People want to change. If only.....!!

Everyone wants to progress, wants to be better and if one wants to be better, then logically one wants to change to become better. All rational human beings change if they see the reason and benefit in it. Simon Sinek in his path breaking discovery has shared with us the secret of world class marketing and it a single word “Why”, if we share “Why” with people, they are willing to listen and ultimately change.

In the past one year, the organisations I have touched more or less do not want to spend time on sharing the reason or “Why” of change, but are more than willing to spend million of rupees on deciding “What” to change and “How” to change. They want to share the new direction, strategy and plans with people and expect them to follow the same quickly, often wondering as to why others can not see the reason for change as clearly as they can. We miss the point, as management we have spent countless days to look at scenarios, mull them in our heads over and over, looked at various perspectives, spent may be 2-3 months to arrive at that crisp 1 pager explaining the strategy and plan. We are clear and our mind fails to believe that others can not see what we are able to see, ‘it is not possible’ we think and yet others are not able to see things the way we are seeing, it is all very ‘perplexing’ is  what we think. We fail to communicate the “Why”, the more we want to explain “What” the more people want to know the “Why”, the forces are acting against one another and since we are “in” the situation, we fail to see “Why”.

I have experienced the magic of people willing to walk the hard path with you provided you make them your partner in the hard path (and explain the “Why”). Please do not pretend that you are leading  but  walk shoulder to shoulder with them.

Often management  does not explain the “Why” of change and expect people to walk along, they will, but the minute something catches their fancy or they find the path Hard, they will slip and walk off. Most of us in top management think it is a waste of time to align people to the “Why”, we think it is the job of management to think and provide direction and job of employees to follow. We can not be farther from reality, employees are rationale beings, explaining your rationale helps people appreciate your point of view and once they see what you see, they understand and then they trust. Once trust builds, one can move mountains, literally.

Next time you want to start that change effort in your company, start with the “Why” and be amazed with how quickly things gain momentum.

Business & Talent Strategy

How come you have the best consultants in the world working on your business strategy and mediocre ones implementing it ? There is something incredibly wrong here, you put the best brain to create a super product and let mediocre talent ruin it, I am sure you have thought through the last detail of the strategy while you go out with that hot product. The talent question begs the best answer in the world but we repeatedly give mediocre ones.

Why are your best brains not working on creating your talent strategy, we hear the chant 'people are our greatest assets' over and over, and we see ourselves failing on doing the best for the talent strategy over and over. The best brains are reserved for numbers and not people.

If we want a differentiated business strategy, we have to start with the people who are going to implement it. We have to create business differentiation through our talent strategy. We have to make talent strategy as relevant as our business strategy, give it the same time in the board room as the business strategy, give it the same analytical and multidimensional approach as we give to our business strategy, put our best people behind it to create the superlative, non replicable competitive edge.

Otherwise the best business strategy will remain the best business strategy of the boardroom.

What can an Year teach you

What can an year teach you, well a lot, if you do not get your ego into it.

It can teach you to listen once again, it can teach you the value of customer centricity, it teaches you to be humble ( in punjabi they say, ' hor vee neevan ho fakira'),it teaches you to take relationships deeper, it teaches you trust and mistrust, it teaches you to believe in luck and serendipity, it teaches you to be patient, it teaches you love once again, it teaches you pain, it teaches you disappointment, it teaches  you self belief, it teaches you to be your own person, it teaches you righteousness, it teaches you to master your game, it teaches you to be in the game; you got to learn to play it all over, it teaches you that bread is sweeter when earned with your two hands and your mind power, it teaches you the joy of creation and putting your signatures on your pieces, it teaches you confidence, it teaches you courage, it puts you back in touch with you, it teaches you to look I the eye of the world and stare back, it teaches you to be scared and bold at the same time, it teaches you anguish and frustration, it teaches you dependence and independent in he same breath, it teaches you depth and sincerity, it teaches you to be honest with yourself, it teaches you the value of time and money lest you forgot it, it teaches you that everything is transient yet everlasting.

An year teaches you many things provided you are ready to listen and hungry. An year can teach you the value of nothing and everything, an year teaches you to be grateful, it teaches you that the life boats ate useless if you want to swim in the ocean but are necessary to carry because they keep you at peace, an year teaches you to take things lightly and move on, an year teaches you to be yourself no matter what. An year teaches you to relish it. And what it has given you, it teaches you to understand others as you have never done before, it teaches you the reason for being in the team and yet standing alone, it teaches you to be smart and assertive, it teaches you that angst is useless and patience is priceless, it teaches you that you are here for a certain time and time is fair to all, it teaches you to be on the lookout for opportunity and fall, it teaches you to be devoted yet a rock.
 

An year can teach you that it can go very fast while seeming to be very long,  it can teach you to bring yourself to closure, it can teach you to open yourself to things you never thought are possible. It can teach you that emotions rule humans and business is personal at the end of the day whatever one may say.

 

Talent Retetion - Hard work for Bosses

One of the most important skills a business manager had to learn in the first decade of 2000 was Retention of employees. This skill was not too much prevalent in India till the year 2000. People stayed in jobs for decades in all the three sectors; Govt. , public and private. Though the lifelong employment contracts were not prevalent in their entirety, employees still stayed for a reasonable long period of time in a job, 3 – 5 years was the generally acceptable norm in the private sector.

All this changed as the various industrial sectors were deregulated and opened up. Movement of talent across industry became a norm. If you were still in traditional sectors of manufacturing / FMCG and had not hopped on to the bandwagon of IT, telecom, financial services, Banking, BPO or insurance, you were considered fuddy-duddy and not the ‘in’ crowd. You seem to be still content with your 10-15 % salary increases every year and marginal bonuses with missing stock plans. The new sectors lured you with bumped up fixed salaries, huge variable and wealth creation options of stock plans. Campus recruitment changed its flavour with the new sectors dominating the first day hiring in B schools instead of the traditional FMCG. It became impossible to contain the move of bright talent into the new sectors. Few who were successful to retain their teams did it more because of personal style and less of organisational support.

This blog entry is related to the efforts of managers who still went out and did their best to retain their team while their hands were tied behind their backs. I wanted to touch upon such skills and tactics, these I learnt from my street smart business managers, I can vouch for this that together we contained the exodus at many levels by as much as 60-70%. The trick lies in team work between HR and Line, yes that is the simple secret of retaining your talent. Most of the times HR & Line are wanting to prove their own hypothesis and opinions about; the company, individual concerned, boss concerned, HR deptt, HR policies, compensation  and culture. The agendas involved are more personal than organisational. You truly have to rise above to keep the organisation purpose in mind and it is difficult. You have to curb your ego a lot in this kind of effort.

Let us start with the beginning, the employee comes to her manager and says she would like to thank the organisation for all that it has done for her but sees that the stint has borne fruit and would like to move to better opportunity. She talks about the great time she has had here and all the things she has learnt, she evades the topic of “why” is she leaving. She talks about the date of relieving and handing over. The manager in most cases is stunned as this is a surprise item for her and she has not seen this coming (pause, has this happened to you?, what was the state of your relationship with her?). The first reaction is anger, how can she do this to me, this is not acceptable, I have loads of work on my head and this is not right. She is unfair to me, coming like this and dropping this bomb on me. I would not let her go, simultaneously a lot of thoughts are running, how will this affect other team members, what will HR say, what will my boss say, what will my colleagues say.  Let me try to talk to her, who should I inform first, has she already told some of her colleagues, how will we manage the situation, is the information out, where is she going, how much is she getting there.  As you are going through these thoughts, you also start thinking about, what could have triggered this, has some of my comments, behaviour in the past led to this. What has gone wrong? 

Let us be honest, your first thoughts are not about her or the loss to the organisation, work, they are about saving yourself first. Your amygdale has kicked in and you do not even know yet, fight or flight reactions take over and cloud your judgement, you have lost your peace for the time being. You are reacting to the situation. You may lose your cool since there are 3 deadlines looming over and she is the one who is to deliver on these. You are seething inside because of the betrayal but you can not show it.

Here are some tips to handle this situation:

•  Take a deep breath and think about it as a normal day to day situation
• Do not let the frustration and anxiety come to your face
• Be aware of what is happening to you and get into the mode of responding logically instead of emotionally
•  Think of the last emotional conversation you had with the person and the triggers she had mentioned to you about keeping her unhappy (we will have to build on these to retain her)
• Buy out sometime to think through this, do not accept the resignation immediately even on mail. Write back to her that we have to think through this and you would not like to respond on the same.
•  Inform your HR colleague and your Boss immediately
• Start thinking of the Plan B for this critical resource while you start getting ready to retain her.
• Set up a face to face meeting after thinking through both the emotional and rational factors of retaining her with you.

·         Discuss your strategy with your Boss before meeting the employee

• Set up a meeting where you are in control and not the subordinate
• Discussions in the meeting:
• Let her open up and speak her mind to you. She will generally be deflecting the real topic of exit.
• Gently keep on probing till you understand the core of the issue.
• Once you have understood the real reason of dissatisfaction, ask what will it take to keep her in the company/ hold her back.
• Generate 2-3 alternatives
• Get ready for another round of discussions
• Set up meeting with upto 2 levels higher to retain

·    Retaining this talent is far easier than hiring a fresh one and training her to deliver what the current incumbent is delivering.

Once she has said yes to being in the organisation, a lot of damage has to be contained, between both of you, you have to think through all the answers both of you will be providing the eco-system around you. You will have to have answers for your subordinates, other colleagues as to how have you held her back since the curiosity will lead to a lot of rumours and aspersions. Find a proactive way to contain it.

Retaining Talent is hard work, real emotional and rational drain. Sometimes you will feel that it is a waste of an effort and why should you spend so much time in retaining this person and thought of giving up in between will cross your mind. Banish these thoughts and keep at it, when the talent is retained the fruits of labour are very sweet indeed.  You would have built a stronger relationship with the person in the process. You have saved a lot of cost for the company and improved its productivity.

Amen!

Checklist for Changing Jobs

Last Friday I got a call from one of my old acquaintance who wanted to meet me for a discussion.  I make it a point to keep on meeting people almost 3-4 meetings a week whereby it is not about my agenda but their. We planned to meet up on Saturday morning for a coffee. The discussion came around to changing jobs. It struck me that whenever one is at a critical point in one’s life and career most of are seeking advice from people who have been through more and can share their experience with us.  I have been doing it for the past 20 years and have always come out richer through these meetings. This blog’s genesis was this discussion.

Most of us change jobs at least 6-8 times in our career of 35 years, though the latest data says that today’s generation will have changed jobs at least 10-14 times by the time they are 38. 1 in 4 people are leaving their current employers in the first year itself. It becomes imperative that we build our skills of looking for the right place to work to lead a happy life. A great “Fit” in the job gives satisfaction to the employee and improved productivity to the employer. Here are the few prioritised checks you need to do before you sign on the dotted line :

•  Look up your prospective boss on Linked in (that is an easy one but many of us miss it, check for any recommendations from his earlier sub-ordinates)
• Look up our prospective colleagues on Linked in (now how many of us do that?)
•  Pick up the phone and call their salesperson to sell the product to you ( you will know many things about the culture and the product)
• Walk into an office of the prospective employer  and feel the energy ( Ya! Ya! It matters and also it is more that touchy, feely, it will give you an idea of your fitment into the culture), ask to meet the Branch Incharge
• Speak to at least 3 ex employees of the company and listen to their unsaid feelings
• Speak to the earlier incumbent , if possible ( he will be easy to track through Linkedin)
• Look up the latest news and the latest numbers on internet
• Challenge the HR guys to share with you the performance management  system, their HR policies
• Have lunch in their  cafeteria
• Pick up the this/last year goals of the erstwhile incumbent (it will give you an idea of how tough/easy the job is, much more than what everyone has been sharing verbally with you)
• Ask for every promise being made on the compensation aspect (especially the variable component’s dependency vectors and last year payout methodology and actual monies paid out )
• Answer few questions for yourself:

o   Does this job fit into my long term LIFE Plan?

o   Where will this job lead me to?

o   Will it make me happy on a day to day basis?

o   Will I be proud of my association with this organisation?

o   Will it make my family happy?

Happy signing on the dotted line!!

Building Competencies through Experience Maps

  

Many HR Heads are struggling with the answer to providing career paths to employees. Employees who are hi—pos (sorry for the terminology with which many may disagree) want to see clear direction and something they can look forward to stay in the company. Most of them behave like mercenaries, extremely good in performance and showing a lot of potential but for their wares they demand promotions and nothing less. Promotion for everyone I n corporate world automatically means better designation, bigger car, higher bonus and more money, lastly the respect they get from their colleagues and sub-ordinates. If you do not provide the path or promotions, they are very happy to knock on the next door where a higher designation is available. This round robin continues and puts us in a big dilemma of buying or building talent. Depending on the organization hunger, need and the phase most managers take call suiting the situation. Most of us generally agree that we would like to build our own talent but give opportunities to employees from outside to take on higher positions paying lip service to building Talent.

In case we want to build talent we have to take a slightly organized and longer path, this pays in the long term, we all know that from our own experience. Most of the HR Heads struggle to build a great career path for the employees, we build great presentation(s) on the number of years taken for one to move designations but few would map out the experience we should gain to move to the job role. If we have personal mentors they normally guide through the games of snakes and ladders for us to know the right path to our ultimate destination. It is a known fact now that to build competencies we have to have particular kind of skills, knowledge and behavior but these have not been mapped out for various job roles in a company.

 

Would it not be wonderful if some of those paths are simply put together by the organization and shared with larger audience so that they can know what they can do to get the next job, having gone through particular kind of experiences. Let us take an example of Director – HR, if one was to know that to become Director – HR in a FMCG company, she must have managed IR experiences at the manufacturing location, should have experienced one Long Term Settlement, one full year of experienced manufacturing cycles, been a part of new initiatives of TPM, Lean management or other production techniques, run the welfare and other programs for workmen, experienced participation in Union – Management committees and taken tough decisions of convincing Union Leaders on an item of contention then a lot of resistance from Management Trainees to go to a plant would be overcome . A clear experience map will ensure that management sees the person in various kind of situations to make up their mind on which edges of this diamond need more polishing to decide on the development journey. I am sure we can all draw out similar maps for our functions, it is not a difficult task. Marc from Talent Management Group and self have been talking and working on these for a while. It takes time and thinking through, it is a lot of hard work, alignment and agreements on future capabilities but in the end it is worth it.

The experience maps can make our job a lot easier as managers. We can have easy dialogues around next job and promotions, a clear indicative path with experience map laid out can determine for us the next set of experience our subordinates must take to vie for our job.

Talent Supply Chain – Make or Buy

The toughest decision facing HR Leaders across the country today is in the area of Talent Supply Chain. I have had the fortune of meeting with 18 of them in the past week across the cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore alongwith my partner, Marc Effron. Marc leads the Talent Strategy Group based out of NYC (www.talentstrategygroup.com)

The future of corporate success is clearly dependent on kind of persons you are able to horde within your corporate walls. Like the past era of licenses in India and ability of business houses to garner as many of them form the Govt as possible, the same simile can be applied to hording of Human Capital in a corporate.

Invariably all HR Heads are trying to find the best way around Talent Supply Chain. Critical decisions needs to be taken in light of the organisational cycles. If you are in growth scenario, the requirement of talent is completely different than the downsizing scenario. If industry is facing recession, would you like to build a bench? Is there merit in hiring from the campus or should you go for experienced hands? How much of your organisation’s bandwidth can you spare for building future pipeline? Should you pay 50% more than the market and get the best talent available for your industry?

HR Heads have to become better at this science, they have to learn news ways and tricks to manage this. Till now most of the HR heads have been managing these questions out of guts, experience and helping hand of business. Future will see them becoming more scientific about this.

The problem is not limited to private sector, public sector is going to see a mass retirement of both the top and middle management in the next few years. There is no guarantee that they will be able to fill this experience gap and give efficient service to customers. There is also no guarantee that these institutions will be able to exist if there are no capable employees to manage them profitably in the future.

Marc Effron in his book One Page Talent Management (OPTM) has thrown light on how to build and operate this factory. His approach to talent is like building a product: know the specifications, choose the raw material carefully and churn them through the process. Just like any factory does, you should be able to do this efficiently with each new cycle of production. There is no simpler way to do this.

Strategic decisions for corporates that will determine profitability in the next few years will revolve around managing the talent supply chain. The question of make or buy which happens in any production process will have to be answered by each company separately. The decision will not only include the HR head but the CEO, CFO and the Chief of Strategy.  The question can not be answered by the Head of HR alone, it is too critical for the growth of business.