Simplicity @ the other side of Complexity

A political paradox for OD & HR

2012-01-22T02:47:00.005+05:30

“This is a political issue and we should resolve it politically”, said the senior consultant. I heard this interesting piece of ‘wisdom’ at an early stage in my career as an OD/HR consultant and it had left me somewhat confused.

I knew that as external consultants one of our main tasks was to diagnose the core issue/root problem correctly (as opposed to merely documenting the symptoms) so that we can design an intervention at the appropriate level. I also knew that ‘workplace politics’ existed in many of our client organizations. What confused me was the part that said ‘we should resolve it politically’. ‘Organizational politics’ was a ‘bad’ word for me at that time – something that incompetent people do to further their selfish motives – something that we as external consultants should keep a safe distance from. So the suggestion that we should use political means to resolve the issue alarmed me. Over the last decade, I have developed a better understanding of the paradoxical nature of organizational politics and its implications for anyone who wants to lead/facilitate change in business organizations.

As we have seen earlier (see 'Paradox of business orientation of HR'), a paradox occurs when there are multiple perspectives/opinions (doxa) that exist alongside (para)- each of which is true - but they appear to be in conflict with one another. Let us look at some of these opinions about organizational politics.

1. Politics is essentially about power. Any activity that reinforces or alters the existing power balance in a relationship, group or organization is a political activity. Organization development(OD) is about facilitating change. To make change happen power needs to be exercised and hence all Organization Development is essentially political.

2. Politics is based on informal power - power that is not officially sanctioned. Hence politics is illegitimate in the organization context.

3. A large part of the work in any organization takes place through the 'informal organization' (informal channels that are not captured in the organization structure/job descriptions/chart of authority/operating manual). Keeping this in mind, one can't claim that organization politics is illegitimate just because it is based on informal power.

4. Organization politics is undesirable as it is all about pursuing selfish interests.

5. Organization politics need not be about pursuing selfish interests. It is necessary in order to secure resources and further ideas in an organization. Both ‘bad politics’ (characterized by impression management, deceit, manipulation and coercion) and ‘good politics’ (characterized by awareness, creativity, innovation, informed judgment, and critical self-monitoring) exist in organizations.

6. A good organization culture can eliminate organizational politics

7. Politics will be present in any group of human beings. The only way to avoid politics is to define and enforce detailed rules and procedures for all activities and interactions among the employees. This would be very difficult to do in most organizations and this would get more difficult when uncertain and fast changing business environment requires organizations to be dynamic and rapidly evolving. When an organization is in transition there won’t be clearly established rules/procedures and hence politics will become more prevalent. Since organizations are likely to spend increasing amounts of time in the ‘transition state’(because of the multiples waves of change), politics will become even more prevalent.
8. Politics is a social construct. Hence the behaviors that are perceived to be 'politcal' in one organization might not be perceived as 'political' in another organization.

So where does this leave us? I think that organization politics is a reality and any one driving or facilitating change in an organization (like a business leader or an HR/OD professional) need to develop an accurate understanding of the power structure and political dynamics of the organization. One of the key reasons why many of the change efforts fail (and why many of the consultants’ reports/recommendations gather dust without getting implemented) is that they didn’t pay sufficient attention to the political dynamics of the organization. As Human Resource Management (HR) professionals move from transactional roles to more consultative/'change agent like' roles, they need to develop the ability to naviagte the 'polical waters' of the orgnization better. Again, if the change facilitators don't pay attention to the political dynamics, they might end up as ‘pawns in the political game’ or even as ‘sacrificial lambs in the political battle’

I also think that both formal and informal influence needs to be used to maximize the chances of the change effort's success. This will become increasingly critical as the organizations become more fluid (with less rigidly/clearly defined procedures) and dynamic (fast changing with higher degree of uncertainty both externally and internally).

However, I feel that the OD consultant should not ‘play politics’ (i.e. become a political activist) as that would mean driving a political agenda/imposing the consultant’s agenda on the organization. This goes back to the ‘process consulting’ foundations of OD where the consultant’s role is to enable the organization to solve its problems (and to increase its problem solving capability) as opposed to providing solutions. Yes, I agree that all HR/OD consulting need not be process consulting and that the dividing line between the mandate of the HR/OD initiative/project and the political agenda of the consultant (especially internal consultant) is not always clear.

Hence, my current thinking is that the change facilitator/change leader should gather data on the political dynamics of the organization (power structure, various clusters of interests and their assumptions/world view/agenda/unstated concerns, interrelationships among the various clusters etc.) and leverage the same to improve diagnosis, solution design and implementation. This includes presenting (at appropriate times/stages) relevant data on the conflicting assumptions/interests without taking sides. This can also reduce the relevance of politics by making relevant parts of the informal (unstated/implicit) elements of the organization dynamics more formal (stated/explicit). This is not unlike a psychoanalyst helping a patient to be more psychologically healthy by enabling the patent to make some of the relevant parts of the unconscious more conscious (and hence better integrated). Most managers consider politics as a routine part of organizational life - though they might not talk about it openly. Hence, incorporating (without any negative associations) discussions/training on 'understanding and managing the political dimension of change' in the change management intervention, will give the leaders/managers a legitimate platform and skills to surface, talk about and deal with this dimension thereby increasing the probability of the successful implementation of the change.

Another relevant analogy is the approach for incorporating feelings and emotions into the decision-making process. Feelings and emotions are real – though they might not be rational – and hence they can’t be ignored. However, ‘making decisions based on emotions’ is not desirable, from an effectiveness point of view. We can improve the quality of our decisions by gathering data on the emotions/feelings of the stakeholders/ourselves (including impact of the various decisions/possible options on the feelings/emotions of the stakeholders) and using the same to inform our diagnosis, solution design and implementation. Similarly, we can improve the effectiveness of our change interventions (diagnosis, solution design and implementation) by leveraging the data on the political dynamics of the organization without ‘playing politics’. Yes, this is a tightrope walk that requires very high degree of self awareness and critical-self monitoring. But it is something that HR/OD consultants must do to maintain their integrity, credibility, effectiveness & relevance!

Decoding the 'IR mindset'

2011-12-30T23:00:00.015+05:30

“You need to be careful when you interact with him. He has an IR mindset” I was given this cryptic piece of advice by a friend many years ago. This led to an interesting discussion on what was meant by the term ‘IR (Industrial Relations) mindset’. After that, I have heard similar ideas being talked about in many other organization contexts. Recently I did some thinking about the common themes emerging from these discussions and this post is the result!

Let me begin by saying that this 'IR mindset' need not necessarily have anything to do with the way ‘Industrial Relations’ is being managed in most organizations. The similarities (if any) are with a ‘caricature’ of IR as opposed to the actual practice of IR. A 'mindset' is a fixed mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person's responses to and interpretations of situations. So the ‘IR mindset’ that we are talking about here is more of a ‘personality orientation’ or a ‘preferred pattern of behavior’. There is nothing inherently evil with this ‘IR mindset’ – it is just a distinct (peculiar!) way of ‘looking at and influencing the world’ (or of ‘interacting with others’). I also feel that the 'IR mindset' (like any other mindset), influences the 'sense-making process' (see 'Architects of meaning') of the individuals who have the mindset.

So, how do we recognize the 'IR mindset'? The following are 10 defining features (‘signature themes’) of the ‘IR mindset’ that I can think of.

(1) Using feedback as a ‘message’ and not as ‘information’ (i.e. the primary focus is on creating the right impact on the individual as opposed to conveying accurate information)

(2) Making a threat with no real intention to carry out the same

(3) Viewing work (and people management) as a ‘Chess game’ or even as a ‘Billiards game’

(4) Taking an indirect approach where a more direct approach would have been equally effective

(5) Disproportionate focus on ‘tactics’ as opposed to ‘strategy’; an obsession with tactics or indiscriminate use of tactics - to gain minor advantages (even at the risk of jeopardizing relationships or long term credibility)

(6) Using information as a source of power

(7) Focus on ‘ends’ as opposed to ‘means’ - ‘results’ as opposed to ‘processes’ - ‘hunting as opposed to farming’

(8) Seeing each interaction as a ‘negotiation’ (or as 'buildup to a negotiation')
(9) 'Theory X' as opposed to 'Theory Y'
(10) Focus on dominating as opposed to collaborating

The above list uses many ‘metaphors’. As we have seen in ‘Appropriate metaphors for organization commitment’, metaphors can be generative (i.e. they can help us to generate new ideas/understandings about a relatively unfamiliar/abstract topic) and that is the primary reason for using them here. Since a metaphor is not an exact comparison, they can also generate inaccurate/irrelevant/misleading meanings & ideas and we need to make a conscious effort to screen them out.

As I have mentioned earlier, there is nothing inherently wrong with the ‘IR mindset’. In some situations, the ‘IR approach/mindset’ is the most appropriate one. As in the case of ‘passive resistance’ (See 'Paradox of passive resistance'), the ‘IR approach’ is problematic only when it becomes an indiscriminate/habitual response. Usually, the trouble starts when the thin line between ‘management’ and ‘manipulation’ is crossed!

Now let us do some pure speculation. Are there are a set of conditions/factors that might increase the possibility of someone developing the IR mindset? I haven’t yet come to any firm conclusion on this. For the time being let me note down a couple of hypotheses.

(1) Certain types of ‘early career experiences’ : Like we have seen in ‘Influence of early career experiences’, experiences at the beginning of one’s career (e.g. on the first job) can have a profound impact on a person’s thinking/approach as they can shape the person definition of ‘what good looks like’ (i.e. what is an appropriate response). An example in our case will be that of working with bosses (or ‘significant others’)who have the IR mindset at an impressionable stage in one's career.

(2) Being forced to grow up too fast : This (being forced to grow up too fast) can happen in life (e.g. being sent to a hostel at a very young age) or in the workplace context (e.g. being thrust into a role way beyond he person’s current capabilities – please see ‘Career Development and Sublimation’ for more details)

Have you seen this ‘IR mindset’ in action? Can you think of any other defining features of the ‘IR mindset’? Do you have any thoughts on the factors that might lead to the development of the ‘IR mindset’?

Appropriate metaphors for Organizational Commitment

2011-12-27T21:07:00.005+05:30

"We need more commitment in this organization. Employees should just trust their managers and the organization and do what they are asked to do. Instead, they get confused and start asking questions", said the senior HR professional. It was my second encounter with this person (See 'Passion for work and anasakti', for the details of the first encounter that happened many years ago). Like what happened last time, this statement set me thinking. I have realized that interactions like this prompts me to examine my own opinions/assumptions and hence enrich my understanding. That is why I treasure these encounters!

For the purpose of our discussion here, let us define Organizational Commitment as the psychological attachment or affinity that employees have to the organization they work for. It is highly useful for the organization/employer as organizational commitment (or certain types of organization commitment - to be more precise) can have a positive impact on important workplace outcomes like employee retention, attendance, performance and extra-role behavior. There exists a significant volume of literature on organization commitment (e.g. affective commitment, continuous commitment, normative commitment etc.), its antecedents and its outcomes.

Now, let us come back to the statement made by our senior HR professional. What intrigued me the most was the likely underlying assumptions in his statement about the behavioral manifestations of commitment and trust. My objective is not to prove that these assumptions are wrong. Having been a people manager for more than a decade, there have been many situations where I felt that it would be so much better for everyone if my team members just did what I asked them to do without forcing me explain everything. Different assumptions are valid to different extents in different contexts. The objective here is just to examine if there are other ways of looking at the situation.

To begin with, I am not sure if 'getting confused' or 'asking questions' necessarily indicates lack of commitment. It might just be that the employee does not have enough information/clarity on what exactly needs to be done and how. Often, this is the result of the so called ‘curse of knowledge’. As the manger might have additional information/background/big picture understanding & knowledge/expertise about the situation/task the employees don’t have, what seems so simple, clear and obvious to the manager might not be so for the employees. But since the manager does not realize this (i.e. as he burdened by the ‘curse of knowledge’) he does not feel the need to provide all this information. Hence the most reasonable response on the part of a committed employee is to seek clarifications. However, in some organizations it could be culturally more acceptable for the employee to ‘muddle through the situation’ as compared to seeking clarifications upfront. In such cases it is the organization culture (and not the employee) that needs fixing (see 'Placebos, Paradoxes & Parables for Culture Change').

Sometimes, it is possible that the employee has a different view from that of the manager. In this case also, the most effective response is to discuss the matter upfront. But if such a behavior is not permitted/feasible, it can lead to 'passive resistance', especially on the part of the 'good' employees. As we have seen ‘Paradox of passive resistance’, it is often the highly competent (and hence capable of seeing the limitations of the approach suggested by the manager) and committed (and hence caring too much about the organization to accept the suboptimal solution) employees who exhibit passive resistance in an organization context where they can’t express their disagreement directly without seriously jeopardizing their careers.

Now let us look at the ‘trust’ aspect. I think that expressing the feeling of confusion and/or seeking clarifications can actually be a sign of the employee’s trust on the manager. If this trust did not exist, the employee won’t make himself vulnerable by expressing the feeling of confusion or by seeking clarifications (and hence revealing his lack of understanding). In a way, it also demonstrates the trust the employee has on the manager’s competence (to be able to provide the clarification). Of course, expressing confusion/asking questions can also be a defensive behavior – to avoid/delay the task. It is also possible that questioning too much when there is a critical need to take urgent action is counterproductive. My point is just that expressing confusion/asking questions doesn’t necessarily indicate lack of trust. It is interesting to note that the type of trust implied by our senior HR professional (on the omniscience and infallibility of the manager/organization) boarders on trust in God. That kind of trust would be appropriate in a religious/spiritual context but not in the context of business organizations! This brings us to the topic of metaphors and the appropriate use of metaphors.

Metaphors are highly useful tools for thinking. Metaphors facilitate the understanding of one conceptual domain (typically an abstract one) by relating it to another more familiar conceptual domain (typically a more concrete one). They are so much a part of our lives and thinking that often we are not fully conscious of the metaphors we use. It has also been argued that by examining the metaphors we use, we can a learn a lot about ourselves – our values and assumptions. A good metaphor is generative. It helps us to develop new ideas, perspectives and understanding about the topic that we are exploring (especially when the topic is a relatively unfamiliar one). But the use of metaphors also has its disadvantages. Since a metaphor is not an exact comparison, often inaccurate/irrelevant/misleading meanings & ideas creep in into our thought process/understanding. Since we might not be fully conscious of the use of metaphors in our thinking, this can be dangerous.

Now let us look at a couple of metaphors used to talk about (think about) the ‘employer-employee’ (employment) relationship. The most common one is that of ‘marriage’ – with sometimes a finer distinction being made between ‘arranged marriage’ and ‘love marriage’. While this metaphor help us to generate useful ideas (e.g. the importance of ensuring high degree of ‘person-organization’ and ‘person-job’ fit at the time of selection), it also brings in meanings that might not be appropriate (e.g. the requirement for making a long term commitment at the time of joining the organization – reflected in statements like ‘we should hire only those people who are willing to make a long term commitment to the organization’). As a social institution, we don’t yet have a viable alternative to marriage. But we do have viable alternatives to lifelong employment. In some societies, marriage is a sacred bond. But employment might not be so. While stability/continuity of employments is important for business, the disruption caused by employee attrition is often no way close to the trauma caused by the dissolution of marriage. Again, in the context of frequent rightsizing and reorganization, a sacred longtime employment commitment might not be feasible even from the organization’s point of view.

Another metaphor is that of the family (with the employer being the parent and the employee being the child). While this metaphor also helps us to generate useful ideas (like encouraging high degree of mutual trust & collaboration, care/benevolence towards the employees, extra-role behavior/going the extra mile etc.), it also brings in meanings that might not be appropriate (like a lopsided relationship/power balance, assumption that the employer/manager always ‘knows best’, encouraging ‘Parent-Child’ interactions as opposed to ‘Adult-Adult’ interactions– in the Transactional Analysis sense – between the employer/manager and the employee etc.)

So where are we now? We have found that two of the most common metaphors used to talk about (think about) the ‘employer-employee’ (employment) relationship have significant disadvantages. They also create avoidable complications when it comes to figuring out what kind of trust and commitment would be appropriate in an organizational context. However, metaphors have tremendous rhetorical value and hence they are highly useful for leaders/managers in the complex endeavor of ‘motivating’ or ‘inspiring’ employees (Please see ‘Power of carrot and stick’). Metaphors are also be very useful for employees to find meaning (or to make sense) in the workplace (Please see ‘Architects of meaning’). Again, it would be very difficult (or even impossible) to totally avoid the use of metaphors as they are such an integral part of our thinking process. Hence metaphors are here to stay and we need to make the best use of them.

Are there metaphors that are more appropriate for helping us understand commitment and trust in the employment relationship? May be, there is no one metaphor that is appropriate. The best course of action might be to use multiple metaphors (e.g. marriage, family, contract, partnership, citizenship, mission, journey, marketplace, channel, tribe, village, casino etc.) to generate a wide range of ideas on the various aspects/dimensions of the topic/concept, while consciously watching out for spurious meanings/ideas that are likely to come in as part of that process, so that we can select the useful ideas (and discard the irrelevant/misleading ones) enabling us to come up with richer understanding and better responses!

Any ideas/comments/metaphors?

Paradox of ‘passive resistance’

2011-10-25T01:32:00.017+05:30

“There is too much passive resistance in this organization! When I suggest something, everyone agrees. But they go back and do whatever they wanted to do", said the frustrated business leader.

‘Passive resistance’ is a term that is heard quite often in business organizations. Let us begin by taking a look at this phenomenon from a broader perspective.

From a psychological point of view, passive resistance is a form of passive-aggressive behavior. Passive-aggressive behavior involves acting indirectly aggressive rather than directly aggressive. It usually manifests as procrastination, resentment, sullenness, helplessness or even as deliberate failure to accomplish tasks.

From a sociopolitical perspective, passive resistance is a method of nonviolent protest against laws or policies in order to force a change or secure concessions. This involves methods like economic or political noncooperation, hunger strikes/fasting, mass demonstrations, refusal to obey or carry out a law or to pay taxes, economic boycotts, symbolic protests etc.

Keeping these in mind, let us come back to passive resistance in the context of business organizations. Employees exhibiting ‘active resistance’ are vocal in their criticism and they might even make efforts to cause the change to fail. Employees showing ‘passive resistance’ exhibit little visible resistance. They will outwardly agree with the change that is being proposed, but then act as if they don't. Eventhough they don’t challenge the change directly, they will continue doing things their own way.

The typical behavioral manifestations of passive resistance in organizations include

• not taking ownership while appearing to agree with the proposed change
• diminished enthusiasm/ withdrawal/ sulkiness/ apathy/cynicism/hopelessness
• complaining without offering solutions/ blaming others
• indecisiveness/ procrastination
• excessive adherence to procedures/guidelines
• withholding information
• working inefficiently/ making half-hearted efforts
• 'forgetting' obligations/commitments
• repeatedly making excuses to avoid assigned tasks/ working on unwanted tasks
• over-complicating the new way of working
• propagating rumors

From these it appears that passive resistance is clearly something 'bad'. So, what is paradoxical about passive resistance? As we have seen earlier, a paradox occurs when there are multiple perspectives/opinions (doxa) that exist alongside (para)- each of which is true - but they appear to contradict/to be in conflict with one another. Now, let us look at some of the opinions about passive resistance

• Passive resistance is more dangerous than active resistance as it is a ‘silent killer’ (that goes undetected and hence unaddressed).
• People who display passive resistance lack the courage to stand up for what they believe in. They know that their reasons for opposing the change are not valid.
• The primary reason for passive resistance is an environment where the direct expression of disagreement is discouraged. When employees feel that they cannot express their opinions and emotions openly, they might resort to more indirect methods of expressing the same.
• Passive resistance can be a very ‘logical response’ in a hierarchical organization where it is culturally unacceptable to oppose the views of the superiors directly.
• It is often the ‘good’ employees (highly independent, highly competent and highly committed to their work/organization) who exhibit passive resistance. They are the people who can operate with a high degree of independence (a very valuable capability in rapidly evolving business organizations). Their high degree of competence enable them to realize that the plan of action suggested by the superiors might not always be correct or in the best interest of the organization. They also care too much about their work and the organization to just 'go along'. Again, they are intelligent enough to realize that they can’t express their views/disagreement directly without seriously jeopardizing their careers. Hence they respond with passive resistance!
• Sometimes, passive resistance can be a ‘rational’ behavior which lets an employee dodge unnecessary tasks while avoiding confrontation. Employees often resort to passive resistance when the assigned task/imposed view does not 'make sense' to them. It helps the employee to gain a sense of control. Passive resistance becomes problematic only when it becomes a habitual and indiscriminate response.
• An employee might not always be consciously aware of his/her passive-aggressive behavior.
• The basic 'animal response’ in a stressful situation is ‘fight’ or ‘flight’. 'Fight' is similar to active resistance and a fight response (in its basic form) might not be a possible (without serious repercussions) in many situations that employees face in business organizations . Similarly, a 'flight response' in its basic form (e.g. getting out of the situation by changing roles, changing jobs etc.) might not also be feasible. Hence ‘passive resistance’ (which can be conceptualized as a 'creative' combination of 'fight and flight') becomes a 'natural response' to cope with the brutal realities of organizational life. By the way, it has been argued that insanity is a perfectly sane response to an insane environment!

Please note that the attempt here is not to glorify (or even to justify) passive resistance. The idea (like what we did when we explored the ‘Power of carrot and stick’) is to develop a richer understanding of the complex reality that underlies the phenomenon of passive resistance which in turn will help us to respond to passive resistance more effectively.

So, how should we deal with passive resistance- in ourselves and in others? A good place to start is to examine some of the causes of the passive resistance mentioned above.

• If the cause for passive resistance is an environment where the direct expression of disagreement is discouraged, the logical first step should be to make it more safe/acceptable to express opinions/disagreement more directly/openly. Of course, this is easier said than done, changing (hierarchical) cultures often requires significant amount of time and effort (see 'Placebos, Paradoxes and Parables for Culture Change').

• If the passive resistance is based upon the belief that past practices have been sufficient and there is no need to change, then placing more emphasis on creating and communicating the ‘business case’ for the change becomes critical. This is especially important in those situations where employees go into passive resistance as a means of retaliation for some decision or action they perceive to be unfair or unjustified.
• If the problem is primarily with the loss of control/independence, getting the employees more involved in the change process, giving them more freedom in determining how to carry out the task and reducing the amount of micromanagement (while ensuring accountability) will help.
• If a key contributing factor is some sort of ‘learned helplessness’, enabling people to examine their thought processes (and the inferences/attribution errors they are making) along with enabling them to build the requisite skills to operate in the new environment will help. If the transition from 'learned helplessness' to ‘learned optimism’ can be facilitated, it would provide a significant advantage when it comes to dealing with the next wave of change.

Hence, the primary strategy to deal with passive resistance is to surface it so that it can be addressed in a reasonable manner. However, if there are issues at the structure level (e.g. administrative and functional managers of an employee driving conflicting priorities in a matrix organization), at the group level (e.g. inter-group conflict) or at the interpersonal level (e.g. power/political struggle with the person driving the change, lack of trust, emotional baggage from previous interactions etc.) that lead to passive resistance down the line, they need to be addressed at the appropriate level. Of course, basics of good change management like articulating the vision, communicating the business case for the proposed change and the ‘What is in it for me’ for the impacted individuals, creating forums to raise and address issues, demonstrating top management commitment and helping employees to improve their change resilience are very much relevant here also.

So, these are some of my ‘thought fragments’. Now, over to you for your comments so that we can convert these thought fragments to something more useful in understanding and dealing with passive resistance!

Do we need a new ‘defining myth’ for HR?

2011-10-08T00:11:00.002+05:30

This post is an attempt to explore the intersection of two of the key themes of this blog - the nature of the HR function (see 'Philosophy of HR') and creating meaning as HR professionals (see 'Architects of Meaning - From CHRO to CMO').

Meaning (finding meaning in work) is becoming an increasingly critical issue at the workplace. Hence, 'facilitating creation of meaning' becomes an important opportunity and challenge for HR professionals. While 'Architects of Meaning' touched upon HR interventions to enable leaders and employees to create meaning at the workplace, it did not focus specifically on enabling HR professionals to find meaning in their roles. This is where a ‘defining myth’ becomes relevant.

A myth is a story that embodies a powerful truth. We create stories about our experiences to give meaning to them. Once we internalize a myth (created by others) it helps us to find (create) meaning in our experiences and in our roles. So myths are useful for HR professionals to find meaning in their roles.

In any domain of human endeavor that encompasses a wide range of experiences and dilemmas, multiple myths are required (to facilitate the meaning creation/sense-making process). However, there is usually a 'central myth' or 'defining myth' that lies at the core of the meaning creation process. This defining myth provides the essence of meaning and the other myths add to this meaning (in terms of details and finer nuances in various contexts). In this post, we will look at a couple of candidates for being the 'defining myth' for HR.

The nature of the tasks carried out by most of the HR professionals most of the time makes 'finding meaning' a difficult endeavor (Please see 'HR Professionals and Multiple Personality Disorder' and 'In praise of HR Generalists'). This vacuum in meaning prompts HR professionals to ask ‘existential questions’ about their roles (What am I doing? Does it make sense? Does it add value? etc.). To answer these questions multiple myths have been developed regarding the mandate of the HR function, the roles in HR and the significance(value) of these roles. Often, these come in the form of 'new models of the HR function' and/or ‘new set of roles for HR professionals’.

Let us digress a little. Many years ago, when I was exploring thought leadership in HR (see 'Thought leadership in HR in India'); I could not find any consensus (among the group of senior HR professionals that I had surveyed) on the names of the thought leaders in HR in India. But the moment I expanded the scope of my question to cover ‘thought leaders in HR anywhere in the world’, almost all the people came up with the name of Dave Ulrich - that too as the first choice. I have often wondered why Dave Ulrich's ideas became so popular among HR professionals. Now I feel that it is partly because he created (through his ideas on roles for HR professionals) narratives/stories (myths!) about roles in HR - myths that enabled HR professionals to find meaning in their roles and in their careers. I feel that Dave Ulrich created some sort of a ‘professional mythology’ for HR – tapping into the deep-rooted desires and fears of HR professionals - and through that he redefined the HR domain - in a way that the HR professionals found meaningful and hence acceptable!!!

Now let us come back to the myths in HR. While there are many of these myths, the one that has come closest to being a 'defining myth' is that of the 'HR Business Partner'. Usually a myth consists of a story and a truth/meaning embedded in the story (some sort of a 'moral of the story'). Here the story was about the heroic HR professional who evolved from doing mainly low skilled administrative activities that were not core to the business to become a strategic partner to the business, creating a huge impact on the business, gaining respect from the CEO and the function heads and earning the much desired 'seat at the table'. The truth/moral was that HR professionals could evolve from their earthly administrative activities and fly in the exalted realm of true business partners - almost like the human beings realizing their divine potential from their earthly nature as outlined in the myth of a dragon (see ‘Too true to be real’)

This was a very valuable myth. It enabled many HR professionals to feel better about the HR domain and the opportunities for themselves in the domain. Also some people actually become business partners - at least to some extent. However, I feel that this myth (or the truth implied by the myth) has many practical difficulties in many organization contexts. Please see ‘In the wonderland of HR Business Partners’, ‘Nature abhors vacuum’ and 'Paradox of business orientation of HR' for more details. More importantly, as the context changes, new meanings are required – just like we need a new map when the terrain changes. This would mean that we need myths held together by a new defining myth. Of course this does not mean that the previous ‘defining myth’ becomes irrelevant. It can continue as one of the supporting myths. It is just that it is no longer the central theme (‘defining myth’).

In a new terrain (organization context) characterized by rapid/disruptive changes, complex challenges and paradoxes, being ‘Architects of meaning' might be more appropriate as the defining myth for HR professionals. Of course, the myth of the ‘HR Business Partner’ needs to continue as one of the supporting myths. But it will no longer be the central theme (‘defining myth’) as some of the basic underlying assumptions about ‘the nature of the business’ and the ‘nature of the partnership between business leaders and HR professionals’ will get revisited. The story that contains the new myth can be about the wise HR professional who helped the business leaders and employees to examine their sense-making process in the organization context and hence enabled them to create meaning (and sometimes ‘new meanings’) for themselves and the people they lead in the face of gut-wrenching changes. Also, the truth embedded in this story takes HR closer to its behavior science foundations. Behavior science was supposed to be about understanding, predicting and influencing behavior (and the underlying sense-making processes!)

What do you think?

Do regional and global roles always make sense?

2011-09-03T20:04:00.025+05:30

"Do you know why am I staying on in this organization? It is because if I hang around here for another ten years, I will be in a global role where I can make 25 people in 20 different countries run around doing absolutely meaningless work", said the frustrated HR professional.

I had heard this statement about 7 years ago. It popped up in mind recently, possibly because of my current 'obsession' with 'sense-making'/'meaning creation' process in organizations (see 'Architects of Meaning - From CHRO to CMO' for details).

This post is primarily about regional and global roles in the context of careers in HR. Similar to what we did in 'Career Development and Sublimation' let us define 'career' as 'pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement where one takes up positions of increasing responsibility, complexity & contribution'. Going by this definition, regional and global roles seem to make 'career-sense' for HR professionals as they can provide a natural progression from country level roles in terms of geographical scope of the responsibilities. These roles also make 'organization-sense' as the HR structure that includes regional and global roles often mirrors the organization structure of the business.

So what (if any) can be the possible problems with moving on to regional and global roles in HR?

The first is that while comparable regional and global roles are usually at a higher organization level as compared to country level roles, they might not necessarily be more complex. Also if there are basic problems with the HR operating model of the company (e.g. in terms of definition of roles, nature of the responsibilities, feasibility of carrying out those responsibilities, buy-in from business leaders at various levels etc.) progressing from country to regional roles might not enable the HR professional to solve (or even to 'grow out of') the problems' that he/she has been struggling with at the country level.

Another set of problems arise because of the nature of regional and global roles. Because of the large geographical scope, role holders in these roles will have to influence indirectly and/or focus very narrowly. This might lead to 'diffusion' of responsibility and/or 'marginalization of the role' (in terms of not being able to create a tangible impact on the business). This create difficulties with the 'taking up roles with increasing contribution' part in our definition of the term 'career'. This bring us to another type of 'sense' - in terms of the role change being 'personally meaningful' for the HR professional concerned (the 'sense-making' or 'meaning-creation' process that was mentioned in the second paragraph in this post).

Again, since these roles have to look at multiple territories each with different contexts, the role holders will have to work mainly at the level of guiding principles, guidelines and targets that will have varying degrees of relevance in particular territories (and to the HR professionals who are implementing them in those territories). The impact will depend on the extent of centralization/ monitoring/ enforcement, degree of detail and the flexibility (or lack of it) to make modifications at a territory level. This can create situations where HR professionals at local level get frustrated (as these inputs/interventions/demands from the role holders in regional/global roles do not make sense to them)- leading to statements like the one with which we started this discussion/post. May be one of the key responsibilities of regional/global HR roles should be to actively help in (influence!?) the sense-making process in the minds of the HR professionals at the country level!

This inference is not without irony. Earlier in this discussion, reference was made to a previous post which said that HR professionals should become 'Architects of Meaning' (and even that the 'Chief Human Resources Officer' should become the 'Chief Meaning Officer'). Now we are saying that HR professionals need a dose of their own medicine. May be, there is no irony. It might just be that Human Resource professionals are also human!!!

Over to you for your comments/ideas!!!

Daydreams of an OD Mechanic

2011-08-14T20:19:00.018+05:30

After making a living in the Organization Development (OD) field for more than a decade, I have realized that my primary role so far has been that of an 'OD Mechanic'. There is nothing inherently wrong with being an 'OD Mechanic'. Every field requires skilled technicians. It is just that it was very different from what I had set out to become.

Having started my career as an Aerospace Engineer, my objective while making the quantum jump into the Behavioral Science domain, was to become a 'Scientist' in that domain. I must admit that I had very limited understanding of what my ‘Picture of Success’ looks like (as a scientist in the HR/OD domain) – some sort of a 'Corporate Anthropologist' was my best guess!

Once I started handling real life roles in HR and OD, I more or less forgot about this. I did get fascinated by the idea of 'thought leadership' and investigated ‘Thought Leadership in HR in India’ I have also been aware of the importance of (and the difficulties in) maintaining the link between theory and practice (see 'HR professionals and Multiple Personality Disorder') and I feel that this ‘OD Mechanic’ might have emerged as a result of my attempt to avoid that ‘Multiple Personality Disorder’ (talking about behavior science theories/principles in meetings/seminars but carrying out the day-to-day work without applying any of those theories/principles). I do wonder if it has been more of a convenient compromise as opposed to being an optimal solution that emerges from constantly living in the creative tension between the two polarities. You see, creating and using tools allows me to feel that I am applying behavioral science knowledge/principles though the creation/use of tools might not necessarily need a lot of behavioral science knowledge!

Now let us take a closer look at the terms ‘Mechanic’ and ‘Scientist’. We will also look at another related term - ‘Engineer’. A Mechanic is a skilled worker who practices some trade or craft. The defining feature of a Mechanic is the high degree of skill in the use of tools. A Scientist is a person who studies any of the sciences, uses scientific methods and develops deep expertise. What characterizes the work of a Scientist is the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. An Engineer is a person who uses scientific knowledge to solve practical problems. As Randy Pausch says, Engineering is not about perfect solutions; it is about optimizing within constraints. Engineering also has the connotation of shrewdly managing an enterprise/task (as in the phrase 'he engineered the election campaign beautifully').

Over the last decade, I have learned and applied a large number of tools and techniques in the HR/OD domain – tools and techniques for diagnosis, process facilitation, solution design, action planning, program management etc - that too in various contexts like increasing individual and team effectiveness, managing change, employee engagement/culture building, organization design, development of frameworks/systems/processes, capability building, career development etc. I have also learned to select the most appropriate tools for a particular problem, customize tools/techniques/approaches, and also to create my own tools (remember: ‘Man is a tool-making animal’!). Of course, these tools were required and useful. Unless people saw value in what was accomplished through the use of those tools and techniques I wouldn’t have been able to survive in the field. I have also done significant amount of 'optimizing within constraints' -that is the essence of the work of an Engineer (and this activity is of at most importance in adding value in the context of business organizations). The problem is just that I haven’t done enough of ‘observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena’ that characterizes the work of a Scientist. Yes, I have done these sporadically (as reflected in some of the posts that I have written in this blog over the last 4 years). But the extent of manifestation of my 'OD Scientist self' has been significantly less as compared to my 'OD Engineer self' or 'OD Mechanic self'!!!

Considering that OD is a planned, organization-wide effort using behavioral science principles to increase an organization's effectiveness, real life OD initiatives and OD roles are likely to require a mix of Mechanic, Engineer & Scientist. My daydreams were about my attempts (and their outcomes) to significantly increase the percentage of ‘Scientist’ in the mix as I progress in my career as an OD professional.

Daydreams apart, one key part of this endeavor is to be more ‘mindful’ (in general, even while doing the 'OD Mechanic's job'!) so that I will do a better job of observing and then later reflecting on the behavior of individuals and groups in organizations. Another key part is focusing more on 'why' questions ('hypothesis generation and testing') and 'what if' questions ('thought experiments')as opposed to 'how' questions (which are the primary focus of the Mechanic).

These might not necessarily lead to any 'OD interventions' immediately. But they will definitely help in deepening my understanding. It might also help me to identify 'leverage points' in the system and even to do 'Wisdom level consulting' (another daydream, I must say!). I feel that identifying and acting on leverage points (where a small change can create big impact on the overall system) is critical for OD professionals in order to make a tangible/significant impact on the system/organization (as opposed to doing isolated 'OD interventions' here and there!). You see, one of the 'occupational hazards' of handling a Corporate OD role is to land up in a 'mouse in a maze' kind of situation - 'running here and there (doing OD interventions here and there !), feeling extremely busy, but getting nowhere (in terms of creating a significant and lasting impact at the level of the entire organization!). Considering the above discussion, my initial idea of becoming a ‘Corporate Anthropologist’ might not have been too far off the mark! May be I was right for the wrong reason!!!

Now let us come back to daydreams. Dreams (including daydreams) are in a way 'stories that we tell ourselves'. Similar to what I had mentioned in 'Architects of meaning', I think that by analyzing my OD daydreams (stories)and by consciously introducing subtle changes to the stories (and the truths/meanings embedded in those the stories)I might be able to improve my effectiveness as an OD professional. I also think that daydreams (and 'lucid dreams') have great potential in serving as effective methods for conducting 'thought experiments' in OD. But that is another story (or shall I say, another post)!!!

Any comments/ideas?

Placebos, Paradoxes and Parables for Culture Change

2011-02-01T20:09:00.015+05:30

These days, I find myself thinking a lot about ‘culture change’. In my previous post (The Culture Lizard), I mentioned that just by changing the way people address one another in office (e.g. calling people by their first names instead of ‘Sir’, ‘Boss’ etc.) the underlying (hierarchical) culture is unlikely to change. I also said that in general such attempts might do more harm than good (e.g. by creating cognitive dissonance – especially for new entrants). But there are exceptions to this and let us begin this post by looking at one such scenario.

From my experience across organizations, I have found that new entrants often make incorrect judgments about the ‘culture of the organization’ and ‘what is required to be successful in that culture’. Sometimes, they also ‘project’ their ‘assumptions’, ‘preferences’ and ‘fears’ into these conclusions. Going back to our discussion above, there could be situations where new entrants (because of their assumptions about culture) misjudge the culture to be ‘hierarchical’ (where it is not actually so). They might also start addressing people as ‘Sir’ or ‘Boss’ (where it is not really required).

That is where the ‘placebo effect’ comes in. Placebo effect is the beneficial effect in a patient following a particular treatment that arises from the patient's expectations concerning the treatment rather than from the treatment itself. In a situation where the new entrants have misjudged the culture to be hierarchical and hence started addressing people as ‘Sir’ or ‘Boss’, the above intervention (of stipulating that everyone is addressed by their first names in the office) might do the trick. Of course, here the problem was essentially in the minds of the new entrants and that was the primary reason why the placebo (intervention) worked.

In reality, a particular culture is not really ‘black’ or ‘white’ (i.e. hierarchical or non-hierarchical) – it is more like ‘shades of gray’ (i.e. ranging from ‘very hierarchical’ to ‘very non-hierarchical’). Since placebos often have useful physiological effects, I would speculate that our placebo (i.e. our intervention) might even cure mild cases of ‘hierarchical culture’. This happens when the new entrants feel ‘empowered’ by the intervention and if there are a ‘critical mass’ of new entrants they might actually end up changing (‘curing’) mild cases of hierarchical culture!*

This brings in another important issue. One of the methods advocated for culture change is to hire the right people who would help in creating the desired culture. However, as I have mentioned in my post ‘Paradox of hiring good people and letting them decide’ that implementation of such an approach might be more difficult that what it appears to be (as definition of ‘good’ might get colored by the limitations of the current organization in figuring out ‘what good looks like’). It is also possible that if an organization hires someone who is aligned to the desired culture and if the desired culture is very different from the current culture the ‘system’ (the current organization) might ‘reject’ the new entrant just like the human body tries to reject a newly transplanted organ. May be, the solution is to hire someone who does not disrespect current way of doing things (and hence someone who would not evoke too strong an ‘immune response’/rejection from the existing organization) – but who is committed to the new way of doing things (the desired culture) – and changes the culture in subtle ways – say by introducing subtle modifications to the stories (parables) and the meanings derived/messages conveyed by the stories – by changing the daily conversations among the members of the organization through which they derive/agree on/make sense of the events in the organization (see ‘Architects of meaning’ for more details)!

*Note: Another scenario where such an intervention might be useful occurs when these words ('Boss', 'Sir' etc.) have strong associations (especially negative ones - say with 'autocratic behavior', with 'highly formal relationships' or with 'distant authority figures') in the minds of the new entrants. These associations (formed based on their previous work/life experiences) might trigger corresponding emotional responses in the new entrants and this might cause them to feel/think and act differently when interacting with their managers. For example, it might make it difficult for the new entrants to interact in a natural/creative/uninhibited manner with their managers. It is possible that such associations exist (at least to some extent) in the minds of managers also and this in turn might affect their feelings/thoughts and hence their behavior towards their team members. In such scenarios, this kind of an intervention (calling people by their first names instead of ‘Sir’, ‘Boss’ etc.) is useful as it prevents these unwanted emotional responses from getting triggered.

The Culture Lizard

2011-01-16T22:26:00.004+05:30

“We need to change the hierarchical culture here. So let us stipulate that everyone should be addressed by their first name in the office”, said the young HR professional. When I hear a statement like this an image comes to my mind – image of the detached tail of a lizard!

It is said that when lizards are attacked (or when they are captured by the tail), they are likely to shed part of their tail and flee. The detached tail will continue to wiggle, creating a deceptive sense of continued struggle and distracting the attacker’s attention from the fleeing lizard. The lizard can partially regenerate its tail over a period of weeks.

Now, let us come back to our young HR professional. As far as I could figure out the real problem that she was trying to address was the hierarchical culture. While I don’t think that there is anything inherently evil with a hierarchical culture (especially in the context of a larger society that has high ‘power distance’), I do agree with her that such a culture can be an impediment when an organization is trying to ‘empower’ the employees. The source of my ‘disconnect’ with the young HR professional was different. It was because I felt that the terms people use to address each other in the office (‘Sir’, ‘Boss’, ‘first name’ etc.) seemed to be just a symptom (or just one of the manifestations - that too a rather peripheral one - of the underlying hierarchical culture). I also felt that the manner in which people address each other in office was like the tail of the lizard (the hierarchical culture lizard!).

Hence my fear was that if our young HR professional tries to catch the culture lizard by its tail, it will just shed the tail and flee. So we might have a situation where people address each other by their first names but the underlying hierarchical culture remains very much intact. In my opinion, this is a more damaging situation as it creates cognitive dissonance and it can be very confusing – especially for new entrants. Again, the distraction caused by the wiggling tail (the change that is happening in the way people address each other) might dilute the focus and adversely affect the chances our young HR professional might have had to bring about real culture change.

I am in favor of intervening simultaneously at multiple levels of culture to bring about culture change. Again, interventions/changes at a particular level of culture can sometimes have useful 'ripple effects' at the other levels of culture. Hence I do see value in making changes at the ‘outer layers’ of culture (like artifacts, norms etc.). But if we make changes at these levels without touching the inner/core layers of culture (like values, basic underlying assumptions etc.), the culture change is unlikely to work. Depending solely on the 'ripple effects' mentioned above is too much of a risk (especially since the ripple effects are often unpredictable). Also, as we have seen earlier, the lizard can regenerate its tail fairly quickly. Similarly, if the culture lizard is alive and kicking despite the loss of its tail (i.e. if the underlying hierarchical culture remains intact even after the change in the way people address each other), it might regenerate its tail without much delay!

Have you encountered any such ‘culture lizards’? If yes, what happened to the tail?

Architects of meaning - From CHRO to CMO

2010-12-07T21:41:00.009+05:30

"It doesn't make sense!" This is a statement that one is likely to hear quite frequently in today's 'dynamic & complex' business organizations. This makes me wonder if the problem has more to do with the 'it' part (the situation) or with the 'sense' part (the implied definition of the term 'sense' in this context) or with 'make sense' part (making sense of the situation)?

All the three seem to be highly probable 'suspects' - individually and in various combinations. Corporate life often throws up many 'strange' and 'messy' situations for the employees (e.g. those created by frequent reorganizations, frequent changes in the strategy/operating model etc.). It can also be argued that since business organizations are somewhat 'artificial' entities (significantly different from the 'natural habitats' or 'natural social groups' for humans), the term 'sense' should have a different interpretation in the context of business organizations as compared to that in more 'natural' settings! However, this post let us take a closer look at the third 'suspect' - 'sense making' - in the context of business organizations (i.e. process of giving meaning to experiences in organizational life). We will also explore the possibility of using another concept that has often been discussed in this blog -myths - as an aid to sense-making (see here and here for examples).

It is said that nothing is more practical than a good theory. So let us begin by examining some of the theories on sense-making. According to Karl Weick, sense-making is about contextual rationality. It is built out of vague questions, muddy answers and negotiated agreements that attempt to reduce confusion. Our perception of reality is an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs. Sense making is not interpretation as it encompasses more than how cues are interpreted; but it is concerned with how the cues were internalized in the first instance and how individuals decide to focus on specific cues. Two types of sense-making occasions common to organization are ambiguity and uncertainty. In the case of ambiguity people engage in sense-making when they are confused by too many interpretations whereas in the case of uncertainty they do so because they are ignorant of any interpretations.

Sense-making occurs when activity/practice (habit/pattern of behavior) is disrupted (e.g. by events or ambiguity). However, people first look for explanations or reasons that will enable them to resume the interrupted activity. In cases where no explanation or reasons for the disruption can be found, a sense-making process is initiated. The process of sense-making on a situation has two steps. Bracketing & filtering cues followed by creating meaning. This in turn serves as the springboard for action. But the process is not so linear. It is muddy and iterative. Social sense-making is most stable (and effective) when it s simultaneously constructive and destructive -when it is capable of increasing both ignorance (unlearning) and knowledge (learning) at the same time.

As you might have realized, while the above theory on sense-making seems very reasonable, there is one important problem. The sense-making theory is mainly 'explanatory' in nature. This does not directly help us in our objective of facilitating/helping sense-making in organizations. To remedy this, the concept of 'sense-giving' has been developed. Sense-giving is the process of attempting to influence the sense-making and meaning construction of others toward a preferred redefinition of organization reality. Logically speaking this could involve influencing the way people do the 'bracketing & filtering' of cues (i.e. the first step in the sense-making process described above). I feel that interventions based on behavioral economics principles (see note 3 in this post) can be of use here. We can also look at influencing the second step in the sense-making process (i.e. creation of meaning). This is where myths comes in!

A myth is a story that embodies a powerful truth. While the incidents in the original story might not be factually correct (see Too true to be real) the 'truth' contained in the story remains valid across time. Anthropologically speaking, one of the key uses of myths in a society (or any group in general) is to help the members to make sense of the events in their life -especially the profound and/or no so pleasant events - the events and transitions that shakes one up. Myths can serve the same purpose in organizational life also. By the way, if you are wondering if concepts from Anthropology are relevant for today's business organizations, please see 'Accelerated Learning and Rites of Passage' for a discussion on how another concept from Anthropology - 'rituals' - can be used to facilitate key role transitions in corporate life.

We create stories about our experiences to give meaning to them. This can happen both at the individual and at the group/team level. Teams work well when they share a common set of myths - stories that have powerful, emotional truth - truths the team learned during their struggles/experiences in organizational life - stories they have created to give meaning to these experiences. Leaders can be more effective if they can tap into these myths - to generate energy to pursue new opportunities and to hold the group together. As Karen Armstrong says, myth is not a story told for its own sake. It shows us how we should behave.

Now, let us come back to second step in the sense-making process that we have seen earlier - creating meaning. By helping individuals and groups to create stories we can help them to create meaning from their experiences. Stories can help people to 'find their place' in the organization. This is important as who people think they are in their context shapes how they interpret events and what they do. Stories can also help in making sense (deriving the meaning) of the inevitable not so pleasant/unsettling experiences in organizational life. All these can very useful especially for new entrants to the organizations (e.g. management trainees). HR practices that create time and space for introspection as a group can create opportunities the group members to collectively understand and share their experiences of organizational events. Hence they can facilitate the process of organizational sense-making.

This discussion becomes very significant as meaning (finding meaning in work) is becoming an increasingly important issue in the workplace. This is possibly because of ‘higher order needs ‘(where ‘meaning’ forms a significant factor) becoming more active in a greater percentage of the employees and because of the unnerving pace of change in the workplace (that push employees out of their comfort zones and prompt them to think about ‘deeper’ issues including that of finding meaning). It can also be argued that one of the key responsibilities of managers/leaders in such situations is to help the employees to find meaning in work. Thus HR interventions that can help the employees and managers/leaders in this endeavor should become one of the key focus areas for HR.

By the way, if we leverage power of stories in HR interventions like coaching and mentoring, they are likely to be more effective in helping employees to make sense out of their experiences and to be better adapted to the organization. Stories can be useful for sustaining/celebrating the existing culture and also for changing the culture. Taking an existing story (myth) and making subtle changes to it (to the story and/or the truth implied in the story) can be a great way for initiating change. When we are telling a story to others we are telling the story to ourselves also. In a way, by changing our stories (and the truths embedded in those the stories) we can change ourselves. Also when we interact with others and with ourselves through story telling, the stories evolve.

From a change management perspective, stories have many advantages. Stories can communicate complex meanings and ideas (that are required to be communicated in today's complex organizations/organization contexts). Stories can help people to organize and integrate experiences (even a set of experiences that are not internally consistent). Since stories and story telling come naturally to human beings they are inherently non-threatening and hence the stories can directly engage emotions without having to face too much screening/too many arguments from the analytical mind. This can be very useful in generating initial buy-in for a new/unfamiliar idea. More importantly, people can add on to the stories. This can lead to a situation where people consider the stories (and the truths contained in them) to be their own and tell the stories to others. This in turn can convert them from being passive recipients of the change to active advocates of the change.

What does this mean for HR professionals? May be, we should start talking about 'being Meaning Architects' in addition to our (increasingly annoying) talk about 'becoming Strategic Business Partners!Extending this line of thought, the Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) should become the Chief Meaning Officer (CMO). This transition from CHRO to CMO is not without risks! I am sure that if 'creating meaning' becomes accepted as the key deliverable for business leaders, business heads (and possibly even the CEOs) might get tempted to 'steal' the CMO role and/or title from the CHROs! They can use the ‘tried and tested argument for these kinds of situations' - ‘the matter is too important to be left to HR’!!!

What do you think?

Renewable resources for thought leadership in HR

2010-09-04T19:37:00.007+05:30

About 3 years ago, I wrote a post in this blog on “Thought leadership in HR in India” – based on an informal survey that I had conducted at that time. While the post mentioned that there does not seem to be consensus on the names of thought leaders in HR in India, it ended with a rather positive inference (especially for the people who want be thought leaders) that “There are a wide range of definitions of thought leadership. It seems that there is room for many types of 'thought leadership' and for many types of thought leaders in HR! This gives many of us a chance to become some sort of 'thought leaders' (or at least to 'call ourselves thought leaders’!) in some HR related domain, in some industry, at some point in our careers”. That post also raised an important ‘philosophical’ question - “Can leadership (including thought leadership) exist without followers?”

The objective of this post is to outline how my thoughts on some of the aspects covered in the previous post have evolved during the last three years. I hope that my thinking on this topic will continue to evolve (and that I will be writing another post 3 years from now).

At this point, what interests me more is the ‘nature of thought leadership’ in HR as opposed to the names of thought leaders in HR. Obviously, these two are not unrelated. A particular interpretation of the nature of thought leadership in HR will result in a particular list of thought leaders and vice versa.

Let us start by taking a closer look at the ‘philosophical’ question that was mentioned above - “Can leadership (including thought leadership) exist without followers?” This will depend on the definition of leadership. My preference these days is to think about leadership as an emergent phenomenon that takes place in the context of a relationship (or in the context of a set of interactions – face to face and/or virtual – including indirect interactions). Going by this definition, leadership can’t exist without followers*. So the focus of this post is on thought leadership in HR that others (e.g. fellow HR professionals, Business Managers etc.) find useful.

From this perspective, thought leadership in HR has to deal with key challenges and opportunities related to people management. It also has to focus on those aspects where others (potential followers) feel the need for such thought leadership. Hence ‘core’ ‘messy’ areas in HR – where standard/algorithmic solutions are not feasible - are good candidates as domains for thought leadership. Often, this path can lead to the key ‘Paradoxes in HR’ that we have discussed often in this blog (see here, here, here, here and here for some examples).

Attempting ‘thought leadership’ in these areas related to Paradoxes in HR has interesting implications for the nature of thought leadership. As mentioned above, it won’t be feasible to prescribe effective standard/algorithmic solutions (that can apply to a wide range of contexts) in these areas. The kind of thought leadership that is likely to be useful here will be more in terms of providing a new perspective, deepening the richness & understanding of the paradox, providing an experience that provides company (‘provide a feeling of being understood’/ demonstrate compassion) hope and amusement to the people grappling with the paradox etc. It can also be inferred that this kind of thought leadership need not necessarily involve providing any sort of 'answers' - it can exist purely in the form of providing questions - questions that would help others to see the problem/paradox in a new way - which in turn could enhance their understanding and trigger solutions in their mind. Thus, the purpose of thought leadership in these cases will be to trigger solutions in the mind of people dealing with the paradoxes as opposed to prescribing solutions directly. Since these questions are about the essential nature of the issues involved, they might sound like riddles (or even like koans in Zen) that can be solved only by struggling with the same for an extended period of time to reach a level of understanding/awareness where the solution presents itself.

Obviously, this creates difficulties in terms of mass-production and marketing. But there is also an advantage here. The basic paradoxes in HR (and hence the pains/problems created by them) are unlikely to be ‘resolved’ (in terms of having a final and permanent solution). With effective thought and action (possibly aided by thought leadership!) they can be ‘managed’ (if we use the term 'manage' to mean ‘to cope with’) and even celebrated. But these paradoxes/problems/ needs won’t go away. Thus, these are the ‘renewable resources for thought leadership in HR’ – where solutions to problems will create new problems to solve -that will continue to provide opportunities for thought leadership – that will sustain an entire ecosystem of ‘HR Managers, Consultants and Thought Leaders’ - for a long time!**

Now over to you for your comments/thoughts/ideas!

* Note 1: Technically speaking, this does not preclude the possibility of ‘self-leadership’ as ‘interactions with self’ can also be interpreted as interactions. Moreover, the question “Will I follow my own advice if it came from someone else?” can serve as a useful reality check – to guard against some types of ‘delusion’ that can affect some of the thought leaders.

**Note 2: I feel that these paradoxes/problems won’t go away in the foreseeable future as these arise directly from the very nature of people management as it is practiced today. Hence, unless there is a fundamental change in the nature and philosophy of people management, they will continue to exist.

Driven to insights

2010-05-30T22:54:00.005+05:30

Over the last few years, I have spent quite a lot of time driving my car. This post covers two of the interesting thoughts triggered by that experience.

The first one is regarding the utility of certain kinds of knowledge. Many years ago, when I was learning to drive a car, my driving instructor spent quite a bit of time telling me about how to stop the car on a slope using just the clutch and the accelerator (i.e. without using the brake/handbrake). Being a ‘good student’ I tried my best to apply this knowledge. But I failed consistently. So I had to revert to the suboptimal technique of using the brake/handbrake to deal with this situation. Many months passed and I ‘forgot’ all these. One day, while I was stuck in huge traffic-jam on a slope, I was surprised to realize that I was actually using the technique that my instructor had told me about – without consciously trying to do so. Now, I am not sure if I would have achieved this even if the instructor had not told me about this possibility. Anyway, it helped me to really understand (i.e. beyond the level of intellectual understanding), the meaning of something (regarding the utility of certain kinds of knowledge) that I had read a long time ago – that knowledge is 'useful' only in those situations where it is almost superfluous. I also think that this could be the main problem with the most of the knowledge (suggestions) in self-help books!

The second one is regarding the nature of ‘focus’ that is most appropriate in many situations in life and work. The basic challenge here is to determine the optimal balance (equilibrium) between exclusive focus on a particular (predefined) thing (goal/result/approach/path/ idea/framework) and flexibility (openness to take in new information and to make changes/course corrections). I think that the experience of driving a car can be helpful in exploring and explaining such a balance - in two ways.

(1) It can serve as useful metaphor - helping one to think about this balance

(2) It can provide confidence/hope that one can achieve such a balance ("If I have already been able to achieve such a balance in the context/task of driving a car, why can't I achieve something similar in other tasks/situations in life/work?)

Now, let us look at the experience of driving a car in more detail - in the context of the above discussion. When one is driving one is aware of his/her destination. One might also have a preferred route to the destination in mind. At the same time, he/she is also intensely aware of the immediate surroundings (i.e. road conditions, traffic situation, weather, state f the vehicle, ‘condition’ of self, other relevant information that one receives while driving etc.). Based on this one makes course corrections when required. While these corrections happen mostly at the level of path/route (e.g. taking a different road), corrections at the level of destination/goal can’t be completely ruled out! I must say that this is just a metaphor and that there is often a significant gap between ‘metaphor’ and ‘method’!

It is interesting to note that there is a paradox here - if we consider the two 'insights' at the same time. The first 'insight' (regarding the utility of certain kinds of knowledge) can dilute the utility of the second 'insight'. The discussion on second 'insight' (the utility of an insight - in terms of serving as a metaphor and as a source of inspiration/hope) can soften the blow of the first 'insight'. I also feel that this (serving as a metaphor and as a source of inspiration/hope) might be the primary utility of self-help books mentioned above. Speaking of the first 'insight', it can be argued that since the first 'insight' is also a kind of knowledge (at least for those who haven't yet experienced/applied the same) the first 'insight' itself has limited utility- and hence it needs to be 'rescued' by the second 'insight'.

Accelerated learning and Rites of passage

2010-02-21T07:13:00.017+05:30

The words 'Accelerated Learning' appear in my current business title. This gives me an 'excuse' ('obligation' !) to think about the methods that can be used to accelerate the learning process in organizations - at individual and group levels. I must also mention that I have dabbled in the field of Anthropology and one of things that struck me (in Anthropology; see here and here for other examples) is the very useful role that 'rituals'/'ceremonies' and ‘rites of passage’ play in tribal societies. Somehow, these themes ‘fused’ in my mind and this post is the result of that fusion.

To ensure that all of us are on the same plane of understanding, let us begin by defining the two key terms - ‘learning’ and ‘rites of passage’. Of course, these are just 'working definitions' - for the limited purpose of our discussion here.

Learning: Learning is said to occur when there is a relatively permanent change in a person’s behavior. So we are using a ‘behavioral’ definition for learning, as opposed to a definition that talks merely about ‘gaining knowledge’. We will focus mainly on learning at an individual level that happens through experience.

Rites of passage: A rite of passage is a ‘ritual’ that facilitates and marks a change in a person’s status. Hence we are using a broad definition for ‘rite of passage’ that includes ‘facilitating the change’ in addition to ‘marking the change’ in a person’s status. Also, the word ‘status’ that we are using here covers not only the ‘social status’ but also the ‘psychological status’ (or state of mind or mindset).

This post explores two main themes - the importance/value of rituals in accelerating the learning process in organizations and usefulness of the 'rites of passage concept' in facilitating & accelerating role transitions in organizations.

Now, let us come back to our definition of learning. If learning happens through experience, then some of the ways to to accelerate learning should be

(a) to provide a larger amount of experience and/or

(b) to provide experiences with a larger learning potential and/or

(c) to help the person to derive more learning from the experience

Another important aspect here is to 'make the learning stick' - that is to facilitate transfer of learning/application of the learning in the workplace. I feel that 'rituals' can be very useful - for helping a person to derive meaning from experience and for making the learning stick.

Rituals can increase the mindfulness of the learner. Rituals can also increase importance/value of the learning experiences in the mind of the learner. Rituals are especially important when the learning/new behavior requires a significantly different way of functioning. Rituals can signify a break from the old way of functioning and the beginning of the new way of functioning. So in our efforts to be rational and lean, if we remove rituals from learning initiatives, we might be adversely impacting their learning potential!

Now let us come back to 'rites of passage'. A rite of passage marks and enables a leap forward in maturity. They can also indicate initiations into specialized groups. Most of the cultures in the world have rituals associated with the passage from childhood to adulthood. Growing physically into adulthood happens naturally. But the psychological transition to adulthood does not always take place automatically along with the physical transition. The objective of the rites of passage is to enable the psychological transition. The rite of passage also serves as a clear signal/statement - to the people in transition and also to the community/group they belong to - that the transition has taken place. Again, it serves as an acknowledgement from the group regarding the new status of the individual. Rites of passage are not restricted to the transition to adulthood. They are also applicable in the case of other major changes/transitions in life - like marriage, divorce, death/loss of a loved one and retirement.

It has been observed that many of the tribal societies use rites of passage to accelerate key transitions in life (e.g. the transition from childhood to adulthood). Tribal societies that have very limited resources (and hence require everyone to contribute for the survival of the tribe) can't afford a situation where many of its members are stuck in a transition state for an extended period of time where they (the members in transition) don't contribute much to the tribe. Thus, these societies have a critical need to accelerate the life transitions. There is an obvious parallel between this situation and that in many business organizations today, where it is critical for the organizations to ensure that employees making role transitions become fully productive in their new roles as early as possible (e.g. they can't afford to have a situation where a new manager takes a couple of years to discover the manager in him/her !).

Thus, I feel that rites of passage are relevant in the case of transitions in organizational life including career/role transitions. As mentioned above, an excellent candidate here is the transition from an individual contributor role to a people manager role. I think that this transition is not just a matter of developing some additional skills/capabilities. It also requires a change in the state of mind/mindset - a psychological transition. I am not saying that managers are a 'higher form of evolution' (or are 'superior') as compared to individual contributors. My point is just that the manager role requires a different state of mind/mindset.

In most of the organizations we are likely to find examples of managers who have 'become managers' without having made made the psychological transition to 'being a manager' - making life difficult - for themselves and the people around them - especially the people they manage. I feel that designing suitable rites of passage that are appropriate in the particular organization context & culture(in addition to the necessary skill building initiatives) can help the managers in making this psychological transition faster and more effectively and hence in bridging the gap between 'becoming' and 'being' that we have seen above.

Now that we have seen the 'business case' for using rituals to increase the effectiveness of learning initiatives and for using the 'rites of passage' framework to facilitate career and role transitions, let us look at more pragmatic issues. What kind of rituals can be used to increase the effectiveness of learning programs? How exactly should one go about designing rites of passage to facilitate role transitions? After all, we are talking about implementing these in 21st century business organizations where esoteric rituals and rituals might not be appropriate. Complete treatment of these issues will require a much longer discussion than what is possible within the scope of this post. So let me provide some pointers - for the time being.

If we look closely, we are likely to find that rites and rituals are very much present in 21st century business organizations. It is just that these rites and rituals look very different from their counterparts in tribal contexts.

Let us begin by looking at some of the rituals that can increase the effectiveness of learning initiatives/accelerate the learning process. As we have seen earlier, to make this work the rituals should - increase the perceived value/importance of the learning initiative, make the learners more mindful and help them to derive more learning from the experience faster. So any ritual that meets the above requirements (and that is appropriate in the particular organization/ program context) should be useful.

Hence these can include 'nominating rituals' (e.g. in terms of an in-depth interaction between the employee and his/her manager before the program that will help the employee to better appreciate the value of the program to her/him and the investment the organization is making for her/him and to be more mindful of what can be learned from the program and how it can be applied on the job), 'opening rituals' (e.g. a senior leader doing the program launch to signify the importance that the organization is placing on the program and the participants) , 'experience assimilation rituals' (structuring the learning experience and reflection on the learning experience to increase mindfulness, learning and assimilation of experience), 'action planning rituals' and 'program closing rituals'. In a way, there is nothing really new/esoteric about these activities (they are part of most of the well-designed learning initiatives). The idea is just to put ceremony/rituals (back) into these activities to enhance their learning potential.

Now, let us examine how the elements of rites of passage can be used to facilitate the psychological transition associated with role changes. If we analyze the rites of passage, we will see that there are some common elements/phases (even though the rites might look very different from one another) - separation, transition and and re-incorporation.

The key requirement for the first phase is to detach/separate from the current status/position in the social structure and from the current identity/self. The transition phase is the in-between state where one has separated from the previous state but hasn't yet 'reached' the desired new state. The key requirement here is to remain in this state of uncertainty (without regressing into the previous state) so that the self has an opportunity to reconfigure itself in a manner that is appropriate for the desired new state. The objective of the re-incorporation phase is to re-enter the group/society with the new status/identity. Let us examine how these elements can be built into a new manager orientation program.

Conducting the manager orientation program at a site away from the office has a lot of value. The physical separation from the previous state (previous role in the office) can help in the psychological separation also. Having the space and time where one can reconfigure the mindset (not being burdened by the demands/activities of the previous state) - in the company of people who are undergoing a similar transition - that too under expert facilitation/help - can be very useful in psychologically tuning into the new role. Performing 'difficult' tasks - tasks that can't be accomplished with the previous mindset/task that require the new mindset can also be of immense value here (as they drive home the point that the previous mindset is not effective in the new role and as they help the participant to discover the mindset that is required to be effective in the new role). The key is to create an environment in which deep learning can occur and in which shared experience contributes to the creation of a new identity. Ceremonies to mark the successful completion of the program ('graduation rituals'), especially if they are witnessed by the senior leaders (and hence signifying their acknowledgement/recognition of the new status/state of the individual) can help in re-incorporation to the organization - in the new role. By the way, new manager orientation sessions (like rites of transition) also provide an opportunity for cultural indoctrination, where company values/leadership traits/ perspective/ 'world view' can be made very explicit ('Who we are and what do we stand for as an organization', 'How do we do things around here', 'What does it mean to be a manager in this company etc.).

It is important to get the 'positioning' of these programs exactly correct. There requirement is to help the participants separate from their previous role (and mindset) and tune into their new role (develop the new mindset) without making them feel that they are an 'elite class'/'superior to the people who are doing roles that they were doing previously'. So while branding this program is very useful, the essential signal/message to the participants should be that "You have made a very significant and valuable transition and have become more suitable for your new role; but this does not necessarily mean that you are superior to the people you manage" !

Any comments/suggestions/ideas?

Links : Carnival of HR - March 3, 2010, Career Development & Sublimation, Career Planning & the Myth of Sisyphus

Paradox of 'business orientation of HR'

2009-10-17T11:27:00.016+05:30

This post allows me to come back to one of the key themes for this blog – exploring the paradoxes in the Human Resources (HR) domain. Based on more than a decade of experience in HR, I can confidently say that HR is a field that is rich in paradoxes (Please see 'Paradox of HR systems' , 'Paradox of potential assessment', 'Career planning and the myth of Sisyphus', 'Paradox of hiring good people and letting them decide' and 'Crazy HR for crazy times' - for some examples).

A paradox occurs when there are multiple perspectives/opinions (doxa) that exist alongside (para)- each of which is true - but they appear to contradict/to be in conflict with one another. Going by that definition, ‘business orientation of HR’ qualifies as a paradox.

There is no conflict of opinion on whether HR should be business oriented. HR exists to support the business and hence it should be aligned to the business needs/goals/strategy. ‘HR for HR’ (‘I want to do some HR interventions and I will get the business to agree’) is definitely not a good idea. The paradox occurs when we look at how exactly should HR demonstrate this 'business orientation'.

There are multiple possibilities here - each with its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, HR can agree to whatever the business leaders say on people related issues ('after all, we get paid to support the business'). HR can take this approach to the next level by trying to ‘guess’ what the business leaders will be comfortable with and advocating that ('business leaders are our primary customers and we should be anticipating customer needs'). HR can also avoid surfacing issues (or suggesting solutions) that they think the business leaders will not be comfortable with ('business leaders are already stretched to the limits fighting for the survival of the company, how can we risk annoying them at this point').

This approach might help in reducing the number/intensity of possible arguments/conflicts between HR and business leaders on these issues and the associated investment of time and emotional energy, leading to faster decision making and smoother relationships. In this case, business leaders will ‘like’ HR and hence they will be more likely to cooperate in the roll out of basic HR processes and less likely to come down heavily on HR when HR makes a mistake. Hence conflicts are avoided - making life easier for both the parties involved. However, this can also lead to suboptimal decisions (see ‘Training the victim’ for an example).

The other option is to develop and articulate an independent point of view – based on the HR philosophy of the organization (see ‘Towards a philosophy of HR’ for more details), HR functional expertise and an assessment of the context/situation.

This might turn out to be different from what the business leaders have in mind/are comfortable with and hence this can create conflicts and lengthy discussions/arguments and possibly delays in decision making. The business leaders might feel that ‘HR does not understand the problems that the business is facing’, ‘HR is becoming a pain in the neck’ or that ‘HR is being too idealistic’. This might lead to a situation where business leaders become very demanding – questioning the rationale behind each of the initiatives that HR comes up with. Thus this option can make life more difficult for both the parties involved. But if the conflict (of opinions between HR and business leaders) can be managed constructively, this option can lead to superior decisions and also to the development of mutual respect and trust. However, there is no guarantee that this can be achieved in all the situations.

So, which is the ‘better’ option?

It is possible that the business leaders were more open than what the HR professional had guessed. May be, they wanted HR to make an independent recommendation. Again, it is possible that the HR professional’s ‘independent assessment’ of the business needs/constraints was totally off the mark, making his/her point of view completely unrealistic. May be, the context is such that the conflict of opinion can’t be resolved successfully quickly enough for the matter at hand. Thus there are many possibilities here.

It can be said that if we take a long term perspective, if both the parties are competent and sincere and if the conflict can be managed constructively and quickly enough, the second option might give better results. But that is too many ‘ifs’ (3 in the last sentence!). It can also be argued that the two options mentioned above are just two extremes and that reality lies somewhere in between. For example, a particular HR leader might adopt option 1 in the case of some issues and option 2 in the case of other issues – depending on the context/nature of the issues. After all, ‘picking and choosing one’s battles’ is supposed to be a key requirement for survival in the corporate world!

An important factor here is the nature of the relationship between HR and business leaders. Often, HR does not pay sufficient attention to the relationship management aspect (positioning of the HR function appropriately, establishing the relationship, managing/shaping expectations, building capability and consistently meeting commitments/delivering value, enhancing the levels of mutual respect and trust etc.). See 'Nature abhors vacuum' for an example. This can be problematic as effectively managing the relationships with the business leaders can turn out to be the most significant enabler for demonstrating and sustaining 'business orientation'.

Of course, in this discussion about 'business orientation' we should not forget the other customers of HR- like the employees and first-line managers. There is an increasing tendency on the part of HR to give less emphasis to the ‘employee champion’ role because of the increasing importance given to the ‘strategic business partner role’ (see 'In praise of HR generalists' , 'Of specialists and business-alignment', and 'In the wonderland of HR Business Partners'). This can easily lead to situations where there is not enough focus on ‘employee engagement’ (other than the cosmetic efforts/peripheral initiatives – see 'Employee engagement and the story of the Sky maiden’ for details). As it is widely known, employee engagement is a good predictor/lead indicator of business results. Thus, if this 'business orientation' (and being the 'strategic business partner') is achieved at the expense of 'employee' engagement, the result might be 'strategic (long-term) harm' to the business.

It is also interesting to model this situation using the concepts of 'static' and 'dynamic' equilibrium (A chair has static equilibrium. A bicycle in motion has dynamic equilibrium. In a state of static equilibrium there is balance, but no change or movement - that exists in the case of dynamic equilibrium). A 'live and let live' kind of arrangement between HR and business leaders (that avoids conflict) is similar to 'static equilibrium'. But a scenario in which HR and business leaders openly & clearly state their independent opinions, followed by constructive debate/conflict leading to decisions that both the parties are comfortable with is similar to 'dynamic equilibrium'. This does not mean that the parties can't be passionate about their points of view/express 'strong' opinions. The requirement is just that they should not get too much attached to their opinions (see 'Passion for work and anasakti' for a related discussion).

I feel that, in general, dynamic equilibrium provides richer possibilities (sitting on a bicycle allows you to do things that you can't do sitting on a chair). But, establishing dynamic equilibrium might not be required or feasible in all the cases. It requires more time, effort and skill (as the equilibrium needs to be constantly reestablished) . It is also more risky (you are more likely to have a fall from a bicycle as compared to that from a chair - especially when you are learning to ride - which can be compared to the 'establishing the relationship' part/phase of the 'relationship management' that we had discussed earlier!).

Any comments/ideas?

The power of ‘carrot and stick’

2009-08-17T11:21:00.016+05:30

It seems rather ‘regressive’ for someone who calls himself an ‘Organization Development Professional’ to write a post on ‘the power of carrot and stick’. Haven’t we transcended the ‘carrot and stick’ method of motivating employees a long time ago (at least after Frederick Herzberg came up with the ‘two-factor'/'motivation - hygiene’ theory almost 50 years ago)?

The objective of this post is not to recommend or to praise the ‘carrot and stick method’. It is just to examine the actual situation in this domain (in terms of both theory and practice) and to explore the possible reasons for the 'power of carrot and stick'. We will also look at possible responses to this situation - from both the employee's and the employer's points of view.

While today's organizations are unlikely to talk about the 'carrot and stick method', if we analyze the methods that are actually being used by organizations to 'motivate' their employees, we are likely to find a high amount of ‘carrot and stick’ element in them. Of course, the ‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’ have become more sophisticated. But, in time of ‘organization stress’ (e.g. the recent economic downturn) some of this sophistication often disappears and more crude forms of ‘carrot and stick’ (that were thought to have become extinct) reappear!

Let us come back to Herzberg. Technically speaking, the ‘two factor’ theory of Herzberg is primarily about ‘satisfaction and dissatisfaction’ – and not exactly about motivation (as job satisfaction might not necessarily lead to motivation or productivity). So it seems possible that the ‘carrot and stick’ method of 'motivation' might be very much alive – both ‘in theory' (more about this later in this post) and ‘in practice'.

Now, let us examine why the 'carrot and stick method' works so well. I think that the power of ‘carrot and stick’ emanates mainly from the fact that it takes advantage of two of the most basic human emotions -‘desire’ and ‘fear’. To be more explicit, ‘carrot’ scores a direct hit on ‘desire’ and ‘stick’ does the same on ‘fear’. It can be argued that if we use the terms ‘desire’ and ‘fear’ in a broad sense, most of the human emotions (and hence most of the human behavior and motivation!) can be ‘modeled’ in terms of these two (and the human responses to them).

If we push the above argument a little further, it can be deduced that the so called ‘content theories’ of motivation (especially those that talk about fulfillment of ‘needs’ – e.g. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, ERG theory, McClelland’s theory of needs etc.) can’t distance themselves too much from ‘desire’ element (and hence from ‘carrot and stick’). Similarly, if we take a close look at some of the ‘process theories’ of motivation (e.g. Expectancy theory) we might be able to detect elements of ‘carrot and stick' in them also (e.g. especially in the 'valance' part of the 'expectancy - instrumentality - valance' chain/of the cognitive process that leads to motivation, as per the Expectancy theory).

If we consider motivation as a 'state of mind' (i.e. something that happens in the mind of a person), 'carrot and stick' (or anything external to that person, like what the manager/ employer does) can't directly cause motivation to occur - it can only create a situation where motivation is likely to be 'triggered'. Again, the method for applying carrots and/or sticks for maximum effectiveness (especially if we take the sustainability of the effectiveness account), can become quite complex. There have been quite a few studies on the effectiveness of various types of positive and/or negative reinforcement strategies to elicit desired responses. So the 'power' of 'carrot and stick' does not imply that the application (of 'carrot and stick') is always easy!

Now, let us look at this situation from the other side – from the point of view of the employee who is at the ‘receiving end’ of these motivation strategies. From the above discussion, it can be seen that if an employee wants to be immune from the power of ‘carrot and stick’, he/she should develop immunity from ‘desire and fear’ – at least those types of desires and fears that can be leveraged/manipulated by the employer. Easier said than done – I must admit - for most of the 'real' people in 'real' organizations! By the way, in the novel 'Siddartha' by Hermann Hesse, there is a beautiful description of how this method of motivation (implemented through an incentive scheme - with a significant upside and downside for the employee) attempted by an employer (Kamaswami, the rich merchant) fails to have any impact on an employee (Siddartha) who had transcended 'desire and fear' ("Siddartha can think, Siddartha can wait, Siddartha can fast"). It is also interesting to note that this novel was first published in 1922 - much before 'HRD' (in the current sense of the term) came into existence.

My point is not that most of the human beings are nothing more than bundles of ‘desires and fears’. We are capable of other emotions (like love, sense of pride, sense of duty, quest for purpose/meaning etc.) that might go beyond ‘fear and desire’. So it should be possible to find ways of motivation based on these 'higher' emotions. However, these higher emotions might not be very easy to ‘manipulate’ in an organization setting. Please see 'Passion for work and anasakti' for a more detailed discussion on this.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about incident that triggered the thought process that resulted in this post. One of my friends asked me to comment on an article which argued that ‘Leaders should inspire people as opposed to motivating them’. When I thought about this, I felt that the situation was a bit more complex than what it appeared to be – when we look at what really happens in many organizations. Most of the organizations have an essentially top-down goal setting/goal cascade process. While individuals might have some degree of freedom to shape their roles/deliverables, individual goals must add up to the corporate goals. Also, organizations usually hire people to do a particular job (which might even have a formal job description that details the job responsibilities). These factors can lead to a situation where a large part of what needs to be done by a particular employee has been 'fixed'/‘mandated’ or even 'imposed'. If what you need to do is fixed, then whether the leader ‘inspires you’ or ‘motivates you’ to get the same thing done can become essentially a matter of semantics!

I also feel that ‘inspiring someone’ (creating a situation where someone might become inspired- to be precise) is a more unpredictable process (in terms of outcomes) as compared to 'motivating someone' (to do a particular task – say through carefully applied positive and/or negative reinforcement - including the promise/threat of applying/withdrawing positive and negative reinforcement or ‘carrots and sticks’ !). No, I am not endorsing the 'morality' of these 'motivation' techniques. I am just saying that they are possible. I must also mention that there could be situations where these techniques might fail. For example, it is easy to create 'incentives' (financial and non financial) for someone to write a book. But, whether this can result in a 'great book' (if the author is not really inspired to write the book) is debatable. However, the fact still remains that 'inspiration' is often a complex (and elusive!) phenomenon.

While, your manager can 'inspire' you, what you will end up doing based on (triggered by) that inspiration can’t always be predicted accurately. So, if the objective is to get you to do a particular task, I am not sure if the pure inspiration route will always work. Any attempt to make the inspiration more controlled, will bring in the element of manipulation that this inspiration approach is trying to avoid. Of course, if we are talking about a community with no predefined goals (as opposed to organizations that usually have predefined/ mandated goals) then this inspiration approach might work – though no one can predict what will exactly will the outcome be (at the individual and at the community level – considering ‘interaction effects’ and ‘emergence’)!!

Well, it can be seen that the post that I ended up writing (based on the above trigger) went much beyond a response to the immediate ‘provocation’. May be I was inspired (as opposed to just being motivated)!!!

Now, over to you for your comments!

Note 1: It might be possible to make a distinction between actions that we take because of some sort of compulsion and those we take because we really want to do so (e.g. between compliance and commitment). The problem here is that compulsion does not necessarily mean coercion (at least not in the usual meaning of the term 'coercion') - any sort of 'inducement' can also imply compulsion. In a way, all we can observe is the action and the reason behind the action is some thing that we infer - especially in the case of other people. Even if we are talking about our own actions and the reasons for those actions there is the problem of rationalization (e.g. we can attribute the 'good' actions to intrinsic motivation and the 'not so good' actions to external compulsions). Hence the distinction between the two types of actions can get blurred.

Note 2: In this post, the term 'desire' has been used in a broad sense. This makes it easy to link 'needs' and 'carrots' to this term. But it can also be argued that if we use broad definitions for fear and desire, even the 'higher order' emotions mentioned above (like love, sense of pride/ duty/ purpose/ meaning etc.) can be mapped to/'reduced to' (at least, in the 'factor analysis' sense) the core emotions of fear and desire. To deal with this, we need to define these terms (terms like desire, fear, love, sense of purpose and of course the terms action/ motion/ movement, motivation, and inspiration) more precisely and in a manner that has internally consistency/ coherence (at least 'arbitrary coherence' -as Dan Ariely says in his book 'Predictably Irrational') . But that involves too much work (may be even a lifetime of work!) which is beyond the scope of this post.

Note 3: Now, that I have mentioned the name of Dan Ariely, I must also say that I am fascinated by the work that behavioral economists (like Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler & Dan Ariely) have done in exploring the domain of human motivation and decision-making - and the predictable irrationalities in the same. Their studies have also shown that 'relational rewards' work better than 'monetary rewards' in many circumstances, though relational rewards have the disadvantage of raising relational expectations. Please note that this does not negate the 'power of carrot and stick' . We can always say that while relational rewards ('relational carrots') and different from 'monetary/transactional rewards' ('transactional carrots') - they are still 'carrots' - carrots that appeal to higher order needs (say in Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Again, it has been suggested that monetary incentives work best in the case of simple tasks (tasks involving straight forward physical or mental activity; i.e. tasks that don't require creativity) where higher performance is just a matter of trying harder and where the performance can be measured accurately. This also need not necessarily create problems for the 'power of carrot and stick theory' as this is more about the relative effectiveness of carrots. We must also note that there is an intense debate going in between 'rational choice economists' and 'behavioral economists' - regarding the applicability of the findings from behavioral economics experiments. It has been argued that we are quite rational in most circumstances (i.e. in our natural habitat/ in familiar situations) and these predictable irrationalities surface mainly in in unfamiliar circumstances and that the conditions created in some of the behavioral economics experiments are quite unnatural (i.e. not representative of the conditions faced by most people most of time in the real world). Even the very definition of rationality is open to debate (e.g. rationality can be defined narrowly - just as a consistent system of preferences/consistent response to incentives - even if these preferences might not be 'good' for the decision maker - as judged by the society)!

Note 4: It can be argued that all the leadership/management actions involve influencing and hence some element of manipulation (as it involves getting a person to do something that he/she would not have done otherwise). Now, whether this manipulation is for a ‘good’ cause (and for whose ‘good’) will bring us close to the domain of ethics (and the tricky terrains of situational ethics vs. code ethics, individual good vs. collective good, good of one collective vs. good of another collective etc.). For example, if my manager gives me some information that opens my mind (e.g. by enabling me to see some possibilities that I was not able to see before), I might get inspired (and do something that I might not have done otherwise). But if my manger gives me the additional information selectively, so that I will see only those new possibilities that he/she wants me to see (e.g. so that I will take some particular action) then the element of manipulation creeps in. Yes, the line between 'management and manipulation' or that between 'influencing and manipulation' can be a very fuzzy one!

The leadership sandwich

2009-04-19T19:56:00.011+05:30

This is a 'thinking aloud' kind of post. Usually, I find it difficult to do 'thinking aloud' kind of activities. My reasons (rationalizations!) for this revolve around my personality type (INTJ or 'Dominant Introverted Intuition' - in MBTI/'type dynamics' terms). Of late, I have been reading some books written by Alan Watts and I came across the the following "It is surely a kind of spiritual pride to refrain from 'thinking out loud', and to be unwilling to let a thesis appear in print until you are prepared to champion it to the death. Philosophy, like science, is a social function, for a man cannot think rightly alone, and a philosopher must publish his thought as much to learn from criticism as to contribute to the sum of wisdom." Inspired by this, I have decided to write this post.

The trigger for this post came from some of the conversations that I have been having with my son (the same guy who was the main character in my earlier post called 'Research and a three-year-old' - though he is now seven years old!). During the last academic year, he got his first taste of 'being a leader' - when he was made the 'leader' of his group/class on certain occasions/ for certain events and he has been sharing his experiences as a 'leader' - both good and bad -with me. These discussions about the 'leadership experiences' of a seven-year-old, made me remember a curious thing that I had noticed about the roles and designations - especially in IT/ITES organizations.

In these organizations, often there is a level called 'Team Leader' that appears - just above that of a Team Member - but below that of a 'Team Manager' or 'Project Manager'. Beginning with the Team Manager/Project Manager level, there are multiple levels of 'Managers'. But after these 'managerial levels', 'Leaders' (e.g. Business Leaders) again make an appearance. So we have a curious situation - we have managers 'sandwiched' by leaders. Hence the 'leadership sandwich' which forms the title of this post.

Now let me come back to the 'thinking aloud' part. I was wondering why this 'leadership sandwich' occurs. Why do we have levels/roles with the term 'Leader' in the title on both the sides of the levels/roles with the term 'Manager' in the title? Since too much have already been written about the 'Leaders Vs. Managers debate', I have no intention to get too deep into that tricky territory. But these kind of 'sandwich' situations interest me immensely - because I feel that some phenomenon similar to that of the 'U-curve' (which I have often written about and which is very close to the basic theme of this blog) might be operating here. In such cases something starts in one state - moves to the opposite state - and then comes back to the original state at a higher plane (creating a 'U' - shaped pattern). So I was wondering if 'Leadership' also follows such a 'U' - shaped pattern!

May be we can get a clue to the (leadership sandwich) puzzle if we compare the role of a Team Leader with that of a Team Manager. Typically, a Team Leader does not have formal authority (e.g. to hire, fire, evaluate and reward staff). So a Team Leader is forced to influence (get the work done) without formal authority. Team Managers (and the multiple levels of Managers above them) do have formal authority. Of course, the 'Leaders' who are at higher levels as compared to these 'Managers' also have formal authority - much more than what these 'Managers' have. But may be these senior 'Leaders' are supposed to influence (get the work done) without exercising their formal authority, though they do have a lot of formal authority. May be they are supposed to do the influencing in 'better/higher ways' (e.g. by creating an inspiring vision, by building a high performance culture etc.). So if we can say that "Team Leaders influence without formal authority because they don't have any formal authority and Business Leaders influence without formal authority because they choose not to exercise their formal authority" - then we have the description of a phenomenon that follows the U-curve - that too perfectly!

Now, let us come back to the second part of what Alan Watts said - the part which says that 'a man cannot think rightly alone and that he should publish his thought to to learn from criticism'. I have done the publishing! Over to you for your criticism!!

Career development and 'sublimation'

2009-03-29T01:46:00.017+05:30

Since the words ‘career’ and ‘sublimation’ have many meanings/interpretations, let us begin by defining these terms - for the (limited) purpose of our discussion.

Career – pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement where one takes up positions of increasing responsibility, complexity & contribution

Sublimation - change directly from the solid to the gaseous state without becoming liquid (so we are using the 'Chemistry' meaning of 'sublimation' - as opposed that in 'Psychology')

Now that we have got the definitions out of the way, let us come back to the issue at hand. These days, it is quite common for people to skip some of the steps in (what used to be) the 'typical career path'. That is, they jump from a particular position to another position that is more than one step away/higher. So they transition directly ('sublimate') to a significantly 'higher' position without going through (what were considered to be necessary) intermediate positions.

These kind of career moves make a lot of sense in today's scenario - where many organizations are in state of flux - making traditional 'career paths' and 'career ladders' less relevant. Again, organizations are more open to this kind of career moves these days, especially where this results in cost saving and lower time to fill a vacancy. Of course, it makes eminent sense also from the individual's point of view - in terms of faster career growth.

So, if this 'sublimation' seem to make sense - from the points of view of both the individual and the organization - what is the issue? I think that this 'sublimation' can create problems - for the individual and for the organization.

For the individual, skipping intermediate positions in the career path can result in loss of learning opportunities - and some of these 'missed learnings' can prove costly - in terms of the adverse impact on long term career success and on personal effectiveness at work. Some of the intermediate positions might be key from a 'career & professional maturity' and perspective building (and wisdom development!) points of view. While the 'higher' positions will also provide valuable learning opportunities (may be even learning opportunities at a broader/'higher' level), they can't always substitute for the learnings provided by the intermediate positions. I would even speculate that time spent in the intermediate roles might have a positive impact on the 'ability to learn' - including the ability to learn from opportunities at a broader/'higher' level. The situation is not dissimilar to that of children who are 'forced' (e.g. by life situations) to grow up too fast. They manage to act like grownups - but often they have hidden flaws in their (psychological) development.

Often, after one has taken up a 'higher role' (in terms of organization hierarchy) it becomes difficult* (see the note below) to take up these intermediate roles - unless one moves to another ('bigger'/'more reputed') organization. So it is possible that these necessary learning opportunities are lost forever for the particular individual. Let me give a personal example. I moved to a global/corporate role in the Learning and Organization Effectiveness (L&OE) domain without spending time in a role that involves handling complete operational responsibility for the L&OE function/team at the business unit/country level. At this point, I don't really know what exactly have I missed because of this 'sublimation'. While I have tried to find this out by speaking to people who have handled such jobs (some sort of 'knowledge engineering'), I do feel that there could be significant gaps in my understanding! After all, there is a difference between understanding/wisdom (that is developed from actual experience) and knowledge.

This brings us to the problem of 'unknown unknowns' -a key side effect of 'sublimation' - which can create problems for both the individual and for the organization. Usually, 'unknown unknowns' are more dangerous than 'known unknowns'. Based on our discussion above, it can be seen that the 'sublimated individuals' can create serious risks for the organization. While the 'sublimated individuals' are usually very confident, their confidence often stem from 'simplicity on this side of complexity' as opposed to 'simplicity on the other side of complexity'. These 'unknown unknowns' can seriously undermine the quality of decision making. This becomes a major cause for concern when these individuals are in positions where their decisions can have high organizational impact. From the individual's point of view, a key risk is that of self-destructing their fast track careers! Other risks for the individuals include becoming too big for most of the roles available in their domain too early in their careers (limiting their options for changing jobs - see here for a related HR specific discussion) and of course that of 'reaching their level of incompetence' too fast/too early in their careers!!

So there can be problems/costs involved with 'sublimation'. But there are also potential benefits (as we have seen earlier). In addition to this, we should keep in mind that there are approaches like job rotations, stretch assignments and action learning projects that can provide accelerated career development while avoiding some of the problems associated with 'sublimation' - at least to a large extent. Hence it comes down to a cost benefit analysis - which can be highly context specific - both for the particular individual and for the particular organization - making a standard solution/recommendation difficult. But the awareness of the options and the possible problems/benefits can facilitate better cost benefit analysis and more informed decision making.

*Note: The difficulty in moving into a role that is 'lower' in the organizational hierarchy could be in terms of the possible adverse impact on salary, organization level etc. I do feel that the degree to which the difficulty is felt by an individual also depends on his/her outlook towards salary and career growth. The two extremes here are 'shape approach' and 'area under the curve approach'. It is essentially a matter of what one is trying to optimise - 'shape of the graph' or 'area under the graph'. Let me explain using salary progression as an example. Let us visualize a diagram ('salary graph') with salary on the y-axis and time on the x- axis.

Those who take a 'shape of the graph' approach/philosophy want to ensure that their salary goes up each time they make a job change (either within an organization or across organizations). So they want the salary graph to have a nice shape - with a positive 'slope' at all times. These kind of people will not want to take up a very high paying job if they feel that the salary growth is not sustainable and that they might have to take a pay cut later when they move from the very high paying job.

If we go back to our salary diagram (with salary on the y-axis and time on the x- axis), the area under the graph signifies the total earnings over a period of time/over the span of the career. It is apparent that what the people who take a 'area under the graph' approach/philosophy are trying to maximise is their total earnings/salary. These kind of people will take up a very high paying job even if they feel that the salary growth is not sustainable - so long as their total earnings (over the span of their career) are likely to be higher.

Of course, the above approaches ('shape of the graph' and 'area under the graph') apply not only in the case of salary but also in the case of other dimensions of career growth like 'size of the role' , 'position of the role in the organization hierarchy' and 'learning experiences provided by the role'. It is interesting to note that 'shape of the graph' approach/philosophy is reflected in many of the typical definitions of the term 'career' (even in the one that is given at the beginning of this post - as it talks about ' pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement' and about 'taking up positions of increasing responsibility'). But we have seen that this not the only approach possible or even the most effective one in today's environment. So if one takes the 'area under the graph' approach(which is more attuned to today's scenario), the 'difficulty' mentioned above can become much less significant.

Now over to you for your comments and suggestions!

In the wonderland of HR Business Partners – Part 1

2008-11-14T21:01:00.006+05:30

The posts in this series constitute some sort of 'random' walks in the wonderland of HR Business Partners (HRBPs). Since our objective here is to explore the terrain (and not to reach anywhere in particular), we have the liberty of adopting the amazingly liberating philosophy of "if we take any path and walk long enough on it we are bound to get somewhere".

There are a wide range of HR roles that go by the HR Business Partner (HRBP) title. For the purpose of our discussion, let us focus on ‘pure’ HRBPs – HRBPs whose role is that of being a strategic business partner - to the business they are supporting. This would mean that they are supposed to have very little or no transactional/operational HR responsibilities. So these roles (HR roles that don't do usual HR work) are some sort of freaks of evolution- in the evolution of the HR function. Freaks occur in the course of biological evolution also. But they are unlikely to create much of a problem as they usually don't live long enough to reproduce. However since HRBPs can (and do) survive long enough in organizations to create (hire/develop) more HRBPs, it is worthwhile to take a closer look at them and their world.

I must say that I have handled HR Business Partner (HRBP) roles – in the not too distant past. Most of what I say in this series of posts are based on ‘hard experiences’ – mine and those of my fellow HR Business Partners – across organizations. While some of the observations in this post might seem funny, I have absolutely no intention to make fun of HRBPs. I know the challenges and complexities faced by HRBPs a bit too well to attempt something like that. Again, though I am in a specialist role now, I have a great amount of respect for HR generalists (see ‘In praise of HR generalists’), – including HRBPs.

In the wonderland of HR Business Partners – Part 1 : Seven guaranteed ways to make an HR Business Partner fail

A story...

Once upon a time, there was an HR Operations leader who was doing very well in his job - happily implementing HR processes & policies. Then the corporate HR leadership in his company came under the spell of Dave Ulrich’s ideas - or what they thought be Dave Ulrich’s ideas. They also saw other firms in their industry adopting such ideas. They did not want to be left behind. After all what is the fun of being in corporate HR - if you are not considered to be 'progressive' and 'state of the art'. So the inevitable happened - the company changed its HR operating model - worldwide.

Being ‘top talent’, our HR Ops leader was chosen to move into one of the newly created HR Business Partner roles - the roles that were supposed to take the HR function in the company to the next level of excellence and to add immense value to the business.

He understood that he should play a strategic HR role. He knew that he should partner with the business leadership. He knew that he was a high cost resource and hence he should produce good results-that too quickly. He wanted to do a good job – he was a top performer throughout his career.

So he worked very hard. In the spirit of collaboration and to ensure seamless service to the business, he did his best to proactively cooperate with other parts of HR and even with the finance & communications teams of the business he was supporting.

Many months passed. Our HR leader was feeling strangely uneasy. Initially, he could not figure out what was wrong. He was doing a lot of things - including participating in all the Leadership Team meetings of the business. He was in a role that was supposed to be the 'highest form of evolution' among HR roles. But he was not feeling happy. Sometimes he felt that he was like a 'mouse in a maze' - running here and there, feeling extremely busy, but getting nowhere. So he took a week's leave - to think things over. After he was away from the pressures of work for a few days, things started becoming clear in his mind.

He realized
…that playing a strategic role required skills he did not have & that these skills are not easy to develop - especially in a short period of time
…that what the business leaders expected from him was not really strategic
…that they wanted him to ‘manage the HR system’ – to ensure that what they want gets done
…that he was getting involved in issues that he was not supposed to – as per his role
…that he was fighting too much with other parts of HR - leading to too many escalations and that the global HR function was looking less like a 'team' and more like a 'house divided against itself'
…that Finance team was not taking him or his role seriously
…that he couldn't get reliable data to analyze business level patterns & trends on people issues
…that he wouldn't have enough results to show at the end of the year to justify his salary &
…that no one really understood what exactly his role was supposed to deliver

Being an intellectually honest person, he could not help wondering if he himself understood his role correctly & if his role really existed.

7 guaranteed ways to make an HRBP fail

1. Don’t define the scope and responsibilities of the HRBP role clearly

2. Don’t establish the performance measures for the HRBP role

3. Don’t secure the buy-in/agreement from the business leaders for the HR operating model, HRBP role, its deliverables and the choice of the role holder

4. Don’t make the other parts of HR (HR operations, specialist functions etc.) accountable to the HRBPs

5. Ensure that the HRBP does not have the data and analytical/reporting tools to derive the business-level patterns/trends on key people and business related parameters. This will create a situation where the HRBP can't work at the patterns/trends level (as they are supposed to do), prompting them to get involved in 'individual employee- level' issues (after all they have to something) - a great recipe for ensuring 'territory battles' with HR operations.

6. Move HR staff from other parts of HR into HRBP roles without verifying if they have the requisite competencies to be effective in the HRBP role. If you can't find any other role for a senior HR leader, move him/her into an HRBP role. Assume that the vacuum created by the removal of transactional/operational HR responsibilities will get automatically filled up by strategic activities (see 'Nature abhors vacuum' for more details)

7. Change the HRBPs frequently - before they have had the opportunity/time to understand the business or to build relationships and credibility with the business leaders

Now that we have heard the story of an HRBP and also derived some lessons from the story, let us explore what can be done to maximize the chances success in HRBP roles. Some of this can be derived from this post itself – by logical deduction. But some other aspects are not so obvious or easy. Anyway, we will look at some of them in the subsequent posts in this series.

Over to you for your comments/suggestions and experiences!

Crazy HR for crazy times!

2008-11-01T13:25:00.007+05:30

It has been argued that insanity is a perfectly sane response to an insane environment. This also implies that ‘abnormal’ situations require ‘abnormal’ responses. While I have often talked about the connection between HR and madness (see ‘HR professionals and Multiple Personality Disorder' and ‘Career Planning and the Myth of Sisyphus’), here I am using the term ‘abnormal’ in the statistical sense of the term (i.e. not fitting into the normal distribution). So in this context, 'abnormal' just means ‘different from normal’.

The basic point in this post is that normal/usual HR responses (HR strategies/practices) are based on certain assumptions about the situation (context/environment) in which the organization (and hence HR) is operating in and when we are faced with situations where those assumptions are not valid, normal/traditional HR responses will not be effective. It also follows that when situations are radically different from usual/normal, we might need HR responses/practices that look very different from the normal/usual HR responses (i.e. responses that are ‘abnormal’) – and that is where we come to ‘crazy’ HR. Again, with the ‘abnormal’ situations becoming increasing common, effective HR responses/practices might also become increasingly ‘crazy’ – till we redefine (or even reverse the definition of!) what is ‘normal’ and what is ‘abnormal.

Now, let us look at a few typical practices/principles/assumptions in HR and explore the implications for the HR response when we are in contexts where those assumptions are not valid. Please note that these situations (and responses!) are not independent - there are common themes - and even contradictions - among them!

1. From long-term employment relationship to short-term employment relationship

This is a big one. Actually, 'continuity of employment relationship' can be treated as the basic assumption that underlies many of the assumptions in HR. If we look at many of the HR systems (like career planning, training and development, staffing etc.) there is often an assumption that the employees/prospective employees will stay with the organization for a long period of time. Now, if one is in a context (organization/industry) where the most of the employees spend much less than 2 years in a particular organization, these assumptions and hence HR strategies/ practices/ systems based on these assumptions, are obviously not valid/effective. So what makes more sense is to assume that the organization would be involved in 'managing' (planning/ developing) only a limited (often very limited) part of the career in the case of most of the employees and to design HR strategies/systems/processes accordingly. Now, the idea here is not that the systems/processes should be designed to push most of the employees out in two years or less! The idea is just that the HR strategies/systems/processes should not ignore the ground reality - even if it is unpleasant.

In many contexts the reality is that most of the employees are likely to spend only a very limited time in the organization and that HR strategies/systems/ processes should deliver value to the employees (and enable the employees to create value for the organization) within that time while maximising the return on HR investment for the organization. Of course, if one has a reasonable chance to shape the situation (or to create a new reality that is more favorable), it makes sense to make an earnest attempt. May be the attempts to shape the reality (i.e. increasing the time that the employees spend in the organization) will be more successful-if they are focused mainly on some segments of the employees (we will discuss this further later in this post). But 'deluding oneself' or 'wishing away the reality' don't really help - and this brings us to our next point.

2. From trying to reducing attrition to redesigning HR systems to work well in a high attrition environment

The typical HR response in a high attrition situation is to try to reduce attrition. But after one has repeatedly tried this and has failed consistently, this response no longer makes much sense. A better option may be to re-design the HR policies/processes/systems so that they can work effectively in a high attrition environment.

As an example of re-designing an HR system/policy to suit a high attrition environment, let us look at the Training and Development system. In a high attrition environment, there is a high possibility that employees who have been trained (at a significant cost to the company) may leave the company to join a competitor. Now, there are multiple ways of responding to this. One option is to focus most of the training investment on top talent and on employees in critical roles (i.e. don’t try to follow the approach of providing training to everyone). Since they form only a small percentage of the total employee population, the organization (with even limited resources) will be in a better position to create a compelling value proposition for them. So the organization will have a much higher chance of ensuring good return on training investment. The training needs for the rest of the employee population should be met mainly through a shared training infrastructure that provides e-learning solutions for common learning needs. Of course, there are other approaches like skill-based pay, training bonds etc. that tries to ‘lock in’ the employee. But my preference is for the approach focusing on top talent and on critical roles.

3. From Job enrichment to Job deskilling

Designing/redesigning jobs to increase their motivational potential has been a key principle in HR. This is typically done by improving various dimensions of work like skill variety (the variety of activities required), task identity (the completion of a “whole” and identifiable piece of work), task significance (how substantial an impact the job has) and autonomy (the freedom, independence, and discretion that one has to do the job).

Now there can be situations where the opposite of this response (i.e. job deskilling) might be called for. Examples of this can be found in situations where is a critical need to

(a) Manage process risk - Creating detailed process maps that specify each step in micro-detail (e.g. level 5 or level 6 process maps) and insisting that the employees carry out each step as it is described can be good way to manage process risk/reducing chances of error (though it adversely impacts 'autonomy' and hence job enrichment mentioned above).

(b) Reduce cost - The same approach (detailed procedures - strictly enforced) can also reduce the skill-level required to do the job. This can obviously provide opportunity to reduce salary cost (as employees with lower skill profiles can be hired for the job) and training cost (as not much training is required).

(c) Operate in high attrition environment - Again the same approach (detailed procedures and lower skill profile) can make it easier to find and replace employees (as there is not much need to hunt for specialized skill profiles that can be difficult, time consuming and costly to find) and to minimize the adverse impact of employee turnover on work/deliverables (as the 'learning curve' of new employees can be very short because of the low skill requirement of the job).

But there can be many complications when we try to implement the above (job deskilling) idea. Let us look at a couple of the major ones.

The first one is that in some contexts the nature of the work makes the 'formulating detailed procedures and enforcing them strictly' approach difficult to implement - because there are certain parts of the job that require a high degree of skill/judgment/discretion. Here one can try to re-design the jobs so that the activities that require a high level of skill are grouped into a few jobs and most of the other jobs consist of activities that don’t require high degree of skill (where the above approach will work). Of course, this will work best if there is an opportunity to reengineer some of the processes so that there will be greater opportunities for re-designing jobs/grouping activities into jobs differently. Now, this has other advantages like further saving on salary cost (as we need fewer number of high cost specialist positions) and reducing attrition among the highly skilled jobs (as the specialist jobs get enriched in the process because the lower-skill parts of the job are taken away and as the organization can provide these specialists much better value proposition because they are small in number - making the additional investment required much smaller and manageable).

The second problem arises from the very nature of the job-deskilling approach - lower skill requirement for the job is likely to result in lower 'motivation potential' for those jobs (because of its adverse impact on the factors that drive job enrichment that we had discussed earlier). But this can also be avoided to a large extent. Here the trick is to change the profile of the candidates/jobholders. So if the job was being done (before the job re-design exercise) by a graduate engineer, the candidate for the deskilled job should not be a graduate engineer (who will find the job de-motivating) – it should be someone with only an engineering diploma/certificate. Now, what seems routine for a graduate engineer can still be quite challenging and motivating for a certificate holder. Of course, this approach also has cost advantages (as a certificate/diploma holder in engineering costs less as compared to a graduate engineer).

I am not saying that these are the only HR responses possible (or even the best responses) in the situations described above. My point is that certain situations require radically different HR responses – responses that seem so different from the usual/traditional HR responses that they appear to be crazy. But they are actually much more sane - as compared to the alternative of 'continuing to persist with the same (failed) normal/traditional HR response and expecting different results' - which incidentally was the way Einstein defined madness.

What do you think?

A decade of 'active experimentation' in HR

2008-10-27T10:24:00.003+05:30

Of all the models/concepts that I encountered during my MBA studies in HR, one of the few that I haven't managed to forget (even after 10 years) is the 'Kolb's learning cycle' - according to which 'experiential learning' takes place through cycles of 'Active Experimentation, Concrete Experience, Reflective Observation & Abstract Conceptualization'. Now, what triggered the memories of this 'old friend' was the new novel written by Abhijit Bhaduri. This book(Married But Available), deals with the first ten years of working life of a young HR professional (Abbey) after he completed his MBA in HR from MIJ(Management Institute of Jamshedpur).

Since I am completely 'innocent' of any deep understanding of fiction (or of reviewing books for that matter), I will confine my self to commenting on (what I think are) a few themes in the book that relates to HR and to the career of an HR professional. While I have also just completed the first decade of my career in HR, I am not sure if that places me in a better position to comment on the book. You see, my data set (primary and secondary points I have on the matter) is limited and it does not come any way close to being a 'representative sample'. So this might make me more prone to the risk of generalising based on limited data. Hence these comments may be based on assumptions/inferences that are closer to fiction than the story that Abhijit tells.

The first one is the tendency of MBAs to compare (or 'benchmark') their achievements against that of their batch mates. Now, this tendency is likely to exist, to some extent, in any group. But the 'pressure cooker' nature of many MBA programs coupled with the high degree of 'results orientation' in many MBA students can make this 'tendency to compare' more pronounced among a batch of MBAs. The situation becomes more interesting in the case of HR MBAs, as 'position and salary benchmarking' is part of the job responsibilities of many HR professionals. Yes, this tendency can lead to lot of unnecessary suffering, especially in those situations where a person's identity (and self worth) is defined mostly in terms of his/her job (see Job and Identity) - because in those situations, the comparisons go beyond 'comparison of achievements' (and get into the territory of comparison of 'worth of individuals'). One good thing is that after a few years out of the B-school, it becomes very difficult to make exact comparisons - as people would have taken different career paths - and as there are often significant differences across organizations in terms of roles, levels and designations. Also, over a period of time 'internal benchmarking' (comparing oneself with people within the organization that one is working) becomes increasingly more important (as compared to comparing oneself with batch mates in other organizations). Again, people might have/use different definitions of success (different parameters to measure success or at least attach different relative weights to the parameters) - making the comparisons even more difficult. So even in those cases where one is not able to avoid comparing oneself with one's batch mates, by being 'creative' with the definition/parameters of success, one can achieve a favorable result for oneself - in the comparison game. Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. One can also find ways to conclude that everyone else in the batch is more successful than himself/herself!

I also liked the mention in the book about being at the receiving end of an HR process (recruitment -in this case). I have found that 'being at the receiving end of HR' (experiencing an HR process as an employee, especially if it is a 'not so pleasant' experience) can be a great eye-opener for an HR professional. This helps one to be more sensitive to the 'human' in 'Human Resources'. While most of us have been employees also (in addition to having been HR professionals) for most part of our careers, we often have this strange tendency to discount our experiences as employees (as internal customers of HR strategies/ processes/ policies) as compared to our experiences as HR professionals (who design/run HR strategies/ processes/ policies).

The last point I want to talk about here is insight that the book provides about the 'increased cost' (human and social cost) of retrenchment in the Indian context. Since there is little or no social security provided by the state, the role of the employer/expectations from the employer in this domain get heightened. I would even say that since the joint family system (that used to provide some sort of insurance/social security) is breaking down, this aspect can become even more significant. Then there is this issue of 'family involvement'. Since many of us still have the tendency to 'get our families involved' in most of the important decisions that we take (like marriage and job!), separation from the job has an impact on the family that goes beyond the economic impact (as it can have impact on dimensions like family pride and even identity!). This also has implications for the 'innovative' employee engagement & employee retention strategies/ initiatives that many organizations are trying out these days - initiatives/strategies that try to 'lock in' the employees by actively involving their families (like parents day, get the families to the office etc.). Yes, these can help in reducing employee attrition/voluntary turnover. However, this would also make retrenchment/involuntary separation more difficult for the organization and more painful for employees (and their families).

In search of a 'sharp' employee value proposition

2008-10-24T09:22:00.005+05:30

These days, many companies are quite vocal about their 'employee value proposition' - the 'total employee deal' that they offer. Some of them even have formal employee value proposition statements. Yes, this is a positive development. If organizations are serious about treating their employees as anything more than 'mindless resources' and if they acknowledge that the employees exercise at least some amount of choice (in matters like joining the company, staying on, putting in discretionary effort at work etc.) it make sense to think about (and more importantly, to do something about!) creating a value proposition (or a 'total employee deal') that appeals to the the current and prospective employees.

However, we often come across two types of problems with 'creating a compelling employee value proposition' efforts. The first is that the value proposition exists mainly in word and not in deed. Hence this becomes more of a communication (or 'public relations') exercise. Now this might work for sometime (in terms of increasing employee morale and in terms of attracting new hires) - as employees often believe the employers (or at least give them 'benefit of doubt'). But after some time, when the employees don't see much action (or the alleged 'employee value' in the employee value proposition) it leads to more frustration/ disillusionment/ mistrust. Thus the employees might develop some sort of aversion (or at least reduced sensitivity) to employee value proposition statements/initiatives.

The second problem is that the 'employee value proposition' statements of many of the organizations look very similar. Now if many organizations start speaking about very similar 'employee value propositions' it leads to a lot of clutter and hence the the employees, especially the prospective employees, find it difficult to judge the relative merits/demerits of the employee value propositions offered by various organizations. This can also add to the 'reduced sensitivity' to employee value proposition statements that we were discussing earlier.

In many cases, one of the key reasons for the above two problems is the attempt on part of the organization to do too many things - trying to improve all aspects/dimensions of the employee deal - that too for all the employees. While this ('trying to be everything to everybody' kind of approach) leads to 'well-rounded employee value proposition statements' the implementation/delivery of the employee value proposition becomes too difficult/impossible. When many organizations follow this approach this also results in employee value proposition statements that look very similar (and too good to be true!).

The above discussion implies that, to be effective, organizations need to find a way to cut through this clutter and reduced employee sensitivity - while ensuring that the employee value propositions are implementable. This where 'sharp' employee value propositions come in.

The basic requirement here is to create a very clear employee value proposition that is different from (and perceived to be different from) what other companies are offering. Usually this implies focusing narrowly – concentrating only on one or two levers/dimensions of the ‘total employee deal’. So the idea is to choose one (or two) aspects of the employee value proposition (based on the business and HR context/strategy/plan) and to channelize most of the resources to enhance ‘employee deal’ in those dimensions. For example, the value proposition can be that

‘we are the best paymasters in the industry’ or
‘we provide the fastest career growth in the industry/we offer positions at a higher responsibility level as compared to what the other companies offer for a given employee profile’ or
‘we provide better/more stable long-term career and greater work-life balance’ or
‘we provide greater opportunities for job rotation and the opportunities to work in multiple geographies’ or
‘we provide the opportunity to work with the most advanced technology/tools and the chance to work with people who are considered to be the thought leaders in the field’ or
‘we provide mass-career customization/greater flexibility in designing your own career’ etc.

Now, all of the above options listed above might not be feasible in the context of a particular company. However, some of the options might be very much feasible. Of course, having/developing competent managers and building a good work culture are very important – especially from a retention point of view. But since every company talks about these it becomes difficult to make these differentiating factors – when we are talking about attracting a new candidate/when a candidate has limited primary data points regarding what particular companies are really offering.

Once the organization has chosen the lever(s) to press and has enhanced the employee value proposition on that dimension (by modifying the policies/processes/management style etc.), the next step is to publicize it – both internally and externally. This will also ensure that the organization attracts the 'correct' profile of candidates (as the ‘focused’ employee value proposition will appeal to only a particular set of candidates – candidates who have a set of workplace preferences that is similar to what the organization is highlighting). While this might reduce the size of the ‘candidate pool’, it will help the organization greatly in reducing attrition – as the organization is attracting only those people who are motivated by those aspects of employee value proposition that the organization is providing better than what the other companies are doing.

It is also possible to further customize ('sharpen'!!!) the employee value proposition to make it more attractive to particular employee segments (e.g. high performance – high potential employees, employees in certain jobs, employees with certain skills etc). This makes a lot of sense if the organization has very limited resources and if it doesn't have equal need to retain all segments of the employees.

Any comments/observations/suggestions?

Influence of 'early career experiences'

2008-07-13T19:04:00.016+05:30

What has been the impact of your 'early-career experiences' on you? For the purpose of this discussion, let us define 'early-career experiences' as 'experiences during the 'most impressionable part' of one's career and this would imply (for many people) experiences during the first few years of one's career/the experiences during one's first job. So please take a couple of minutes to think about your 'early-career experiences'. What do you remember about them? Do you think that they have impacted you in any significant manner? If yes, what has been the nature of the impact?

The importance of early life experiences on the psychological/behavioral development of a person is well known. But considering that one is usually much older when one starts working, can a similar phenomena occur - in the domain of one's basic assumptions about organizational life/work/career? In an earlier post (see HR professionals and Multiple Personality Disorder), I had speculated that 'traumatic' early career experiences might contribute to the development of some sort of a 'Multiple Personality Disorder' among HR professionals - especially among young MBAs in HR.

While I have been thinking about this issue for quite some time, the 'trigger' for this post came recently in the form of a discussion in an e-group that I am part of. This e-group consists mainly of my ex-colleagues from an organization in which I had worked a long time ago. We were discussing issues like"the reasons for the existence of strong bonds among us even though most of us had left the organization a long time ago"; "why do we often talk about the 'great experience' that we have had in that organization" etc. Now, there were multiple factors (at multiple) levels involved in the situation. I felt that one of the key factors involved (apart from the factors related to the organization context, nature of work, nature of inter-dependencies in the group etc.) was the profile of the members of the group/organization at that stage - most of us were at an 'impressionable stage' in our careers!.

It was the first job for many of us and I felt that it 'shaped' our definitions of 'what is good' in an organization/workplace context (i.e. the tacit/subconscious definitions of 'good' boss, 'good' team member, 'good' team, 'good' employer, 'good' learning opportunities and even that of 'good' work). Since other organizations (that we joined later in our career) are unlikely to provide environments that exactly match these definitions, the work experiences in them are likely to be perceived as falling short of 'the good old days'. I think that this is similar to the phenomena in which the traditional way of cooking in India (cooking with fire/heating food from the outside) influenced our definition of 'good taste'. This in turn made it difficult for a product like the microwave oven (that heat up food uniformly) to become popular in India* (other than for reheating the food) - till a new generation brought up on a more 'microwave-friendly' definition of 'good taste' became consumers.

So my hypothesis is that early career experiences can have a significant impact on our careers by influencing our basic workplace preferences and attitudes. Of course, there are other factors (like personality related factors) that can also influence our workplace preferences and attitudes. It would also be interesting to examine if the impact/influence of early career experiences reduces as one progresses in one's career (and gains more experiences/data points).

Any observations/comments?

*Note: I am not saying that this is the only factor that possibly worked against the popularity of microwave ovens. There could be many other contributing factors. For example, from a psychological point of view - fire has many important associations (i.e. fire symbolizes a number of things). It is a symbol of purity - for fire is considered to purify everything. Hence cooking food in fire can symbolize purification of food. Fire is also supposed to symbolize 'illumination', 'inner light' , 'holiness' etc.. It is interesting to note that in many of the cultures across the world there are myths related to 'theft of fire' (e.g. according to Greek mythology, Prometheus [whose name means 'foresight'] stole fire [which was available only to the gods at that time] from Zeus and gave it to the mankind). As I have said earlier (please see Myth and truth : 'So true that it can't be real'), myths often embody great truths.

Now let us come back to microwave ovens. From the above discussion, it can be seen that 'microwave-cooking' might have been at a disadvantage as compared to 'fire-cooking' because of the symbolic significance of fire. This argument becomes stronger if we compare microwave ovens to washing machines. As compared to microwave ovens, washing machines became popular in India much faster. One of the reasons for this could be that a washing machine is a more or less 'straight forward automation of an essentially mechanical process' (i.e. washing). So washing machines did not have to fight some of the above 'psychological battles' that microwave ovens had to fight! Anyway, since I am not an expert in marketing (or in microwave ovens/washing machines for that matter) let me not push this point any further !

In praise of HR generalists

2008-06-29T01:52:00.015+05:30

Let me begin by saying that I am a specialist - I am in a specialist role now (in Learning and OD) and I have spent most of my career so far in specialist roles in HR. But I have also handled HR generalist/HR business partner roles where I was the 'internal customer' for specialists roles in HR. Again, I have been fortunate to get opportunities to work in the HR domain in multiple contexts - HR consulting, Internal HR and HR Shared Services Centre. At this point, I am very happy to be back in a specialist role. But I have much higher appreciation/ respect for HR generalists now - as compared to what I used to have during the early years of my career.

Earlier (when I was looking at HR generalist roles as an outsider), I used to consider most of the HR generalist roles to be rather 'shallow' - in the sense that most of those roles (when it comes to the way they are actually executed) don't require any significant application of HR/behavioral science knowledge (please see HR Professionals and Multiple Personality Disorder). The main requirement for those roles seemed to be 'a bit of common sense coupled with knowledge of procedures/policies'. Now that I have closely worked with some very effective HR generalists (and also seen generalist roles from an 'insider perspective'), I am convinced that what appears to be straight forward common sense decision making often involves fine judgement - the kind of judgement that requires knowledge and much more than knowledge - often requiring the kind of 'wisdom' that I spoke about in 'Wisdom-level consulting'. Since HR generalists need to interface with employees & managers, they need to ensure that what they do/the decisions they are communicating appear simple, clear and consistent. But these simple 'front-end/user interface' is often achieved by absorbing a lot of complexity at the 'back-end' of decision making - and you have to be an insider to see/appreciate this 'back-end' of decision making!

I have seen many senior HR generalists do the kind of great process facilitation/ process consulting work with business leadership teams that would make an Organization Development (OD) specialist proud. But usually these HR leaders don't call it OD and they don't talk too much about it - may be because they see it as a very natural part of their job and may be because they don't want to annoy the 'designated OD specialists' in the organization! I have also seen these leaders being able to synthesize the inputs from multiple specialists (staffing, compensation, resource management, workforce planning, employee relations, capability development etc.) and provide the the business leaders with an integrated HR response (diagnosis and solutions) to business challenges. This much more useful for the business leaders than receiving separate recommendations from various specialists. I feel that integrating multiple perspectives and answering the 'so what' question for the business is a much higher craft than coming up with isolated findings. Again, some of these HR leaders have a much higher understanding of the business as compared to that of the specialists and they are able to look at the organization from a 'total system perspective' - to identify and exploit 'leverage points' - those points/areas/factors in the system where a small change made can have a huge impact on the overall system/business.

Another reason for my increased respect for HR generalists is a gradual shift in my definition of 'what really makes a difference'. These days, I am more inclined to think that unless what an HR professional does makes a difference at the level of individuals, it is not making much of a difference. Of course, I agree that often a system level intervention is needed to impact a large number of individuals and that the definition of individuals is not limited to particular employees. But I have seen that technically perfect work (or 'high-end HR work') done at the system level does not always translate into making a difference at the individual level (to the individual stakeholders). From a diagnosis and solution design point of view, it is required to go beyond the immediate appearance of people related problems/issues and look at the 'underlying form/patterns/principles'. But, we need to ensure that these solutions designed at the 'pattern/underlying form/principle/theory' level, need to be converted back to the level of individuals - solutions to the actual problems/issues that we had started our analysis with. This is similar to the 'physical problem-mathematical model of the problem-mathematical solution-physical solution' process used in approaches like Six Sigma. Since specialists work mostly at the pattern/principles/system level (similar to the mathematical/'ethereal' part mentioned above), generalists are required to bring the solutions to the ground level - to make them 'real' - as solutions to the actual problems of particular individuals.

Specialists enjoy an advantage over the generalists - specialists usually support more than one client group, where as the generalists are often embedded in a particular client group. So it becomes relatively easy for a specialist to take a objective/neutral perspective as compared to a generalist. Thus balancing the interests of the particular client group that one is supporting with that of the larger organization becomes a more difficult task for the generalists.

There is another tricky balancing act that HR generalists (especially at senior levels) often have to do. Many of these generalists have a good amount of specialist functional expertise and there is one part in their personality that craves for technical perfection of the solutions. But their roles demand that the solutions should be pragmatic/workable/easy to communicate and implement - keeping in mind the organizational constraints. Also, because of their greater proximity to the particular businesses they are supporting, HR generalists are much more aware of the organizational constraints (especially the tacit ones) as compared to specialists. This leads to an interesting situation when these generalists are the internal customers of specialists roles in HR. When the specialists push for technical perfection of a solution, the generalists often have to push back - to keep the solutions implementable. This would mean that in addition to arguing with the specialists, they also have to argue with themselves (i.e. the specialist part of their personality). Believe me, this is not a very enjoyable situation to be in! Of course, specialists also face these kind of issues as they grow in their careers. Please see 'Of specialists and business alignment'.

Overall, I feel that HR generalists roles are more 'messy' as compared to specialist roles. Often, HR generalists have to act as the 'face of the organization' when it comes to communicating unpleasant decisions (like disciplinary actions, layoffs, reduction in employee benefits etc.) to the employees. It becomes a challenge to maintain integrity (at the intrapersonal and at the interpersonal levels) when an HR generalist has to to stand in front of the same group employees -within the short span of time - first to announce employee engagement initiatives and then to announce a layoff. As I have mentioned earlier (Please see 'At the receiving end of change management'), even in the case of major changes in the organization that have significant impact on the organization structure, jobs and on the employees, often the HR generalists are able to get involved only when it is too late. By that time 'emotional wounds' have already been created and what is left is more of communication and 'dressing of wounds'. This is definitely not the 'strategic change management' role that they were supposed to do. Now, I am not saying that these 'organizational scavenger' (or 'organizational earthworm') kind of roles played by HR generalists are not important. Actually they are very critical for maintaining the health and vitality of the organizations (just like earthworms increase the vitality of the soil/scavengers help to maintain the health of the ecosystem). My point is that these aspects of HR generalist roles are often very messy.

Again since HR generalists often have to respond quickly there might not be enough time to come up with neat solutions. The specialists also have their own battles to fight in organizations and there is always the risk of 'injuries'(Since these are 'organization battles', these injuries are unlikely to be physical in nature - but they can really hurt. Please see 'Leaders and battle scars' for a related discussion.). The 'injuries' sustained in 'specialist battles' are more likely to be similar to 'cuts' , whereas those sustained in 'generalist battles' are more likely to resemble 'wounds'. It is important to note that here we are talking not just about the 'injuries' sustained by HR specialists/generalists. We are also talking about the 'injuries' to the other players in the organization and to the relationships - the relationships between HR professionals and business leaders/managers that are very important (especially for the HR generalists) to get their work done! In general, 'cuts' tend to heal faster (and neater/with less scarring !) than 'wounds' !

Another factor here is that the boundaries of generalist roles are often not well-defined and hence all kinds of tasks/problems (especially those no one wants to touch) can get dumped on the generalists. In some contexts this can also imply that HR generalists are 'on call' 24x7. Work can become a series of small activities with nothing substantial to show (or to add to the CV !) at the end of the year. Again, there is the greater need to walk the thin line between confidentiality and openness, empathy and objectivity, cooperation and capitulation, emotional intelligence and emotional manipulation etc. One can even end up feeling like a 'mouse in a maze' - running here and there, feeling extremely busy- but not reaching anywhere! Now, what amazes me is that I have seen many HR generalists being effective and producing very 'neat' work in such a 'messy' situation. So how can I stop myself from writing this post - 'in praise of HR generalists'?

Any comments/observations?

Job and identity

2008-05-31T20:23:00.014+05:30

Recently, I left the job that I had been doing for the past three years and took up a different type of job with another organization. I also got the opportunity to take a 3-week break in between - the first in my career that I have done so. I spent most of this time outside Bangalore - with some of my close relatives. This also meant that I met a lot people (the friends/relatives of my relatives) - and I was meeting most of them for the first time. One side effect of this was that I had to answer the question "So Prasad, what are you doing now?" - roughly 3 times/day - about 40 times in total, over a two week period.

Initially, I tried the answer "I am on vacation" - but that did not seem to work. People would wait for me to say more and if I did not say anything more they would ask me something like "What do you do for a living?". To this I tried to give the answer "I work mainly in the area of Organization Development". But even that answer did not seem satisfactory. Sooner or later people would ask me "Which company do you work for?". To this I tried answering "I am in between jobs" (or "I am taking a break") - but this also did not appear to work well (and sometimes this answer elicited a confused and/or sympathetic look/expression also). So finally I was forced to answer "I was working for company 'C1' till date ' d1' and I would be joining company 'C2' on date 'd2' ". While this turned out to be 'satisfactory answer' (from a social perspective), I did feel quite uneasy.

My uneasiness was mainly at two levels. At the 'social level' I was bothered about how would I have handled this question if I was not in a position to say that "I would be joining company 'C2' on date 'd2' ". At more personal level, I was wondering whether I can articulate a clear answer (just for my own consumption) to our initial question ("So Prasad, what are you doing now ?"), without referring to any of my employers (past, present or future!) or to the job titles. After I thought about it for a while, I felt that uneasiness at the first level was not a very important - as it was arising mainly from 'social desirability' and 'norms of polite communication in a particular social group' - and hence it should not bother one unduly so long as the 'economic viability' angle has been taken care of. The uneasiness at the personal level was more difficult to address. Once I resisted the temptation to 'destroy the question' by resorting to philosophical answers (e.g. one should be bothered about 'being' as opposed to 'doing'), the real issue became "Have I wrapped my identity too much into my job/career ?". I feel that this is an important question that needs to be looked at more carefully.

There are conflicting trends operating here. On the one hand, many of us spend a very large part of our waking lives at work. Many of the jobs are very demanding and they occupy a lot of our 'psychological space' - much beyond office space and office hours. Our 'passion for work', might make work and the achievements at the workplace very important for us. It has also been argued that in an environment where the role holder has the opportunity to shape the role to a large extent (and/or where people are expected to be responsible for managing/developing their careers), role identity and career identity are essential for success/effectiveness. On the other hand, these days many people routinely change jobs or even change careers. Again, often people are forced out of their jobs and careers by organizational changes(right sizing, restructuring etc.). Thus, if your identity is wrapped up in what you do, a change of job or a change of careers (especially if they were forced on you) becomes traumatic (much more so in the case of a job loss).

So where does this leave us? Developing and understanding our identity as individuals is essential for personal effectiveness. This would serve an anchor point for us when everything around us are changing. While job and career identities are useful from a job/career effectiveness/success point of view, they can't define who we are as individuals. Jobs and careers are like the cloths that individuals wear and change. Just as we can't let our cloths define us (though some of us might choose to express some aspects of ourselves through the way we dress), we can't let our jobs and careers define us completely. So it is very important for one to examine one's current definition of oneself and if the results don't show anything beyond job and career identity, it is time for investing significant time and effort for expanding the boundaries of those definitions. Of course, developing and understanding our identity as individuals is a lifelong process.

By the way, there is another reason for being careful about this 'sense of identity wrapped up in job' . It has been argued that 'sense of identity wrapped up in job' is one of the factors that could predict the risk of violent behavior at the workplace. So now the relevant questions are - "Are you at risk ?" and "Are you a risk ?" !!!

Related Link: HR carnival at Strategic HCM blog

Passion for work and anasakti

2008-04-27T01:38:00.015+05:30

" People here are not passionate about their work. If you ask them to do something more, they start speaking about their deliverables, resource constraints and work-life balance. People should show passion for their work and they should be willing to work beyond office hours and on weekends to go beyond their job descriptions", said the senior HR professional. I did not know how to react to this immediately. There were many themes and assumptions (in addition to many emotions!) in his statement. I needed to think through this before I could come up with a reasonable response. So I just shook my head (in an ambivalent manner !) and tried to change the subject of the conversation.

Now, if you have been in the corporate world for some time, it is highly unlikely that you would have been able to avoid hearing these kinds of statements about 'passion for work'. While most of these statements are made in the context of 'motivational speeches' (without any concrete action points on this 'passion for work'), this is not just a 'philosophical' issue. It has been observed that while 'passion for work' might or might not have a significant impact on actual job performance, 'perceived passion for work' is an important factor in selection decisions. Of course, we have more fundamental issues here - like 'how exactly do we define passion for work' and 'what are the behavioral manifestations of this passion for work'. To begin with, I don't agree with the assumption made by our senior HR professional that 'passion for work can't be demonstrated during normal office hours'!

While the connection between 'passion for work' and job performance seems logical (though I am not sure how much empirical evidence is there to support this), I do wonder if one can do anything to develop/enhance 'passion for work' in oneself and/or in others. It appears that it is very difficult to train/'inject'/'program' this 'passion for work' into anyone (including oneself !)- especially on a sustainable basis. 'Passion for work' seems to be a byproduct of more fundamental things like meaning, purpose, talents, basic personality orientations etc. (Please see 'Employee engagement an the story of the Sky maiden' for a related discussion). So it appears that 'passion for work' is more like something that we can discover/re-discover and help others to discover/re-discover (as opposed to something that we can directly create).

While this seems promising, we might find it difficult to align the 'passion for work' that we have 'discovered' to the immediate job requirements/context - as passion for work might not be bothered about 'minor' things like job descriptions!. May be we should 'let our passions find work that meets them' rather than the other way around. Of course, this is not a simple task - either for the individuals (in terms of actually finding such work - over the span of an entire career) or for the organizations (in terms of developing/maintaining the flexibility required - in organization design and in talent management).

This could explain why our senior HR professional came to the conclusion (based on many years of experience in the corporate world) that passion for work requires working beyond normal office hours. However, the problem with this approach/conclusion is that it tries to work around (and even perpetuate) a problem rather than trying to solve it. From both 'organization effectiveness' and 'personal effectiveness at work' points of view it is worth trying to solve this problem - though it would involve significant amount of effort. By the way, it can also be argued that since passion for work is not easily trainable, using 'demonstrated passion for a particular type of work/job' as one of the selection criteria for that job is not a bad idea - especially if we can find a reliable way to define/ assess it (e.g. formulating a definition in terms of its behavioral indicators in the particular context and using targeted/behavioral interviews based on those indicators).

Another aspect that intrigues me is the possibility of 'undesirable side effects' of this 'passion for work'. For example, I do wonder if 'passion for work' comes as a package deal - along with complications such as too much attachment to the task/job/position, tendency to attempt for local optima (at the task/individual level results) that might not add up to global optima (at the team and organization level results) etc. On a more philosophical plane, this discussion has similarities with the discussion on the fundamental issue of 'whether happiness and sadness are a package deal' (i.e. "can one be 'emotionally open' to feeling happiness while being 'emotionally closed' to feeling sadness" or "can one reduce one's sensitivity to sadness without reducing one's sensitivity to happiness"- assuming that the person has no major psychological disorders !).

So is there a type of 'passion for work' that is does not involve attachment? There does exist such a concept (in yogic literature) - anasakti. While anasakti is sometimes translated as 'detachment', the true meaning of anasakti is closer to 'non-attachment'. Actually, there are three related terms here - asakti (attachment), vairagya (detachment) and anasakti (non-attachment). Non-attachment is acceptance of situations (and responding to them adequately) without getting emotionally affected by them. This is similar to the ideas of 'being in the world but not of it' and of 'engaging in tasks, yet not being concerned with rewards involved'. It is also interesting to note that anasakti has similarities with Scott Peck's definition of true love. A person high in anasakti carries out tasks (as a karma yogi) with a sense of responsibility and task enjoyment without any additional expectation (while this person does not refuse to enjoy the 'fruits of his labor', he/she does not get hooked on to these conveniences).

I must say that there is a huge difference between finding the concept of anasakti and implementing the same successfully in work-life (as a model of the ideal type of 'passion for work')! Finding a term that describes what we are trying to achieve, does not automatically enable us to achieve it. However, we can get some useful ideas from the thoughts/experience that have already been developed around the term (though in a slightly different context) and this in turn might help us avoid 'reinventing the wheel' in some aspects. So our quest for finding and implementing the ideal type of 'passion for work' continues.

Any comments/thoughts/ideas ?

Note1: In this post, I haven't really tried to define 'passion for work'. There are essentially two reasons for this. 'Passion for work' is essentially an internal phenomenon (more like a feeling) and internal phenomena are 'better experienced than defined'. The exact nature of the feeling can also be highly individual-specific/personal. Hence any formal definition given in the post can create some sort of a 'disconnect' in the minds of some of the readers - as some parts of the definition might not match with their own tacit/intuitive personal definition. Hence by using the phrase 'passion for work' without defining it I was trying to prompt the readers to use their own personal/intuitive definitions of 'passion for work'. Now let us look at the second reason. This post was focusing mainly on the implications of 'passion for work'. Hence I was concerned that dwelling too much on the technicalities of a formal definition could shift attention away from the main focus of the post. Of course, this approach would work best when there is quite a bit of 'common ground' among the personal/intuitive definitions and when we are concerned more about the implications of 'passion for work' (especially for particular individuals) as compared to 'passion for work' itself.

Now that we have got the reasons and rationalizations out of the way, let us look at some of the common themes/terms/phrases/definitions associated with 'passion for work'. One of my favorites is 'spark in the mind' - that a person brings to work (and that makes him/her look forward to coming to work!) - that encourages him/her to care deeply about the work and to put in his/her best - and even to approach work as an act of love . We can also try to define 'passion for work' in terms of its typical behavioral manifestations - increased energy, creativity, commitment etc. This bring us to another term related to passion for work - enthusiasm - to be inspired . If we look at the original roots of the word enthusiasm (en + theos = 'in god' or enthousiazein = 'to be inspired by a god'), it is not difficult to arrive at the 'work as an act of worship' idea associated with 'passion for work'. Another related dimension is 'finding/ experiencing deep meaning in the work that one is doing ' - in the work itself and/or in terms of one's work contributing to a worthwhile objective (in the 'laying bricks - building the cathedral' sense). Since we are also speaking about anasakti and non-attachment, it is important to avoid any undue attachment to these objectives/goals - even while being inspired by them!.

Hence, 'being inspired, caring deeply and feeling an intense connection (or even 'oneness') with what one is doing - without developing any undue attachment' is the closest that I can come at this point to a definition of the kind of 'passion for work' that I am talking about here. Quite a tall order, I must say!

Note2: As I have commented here, I feel that 'passion’ is closely related to meaning and purpose. Yes, if one is passionate about something, one will be willing to stretch/extend one self (‘suffer’) for it. Interestingly, this again takes us very close to another aspect of Scott Peck's definition of 'true love' that was mentioned earlier in this post(Etymologically speaking, the origins of the word passion can be traced back to the Latin words pati (to suffer/endure; the word 'patience' also has similar roots) and passus(suffering). But it is ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ that take ‘suffering’ into the realm of ‘passion’ (as in 'Passion of the Christ'). After all, there is a lot of meaningless (neurotic) suffering in the world, in addition to meaningful (passionate) suffering.

Mysteries of 'being a good team player'

2008-03-02T20:39:00.009+05:30

"My team is not happy with me. They have told me that I am not a good team player", said the young engineer. The latter part of his statement triggered alarms in my mind. Over the years, I have learnt that when it comes to receiving negative feedback, one is in a much better situation if the negative feedback is about some particular action/task that one has done. In that case one can understand the mistake made and try to do better/avoid it next time. However, if one receives feedback like 'you have an attitude problem' or 'you don't have passion for work' or 'you are not a team player' then the situation becomes much more tricky. Firstly, it is often very difficult to figure out what exactly one did wrong. Secondly, it is usually very difficult to change these impressions/perceptions (regardless of what one does).

Let us come back to our young engineer. What happened in this case was that the team/ work group that he was part of decided to on a picnic to a neighbouring state. Our friend did not go along with the team for the picnic. He did not want to go out of station for very strong (but very personal) reasons. However, he covered for the team during that period by putting in extra hours in office- including many night shifts. This lead to a peculiar situation. Our engineer felt that he displayed 'team work' as he had put in additional effort - enabling the team to minimise work disruption while they enjoyed the picnic. Some members in the team felt that our engineer did not display 'team work' as he did not join the team for the picnic (or as he declined to 'play with the team' !). So what could have been a 'win-win' arrangement degenerated into a 'lose-lose' situation.

There are many dimensions here -the possible differences in the understanding of even very commonly used terms & their adverse impact, power of metaphors in our thinking and of course our primary topic - mysteries of 'being a good team player'. It has been argued that human thought processes are mainly metaphorical and that we understand and experience things and concepts (e.g. the concept of 'team work' in our case here) in the network of their metaphorical affinities.

The underlying metaphor in the case of 'team work' is essentially that from the field of sports - a sports team. While this appears rather straight forward, there could many complications here. There are many types of sports/games. The type of 'team work' that is required varies widely from game to game. The type of team work required (and hence what makes someone a good team player in that context) is different in the case of a soccer team as compared to that of a cricket team, a relay team (in athletics) or a Davis cup (tennis) team. Now the amount of interdependency among the players in a soccer team is higher as compared to that in a cricket team and much higher as compared to a relay team. In the case of a relay team, what is required to be a good team player is essentially to run his/her part of the race as fast as possible and to exchange the baton well with the other team member(s) involved. In the case of a Davis cup team, all that is required from a team member in a singles match is to win that match and get a valuable point for the team/country. Obviously, the same type of approach will not make one a good team player in a soccer team!

Now let us take a closer look at 'team work' in a workplace context. As we can see from the above discussion, when different people say 'team work' or 'team player' in a workplace context, they might be using the sports metaphor (team) with very different types of games in mind. This can lead to a lot of misunderstanding. Actually, there are additional factors involved here that could complicate the situation even more. The tacit definition of 'team work' in highly individualistic cultures could be significantly different from that in collectivist cultures. It has also been observed that there could be gender related differences in the understanding of what makes one a good team player. Part of this could be because of the fact that young boys and young girls tend to prefer playing different types of games (e.g. 'war games' and 'doll games' - to use a stereotyped example)! By the way, it is interesting to note that we can learn a lot about an individual/ team/ organization from the metaphors/expressions they use to describe key experiences.

It can be seen that, from a team effectiveness point of view, different types of team work are required in different workplace contexts. So it would be a good idea to analyse, understand and agree upon what exactly is type of team work required in the case of a particular team/work group in a particular organization context. This would also help us to develop and communicate a good 'operational definition' of 'what makes a good team player' in that context. Of course, an 'operational definition/working definition' is not very glamorous and it does not fully capture the mysteries of the 'broad concept of team work'. But it can help to avoid a lot of 'avoidable unhappiness' at the workplace!

Why pigs have wings (Importance of differentiation in people management)

2008-02-15T18:35:00.013+05:30

The more interesting part of the title comes from 'Through the Looking -Glass' (by Lewis Carroll). The other (related !) part - importance of differentiation in people management - is something that I have often thought about. There are many issues here. Is differentiation really important in people management? What types of differentiation are relevant? What are the implications of differentiation ? Is it worth the trouble and effort?

Now, there are many types of 'differentiation' possible in people management . We can look at differentiation in terms of the parameters on which differentiation is based on (i.e. input parameters/criteria) and/or in terms of the ways in which differentiation is implemented (i.e. results/outcomes). For example, differentiation could be based on (inter alia) performance, potential, criticality/ impact of the role, job level, job family, market value of the skill set, tenure, business unit etc. or a combination of them. Again, the differentiation could be made/ implemented in terms of (inter alia) compensation, benefits, recognition, career progression, development opportunities etc. or a combination of them.

If we look at the large number of input parameters and outcomes listed above, it becomes apparent that there are a large number of combinations possible here. The relevance of a particular combination would be context specific. To keep this discussion manageable, let us classify the input parameters into three broad categories - parameters that are related most to the
(a) individual (performance, potential, tenure etc.)
(b) position (criticality/impact of the role, job family, job level, skill set)
(c) part of the organization (business unit/function/geography)

I must say that these catagories are somewhat arbitrary and there could be some amount of overlap among them also. For example 'skill set' is related to both the role and the individual. It also raises some interesting questions like 'if an employee has a skill that is in the list of 'hot skills' (as defined by the organization) and if the employee is currently in a job that does not need that skill, should the employee be given any sort of differentiated rewards? ' OK, OK, let us come back to our discussion.

Based on our classification, the question now becomes whether it makes sense to differentiate based on individual, position or organization/business unit related factors? Different business unit in a company might face different markets (both product and factor markets) - with different dynamics and market practices. Business units might also differ in terms of their performance. Hence there is a strong case for differentiation. However, too much differentiation might lead to a situation where the employees in different business units don't really feel that they are working for the same company ! Thus, the organization culture and philosophy becomes a key factor in determining the extent of differentiation. Similarly, it can be argued that some positions in the organization have a much higher impact on organization performance and that some skillsets carry a greater market a higher market value at a particular point - there by making a case for differentiated treatment. Of course, we should keep in mind the fact that the list of critical positions and the list of key skills could change - sometimes quite quickly.

Now, if we examine differentiation based on individual related parameters a similar argument holds good when it comes to individual 'performance' - higher performance merits higher rewards. The case (if any) for 'tenure' based differentiation usually has more to do with organization culture/values. The case for 'potential' based differentiation (on a stand alone basis) is more complex. Anyway, the most common practice is to use a combination of performance and potential. This also leads to interesting situations and challenges. Please see 'Paradox of potential assessment' for a detailed discussion.

Now let us leave aside all these details and examine the core of the issue. I feel that the most important factor driving differentiation related decisions should be 'contribution/value addition to the organization'. So if there are some business units/positions/individuals that create more value to the organization as compared to other business units/positions/individuals they could be given preferential treatment. By the same logic, the extent of differentiation should mainly be a factor of the variation in the 'contribution/value addition to the organization'.

While this sounds quite neat/logical, there are a few important prerequisites to make this work. For example, everyone should understand and agree upon what exactly is meant by 'contribution/value addition to the organization' at the business units/position/individual levels. In addition to this we might need to include probable 'contribution/value addition to the organization' in the future, apart from the current ''contribution/value addition to the organization' (e.g. in the case of differentiation based on 'potential'). Also, it should be possible to track/ measure/ assess this relative 'contribution/value addition to the organization' (to the satisfaction of everyone involved) at all these levels . Again, there should clear norms in staffing the positions/business units to answer the question 'how can I move to that position/unit that gets better treatment'. As we can see all this could get quite complex.

As I see it, what really matters most here is the dynamic interplay of the factors (as opposed to a particular factor per se) in a particular context. For example, it is worth it to have a 'key talent program' ( that aggressively differentiates 'high performance - high potential' employees in critical job families) if we are in a context
(a) some positions (say critical positions) have a much higher business impact as compared to other positions &
(b) in critical positions, a high performer in creates much more value as compared to an average performer &
(c) it is very important that senior positions are filled by developing talent from within (say because of the nature of work and organization culture)
In such a context, the business case for the key talent program is clear even if the program could have possible side effects in terms of annoying a large section of the employees who are not part of the program. However, if one or more of the conditions mentioned in (a), (b) and (c) above do not hold good (or if they hold good only to a limited degree/extent), the business case becomes less compelling.

While this does not negate the existence of the complexity that we were discussing earlier, it can be seen that some patterns can be found amidst the complexity that can lead to actionable inferences in the area of differentiation in people management. Also, while we are caught up in all this talk about differentiation, we should not forget the importance of 'individualization' (managing each employee as a unique individual - please see previous posts like 'Paradox of HR systems' and 'Feasibility of mass career customization')- though it is not really 'differentiation' - in the sense we are using the term here.

Paradox of 'HR Systems'

2008-01-08T19:46:00.002+05:30

"But I don't need HR systems", said the senior business manager. I had gone to this gentleman to seek his buy-in (and sponsorship, if possible) for implementing an internal HR product/ solution that I was managing at that time. The main selling point for the HR product was that it would improve the effectiveness of core HR systems in the organization (like Staffing, Rewards and Training). I had just finished my sales pitch and then I was hit with this response. Actually, he was not being difficult. He had a point. This gentleman was managing one of the most profitable units in the organization. This unit had a relatively small number (as compared to the total headcount in the organization) of employees - but with a highly specialised (and difficult to find/retain) skill set. His point was that because of the nature of the skill set and high business impact of the positions in his unit, key people related decisions (hiring, rewarding, training etc.) are directly handled by him and his direct reports in a highly individualized manner and this has been working very well. So any (standardised) HR system/process would be more of a hindrance for him in running his unit !

While the above scenario is not representative of the typical organization context in which HR systems function, it brings us to an interesting paradox in 'Human Resource Systems/ Processes'. There is a clue in the name itself. The words 'system' or 'process' convey an impression of standardization/ consistency. The word 'human' implies a unique individual. As I have mentioned earlier (while discussing the various terms used for HRM), the new business environment has forced organizations to pay more attention to the 'human' part (as opposed to the 'resource' part) of 'human resource management'. This has resulted in a quest for more individualized approaches for managing people (See here for an example in the domain of career development. Another example could be the shift/progression from 'level/grade-based' to 'position-based'' to profile-based' to 'individual-based' approach in compensation and benefits management.). Now the question is that "how can standardized processes/systems be effective in managing unique individuals?" But we can't jump to the conclusion that HR systems/ processes are not required. Absolute chaos can result if there are no HR systems/processes - especially in the case of large organizations. Moreover, how can we forget what we have learned about 'procedural justice' ! However, it has also been established that human beings are managed most effectively in small units. This again brings us back to the importance of customised approaches to managing people - at individual and small group levels - even as many organizations are becoming larger in size. Thus we have a paradox in the true meaning of the term - multiple perspectives/opinions (doxa) that exist alongside (para)- each of which is true - but they appear to contradict/to be in conflict with one another.

One 'solution' that has evolved/emerged in response to this paradox (which is often seen in MNCs) is to establish well-defined processes across the organization and also to give a lot of decision making power to the managers. For example, the process (steps/procedure) for giving a salary increase (or a promotion) would be very clearly defined; but the manager has absolute freedom to decide on the quantum of salary increase for a particular employee (or to decide whether or not to promote a particular employee) subject to an overall salary increase/ cost of workforce budget for the entire team. Thus, highly individualised approach can be taken for managing a particular employee while maintaining standardization at the group level.

One interesting fallout of this has been the phenomenon of 'Computer Controlled Manager Empowerment' (let us call it 'CCME' to make it sound respectable !). This happens in organizations that have implemented an HRMS. Here all the HR related transactions happen online - through manager and employee self service. Thus a manager might be able to take actions like promotion/salary increase etc. (usually subject to built-in budgets) without any approvals. However, the system would automatically send an e-mail message to the manager's manager, HR manager etc. notifying them about the transaction/action (this gives me an idea - let us pronounce 'CCME' as 'cc me' - to prompt the e-mail friendly minds of HR professionals to attribute additional meanings to this term !). Also anyone higher than the manager in the reporting chain/organization hierarchy and designated staff in functions like HR can generate reports (at any time they want to do so) that would capture the details (multi-dimensional views) of the transactions over a period of time as well as various workforce/business related parameters - for groups at multiple levels (including the group under the particular manager that we are talking about). If any of them notices an anomaly, the manager can be asked to justify/explain his/her decision. Thus a manager has a lot of freedom to act so long as he/she is prepared to justify his actions - if someone asks for a justification. So there is manager empowerment subject to possible monitoring through the information system. Of course, this is not a perfect solution. A manager who is willing to take risks can get away with a lot of dubious decisions - especially if the people who could do the monitoring are not so keen to look at the data and/or to question the manager. Also, people who run reports at the large group/corporate level (who might look at the data in the reports in isolation - without adequate understanding the context around a particular set of data) could trigger a lot of false alarms . This could end up wasting a lot of time and irritating the managers ! However, this is not unexpected. After all, we are dealing with a paradox here !

People management is a field which is full of paradoxes (for more examples of such paradoxes please see paradox of 'hiring good people and letting them decide' and paradox of potential assessment). . The 'human' dimension of the issues in this domain is one of the main contributing factors. Also, any system (including a human system), when it becomes sufficiently complex, becomes difficult to 'manage' in the normal sense of the term 'manage'. As I have mentioned earlier (while exploring the behavioral science foundations of HR), a key prerequisite for managing is the ability to predict. In the case of complex systems, we face a dilemma - predictions about the behavior of the system that can be made accurately are not very relevant/helpful in managing the system and predictions that are relevant/helpful in managing the system can't be made very accurately ! However, a paradox per se is not a bad thing. If there were neat/linear solutions to problems in people management there wouldn't have been many deep-specialist jobs in HR (which in turn would have forced many of us to look for jobs in other domains !). Paradoxes also contribute to the richness of the domain. However, managing paradoxes might require approaches that are different from traditional problem solving methods. They might need approaches similar to those that I have described in posts like 'Making problems disappear' , 'Wisdom-level consulting' and 'Of problems, paradoxes, koans and wisdom' - approaches that reflect simplicity at the other side of complexity !

Any ideas/comments?

Related posts : See here and here for related posts.

Ghosts, stories and one year of simple-complex

2007-12-08T20:48:00.000+05:30

This month, 'Simplicity at the other side of complexity' is completing one year. When I started this blog, I wasn't sure about how it was going to evolve. One year and forty posts later, the situation remains more or less the same, though some patterns have emerged. For example, the nature of posts in this blog has become more focused - around Human Resources, Organization Development and Personal Effectiveness (as opposed to being scattered in the broader domains of 'life and work'). The posts have also become more 'experience driven' - with the concept/ theory part limited mainly to concepts/inferences that emerge from the situations/experiences. It is interesting to note that this 'evolution' mirrors (to some extent) the basic theme of this blog - 'simplicity at the other side of complexity'. By the way, I have kept the name of blog as 'simplicity at the other side of complexity' (as opposed to 'simplicity on the other side of complexity'), to stress the point that this simplicity is something that one 'arrives at' (usually, with a significant amount of effort) after working through/ wrestling with the complexity.

This one year of blogging has been a wonderful experience for me. I got to know a quite a few great people through this blog and I have greatly benefited from the interactions with them. I must thank Gautam for introducing me to the blogosphere. He also played a great role in popularising this blog by discussing many of my posts on his extremely popular blog. Special thanks also goes out to others (like Astha and Alex) who have discussed my posts on their blogs. I am also thankful to all who have read this blog/commented on the posts/linked to this blog/got in touch with me through this blog. Of late ,I have noticed that the comments/ discussions around many of the posts are longer (and more interesting !) than the posts themselves ! (see here for an example)

There is a concept in 'Tantric philosophy' that ghosts get created because of 'undigested karma'. I feel that 'ghosts' could get created in the domain of thoughts also - because of 'undigested incidents/undigested thoughts arising from the incidents'. The ideal way to exorcise these ghosts is to listen to them, revisit those incidents/thoughts and deal with them properly to ensure that the thoughts/ideas are digested/absorbed/integrated. In a way, it is very similar to the regurgitation/'chewing the cud' behavior of some animals (called 'ruminants'). This blog has given me an opportunity to exorcise quite a few of such ghosts (see here for an example).

I have also noticed that many of my posts contain stories (fables, legends, anecdotes and myths). I feel that it is mainly because of the nature of the thoughts discussed in those posts. Many of these thoughts/ideas deal with things like 'reality', 'essential nature', 'meaning', 'wisdom' etc. that are very difficult to express in words. Stories have the capability to 'capture' complex meanings , though these 'meanings' are not contained in the words/text of the story (actually, the role of the words/text of the story is to 'trigger' the 'meaning' in the mind of the reader). Thus, stories can be very useful in capturing and communicating thoughts/ideas/ meanings that are difficult to verbalize. The other option is to use complex/strange combination of words and symbols to try to communicate the thoughts/ideas/meanings that we are talking about. This could come across as 'using big words' and often it fails to meet the objective. So I feel that stories present a much more elegant solution. Of course, my favorites are myths that allow us to transcend even the 'limitations' imposed by reality! (see 'so true that it can't be real').

Any comments/suggestions?

Of deep-specialists and jumping around

2007-12-04T18:08:00.000+05:30

This post is on one of my favorite topics : 'deep-specialist' roles in internal HR. Please see here (Specialist roles in internal HR - An endangered species ?) and here (Business alignment of specialists) for previous posts in this domain. The first post explored if these deep-specialist roles are becoming fewer in number. This post is about another related dimension : the average time that these 'deep-specialists' spend in a particular organization.

When we say 'deep-specialist' roles, we are talking about those roles in internal HR that require deep specialist skills/expertise in one of the functional areas in HR (e.g. organization development, reward management, leadership development etc.). It takes many years to develop skills/ expertise to this level. Often, this would also imply that

(A) Very few people can become deep specialists in more than one area

(B) Deep-specialists are high cost resources to hire/ maintain.

If we combine (A) and (B) above; it can lead to some interesting scenarios. (A) would imply that most deep-specialists would find it hard to find another deep-specialist role that they can move into within the organization. (B) would imply that the deep-specialist would have to maintain a very high level of contribution/value addition to justify his/ her cost. For this to happen there has to be a very close match between the the skill/ expertise area of the deep-specialist and the needs of the organization. Now the problem is that in many organizations the 'needs' (that necessitated the hiring of the deep-specialist) change - often quite quickly. This could happen because of many reasons - including those related to the changes in the business and/or those related to the HR strategy/structure/operating model. Now if the the 'original needs' (that necessitated the hiring of the deep-specialist) don't exist any more, that puts our deep-specialist in a peculiar situation : he/she can't maintain the high level of value to justify his/her cost and also he/she can't move into another role in the organization. So this could force the deep-specialist to leave the organization/look for another organization that provides a better fit. However, it could just be a matter of time before the same story gets repeated in the new organization. Again, if we assume that the above changes in business/HR happen frequently, 'logically speaking', this should lead to relatively shorter tenure for deep-specialists.

Since I know that a purely logical approach might not always lead to correct conclusions, I decided to do some sort of a 'reality check'. I spoke to some of my friends (who are deep-specialists) and asked them what is the average tenure they look at when they take up a new job. The answer : about 4-5 years in terms of aspiration and about 2-3 years in terms of the likely result. I feel that these (relatively small) numbers and especially the gap between the 'aspired figure' and the 'likely figure' for tenure, seem to support the inference/line of reasoning regarding the 'relatively short average tenure for deep-specialists'. Of course, this is far from being any sort of conclusive proof ! May be (since I am a 'deep-specialist at heart') I am just looking for excuses to jump around frequently !

What do you think?

Towards a philosophy of HR

2007-11-27T13:57:00.008+05:30

"HR is like gardening", said a senior HR professional when he was completely drunk. "We are not using any functional expertise in this recruitment assignment; our role in this project is similar to that of a pimp", said a Project Manager from a reputed HR consulting firm when he was in a reflective mood. "The HR leadership team is thinking about strategies to build the firm for the next 150 years", said a global HR leader in a 150-year-old MNC. Three senior HR professionals and three interesting perspectives - in three different contexts.

What is the basic 'philosophy' that underlies the domain of Human Resources? Does this (and should this) vary significantly across organizations? Is it a clearly defined and commonly accepted philosophy ? If not, can we derive some sort of 'emergent philosophy' from the way the craft of HR is practiced ? How has this philosophy been evolving? Is it worthwhile for organizations to invest time and effort in formulating and articulating an HR philosophy?

Now that I have been working in the HR domain for a decade, these are some of the questions that I have found myself thinking about quite a bit these days. Of course, I don't claim to have definite answers to these questions. What I do have are some 'thought fragments'. So the objective of this post is to seek comments from the readers so as to have a discussion on the topic.

Since this is a very broad topic, let us make a couple of simplifying assumptions for the propose of this discussion. Here we are taking about HR only in the context of business organizations. We are using the term 'philosophy' in a limited sense, to mean the basic assumptions, premises or tenets that underlies the field of HR.

There are many ways to approach this topic. One of them is to look at the applied behavior science foundations of HR. It can be said that the objective of applied behavior science is to understand human behavior in order to make predictions regarding probable behaviors in various situations so as to be able to influence those behaviors. This 'understand-predict-influence' sequence underlies all applied behavior science including Human Resource Management. From this it can be inferred that one basic assumption in the philosophy of HR is that it is possible to understand and predict human behavior so that it can be influenced to be in line with the organization objectives.

Another 'trick' that is often used is to look at the various terms used for HR and derive inferences from the choice of words. Here we comes across many terms, including Human Resource Management, Human Resource Development, Personnel Management, Human Capital Management, Talent Management etc. Then we could make 'inferences' like

(a) use of the term 'Management' indicates the intention to 'control' (more than what is meant by the term 'influence')
(b) use of the term 'Resources' implies that employees are a factor of production or even that they are essentially costs of production that needs to be minimised to the extent possible
(c) use of the term 'Capital' implies that employees are more like assets than costs and hence they are worth investing on or even that they add significantly to the value of the firm
(d) use of the term talent and avoidance of the term resource implies that employees are like investors who invest their talents in the organization and that they would continue to do only if they see attractive benefits like rapid appreciation in the value of their talent and good revenues in terms of salary.

While some of these 'inferences' do not necessarily follow from the terms, they do give us a flavor of the underlying assumptions.

Now if we look at many of the HR practices (that originated many years ago), we can figure out that they make some assumptions like 'continuity of the employment relationship', 'good amount of predictability regarding the business growth and hence career growth' etc. If we examine what actually happens in organizations these days (especially in highly dynamic industries), we are likely to find that these assumptions no longer hold good. Please see here for an illustration of this point in the context of career planning. Based on this we could argue that some of the basic underlying assumptions and hence the de facto philosophy of HR is evolving - often quite rapidly.

It is interesting to note that to some extent this 'evolution' also gets reflected in the changing names for the various sub-functions in HR. For example the function of 'Compensation' (which can be interpreted to mean that the organization is compensating the employees for some harm done to them) evolved into 'Rewards' and then into 'Total Rewards'. Another example could be the 'Training' function evolving into 'Learning' function. Training sounds like something that is done to the employees (or even forced upon the employees), almost similar to training animals. Learning happens inside the minds of the employees and hence can only be facilitated (and not forced upon the employees) by the 'Learning' function. Of course, the change in the name need not always imply a change in the underlying assumptions/philosophy. But it does show that it is fashionable/desirable (at least from a PR point of view) to have (or at least to create an illusion of) a more progressive philosophy of people management.

Now let us look at the basic issue of why should we be bothered about the 'philosophy of HR'. The 'philosophy of HR'/'basic assumptions in HR' in a particular organization context shapes the way the employees are managed in that organization.

Lack of a clearly articulated and understood 'philosophy of HR' can make the organization susceptible to 'taking up the latest fad in people management and discarding it soon after to take up the next one'. It can also result in highly inconsistent attitudes/practices in managing the employees (e.g. swinging wildly between high empowerment and high control, between large investment in employee development and no investment between 'intense focus on encouraging employees to form emotional bonds with the company and 'downsizing and then scaling up shortly after that' etc. This in turn can cause a lot of avoidable confusion.

More importantly, the 'way the employees are managed' will influence how the employees respond to that/how the employees behave in the organizations. What happens here is similar to the 'Pygmalion effect'. Thus 'wrong/bad' assumptions/philosophy, might result in creating 'wrong/bad' reality. For example, 'Theory X' kind of assumptions/philosophy (i.e. that the employees are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can) in people management will promote 'Theory X' kind of behavior among the employees. Hence, though the 'initial reality'/'employee behavior' might not be in line with 'Theory X kind of assumptions', after people management based on 'Theory X assumptions' have been practiced for some time, employees might start to behave in a fashion that validates 'Theory X'. This makes people management a very dangerous domain !

We also have to be mindful of the possible conflict between the stated HR philosophy in an organization and the 'actual' HR philosophy practiced in the organization. What really matters is the HR philosophy (basic assumptions about HR) that emerges/can be inferred from (or gets reflected in) in the decisions made by the organization. It will be a tragic-comic situation if an organization says that 'people are our greatest assets/people are our main source of competitive advantage' and at the same time practices 'downsizing' and/or 'cutting employee benefits & training' as the first response (instinctive response!) to any business downturn. There is no better way to create mistrust and cynicism in the organization ! The same holds good at the level of managers also. Managers (especially direct supervisors) represent/symbolize the 'organization' to the employees and the real 'HR philosophy' of the organization (as perceived by the employees) is the one that gets reflected in the behaviors of (or in decisions made by) the managers. So we can't overemphasise the need for congruence between the 'articulated HR philosophy' and the 'HR philosophy in practice' ! It is interesting to note that discussion mirrors the discussion on the need for congruence between the 'espoused values' and the 'enacted values' in an organization. Logically speaking, HR philosophy of an organization should be closely linked to (or even derived from) the core values of the organization. Thus, the issues at the level of core values are likely to get reflected at the level of HR philosophy also!

So, these are some of my preliminary thoughts. Now over to you for your comments.

Training the victim

2007-11-11T11:16:00.000+05:30

'Training the victim' is one of the most common 'crimes' committed in the domain of Learning & Development. Often, this 'crime' follows a standard plot. There is a steady deterioration in the performance of a unit. Customers are unhappy. The unit head is shouting at the employees. There is a lot of firefighting happening. But all this does not seem to be working. The unit head feels that since the situation hasn't improved despite all his efforts, the employees must be incompetent to do the job/carry out his instructions. So he calls the Training manager and demands that the employees should be trained urgently. This could result in things like attitude training, skill based training and (when the unit head is a 'manager of managers' or higher) training the managers in the unit on people management (often under fancy names like 'engaging and energising teams'). The employees dutifully attend the training programs, though they feel that they are being blamed (or even 'punished') for no fault of theirs. However, even after the training programs have been rolled out, the performance indices continue their downward journey with renewed vigor.

I have seen that these kind of situations occur mainly because of wrong diagnosis/need identification. The real problem in these contexts might not be related to the capability level of the individual employees at all. Often, the problem is mainly at the structure, process, policy or leadership level. However, it is relatively difficult/inconvenient for the organization/unit head to address the issues/make changes at these levels. So there is a temptation to jump to the conclusion that it is an employee capability issue and to attempt a training solution. Since the real issue remains unaddressed (despite the 'training solution'), there can't much improvement in the situation. I am not saying that there won't be issues at the individual capability level. Of course this possibility should also be explored and if there is evidence for the existence of such a need, an appropriate learning solution could be attempted. My point is just that a proper diagnosis needs to be carried out before a solution is attempted (instead of jumping into the most convenient solution) and that when it comes to taking the responsibility for the deterioration in the performance of the unit in such situations, sometimes, the individual employees are 'more sinned against than sinned'.

Often, the way the HR function is structured in the organization increases the possibility of a wrong diagnosis. This happens mostly in those organizations where the Learning/Training function is aligned vertically, separate from the organization effectiveness function and the HR generalist functions. In these contexts, when a business leader directly contacts the Training specialist supporting the unit with a 'capability problem' (or even with the request for a particular training program), it is highly possible that the training specialist just carries out the request without spending much effort to check if the problem has been diagnosed correctly and if a training solution is appropriate. Sometimes this happens because the Training specialist does not have sufficient understanding of the entire business/people context in the unit or because the training specialist does not have the requisite diagnostic/consulting skills. In these cases, 'training need identification' becomes no more than 'order taking'. Also, if the training specialist is measured mainly on the number of training programs/number of person-days of training, then there might not be much incentive for the training specialist to 'refuse an order' or even to 'question an order'!

From the above discussion it can be inferred that a close partnership between the Training function and the Organization effectiveness/HR generalist functions could help in making the diagnosis/need identification more accurate by bringing in the requisite diagnosis/consulting skills, enhanced understanding of the context (from a whole system perspective) and greater credibility with the business leaders. This would also make the 'solution' more appropriate and enhance the effectiveness of implementation (by being able to manage the change better). Of course, defining the mandate for the training function in a more holistic manner and using the correct performance parameters to assess/reward training specialists would also be required.

It is interesting to note that from a psychological point of view, 'training the victim' can be considered to be a variation (or a mild version) of the broader theme of 'blaming the victim'. This involves holding the victims responsible (at least in part) for what happened to them when something bad happens. This enables others to absolve themselves of any blame/responsibility and also to reduce cognitive dissonance which would have resulted if they had to admit that the 'system' (structure/policy/process in this case) that they hold so dear/that they were responsible in creating/managing might be at fault. This in turn helps them to avoid the need for taking the more difficult/painful remedial steps that are required to address the real issue/cause of the problem. Sometimes this can also lead to tragic-comic situations. A few years ago, I heard about a situation where there was a proposal to conduct 'followership training' for the entire staff in a unit. Apparently, the unit head was a very poor leader and he was making the life of his staff miserable, leading to problems in employee engagement/ retention (which in turn was creating issues for the HR team). Since it was felt that the unit head won't be open to any sort of feedback and/or training, it was being suggested that the staff in the unit be trained in followership (as the leader won't be/can't be trained on leadership)! While I agree that 'managing the boss' is a valuable skill (and a 'trainable' skill to a large extent), I did feel that this attempt (training on 'followership') was (at best) a case of 'trying to solve the wrong problem' !

Related posts : See here ('the curious case of missing solution orientation') and here ('blame it on the managers') for related posts.

Paradox of 'potential assessment'

2007-11-06T14:12:00.001+05:30

Many organizations have some sort a process for assessing the 'potential' of its employees. This is very much required as the 'fallacy of promoting an employee to a new job based on performance in the current job' is well known. There won't be many HR professionals (or even managers) who haven't heard many times about the 'tragic story' of the 'star salesman who was promoted to the sales manager position'. So the business case for 'potential appraisal' is quite strong. The problem begins when one asks questions like 'How exactly should organizations go about assessing potential ?' , 'Can potential assessment be done (within the organizational constraints) in an objective/ valid manner?' , and, 'If there are serious doubts regarding the validity of potential appraisal in a particular organization context, is it worth the trouble and effort to put in place a potential appraisal process in that organization?'.

The common methods used for 'potential appraisal' include managerial judgement, 360 degree appraisal, psychometric testing, assessment centres etc. Some times a combination of these methods are also used. In most cases the choice of method(s) is driven mainly by the amount of time and resources that the organization is willing to invest in the process and the 'cultural readiness' of the organization. Some times the choice could also be driven by things like 'casual benchmarking', 'latest seminar attended by the HR Head, 'pet methodology of the consulting firm hired' etc.

I feel that the basic issue in potential assessment (which some times does not get enough attention) is 'potential for what?'. The answers include 'potential to be effective in a particular position', 'potential to be effective in a job family', 'potential to take up leadership positions in the company' etc. Logically, this should lead to the creation of a capability framework that details the requirements to be effective in the job/job family/leadership positions that we are taking about. The potential assessment has to be done with respect to these requisite capabilities. Depending on the nature of the particular capability, the method for assessing it can be chosen keeping in mind the organization constraints/context specific factors. In many cases the employees might not have had an opportunity to demonstrate the requisite capabilities (for the future/target job) in their current/previous jobs. This would call for some sort of simulation, similar to those used in assessment centres. For some aspects of particular capabilities that are close to work styles/ personality attributes some sort of psychometric testing could also be useful. Managerial judgement (especially if it is based on in-depth discussion by a group of managers who have had significant amount work related interaction with the employee) and 360 degree feedback are useful to supplement the data from assessment centres/from other assessment tools particularly from a data interpretation/'reality testing' point of view.

In the choice of methods/process, t is very important to strike the right balance between accuracy of the assessment (from a validity point of view) and the time/resource investment required (from a sustainability point of view). Some capabilities are easier to develop through training/experience in a short period of time while it is not the case for some other capabilities. So if the time/resource constraints do not allow the potential assessment to cover all the capabilities, the capabilities that are difficult to develop through training/experience in a short period of time should get priority. Of course, we need to look at the relative importance of various capabilities for enabling effectiveness on the job. Thus, to achieve a reasonable amount of validity, 'potential assessment' requires a significant amount effort and if the the organization is not willing to use anything other than 'judgement of the immediate manager' for assessing potential, the usefulness of the assessment becomes doubtful.

This brings us to the issue of how would the organization use the results of the potential assessment. Most common practice is to combine the potential assessment with the performance assessment in order to arrive at some sort of 'talent classification' that segments the employees into various categories and to define particular courses of action for each category (e.g. promote, retain, develop, move out etc.). It has to be kept in mind that even if the performance assessment has been done in an objective manner, if the validity of potential assessment is doubtful, the talent classification and the consequent actions become debatable.

There are also other interesting dimensions here such as whether the organization would disclose the results of the potential assessment and talent classification to the employee in question. Not disclosing this could create issues related to transparency and even those related to data privacy/data protection. Disclosing the information might lead to a situation where the employee questions the results/methods, forcing the manager/organization to explain how exactly were the results arrived at and also the steps taken to ensure the validity of the process/ results.

There is also the issue of employees who were assessed to be 'low potential' feeling discouraged/demotivated. Some times, these negative reactions are even worse than those to a 'low' rating on performance. In many organizations, the results of potential assessment for a particular employee tend to remain the same across years (especially for assessment of 'leadership potential'). Thus once employees get a 'low rating' on potential, they might feel that they will never get an opportunity to take up leadership positions. Many employees also feel that they have a better chance of influencing their performance rating as compared to influencing their potential rating, especially when the potential appraisal process is not very transparent.

I have also come across situations where the potential assessment has been misused. Some times potential assessment is positioned/communicated as 'purely for capability development' though the results get used for assessment that feeds into key decisions impacting the employee's career advancement. Of course there could be much worse scenarios. Many years ago, when I was doing a diagnostic study of the HR systems of a company, I was told that though the performance planning and review system of the company provides an option to the employees to disagree with the manager on the performance rating, no one exercises that option. When I tried to investigate the reason for this, I found that the process provides for a 'potential rating' in addition to the performance rating and that the 'potential rating' is not even shared with the employee. It was common practice among the managers in that company to give a 'low' rating on potential for any employee who disagrees with manager on the performance rating. Since a 'low' rating on potential would have ruined the career of an employee in that company, no one wanted to take the risk of disagreeing with the manager on the performance rating. I hope that this extreme scenario is a rare one. However the point is that potential assessment can be misused and this could have serious adverse effects on employee engagement and retention.

Thus the organization needs to think through the entire gamut of issues related to potential assessment in its context (objective, methodology/process, validity, sustainability, using the results, employee communication, initial investment/effort, time/effort required for each cycle, cost benefit analysis etc.) before a potential appraisal system is put in place. While perfect solutions may not be feasible/required, it does require thinking though multiple scenarios, options and implications and making informed decisions/trade offs. This would enable the organization to maximise the implementation effectiveness and to minimize/mange the ripple effects of implementation. This is the requirement for being able to give a positive answer to the question that we started off with (Is it worth the trouble and effort to put in place a potential appraisal process in the organization?').

Related Links : Please see here for a related post and see here for my response to that post (see the second comment).

Two slips and a gully (2 EAs and a secretary)

2007-10-19T15:45:00.000+05:30

A few years ago, I worked with a very 'interesting' boss. He was the head of our group and he used to have 2 Executive Assistants and 1 Executive Secretary supporting him. Since group size was about 30, this meant that 10 % of the group was in his support staff. I used to wonder if this was really required. While he definitely needed some administrative support, 3 support staff seemed to be a bit too much. I used to suspect that some sort of 'pace bowler mentality' might have something do with this situation. Let me explain. In the game of cricket, if you are a pace bowler, you would feel very good when you see a few fielders in slip and gully positions when you are running in to bowl. In a way, it is an acknowledgement of your skill as a pace bowler. After all, fielders won't be deployed in those positions unless you have a good chance of forcing the batsman to edge the ball. So it makes sense. Now think of a situation where the batsman has been hitting you over midwicket frequently and you still insist on having many fielders in slips/gully. It this case it becomes debatable whether your demand is based mainly on logic/cricketing sense or on your need to maintain your self image as a good pace bowler.

This brings us to the larger issue of the level of admin./secretarial support required for senior managers. In MNCs, the trend these days is to reduce the number of support staff for senior managers to an absolute minimum level. In a high-tech world, many of the traditional administrative/secretarial support activities are not required. Self service is the norm even for senior managers. Some times this (i.e. operating without support staff) is also done as a 'cultural statement'. Anyway, this leads to savings in 'headcount' and it makes sense in most situations. However there are also situations where a significant part of the senior managers time gets wasted in administrative activities that could have been done by a support staff. Considering the very high salaries of many of these senior managers, some times this 'avoidable' wastage of time could prove to be more costly than the cost involved in employing support staff (especially when we consider the 'opportunity cost' of the time wasted by the senior managers). Also I feel that, in general, decisions based on 'total cost of workforce' are often better than those based on 'headcount numbers' though headcount numbers are easier to track and control. Thus it becomes necessary to examine whether the decision to reduce the number of support staff is based entirely on sound business logic (based on a cost benefit analysis).

It would be interesting to examine if the presence of support staff encourages some managers (especially 'old world' managers) to operate in a more hierarchical/less democratic way with the other team members and/or to feel that the other team members are not so important. An extreme example is the case of a senior manager who (when he has questioned by his HR manager about the high attrition rate in his team) claimed that he is not bothered about attrition as he can run the department with only two other staff members. When the curious HR manager tried to find out who these two 'critical resources' are it emerged that the senior manager was referring to his secretary and his driver. May be the presence of support staff increases 'power distance' in some contexts and in those contexts the 'cultural statement' that I was mentioning earlier might not be all that bad an idea !

Of specialists and 'business-alignment'

2007-10-08T18:20:00.000+05:30

I have spent most of my career so far in specialist roles. I have also handled HR business partner roles (being part of the business leadership team) where I was the 'internal customer' for specialists roles in HR. This gave me an opportunity to develop a more 'balanced perspective' on specialist roles - their value proposition, their relationship with generalist roles, and their business-alignment.

One of the issues that has interested me a great deal is the 'business-alignment of specialists'. Most of us would agree that specialists should not operate in an 'ivory tower' manner and that their efforts should be aligned to the needs of the business. It would be quite disastrous if a specialist operates with an attitude that 'I need to make some interventions, so let me find a group/unit to be intervened upon' or that 'I have designed a 'perfect' framework/tool/process and my duty is to make the organization implement that - whether they like it not'. So, the solutions that the specialists design should be targeted at the key problems and opportunities for the business. Also, these solutions should be designed in a such a way that they have a good chance of 'working', keeping in mind the organizational constraints and its state of readiness. Otherwise the result would be 'very elegant impractical solutions'.

However, it would also be a mistake to jump to the other end of this spectrum - where the specialist becomes just a pair of hands. Specialists are paid for their expertise and just 'obeying' what their customer asks them to do without questioning would be an abdication of responsibility. As a specialist, I have felt uncomfortable when a business leader or a generalist attempted to tell me 'the solution'. I feel that the customer should describe the need/problem. The customer can also specify some key design considerations and boundary conditions for the solution in their context. But it is the job of the specialist to design the solution. Of course, the solution design process is an interactive one where the customer input/data/feedback is sought at all the appropriate stages. Again, it is for the customer to decide whether the solution meets his/her needs. But none of this takes away from the fact that 'solution design per se ' is the job of the specialist.

Now, this does not mean that specialists should stop listening to the customer the moment the customer starts describing the 'solution'. These 'solutions' described by the customers often provide valuable information regarding the 'real problem'. In many situations, this information might not be part of the initial problem statement. The solutions provide a good starting point for an in-depth discussion with the customer regarding the problem. This is essentially a matter of asking the customer why he/she is proposing the particular solution. The idea is to seek clarifications so as to have a better understanding of 'where the customer is coming from' and not to 'destroy' the 'solution' proposed by the customer. Once we understand the real needs/objectives of the customer, it becomes possible to have a discussion with the customer regarding the possible solutions (and not just the one the customer had initially proposed) and their implications. This gives the specialist an opportunity to bring in his expertise (content and process) and do what the specialist is paid to do. Of course, there could be situations where the customer is not prepared to have such a discussion (i.e. where the customer's position is that of 'just do what I tell you'). If these situations occur frequently in a particular context (or if they become the standard operating procedure), then the specialist should think about whether a specialist role is really needed in that context. Fortunately, these these kind of contexts are relatively rare.

The role of the specialist is a tricky one. Deep technical expertise (in both the 'content' part and in the 'process' part) is often a key part of the 'definition' of a specialist. Thus 'technical perfection' of the solution becomes a key motivating factor for the specialist. However, the survival of the specialists depend on developing and implementing 'pragmatic solutions' that work within the organization constraints. Thus there is always this ('creative'?!) tension between 'correctness of the solution' and the 'feasibility of implementation'. Making the transition from being a 'technical' expert to being a 'solution provider' is a necessary part of the 'journey' of any specialist. The 'trick' is to make the transition without losing the 'soul of the specialist'.

Any comments/thoughts/ideas?

Related Link : Specialist roles in internal HR - An endangered species?

Followership behaviors of leaders

2007-09-18T19:20:00.000+05:30

A few years ago, while I was working with one of my previous employers, I got an opportunity to attend a 'global HR leadership team meeting' of that company. This meeting brought together senior HR leaders of the company from various countries and from the corporate office. Though the main purpose of my participation in the meeting was to lead a working session (on an initiative that I was managing at that time), it also gave me a great opportunity to observe the HR leaders of the company for three days.

What struck me the most was the 'followership behaviors' of some of these leaders (i.e. their behavior pattern when they are interacting with leaders who are even more senior than them). In quite a few cases this was very different from their behavior in those situations where they were the senior most person present. The supreme confidence and aggressiveness that were often present in their behavior in the latter case were completely absent when they were in the presence of leaders who are more senior than them. Initially, this difference caused some amount of 'dissonance' in my mind. But it helped me to develop a more realistic/balanced understanding of these people as individuals and also of their degree of power/influence/importance in the organization. This proved to be very helpful in working more effectively with these leaders later.

I do wonder how much difference is there between the 'leadership' and 'followership' behaviors of most people. May be we can say that the difference is there in the case of most people (this is a common phenomena among primates !) and that the difference becomes more 'noticeable' in the case of people who are in leadership positions in organizations (or at least that people who have seen these leaders in action in both the 'leadership' and 'followership' roles tend to notice quite a bit of difference). Of course, this difference is a matter of degree and in the case of some of the leaders there won't be a significant difference in the behavior. It might also be that the difference would be more in the case of more hierarchical organizations (and in the case of more 'authoritarian leaders').

An even more interesting question is whether it is 'OK' to have a difference between one's 'leadership behavior pattern' and 'followership behavior pattern'. I feel that some amount of difference is 'normal' - in the statistical sense of the term (i.e. fitting into a normal distribution). I do feel that a very high degree of difference (resembling 'split personality') is not desirable - especially when the difference in behavior is used to manipulate one's subordinates and/or superiors.

All of us are leaders and followers. It can be argued that 'leadership' and 'followership' are present in all of us and that one of them ('leadership' or 'followership') becomes 'active' in a particular situation. This leads to some interesting questions. To what extent is 'leadership' and 'followership' a choice of the individual concerned? Is this always a conscious choice? To what extent does the situation influence this choice? If we treat leadership as an 'emergent phenomenon' can one do anything to improve one's chances of 'emerging' as a leader?

Any answers/thoughts/comments?

Social capital, restructuring and attrition

2007-09-02T18:23:00.002+05:30

Social capital in an organization refers to the collective value of all social networks (connections among the individuals) in that organization. These connections have 'value' for both the organization and the employees.

A significant portion of the 'work' in organizations gets done through these connections (often referred to as the 'informal organization') rather than through the 'formal structure' in the organization. These 'connections' motivate employees to do things for one another beyond what is specified in the job descriptions. Hence social capital has a positive influence on productivity. The importance of social capital in the creation of intellectual capital has also been recognised. Since these 'connections' are difficult to copy, social capital could be a source of sustainable competitive advantage for the organization.

These 'connections' (social capital) could also help in addressing 'relatedness' needs of the employees. So in addition to enabling the employees to get their work done faster/easier/better, these 'connections' contribute in meeting their their social/'connectedness' needs. Thus social capital could add to 'personal effectiveness at work' and the 'total employee deal' as perceived by the employees and hence it could have a positive influence on employee engagement and retention.

Organization restructuring is one of the popular ways of responding to a dynamic business environment. While the business case for restructuring is quite compelling in many contexts, the hidden costs of restructuring in terms of loss of social capital often gets overlooked. Restructuring breaks up the human networks/connections in organizations and dilutes the social capital in the organization. Since (as mentioned above) these connections are valuable for both the organization and the employees, there could be adverse impact on the organization (in the form of reduced productivity, reduction in the rate of intellectual capital creation, increased employee turnover/ attrition etc.) and on the employees (in terms of reduced engagement, work effectiveness, satisfaction etc.). Of course, many of these factors are interrelated and hence the adverse effects could get amplified.

As we have seen above, organization restructuring and the consequent loss of social capital could reduce the 'value' that the employees derive from organization and hence this could lead to employee turnover/attrition. The social networks bind the employees to one another and hence to the organization. It can also be said that one of the reasons that the employees don't want to leave an organization (to join another organization) is the reluctance to 'start all over again' (in terms of having to build new networks/connections). Thus if a restructuring breaks up their existing connections, employees might have less reason to stay on in an organization. Costs of attrition are well known. Apart from these costs attrition also leads to a further erosion in human capital as more social networks/connections get broken when employees leave. When 'key' employees (with a large number of strong connections) leave the impact on social capital would be more. It is also possible that employees might leave in groups if these groups have a large number of strong connections within them (especially if another organization offers an opportunity to maintain these connections).

Thus one of the key hidden cost of restructuring could be in terms of loss of social capital and its ripple effects. Loss of connections/social capital could lead to attrition which in turn leads to a further erosion of social capital. This could lead to a vicious cycle and organizations should be careful about this. When an 'impact assessment' is done for the proposed restructuring exercise, the impact on social networks/connections/social capital should also be factored in. Since these social networks also serve as communication channels, the communication strategy for restructuring requires even more emphasis (as the restructuring could have broken up some of the existing communication channels). The overall change management plan should give specific attention to retain key people (people with a large number of strong connections) so as to reduce the erosion of social capital. The plan should also focus on creating an environment that would facilitate building of new connections to replace the old ones hence to restore and enhance the social capital in the organization.

See a related post here.

Career planning and the myth of Sisyphus

2007-08-21T21:03:00.001+05:30

Career planning is one of the most interesting rituals in HR. But before we come to career planning let us look at the myth of Sisyphus. We come across Sisyphus in Greek mythology. The myth says that because of his trickery Sisyphus was cursed by the gods. As a result of that he had to repeat a maddening procedure forever. He was compelled to roll a huge rock up a steep hill, but before he reached the top of the hill, the rock always escaped him and he had to begin again. Actually, similar stories exists in other cultures also. For example, in my home state (Kerala) there is a similar story about Naranathu Bhranthan. Naranathu Bhranthan was considered to be a 'siddha' (an 'enlightened' or 'realized' being) though some of his behaviors appeared to be rather 'strange'. He used to follow the same procedure as that of Sisyphus (though not on a full time basis!). But he was doing it out of choice. Also in his case the stones would not automatically roll back. So he would manage to get many big stones to the top of the hill. Then he would push them down one by one and he would laugh loudly as they roll down the slope. We will come back to Naranathu Bhranthan later in this post. As I have mentioned in an earlier post, myths are important as they contain eternal truths, though myths might be too true to be real.

Now let us come back to career planning. Organizations in general and HR professionals in particular, invest a lot of time an effort in career planning. There are very good reasons for doing so. A large number of studies have shown that 'opportunity for career development' is one of the most important things that employees look for in an organization. So the organizations (and HR professionals) have to do something about this. The typical response is to map out career paths. Since organizations are keen on approaching this 'strategically'/with a long term perspective, these career paths provide the 'growth paths' extending over many years. Since there are many types of employee profiles, employee preferences, positions and career options, often these lead to a huge amount of detail. This of course implies a large amount of time/resource investment. But there is a paradox here. In many industries (especially in sectors like IT/ITES/BPO in India) the attrition rates are very high. So in many organizations most of the employees would leave before they complete 3 years in the organization. Hence these long term career plans get wasted in the case of most of the employees. This is where Sisyphus comes in. We put in a lot of effort in formulating detailed career paths (like Sisyphus rolling the huge rock up the hill). But before they could make significant progress along these nice career paths most of the employees leave (or 'escape' like the rock in the case of Sisyphus). So does 'career planning' amount to some sort of a 'Sisyphus-like curse' for HR professionals?

May be the situation would improve if we can target career planning efforts to those employees who are likely to stay on with the organization for a long time. While it can be argued that career planning itself would reduce attrition, this does not seem to work very well in many organizations. May be career planning (at least in the traditional form) would have a significant influence only on some employees (who already have a some sort of a long term perspective and also have a good degree of person-organization fit!). Of course there are more innovative approaches to career development that are being experimented.

Another way to look at this situation is to say that the 'career planning ritual' is both 'necessary and beneficial', though the manifestation of the results might not essentially be in terms of employees moving along the prescribed career paths. The ritual itself might help in building positive energy and it might also considered to be a necessary condition (though often not a sufficient condition) for positive organizational outcomes. May be we are more like Naranathu Bhranthan than like Sisyphus. This would imply that we are formulating these career paths knowing that most of the employees won't really follow them. So we are like Naranathu Bhranthan who was following the 'Sisyphus-like' procedure out of choice. By the way, the word 'bhranthan' in Malayalam language means a 'madman'. So we can see that though Naranathu Bhranthan appeared to be 'mad' to many people (and hence he was called a 'bhranthan'), he was the 'master of his madness' and that he was laughing at life itself (remember - he was also considered to be a 'siddha'). Perhaps career planning in rapidly changing high attrition environments would always be a maddening activity. But each one of us can attempt to be a 'master of the madness' rather than being a slave. May be we can also laugh like Naranathu Bhranthan used to do (though not so loudly - lest we might be considered to be 'mad' by the 'masters' in our organizations !) when the employees grow beyond (or even 'jump' out of) the elaborate career paths that we had created with so much effort !

So are you laughing ?

Note: Please see here for another example of the connection between HR and 'madness'.

Research and a three-year-old

2007-08-14T13:54:00.004+05:30

The incident that triggered the thought process behind this post happened when my son was about 3 years old. This was the time when he was trying to figure out 'cause and effect' relationships. So he used to say things like "If I shout in the class, my teacher will scold me", "I ran very fast in the park. That is why I fell down" etc. Those days we used to have an evening ritual. I would put my son on my shoulders and go for a walk. This 'sitting on the shoulders' arrangement made conversations easy even when there was a lot of noise all around. So this led to a lot of interesting discussions. There is nothing quite like a conversation with a curious, confident and talkative three-year-old to force one to be aware of and to question one's assumptions!

These walks would take us near a manned railway crossing/gate. Since he likes to see trains, we would stand there for a long time. After a few days he told me about a 'discovery' he has made "The gate has closed. That is why the train is coming"! Now, we all know that the 'causation' (if any) is the other way around. But purely based on his observations this was not so. He sees one thing happening (gate closes). After that something else always happens (train comes). Based on his 'life experience so far' (or his understanding of the 'system'/'universe') it was reasonable for him to think that if something happens and something else always happens after that the first thing might be causing the second thing (this principle had worked for him in the two examples mentioned above - running in the park and shouting in the class).

So, how would I convince him that his conclusion was wrong? The only way that I could think of was to tell him about the larger system (the railway system in this case - that makes the trains run and the gates close). This solution 'worked' only because there was someone around who knew about the larger system. He could not have come to the 'correct conclusion' purely based on his observations and his life experience thus far (i.e. based on his understanding of the 'system' at that point) .

Now, if we look at the research in behavioral science (or may be research in general), often we don't have the luxury of fully knowing the larger system in which the phenomena that we are observing are happening. Also there might not be anyone who has an adequate understanding of the system to 'enlighten' us. Actually, such understanding might not even exist! (as all the 'possible' events/system behaviors might not have been observed or even taken place so far - e.g. unusual/rare events/system behaviors like those that could result from malfunctioning of railway signals, human error, train breakdowns, accidents etc. or events like 'two trains passing through the railway gate at the same time on parallel tracks' that could arise from from a peculiar/uncommon combination of factors - if we stick with our original example). Often, there is no way we can study the 'entire system' (actually it would be very difficult even to determine the exact boundaries of the relevant 'system' in a particular study). We might not be in a position to look at all the data. So have to decide what data we would study and what data we would leave out. This could bring in biases (e.g. selection bias, survivorship bias etc.) and limitations. Thus, there is a significant risk that we might make the wrong inference (since we are limited by our observations and our current level of understanding of the system).

In addition to this, there are the standard problems with spurious correlations, mistaking correlation for causation, determining the direction of causation ('A causes B' or 'B causes A' or 'C causes both A and B' etc.) and assumptions regarding the homogeneity/uniformity of the system (assuming that findings that are valid in one part of the system are equally valid in other parts of the system). Of course, there are ways of expanding both our 'current level of understanding' and our data set/observations (e.g. study of the existing 'research' in the domain- if relevant and available). But, if we examine most of the 'research' that happens within organizations (for diagnosis and decision making - to solve the immediate problems in particular organization contexts), the pressures of time and resources might dilute the efforts to expand the 'understanding and data set'. Again, it is possible that the 'system' might have changed (in subtle but significant ways - without us noticing it) from what it was at the time we studied it/derived inferences on system behavior. Considering the nature and pace of change in many of the human systems that we are taking about, this could pose a big challenge for making available 'valid actionable inferences' to guide our decision making. Keeping all this in mind, can we expect to do always better than what my three-year-old had managed to do?

Note: I am not saying that useful behavioral research can't be conducted in organizations. My point is just that it requires a convergence of 'realistic expectations', 'will' and 'resources' - which, unfortunately, is not very common in most 'real world' organization contexts. If the 'research problem' can be defined narrowly, I would not even rule out the possibility of 'experiments' (though 'experiments' might not be a 'politically correct' term in organization contexts ; 'pilot studies' might be more appropriate). If such experiments can be conducted in the filed of medicine (where - literally - 'life and death' issues are involved), why can't we try them in business organizations (with proper precautions)? Of course, the problems like the ones that I have mentioned above (e.g. too many variables, difficulty in conducting 'controlled experiments', insufficient understanding of the system, biases in selection of data, assumptions about homogeneity and stability of the population/system etc.) still apply. But we might still get some useful information and/or insights.

Any comments/thoughts/ideas?

See somewhat related posts here, here and here.

Paradox of 'hiring good people and letting them decide'

2007-08-04T11:58:00.001+05:30

How do one go about building a high performance organization? There are many 'answers' to this question. There has to be many answers (or at least 'attempted answers'), because, this is the core issue in 'management'. Hence most of the management literature should be dealing with some aspect of this this question (or should I say 'quest') in some way. So we have many approaches/answers. There is one particular approach that I find to be very interesting. It is something like this : "Hire good people and empower them to decide what is to be done and how it is to be done". The basic idea here is that in a complex and rapidly changing environment, it the traditional approach of specifying (to each employee) what exactly has to be done is unlikely to work. So it is better to hire good people and let them figure out what needs to be done.

I am not saying that this approach is 'wrong'. My point is that there is a paradox here. In order to hire 'good' people the organization has to use a definition of 'good' (a 'working definition' of what 'good' means in their context - so that it can be used in the hiring process/ as the selection criteria). After all one can't do hiring without some sort of criteria (implicit or explicit). This leads to an interesting situation. This definition of 'good' (implicit or explicit) is colored by the current thinking in the organization. To put it in another way, the criteria for a good hire gets influenced by the organization's (often implicit) understanding of what is to be done, how it is to be done and hence what sort of a person can do it. So the existing limitations (and prescriptions of what is to be done/how it is to be done) gets built into the hiring criteria at least to some extent.

Let us look at the most common example of this situation. Organization 'A' is in trouble. The organization does not have a clear understanding of what is to be done to get out of this situation. So it decides to hire a 'good' CEO and let him/her figure out what needs to be done. However, when the organization chooses a 'good CEO' that choice is colored by the explicit/implicit definition of 'a good CEO' which in turn is limited by the current thinking/consciousness in the organization. This can be addressed to some extent by looking at 'best practices' (what has worked in CEO selection elsewhere in similar situations) and by using external advisors. But this might not always work as the the uniqueness of that particular organization context might get missed out and also because the external advice/best practice information often goes through one level of processing within the organization (when decision making is done by existing people) which in turn brings in the limitations in the current processing/thinking in the organization.

Hence the approach of 'hiring good people and letting them figure out what needs to be done' might not be as simple as it appears to be. Actually, it can not be simple. Otherwise it would have been very easy to build and sustain high performing organizations.

Any comments?

See a related link here

Choosing a leader - the 'battle scars' way

2007-07-22T18:07:00.002+05:30

There is a huge amount of literature on the characteristics of a good leader. What is not so certain is whether this extensive body of knowledge is leveraged when organizations actually choose leaders. In this context, I remember a story that I had heard a long time ago. It is about an 'ancient method' for choosing leaders. I am not sure if this story is a real one/based on facts. But, as I have mentioned earlier, there can be some things that are too true to be real.

The story says that in some ancient societies, there was an interesting method for choosing the leaders. The procedure was rather simple - count the number of battle scars on the bodies of the candidates. The candidate with the highest number of battle scars gets selected as the leader.

Though this method appears to be rather 'weird', there is an interesting logic behind it. If one has too few battle scars, it means that one hasn't taken enough risks in one's life. Of course, if one took too many risks, he/she would have got killed already, and hence he/she won't even land up for the leader selection process! Hence the candidate with the highest number of battle scars qualifies as the leader.

This makes me wonder if this 'weird' selection principle has any relevance in today's organizations. If we look at the story carefully, we can see that the underlying assumption of the selection process (described in the story) is that 'the ability to take an optimum amount of risk (or the ability to pick and choose one's 'battles')is the key success factor for a leader'. This is true to a large extent even today, though there are many other factors that make an effective leader.

Since the battles in corporate world are no longer 'physical battles' (leaving aside the studies on 'workplace violence' - for the time being !) , 'battle scars on the body' is no longer a valid indicator (even if we assume that there won't be any fudging - say by 'manufacturing' battle scars through cosmetic surgery!). But 'less physical equivalents' of battle scars (say ambitious projects that have failed) can still be found. It can also be argued that if someone takes too many risks and/or 'wild' risks it is likely that it would lead to 'too many too bad failures' in his/her career, which in turn would mean that he/she is unlikely to 'survive long enough'/reach a senior enough position in an organization to be a leadership candidate. So this principle could still have some relevance - at least on the dimension of risk taking!

Actually, if this principle gets widely adopted, it can lead to many interesting situations. For example, job candidates will include a section in their CVs titled 'My key failures' (that list the ambitious moves/projects that have failed, learnings from them & how they have helped in becoming a better leader) in addition to the usual section titled 'my key achievements ' !!!

What do you think?

Employee engagement and the story of the Sky Maiden

2007-07-11T10:27:00.006+05:30

"Employee engagement" is one of the popular concepts in HR these days. Many organizations have launched new initiatives to improve levels of 'employee engagement'. Some of them have dedicated HR staff to 'handle' this important dimension. I fully agree that 'employee engagement' is very important. There is a lot of research that links higher levels of 'employee engagement' with positive outcomes like improved productivity and reduced attrition rates.

What concerns me is the tendency in some organizations to view 'employee engagement' initiatives mainly as a series of employee communication programmes. Here the term 'employee engagement' gets used in the sense of leaders 'engaging with' or 'speaking to' the employees. Now, this is an important part of employee engagement. The problem is that true 'employee engagement' requires much more than this. Another troubling trend is to equate 'employee engagement' with 'fun and games' activities. 'Fun and games' initiatives are also useful. They provide a temporary distraction from work (especially when they are held during office hours, which sadly is not always the case !). They also provide an opportunity to interact with other employees. But all these do not make any significant change in the basic nature of work or in the work context.

The defining feature of employee engagement is 'discretionary effort' put in by the employees. If employees have to get motivated to put in the 'discretionary effort', just speaking to them and telling them what is happening in the organization (and even just listening to them) won't be sufficient. To get discretionary effort, both the hearts and minds of the employees have to be engaged. Often this calls for interventions to improve the person-job fit, the performance management/rewards system and the organization culture. Of course, it is much easier to hold communication meetings than to ensure that employees are in those jobs that leverage and celebrate their key talents/abilities/interests! But if the objective is to have the type of 'employee engagement' that motivates employees to stay on and to put in discretionary effort, peripheral interventions (like communication meetings, 'fun & games HR' etc.) might not be sufficient.

This brings to mind the 'story of the Sky Maiden'. There are many versions of this story. It goes something like this: Once there lived a young farmer. He used to get up early in the morning every day to milk his cows. This went on for quite some time. Then he felt that something strange was happening. The cows seemed to be giving less milk than they used to. He tried many methods to improve this situation. But they did not work. Slowly he became convinced that someone was stealing the milk. So he decided to stay up all night to catch the thief. So he hid behind a bush and waited. For many hours nothing happened and he was feeling very sleepy. Suddenly he noticed something that left him spellbound. A very beautiful woman came down from the sky and started milking the cows. Initially our young farmer was too dazed to react. Then his anger took over and he managed to catch the thief before she could escape. He asked her who she was and why was she stealing the milk. She told him that she was the Sky Maiden, that she belonged to a tribe that lived in the sky, and that the milk was their only food. She pleaded with him to let her go. Our young farmer told her "I will let you go only if you promise to marry me". She said "I will marry you. But you need to give me a few days so that I can go back home and prepare for the marriage". He agreed. So the Sky Maiden left and as promised she returned after a few days. She brought a large box along with her. She said to him "I will be your wife. But you must promise me one thing. You should never open this box. If you open this box, I will have to leave you". He agreed and they got married.

Many months passed. Then one day, while his wife was not in the house, our young farmer could not contain his curiosity anymore and he opened the box. He was surprised to find that he could not see anything in the box. When the Sky Maiden came back she could sense something was wrong. She asked him "Did you open the box?". He said " I am sorry. I opened the box. But there was nothing in it". The Sky Maiden became very sad. She said "I am leaving. I can't live with you any more". He said "Why are you making such a big issue out of this. I told you that the box was empty". She said "I am not leaving you because you opened the box. I knew that you are likely to open it sooner or later. I am leaving you because you said that there was nothing in the box. Actually, the box was not empty. It was full of sky. Before I came to you I had filled the box with sky which is the most precious thing for me. Sky is the core of my real self. It is what makes me special. It is what makes me who I am. How can I stay with you if you can't even see the thing that is the essence of my Self and that makes me special?"

Now there are many important points here. No deep relationship can thrive unless it recognises and celebrates the factors that define the essential nature of the parties involved and that makes them special. Of course, this is more true for personal relationships and the use of this in a work context is an exaggeration to some extent. But I think that the central point remains valid even in a work context.

Any comments?

Personal effectiveness and wisdom

2007-07-06T12:34:00.000+05:30

Ravindra requested me to comment on his new book (Give me back my guitar). This book focuses on 'personal energy management' (which is aligned to one of the key themes for this blog - personal effectiveness) and it explains 'why the wise and successful need not struggle'. The book talks about doing the work that one enjoys, avoiding ego traps, making thoughts powerful, importance of right desires and about choosing one's environment carefully. Ravindra presents these concepts through stories. These are well known stories, though he introduces interesting twists to some of them. For example, he narrates the story of the 'hare and the tortoise' and asks the question - 'Would the 'slow and steady' approach of the tortoise have won the race if the hare had not decided to take a break/sleep before he had completed the race?'. Then he goes on to examine 'why did the hare decide to take a break during the race' in order to show that 'the hare should not have chosen to race with the tortoise at all' (as the hare had nothing to gain and everything to lose in that kind of a race).

Overall, I agree with the concepts presented in the book. But it did trigger a couple of thoughts on somewhat related aspects. For example, can we say that 'wise need not struggle'? I can think of at least two kinds of 'struggle' associated with being 'wise'. While we can learn from others and from the 'wisdom of the ages', I feel that true wisdom (as opposed to knowledge) can be gained only though personal experience. This process of gaining wisdom often involves struggling with (and some times even unsuccessfully struggling with) the complexities in life, often for an extended period of time. The second kind of 'struggle' comes out of the paradoxical nature of wisdom. In a way wisdom (as it embodies 'simplicity on the other side of complexity') does make one's life simpler. But often it also increases one's level of awareness and sensitivity [You might have come across this question : "Which one would you like to be - an unhappy Socrates or a happy pig?". This of course is an exaggeration as happiness and wisdom are not necessarily mutually exclusive - but there is some merit in this argument]. The increased awareness brings in more complexities (and hence ' more struggle'), though these are complexities at a 'higher level'. However, the 'wise' seem to handle this (new) struggle more gracefully(and even gladly). Based on the above discussion, we could say that, for a given set (or level) of problems, 'wise need not struggle' as much as people who are not so wise !

In this context, the Zen concept of 'personalization of enlightenment' comes to my mind. This says that your work does not finish once you attain enlightenment (otherwise there is no point in living any longer !). Actually your true work begins only then. The real work is to personalize the enlightenment that you have attained by bringing in your unique gifts/perspective/life context. This also has similarities with what Richard Bolles says on the three stage process for finding your mission.

Thought leadership in HR in India

2007-06-12T18:20:00.000+05:30

I have been doing some sort of an informal survey. It involved getting in touch with some people (most of them with more than 10 years of experience in HR) and asking them the following question: "In your opinion, who are the thought leaders in HR in India?".

Most of them came up with a list of 3 or 4 names. One interesting thing that came out of this was that there were not too many overlaps between these lists. Apparently, the people surveyed had very different opinions on who are the thought leaders in HR in India. This prompted me to prob a bit deeper by asking them "why did you name these particular individuals?", and that in turn led to discussions on "what is your definition of thought leadership in HR".

From these discussions it emerged that there is a wide variation in the definition of 'thought leadership in HR' among the people surveyed. Many of the names in the lists have contributed in more than one role in HR. Broadly speaking, their primary roles included those of consultants, management professors, OD professionals, senior managers etc. The underlying definitions of thought leadership that influenced the choice of HR thought leaders (depending on the primary roles of the individuals named as thought leaders - to some extent) included one or more of the the following aspects

Creating and/or popularising new HR practices/interventions
Understanding/predicting trends (sensing trends before they become common knowledge)
Possessing insight and vision beyond knowledge/subject matter expertise
Conducting research and publishing books/articles on a regular basis
Converting insights to a solutions and getting them accepted/ implemented
Receiving extensive media coverage (i.e. their comments are widely sought by the media on key HR related issues)
Possessing great process facilitation and change management skills
Having an extensive knowledge about the HR related research, HR practices and their applicability in particular organization/industry contexts
Coming up with new/innovative solutions to key issues/complex problems
Enjoying a great amount of influence in the HR community
Encouraging others to think about/implement new ideas/solutions

Another interesting aspect here is the primary purpose for which one tries to develop 'thought leadership'. One purpose could be to make a significant contribution to enhancing organization effectiveness and employee engagement by designing and popularising/implementing new and innovative solutions to the key people related issues in organizations. Another could be to bring in new dimensions to the field of HR, enhancing/shaping the field. Depending on the current primary role of the 'thought leader' there could be other possibilities. For example, in the case of a consultant, 'thought leadership' is very useful for obtaining new assignments and for supporting higher charge out rates/fees. For a senior HR manager within an organization, a reputation for thought leadership could provide greater opportunities to try out new things and to take up initiatives that involve large amount of change/resource investment. Of course, for some people thought leadership could just be a spontaneous act of generosity - giving one's ideas, time/effort and wisdom to help fellow professionals.

Now let us come back to the definition of thought leadership in HR. As we have seen, there are a wide range of definitions of thought leadership. It seems that there is room for many types of 'thought leadership' and for may types of thought leaders in HR' ! This also gives many of us a chance to become some type/sort of 'thought leaders' (or at least to 'call ourselves thought leaders' !) in some HR related domain, in some industry, at some point in our careers. This in turn raises interesting philosophical questions like 'Can leadership (including thought leadership) exist without followers?'.

Any comments/thoughts?

If you hang around in HR for too long...

2007-05-27T16:59:00.000+05:30

This post is about a question that has been in my mind for the last few years. The issue is something like this: After your MBA in HR (especially if you have graduated from a reputed management institute) you can expect to be the Head of HR of a somewhat large firm in about 15-20 years, assuming a reasonably successful career. Of course, not everyone becomes (or even wants to become) a Head of HR. But in general, this kind of a time frame seems reasonable. Now, the question is 'what would you do after that'. Many people would look forward to working for at least 15 years more. So what are your 'career options' at that stage ? If we define career as 'pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement where one takes up positions of increasing responsibility/complexity/contribution', the challenge is to find such positions/work that would enable the senior HR professional to continue to grow and contribute.

It is interesting to look at this issue from the organization's perspective also. Do organizations have many HR jobs that would require a level of expertise which would take more than 20 years to develop (Quick question : In the last 2 years, how many HR jobs have you come across for which the person specification indicated more than 20 years of experience?)? May be, not too many positions exist within most organizations that require such a level of expertise/such a senior profile.

Now, let us come back to our senior HR professional. We have seen 'solutions' found by particular individuals. They include, inter alia, moving into larger firms, moving into regional/global roles, starting one's own firm, HR consulting, becoming an OD/Leadership Development specialist, teaching and branching into a totally different fields. Some people also become CEOs/Heads of other functions, though they constitute only a very small percentage of the population that we are talking about. Of course, there is always the possibility of 'retirement on the job' where one stagnates, disengages and still continues on the job. If we look at solutions 'within the organizations' (like moving into larger firms, moving into regional/global roles etc.), it would be interesting to examine if they really solve the problem (by providing positions of increasing responsibility/complexity/contribution) as compared to merely changing the context (by providing a different sort of mandate/experience). Some combinations of the above solutions/options might lead to something very similar to 'portfolio living' that Charles Handy talks about. We also need to differentiate between the solution(s) found by a particular individual (or individuals) and the career options available to bulk of the population that we are talking about. So where does this leave our senior HR professional. In some cases this could lead to some sort of a 'career crisis'. It is interesting to note that this career crisis might also coincide with a larger midlife crisis which brings in additional dimensions.

Any thoughts/comments?

Notes:

1. The title of this post does not in any way imply that a long stint/career HR would necessarily mean 'hanging around in HR'. There are many possibilities for 'progressive achievement/ contribution' including those hinted at by the 'solutions' mentioned in the post. I have used the term 'hanging around' (though it has a negative connotation) for rhetorical purpose - to highlight the risk of stagnation and to stimulate discussion. It would be interesting to read this post along with the next post on 'Thought leadership in HR in India'. It can be readily inferred that the thought leaders does not hang around in the field as they redefine the boundaries and bring in new perspectives which would in turn mean that they rise above the constraints imposed by the current definition/understanding of the field.

2. It would be interesting to look at the senior HR positions in organizations and examine if the essential requirement for the position is that of a leader or that of a manager. To keep matters simple, let us go by the distinction that 'leaders focus on 'doing the right things' while managers focus on 'doing things right' (i.e. leaders focus mainly on effectiveness while managers focus mainly on efficiency). If we look the senior HR jobs in MNCs in India (that are headquartered outside India), we might find that in many cases the 'right things' (the deliverable/tasks for the senior HR positions at a country level) gets decided at the global level and the key expectation from the HR position at the country level is to get those 'right things' done right/efficiently. The logic here is that an aggregate of local optima might not lead to a global optimum. So the key expectation from such senior HR positions is to carry out a predefined set of tasks efficiently and to keep customizations to a minimum. Thus the ideal profile would be someone who would 'completely merge into the system' and get things done without asking too many questions. So the requirement is essentially that of a manager. If a 'leader profile' gets hired into the position, she/he might get frustrated and leave (or she/he might get forced to operate just like a manager). If the senior position is supposed to manage 'deep-specialists' (see an earlier post on 'deep-specialist' positions here) it could result in additional difficulties as 'deep-specialists' tend to respond more favorably to leading as opposed to managing. Mercifully not too many deep-specialist positions seem to exist in those contexts (see here).

3. See a related post here

Of problems, paradoxes, koans and wisdom

2007-05-07T22:17:00.000+05:30

This post was triggered by a comment on one of my previous posts (see making problems disappear ). The comment also contained a request that I discuss 'other problem solving methods that I know'. I must admit that while I do have a basic understanding about the problem solving methods (that can be used to solve the problems that can be solved in the usual meaning of the term 'solve'), I don't really have any thing special to say on that matter at this point. So what I am trying to do in this post is to talk about a couple of ideas related to problems and problem solving and link them to the basic theme for this blog - 'simplicity at the other side of complexity'.

A few months ago, I had written a post called U-curve and simplicity at the other side of complexity which mentioned that many phenomena follow a pattern that resembles a 'U' - shaped curve over a period of time. They start in one state (i.e. in a particular manner), then move towards the other end (i.e. the opposite manner/state) and then they come back to the original state at a higher level/plane. I feel that something similar might be involved in the case of many of the complex problems. It works something like this. The first stage is when one does not recognise that a problem exists. Here one does not (have to) do anything/exists in blissful ignorance. In the next stage the pendulum swings to the other side and the existence of the problem is recognised. This is also accompanied by a powerful desire (bordering on compulsion) to find a neat solution to the problem immediately. In the case of complex problems often these attempts to find a neat solution fails and this makes the pendulum swing to the other side. In this phase, the existence of a paradox (and not just a problem) is recognised and the nature of attempts to resolve the problem shifts from traditional problem solving to methods similar to making problems disappear. It is interesting to note that one of the definitions of wisdom is 'the understanding of paradoxes'. This in turn leads to approaches like wisdom-level consulting.

I have always been fascinated by Zen- especially the koans in Zen. Initially, I used to think of koans just as 'impossible problems' that are used to break the logical mind. Only recently I came to know that each koan has a more or less unique solution. The critical point here is that these 'solutions' make sense only at a particular state of awareness, which is reached by working on the koan for a long time. Of course, in this context, what is important is the 'achievement of the particular state of awareness' and not the koan or it solution per se.

Truths stretched too far - Part II : Let them learn all by themselves

2007-04-23T16:24:00.000+05:30

This is the second one in the series of blog posts that look at how some very valid research findings ('truths') tend to get misinterpreted/misused when they get 'stretched too far'. As mentioned in the first post in the series, the 'stretching' happens because of many reasons like extrapolation of the validity of the research findings to contexts other than that in which the research was conducted, using 'inferential leaps' between the actual research finding and assumption(s) underlying the HR practice in question, ignoring other factors (other than the factor covered in the research) that have an impact on the current context/ situation etc. There are also situations where these 'stretched truths' are used to rationalize/justify particular HR policies/ practices instead of using research to improve the HR policies/ practices. Sadly, this sounds similar to the saying about the 'drunkard's use of the lamp-post' , that is , 'for support and not for illumination'.

In this post let us look at the popular research finding "Less than 10% of the learning takes place through formal training". I think that this finding is very much true. Most of the learning happens through job experiences and through interactions/relationships. The problem happens when this finding is used as an excuse for 'cutting training budgets without establishing any concrete mechanism for facilitating the learning through job experiences and interactions'. Since 'job experiences and interactions' are outside the traditional domain/mandate of the training function, it is easy (and very convenient for HR) to jump to the conclusion that 'the entire responsibility for ensuring that this type of learning happens lies with the managers and the employees'.

Unfortunately, this type of learning (through job experiences and interactions) does not always happen automatically. Even when the learning does take place, it could be incomplete or too slow. There is a need to put in place a mechanism to structure, facilitate and track this type of learning. This is especially true in situations where there is rapid growth and the workforce consists of relatively inexperienced employees and first-line managers. In these 'high growth - high attrition - large span of control - inexperienced team profile', managers are under too much pressure and hence 'surviving' could take precedence over 'learning and facilitating learning'. Hence we come back to the need for institutionalizing practices that would facilitate and maximise learning through job experience and interactions.

For example, 'the way a job is structured' is a critical factor in deriving learning through on-the-job experience. This calls for an intervention at the job design level to ensure that the jobs have sufficient authority/responsibility and scope/variety. 'Job rotation' and 'special/stretch projects' also offer high learning potential. This would require that the organization puts in place policies/ practices that encourage job rotation and assigning people systematically to special/stretch projects. Similarly, to maximise the learning through interactions/relationships there is a need to institutionalize systems/practices for coaching, mentoring, 360 degree feedback etc. While the learning value of formal training programmes is limited, some times they can serve as a mechanism for creating awareness and to build very specific knowledge/s kills that could facilitate/ maximise learning through job experiences and interactions.

HRM in partnership firms

2007-04-19T11:37:00.000+05:30

If we analyze the role of the HR function in a partnership firm (here we are talking about large multinational partnership firms) some interesting dimensions emerge.

One of the key factors here is that a partner is an owner of the firm in addition to being a manager. Now, if I am an owner, I might feel that it is my privilege to run the firm (or the part of the firm that I am managing) 'my way'. It might also lead to a tendency to make 'sporadic interventions' in people related processes/ decisions. Thus some of the partners might view well defined HR processes as impediments to their 'freedom of operation'. This might pull the firm towards functioning like a 'family owned firm'.

However, most of the global partnership firms have well designed global HR processes. It is essential to have these processes to manage the scale of operations and to attract and retain good talent. Also one of the key attractions for working in a partnership is the opportunity to grow in the firm and become a partner/owner. Well designed HR processes are required to facilitate this and to give the employees the 'comfort feel' that this is possible .

So there are two opposing forces here, one pulling towards a highly 'personality driven' way of making people decisions and the other pulling towards a highly 'process driven' way of making people decisions. The HR function in a partnership firm experiences both these forces and it makes the role of the HR professionals quite tricky. Often only a 'dynamic balance' is possible and the equilibrium point keeps on shifting. Depending on the degree of credibility/respect that the HR professionals in the firm enjoys/develops (in the eyes of the partners) more positive outcomes becomes possible from this dynamic interplay of forces.

Truths stretched too far - Part I : Blame it on the managers

2007-04-18T16:54:00.000+05:30

These days HR practices are supposed to be 'research based'. As HR professionals, when we recommend/implement a particular practice/policy in the people domain, we want to substantiate it with 'solid research findings'. There could be many problems with this. The first is the validity of the research findings in contexts other than that in which the research was conducted. The second problem occurs when there is a 'chain of reasoning' (and sometimes even an 'inferential leap') involved between the actual research finding and assumption(s) underlying the HR practice in question. It is also possible that other factors (other than the dimension covered in the research) that have an impact on the outcome gets ignored (In the people domain, and in life in general, most important things are 'overdetermined' - i.e. they have more than one cause). Of course, there is also the ever present danger of confusing between 'correlation' and 'causation'. In this series of blog posts, we would look at some of those research findings ('truths') that tend to get misinterpreted when they get stretched too far.

In this post (which is the first one in this series) let us look at the very popular research finding "People leave managers and not organizations". I think that there a lot of truth in this finding. The immediate supervisor is a key influencing factor in employee engagement and retention. The problem happens when other factors that influence employee engagement and retention are ignored and the entire responsibility(or even blame) is put on the managers. Often there are other significant factors involved (e.g. the basic nature of the job, 'Rewards' strategy, work environment, lack of career advancement opportunities etc.) over which first level managers don't have much influence. So when the attrition level goes high, the tendency is to respond with 'training the managers on engaging and energising teams'.

This response also suits HR admirably. The factors like basic nature of the job, 'Rewards' strategy, work environment, career advancement opportunities etc. are more difficult influence as compared to 'sending the poor managers for training'. While this gives HR the satisfaction of having 'responded quickly to the business challenge of attrition', unfortunately this does not solve the problem adequately. It also leaves the managers (who are already facing the consequences of attrition in their teams) more confused and frustrated. Hence we come back to the point that 'system level issues' have to be addressed at the system level (and no amount of manager training can obviate this need).

Related Links: Next post in this series , related post

Strange case of 'wrong' HRIS reports

2007-03-26T10:49:00.003+05:30

As far as I know, there are only a few things that HR leaders (at the corporate level) across companies agree on. One of them seems to be that the reports from Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) that they receive/generate are often misleading and/or wrong. Fortunately, in most cases, nothing really bad happens because of these 'wrong reports', as they are not used for making any serious decisions. They just get converted into charts and tables and land up in presentations. These presentations are used mainly to describe (or even rationalize!) the past and not to predict the future. So no real damage happens ! Of course, if one tries to use these data to support decision making (i.e. as the basis for Human Capital Analytics), then it can lead to wrong decisions. Since Human Capital Analytics seems to be one of the key opportunities to create significant organizational value in the people domain*, we need to look more carefully at the reasons that make these reports wrong/misleading - so that we can fix them in a sustainable manner.

When errors are discovered in HRIS reports, the most common tendency is to view it as a 'data entry mistake'. While errors do creep in at the data entry stage, often the main issue lies at the levels of 'data interpretation' & 'business rules'.

Often there is no common understanding of how different data elements/terms are interpreted. Let us look at a very simple example - a request to pull out a 'list of all the staff in IT'. While this seems simple, there are many possible interpretations here (especially in a global organization). For example, this could mean a list of

(a) all staff who are doing an IT kind of job' and/or
(b) all staff whose are being paid from the salary budget of the IT department and/or
(c) all staff who are in the reporting-tree of the Head of IT

Now, to get this simple report correct, it is not enough just to use the correct definition of the term 'IT team' while generating the report. The real challenge is to build that definition into a business rule that covers all staff staff movements in IT (e.g. hire, transfer etc.) and to ensure that the rule gets followed correctly across all the countries in which the firm operates. For example, if the definition of 'team' is along reporting lines [as given in (c) above], then whenever an IT person gets hired in the firm in any country, it has to be ensured that the new hire reports directly to someone in the reporting chain of the global head of finance. In a global firm, this simple business rule might not always be that easy to implement as there could be scenarios (e.g. in a country where the size of the firm is very small) where it might seem more appropriate to make the IT person report to a business person. Of course, there are other factors (e.g. 'double-hatting') that could complicate this further. It is possible to use complex definitions to take care of complex situations. However, this would also imply more complex business rules, making the communication/implementation of the business rules difficult.

Another dimension that is relevant here is the variation in HR practices across countries. For example, let us look at a case where there is a decision to make a staff member, who has been working with the firm on a 'contract basis', a member of the regular staff. In this case the practice in one country might be to do a 'terminate and rehire' while that in another country could be just to change the 'employee class' from 'contract' to 'regular'. Thus the staff would show up in a 'new hire report' if he/she is in the first country and it won't happen if he/she is in the second country. Now, if we generate a global report, we would get misleading data on the number of new hires. Another similar issue could be 'what is a promotion' (e.g. 'increase in job level' and/or 'change in pay grade' and 'increase in pay' etc.). If we look deep enough, a large number of such issues are likely to surface in any global firm.

Any attempts to 'clean up the data' on a one time basis would be useless as the data would again go out of shape very quickly (as the problems at the data interpretation/business rules level would keep on producing 'data errors'). It is also useless to try to 'reverse-engineer' a report generation criteria (by combining a large number of HRIS fields to form a complex condition) which if applied on the current data in HRIS, would produce a result similar to a target list (e.g. a list of staff names given by the Head of IT as the list of 'his staff'). Since the data/target population (e.g. IT staff) is dynamic, the 'reverse -engineered criteria' (that captures target population at this point) might not be able to capture the target population accurately at a future point of time. So even if there are hundreds of data fields in the HRIS, need for business rules still exist !!!.

Thus to generate meaningful HRIS reports

(1) there should be a set of Business Rules & Data Standards that are clearly understood and consistently applied across geographies and businesses (which would lead to 'patterns in data') AND
(2) the report generation criteria should be aligned to these Business Rules and Data Standards (so as to capture the relevant patterns in the data) AND
(3) it should be possible to express the report generation criteria in terms of HRIS fields AND
(4) the query tool should be able to pull out the data as per the criteria

In practice, the above 4 requirements/steps might not always happen in a neat sequential manner especially since the business context and the analysis requirements keep on evolving. Usually the above requirements would also mandate significant amount of selling (and even pushing!) on the part of HR to secure buy-in from the business leadership and it is easy to get carried way by the immense opportunity to provide great information/analytics to support decision making. We should always keep in mind that the purpose of HRIS/Human Capital Analytics is to enable the business to function more effectively and not the other way around !!!

*Note : The objective of Human Capital Analytics (HCA) is to provide information and analytic support to enable better people related decisions. HCA could include, inter alia analytical reports, trend analysis, dashboards, benchmarking, predictive models etc. Analytical reports analyze people related issues (e.g. attrition) from multiple dimensions (e.g. various combinations of dimensions like tenure, age, experience, gender, performance, potential, location, job family, level, salary band,time since last promotion etc.).

Depending on the context developing HCA in a particular organization could involve a wide range of tasks. These could include requirement analysis, finalizing specifications, setting up the IT/ analytics infrastructure, benchmarking, report generation,maintaining dashboards and even building predictive/multiple regression models (e.g. to predict attrition). Since people related decisions might require various types of data that might be held in different information systems (that might not 'talk' to one another) and since many many of these systems are optimized for transactions/data storage and not for data retrieval (as required for HCA), setting up of HCA usually involves developing some sort of a data warehouse/data mart.

It is interesting to note that since developing and operating HCA involves a wide range of tasks, this would also require a wide range of skill sets/roles - Business analysis, IT/HRIS, HR specialist/consulting, statistical analysis, report generation, presentation/decision support, change management, project management etc. Now, some of these tasks/roles can be outsourced to a vendor - and hence some of the skill sets could come from the vendor. If the organization decides to staff some of these roles with internal resources - for cost and context understanding reasons, this could create new challenges. These could include issues like -'would the organization be able to hire these people easily?' - even if the organization manage to do so would it be able to provide these resources career paths within the organization (as some of these are quite specialized jobs - that could be very different from the mainstream jobs in the organization).

Apart from these staffing related challenges, there could be other significant challenges involved in developing and operating HCA. These include a avilability of data (if the current HR systems/benchmarking process don't already capture all the data required for analytics, you might have to put systems/processes in place to collect the data -this would take time and resources - also it would limit your ability to do any trend analysis as previous data would be missing), Mindset change (even if you make information/analytical support available would the managers use it in the decision making process?) and ensuring investment and sustained focus (- setting up and maintaining data collection process, analytical & reporting/ data presentation infrastructure etc. could require a lot of money and resources - is the organization ready for that - it is one thing for the leaders to say that they need information - the question is whether they would pay for it and whether they would continue to do so !)

Goal setting and 'zero error'

2007-02-20T13:17:00.000+05:30

I came across this interesting situation in a BPO company. The issue was with 'target setting' for a team that was doing transaction processing kind of work. These were reasonably important transactions and errors could have a significant adverse impact on customer satisfaction. However,this process involved a lot of manual intervention and error rates were quite high. The problem was 'what sort of accuracy targets' should be set for the team.

The head of the division was of the firm opinion that the target should always be 100% accuracy (or zero error). His reasoning was 'how can we plan for making an error'? (i.e. If we set the target as 99% accuracy, aren't we telling the agents that they can afford to make one mistake in every 100 transactions? Won't that make them complacent? How can we tell the customer that we are targeting anything less than perfection?). This also lead to initiatives like declaring an 'error-free' month. This involved giving a pep talk to the team and making them take a pledge that they won't make any mistakes for one month. The pep talk also included another very interesting line of reasoning: "Can't you do one transaction without error? If you can do that what prevents you from repeating the same 1000 times? This is all that is needed to make an 'error-free' month". So this 'error-free' month initiative was launched with a lot of hype. Sadly, the error rates increased during the 'error-free' month.

One key issue here was that while the above approach had a lot of 'intuitive' appeal, it went against the basic principles of goal setting. To be motivating, the goals/targets have to be challenging and achievable. As the process involved a large amount of human element/manual intervention, zero error was impossible. So a 'zero-error target' would only de-motivate the employees (as they are ‘guaranteed to fail’ sooner or later). So the solution was to set a target (demanding but achievable target) keeping in mind the current capability of the team, improve the process/team capability and raise the performance bar/targets accordingly(ensuring that the targets remain demanding but achievable). At rhetoric level, the key is to distinguish between a 'performance target for the current performance period' and an 'ideal that we aspire for'.

Another aspect here is the limitations imposed by ‘diminishing returns’ and ‘process entitlement’. Each process has a performance limit (entitlement) beyond which its performance can't be significantly improved without redesigning the process. Processes that have a lot of manual intervention tend to reach this limit much before the level of 100% accurate performance. So unless the process is 'redesigned' (e.g. automated) very high performance targets would be impossible. Also when the performance level approaches the current 'process entitlement' limit, 'return-to-effort' ratio for performance improvement efforts (without redesigning the process) tends to fall drastically. So performance improvement beyond a certain point might cost too much (more than what the customer is willing to pay).

HR professionals and Multiple Personality Disorder

2007-02-08T14:21:00.000+05:30

Encyclopedia Britannica defines multiple personality disorder as follows:

'Dissociative identity disorder, formerly called multiple personality disorder is a rare mental disorder in which two or more independent and distinct personality systems develop in the same individual. Each of these personalities may alternately inhabit the person's conscious awareness to the exclusion of the others. Usually the various personalities differ markedly from one another in outlook, temperament, and body language.'

I have noticed a similar phenomenon among HR professionals. The difference is mainly that it is fairly common (and not 'rare' as the above definition says). It is more commonly seen among those HR professionals who have taken their behavioral science education seriously. I talking about those folks who (even after working for many years in HR) still remember the behavioral science theories/principles that they have learned. Though a college degree per se might not have any direct impact on the level of knowledge of a person, it is often observed that having a MBA/MA in HR/behavioral science makes one more prone to this disorder. Of course, the most severely affected are those who have a pursued doctoral level studies and then (for some 'strange' reason) started working in internal HR.

The behavioral manifestation of this disorder is something like this:

During most of their time in office 'Personality 1' (let us call it P1, the dominant personality) is in operation. This involves carrying out their job related activities in a manner that does not reflect application of behavioral science theories/principles in any significant way.

Once in a while another personality (let us call it P2) surfaces. When this happens the HR professional gathers other HR professionals in the team, gets into a meeting room and talks about behavioral science principles/theories and their implications for HR practices. It can lead to discussions such as 'does our performance management system reflect principles of distributive justice' , 'do the models that are used in our leadership training programs have empirical validity' etc. This makes everyone feel nice and also enable them to feel that they are 'superior' to those who have 'wandered into HR without any behavioral science background'.

True to the nature of the disorder, P2 vanishes as soon as one gets back to day-to-day HR work and P1 takes over. Of course there are other avenues for P2 to surface including HR conferences, seminars etc. By the way, blogs might also provide an opportunity for P2 to surface !!!

There could be many more personalities (P3, P4,....,Pn) involved and some of them could even be placed in the continuum between P1 and P2. One such personality involves identification and implementation of 'best practices'.

Now let us go back to Britannica and look at the causes of this disorder. Britannica says

'Dissociative identity disorder is widely viewed as resulting from dissociative mental processes—i.e., the splitting off from conscious awareness and control of thoughts, feelings, memories, and other mental components in response to situations that are painful, disturbing, or somehow unacceptable to the person experiencing them. The failure to form a distinct personality can thus be seen as a way of coping with or escaping from inner conflict.'

I think that this more or less holds good in the case of HR professionals also. If we analyse the day-to-day activities performed by HR professionals in most of the companies, we would find that many of these activities do not require any great amount of behavioral science knowledge (at least in the way they are 'usually' carried out). This might be true even for senior positions. If we take out the hype, many of these activities might get reduced to 'getting forms filled-up'. Of course 'facilitation' is required, 'alignment' as to be maintained, the target population includes senior leaders, and the form filling is enabled by fancy IT systems (i.e. the 'form filling' happens online supported by an automated work flow and the system also enables monitoring, collation/aggregation and even built-in budgets). While this is useful work, this could create 'painful, disturbing, or unacceptable' situations (mentioned above) for the the HR professional who wants to 'make a big difference/contribution' by leveraging his/her behavioral science training. Again, similar to the 'painful early childhood experiences' that lead to the development of personality disorders, 'painful early career experiences' could contribute to the development of 'personality disorders in HR professionals'. Most obvious case is that of an HR MBA, who after taking up an HR job (often with unrealistic expectations) finds that his/her attempts to bring behavioral science knowledge into day-to-day work meets with inertia, indifference, resistance and even ridicule.

Similar to that in the case of multiple personality disorder, the treatment for 'HR personality disorder' should also involve integrating the disparate personalities back into a single and unified personality. Of course, this 'integration' itself is a complex topic (that require a much more elaborate discussion than what is possible here). Again, as in the case of treating multiple personality disorder, it is an important step to make the personalities aware of one another. That is exactly the purpose of this post!!!

Related Links : See related posts here, here, here and here