Full Proof!

I was having a brief conversation with a friend of mine and we were talking on the careers and life! Suddenly, the thought came if there a way to fool proofing your career? Very relevant question surrounding us specially when you cross 35 -40 and there is some mid-life crises which is mostly on the way to this journey of life! Nonetheless, still with persistent hope we try to do our best and navigate into new areas, with new people around and new assignments. There is no fool proofing as a concept when it comes to careers and life, both needs to be looked simultaneously as each journey has new expectations and uncertainty attached to it. Even Apple gives you warrantee not guarantee!

Specially, when it comes to careers, I have seen people growing fast and stopping after a point in time. Seen people who moved slow but are doing well where they are, seen those who moved out of corporate and now running a well established business and even those who were successful earlier have failed later miserably. There is no guarantee always to career! Its a flow which is on and we adjust to it. There are layoff happening in a particular sector in the last 6 quarters and even this year 40000 have been erased out of the books. No fault of them, companies may want to streamline the EBITDA/strategy need! If not done, the crises could be even more for many.

However, still all I can say with my experience, there are few things we can do and rest leave it to destiny!

• Keep Updating yourself – It is always better to move out of the comfort zone and keep updating your work standards to build the level of depth needed to run the potential next role. As they say someone can steal your things not the skills which can help you create them again. If today there is an external/internal challenge deeply impacting the company and can lead to serious calling, skills you have built can be a demand to some other company/industry. Hence continue to raise the bar in your work and bring a sense of achievement to you and teams and visualize the future needs to stay in.
• Right-Networking– It is an old way to get into a place where you know someone and that help gets you the ticket to enter. But for that you need to be also a potential prospect hence as said earlier, you need to raise the bar in work and excel. Keep connecting with relevant people rather than those 10k on some social site where it has no meaning for you! Networking is a skill again which depends on the intellect you bring on the table during that opportunity! Remember, those you want to network with may not always want to be in your network until they see that credibility in you which they believe is relevant to them! This goes the same for internal networking in the company! Keep reading, share the right kind of work and improve yourself 1% if not daily then monthly. 12% of betterment yearly is still beating the inflation and can get you the returns you need! Done with discipline compounding of networking of intellect is an amazing thing that can happen to you with this practice!
• Try new Industry/New role – Career are not full proof if you don’t grow in same company both in work and profile irrespective of number of years spent. In this VUCA and BANI environment, the scope is wide and vulnerability is even more. Its good to move industry and try new assignments in the functions you have worked and it will help you as talent to move places and would further engage you even better as the comfort zone is not there.
• Learn new skills – As the digital world is taking over everything, jobs currently looking more meaningful can be transactional as the audience and business models are changing at a fast pace. Hence try to learn new skills which you want to invest in future. This needs proper understanding of the work you want to pursue in future and also how much the company wants to support you in doing those kind of interventions which can add value too and can get the same for you as return.
• Be Easy to yourself- This is very important, people are too hard on themselves for many reasons! There are so many materialist desires which one entangles into and hence the pressure to stay into where they are is even more! People are doing jobs which may not be relevant to what there potential is and still they are stuck as too much expected here through self! One has to put a full stop somewhere to be more relevant to self. Like career there is a life to enjoy too! Hence our choices makes it even the more difficult to reach where we think we could be more relatable to self. Comparison of one career with another peer is not always a great thing to do. Each one has its own path and hence be high on aspirations not desires to stay focused. Self reflection is the key here!

There could be many other ways to secure your careers but still you will continue to experience your own set of high and lows! What is important is that one must accept this fact that one day still will come to us when the pen shall be kept down. So stay relevant with the opportunities which come your way and create memories for self and those who will cross the paths!

Happy reading and share your thoughts!

Prevention is better than Cure!

The famous quote we all heard! In our eating habits we easily identify and say what is not good for the health and can take precautions if disciplined to do it! In a similar manner this is very much relatable in the work, in our behaviors’, in our approach to deal with various projects coming our way and more importantly setting us to prepare well for many things!

In my experience nearing 2 decades and working with various set of leaders’, their teams specially high performing ones’ some of the things I learnt and wanted to share while scribbling my thoughts here which can be helpful to those who are seeking answers when some tough feedback comes their way specially during this period of annual appraisals!

This last quarter becomes very crucial, and people are very careful suddenly as the ratings are on the way, how the managers and their subordinates work out among them is bit interesting! However still as I said the challenge with annual process is not rating or tough feedbacks! In one of my projects when we checked upon the annual appraisal process in detail by way of reading through some 2000+ appraisals on 2 parameters, how people have written their year and how the managers even at the higher levels have put their thoughts, the results were so bad it was kept to clod storage! Extremely low level of proper documentation was done! So how do we prevent ourselves getting into difficult discussions and specially during this time avoid any fear of loss of right recognition which we can earn throughout! 4 things I am doing and have observed very closely good leaders’ and their high potential team members display.

Being Disciplined: This is very critical and as easily written here and said, this is very difficult to do! In one of my working with someone in sales shared how being disciplined in time helped him do well with his customers and build a strong rapport with them. The trust built by respecting the time of self and the other people specially his subordinates earned him his leadership points well! It helped the team to follow the same whenever they meet. Start on time and close on time was the mantra! This prevention of not taking the time granted helped! There could be many more such behaviors’ we can relate to!

You don’t know it all: Whatever designations we reach or success we have does not guarantee that we know it all! This is the biggest prevention one can take by accepting it for life that we all are disciples in some way to any discipline we have. Once we do it, it helps us come out of our comfort zone to getting into the zone of learning new things and improvising it. I accepted many such things to help me become better as a student till date and same I have seen with very few leaders. Once you leave the baggage of heavy designations, salaries one becomes lighter! A very well-known corporate promoter I was talking too on a walk said, when I do not know what is being shown on ppt to me and I have never seen it, done it, I ask politely, if someone can help me learn this, please! He was not tech savvy! He learnt it to relate with it!

Asking the right questions: Our working styles wary from person to person, however most of us have one defined larger goal for self, teams. This goes even in our personal life! The challenge is to navigate and build actions for achieving the same. If some of us recall, when there was no google maps, reaching a particular place the first time was very difficult, one had to ask several people stopping them. Adding to frustration and today the maps helps and guide so well! Similarly asking right questions helps in knowing the What, why, how, and this is even the more important for leaders and they are extremely vulnerable to ask help. All questions are good one! I learnt it and till date until I am not sure, I keep asking like a child!

Self – reflection: We all get feedbacks, sometime good, most time bad! Are these feedbacks or perceptions? What have we done so bad that suddenly everything looks low during this period. A whole of the year was looking fine, boss was happy and was even taking us to dinners! Still the rating went bad! All of us have seen such surprising years! One of the best preventions is to do self -reflection of your work, your behaviours, document them! What went well for you end of the month? Are you even aware of it? Have you reflected upon some of the difficult conversations you have had with your not so closed relationships? How you would have approached this problem? Was the way you adopted the best one or there could be some better ways. Did you try putting data to talk? How you would have reacted to similar things coming to you from someone else? And the list is of endless questions- Pick your top 4/5 questions and ask. Pen them to relate to what you have achieved, how, and most importantly did you generate respect for all with your actions? Try long walks being alone and do self- talking! It works wonders!

I have failed badly on many of above in my tenure, got into difficult conversations and very tough feedbacks!

When I adopted the above in any of the circumstances, trust me it worked well! What’s your prevention?

Would love to hear the thoughts! Best wishes.

Are you still fishing?

Hiring is one of the key challenges any organization would always have and it shall continue to take tremendous amount of effort to get the best of the talent available. No matter how big the brand is the gap is always there to cover. This is certainly not a new thing. In the last few years with even technology taking leap, the HR teams in many large organizations are trying get those filters in place to save time & energy to reach the given task faster and better.

However, I am not here to talk on the interventions helping out to ease the job, rather I am trying to share a major and visible change which is becoming brighter day by day, sharper and highly relevant in the today’s VUCA world “the culture” which the organization is giving to the people working in there!

In the previous years trust me there were hardly any questions put forward to the interviewing teams and most often no one use to care even to ask every candidate if they need to know anything from them. People were keen with the brand, monetary growth, and that’s it leave aside the reason may be someone’s boss in most cases for their switchover! Rarely any questions came to counter! Set mindset was there. Even at higher positions there was not much to deliberate barring any few experiences where you were setting up the whole new business if any!

This is changing very fast and I am very happy to share that it is at almost all levels where you are making more quality connect with the candidate and they seen more authentic conversation rather grueling someone with questions . In a recent interview a friend of mine shared a list of few questions which came from different candidates and one had an interesting 40 mins of conversation with the top most guy during a middle management profile which he was interviewed for!

1. Can you share few thoughts on the culture which your organization has?
2. Does my reporting manager allow the current set of managers to take decisions – Is empowerment allowed?
3. Are new ideas welcomed or taken differently?
4. What is the TA/DA and how at senior level who allow the flexibility of expenses with high travels.?
5. What is the business size of the various territories? Distribution strength?
6. Expansion plans of the organization in coming 2 years?
7. What is the career path for me and the team?
8. Where am I placed compare to the same roles in other function. Is there a band system?
9. Is there any support in the initial days of joining or you expect me to deliver in the first month itself?
10. More than that something which came more strongly was what is the pedigree of the people I will lead and who will lead me?
11. Flexible timings if the organization allows? Are Saturdays off?

The list may vary from conversation to conversation. But the interesting fact is salary is no where the top priority. And, this is a very positive change which I personally see into the process. Organizations need to build a lot of strength in them and specially leaders leading a large set of teams to start accepting this change that what they expecting of others is not just the way forward it is the other way around and this will continue to add pressure on the them and teams attracting talent to ensure that they keep checking the waters! How are they getting ready to build a better culture to attract their right one!

Try a small test for your teams, post the current job available under your leadership and see how many candidates apply to you for the job, how much are you prepared to get sold as a profile which people want to work with rather than asking the HR teams to post the job and see the filtration. Look at the resumes coming, try to interact with some of them and share the job profile yourself, face individually few interviews and see how much are you ready to answer on the above ask. In the end we all have to play HRs role for the teams we lead.

Trust me, no more it is fishing!

Thanks

The silent attack!

Mental health? Yeah pehle nahi hota tha na….tha re, bolte nahi the khul ke!

Today, on the mental health day, while listening to various thoughts, having gone through my own personal and professional experiences, family challenges I want to share that mental health is very serious challenge! It is “ok to be not ok” all times is indeed a reality! Now one part of the situation is that you know you are not ok, you need help and you certainly have to look up to somewhere. But challenge is where to look for answers, whom to reach, how to explain, but before that why it happened, was it created?

Having personally seen some very tough situations in personal life, I can share with you all that it takes blood out of you and not just your sweat to deal with it. You feel suffocated, you want to die, want to finish but that can’t happen because you and I can think just that’s it! This is the way only to end! Yeah!

Similarly in corporate world, we deal with many very demanding issues which bring mental health to another level of stress and anxiety. How we deal with it? How to create environment to make people more accessible to seek help? Who should they go to? Organizations today are suffering with such silent strokes through people exiting them and not able to share what made them fail, what really screwed their careers?

I have seen one such case of an individual who raised an integrity issue against the person who was misusing the position of authority to the concerned manager in top rank, to the surprise of the person the master shared the exact with the individual in spot just because they needed each other politically to grow in corporate or whatever, the end was the career of the whistle blower in the organization. The person’s fault was trusting the leader who he really admired and stood for! She did not realize what she did and how the corporate politics played well later! The person lost the job in 4 flat months, lost a successful career in that organization, lost the smiles, specially his family, even lost his upcoming personal happiness! Rest is the story understood!

The point is what you think is how to just admit on having bad mental health, then asking for help, the point is why is it happening so fast? What cultures of empowerment, transparency and trust we as individuals, as leaders of our team, as CEO’s or CXOs as shareholders are enabling to make the people admit they need help! who they should go to for help? Are they or together aware the “we” need help to fight many such evils of corporate politics, hate, disliking’s, likings for many inside to grow and capture faster something which is not staying back even, toiling on the mental health of individuals, their families and leaving them with those scathing scars for life? Trust me, it is not just performance matters! It is not easy to just move on for many many of us! It is may be not further even possible to go to get a therapy, costly affairs! It is also not just having 8 hours of sleep, doing yoga, making friends or spending time with family to come out of it, it is way beyond! These are easy said and done lines, until the intentions are good for each other, until the leaders will not talk of building value driven behaviors, mental health will continue to be a serious silent heart attack exiting the talent the organizations need! Are you ready as self, as leader as CEO or looking at it as only an HR activity to drive through?

Thoughts!

The joker in hiring!

Hiring is one of the most interesting activity any manager or a leader does for itself. As an HR professional, I have done a lot of it! It is my most of the part as only someone who understands what it business, and how a wrong hiring will cost to the company, a unit, a leader and most importantly the territory or that seat that it occupies for it’s delivery and further even for the incoming one who will have to work to build something which in some industries like FMCG says the customer once lost may not come till the next season. Trust me, it is a very serious work not only for HR but for the business or the hiring manger too!

Now one area in this activity is even more crazy than the whole part of it, that’s called the ‘Reference check’. In some companies it is like the last milestone if not looked upon well, everything will fall apart. For some refer check is the only last thing they feel if it is right they should hire.

Now the moot question is hiring right or doing the reference check ✔️ right? Most often the hiring managers do not know the candidate and this is same for the hiring manager at the business side. Further, the challenge is most reference checks are positive as the activity is pre defined with certain questions and left to the people to close at the earliest one to drop the offer letter in the mail box. This needs a different perspective as most of the data for hiring says CEOs spend 75% of their time in getting the right talent. Another fact is 70% of people leave jobs due to bad managers or to be polite demanding managers’. If this is the case then are you hiring from the rest 30% who rest their 🖊 down due to personal reasons, locations etc etc? Of course, NOT!

In some cases the hiring is done with not less than 5 to 6 interviews and still the reference check is the last area which will decide everything to the panel. So is this activity more important than the interview process or the process of hiring is poor that it relies on this part to decide.

I have personally seen business hiring okayed by HR because business wants to hire and HR is merely a paper pusher and hence is the activity! I have seen background agencies doing poor work on the same and it remains a tick mark activity. A mail is floating in some mailbox and someone from other side giving details which are mentioned in full and final statements.

I have further seen biases in the same where someone you know 3/5/10 years ago and may not have done well then but have grown to ranks now with clear determination and hard work falling prey to someone not thinking where the person has reached in his career and simply the hiring decision too getting impacted. Have you checked the biasedness in the entire activity? Who are you doing the reference check with, why? How to ask the details, trust me it is as difficult as giving and taking feedback. It is like a joker card without which the bundle of cards remains incomplete!

Things we can do better to cover this grey shade!

1. Review the hiring process: The call is more about building the overall hiring process right, from writing the JD right, picking the hiring panel right, preparing oneself for the interview right, and being more authentic to the candidate on the areas of delivery and expectations through the various stages of conversation which goes with the process of hiring helps.
2. Learning the Business: What business, function are you hiring for, understand that a more. Further, check what is the expectation from the manager, role, it is reflecting well in the Jd shared? This will help to look for right attributes in one and will make interview experience better for both people.
3. Performance check. Asking people to share the various accolades/ appreciation mails they have got recently to ensure result orientation wad displayed. Ask people to make presentation on a case study to evaluate on their thought leadership deeper. This is helpful in middle management.
4. Make Notes: Making notes and sharing them for next panel helps. This allows the interviewer to know on the areas which are already checked upon and one can look for more new aspects to delve deeper.
5. Joint interviews: Doing joint interview further makes the hiring decisions better. It makes the hiring panel learn from experience of both or more on various aspects of answers given.

To me reference checks are a grey area, as people are under tremendous pressure sometimes to give reference of their managers who have not treated them well which makes it the top reason of job change still! Personal biases, disliking’s towards someone which the person on the other side doing the ref check may not even be aware of can fall prey to the same.

In the end I would say, people who have done extremely well in past organizations too have failed sometimes in their new roles, and vice versa. It is leader of the person, the intent to work by the individual and the way organization builds its culture makes most of the difference in making a hiring decision better.

So, are you still hiring based on an activity called reference check or making your process of hiring better to allow you to take more informed decisions keeping the cost of wrong hiring in mind? Thoughts!

Thanks.

Welcome to culture!

Culture is a very profound word in itself and when it comes to its use in the corporate world the definition is no where same. It moves from one cabin to another and from one desk to many personalities leading the teams or individually. Hence the ambiguity around this is immense! And it is the quote by thoughtful leader is so true that the culture of many organizations is shaped by the worst behaviors the leaders are willing to tolerate! Let me share a brief conversation I had recently with a friend and it reminded me of many things when I reflected upon self as an experience!

I was talking to a friend of mine and she shared that the organization she is in now has a very toxic culture! The leader is not behaving right and the degree of fear is too much! This is very difficult for someone who has seen a good past and have thought to move into a new role and with more responsibility on the shoulder! Now what ever the stories she shared were not only funny but very sad enough that I wish not to put it! Not every time we need spices to enjoy!

To cut the story short I shared with my fried few thoughts and we both then reflected upon some of the past experiences which we shared together during our stint in an organization we worked together!

We asked our selves few questions!

1. Should we worry about the bad stories we are coming across as a new joiner and feel afraid?

The answer was NO! We all had difficult bosses, a very few were actually leaders and there were times we sailed long with both and lived our glories! which lead us to say that the answers is to adapt to the new change and change is not always very welcoming, we too need to have least expectations sometime. You go to hills and not always the weather allows you to have fun but the sunshine to comes it way!

2. Now when you have heard the stories, did you try to politely ask few of them who came to you what have they done to bring the change and why then they are sticking to the TOXIC culture? The answer was blatantly NO again!

The same people sharing the stories are there from the time immemorial:) They are enjoying their part so far! Hence one must understand that it only you who needs to understand the requirements of the new job, the expectations from the leaders leading you, the teams you are leading and build upon then your experience.

3. Then we asked did we too faced such situations in the past? The answer was YES! We too have had our share of bosses who were very difficult to manage and toxic and in some we too were equally bad! Remember it is the situation we responded too and how it led to many more differences made the story we are today, hence self reflection is the key to manage this word culture!

4. Then we asked Is keep changing jobs and people/bosses the answer? quickly it was NO! We all have our gaps and strengths! All we need to do is to see how to put into use what, where, how and when! Easy said and done but a small exercise of self reflection, critically reviewing our own work and seeking timely guidance becomes a key ingredient here and once we start using it, makes a difference!

5. Last and very important, we asked what makes the culture toxic and what is actually toxic? Is it individual performance? Behavior? or anything more than this?

The answer to this was bit difficult, but we reached to a part and said if the individual is focused on the goals and is achieving for which he/she/they/them are, then the culture is good to that person and manager! Only an idiot will have to fire a good person and it is certainly toxic! We must stay focused on the goals we have, understand the people leading it, the business we are in and how much we are on solutions. All this is important to bring the change in the stories which one day someone else has to share for you and me!

There is no place where the culture is only GOOD, and there are no places where you won’t find the spot of bad ones! The best of the the organizations in the world too have people leaving them for similar reasons! It is important we look at every new challenge more gracefully, accept it well and ask several questions around it to resolve and stay committed after all those who were managing the worst one are still there and growing! What is there skill set and approach, please learn to stay in and stay ahead! Leaving the battle field is not always the answer!

There are many more things to do one of course is to to make friends in the system, have quick wins on the low hanging fruits, publish the 90 days agenda with stake holders and partner well and take small but important steps to remain on key aspects which are the priority of the month/quarter and are non negotiables!

And if you still have doubts ask someone you know how is a start up? This is yours’ enjoy it too!

Of course in the end if the ways of working are really really bad and you have tried your best, take the call soon!

Best wishes and do share your thoughts!

Thanks.

The 10Rs attrition!

As a business leader you are proud of the fact that the culture in the organization is good, the managers leading the teams are bright and aspiring, the teams working with them are also happy with them, the salary was coming on time, however, the attrition in the team is too high! What seems to be then going wrong! As an HRBP of a set of retail stores I am sharing an experience of mine which is though a decade old, however, helped me a lot in bringing down attrition in retail stores and setting up the pace of work. Sharing my learning!

I joined the retail industry – easy day stores as their new HR manager of the region- Jammu & Amritsar districts in 2011. The Jammu district was at a very high attrition rate. The further challenge was that we were coming up with new stores as well! We had exactly 55 days in hand. I can’t even source them as the role was of HRBP.

The moot question was then “how to source the right talent”, that stays with us and grows with us! This was an ongoing business problem becoming too loud, as any shortage of manpower in a retail store can lead to poor customer satisfaction scores which are very important for the org and at the same time may lead to degrading of in-store culture and discipline to arising out of either overtime or absenteeism.

With limited days in hand for the hiring of new stores and the pressure to keep the current talent in hand was quite intense. I decided as a plan to travel twice to Jammu for 8 continuous days from my base location of Amritsar within a span of 30 days and stationed myself there only to cover all my 4 existing stores at 4 different locations and met every single associate and manager working in the team. Started reaching myself at 6 am in the morning and used to understand their ways of working and challenges. Also, did 6 shifts of 2-11 pm additionally apart from my day starting at 930 in the morning to know store wise, shift wise, TL wise challenges, and best practices. Each store had 16-18 of them working in shifts from 6 am to 11 pm as PTs & FTs. After knowing them, their expectations, and challenges, one of the things which came out very differently was that people wanted the organization to increase their salaries by an additional 400-500Rs per month which was not at all possible then suddenly. I too was confused with this!

Interestingly, most of them shared that they were enjoying a good culture and working relationship with their managers leaving 2 team leaders. high attrition? The most important thing which came out loudly was the respect and timely salary getting credited to them as most of them have either worked in small mom and pop shops or have not seen an organized set up. So why then such high attrition?

So, carefully and slightly informally, I asked them what will make them leave this place? They said if something will make them think of leaving this place is their high travel, stay, and food expenses. Initially, I was a little afraid to think on those terms but when the same got echoed in the 2nd, 3rd, and then with the rest of 2 stores I got the clue of why we were losing and what is the “missing link” to hire right and place right. 

Those who left us were coming from more than 8 km of distance and among them, there were also TMs who were coming from more than 20 km away. This was a very ‘unique problem’ because they were left with zero savings after all the months of hard work. Connectivity with the family too got over for such associates who were from nearby villages and had to stay back for meeting the shift timings.

No one might have thought that the bus expenses in Jammu which were just Rs.10 for more than 5 km of distance and Rs 20 for more than 10 km can cause such high attrition in the first year of our operations. Just double it for too and fro, the problem is clearly visible! Their salaries were 3940/ PM for FT & 2000/– for PT, governed by minimum wages of the state. Due to low wages and higher expenses of bus travel their total expenditure was more than 500-675/ Rs per month and those who were coming from nearby villages were also spending on food and shared rooms. This was another big challenge! These were FTs who either were coming at 6 am or going back at 11pm. Further, Looking at the challenges of militancy then this was even more critical for them to travel safely during the early hours & late-night shifts. E.g. Kathua store was near the border area. Udhampur store was also near the military HQs of the northern command.

The key expectation was to reach 5-10 mins before the start of their shift in the store, well-groomed. This is very important from compliance & building up a right discipline for the store opening at 6am, setting it up & finally closing at 11pm.

Hence, I took a ‘unique way’ to build a pipeline before the TA team was to arrive in Jammu. I went to 200+ shops near to all my stores in all the 4 locations, Talab Tillu, Roop Nagar, Trikuta Nagar and Janipur on Jammu Srinagar Highway, and introduced myself as the HR Manager for the Easyday stores and also shared the job they have to perform. Shared my contact with all of them and requested them to share further to help anyone looking for a good job. In the first 6 days no one came! I went again as a second round and then we got some references.

Further, also kept asking the in-store people to refer people from near the store locations for both upcoming and the current ones. With that we closed the ongoing vacancies for the stores.

In the period of the next 25 days, we had a lineup of more than 65 people with the age group from 18-53, staying near the stores. Most of them were either 10/12th pass and some females were even college dropouts looking for good respectable and safe PT jobs with us. This sorted the entire problem of sourcing initially and additionally when the TA team also reached Jammu and we camped for another few days, they partnered with various NGOs and units that help semi-skilled people to get jobs, we got 100+ interviewed and finally selected 35 of them. They did a fantastic job!

It was great learning that helped me bring down the attrition by a good 20% for the reason that could be ignored easily. Rs.10? In the race of many things to complete some times the talent is not able to share the real challenges which are bothering them as the price tag may be too low or they may cause them to feel insulted but the same was causing the organization and business a huge cost. Nothing wrong with going to the sides of the reasons which were never explored.

Your travel policy, modes of reimbursements, approval of expenses, and many such small things which might be continuously concerning even a good talent while looking too small to be discussed in open forums can lead to unplanned talent and business loss!

Not limiting to retail and specially in this covid era where the dynamics have completely changed of working and doing business, organisations, business leaders and HR managers have to certainly explore the unexplored ares, trust me you may get surprises too!

Best wishes.

The missing link!

We all are seeing a tough period of covid era! there is no doubt that each individual is putting its hard work to ensure the person or collective unit of organization achieves the desired results. In the last few months organizations across levels and industries were struggling to come up with more and more high degree of engagement by the individual and units to ensure they meet the expectations and both business and HR leaders were on the task!

In building the engaged workforce the role of timely reward and recognition plays a very critical role and hence become the force to build positivism in the process. What is interesting to note would be to see how the world of corporate recognizes the values which they have incorporated in the the overall achievement of the individuals, units and, cross functions to achieve the growth numbers/annual results which the board publishes to the stakeholders.

Why I am today talking about the values is because that is the missing link in building the story of sustainable growth and a higher engaged workforce. Look at one of the most common value like Integrity/Honesty written in many forms on the walls of the big corporate and how it is being remembered? Is it only used to tell people to move out when they fail and some issue have been raised somewhere where it is being compromised or did the CEO of your organization took charge of the value based process orientation in the need to survive the growth numbers where HONESTY becomes the way to keep the check and balance when physical presence have been taken over by the virtual world or still it is the same survive or perish approach? This is an important ask going forward when people are faced with the difficult times of such extreme natures.

CEO to set the tone: Certainly, this is should not be a stand alone HR activity in most organizations. When it comes to defining the high performance culture and setting its pace in the most tumultuous times, value based discussed makes the fundamentals look much stronger and clarity on each step becomes the pathway to follow. The CEO must take this as a need of the hour to ensure that rest of the leaders in the hierarchy starts to follow the same tone and pattern to address the units below to keep them engaged on the overall journey. In the way not only they strengthen the believe in the individuals and units to avoid any shortcuts but also they allow them to believe that the leaders are standing tall with them to meet the targets with no shortcuts involved.

Recognition to be value based: While the team of business leaders and HR folks continue to run the process of rewarding the high performance, it is important they write the success of the achievements based on the values which the organisation have chosen for itself. This is help the teams to recall the set of behaviors they must display in the journey of every single achievement they have got and to bench mark with the desired expectations agreed upon. The onus to retain the culture of taking right actions ahead will get largely addressed itself till the ground level.

Reprimand when fail: Again like it is important to ensure that people are recognized they should be equally be reprimanded for not following the set of desired behaviors to the set goals. Merely meeting the goal and later regretting on the compliance will add to more challenges. Hence in the era of difficult times the role of values becomes even more critical.

Builds cross functional collaboration: When the process of the recognition and growth of individuals requires them to display the behaviors defined in each of the value it helps in looking a value like teamwork, collaboration even more meaningful when it comes to cross functions working on the common projects and had to look up to their leaders command of orders as well. Leaders too remain on the check to display the same behavior which they expect from the units below.

Mitigates risks: When people walk the talk irrespective of their titles it encourages both the leaders and units to follow the process eventually mitigating the risks involved in the turbulent times which gets even worse sometimes and call for a more effort to do resolve something than focusing on the core agenda. E.g. asking people to stretch in a retail store and not keeping the check on the overtime and its payouts leads to more ER challenges like absenteeism then following the process to mitigate the risk. Only when people are clear with the line of communication from top to follow the process and get rewarded, it will help them find more innovative solutions to any problem.

In the end we must reflect why many large organisations failed and why many survived their journey even when faced with their most difficult times. How having a value based culture in actions and strategy allowed them to sail through!

And finally are you yet recognized by the value your organisation have displayed on the big wall at your workplace and if not, ask for the ‘how’ of it.

Best Wishes.

When a party becomes a ‘character’!

There are times when we look up to people who have shown a great character and become a follower to at-least one if not many in terms of the ideology they carry and the thought process that derives them to the the vision they have for the people or the mission they are having in mind! To a common man they are the ones who have made the difference which is felt in many ways in the lives of millions.

I remember when I was 18 and not having much understanding of the world around me, with a great reason of winning of Kargil war, met late. Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee ji, the then PM of India at his residence, courtesy the group of political people with whom I visited including my father who spoke there! After listening him, I was not only impressed with the class of his simplicity and humbleness towards the common man visiting him and at the same time the respect for the brave soldiers whose stories of valor we heard that day. I saw in him the right ideology of keeping the politics higher as a ‘character in making’! Most of us who know a bit of recent history of politics who remember that within 13 days of coming in power the BJP leader left the floor after addressing the session that day in the temple of democracy and gave the resignation to the President but did not mad any sincere or crook effort to buy out MPs as we call the famous ‘horse trading’, to run the govt in many easy ways! That marked an indelible imprint on the minds of people who read in their school books – ‘honesty is the best policy’ and then lived upto it! I gradually learnt to become close to the politics as a responsible citizen in terms of reading and voting every time for the right people like him!.

Today, after 24 years of that event passed I am seeing the same one person of a great political virtue turning into a party of a character. They are now building the same under the leadership of Modi and likes of him in the party! Yogi, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari and many more who consciously ensured that the sabka sath sabka vikas is lived in true sense and now sakba vishwas is built with the model of continued good governance reaching the last man!

The Bihar results is the testimony of the fact the the party has made a character which is said to be in great sports teams like of Yankees and people like Michal Jordon who are always called ‘great’, ‘legends’! The party won 74 seats and ensured it lived upto its promise of making Nitesh Kumar as the leader of Bihar and not the other way around the way it is projected as bada bhai in media now! This is a character of a party and the leadership in process! A lot of this is value based which is coming from the past leaders and the fundamentals it has set for itself! It is funny to think, but trust me when I say politics too has a character and can only be seen in such grave moments of loss or win! It is just that very few would know what it means to say it when you are watching them becoming one such term called ‘character’, in last 25years’ passed!

May we seen the same in many more!

The deaf culture!

This is a story of an individual working in a good organisation! The poor person works hard to earn the living, ensures that the performance is also satisfactory to get the rewards too! The manager is also happy about the work done by the person and the subordinate is also equally enjoying the environment given to outperform! Similarly, the organisation is also taking care of all the important things at large in a manner that is appreciated by all! And much more to many. There is no challenge which is surfacing and everything looks cool!

One fine day, a team writes an email to all the employees to complete a task in hand which vital for the organisation from a compliance per se! Now, this is important, as it calls out for compliance later to me met with some serious penalties or may be even more worse! Everyone must do it including the CEO and the last individual on the ground! Now the employee receives the communication citing the details and way to do it. Time passes and more mails bounce into the box, he still does not complete it and many of the mails may by now have gone to trash. Further repeatedly with many reminders now the manager of the person is also involved! No heed still! the team is happy as that is not their key deliverable nor is impacting their customers or anyone. This is very common across organisations and specially If the task given by the organisation is not of any importance to ones boss, it will never be done on time by the mass! Very few act on their own without telling them to close!

Then the question is, was the task of any importance? or was it given as mere transaction for completion? Who took the responsibility to explain if this is done on time, how it will help you/me/I and all of us as an organisation. Leaders and teams involved must help the people understand that task will be still done within timelines by many and later by few but if they fail to correct the culture of it will last long in their behaviors! Not listening and acting to organisation mails is a critical failure among a very large set of people! This if continuous to become a habit will impact the concerned individual in many ways negatively only in the long run, may not the job in hand!

This is the question of culture you are in and not mere execution of that assessment! Leaders must reflect if their mails too are listened by the person before they act or they too have failed in doing it before asking them to complete. They too need to walk the talk!

5 things from the execution point that can help both the organisation and teams involved are;

1. The importance of the task must be clearly defined: It should not come as another transaction! If you are asking the entire organisation to involve in something which may even take 30 mins only by any individual to complete, then the importance is to be defined well not of the time to be taken to complete it but of the task itself. If you ask anyone to spare 30 mins in a month, it will look cool but not important as one has the liberty to ignore till the last day. How it will impact to an individual and the organisation must be clearly understood at all leadership levels to accordingly act for their teams and guide them to closure.

2. Time duration- It should not be a month/2 month period to close the agenda if it is so important for the organisation. Clear timelines should be set for 2 weeks or max 3 looking at the gravity of the task so that man hours can be saved well in unnecessary follow ups and keeping every leader in the company involved till the last man completes.

3. Support system: The team involved in driving such a project must be given additional support to help the employees towards closure. Employees should be aware as to how to approach the task, what to do in which area and complete guidance and escalation matrix so as to allow them to feel engaged for closure of it.

4. Continuous Feedback: Very critical for the organisation and teams to take the feedback in correcting the process and procedures involved in keeping a simple task simple. If people do not act upon the critical feeds specially when the flaws are identified the same exercise will become a tedious one. Many more will be involved and will lead to difficult conversation and managing behaviours later in few critical aspects. Teams must act fast and keep the system readiness in same manner to accommodate the changes needed to ease out the things.

5. Use of technology– Many times there are areas where IT can be used well to do such tasks. By merely putting the task on the primary site and then allowing the employee to move ahead in the system to access the rest of it needed! This should be rarely done until it is very critical and timelines about to finish.

One fine day organisation we will certainly see the task to its closure, important is we must reflect and act fast to replace the ear which is surfacing the deaf culture in the team! Behaviours must be identified and incentivised to build the listening culture where people understand the need to be more disciplined to self and the organisation. This is their primary need for self-development and a basic ask by the organisation.

The task was never the challenge!

Best wishes.