Follow Up

Follow up

If there was one thing which distinguishes great managers from good, in my opinion, it will be ‘Follow up’. There are many ways to distinguish between the two but ‘Follow up’ is an essential ingredient in the success formula to be a ‘Great’ manager. This is the distinguishing quality because it does not come naturally to us. This has to be consciously developed, thought about, kept in mind and the quicker we learn about this, the faster we climb the ladder of success in corporate.

All of us are daily dealing with our colleagues/subordinates making promises to complete assignments, or help us with certain jobs. We have a plethora of things on our calendar to finish, we have meetings to go to, we have clients to meet, we have jobs to complete, we have deadlines to meet and we have reviews to finish....the list is endless. When we complete the mindless act of round robin, we realise that some of things said in the last meeting have not moved an inch, the client meetings were fantastically good and we felt nice but we have not sent her the requested information and we also have not followed up on the proposal, we completed 95% of the job 5% is still remaining and the critical approval has not yet come in. We finished the review with the subordinate and agreed on a set of things to be done and both of us were just silent on the same till a quarter passed. The developmental promises made between us have not been fulfilled.

“Follow up” is an essential ingredient of our success framework. We need to make sure that if need to move to the next level then we need to follow up. We need to make sure that we get things done, execute flawlessly. We need to follow up with everyone else and we have to “Follow up” with ourselves. We keep on making false promises to ourselves. It is easiest to postpone things which no one knows about. Make sure to "Follow up" with yourselves.

It is that time of the Year – Performance Management , Tips for the Boss

I promised I will be back with the tips for the Boss.

Over the past 2 decades of personally engaging in performance appraisals as a Boss, I have gathered few tips, these tips will make the appraisal discussion a lot easier on you as a Boss. I am sure you can relate to them and see both the sides (specially if you have read my earlier blog on the subject). 

Here are the tips for you as a Boss:

• Empathise...this is the single skill you need to have/learn to be the STAR in performance appraisal meetings
• Prepare and conduct  2 different meetings for the appraisal discussion, yes, 2 meetings for 1 subordinate; 1^st one for listening (no interruptions from your side and a wonderful opportunity for subordinate to present) and 2^nd one for sharing your observations, feelings and data...give constructive and not destructive feedback
• Gather data about your subordinate from his colleagues & customer (make it clear to the subordinate that you will be doing this). Data thus gathered is objective and has multiple perspectives and hence more acceptable
• Share Feeling s about the performance and the year (separately) & qualify these feelings, talk about your feelings, share your perspective(s) with out either being defensive or aggressive
• Summarise and headline subordinate’s strengths, spend considerable time on what you like about the person more that about his development areas
• Be crisp about the development area – help her see it through your eyes
• Be prepared for awkward situations and do not be surprised at the reactions on development areas, many times the person can not see it and this is a blind spot
• If you have the same subordinate for several years, do take care not to be repetitive, if you do not anything new to share...just share progress over last year and if subordinate has done some special efforts to overcome a development area...share your appreciation
• Share Progress over last year’s development plan & talk about it
• Do not share your rating in the first meeting, listening gives you better time to prepare for the 2^nd meeting where you can share the rating and the process to a rrive at it
• Share specific agreements  and disagreements on the KRAs and be specific for each KRA rather than being generic about the performance
• Show the path to development (please bounce off with HR before the meeting) with specific commitment from your side and gain one from her side
• Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen................................
• Gather & Present Data
• Above all “Be Fair”, even in the most trying circumstances ( you will sleep well at night)
• Subordinates will remember “How” you treat them for the rest of their lives
• Empathise

Happy Reviews!!

It is that time of the Year – Performance Management

Most managers I know dread this time of the year because it is time to review performance,  give feedback, take feedback and decide on bonuses & increments (this should not be that bad!).

The outcome (bonus/increment ) is pleasurable but the process; to be fair, transparent and judgmental to another human being, specially the ones who we see 8 hours of the day is not easy. Switching to an objective hat does not come naturally and many of us keep on postponing this crucial work till the last moment. When there is no choice and the last date is approaching (complete the inevitable), we sit down, try to remember vague details from the year gone by  and conjure up ratings basis recent memories (not all but most of us do follow this process).

I know I have been a little harsher than I should be but believe me that even the objective journalists, clinical doctors, surgeons, CEOs, lawyers & just about everyone shies away from this task. Corporate managers hate and abhor it.

Wouldn’t  it be nice if someone made the whole process easier  with a magic wand. The hard process should somehow disappear and the easy part of rewarding  simply happen. Alas!

Over the past 2 decades of personally engaging in this exercise, I have gathered few tips as a subordinate, these tips will make the appraisal task easier for your boss:

•  Gather & Present  Data
•  Share Feelings about the performance and the year (separately) & qualify these  feelings
• Summarise and headline your achievements (on top of your appraisal form, attach a separate sheet) 
• Be modest (supervisors hate it when you come with a chip on your shoulder)
• Show Progress over last year’s development plan & talk about it 
• Do not inflate your ratings, remember your boss is someone’s subordinate (& knows the same tricks) 
• Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen, Listen................................ 
• Gather & Present Data

I am sure you want a great appraisal rating and excellent feedback, take the initiative and write your appraisal with passion, sincerity and dedication (do not forget the data!!). 

Your boss is bound to notice it and be fair in return. Fair rating is a great rating, it will genuinely help you move up in your life.

I will be writing tips for the bosses in the next blog !!

Happy Reviews!!

2012 - Trendspotting in HR

2012 is going to be another year of adjusting, giving up familiar terrain and adapting to the new. The economy has a mind of its own and keeps on acting like a twirling river. The predictions for the year are all out now and strangely nobody seems to know  which direction are we heading in. It becomes very difficult to say what the large trends for HR in 2012 will be or whether we will survive the Mayan predictions.

There is certainty that HR will be in forefront of business whether we are laying off or whether we are hiring (baked) talent. HR has become the new all pervasive function,  any CEO who wants to stay ahead in race will have to learn this new skill, partner consciously and deliberately with HR. HR function which largely stayed in the background is suddenly under spotlight.

HR Head(s) will have to learn new skills of managing the up and downturns of a twirling economy and getting out of the stability mindset, they have been used to all these years. Agility and managing ambiguity are the competencies one will have to add to the quiver. There will be little difference between the Business leaders and HR leaders, the gap needed to run a function effectively has been narrowing down over the years and will further reduce this year. More HR leaders will start their transitions into Business roles,  few of them will leave their functions to take on fresh roles and some of them will add more functions to their portfolio. Many of the current HR heads who are scared to make the transition will have to let go of their chances of promotion and value addition to the business.

Another area which will get impacted in 2012 is coaching. The current unregulated and non standardised infant industry (in India) of coaching might see more clients asking for credentials before engaging in the process. Early signs of certification in the (Indian Coaching) industry might start seeing the light of the day and ask for credentials of self claimed coaches .

Engaging with a younger, short attention span and multitasking workforce will call for different bag of tricks. It may mean more communication through social networking tools, using twitter, facebook and  blogging  for company communication and networking. HR Heads will have to get familiar with latest  technology and make sure that their management team also familiarises itself with the same. This will be essential for leaders of future and might start getting added to the management leadership competency list.

Compensation will be under stress as businesses reel under the pressures of economy and the nature of compensation will move to more variability and pay for performance schemes.  Fixed increases will move from double digit to single digit numbers in India.

HR Analytics will start playing a major role in defining the new dimension of decision making in the HR function. Buying/Leasing latest technology to effectively use this technology for business decisioning will see increased usage with many companies especially in the service industry,

Discretionary effort of the employees will be under pressure and hygiene level engagement will keep average performers in the company while high performers will be on the lookout for better opportunities...not a bad time for companies looking for talent. 

Highly competitive job market will see a war only for high performing talent, very different from the earlier years.

An interesting, adventurous and pressure cooker year in the offing which will bake the talent...much needed....isn’t it?

Selling HR

Everybody sells something. Most of us in Human Resources think; it is the work of sales to sell. We often forget that in HR, we are selling the most difficult commodity to sell, "Ourselves". As Head of HR, we got to sell ourselves to the shareholders (representing employee), sell ourselves to employees (representing shareholders & our colleagues in management), sell ourselves to our direct reports to enlist them for the projects and committing to a excruciating deadlines.


A HR head we has multiple hats and in all of them he has to sell, yet most of us run away from this concept and the word. We think selling is a lowly job, well the US presidential candidates sell themselves to the public and if that is not the hottest job of the world, then  which is? For the hottest job of the world, the candidates go to great lengths to sell and sell hard.


HR has to learn the art of selling and who else but our dear friends in Sales can help us learn it. We got to see them and learn from them in their natural surroundings, we should accompany them on sales calls, work with them when they are selling targets to their teams (be cautious when they oversell the same and learn to avoid all the silly  mistakes they make while doing this). In turn barter your HR skills especially the ones about managing people with them, everybody wins at the end of the day.


Once you have learnt this beautiful art, you sell the Sales job to Sales employees, that to me is the Master Stroke. I remember in my last assignment I had to sell a Sales job with decreasing compensation to sales employees (if you joined at INR100 by the 3rd year your salary would be INR50), I greatly enjoyed it. It gave me a challenge which had never been encountered in India and we ran that model of compensation for 4 years in the company before stopping it. In those 4 years, I hired roughly 450 sales employees where by their fixed salary used to get swapped by variable and get reduced by 50% over a period of 3 years. It too guts to join such a job and such a company. I admire their courage and their self confidence to be in such a situation.


The toughest job in HR is to attract and select the perfect candidate for the job and we all know that their is no perfect candidate just like their is no perfect spouse...but we all believe that there is. Often enough it is HR who has to sell to the candidate the company, sell to the manager the candidate and in the end sell the best offer to the candidate to join. Still under the illusion that 'Selling' is not his job. 


Great HR heads are selling all the time; their company to the candidate, their proposals to board, their company and the manager to the exiting employee, themselves to anyone who attends the numerous training programs they run themselves.


Selling is inherent to HR, whether you like it or not........Learn to Sell.


The joke with my friends in Sales is that it is the HR person who sells you your job in a company, so who is to say who is better salesman!!

The only Constant

It has been a while that some quote got me thinking, my brother in law said to me "the only constant is the human behaviour". Well it is an oxymoron statement, when we keep on saying in the corporate that the only constant is change...we never realise that whatever the circumstances...wherever in the world we are...whatever we might be doing or going through...humans react the same way to similar situations.

The human beings behave in the same way to the stimuli thrown their way...if you are sad you cry...if your boss shouted at you...you will be sad...if your boss praised you...you will be happy. Certain things remain in front of us and we never notice. It is perhaps the same with humans. Since we interact and are with each other so much that we never realise who we are, what motivates us and what will be our behaviour. Our brain keeps on labeling people and categorising them: teachers, politicians, doctors, indians, americans, europeans, african etc...we remain humans and we react the same way to same stimuli.

So what is the point...the point being that in corporates we need to pay more attention to humans than to anything else since in the changing circumstances we still know how can we get them to give their best since their behaviour is predictable. The only thing which is predictable in an unpredictbale world. The Manager has to play a far stronger role in understanding his team, their behaviour and whole being rather than the person who has come to work for you. This person comes with connections and these connections do not leave him...since he is physically in office does not mean he is not worried about  his family.... is not thinking about the evening program with his friends etc. If a manager knows people...he knows work...he knows productivity...he knows the key to the workplace. Many organisations and managers are not able to understand this reality and hence keep on grappling with issues which are superfacial and not able to go deep ever.

Even in the best of B schools they do not teach; how to handle humans, they do teach organisation behaviour, psycholgy etc but they never teach how to handle human beings, their emotions, their motivations, their moods and keep them engaged. Most of us learn by experience and is it not sad? Understanding humans is a learnable skill and we should strive to provide the same on the job/ in MBA or other places.

It makes imminent sense to learn to deal with the only constant when everything else is changing fast.
Isn' it?

A World without Steve!

The last 25 years from 1984 to 2011 have seen fundamental changes in the way the world operates. Steve made a dent in the universe and left. A boy of a single mother, a lad who left university education because it was a drain on his foster parents resources and a dreamer left this world. He showed us many traits of a human being who truly wants to make a difference. He left a legacy which will be remembered for a long time to come.

I have never seen/met him, I only heard him and was fortunate to see him live on internet while he unveiled iphone4. No other death, including the ones of near and dear ones has left a hole in the way his has. He truly showed that it is the mad ones who lead the sane ones and always will. I have seen many comparisons of his leadership style to others, to me he is more than a leader he was an inspirer. He was a poet and a plumber rolled into one.

In his brief journey on this earth he played his part well and with integrity. He will continue to inspire me and egg me on to do my bit in building a better world. I will try to make a nick in the universe, Steve!