Friday, September 17, 2021

Stoicism and life well lived---meaningfully. humbly and died naturally

Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations are nothing else than personal reflection. A journal to himself. What did he do well? Where could he improve? Who does he want to be in this world? That is Stoicism. To look at yourself, to take responsibility for your life, to look after yourself so you can be your best version, moment to moment to moment. We need to reflect. And catch ourselves where we went wrong, so we can correct it. And aim up.

https://modernstoicism.com/on-taking-responsibility-the-stoics-in-exile-by-jonas-salzgeber/

“We suffer more in imagination than in reality.” – Seneca 
"Fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself." The Alchemist
“Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will—then your life will flow well.” - Epictetus

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy



Philippe De Champaigne Painting below on Stoic nature of life



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Friday, September 10, 2021

Employer branding is just not marketing!

Employer branding begins but does not end till the time you have taken a good merry go round of the available digital media platforms that gives you visibility as a credible employer. Unfortunately employer branding if crafted for marketing success, it may miss the purpose of inspiring top talent to consider a job opportunity and visualize career growth and fulfillment!



I have my takes on the platforms that companies use; their importance vs impact!

Interfaces Platform Importance/Impact-

Career page of the Company website "Importance-Talent marketing hinges on to career page, every other campaign in hiring revolves around it. It is the centerpiece ! 

Impact- If you are able to pull talent on career page from all other open market media, you have very high possibility of converting that candidate. Here you feed him with company vision, products, people and culture. Battle won!"

LinkedIn Professional media "Importance- LinkedIn is undisputed, the most reputable media to professionally talk about company and people etc and seek talent attention!

Impact- Here you can either be applying the same mind set as generally companies have for Naukri, IIMJobs or you can create your niche presence!"



Facebook Social media "Importance-Matters as you advertise your products here and your target candidate is from the same niche as your target buyer is.

Impact- Use the right mix in communication and try to evince interest in being a part of the company that creates such products would be a great place to work at, too."

Twitter Social media "Importance-It is required you are there as a company for selling your brand and attracting talent. Though this is not a hiring platform but you need to be as noticeable there as on FB. Use the right mix of communication, brand, values, people and the journey, milestones, the BHAG!

Impact-It is considerably an elite platform and recent change in settings at twitter makes it even more sensible media to be used as platform. As you care about niche speak, you have audience here for all purposes professional."

Quora Answering platform "Importance-Empirically large part of Start ups success has been written by folks who join you fresh from campuses. It is a great platform where you directly talk in close-combat mode to the target you want to hit. Again niche platform and opnions matter here. Top talent considers Quora responses with high regards!

Impact- It is obvious if you try it well."

Glassdoor Review platform "Importance- You realize it more when you have a very credible sounding negative review on company, CEO, interview or salary related experiences. Fake strategies do not help here. People who look at Glassdoor can easily read all meanings between the lines, words and letters. Use it to your best advantage. Respond to reviews honestly! 

Impact- You know it has on both talent outside and within. Talent marketing for niche skills are mostly Inside-Out. What your internal folks believe in and say, formally or informally are equity of your talent appeal."

IIMJOBS.COM Job listing platform "Importance- Not sure how much it helps but be there before your recruiting partner placed your Ads, half-hearted.

Impact-No idea!"


Dissipating MBA's worth and value!

 

Many XL's PM&IR guys are looking for cerebral and meaty roles but they are surprisingly occupied by their step brothers from XL's PGCHRM program. These CHRMs are now Talent Management Heads at MNCs, managing TM programs in 11 countries in APAC. This is called XL's self-goal! 

SCDL makes 10X more money than flagship full-time MBA programs of Symbiosis University. This is what I heard from a senior SCDL official some years back..

Cash cows started eating the lion's share!

Though SCDL is certainly not a threat to the Symbiosis Univ's MBAs, XL's PGCHRM certainly has pushed lots of illegal migrants (some deliberately sheltered for vote bank politics), thus making PM&IR grads feel the heat in the course of time. 

What is PGCHRM of XLRI? 12 months distance education program, virtual classroom..Cost?-Rs.225,000/-

If you want international tadka, try this for 85K+taxes, SHRM+XLRI certificate in HR. 

Few exclusive tags in HR can be had/bought from HRCI (The HRCI certifications (e.g., PHR, SPHR, GPHR, HRBP and HRMP*) are owned and controlled by HRCI, not by SHRM. Cost range-$275 to $475). Keep adding these certifications, they keep you in the elite league and they cost so little! Some call these certifications, lounge pass, loyalty card, club membership, etc. 

How many fakers have you seen in Human Resources department, who shamelessly flout their XLRI or IIM or other such tags? Half of the profiles in HR on LinkedIn claims Education from XLRI.

Looking at this, you will feel, wow! deserving, sharp, top breed, etc, etc. But as you scroll down, comes the whimper, this XLRI education is actually a certificate course, a correspondence or postal course, you can buy. Huh! Is this not faking?

If one has to claim for education, mention School's name, college's name for your school, college or University degree. Do not fake with XLRI postal/online certificate course. Can you ever call that postal certificate course, Education? If you do. I certainly will have doubt about your education! Not only Assistant Managers but even VPs of HR in MNCs have been faking this way. Result is, they have not hired anyone from real XLRI's PMIR 2 years on-campus, full-time degree in their company.

No wonder many XL's PM&IR guys are looking for right opportunities but they are occupied by their step brothers from XL's PGCHRM. These CHRMs are now Talent Management Heads at MNCs, managing TM programs in 11 counties in APAC. This is called XL's self-goal! 

 They do not want anyone with better, illustrious degree and knowledge in their private enterprise that they have made of these MNCs. Unfortunate and highly deplorable. We all know 'B' players hire 'C' players or at best a 'B' player.

Interesting fact that you will find in these VP's of Human Resources is their areas of interest. Look at the line below--"My areas of interest are change management, turnaround, HR innovation, HR systems, employee engagement and communication and talent management."

Have a laugh! If these fakers cannot write their education appropriately, can they ever know what is change management, turnaround, HR innovation and employee engagement?

Simply a joke!

Interestingly, this VP has 2 recommendations on LinkedIn, out of which one is by a placement agency's executive. In none of them, there is any mention of the hi-fiinterests/claims of this VP-HR.

More interesting and testifying fact is that despite mention of change management, turnaround, HR innovation in his LinkedIn profile, he has no links for his blog, personal website, any publications, books,where you can read about his glorious interests and thought processes.

even more interesting fact is that he never wrote a LinkedIn recommendation for others. Is this just a coincidence or he was too busy with change management, turnaround, HR innovation?

Not sure! I leave this to your imagination!

One more HR VP with an MNC I know of has mentioned his education in LinkedIn as Don Bosco. I appreciate, he gave importance to his secondary school education over his MSW degree. This is humble and very honest act.In his LinkedIn profile, you will not find he recommending anyone and no one recommended him. He has also been very true to his talent building by never hiring a premier B school MBA in his team. Built his team with MSWs and non- MBAs. Who loses out in bargain? Company! MNCs, beware of your talent builders, HR innovators, Change managers, Employee engagers, turnaround experts. When they are not sure about their degrees, what do you expect out of them!


CEO's on HR! Interesting interview

 I have kept something I once heard very close to heart. When I met the CEO of a large consulting firm in New York some time ago, he said something that just stayed with me – “Pick your highest performing business partner and make that person the Head of HR”. People are the most critical asset in a consulting firm, so you need to put your best person in charge of your people. It made absolute sense.

------Richard Rekhy, CEO, KPMG India----

I personally believe that if we care for people the result will be high performance. So, when I became the CEO, I took the opportunity to ask one of our best performing partners – Shalini Pillay - to take on the reins of managing HR and ensure that we give our people the best. I chose her because I wanted someone who was a high performer as well as passionate about people. In fact, I’ve had such a keen interest in people that I had offered myself for this role to my earlier CEO, so that I could make a difference and transform KPMG India to be on of the best places to work. I believe it’s the most critical role, because you would be responsible for the most expensive asset in the business – our people.

------Richard Rekhy, CEO, KPMG India----

SHALINI PILLAY IS AN ENGINEERING GRADUATE AND A CHARTERED ACCOUNTANT BY QUALIFICATION. HER POSITIONING TO THE HEAD OF HR POSITION IS A CLEAR MESSAGE TO THE HR OLDIES AND NEWBIES THAT HR IS NOT A MATTER OF QUALIFICATION OF A B SCHOOL DEGREE; IT IS A MATTER OF "ATTITUDE" COMBIINED WITH "BUSINESS EXPERTISE AND EXPERIENCE OF RUNNING BUSINESS, SUCCESSFULLY". WELCOME MOVE. WELL DONE KPMG, INDIA, WELL DONE RICHARD REKHY....

Would this mean, THE "BRAHAMANISM" OF HR IS OVER.

Richard Rekhy, CEO, KPMG India, in conversation with Rajlakshmi Saikia, on his dream to make KPMG the most-envied firm by becoming the clients’ and employees’ first choice

In 2012, KPMG India introduced a unique process of democratic succession planning to ensure that the right CEO from a people and business stand point takes the deserving seat.

Richard Rekhy, the first CEO of KPMG India to be appointed through this process, shares his plans to introduce a culture of ‘Collaborate to Win’ in the firm.

At Andersen, besides my business role, I was also given the role of overseeing HR in the company and Andersen was not the friendliest place to work in. I personally worked to make it into a people friendly organisation, to a point when our attrition rate fell to almost zero. I had some very difficult conversations with people when we had to ask them to move out, because it is in the interest of the individual and the organisation. There is no personal vendetta. It is not about likes or dislikes, it is about you not standing for the values that the organisation stands for. So, yes, Shalini (our present Head of HR) will also go through these same challenges, but this is in the best interest of the business and so must be done.

------Richard Rekhy, CEO, KPMG India----

"People Matters" magazine Rewarded the HR Leaders. Did you know

The 25 young winners of People Matters’ Are You In The List were lauded at a spectacular Awards ceremony in Gurgaon.

To select the list of winners in a scientific and transparent way People Matters partnered with Development Dimensions International (DDI), a leading global talent management consulting firm. Here is a behind-the-scenes look at how we did it

‘WHY DO YOU NEED AN HR DEPARTMENT, MR CEO?’

10 questions for the boss

 People Matters asked the winners to pick the one query they would like to pose to their CEO. Here are the ten best questions

Interview excerpts-

Q1. It is one thing to believe that “people” are any business’ competitive advantage and another to support this belief with appropriate allocation of resources. Is the resource allocation strategy of your business in consonance with the belief that it is “people” who make all the difference?

CEO-Resource allocation is not different from building a platoon for a war. When McKinsey wrote about War of Talent and later gave the metrics have ROI of each resource, it was evident, people will play their roles for which they have been chosen. Everyone is a leader or that is what every CEO expects them to be. Be a winner, win projects, win market share, win competition accounts, implement and execute leading ideas faster than competition. CEO Herb Kelleher of South West Airlines told much earlier that "Business of Business is people" and teams comprising of VPs till as Associate is valued and so chosen for a task or assignment or a project or a program.

CEOs not only look for ROI but also ROM (Return on Management) and Shareholder value. People allocation is key to any CEOs success, though he believes that his leadership team down under, would keep teams together, inspired and focused. As Herb Kellehar said, every airline company has airplanes (tangibles), what matters as advantage is Culture (Intangible), very difficult to define but is obvious when exhibited at any levels.

Q2. How can we make cross business exposure for HR professionals as common as it is for other functions? (For only then the business can develop top class HR professionals and reap the benefit.)


CEO-CEOs do not provide such opportunities to anyone, it is upto people to grab them and persistently ask for it by showing great passion and interest. It is same as Osho said that, "I do not make disciples, it is for people to become disciple as even if I make one, they are free to return to their original status". HR has acquired a pedestal of a preacher and often seen working in silos. Hardly 5% of HR folks have ever moved to other departments and that is the reason HR has never expanded beyond TA, Generalist, HRIS, L&D and C&B. HR never became Program Manager, Project Manager or Business Leader. They enjoy the priestly status of Brahmanism bestowed on them. They sulk and recede into their comfort zone, most of the time oblivious of what opportunities business may have thrown to people and even they could grab it. Again, it is not responsibility of business to grow top class HR professionals, it is them in HR, who have to emerge and evolve as Business enablers and value adds. They must know, HR is second best paid job in India as per recent research. It is shame to be the profit guzzlers and being called cost centres.


Q3. If someday in tough times we are to right-size this company by 70 per cent of its current strength, what would be in the list of qualities that you will you send to HR for the purpose of evaluating and retaining the top 30 per cent?


CEO- Right-sizing is not a blanket decision, as often understood by HR. Right-sizing is due to dip in business or decision to shelve certain part of business due to reasons, well debated and discussed.

Qualities can be very different in different situations. Many a times, due to merger of departments or business units, senior positions become obsolete and then, even the best have to be dropped, re-positioned or out-placed. If it is matter of automation or outsourcing and efficiency issue, operations people may be axed and there qualities may not be too fixed a factor. As MCKinsey report says, in assembly line roles, difference between output of a great player and an average player is hardly 20%, while in sales positions, it is 120%. So depends, what function and what reason comes to play for right-sizing. It is a compels process and just not culling the H1N1 infected chicken! HR needs good business insight even to implement what has been decided. Not many HR folks have business insights, forget about business acumen.


Q4. Why do you need an HR department? Why can’t the energy invested in the HR department be invested on the revenue growth functions of the organisation, and why do we need employee champions when every employee can be their own champion and also her team’s mentor?


CEO-Have you heard of the term, "HR Shared Services"? Lot can be driven through them. We need HR people to support people connect for vital issues to admin issues. Since other businesses need someone else to help them with hiring, travel , visa, accommodation, letters, tickets, etc, people in HR/Shared Services are needed from coordination to people champions. Role like people champion evolves over time with proven abilities and attitude to serve as value adding partner. They can help keep core values and people practices intact as per organisation's governance model. How many in Hr ever understand what, when and where "governance values" get ignored and abused. Even EthicsPoint cases gets no hearing in many MNCs and they have become so immune to such sensitive issues. There is no place for whistle blowers that HR should have protected. Rather they are used to snub whistle blowers and value evangelists. For details read my blog on "Corporate Confidential" by Cynthia Shiparo. Using fancy words like employee champion is easier said than done. It requires character that have courage of conviction. How many HR folks do you know have ever exhibited such character to thwart unfair treatment to employees?


Q5. Can I shadow you for a month to understand what it takes to run a business? It would help widen my horizon beyond projects to broader business perspectives.


CEO- CEOs do not play hide and seek. Their business plans are written on the white-boards and any one can read, who ha interest in knowing what is CEO's mission and objectives. You do not need to shadow a CEO to know what he does. Keep your eyes and ears open and look for what people say and talk about at each level in the organisation, water coolers to coffee tables, cafeteria to office cabs. Information is valuable, if you are interested in business. How many HR folks know why we lost our last deal and why procurement/purchase department at client's side threw spanner into the deal for just 3% cost difference?


Q6. What are the skills that you have acquired that you found the most useful in your professional career? How did you acquire those skills?


CEO-CEOs hardly have time to learn, they are on a roller -coaster and walk on tight-rope to razor-edge. Board and Shareholders drive him crazy. He needs to act in real time, his learning is speedback not feedback. All his skills are put to practice and test. He even does not know, what skills worked in what scenario. Business is so shrewed and unpredictable. Take the risk or lose the deal. Unless you are a family guy who is placed as a CEO, you do not have luxury to learn. What is learning for a CEO is his success or his failure, both of them are results. Considering them as learning can be regressive and self-fulfilling prophesy. No rules hold good for long


Q7. How do you think we can build a diversity strategy that gives women options, so that they can have both – a successful career, and also work-life balance?


CEO-As it is told about time management, "you do not need to manage time, you need to manage yourself." Same is true for balancing work with life or life with work. The scales are never evenly weighed. You have to make conscious choice. Success comes at a cost. It is a trade-off, you have to chose to drop. In all cases, your status is more because of what you do to yourself than others do to you. You cannot expect others to help you in balancing your life or work! They also have work and life of their own.


Q8. What has been your mantra to ensure that you keep a steep learning curve and achieve your full potential?


CEO-Success is what counts. It comes because of everything that you do and others do to achieve it. As you grow higher in the hierarchy, your success is more defined by what others do to help you attain that level of success. Here comes test for your leadership style and leadership potential. You have to have a blend of authoritative to delegative to participative leadership style applied at different inflection points. CEOs do not have limited potential. It is immeasurable and pervasive, that keeps evolving and expanding for newer opportunities to leverage the great team's potentials.


Q9. Looking at the HR talent in your organisation, what are the three traits that you think are our strengths, and the three that we need to develop further so that we can contribute more effectively to the organisation’s human capital strategy?


CEO-Every organisation has its own way of looking at its strengths and areas of development. You should ask this question at all levels in the organization to arrive at what are real strengths and opportunities for improvement in the organisation. What you perceive may not be the right thing.

Q10. What keeps you awake at night?


CEO-Excitement to meet clients and propose a great value add. Excitement to meet my teams and discuss with them the future. Worry, that my HR team may not be able to meet newer expectations as some of them may be on casual leave, some getting married and others just came back from planned and long leave.




10 signs HR is dead in your organization

1.   When your top leaders shy away from talking about HR. 

2. When no one cares what the hell HR is doing these days.

3. When your top performers tell you they do not remember, when was their last talk with HR.

4. When your vendors tell you that it is very difficult to reach and get response from your HR.

5. When your new employee is too hesitant to ask HR about something as small as, when would I get my NEO plan?

6. When your HR guy talks at employee gatherings, as a speaker and people dig into phones or food.

7. When HR is just a 'dropbox' which sucks questions of significance and cannot give solutions on the fly.

8. When your HR managers and senior positions talk 80% time about admin stuff.

9. When your HR gets to know of people issues from employee's managers as escalation.

10. When it does not matter when HR people come and go to office and what they do through the day.


Career dilemma-Are you getting into 'One-way'​ to a 'No road ahead'​ trap?

 We all have heard of "fake it till you make it"! Lot inspiring and fills us with indefatigable self-belief!

I heard, the best home for us is actually our body! We all have heard, 'I was

made to feel so uncomfortable in my own skin!Not a sexist statement!

Irrespective of gender affiliations or leanings, this statement shakes us! All

due to external factors intruding, invading, ripping-off, at times just trashed! Painful!

Such feeling do occur at workplace to all of us at some point in time! We feel so

ordinary, so useless and almost a liability and burden to the system! People in

great 'looking' jobs feel so miserable, so helpless and ignored!

Prabir's quote above in pic, has shaken me to think about the moment that visits people in their career and profession; from glory to gloom, spotlight to dark lanes! History is replete with stories of fade-outs, greatest empires where sun never set, greatest of businessmen, kings of good times, world-class players, greatest politicians, greatest authors, movie stars, they all had a date with their most unsavory truths-fade out!

Does this truth strike you, completely unaware, with no sign of it coming? Actually

not! We all know it but we ignore it, we refuse to accept any reality! It is no

less than a Schizophrenia!

schizophrenia/ˌskɪtsə(ʊ)ˈfriːnɪə/noun

1.   a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behaviour, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.

2.   (in general use) a mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradictory elements."Gibraltar's schizophrenia continues to be fed by colonial pride"

We have seen big businesses failing, celebrity businessmen on the run, biggest

civilizations ending to obscurity! Most respected brands losing credibility!

Prabir's reminder is quite timely, especially, when we see business leaders, political

parties and their leaders, nations meeting the same course as Prabir stated;

"you business, your politics, your leadership style, does not need you as

much as you need them! Wake up time, realize, it is not working, rules of games

have changed, you may be facing geriatric problems and still whistling in the pipe-dream, "Hafeez Jallandhari's legendary nazm, 'Abhi to Main Jawan Hoon'!

अभी तो मैं जवान हूँ!

The only way to keep relevant is keep changing! Trees change to face changing

seasons, birds migrate to save life, brands reinvent or die (Xerox,Kodak,

Hindustan Motors,etc) Careers are no different! Jobs that are hot and sexy today will lose all sheen tomorrow. Sometimes, changes are too fast and they sweep in a whiff! Don't be a dodo! Don't live in the twilight with gravity defying belief..

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. ---Theodore Roosevelt

My most favorite quote!

"Work at changing the equation"-

We all forgot that at MBA, we were sent to learn to run business and what most of

us learnt, is this; "work for an entrepreneur"! 'Join the party, fly business class, drink scotch, speak stolen English content in fake accent! What we learn is become "ghar jamaai"!/घर जमाई! (Wikipedia definition-live-in son-in-law) And everyone knows how shameful this term is for a chauvinist male!

Women folks, "bhawanaon ko samjho/ भावनाओं को समझो !"

In professional life, the biggest inhibitor to learning new skills and trade is a tag called, "premier B/T/etc school"! This is such a feudal tag that has made us prison in our own delusional world! Remember, Bahadur Shah II the descendant of great Mughal emperor Akbar, was captured and imprisoned in his own fort, the mighty Red Fort at Delhi and later even a worse fate , extradited to Burma in exile!

Wake up, change equations, as Prabir exhorts, be smart, dynasties do not last beyond their expiry dates! We live in a rapidly changing world! VUCA is for everyone, who repeats it to train others, everyday at their management training sessions!

Be smart, or else your jobs are at stake! Work at changing equations means the following-

1.   Choose alternative career path, be HR analytics and delivery expert. Google uses ~60% TVC staff (Temps, Vendors and Consultants)! and CHROs to HR Managers must think what is this magic combination of FTEs vs TVCs? How it brings the 'core' business to a strategic and innovation inflection point! Think of using the most expandable resource, people in the most disruptive manner! The way, HR or Delivery managers have thought of TVCs in India is quite rudimentary! This is for HR leaders as said.

2.   Start bidding /lobbying for business roles, especially where company is looking for new areas of operations and new businesses, or new geographies, prepare and build new skills. This is not insider trading so keep working on under currents, win confidence of business leaders who can risk to invest in you, 'coz you show immensely infectious determination!

3.   Become a partner to change-Look for possibilities to become vendor, consultant or a techno-business-consultant specialist to help support your principal company an ecosystem expert helping company make leaps! For example, Redington India ($2 Bn) and Ingram Micro ($43 Bn) became billion dollar companies as they saw opportunity in becoming Apple's distribution and then IT distribution for other IT majors! World's best consulting firms have come to solve pains of the behemoth, who needs a catalyst to change and win, keep winning! Most problems can be viewed better from outside! Insiders have limitations, we all know.

Don't get disheartened by people telling you hard-hitting realities but they also suggest a remedy, e.g. HR will be dead by 2020 video by Vineet Nayar.

I believe, like poetry is a concoction of a poet's condensed thoughts, some tweets having the blessings of the mighty goddess! (No bias, just remembering #IWD :))

Thank you Prabir for igniting some thought process!

70-hour work week! Jamoore, are you ready?


NRN offers you a role to build the nation, you can't say No! 

It is just not him, but every greedy owner has a dream like this! 😆
You are an employee! You are often asked to think like an owner, behave and work like one. 

Sooner you realize it was a well-played mirage. 

He has the power! Everything else remains with others, expect your time but no more. They want to own and dictate terms on that.  This is why labor laws exist! 



Can you own anything without being allowed to make decisions on them? Even delegation means, do as I asked you, when I asked you to and do not do unless I asked you to do it! 

I know this sounds harsh and we are trying to find the fallacy, so we correct the dangle.

TAKE THE HIGH RISK, HIGH REWARD ROUTE? 

Reward is what anyone looks for in any job done well! 

What if we are all moved to incentive compensation model for salaries and the ratio of fixed to variable (performance linked) hinges heavily on the variable side? This will be a nightmare, chaos, as this would mean, everyone is measured and paid for performance. Performance and results evaluated closely/objectively and may be brutally honestly, against set goals. 

STABLE SALARY? WE HAVE AN EMI..CAN'T TAKE RISK:

.. But you know you cannot do this now. Why? Because an employee will not come for a high variable structure as you propose. An employee is not a commission agent. He deserves consistent and guaranteed income. Everyone looks for a fixed pay guaranteed and therefore they prefer to work for a company which can pay them well irrespective of whether they are profitable or not. Nothing wrong as employee mind-set will be different from owner mindset.

And if owner has to see business through thick and thin and only he should take risks and invest based on business prudence and face unpredictable situations and lose sleep, why should he give all freedom to employees?

Why would he create a welfare organization? Why should he invite participative decision making? Why should he allow others to take decisions? 

Accept the fact and when you work for someone else, simply follow instructions and do not question decisions as they are not your territory, and you are not hired to worry about owner's decisions. 

ARE YOU A BUILDER OR A SUPPORTER? 

That also means a distinctive divide between builders of business and supporters of business. Lot remains unexamined and unspoken here! Here lies the truth/myth of co-creation! Leadership creates culture by losing control yet shaping with hidden hands!

EMPLOYEES ARE HIRED TO BE MANAGED (like any other resource).  IS THAT A FAIR ASSUMPTION OR CONVICTION? 

Suppose you are in marketing, branding, HR or finance function or even in R&D and your job has been outsourced, do you think employer will have a vendor favorable term with the outsourcing company? Will it care about their happiness, job satisfaction, motivation and learning into the process of meeting services expectations? Not at all but many do! And that means that hiring is the trickiest decision that an owner takes. Compare a physical human with emotions, aspirations, strengths and weaknesses, etc. versus SLA and TAT signed with a services organization, you would see what matters is meeting SLA and TAT and employer is free from all those animated situations! 

Too much of "People-thinking" can at times become the biggest bottleneck in the company's growth and hinder/obstruct meeting goals that are so critical for business. 

It is not unheard "you are paid to do what you have been asked to do", "I will ask you for your ideas and suggestions or complaints if I need any of them." This is so true! Some companies just do it with or without saying and we all have faced it. This is a reality, good to know.

But many a times, you bet on people and people give you that edge over this "services model" and you run on their unique skills, insights and make huge margins and keep winning new clients. Innovation, excellence, advantage, edge, begin, when control takes a backseat!

It is all cyclical and mind-set changes with each cycle and that is how business prioritizes and changes its focus and attention.

Employees, who read that change well, make good adjustments and do good with the system.

Organizations may not do a good job of communicating their strategy to people and therefore disillusionment descends, and people find their roles/titles insignificant, but that is all temporary and people have to make balances as they do on a roller coaster. Emotions don't fetch any value here..
self-control does..

As is said, you learn more on a roller coaster, it is all about reading trends and getting ready for adjustments, sometimes with accelerated growth and sometimes with being driven to become 'no one' for some time. All of us have found our importance or perception of our importance take a toll and that is cyclical with all roles.

WHEN EMPLOYEE NEEDS TO THINK LIKE A FIXTURE! 

THIS CAN BE PAINFUL..DIFFICULT TO MAKE PEACE WITH..Attention of company changes, attitude changes, focus on people changes, people under limelight change, some look like going out of attention map, but all that happens temporarily. Worst case, a few get hit by layoffs but most likely I have seen people survive the test of time and they remain there for ages, passing though moments of glory to obscurity! And no one at job interview ever suspects them of serving lesser time. Longer you stay in a firm, prospective employer finds you "Stable"...Never understood, how stability matters when they just eroded company's hard-earned money? Have seen folks jump 5-fold on salary and continue to do the same job in the same company for eternity? What risk they create for the company-it's sustenance and viability? These guys are riskier than those who left every 2 years and moved to take on new challenges...Every new company is a new battle...not minnows can take on such risks.

Is it always only the company who hires a NOT stable guy, taking all the risk? What about that guy joining your company? Are you all safe and right for that guy..Check if you are not taking a too idealistic a stand. Hire for skills, attitude and potential..

If you are not having your own engine, you just piggyback. Don't whine as you won't do anything that you may do if you dare to take that risk, but remember, risk-taking is owner's job not yours and you need a fixed regular income. Have fun! Just some realistic hard hitting EQ, which is just fine!

Business of business is people; which people?

 Some nostalgia is not bad! This is how MBAs are baptized at MBA schools! Watch Herb talk..Deccan air may get dumped, model SW airlines survives! Model is not faulty...leaders are!

Business of Business is People: Herb Kelleher

For business leaders, people focus is pivot of their business; here people means both employees and customers! Some said, employees first, customers second! How is HR today, dealing with this dilemma vs priority setting! Most CHROs find it easy; they look at the CEO and get into the Wind Chimes mode!

Back to business: what shall HR leader do when rules of the game get murkier! and what shall HR leader do when ethics get compromised for business! For business? Really!

Sample this----

EARLIER-Jio has called out existing operators such as Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea, for not providing enough points of interconnect – which allow users from one network to speak to users on the other networks – and its Chairman, Mukesh Ambani described the situation as “the newbie being ragged by the big boys”.Oct 25, 2016

NOW-Reliance Jio Happy New Year Offer: All Services Free Till March 31 |Existing 52 million users and service started in September last year! WOW!

EARLIER-Trai slaps Rs 3,050-crore fine on Airtel, Vodafone and Idea, would HR leaders at these accused companies, ask their business leaders to behave? Would they remind their leaders who have been taught at great cost and fancy, the ethics and values of doing a fair and transparent business and most basic -CUSTOMER FIRST? Who these business leaders are cheating? Mukesh Ambani or the poor Jio customers, " 75% Calls On These Three Networks Failed!"

What leadership training does not teach is how to feel ashamed! How to feel so ridiculous and disgusting! Let's train them all , once again! Back to basics! Back into the training room!

HR's role if extrapolated to carve strategic chart, it comes in conflict with CEO's strategic course and intent and several leading business leaders too find HR coming in the way rather than smoothing employee relations and ironing out, the strained relations. It is certainly an advisory role, but that makes or breaks a business, many a times. It is quite a consulting role that brings governance, ethics, values into the play. Big boys often times ignore aspects that built them as a leader-blue eyed boy, they have acted arrogant and autocratic in Good times, lucky times. A strong willed and business savvy HR leader grounds them to safety without much of bad blood. I have done it several times with consequences. Tough choices ; very few HR leaders make! Maybe, they are wrong choices for HR. That's why I call for ; Right to Reject, empower employee and corporate citizens select or reject their leaders! For safe-play that most HR leaders play today, they are almost parked in the garage, 'coz that is the safest way to drive safe!

Leader first, celebrity later-Most CHROs crave for celebrity status. They measure their success by number of followers on LinkedIn. Did they not know, that a leaders is known by number of leaders he creates, NOT the number of followers he builds!

Most CHROs are running no HR agenda in general for the industry or trade! They are more like Instagram crazy, clicking selfies and posting them at LinkedIn and twitter.

If number of followers was any measure of their popularity then an ex-Chief Learning Officer of an IT services company, who claimed, he represented an employee base of 350,000 would not have had just 600 views, in 6 years, of his TEDx talk, on youtube!

If a CHRO/GCPO (titles galore and they tweet about no title but servant leadership) was to be measured for his popularity, then at least he would have had some re-tweets for his impressive and path breaking influencing ideas! They hardly have re-tweets. Check that out! We have all wrong measures that these leaders have adopted! Such behaviors are driving their teams and other leaders they support, nuts!

Dear CHRO/GCPO-You are there to influence business and make quantifiable change! These companies who pay you 20 to 30 M do not need Kim Kardashians! Stop carrying vanity bag image! Act like a leader! Make change , create history! You are lucky to have a position, unfortunately, you are just SOCIALIZING! Stunts won't sustain an image!

There is a 'bug' in your hiring engine and you are not treating it

 Your phone rings...you reluctantly pick the call...

Person on the other side....Are you looking for a job? We are hiring! You work on python? How good are you at an R? What's your CTC? Can you come for interview on Monday? Call usually ends around this semantic.

Does this style sound familiar? ....................Now tell me, do you need a rocket scientist to do this call?

No wonder...

Commonly, the bottom rung of HR folks (Are they really HR folks? What is that HR into them? Some non HR, non-grad Customer services execs, or, any half educated telecaller can get there!) We usually find such people in TA, these days! This is such a low intellect job! Who made this so demeaning and non-glamorous? Body-shoppers? In early 2004, an HR manager at Wipro told me that he worked for the largest body-shopping company. He is currently heading HR at a Semi Conductor company, based at Delhi- NCR.

Remember, all this recruiter 'dhandha' started with a hot headhunter kind of a role, who were no less glamorous than the vamps! Insider, socialite. deal maker, etc. You did not see most of them unless one day you met them to discover, it was all for one such silly , hankering TA Manager/recruiter at a search firm!

Don't feel offended, things have not changed for recruiters in past 20 years! They have become less and less attractive. No wonder most of them want to find a cool parking lot in the HR's lazy little world that remains under rocks, unnoticed for generations!

Some B-schools get you celebrity status, high class citizens, who feel offended when they are asked intriguing questions in the interview! They are people who create future, don't ask them what they did in the past and how meaningful was that for their customer. One such Director-HR at a pharma MNC, shared his trophy that he got as a finalist from his company for playing a change-agent! The trophy had his name mentioned wrongly. It was written in reverse order. If I asked you, have you heard of a movie star called Gaurav Kumar, would you be able to find any? No. But what if I asked you, "Kumar Gaurav"! Oh, the "love story" movie guy! You got it.

People hired from XLRI, TISS, other top tier B schools of HR in India, often get placed into Talent Management, OD, Learning, Change Management, Capability building and other sexy (sounding) HR projects. If you placed them in Talent Acquisition (recruiting), they get depressed! Their elite community considers them, out-caste!

Folks from tier 2 colleges and many of you may agree, mostly got hired to begin with screening resumes and lining up and interviewing (checkbox interview screening) junior folks! 

Hiring is such a critical discipline and it needs schooling! We created varsities in companies but never thought about recruiters, who were keeping an eye on talent and ears on every talent discussion! Grooming them is a commando training! Does any company have even a capsule of such programs that cuts at the key skills, tech trends, business cases, talent analytics, the hot beds and talent-choice quotients? How much time and money do we invest in creating a hiring garrison? We can't be mercenary and expect to win a talent war and guard them too!

I personally believe recruiters/TA guys are seriously neglected! Just don't wash your hands by training them on tools to hire! ATS, LinkedIn, belong.co, etc! Help them rise intellectually too. In absence of which they are treated like call center agents!

No wonder we see, recruiting function being managed by the average of the better lots. Overall results? Lack of knowledge and sensitivity for; company's EVP, its brand value, its prestige quotient, etc,. Candidates treat them dime a dozen callers.

Observed behaviors of such recruiters? Poor communication, arrogance, poor vendor and candidate management due to poor knowledge on hiring, subject matter and thus making hiring a labor-market activity! Thus getting to interview chore and hire the desperate ones, the liked-ones and most often than not, the signature-below-average employee! Wollah! Welcome hiring Ninjas, off to the photo shoot for social professional media as the guardians of the coveted 'talent world'! They claim they have demystified hiring!

When quality of resume goes down and the recruiters including the Directors till schedulers get sound advise from hiring managers. What they do next, they go to LinkedIn and write an update, "Looking for recruitment firms, please share your company profile at this email ID....". End of it. This I saw a TISSin from medical device MNC writing on LinkedIn. This is flea market approach to hiring and vendor identification. There is no set standard for MNC in such matters is disappointing.

There is no difference in approaching the best hiring firms than approaching the best talent! 

Naturally, who will respond? Those who by any chance look at this update and seem interested. 

JDs posted/pasted mostly are a ritual, put this on IIM Jobs, copy-paste/link it to LinkedIn and you get applications, look at applications, apply minimum common sense and send them to hiring managers, start interviewing parade and offer someone!

Is this the way talent is mapped, calibrated and invited-integrated to the organisations, aspiring to be the world leaders? Is this the expectation from the recruiters (of all levels from VPs till sourcers)? Is this what you pay millions for?

I have found HR folks/Recruitment folks/Managers and all more of a bottleneck in hiring than facilitators, because they block the communication channel between a recruitment partner and the hiring manger. 

When I asked to speak to the hiring mangers directly, it was considered outrageous by the HR person, who manages the hiring function. And when some good HR/Recruiting folks allowed me to talk to /facilitated my talks with the hiring manager, I found huge difference in the amount of information that was given earlier and were hidden, some very critical for search! Some information given earlier by the Recruitment Manager and HR Managers were wrong! 

The best way to hiring top talent is to work with the best set of recruiters (Recruiting partners) and allow them to directly talk to the hiring manager! They do not need middle-men, who mostly harass them! 

How to hire the best recruiting partner?

Spend time, have patience, research and INTERVIEW them! Invite the shortlisted to meet your leaders and get one more open interview at your workplace!

How many of you do it as a process which is documented?

Most of you manage old time relations-comfort level based recruiting partners! The same mind set goes for employees and you expect change? Wonder why it is not happening?

How much time have you spent training and developing and evaluating and rewarding your talent partner firm?

What have you done which was in your written plan? 

You do not care who is selling your position and how? It's your brand and you care less!

It is that exciting success-based game! This process is largely exploitative and creates more looser than winners!

Most of the business in recruiting is success-based (which means lottery despite your best efforts). It is a lose-gain scenario when multiple recruiting partners work on the same position, mostly. Lose for the set of recruiting partners and gain for the recruitment manager (who has his life cool, as he has resumes and interviewers are not cribbing) . Gain for the company as they get to see many folks and hire who fits their bill. Fits the bills is a big deal-maker! Better you know the hiring manager and your chances of success are higher. Working only through company recruiting folks is no less than shooting in the dark. Large number of recruiting partner companies have been exploited, frustrated into the process. It is a brutal-cruel game of success-based relationship with company. 

What matters to recruiter is resume and good resume and if your resume are not good (most of the time it means not fit for them) you just get to hear one word. "REJECTED". Why? If you dare ask, Answer is "You and not getting the JD". "We are not here to train you in sourcing"? Arrogance, thy name is corporate recruiter (not all but majority are like that). 

Hardly any in corporate recruitment hierarchy ever thinks of developing best recruitment partners? Why? They do not know how to do that and they do not have time for such things! They will call 10 recruitment firms and BOOM, here you have loads of resumes to screen through! It is a WHOLESALE market and not WHOLESOME business! 

And in all this process, you said, "employer branding"? What crap! They are for the time, when company has decided about the EVP! In last 30 years, they could not find one, in next 10 years, they may write one? 

Some smart HR guy will write it, in lines with Google, Netflix, etc irrespective their leaders and people would never know, "Are we really like Google and Netflix? OMG. Why did you not tell this earlier?

How to exploit the talent partnering firm?

No one knows this better than the corporate recruitment folks at most places. Many are exceptions and they do great work. Thanks to their leaders and culture. Leaders who have Right education and have not grown just in title but in real capability! 

Here I suggest a different way-

Give them a crisp JD, get them to interview the hiring mangers, ask them to articulate their search strategy and give them measures of success.

List the firms you want folks to come from, with set of projects and experiences and structures and kind of success stories besides the essential facts of education. Ask them to share search report on top 5 candidates and present to hiring manager on the given matrix of search: Company, Role-KPIs, expanse and key co-ordinates, Reporting and reports, Critical Experiences, success stories and then answers to "interest in the current role". What 5 key questions he had to dig more about the role and success factors around the role/position? What 3 big/medium/small concerns he has about the role, factors around it. Answer from the search/talent partner for "what will make him more interested in the role and how to intrigue him into the role". What shall hiring company discuss, ask and engage in terms of "current, challenges, excitement and future of the role"

Ask in the report the comp benchmark details from similar jobs in similar companies.

Hire search partners who can give you the expected. Big names and MNC are good to tag with and compare how they fare against some firm who is passionate about your company!

 Hiring needs to be liberated from the shackles of unfit-recruiters!(again all in recruiting from top to bottom!) 

Have feedback, comments, anything? Write your valuable comments for the community!

Bitcoins of ''THE HR'' awards!

 HR awards are crucial marketing strategy tools! HR magazines, Assessment companies, other consulting companies have mined and minted this Bitcoin very well! @people matters, now @jombay (Jan 17th Mumbai), @SHRM, @DDI etc have all played it well to the HR gallery! Great job by all these players in making HR a boardroom discussion topic!

R&R matters and matters much more to the deprived sections like HR, the much critiqued function. People like @Ram Charan and now @Vinit Nayar with @Richard Rekhy pronounced its demise by 2020. Awards may save this function, at-least this is what the Kodak Moment of HR may be believing in! 

The Oscar of HR awards as the compere and some mafia HR leaders on stage on People Matters AYIL 2017 award show called these awards for Emerging HR Leaders below the age of 35 yrs. Leaders on and off stage took pride in calling themselves HR mafia! Welcome @Godfathers! You truly deserve seats in the Khap panchayats now!

This year 13 jury members (only 3 women) selected 11 winners and 9 are women! Interestingly none of the winners come from any company that jury members represent! Is that a rule or real outcome People Matters?

In last 6 years of People Matters AYIL awards number of winners have fallen consistently each year from 35 to 11 this year. Does this mean, we have poorer lots falling into HR function? When jury members are the same as Dwarkanath mentioned during the show, selection bar too must have been consistent. There are mix of MBAs from top tier to MSW graduates in the list. Some with 3 years of experience and some with 14 years plus got recognized as Emerging Leader. One MSW took 14 years to get where top tier folks reached in 3 to 4 years! Some presenters called the 9:2 winner ratio an outcome of @building-diversity? In other words can we call this a forced-selection or simply gender-based reservation?


(Artificial) Emotional Intelligence and all the fuss about IQ and EQ!

If humans can teach machines to think and act like them, why not humans be behaving the way they think they should rather than they would? Is this AI thing not a creative intelligence to behave the way, that are manipulated and fixed?

Even if we can't act any behavior for long, we can at-least beat it at that personality test, right?

I was reading a blog post by an accomplished ex-Chief Learning Officer of Wipro technologies, and I was very amused to see the pertinent question that was asked by the author on whether university hires should get tested on Emotional Intelligence, also called EQ (emotional quotient).

I have been wondering on the efficacy of the personality or trait-based tests, the psychometric tests as they are called, and being advocated for decades now.

What are these psychometric tests? Are they not the questions that an interviewer can ask face to face and read emotions, watch for body language, observe anxiety or feel enthusiasm, discomfort or excitement in her voice levels, quality dichotomies, facial expressions, including frustrations?

Can you read all this on a paper pen test or an online test? Answer is No. Not possible! 

Another wonder is the use of objective (MCQ) tests that most of these tests are they give pre-set options to select and many a times, a candidate is forced to make a choice, out of the given choices, even when the candidate finds them lousy or inappropriate or completely off-track. Is that not a joke? DiSC has options of words that asks you to select one of the four words that is most like you and one, the least like you. Is that not setting up someone for a trap?

Will you select these most like you and least like you in all situations? Funnier than that, you find many of those words so alien to your everyday use of vocabulary :). They are weird besides being unfamiliar.

Will your choices not vary when you deal with different situations or circumstances? Would the evaluator or test analysis ever know what situation you were thinking when you selected the most like you and least like you, options? 

Can they read candidate's mind for each option? Let's not joke with people. I suggest, you need a psychologist or trained psychoanalysts in the interview panel who can analyze the real time reactions, behavior under given situations and then do a fair analysis and reporting. Selective assessment will not help, based on only one episodic data of this test of 30 mins. Where is holistic data to know someone's personality? 

Similarly, EQ is considered as new science of being socially able and liked. It is an art of knowing self-emotions, other's emotions, and make a better level of mental and social cohesion. This is not a skill or competency like IQ. But certainly, good acting skill! IQ is knowledge-based competency measure and has application of basic sciences to get a correct answer to a question. 

In EQ, you do not have a correct or incorrect answer. It is situation based and you get full marks for being a good actor, who has nerves but can hide it like an ostrich! 



I am against comparing IQ and EQ. They are two very different things and have no comparison. Though there has been serious comparison being made and statements have been made like, "IQ gets you a job but EQ makes you successful." Ask all those people who have hundreds of patents in their name and tell them that that it is not their IQ, it is their EQ that has made them successful and celebrated. EQ is a social skill and behavior science that helps understand others emotions and leverage that to make a good relational value on results. EQ is not manipulation of behavior, where, if any actor asks me, who is my favorite actor and I tell his name and I do the same for all 10 actors who asked me the same question. I may earn a smile and a hug and a little favor from them but is this an accepted EQ in a professional work set-up?

Think of a situation: Your boss is furious and asks you for why the report is late this week by 3 days? Would you answer him with the right reason or look at how angry he is, you would change your answer?

If you give a non-conflicting and placating answer, which maybe partly true, is your behavior professional or integral?

Let's believe in people, face them! Do dialogue live with them! See though them live, their values, beliefs, fear, anxiety, confidence, etc. Seeing is believing, knowing the artificial way may be a self-fulfilling prophesy!

Family Schema and design of life outcomes or mere coincidence: A family design case in perspective.

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