, if I'd written a feature about the future of enterprises and how they utilise their talent, people, human capital, skills and so on, it'd have been something like "dissassemble the hierarchy, flatten the organisation, put self-managed teams to work, and make it skills-powered."

Now, I'm advocating all of that WITHIN a more robust and adaptive proposition to displace the parts of operating models, organisation design, job design, workflows, value chains, learning and performance measures.

ALL in the container of the operating system I'm narrating into existence: The Polymorphic Organisation.

Squash pyramids into circles, liberate people - truly - to choose their work that creates the value AND give them some guardrails around things that stabilise like helpful governance.

What we shouldn't do is 
- Think the Org Chart IS the organisation,
- That jobs will ALWAYS be scripted as they are now + AI, and 
- That we have a shape we need to restructure when change knocks on the door.

Self-managed, Flywheel Teams could swarm, form and perform in a way we never thought possible.

Part 25 is a big one and I've been working up to the "Silver Jubilee" post for something that means a lot to me, and this really does.

https://lnkd.in/eiFEQGGi

HT Anna Ott, Deepak Mohan CBA® and others for the inspiration. Your writing sparked me and called me to homage your work.

Open article: The Polymorphic Organisation - Part XXV - Hidden Flow by open.substack.com

The Polymorphic Organisation - Part XXV - Hidden Flow

Especially for Matt Phelan - the People & Transformational HR Ltd "Yearbook" of Appreciation Roll Call Quotes from 2024-2025

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The Battle

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