Reflections--the stoic way!

We all have heard of DNA of the organisation. But we have hardly seen it. It remains an unsolved puzzle to all who hear about it! What is this DNA that we must tell about to all employees in the organisation? DNA is set of chromosomes that are built by the grind that organisation goes through,  from seminal thoughts to topsy turvey journeys that make them so unique in their experience and built-up. All validated, tested and embedded thoughts and actions. This brings a new baby in all who worked to make the organisation an organisation that is successful today. This process may have been very testing, very nerve-wrecking, very unconventionally myth-busting, shaken thoughts and beliefs, identifying the 'code' to survive and succeed, etc. They all are chromosomes that pair up to build the DNA, strand by strand. Scars of lessons learnt, taste of blood and sweat, broken hearts and all mixed emotions. DNA is who the organisation is or what is has become, how unique they are an

CAN HR RUN AS A CoE- HR as CoE- deliver as operations based on knowledge  speed and efficiency. Research based HR solutions, remain tied up to business and advise on opportunities, threat, strengths, express concerns in decisions and actions. WHY NOT TRY 'RBO' (ROLE BASED ORGANISATION -GET OVER THE TITLE BASED APPROACH, LOSE SOME ELITISM AND PRIVILEGE FOR SAKE OF ORGANISATION. GET AWAY FROM ' MAAI-BAAP' MIND-SET.  Role based organisation- Do not criss-cross roles and responsibilities. Hold managers and supervisors accountable to the highest degree. Managers will ensure success and will own failures equally. BIT OF GOVERNANCE- RULES THAT APPLY TO ALL EQUALLY STRONGLY- No harsh decisions unless being investigated as per core values and codes of conduct, disciplinary action policy. Ensure people have channel to express and communicate ideas, concerns, violations of policies and code of conduct. Have clear rules of Governance. WRITTEN ON THE WALL . LOUD and

An analytics consulting company does not give analytical thought to it's own policies and programs. A dashboard company does not have a dashboard to capture its projects, invoices, CRM and employee data. Sounds familiar, right? This is what makes you think, where is the focus and what are the priorities. Focus is business, more sales, more revenue, better gross margin. We all have seen companies having great forward management skills but the back-end has always been left for the full-moon, which though comes twice a month, no one chases that for implementation and application of the integrating factors in the back-bay to make better and smoother linkage to business. Finance, HR, IT and Admin work hard to make business run. But to make it run efficiently, not many great efforts are made. Why? Because, like you need a client, you need to be the right client to ask for process improvement and people and technology integration into your company to make it more process-efficient.

Greatness is a matter of choice! Have we made a choice? Is there a clear and linear relationship between employee engagement and the great place to work concept? Do we need a set of highly engaged employees to convert a place of work to a great place to work at? Is there a direct and clear linkage between what defines an organisation's success and what defines an individual employee's success? Not so easy and direct. Ideally all positives add to make it a big positive. This is mathematics. Organisational culture, climate, environment, leadership, vision, mission, core objectives and core values are all created with taking in ind, an organisation's success. Individuals are considered as tools, engines, mind and muscle and whole lot of critical thinking and critical mass that make things happen for good, in the interest of the company. Nothing wrong as far as objectives of the enterprise is met, which economically considered as, making profits. If an enterprise makes 

TOI today has a satire on the job advertisements and the unique terminology that are used there. Salary "commensurate' to experience and skills, not above 35 years of age, 'upwardly mobile', fire in belly, self-starter, highly motivated, team-player, etc. This are really interesting aspects and are written to communicate what that organisation requires, what that organisation has been missing so far or what it wants to shop for,or what it never has seen in the organisation and now the believe this will help them float and fly. Companies attach company information, videos, awards or nomination for awards details with the job ads. I was surprised to find the contrasting difference between what the career section videos communicated what Glassdoor (glassdoor.com) feedback were. Just opposite. Hugely opposite. Videos exhibit great culture of freedom, fun, communication , training, mentoring, happy faces, dancing employees, dancing young Gen-Y and Z folks alongside pot

Hiring has changed a lot at campuses. It all started with Large Engineering companies who visited engineering campuses for selections. It was branch-based companies and selection process. Core and non-core companies. Core helped non-IT branches appear for the process and selected the best, mostly on acads and their performance in the interview rounds. All these processes where very very panel based and tested people without any bias. The only bias that we heard those days was, if there was any influential politician or official who wanted his ward to get some push. Max. Things changed when IT hiring started for vanilla skills of logical reasoning, verbal ability and quant. All branches invited. Infy, TCS, Wipro, Cognizant and other mass recruiters invited anyone with 60% and sometimes even 50% marks to appear for mass appti test. People offered in huge numbers. at each college had selection list of 300, 400 , 750 offers by these biggies. Hiring was called Spray and pray! Mass recrui

Wipro would mute fresher's hiring, HCL not hiring freshers this year, Infosys's 3.0 is built on new platforms and innovation. Freshers do not fit-in there, at least in start up phase of new technology. Freshers fit in when a technology becomes, 'mass product' or platform. So, where will freshers go?  TOI mentioned 5 lacs engineering graduates pass out each year in India. Half of them were ideally consumed by IT industry. Other estimates keep engineering grads passing each year in India to the tune of 10 lacs if not more. Technology ideally phases out in 5 years now and by the time T schools catch up with Big Data, Cloud and Mobility, they will be obsolete and newer technologies will emerge. It appears, brick and mortar modal of companies are gone. Now, it is tough for them to estimate and plan business and comprehend the ever changing face and direction of market. Consumers of IT services and products are shrinking budget and automation is killing possibilities

I have been through SSBs of Army and Para Military forces. Have got selected and offered by Central Police Organisation's Border Security Force for Class 1, Gazetted Officer. I have always seen them carrying an assessment Centre for selection comprising of several rounds of interviews, Psychometric rounds, Group discussions and presentations. All this is done when a panel is available to assess and evaluate. Unfortunately in Private Large or Small companies, it all starts and ends as individual interviews and personal liking or dislike is what plays the key role in assessments. Have you ever heard the word, 'Hiring Manager' in the public sector selections? Word and phenomena of hiring manager is great if implemented alongside Neutral Assessment Centre and just not left hiring to the Hiring Manager's wish and comfort. Hiring is a corporate decision and that should be challenged and appealed against. There is requirement of Ombudsman for hiring in all companies, whe

Haxioms are a set of principles, proposed by Arnoldo Hax, which serve as a framework for the conceptualization of the Delta Model , and since it somehow challenges the conventional wisdom regarding strategic thinking: 1. The center of the strategy is the customer This is the center of the Delta Model, being the customer the driving force for all actions undertaken by the company. Thus, the effort the Organizations have to do is to configure high value-added propositions to customers which will be both creative and unique. 2. You don't win by beating the competition. You win by achieving Customer Bonding Just as the central focus of the management is the Customer, the central focus of the strategy should be Customer Bonding. This stage is recognizable by a relationship based on transparency, fairness, and which produces long term benefits for all involved. 3. Strategy is not war; it is Love When we define the essence of strategy as a competitive advantage, we are at the same

Related to motivation are attribution theory, and the degree to which an employee sees his or her actions as passive or aggressive in terms of shaping his or her position within a company. Perry (2008) notes, for example, that some employees "believe that the course of their career, such as the question of whether or not they are promoted, is essentially based on luck and other factors that are out of their control" (Perry, 2008, p. 179), while other employees believe that they have total control and that it is up to them to achieve what they want to achieve. Therefore, different employees use different methods to attribute success or failure to their own actions. For example, one employee who consistently fails might believe that this is unfair but that it's not something that they can resolve but it's just 'how things are', whereas another employee might believe that this is a sign that they need to improve their performance and work harder and with more f

Resources are tangible and intangible. The tangible resources are physically present and felt like buildings, physical assets, equipments, human resource etc. Whereas the intangible resources include motivation, culture, employee’s skills, knowledge, competencies, brand image etc. According to Kaplan & Norton (2004) ‘’ Intangible assets are the ultimate source of sustainable value creation’’. The VRIO framework , in a wider scope, is part of a much larger strategic scheme of a firm. The basic strategic process that any firm goes through begins with a vision statement, and continues on through objectives, internal & external analysis, strategic choices (both business-level and corporate-level), and strategic implementation. The firm will hope that this process results in a competitive advantage in the marketplace they operate in. VRIO falls into the internal analysis step of these procedures, but is used as a framework in evaluating just about all resources and capabilities

Peter principle applies automatically and people at the top are idle, with less work or no work! They just feel, they are there for only strategic insights, if at all many of those have ever given a single strategic insight in decades. Lots of dead-wood make orgaisations top-heavy or top-sick. And if you are sick at the top, you have lost your mind and what pulls you down is your heavy, uncontrolled weight who knows nothing but law of gravity. So, what is needed? ROB. Yes! Role-Based-Organisation (ROB). This Role Based approach makes the associate to be known by their role and not by their designation. Vadim(2008) illustrates that role based is very internal to the organisation and the structure of the organisation is influenced by the role that is played by the associate. The competency and responsibility of the associate are the two major factors which defines a role in an organisation. It can be inferred that in such a kind of role based organisation the competency of an associat

Why I hate Wipro? Actually, I am against all hate campaigns but being a responsible corporate citizen, I believe it is my responsibility to protest against the unfair and non-professional and non-integral behavior of corporate citizen! I had a Wipro Technologies Interview in 2011 at their SJP 1 office. This was my second round personal round with a Wipro HR Manager. I had met Mr.Ravishankar, the Head of Recruitment at St.Marks Road office a few days ago. My interview had actually started over phone with some Mr. Saurabh from Wipro's Delhi office, and meeting with Ravishankar and then with an HR Manager at SJP-1. This was all communicated to me over phone and e mail as well. The interview was for Engagement Manager for Business Unit. It is an HR role that engages Business. The telephonic interview was great, corporate like, courteous and decent. Meeting with Ravishankar was great. I liked all so far. My meeting with the HR Manager or whatever title he held, was a disaster. I

I had written on my blog on Dec 1, 2011 experience at the Silicon India Strategic HR summit at Bangalore. I called that article, Why this Zillaveri Di! The surprise that I had was because I found the Head HR for a tamil dominated company was a Tamil. When I say dominated, it means, CEO/ MD and other important positions in the company share same home state . Same was the trend for Malyali, Telugus and even Kannadigas. Within Kannadigas  is a group called Mangloreans, within that is a group called Manglorean Christians. Some companies are full of Christians whether Tamil, Manglorean or Mallus. Same is true for several departments and this is more shamelessly obvious in the HR department. I hired a Mallu/Keralite Recruitment Manager for a company, I worked for and found that most of the candidates, he would shortlist/promote for hiring would be Mallus and at times precisely Mallu Christian. How shameless and ethics less has the world become? I found Mishraji HR/Admin manager doing th

MBA colleges educate graduates. Prepares them for picking jobs at companies. Train them on what companies look for in a candidate. They invite these companies to hire their students. They send these students to companies to appear for the interview process there and much more. Is this the end of corporate interface and engagement and alignment. End of responsibilities. Is this conventional model sustainable? Have company's needs and demands not changed over time. Have colleges mapped changing dynamics of entry level talent integration? Have colleges been integral part of discussions, how companies think when they talk about entry-level talent? What is their worry? Why entry level talent needs shrinking? Why is everyone from NASSCOM to Aspiring Minds to other Industry bodies and NR Narayan Moorthy worried about quality of talent in India today? There is serious missing link! Though above given model is simple and understandable still there are millions of challenges colle

When gap is god! What we are not able to find by our own strengths  energy, intelligence or other capacity, we leave it to god and that's why the gap between what we can do or cannot do and what god only can do is God. Speaking tree has a great article in TOI today. It talks about this and even scientists agree or leave it to the supernatural power (though they call it mystery), we call God. Somewhere I read about the belief that you have is called God! Things you know, you are sure of, you call them "I know", things you are not sure of, you call, "I believe". Liked it. Everything that goes up comes down. Everything that moves has a cycle. If you had or have good time, the cycle will change. When and how tragic or smooth! Time only will say and also how your personality responds to the situation. We often hear dynasty matters in politics and film industry but we have several flops in both of these industries, where some babalog do not shine. Here both desti

Did you know that for 43% of consulting firm candidates, firm culture was the most important factor in selecting an employer? Other top factors include practice strength and work-life balance, in addition to prestige and compensation. In order to properly reflect a company's status as an employer within the consulting industry, the Vault Consulting 50 is based on the following weighted formula: 30 percent prestige 15 percent satisfaction 15 percent firm culture 15 percent compensation 10 percent work-life balance 10 percent overall business outlook 5 percent promotion policies

http://www.vault.com/wps/portal/usa/rankings/individual?rankingId1=237&rankingId2=81&rankings=1&regionId=0&rankingYear=2013 2013 2012 CHANGE FIRM % LOCATION RANK RANK Vote 1 1 Mercer LLC 50.4 New York, NY 2 2 Towers Watson 33.7 New York, NY 3 3 Aon Hewitt 30.8 Chicago, IL 4 4 Hay Group 17.9 Philadelphia, PA 5 5 Deloitte Consulting LLP 15.9 New York, NY 6 NR Oliver Wyman 11.6 New York, NY 7 7 McKinsey & Company 11.4 New York, NY 8 6 Accenture 10.1 New Yor