shaking off the shackles of the industrial revolution

Bill Ives of the Portals and KM blog notices my post on my weekend musings and refers to his similar thoughts and talks about a video titled "Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Nations,” produced by the Open University in the UK which referred to the Industrial Revolution as an intellectual bubonic plague, the narrative says that people were now treated as interchangeable cogs and wealth was now based primarily on physical assets. It then attributes the world’s wars and other evils to this movement. Bill also points to Charles Handy's thoughts that in a post-industrial economy, it is people that have knowledge who own the new means of production, turning Marx’s prediction on its head. He points out that this change from an industrial to a know-based economy requires a new approach to management. Managers now must understand and operate under the principal that the unique knowledge that employees bring to work is the key competitive differentiator. But in many instances, management (and I guess he refers to not just people's attitudes, but organizational processes and policies also [what else can explain Friendster firing Troutgirl? !!]) has not caught up to the new economy. Read on to see how such an attitude can hamper KM and Collaboration efforts.

And once we say collaboration, we are talking about all creative processes (and most of administrative processes) in organizations. So this legacy of the 18 century still impacts our productivity and success in the 21st century. Whoever said that history's burden was an easy one to shrug off?

List of blogs maintained by CEOs across the world

See this list at the PR wiki

The aim of this Club is to gather CEOs who believe in the blogosphere and
its extraodinary potential and to offer them a place to share with other
companies leaders the experimentation they are conducting thanks to
weblogs.

Amazing ! If those are regularly updated and actually written by CEOs !

Swiss staffig firm takes stake in Indian HR firm

Swiss firm Adecco the biggest staffing group in the world has taken a 67% stake in Indian HR consulting firm Peopleone.

Yahoo Biz reports: Peopleone Consulting reported more than $6 million in revenues last year and is on track to more than double this in 2004/05, Adecco said in a statement.

The jobs firm did not disclose the price but said it would pay a sum in cash, which would result in it becoming the sole owner of the business over time. The purchase will make Adecco the market leader in India, it said.

India has seen a strong growth in its employment market in recent years as its economy expands.

Are you a technical recruiter? Microsoft is looking for people like you

Hi folks picked this up from Zoe & Gretchen's (who are technical recruiters at Microsoft) Blog

Here is the detailed job description:

Central Sourcing Consultant - Technical

Are you passionate about identifying and recruiting the world’s top technical talent? Microsoft’s Technical Central Sourcing Team is looking for an exceptional recruiter to join our innovative team as we explore new methods to source, evaluate, and pipeline technical candidates for the company’s business groups. We live by big, bold goals!

This Central Sourcing Consultant will be responsible for developing and executing upon a strategy to ensure a constant flow of high quality leads into
assigned pipelines. To fill these pipelines, this recruiter will utilize direct sourcing techniques and the mining of the internal data warehouse while also managing other sourcing resources, such as events, research, agencies, and vendors. This recruiter may also assist other team members or pipelines as necessary to ensure the overall success of the Technical Central Sourcing Team.

The ideal candidate will exhibit a strong passion for the external candidate experience and engagement and will provide proven ability in self-sufficiently managing projects and agency/vendor relationships. The ideal candidate must also be detail oriented, deal well with ambiguity, demonstrate strong strategic thinking and creativity skills, and be an effective communicator with both internal and external partners/customers.

Requirements include 6-9 years of internet and direct sourcing experience (cold calling, networking, and headhunting) and demonstrated success in filling technical jobs with complex search criteria. A proven track record of follow up and follow through with candidates and managers in a fast-paced environment is a must. Familiarity with project, event, and vendor management and experience with a central sourcing/high volume recruiting team is highly desired. A BS degree in a related technical area is preferred.

The position is located in Redmond, WA. We have a great compensation, relocation and benefits plan. Not to mention all the fun you're gonna have working with us :-)
You can contact them for more queries or apply online. Best of luck !

Weekend musings

The question that often bothers me is how do corporate organizations look at the long term and larger picture than just concentration on quarterly results.
How do we think of all the stakeholders (citizens, communities, environment) of the business rather than just shareholders and customers?
It is my view that organizations (of any form) are unnatural entities with their command and control structures and secretive ways. For organizations to survive and thrive they need to embrace the ways of a natural human community (which they already are, but pretend not to be :-))

As Dave Pollard points out James Surowiecki (who wrote in his book The
Wisdom of Crowds), laments the fact that, despite compelling evidence that
executives and experts are poor at making decisions, and that the collective
wisdom of large numbers of people is very much better at it, few businesses
rigorously canvass their employees and customers for anything more than
inconsequential assessments after the decisions have already been made.

Once we start discovering the wisdom rather than just the 'optimum decision' business will cease to be seen as extractive by the rest of community. But how do we get there?

Brand dilution?

LG the Korean chaebol, which is synonymous in India with Consumer durables goods (Fridge, TV, Washing machines etc, in fact we have a LG TV and fridge at home) has launched its FMCG products in a low key manner recently. Stuff like soaps, toothpaste etc.

The problem I see is that the brands are being launched as a part of LG mother umbrella (in fact I don't even remember their names!) . Can you marketing whiz kids let me know if that's a good strategy by LG? Remember, their brand signifies economical durable stuff. Wonder how those will get transferred to FMCG goods ?

A blog sells out :-)

Rob points out Jeremy of Ensight who has sold his Blog, and wonders:

Could someone become a blogrepreneur, starting blogs, building the brand
and then selling them off? If you could sell a handful each year for 10-15K a
piece, that would be pretty decent. And you don't even have to do it full-time.

New additions to the Blogroll

Have added a few more blogs to my blogroll, my ex-boss, Dr. Balaji Utla Sr, VP of Satyam who's writing on learning, also Dr. Ashutosh Bhupatkar , ex-director of IMDR, Pune whom I know through ISISD and the third blog added is Tom Peters' blog which has finally got a RSS feed!

The Global Knowledge Review

Hi folks the first Global Knowledge Review, published by David Gurteen and Bizmedia has been released. You can download the sample copy from here. It's got KM related articles by Jo Singel, Dave Pollard, Lilia Efimova, James Robertson amongst others (like [ahem!] yours truly!)

Bonuses Catching up in India

Economic Times says that Your pay packet can now breach the ceiling.
India Inc, which so far linked bonuses to its top honchos to their basic salary — usually of a few months or a year, is now offering unlimited monetary inducements as project-based or milestone achievement bonuses. No wonder, it’s party time at the top floor.

It’s not that managements across corporate India are signing blank cheques for their staff. But, for now, the signs have started showing at least in the knowledge-based companies. Let’s give you a solid proof: When IBM cut a $700m outsourcing deal with Bharti Televentures, the guys at IBM who pushed through the contract took home $2m, that’s Rs 9 crore, as a one-time bonus. HR consultants say the trend is catching up in the fast growing sectors. In telecom, IT, insurance and retail the annual bonus of top executives is being linked to the earnings growth of companies. In other words, there’s no upper limit on how much an exec can really take home. At least 150 professional CEOs across corner rooms take home pay packets exceeding Rs 1 crore a year, much of it by way of bonuses.

In many cases, companies are also rewarding their top performers with a percentage of earnings (read profit or savings in case of outsourcing) running into crores is cash. Take this as for a pointer: A topline IT major pays its CEO 2% of the preceding year’s net profit plus 2.5% of the incremental profit growth in the current financial year as bonus.

No monopoly for Infy on `Infosys' trademark

The Hindu Business Line reports :
No monopoly for Infy on `Infosys' trademark

"THE Bangalore-based Infosys Technologies Ltd may be a premier Indian company as far as IT services are concerned, but it cannot hold a monopoly on trademark `Infosys'. It was so decided by the Chennai Bench of the Intellectual Property Appellate Board.
On an application moved by the Kolkata-based Jupiter Infosys Ltd praying for cancellation of the registration of the trademark `Infosys' held by the Bangalore company, the Board directed the Registrar of Trade Marks, Chennai, to remove the registration of trademark `Infosys'.
The petitioner, Jupiter Infosys Ltd, sells computers, computer parts, accessories and other items of hardware.

The petitioner also relied on a circular by the Department of Company Affairs, which said that companies dealing in computers were permitted to use names such as `Infosys' as part of their corporate name.

The Board held that it was clear that the 1st respondent had not used the registered trademark numbers 475269, 475267 and 484837 for more than a period of five years and one month. The 1st respondent failed to make out its case that it had been in manufacturing or trading of goods for which it had taken the registration numbers. "Accordingly, we hold that the petitioner succeeds in his application. The applications are allowed and the Registrar shall remove these registrations from the register."

Now that is a big blow for Infosys, it had in fact brought out full page ads by its legal team challenging other firms not to use 'infosys' in their names. Wonder what they will do now....

Gmail invites

Hi, if any of my readers is interested in a Gmail invite leave me your non-yahoo, non-hotmail email id either in the comments section, or send me a mail at gautam.ghosh [at] gmail.com or ggpoet [at] gmail.com

Business bloggers...

Rob at BusinessPundit shares how a portal approached him to sell and emportalize (a word coined by Accidental Verbosity) his blog. Rob refused but says:

if a business magazine (or a bank) will loan me the money for my next venture,
I'll put their ad on this site and I'll blog all about the experience, even the
gory details.

That triggered a discussion on blogging and money making thanks to Rob also blogging this Yahoo article on how bloggers are not making money. (Methinks it is Yahoo's way of hyping down the buzz about bloggers making money, mainly because Google is spreading its AdSense program through Blogger's blogs and giving bloggers part of the $$)

I am still surprised that portals might want to buy niche blogs like business focussed blogs. It's not as if we influence organizations to change their structures, strategies or customers or, do we?

Rob responded to that comment by saying:

Not yet, but maybe we should form an all-blog consulting company ;-)

And I took the thought further:

Lets hypothesize...an organization approaches the "BizBloggers Consulting
Consortium" with a business problem. It gets posted on all the biz blogs and
commented upon by all the readship of these blogs and then the consortium
aggregates the best solutions and presents them to the organization ?
Sounds interesting :-))
The "wisdom of crowds" at work?

Infosys consulting's 40% cost savings

Top Consultant reports on how Infosys Consulting, the US-based arm of Infosys Technologies can manage a 40 percent cost advantage.

Infosys Consulting said it is adopting a ‘1-1-3’ model, meaning that for every consultant based in the US, Infosys will have one more onsite person and three offshore employees. The company believes that while companies like Accenture and EDS may be able to take 20 percent of their work offshore, it can move 60 percent of its work offshore. It said it can translate the 40 percent difference into equal percent cut in costs for its clients.

Sleeping on the job

The BBC reports on how stressed British workers find their bed a more creative space than the office:

Some 30% of people have their best ideas in bed compared to just 11% who
have them at their desk, according to research by the East of England
Development Agency (EEDA).
It is calling for companies to install beds in
the workplace, in an attempt to change the way we work for the better.
According to the authors of The Art of Napping At Work we live a "napaphobic
culture", but attitudes are changing and the bed could soon become part of the
office furniture.
Some companies are embracing the idea and building "nap rooms" and "nap
tents" for employees.
Accountancy firm Deloitte Consulting in Pittsburgh,
America, has designed a special "napnasiums" for the comfort of their employees.
It is open to any employee needing rest and has recliners and blinds.
The company made Fortune Magazine's list of the best 100 US companies to
work for last year, so its enlightened attitude to work naps seems to be reaping
rewards

.


But what we have to think twice, which I don't think the study touched upon, is that is the idea work related? And how will metric and productivity obsessed corporations measure ROIs...Hmm...any thoughts?
Let's extrapolate, as to how a manager could ask those questions:

1. How many ideas were the result of sleeping?
   
2. How many were business related?
   
3. How many could you implement?
   
4. How much of topline and bottomline did it add in this quarter?
   

etc etc etc :-)

The challenge for e-learning

Patrick Lambe has written an article on the challenges of implementing e-learning. No wonder why we see so few examples of "good" e-learning !

To quote:

To do enterprise e-learning really well, beyond the technical competencies
present already in HR and IT, you have to be able to marry deep understanding of
the operational needs at the front line, strategic direction, consulting and
change management skills, quality and performance metrics, information
architecture and usability design, workflow analysis and process redesign,
culture influencing, and superb communication and negotiation skills.

Consulting's march to mediocrity?

Tom Rodenhauser in his latest Inside Consulting newsletter takes a look at the state of the consulting industry today. He notes that the current hype over BPO is reminscent of the earlier hype over Business Process Re-engineering in the 1990s. His observations:

But in the old BPR days, no singular consultant bivouacked with clients
through the entire journey. The strategy folks like McKinsey and BCG would usher
their clients to the precipice and then offer a hearty backslap and cheerio for
a safe crossing. IT implementers, particularly the Andersens and PwCs, would
offer support and a sure hand as they steadied the ropes while crossing the
chasm. On the other side, hordes of outsourcing types like Unisys and CSC, stood
ready to soothe the clients’ weary feet.
BPO seems a natural progression of BPR … a sort of one-stop shop for
the sophisticated client. But it still remains to be seen whether one BPO
company can really cover the entire spectrum of services.None of the major
players have yet aligned all the parts into a cohesive whole, yet each one of
them is praising the miracles of BPO. The hypocrisy needs to be resolved or
consulting will become a middling mass of mediocrity.

Transforming HR for business impact

Every once in a while HR folks get very worried about their percieved lack of 'strategic focus' and a study is done.

TOP TIPS: Transforming HR for business impact
Make sure that changes to your HR operating model - whether throughskills development, structure, technology or processes - have thedesired effect. Philip Vernon of Mercer HR Consulting shares some advice in the latest issue of Strategic HR Review.

1. Are you missing some vital competencies? HR's skills are
seen asone of the major barriers to effective HR transformation.
Although the function has strong competence in professional knowledge,
team, interpersonal and leadership skills, it lacks competence in financial
management, data management and technology. Do you and your team have the
capability - and the credibility - to deliver on the promise ofstrategic
HR?
2. Analyze your sourcing strategy. Maturing vendor capabilities
andadvancing technologies have expanded the breadth and depth of sourcing
alternatives available. An effective sourcing strategy will maximizethe
return on internal resources, enable organizations to take advantage of external
suppliers investments and capabilities andprovide a variable cost structure
leading to the ability to scale service capacity to meet changing needs - an
essential requirementgiven the dynamic nature of today's marketplace.
3. Are your technology investments wise? Many organizations
spend too much money on ad hoc software purchases or, even worse,
under-use multi-million dollar HR software suites by not implementing potentially
valuable modules. Units most likely to be left on theshelf include
competency and career development, recruitment,performance management and
succession planning. Along with the right software, clean data and tight
integration with other elements of the HR infrastructure are critical success
factors.
4. Get the basics right. HR processes are where the function
connects with its internal customer, yet process re-engineering often gets
little focus or direct investment. One of the most effectiveapproaches to
process redesign is activity-based costing that assesseseach activity's time and
cost, as well as headcount and full-time equivalent involvement. This can
help identify the likely causes ofoperational problems, quantify what they cost
and reveal how best tosolve them.
5. Be a business person first, HR specialist second. Responding
to the intense focus on complying with new corporate governance legislation and
increasing investor scrutiny, boards are retooling to ensure they have the right
mix of highly qualified specialists,including HR experts. The most
respected - and sought-after - HR leaders partner with and are confidants of
their CEOs and leadership teams.

Courtesy Melcrum

Trust in organizations

The FC Now blog asks how we can 'foster trust' in organizations.
My take:
I feel trust is linked with organizational processes, systems, structures culture and values also.
If any of these require people to feel that they are not trusted by the organization, 'fostering trust' will never work !

What do you think?

Working less?

Picked this up from the Worthwhile mag blog:

Check out these historical predictions offered up in a new book, "In Praise of Slowness" by Carl Honore:

*Benjamin Franklin predicted that the technological advances of the late 1700s
would lead to four-hour work weeks.
*In the late 1800s, George Bernard Shaw predicted that we would work two hours a day by the year 2000.
*In 1956, Richard Nixon foresaw a four-day work week in the "not too distant
future."
*In the mid-1960s, a U.S. Senate subcommittee heard a prediction that by 2000, Americans would be working about 14 hours a week.

So much for forecasting the future. And so much for technology-as-liberator.So what happened to the long-foreseen Age of Leisure? Are we too money-grubbing to work fewer hours -- or is a day or so a week on the golf course plenty of leisure time after all?

Lost Knowledge

We've all heard of the threat of baby boomers retirements in the US workplace and the gaping hole it will leave in the heart of the US's workplace (Does that hold true for other developed nations too like European countries or Canada?)

Anyway, Dr. David DeLong, a research fellow at MIT’s AgeLab (where he conducts
ongoing research into the challenges posed by an aging workforce), has just
created the first comprehensive framework to help leaders retain critical
organizational knowledge despite an aging workforce and increased turnover among
mid-career employees. In today’s organizations, applying knowledge of complex
technical systems, scientific advances, and integrated work processes is the key
to improved performance. But Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce spells out the serious costs of attrition when this human capital starts to rapidly disappear.

My thought on this is that any knowledge retention efforts would be seen as 'extraction' by this workforce would would suddenly realise that this knowledge which they hold between their ears will become very costly. The smarter of the retiring workforce will not share but rather hold out for free-lancing opportunities to the highest bidder on their own terms.

BCG to craft XLRI's new vision statement

From the XLRI news Blog:

The Boston Consulting Group will be holding a one-day workshop on September 11 to craft XLRI's new vision statement. XLRI's distinguished alumni over the years, members of the board of governors, the administration, the faculty, staff and students will give their inputs during the workshop. BCG has lined up a series of interesting exercises as part of this process.

Coaching - how to choose a coach

I've blogged earlier about Coaching as the new business, and now came across this CareerJournal article on how to go about choosing a coach:

So how do you pick the right coach to help you with your career?
According to Dr. Ehrlich, first you need to understand what kind of coaches are out there, and he points to three main types. First are executive coaches, who are often hired by companies to work with employees. They are called in to fix a manager's behavior, help a high-potential employee make it to the next level or help improve an employee's flagging performance.

Second are career coaches, who often help people outside the corporate setting who are between jobs to land a new position, or else work on issues that arise in the
workplace. They also commonly help people figure out what they are passionate
about and develop a map for the long journey of their careers.
Third are life coaches. They have become more popular in the past few years and "tend to say they do it all," including advising clients about personal relationships and emotional issues, says Dr. Ehrlich.
Other coaches may call themselves by a variety of names which sometimes indicate their specialty: "interview coach," "relationship coach," "productivity coach," "workplace coach," "resume coach."
Once you've determined the type of coach you want to work with, you
can begin to narrow the field.
Network with colleagues and friends to see if they can recommend a coach. You can also visit the Web site for the International Coach Federation, a Washington nonprofit professional association for coaches, at www.coachfederation.org. The group credentials individual coaches and accredits coach-training programs.
In general, it's a good idea to look for a coach with extensive training, even
though some gifted advisers may have limited formal training as a coach. Be sure
to investigate certification requirements. While some certifications may be easy
to come by, others are rigorous. For example, the ICF's master certified
coaching designation requires 2,500 hours of client coaching, among other
requirements.
Since coaching requires an open exchange and personality comes into play, you'll need to go with your gut instincts about a coach. Tony Siciliano, a senior sales executive in Framingham, Mass., met a career coach last year at a networking event, and "I could tell right away that she could help me," he says. The first time Mr. Siciliano, 48, worked with the coach, she helped him become less negative toward a previous employer during job interviews, and he got the next position he applied for. "You can't argue with results," he says.

Where the US goes, India follows. So how soon before we see Coaches proliferating Indian organizations?

India lagging behind China in retail

Rajesh Jain quotes from the Wall Street Journal:

Sales of high-volume packaged goods in urban China grew 9% from a year
earlier to $13.6 billion in the year ended April 30, while sales of similar
goods in urban India grew just 2.2% to $7.36 billion. ACNielsen tracks retail
sales in most key towns and cities in both countries on a continuing basis.
India's retail sector, which is still dominated by mom-and-pop stores and
has few modern shopping malls, has stifled the industry from keeping pace with
its counterpart in booming China, according to Russell Farmery, ACNielsen's
managing director for India. Modern retail outlets account for 46% of
fast-moving consumer goods sold in Chinese cities, in terms of value. In India,
modern stores account for 7% of urban sales.
The disparity in growth rates
for the consumer items surveyed is notable, in particular, because China and
India both recorded among the world's highest rates of economic growth in the
past year. China's inflation-adjusted gross domestic product expanded 9.1% in
2003, while India's economy grew 8.2% in the year ended March 31.
According to retail business analysts, consumers tend to buy more when they shop at "modern trade channels," such as hypermarkets, supermarkets and retail chains,
which offer a wider selection, slicker marketing, a more pleasant shopping
experience and -- most importantly -- cheaper prices.
But such outlets are few in India.
There is another reason retail receipts in India haven't grown much. Feisty local competitors of foreign-run manufacturers such as Proctor & Gamble Co. of the U.S. and Hindustan Lever Ltd., the Indian unit of Anglo-Dutch company Unilever PLC, have also driven down prices of everyday products such as shampoo and toothpaste in the past few years.

Google opens R&D centre in Bangalore

Yahoo! has been here some time , so it was quite natural for Google to open up an R&D centre in Bangalore and they've put out a nifty ad in the Deccan Herald today (not in the careers section but a front page ad!)

So I went to the relevant google page and the best thing I found there that they have given sample resumes of what kind of people they are looking for and what prospective employees can expect from the selection process. Isn't that cool?

ICICI Bank bosses salaries jump

Rediff reports that ICICI Bank bosses salaries jump: "ICICI Bank has raised the basic payscale of its wholetime directors so as to adhere to a Reserve Bank of India norm announced last year.
ICICI Bank's Managing Director and CEO KV Kamath's basic pay has been revised to Rs 6,00,000-10,50,000 a month. In 2003-04, Kamath earned a basic salary of Rs 620,000 a month, up from Rs 400,000 a month in 2002-03.
Similarly, the basic salary of Joint Managing Director Lalita D Gupte has been revised to Rs 4,00,000-9,00,000 a month. Gupte's salary was revised from Rs 300,000 a month in 2002-03 to Rs 465,000 a month last year.
ICICI Bank Deputy Managing Director Kalpana Morparia is now in the Rs 3,00,000-9,00,000 a month payscale, up from a basic pay of Rs 335,000 a month last year, and from Rs 210,000 in the previous year.
Two executive directors, Chanda D Kochhar and Nachiket Mor, have been put in the revised payscale of Rs 2,00,000-5,00,000 a month. Last year, their basic pay was Rs 275,000 a month, up from Rs 175,000 in 2002-2003.
The bank is now seeking shareholder approval to revise the salary structure of its wholetime directors for 2004-2005, at its 10th annual general meeting on September 20."

Rebecca leaves Monster.com and Friendster fires Troutgirl

Monster blogger Rebecca is leaving Monster and in this post she shares the pros and cons of corporate blogging.

Makes me thankful that I don't blog professionally. How can you leave a conversation when people start talking to you?

The power of Blogging also comes out through the bad press that Friendster has got after it fired Troutgirl for some silly reason ! It proved to be the last straw for David who quit the social networking site and here's Robert Scoble on the same issue.