Sunday, August 29, 2010

You delegated the task. How likely are you to get satisfied with outcomes?

In a typical task/role/responsibility delegation, you share your tasks but do not want to lose ownership. You just grant permission, allow certain access, convey to delegatee, how dear or important is the task to you and hope the delegatee will take up and complete the task as you wanted.
Not a wrong expectation. All of us do this.
What can ensure your success in a delegated environment are certain intangibles of relationship and understanding between the delegator and the delegatee, other than administrative aspects as mentioned in the above paragraph.
Here we are talking about the downward delegation as I want the importance of the task not just remain administrative in sense of responsibility transfer as would normally happen in cases of cross delegation.
Between the two human beings, the delegator and delegatee, the delegator has a larger responsibility at the moment of task transfer. She is in the hot seat , who has to ensure, the delegation has to work!
The four (4) stages in the act of delegation are as given below- (CLICK ON THE PICTURE FOR BETTER VIEW)







1.Understanding transfer
2.Retention settlement
3.Focus balance, and
4.Delivery
Here, we are talking about ensuring success of delegation and not just delegation and the knowledge transfer process.
The truth of the moment is that, many a times you don't have control over the selection of delegatee. Knowing this, you always have to ensure that transferring the understanding is your first level of challenge.
At the understanding stage, both delegator and delegatee have to be in active stage. The delegator has to establish the fact that delegation is a bi-partite agreement and it would require serious interest and attention from the delegatee. Certain ground rules of absolute attention to facts and details will help ensure, understanding. While delegator maintains active state of building understanding of for tasks, she has to keep confirming, if the understanding is getting acknowledged with the delegatee by asking confirming questions. At this first stage, both the parties have to be in very active stage and remain focused. Loss of attention can be detrimental. That is the risk.

The second stage is Retention. This stage is highly dependent on the capacity of the delegatee to keep the understanding with them. This capacity to retain the knowledge and skills transferred is highly dependent on the kind of professional the delegatee is. We all know about A, B and C players.

The third stage, Focus is again very much the territory of the deleagtee as it is state of motivation, capacity to remain focused, perseverance, capacity to collaborate, network, make it happen. Here a supervisor can ensure constant touch-base with delegatee, help keep motivation level high and focus intact.
This is the stage which ensures quality of delivery to a larger extent. Here delegator's role becomes important as she would know where can she expect the motivation level to dip, understanding the level of task assigned and complexity or detail orientation involved in the task.
It is always advisable for a delegator to keep tab on development stages in the task accomplishments and keep confirming that things are running smooth. Provide help and direction when and where needed.

Delivery is the final stage which is ownership of not only delegatee but delegator as well.
Remember as a delegator, we always try to keep control with us. Accountability remains with the delegator as primarily, the task was owned by the delegator.
This model can be named 'UR-FD model' as abbreviated term that can be coined out of the four words, Understanding, Retention, Focus and Delivery (UR-FD).
The separation here between UR and FD is intentional as they are two set of stages in delegation, While UR is pre-action stage FD is action stage.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

When King is away..

I heard a mouse roar...
Oh, yes, really...it was a roar..
Did the king delegate the responsibilities to the rat?

We got some quick mails flowing this morning...update..1, update ..2 and yes lots of good advice..
Wake up Sid! Where were you lost so far?
Kingship does not come by delegation..it comes by acceptance.

Acceptance is tough to get ...delegated task come cheap and easy..
Build acceptance and do not impose your sham managership...I don't take shit! Do you?

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Great Hiring Drama-Dilemma!

My hiring experience as an HR Recruiter says-you hire for your immediate 'interests' and not just 'needs'...
When you are triggered by immediate interest, you say-
need to hire now.... hiring as of yesterday.... loosing business.... I' m forced to say 'no' to clients....project teams are stressed...he/she may resign.. slow recruiting/low success hiring rate hurting my business, etc, etc.
When you hire for needs, you hire and not lose out..not keep forgetting that you really need to hire and not keep shifting hiring goals as your needs are external (client) but interests are internal (Manager/team) ever agreed,
Needs are planned, targeted, focused schedules and no changes accepted. No mid-term change in rules!
Interests are selfish, shrude, critic, not trustworthy and ever changing, never accepted, never rallied together.
If Recruiters go right, Company wins, If Recruiters go wrong, Recruiters loose. Interesting?
Yes, no, maybe, But that's the norm!
When you find time, you ask for tons of profiles; when you get some work, you reschedule interviews at last moments.
No worries, No regrets! --CANDIDATE SHALL WAIT...."Baadshaah hammam mein hain.."Right guys do not always chase jobs, they wait for impressive companies and impressive interview experiences. They do not wait for you and your interview calls, when you find time.Needs would make flexible and help you re-prioritise. Interests, ask you to act selfish, be rude. Who cares attitude!

SOME QUICK TIPS..
Hire taking little risk, that you can manage.
Hire for talent and not always for if he knows those eight clicks on a DMR. Mind you: 8 clicks are just 8 clicks away and he/she may have learnt 8000 other clicks, without knowing you!
(BTW, when did you go to IBM to learn that Cognos/Shognos or to Oracle to learn Sibel programming?. Huh...)Hire for skills, attitude and willingness to learn and capacity to perform.
1.Do BEIs and check for capacity to learn and agility/adaptability in past.
2.As DOES NOT KNOW WELL is not sole reason for rejection; KNOWS WELL is not sufficient reason to select either.
 3.As I said, till the time you keep hiring for interests, you can't look for using and optimising talent in a long run. You keep thinking today and yesterday. You never look into FUTURE.
 4.Hiring is not only offering a role, It's a promise to hone talent, accommodate individual's style and speed of learning and applying knowledge; choice of career advancement.
 5.We all know, technologies keep changing, skills get glorified and become obsolete..what remains is talent. Still we hire for skills. Are we hiring key-punching buffoons?
6.Let's start honoring talent, individuality, worthfulness of resource and it's life-cycle of talent optimization vis a vis organisation's capability building for delivery of product/services.
 7.Framework for talent development and optimization is a MUST for any organisation which is people and talent intensive. Unless you are a body shopper or a mere outsourcing firm...you need to start thinking of what you return to an employee against his skills which was so important at the time of hiring.
 8.Hire for capacity to quickly adapt to change in technology, domain, environment.
9.Hiring is like tide in the ocean, you survive when you sync-up with it's wave.
 10.Smart enterprise do ANTICIPATED HIRING and not just go for fishing, when hungry.
11.Interest based hiring may drive you like crazy shopper, going for shopping before a Tsunami or hurricane Katrina. You spend a huge money acquiring stuff and discover it's worth later...Mostly a loss making deal.

Hire for success orientation not just for task completion.


 

The unimaginable employees!

Really painful to see employees not self motivated. Feedbacks do not work... attitude does not change.
They keep ignoring what you told them not to, several times.
Does it not pinch them being so casual about their tasks?
Do they really not care about being successful, being respected, loved and appreciated?
Do they not start considering the special privileges given to them as GIVEN and very much DUE to them?
YOU-
You feel so relaxed while you keep ignoring your responsibilities....I really salute your unimaginable shamelessness...
At all not proactive...
Are you waiting to be told..it's over here?

What do I do with SAD reports? Keep coaching them and not expect change in WORK or BEHAVIOR?
How long can I allow them to ignore their responsibilities?
What I should do is- fire them! , you said.
There are many people who never get opportunity to succeed as they never bought BE/MBA degree or a FAKE demeanour.
Search for the loyal folks..hire them ...spend on them...chuck the SAD ones as they harm your company..kill your time cursing them..
I am going to do this..
IS IT TIME TO DECIDE?

Time to stop Employee Farming!

  #Twitter  handle in Nov 2022 tweeted: "bye literally everyone"! Elon's tweet confirmed that this action was needed as  #twit...