They are different from you and me, this generation born after 1970. They grew up with a finger on the keyboard and an ear to the cell phone, and in a world where the forces of globalization have broken down national barriers like no time in history.
And right now this group is moving up in the business ranks, becoming managers, partners, and eventually CEOs.
Chances are you manage employees from this generation, and it's not far-fetched
to believe you may yourself be managed by them before you check out of your
career.
If the book Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever is correct, the "gamer generation" will make very different kinds of employees and managers.
Actually, say authors John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, gamers will make great workers and great employees. They know how to work in teams, are creative problem solvers, and believe that nothing is impossible. But managers need to know what makes this new generation tick in order to manage them effectively.
Oct 29, 2004
Managing the Gamer Generation
From the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge series:
The nature of the creative organization
From my posting to the ISTT egroup:
Organizations can be creative in two ways...! maybe three!
One, consider the case of a traditional Indian licence rajconglomerate that seeks to be 'creative/innovative' in the new age...It's better off trying to replicate the 'skunkworks' analogy and isolate the creative group (with high business outcomes) from theexisting culture and help them flourish ...! Lots of organizations have tried this approach and succeeded like Indian automobile manufactures .
This is the structural solution...easy to do...but the cons come inthe integration part...the 'skunkworks' will never truly be 'a part of the bigger organization'...always be considered the 'geeks' amongst the 'suits'.
And eventually most of them will leave and the business would have lost the lessons they had learnt...unless the business tries to take on the culture.
That's when we go to approach two .
Approach two is to embed creative thinking into the organization, have dedicated champions who understand benefits...strive and keep at it ...and nine times out of ten this won't succeed...and the companies will have obits written about them..But for the one in ten who succeeds, well you can be sure that HBR will write a case study !And approach three ?Well you can begin a creative company to start with ! Jokes apart, when I read Edgar Schein's views on Organizational Innovation, it made me a little sad :-( From the Businessworld site:
MIT's Edgar Schein has very strong views on organisational culture. He believes business theory has got it all wrong - it is impossibleto transform an innovative company into a business-driven one."A culture of innovation doesn't scale up. As a company grows, it must either find a way to break away small units which continue to innovate, or abandon innovation as a strategic priority. Also,different organisations with different cultures are needed at different stages in the evolution of a market. Current business theories are too locked in making a mature corporation in a maturemarket not only economically effective, but innovative as well. That may be just as difficult as making an innovative company economically effective. In a developing market based on new technologies, you may need more organisations like Digital, many of which will not survive,but will create an industry. Thus, playing their role as innovators.I am not sure that companies can avoid getting into such a culturetrap. Business books always have a solution for everything. I am trying to be a bit more pragmatic. Some problems don't have an easy resolution. Companies do die. Wang could not make this transition. Neither could Polaroid. It is not something which you can necessarily fix unless the entrepreneur is able to see it and chooses to abandon some of his original values. But you cannot say he should see it -some do, some don't. It is very easy for us to say what theentrepreneur should or shouldn't do. But it is very difficult to predict if they, in fact, will do it."
Organizations can be creative in two ways...! maybe three!
One, consider the case of a traditional Indian licence rajconglomerate that seeks to be 'creative/innovative' in the new age...It's better off trying to replicate the 'skunkworks' analogy and isolate the creative group (with high business outcomes) from theexisting culture and help them flourish ...! Lots of organizations have tried this approach and succeeded like Indian automobile manufactures .
This is the structural solution...easy to do...but the cons come inthe integration part...the 'skunkworks' will never truly be 'a part of the bigger organization'...always be considered the 'geeks' amongst the 'suits'.
And eventually most of them will leave and the business would have lost the lessons they had learnt...unless the business tries to take on the culture.
That's when we go to approach two .
Approach two is to embed creative thinking into the organization, have dedicated champions who understand benefits...strive and keep at it ...and nine times out of ten this won't succeed...and the companies will have obits written about them..But for the one in ten who succeeds, well you can be sure that HBR will write a case study !And approach three ?Well you can begin a creative company to start with ! Jokes apart, when I read Edgar Schein's views on Organizational Innovation, it made me a little sad :-( From the Businessworld site:
MIT's Edgar Schein has very strong views on organisational culture. He believes business theory has got it all wrong - it is impossibleto transform an innovative company into a business-driven one."A culture of innovation doesn't scale up. As a company grows, it must either find a way to break away small units which continue to innovate, or abandon innovation as a strategic priority. Also,different organisations with different cultures are needed at different stages in the evolution of a market. Current business theories are too locked in making a mature corporation in a maturemarket not only economically effective, but innovative as well. That may be just as difficult as making an innovative company economically effective. In a developing market based on new technologies, you may need more organisations like Digital, many of which will not survive,but will create an industry. Thus, playing their role as innovators.I am not sure that companies can avoid getting into such a culturetrap. Business books always have a solution for everything. I am trying to be a bit more pragmatic. Some problems don't have an easy resolution. Companies do die. Wang could not make this transition. Neither could Polaroid. It is not something which you can necessarily fix unless the entrepreneur is able to see it and chooses to abandon some of his original values. But you cannot say he should see it -some do, some don't. It is very easy for us to say what theentrepreneur should or shouldn't do. But it is very difficult to predict if they, in fact, will do it."
Communication factors and future organizational structure
From Fortune: (yeah, it's a little old !)
Get ready to choose your own boss.
MIT visionary Tom Malone sees big changes coming to the workplace.
Malone sees a parallel between the evolution of human society and the evolution of business. "For millenia," he says, "all human societieswere organized as small, autonomous, egalitarian groups called bands.Then we saw the rise of bigger and bigger, more centralized societies called kingdoms. Only in the last 200 years have we seen the rise on a large scale of the third way of organizing human society-democracy." Each of those stages, Malone says, can be explained by a change in a single factor--the cost of communication. In his view,writing is what enabled hierarchically organized kingdoms to arise.Printing led to democracy.
Likewise, he says, "until a couple hundred years ago businesses were still organized like bands. It was only when new communications technologies like telegraph and telephone and even the Xerox machine made communication cheap enough to coordinate larger groups of people that we saw the rise of the centralized corporation--the kingdoms ofthe business world." I like the way this guy thinks. So where are we now? It's the revolution, he says. "Near the end ofthe 20th century, it became possible for the first time to exchangethe detailed kind of information necessary to coordinate a businesson a very large scale even as lots of individuals made decisions for themselves. When communications costs fall it becomes possible forvastly more people to be well-enough informed to make decisions instead of just following orders from their uniquely well-informedsuperiors."For most of our lives, Malone says, "the big message of business history was that getting bigger and more centralized was the way yousucceed. But now you can have both the economic benefits of bigness and the human benefits of smallness."
He's really talking about a new era of empowerment, and how companies and workers will inevitably have to adapt to these new realities inorder to thrive."When people are making decisions for themselves a lot of other good things happen," he continues. "People are often more motivated,creative, flexible, and just plain happier."This is by no means the death-knell for big companies and their managers, but it may be a test. Malone thinks adapting to this inevitable decentralized decision-making may be hard, but he posits four different ways companies will be organized in the future. First are what he calls "loose hierarchies," organizations that still have managers but in which a lot of decision-making is delegated to lower-level workers. The open-source software-development model embodies an extreme form of this, he says. Second, he expects to see the rise of literal democracy atwork, "where employees actually vote on who their managers will be."As appealing as this sounds, you might think it far-fetched. Don't.As an example of how it can work, he cites fabric-maker W.L. Gore,where managers have to recruit employees for a project. "If you don'tget any employees you aren't a manager," he explains. Another radical example is Brazilian conglomerate Semco, where workers decide ontheir own where, when, and on what projects they will work. To get ajob at Semco, you have to be interviewed by the people who will be working for you.
Get ready to choose your own boss.
MIT visionary Tom Malone sees big changes coming to the workplace.
Malone sees a parallel between the evolution of human society and the evolution of business. "For millenia," he says, "all human societieswere organized as small, autonomous, egalitarian groups called bands.Then we saw the rise of bigger and bigger, more centralized societies called kingdoms. Only in the last 200 years have we seen the rise on a large scale of the third way of organizing human society-democracy." Each of those stages, Malone says, can be explained by a change in a single factor--the cost of communication. In his view,writing is what enabled hierarchically organized kingdoms to arise.Printing led to democracy.
Likewise, he says, "until a couple hundred years ago businesses were still organized like bands. It was only when new communications technologies like telegraph and telephone and even the Xerox machine made communication cheap enough to coordinate larger groups of people that we saw the rise of the centralized corporation--the kingdoms ofthe business world." I like the way this guy thinks. So where are we now? It's the revolution, he says. "Near the end ofthe 20th century, it became possible for the first time to exchangethe detailed kind of information necessary to coordinate a businesson a very large scale even as lots of individuals made decisions for themselves. When communications costs fall it becomes possible forvastly more people to be well-enough informed to make decisions instead of just following orders from their uniquely well-informedsuperiors."For most of our lives, Malone says, "the big message of business history was that getting bigger and more centralized was the way yousucceed. But now you can have both the economic benefits of bigness and the human benefits of smallness."
He's really talking about a new era of empowerment, and how companies and workers will inevitably have to adapt to these new realities inorder to thrive."When people are making decisions for themselves a lot of other good things happen," he continues. "People are often more motivated,creative, flexible, and just plain happier."This is by no means the death-knell for big companies and their managers, but it may be a test. Malone thinks adapting to this inevitable decentralized decision-making may be hard, but he posits four different ways companies will be organized in the future. First are what he calls "loose hierarchies," organizations that still have managers but in which a lot of decision-making is delegated to lower-level workers. The open-source software-development model embodies an extreme form of this, he says. Second, he expects to see the rise of literal democracy atwork, "where employees actually vote on who their managers will be."As appealing as this sounds, you might think it far-fetched. Don't.As an example of how it can work, he cites fabric-maker W.L. Gore,where managers have to recruit employees for a project. "If you don'tget any employees you aren't a manager," he explains. Another radical example is Brazilian conglomerate Semco, where workers decide ontheir own where, when, and on what projects they will work. To get ajob at Semco, you have to be interviewed by the people who will be working for you.
Oct 28, 2004
Simulated enterprises, Reworking Intuition
Interesting approach to turning around a failing enterprise.
About 3 years ago, psychologist Lia DiBello surmounted a business challenge that would have stumped Donald Trump. Armed with an unconventional theory of how people learn, DiBello and her colleagues coaxed some key employees at three financially endangered companies to confront their organizational failures and to devise new, successful operations. What's more, these transformations of workplace thinking and culture unfolded in a matter of just months after DiBello's team ran mere 2-day exercises at each site. The National Science Foundation partially underwrote this effort as part of a larger attempt to encourage research on how learning occurs in organizations.
DiBello, who heads Workforce Transformation Research and Innovation, a private company in San Diego, takes a different instructional approach. She designs fast-paced, stressful simulation exercises in which small groups must assemble products, ship them to customers, and turn a profit, at least as determined by computer software that tracks each mock venture.
In line with psychological positions known as activity theory and situated cognition, DiBello holds that what experienced workers understand about their jobs grows out of their daily goals, such as making products on time or quickly satisfying a few major clients' demands. If a business' goals change, then employees must reorganize what they have come to know intuitively about their jobs, or that company won't succeed.
This type of learning requires a hands-on challenge that mirrors workplace demands and enables employees to tap into their collective knowledge, in DiBello's view.
Three decades of learning research coincide with this approach, says psychologist Lauren Resnick of the University of Pittsburgh. Evidence indicates that what a person already knows about a subject or an activity lays a foundation for new learning and achieving expertise in that area, she adds. Data also show that knowledge is best cultivated through active participation in relevant tasks, not through memorization or drills.
Read more here. So does this approach work only for organizations that are in the do-or-die situation? Would employees rework their intuitive approach if they knew things were just fine with their organizations?
About 3 years ago, psychologist Lia DiBello surmounted a business challenge that would have stumped Donald Trump. Armed with an unconventional theory of how people learn, DiBello and her colleagues coaxed some key employees at three financially endangered companies to confront their organizational failures and to devise new, successful operations. What's more, these transformations of workplace thinking and culture unfolded in a matter of just months after DiBello's team ran mere 2-day exercises at each site. The National Science Foundation partially underwrote this effort as part of a larger attempt to encourage research on how learning occurs in organizations.
DiBello, who heads Workforce Transformation Research and Innovation, a private company in San Diego, takes a different instructional approach. She designs fast-paced, stressful simulation exercises in which small groups must assemble products, ship them to customers, and turn a profit, at least as determined by computer software that tracks each mock venture.
In line with psychological positions known as activity theory and situated cognition, DiBello holds that what experienced workers understand about their jobs grows out of their daily goals, such as making products on time or quickly satisfying a few major clients' demands. If a business' goals change, then employees must reorganize what they have come to know intuitively about their jobs, or that company won't succeed.
This type of learning requires a hands-on challenge that mirrors workplace demands and enables employees to tap into their collective knowledge, in DiBello's view.
Three decades of learning research coincide with this approach, says psychologist Lauren Resnick of the University of Pittsburgh. Evidence indicates that what a person already knows about a subject or an activity lays a foundation for new learning and achieving expertise in that area, she adds. Data also show that knowledge is best cultivated through active participation in relevant tasks, not through memorization or drills.
Read more here. So does this approach work only for organizations that are in the do-or-die situation? Would employees rework their intuitive approach if they knew things were just fine with their organizations?
The Futurist says...
Picked this from the T+D blog, The Futurist has predicted these trends for 2005 (methinks, these are more of the trends of the next decade....with some exceptions)
--Distance learning grows. By 2008, distance learning (including learning via the Internet, email, and other means) will be the primary delivery mechanism in 30 percent of training programs. By 2014, it will be the main method in 30 percent of university courses.
--Telecommuting increases. The number of people in the U.S. who are telecommuting will grow to more than 50 million by 2010 (from 15 million today). That trend will be driven by better communication technologies and companies' search for low-cost labor.
--"Me generation" winds down. More and more people are focusing on spirituality, caring, and time with family over materialism and getting ahead. These people are known as "cultural creatives" and they make up 26 percent of U.S. society now, over 5 percent in the 1960s. (we are seeing something similar in India, with the grrowth of religion/spiritual TV channels!)
--Older workers could help lengthen business day. This demographic tends to wake up early and be more alert in the morning. Early risers could work 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and expand business hours of companies. (this one sounds unlikely in India ....what say?)
--Knowledge work will decrease. As farming and manufacturing have dwindled, the growth of information technology could make infotech and service jobs dwindle. By the end of the century, jobs in that sector may comprise only 2 percent of the workforce.
--Skills that can't be automated will be in demand. Employers will put more emphasis on these "hyper-human" skills, including caring, judgment, intuition, ethics, inspiration, friendliness, and imagination. (like Tom Peters says about Richard Florida's new book on the Creative Class)
--Distance learning grows. By 2008, distance learning (including learning via the Internet, email, and other means) will be the primary delivery mechanism in 30 percent of training programs. By 2014, it will be the main method in 30 percent of university courses.
--Telecommuting increases. The number of people in the U.S. who are telecommuting will grow to more than 50 million by 2010 (from 15 million today). That trend will be driven by better communication technologies and companies' search for low-cost labor.
--"Me generation" winds down. More and more people are focusing on spirituality, caring, and time with family over materialism and getting ahead. These people are known as "cultural creatives" and they make up 26 percent of U.S. society now, over 5 percent in the 1960s. (we are seeing something similar in India, with the grrowth of religion/spiritual TV channels!)
--Older workers could help lengthen business day. This demographic tends to wake up early and be more alert in the morning. Early risers could work 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and expand business hours of companies. (this one sounds unlikely in India ....what say?)
--Knowledge work will decrease. As farming and manufacturing have dwindled, the growth of information technology could make infotech and service jobs dwindle. By the end of the century, jobs in that sector may comprise only 2 percent of the workforce.
--Skills that can't be automated will be in demand. Employers will put more emphasis on these "hyper-human" skills, including caring, judgment, intuition, ethics, inspiration, friendliness, and imagination. (like Tom Peters says about Richard Florida's new book on the Creative Class)
For fellow Knowledge Management enthusiasts...
...here is a good blog to add to your RSS readers, Nirmala's blog on KM and other stuff (like she says "it’s not just about KM! It’s got a lot of my childish ramblings on a lot of other day-to-day topics as well!"). You can also download Nirmala's perspective on Blogging in an organizational context from the Knowledgeboard site. It's called "Bless the Bloggers" :-)
The way forward for Consulting firms
The Top-Consultant site has an interesting article on how consulting firms are trying to cut costs, increase prroductivity, boost sales and partner with freelancers to remain competitive. One interesting point the article notes is that soon there will be demand for consultants with international skills (as opposed to "exposure", is my guess!) particularly for areas like Central Europe and China.
Oct 26, 2004
Malcolm Gladwell on ChangeThis
I had earlier blogged about Gladwell's thoughts on talent. Now he's released a manifesto on ChangeThis on why talent doesn't matter.
His central theme in the manifesto?
The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it’s the other way around.
His central theme in the manifesto?
The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it’s the other way around.
on why investment on training is slow and low
Got this from the Egon Zehnder newsletter:
While poor performance is often blamed on the skills shortage, manyFull story. Gill Plimmer: "Emphasis on more skills investment" in Financial Times (October 11, 2004). Search archive on title to retrieve article. Subscription required :(
companies are reluctant to invest in training, reports Gill Plimmer in the
Financial Times. Companies often prefer poaching top players from competitors or
overseas as an alternative to developing existing staff. Despite pressure from
policymakers to promote professional development, estimates suggest that
corporate spending on formal training has dropped 10 percent in the last two
years. High employee churn and the difficulty of assessing return on investment
have discouraged some companies from investing in training, explains the author.
Continuing professional development was sidelined by many companies during
the 1990s in the quest for shareholder value, say experts. However, with
downsized, flatter organizations, companies are now realizing that getting more
out of their staff is the key to competitiveness. Increased regulation is
forcing companies to invest in professional development in areas like
accountancy and law. Companies are also under pressure to show shareholders the
impact of training on their results, which should help them to justify bigger
training budgets in the long run. Firms seeking to attract top talent must
realize that the best people want professional development, concludes the
author.
Oct 15, 2004
On vacation - 16th to 25th October
To all my readers, I'll be on my vacation to Lucknow, Rohtak and Delhi and therefore this blog will not be active till then. Happy Durga Puja, Dussehra to you !
Oct 14, 2004
On communication
Businessworld has an excerpt from Arun Maira's new book Remaking India. Here is an interesting paragraph from it on communication:
Good communication perhaps requires more listening than speaking. Talking more
loudly will not break through the barriers in communication between people. TV
shows like Cross Fire in the USA, and The Big Fight in India in which the
participants yell and interrupt each other, are entertaining for their viewers.
However, I am sure they do not help the participants understand each other
better. The meeting of minds, and change of minds can happen when people really
listen to those who have opinions different from their own. When they listen to
the others' reasons - why they have their beliefs; and even more, to their
emotions - their hopes and fears and when others feel they are being heard, they
may be more willing to hear us.
We have to find better ways of communicating that enable deeper listening, and thereby improve communion amongst people. Such ways are available. Their heritage is in the art of dialogue and traditions of group meetings such as the Quakers', rather than in advertising and mass communications whose concepts and techniques increasingly drive the design of communications in media and conventions. Good facilitators enable people to listen to their own unarticulated beliefs and aspirations, and to each other.
One problem with these alternative approaches is that they require much more time than people feel they can spare from their busy, chattering lives. They generally seem to require people to shut off their daily routines and meet 'off-site' for days. Another limitation is that only a few people at a time can participate in the meetings. However, the gains can be enormous.
These approaches are evolving in response to the need within society for more effective communication. The Aspen Institute in the USA uses such approaches. The Society of Organisational Learning with headquarters in MIT in the USA has grown into an international network that is researching better methods. The International Futures Forum based in St Andrews, Scotland, is another incubator. And there are
others in many parts of the world.
My hope is that India will be at the centre of this evolution. India is its best laboratory and has the greatest need for it. No other country in the world has the diversity within it as is present in India. Eighteen distinct languages with myriad dialects, all the major religions in the world and wide disparities in incomes. This diversity of people has chosen to work together democratically, which implies listening to the needs and wants of all. The people have an enormous task to accomplish together in order to change and improve their country, to make it fully developed, which is an expression of their vision for the country. What the people want, and what they believe in, needs to be understood amongst them. And what they do, has to be aligned towards their shared vision to accelerate sustainable change.
India needs simple techniques for communication amongst diverse people to facilitate the collaboration in townships and in villages to make the new India come about. Such techniques may do for India what TQM techniques did for Japan. A principal contribution to Japan's success were the seven tools of quality control developed by Dr Ishikawa and others. These were widely disseminated by JUSE (the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers) through public radio, books, pamphlets, seminars, and schools. These tools provided a simple and
powerful language for workmen on shop floors, offices, construction sites, and elsewhere to work together to improve quality. The beauty of these tools was that they enabled everyone to take responsibility for quality by applying them to the work that they performed every day. Perhaps some simple techniques for effective listening and communication should be developed in India soon, so that it can become the way in which Indians everywhere improve the manner in which they work and create together. These techniques, founded on the same principles that enable great communication to take place in the intense off-sites that I referred to earlier, will make these principles practically applicable in daily life, just as the seven tools of quality took quality from the experts' labs to factories and offices in Japan.
Experience suggests that such techniques, founded on good principles of communication, if diligently practised, could work wonders in India.
CEO? Naah ...I'll give it a pass !
CNN Reports that:
"A survey found that three out of five senior executives don't want to be CEO. The survey by Burson-Marsteller found that 60 percent of senior executives at Fortune 1000 companies say they have no desire to hold a top job at a company. That's more than double the 27 percent who said 'no' to the CEO spot in a 2001 survey by the public relations firm.
Only 35 percent polled in the latest survey said they wanted the top job, down from 47 percent in the 2001 study. The 2001 survey found a far greater percentage of those who were unsure about pursuing the top job."
I wonder how many Indian execcutives want to be CEO? Probably a large number realise that unless they are related to the promoter/entreprenuer they have little chance of becoming top execs at Indian firms. Even being a son-in-law of a promoter is no guarantee that you will not be guarded. As Rajeev Chandrasekhar is findout out !
"A survey found that three out of five senior executives don't want to be CEO. The survey by Burson-Marsteller found that 60 percent of senior executives at Fortune 1000 companies say they have no desire to hold a top job at a company. That's more than double the 27 percent who said 'no' to the CEO spot in a 2001 survey by the public relations firm.
Only 35 percent polled in the latest survey said they wanted the top job, down from 47 percent in the 2001 study. The 2001 survey found a far greater percentage of those who were unsure about pursuing the top job."
I wonder how many Indian execcutives want to be CEO? Probably a large number realise that unless they are related to the promoter/entreprenuer they have little chance of becoming top execs at Indian firms. Even being a son-in-law of a promoter is no guarantee that you will not be guarded. As Rajeev Chandrasekhar is findout out !
Google coming to India
Prof. Sadagopan wonders whether Google R & D coming to Bangalore will give a boost to Computer Science Research in India?
Larry Page and Sergey Brin are visiting India for the first time to formally launch their Indian R & D operations. In an informal talk with several key academics from IIIT-B, IIIT-H, IISc, IITB, IITG, IITK, IITKGP, IITM, and ISI on October 13, 2004, they talked of this center becoming part of their global R & D with technology focus and NOT cost focus. In fact, the personnel at Google R & D Bangalore will be free to move to other locations (Mountain View, New York, Zurich or Tokyo). With people like Krishna Bharat and Lalitesh - who are very key scientists responsible for some of the successful products (such as Google News) - getting re-located to Bangalore, Google India will not be an “outsourcing” center but an “extended arm”.
There are large research groups in India in several areas of computer science that are directly relevant to Google; this includes machine learning, information retrieval, automated reasoning, linguistics, grammar, classification and cataloguing; often, such expertise may be spilling over to departments of Linguistics and Library Science. If Google India could tap their potential, Google will benefit a lot; more important, Indian Research community will start to see the
unleashing of lots of their “lock-up” potential that went begging for years with
no one to use their skills.
Oct 12, 2004
the enemy
How many times have we heard the saying that sometimes there's nothing like competition to spur us on?
...that if Coke did not have Pepsi it'd have to invent it...
...that if Capitalism did not have communism , it'd have to invent it...
...so, when The Society for Leadership of Change did not have the Society for The Status Quo....they invented it !!!
Courtesy: Fast Company
...that if Coke did not have Pepsi it'd have to invent it...
...that if Capitalism did not have communism , it'd have to invent it...
...so, when The Society for Leadership of Change did not have the Society for The Status Quo....they invented it !!!
Courtesy: Fast Company
Resume templates on MS Office
Heather (the famous Microsoft Marketing recruiter) points to a useful resource, Microsoft Office online features which has job-specific resume templates that are downloadable directly to the appropriate office program. More gyan from Heather:
The templates should just make you think about how you might want to present
your background so don't feel like you have to adopt a particular template
format outright. You don't have to use just one template (I would encourage you
not to). I would recommend flipping through the templates available and finding
elements of different templates that you like. Think about why you like them and
how you can incorporate them into one document. Think about what the different
formats say about how you position yourself. But don't let the templates take
the creativity out of marketing you. Find the right combination of the info you
want to say and how you want to present it.
Immigrants and the US's creative crisis
FCNow has an interesting post called : What Sergey Brin, Vinod Khosla, and An Wang Share..
They're all immigrants who came to America and helped to create important
companies: Google, Sun Microsystems and Wang Laboratories.
But what if Brin had stayed in Moscow, and Khosla remained in India, and Wang had gone to university in Europe? That's the provocative question posed by Richard
Florida in "America's Looming Creativity Crisis," an article in the October
issue of the Harvard Business Review. Florida, a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, maintains that "the global talent pool and the high-end, high-margin creative industries that used to be the sole province of the U.S., and a crucial source of its prosperity, have begun to disperse around the globe."
He notes that several major economies--especially India's and China's--have grown to the point where "they can offer great opportunities for people who stay or return home." Just look at the applications for fall 2004 admission to U.S. graduate schools. The figures show that the number of Chinese applicants is down by 76% and the number of Indian applicants is 58% lower than the previous year.
"The evidence suggests that the country may be losing out on the talents of a host of foreign scientists, engineers, inventors, and other professionals," writes Florida.
Oct 11, 2004
Global headhunters swoop onto India
From Newindpress.com:
Hmm, things are hotting up in the recuitment sector in India !
Last month, Switzerland's Adecco, the world's biggest staffing firm, entered India by acquiring a local recruiter. It paid an undisclosed sum for 67 percent of PeopleOne Consulting, which boasts a 20 % market share.
This followed Monster.com's $9.6 million buy of Jobsahead.com in May and a purchase of 76 percent of Madras-based Ma Foi Management Consultants by Dutch firm Vedior in April.
India's Cyber Media group announced two weeks ago a recruitment joint venture with U.S. technology jobs portal firm Dice Inc.
Not everyone is rushing in. Manpower Inc., the world's number two for recruitment, has a low-key presence in India. But for the foreign recruitment companies that are moving into India, acquisitions and partnerships are necessary to gain local expertise in a country with more than 150 labour laws.
Hmm, things are hotting up in the recuitment sector in India !
Oct 7, 2004
The Amateur rises
Interesting article from Fast Company on the rise of the Amateurs, people who collaborate in their respective fields and how grassroots movements (what Dr. Madhukar Shukla calls the "clash of paradigms") are reshaping not just business but culture also.
JSB also talks about this new digital culture and compares it to the start of the scientific revolution and the formation of the Royal Society many centuries ago.
By the way, did you know that amatuer comes from the root that means 'to love'? So a work that amateur does is done out of love and interest? :-))
JSB also talks about this new digital culture and compares it to the start of the scientific revolution and the formation of the Royal Society many centuries ago.
By the way, did you know that amatuer comes from the root that means 'to love'? So a work that amateur does is done out of love and interest? :-))
XLRI Ensemble
Ensemble - the annual management festival of XLRI Jamshedpur is back this year with a bouquet of events under the different functional areas of management. This inter B-school festival witnesses excellent participation year-on-year from students of all reputed Business Schools across the country.The unique design of games and contests in each of the functional areas like marketing, finance, strategy, IT/operations & HR attracts the best talent from top B-Schools to take up the challenge
There are online games too ! Check them out !
There are online games too ! Check them out !
Oct 6, 2004
Recruiting through blogs
Suddenly articles about how blogging is the next big tool for job recruitments are making news. Check these Wall Street Journal and New York Times article (might require sign in or registration :( ). Hyperbole? Maybe....but signs of the focus of blogs moving more and more mainstream. But I still come across people who say politely, "That's nice...but what's a blog?"
By the way, how many of the blogs mentioned in those articles can you find in my blogroll?
By the way, how many of the blogs mentioned in those articles can you find in my blogroll?
Oct 5, 2004
Charles Handy on the Search for Meaning
Handy says: "My next book, The Hungry Spirit, is an attempt to answer that. I think the search for meaning applies to individuals and to institutions. We're all looking for why we do the work we do. It was easy in the past -- we were doing it because we needed the money to live. Now it's clear that money -- for many people and institutions -- is more symbolic than real. We generate more wealth than we really need to live on. And money becomes a rather crude measure of success. We're looking for something more.
There is, in my view, no God-given explanation for each of us as to what success might be. I do believe that we are each of us unique. We each -- institutions as well as individuals -- have something to contribute to the world, and the search for meaning is finding out what that is before we die. Until then we have only tentative answers.
The companies that survive longest are the ones that work out what they uniquely can give to the world.
The first half of life is certainly a struggle to prove that you can survive and then can achieve some special capacity. But the interesting thing for me is that given that you can survive, that you are successful, what is it you can contribute? The companies that survive longest are the ones that work out what they uniquely can give to the world -- not just growth or money but their excellence, their respect for others, or their ability to make people happy. Some call those things a soul."
It reminds me a lot of Viktor Frankl's work on logotherapy and his book "Man's cry for meaning"
On a related note Curt Rosengren points to an interview of Micheal Kroth who says:
Kroth: Good leaders are really meaning makers. Their job is to find out what is meaningful to each person on their team and then try to match the work to that meaning. Of course, you also need to hire people who will find some aspect of real estate sales meaningful.
RMO: How do you know what's meaningful to an individual?
Kroth: First, just ask them. Make it part of each person's annual business planning or performance review. Ask them what part of the plan or the job is most meaningful to them. Often managers assume that's what's meaningful to them is meaningful to others...
There is, in my view, no God-given explanation for each of us as to what success might be. I do believe that we are each of us unique. We each -- institutions as well as individuals -- have something to contribute to the world, and the search for meaning is finding out what that is before we die. Until then we have only tentative answers.
The companies that survive longest are the ones that work out what they uniquely can give to the world.
The first half of life is certainly a struggle to prove that you can survive and then can achieve some special capacity. But the interesting thing for me is that given that you can survive, that you are successful, what is it you can contribute? The companies that survive longest are the ones that work out what they uniquely can give to the world -- not just growth or money but their excellence, their respect for others, or their ability to make people happy. Some call those things a soul."
It reminds me a lot of Viktor Frankl's work on logotherapy and his book "Man's cry for meaning"
On a related note Curt Rosengren points to an interview of Micheal Kroth who says:
Kroth: Good leaders are really meaning makers. Their job is to find out what is meaningful to each person on their team and then try to match the work to that meaning. Of course, you also need to hire people who will find some aspect of real estate sales meaningful.
RMO: How do you know what's meaningful to an individual?
Kroth: First, just ask them. Make it part of each person's annual business planning or performance review. Ask them what part of the plan or the job is most meaningful to them. Often managers assume that's what's meaningful to them is meaningful to others...
Organizational Values ...
David Weinberger writes in the worthwhile blog about Citigroup CEO's new focus on values.
David's reaction:
I've always wondered about this approach of coming up with a "value statement/list" within organizations and then trying to get compliance by fiat. And it's something I must readily admit OD and Training people like me collude with business leaders.
Truth be told, values are imbued in an organization at the time of its formation and is the foundation of the hazy thing called "Organizational Culture". Most of the time it is the entrepreneur's personal values that get enmeshed with the values of the organization. Most organizations also have a dichotomy between "expressed" values and "actioned" values. This divergence actually makes people feel inauthentic unless the values in action are acknowledged.
So do you work for an organization that says X and yet in actual processes, practices, coffee machine conversations shows that it means Y? You are not alone...
"He said yesterday that in the coming year he aimed to lecture employees about
internalizing Citigroup rules 'until I'm blue in the face.'" And, he will be
"ruthless" with transgressors.
David's reaction:
So, he's not talking about values at all. He's talking about rules. And the
problem with rules is that you can't even have internal policemen lined up along
the side of the road. Someone is going to drive off road, or the policemen will
be confronted with an ambiguous, new situation and will choose to implement
their rules foollishly. Only genuine values can handle the interesting cases
where people go wrong.
So, It sounds Citigroup, with the CEO lecturing you
until he's blue in the face, is going to be a heck of a fun place to work.
I've always wondered about this approach of coming up with a "value statement/list" within organizations and then trying to get compliance by fiat. And it's something I must readily admit OD and Training people like me collude with business leaders.
Truth be told, values are imbued in an organization at the time of its formation and is the foundation of the hazy thing called "Organizational Culture". Most of the time it is the entrepreneur's personal values that get enmeshed with the values of the organization. Most organizations also have a dichotomy between "expressed" values and "actioned" values. This divergence actually makes people feel inauthentic unless the values in action are acknowledged.
So do you work for an organization that says X and yet in actual processes, practices, coffee machine conversations shows that it means Y? You are not alone...
Oct 4, 2004
Blog of the day on Blogstreet India
well this is the first time such a thing has happened !
Blogstreet India has chosen this blog as "blog of the day"
Blogstreet India has chosen this blog as "blog of the day"
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)