Pitching to HR folks?

Marketingsherpa has some tips:

HR professionals – at all levels – are incredibly busy (you’re lucky if you get one on the phone). In addition to having to put out day-to-day fires – GPs for instance, are usually dealing with employee relations issues and the like – HR professionals spend 10-40% of their time in meetings and the rest in dealing with strategic issues, such as lowering turnover, improving the recruitment process, or reviewing programs from a cost perspective.
One thing to note: MBA types are moving into HR, which is now seen as a respectable and results-driven field (versus its “pink collar” ghetto reputation of the 1990s). !!!

Four Key Challenges HR Pros Face Now

#1. Regulations and inefficient processes
#2. Resistance to change
#3. Technology solutions could be better
#4. Executive ethics and compliance is huge

Women, centralised decision making and CEOs

Rob at BusinessPundit wonders if the rise of women through the corporate world will kill the CEO.

His reasons:

The command and control hierarchy is already dying in business, and the "one person on top" mindset is going as well. There's just too much to do in large companies. One person can't keep up. .....Recent organizational behavior research has shown that women form groups that are more egalitarian and less hierarchical. It makes sense to me, as my primary observation of the women I've worked with is that they strive to build consensus more than men do. So that raises the question... as more women study business and rise through the corporate ranks, will it accelerate the death of the CEO as the commander in chief?

I want to nod my head vigorously when I read this, but something holds me back. The organization is still not a community, and when Wall Street and shreholders want people to be accountable, there will still be one head to roll ! It would be important to remember that the mental model driving organizations is that of the army, where one person is finally in charge.

But the question that Rob raises does mean that the command and control hierarchy is heading for a steady decline, at least in complex markets and that have complex internal structures. How that influences office politics would be great to see evolve !

An example of bad networking...

Heather of Microsoft recounts an experience on her blog when somebody tried to recruit her, but what flabbergasts her that once she declined, they didn't try to take her offer of help !

The point that most resonated with me (read the full post here) is:

People who don't know how to leverage connectors have no game. I try to remember that not everyone is a candidate, not everyone is a prospect. Some are simply connectors. And frankly, these the the most valuable people in my network. Obviously, not everyone feels that way. People out there in the industry (marketing, finance, tech) should think about this too.

I totally agree. And why people can't see that totally escapes me. It strikes me as intuitive, but maybe that's because I am a connector. I guess, when people connect because of a need, the focus is less on the connection, and more on their need to close the transaction. Once that does not happen, they dis-connect. And that makes connectors feel a little cheated and exploited.

Don't do that.
Please.

How to persuade a headhunter..?

It takes another headhunter to do it...

Like Jason of Recruiting.com did to Antony and Mike of CanadianHeadhunter !

From now on Antony and Mike will continue their postings on Recruiting.com...
...but I still can't bring myself to remove CanadianHeadhunter from my blogroll !

Call me sentimental, but they were amongst the first folks to blogroll me...(sniff! sniff!)

HR outsourcing and the Indian reality

Ganesh Chella, founder and CEO of Totus Consulting, a boutique strategic HR consulting firm in India writes about the myths of HR outsourcing. Some interesting bits, specially the focus on HR in India is given below:

In fact, HR in India would rank as the most dynamic and turbulent in the whole world today. So many new jobs, so many to hire, so many to train, so many to retain and so many to keep happy! After many years of fighting for identity, HR in India has come of age. HR and organisation building issues are centre of the plate in any Indian CEO's agenda today. CEOs are willing to spend as much as it takes to manage their people and people processes well. It may never get any better for HR. Under such circumstances, cost arbitrage is the last thing on their mind.
What is on the minds of our CEOs is the competence gap. They are most worried about the acute shortage of HR talent and HR competence.
At a time when good HR support is needed the most, it is just not available in the measure they would like. The situation is compounded by the fact that there is virtually very little Indiacentric thought leadership on HR issues.
While economic development in the US in the 1960s, 70s and 80s was supported by a significant number of organisation development and HR thought leaders and their research initiatives, we cannot say that of India. We continue to inappropriately apply ideas from thewestern world.
What India lacks is both original thought and strategic HR support.This is a gap that CEOs will not live with. They have already begunto access help from outside and if the growing number of boutique and large HR consulting firms are any evidence, real HR outsourcing is actually happening in India. There are of course a few important differences:
The focus will be on augmenting internal competence and not really on outsourcing the function. It will not be driven by cost.
Thankfully, this is will be supported by a growing awakening about the need to renew and strengthen the employee relations role and function.
So we might conclude that many business leaders in India (with the exception of the very large ones) will seek strategic and specialistHR support from outside in significant measure while they strengthen internal HR to play the equally important role of focusing onbusiness partnering and employee relations. "

Rashmi's rants

Rashmi Bansal rants on how Liril's branding is being tampered with. Also check with her post on the need for a good ice-cream brand in India and youth focussed malls !

And to think that she's doing so much free consulting for Indian corporates via the web !

Way to go Rashmi !

It was getting boring ...

...to read Heather and the others discuss The Apprentice episodes in the US recruitment blogs, while we get to see the Don in last season's episodes. So this news from the Sepia Mutiny woke me up with glee.

After the huge success of the reality show Indian Idol on Sony Entertainment Television, Freemantle Media, which conceived the programme, is set to tap the huge potential of the Indian market for reality shows. Freemantle Media will host The Apprentice, one of its most popular shows in India. "We are planning to introduce The Apprentice later this year. The show will be telecast on the Star network," says Gavin Wood, director of production, India Freemantle Media. One of the most popular television reality series in the world today, The Apprentice will be conceived on the lines it is aired in different parts of the Asia, Europe and the United States.

Yes, yes. We will export cut-throat corporate world behavior to the third world
now. I wonder if Laxmi Mittal will be the tycoon.

"India is a land of great creativity, talent and passion. The spark among the people is truly amazing," says Wood. "Although the television Industry in India is young, it is very professional and has high quality standards which is lacking in many other countries where the industry is much older than in India. The television sector with its wide reach will be a major driver of growth in the entertainment sector," Wood explains.

What they don't seem to understand is the potential trauma that rejected
contestants could suffer in Indian society. Just imagine being fired, coming
home and having to listen to your Indian mother point out the fact that the
other people's children haven't been fired yet.

Training amongst the top 20 growing professions

From the T+D Blog

In the March 21st edition of Fortune, an article entitled "Hot Careers for the
Next 10 Years" names training and development as one of the 20 fastest-growing
professional jobs. Growth is estimated at 22.3 percent, from Bureau of Labor
Statistics projections.

How long to the time this statistic makes the cut in India?
I hope that makes us training folks a lot more strategic and business and learner driven!

despair.com and De-Motivation

Worthwhile blog points to the darkly funny site despair.com

It's a brilliant site, created by some ex-dotcommers, that sells spoof inspirational items. How about the Demotivators coffee mugs pronouncing: Meetings: None of Us Is As Dumb As All of Us, or Ambition: The Journey of a Thousand Miles Sometimes Ends Very Very Badly or the one I've posted here, Potential: Not everyone gets to be an astronaut when they grow up. Now they're selling a new book, The Art of Demotivation, and pitching it as the "last management book you'll ever buy."

The (new) route to the top

HBS working knowledge shows the way how people are reaching the top these days compared to the 1980s.

A recent historical study of the paths taken by executives who make it to the top sheds much light not only on what personal attributes are needed, but also on how organizational dynamics contribute. Are you more likely to charge into the executive suite by working in a small company or large? Does it help to have handled many responsibilities or just a few?
The report, presented in a recent issue of Harvard Business Review, was called "The New Road to the Top." It compared Fortune 100 executives in 1980 with their counterparts in 2001. We excerpt a section on how the changing face of corporations and corporate life over the last few decades has impacted career movement.
Some important findings are (my emphasis is added)

1. Executives are much more likely to be promoted in firms with healthy growth rates than in stagnating companies. (Isn't that obvious??)
2. Further evidence from the data suggests that, other things being equal, younger firms offer faster advancement, perhaps because of their tendency to have flatter hierarchies.
3. The firms that have been big for a long time—those in the Fortune 100 in 1980 and again in 2001—seem to handle career advancement and development differently from others.
4. General Electric, Procter & Gamble, and the like provide extensive training and development opportunities. They also offer relatively long promotion ladders—hence the common notion that these "academy companies" are great to have been from.
5. Prior research suggested that through the 1970s, marketing was the preferred track into the executive suite, but the results here suggest that finance now offers by far the best path (it offered the best path in 1980, too, but consulting and—surprisingly [why surprising??]—human resources were closer behind).
6. The finance track will remain the dominant path to the C suite as long as the investor community wields a powerful influence on corporations. (ahah ! that explains it!)
7. Research suggests that the odds of advancement fall as a person's tenure in a job grows. Individuals who advance to the top tend to be among the youngest in their cohorts—possibly because talent and ability get spotted early, possibly because of "halo" or reputation effects. (so people tend to pick on the guy who's moving around in the company, getting to understand the business better than the person who is building the "expertise" in one job?)
8. Therefore, it may be easiest to move toward the top by doing well in a small company—as CFO, say—then taking the same job in a larger one.
9. Another important point is that holding a general manager job with profit-and-loss responsibility seems to be a prerequisite for the highest positions, perhaps because the ability to run a business is considered transferable; success in running a $10 million organization is a powerful recommendation for a job running a $100 million organization.
10. But the data are not clear on whether people should jump from company to company to get ahead. Executives who stayed in the same corporations for their entire careers got to the top as quickly as their firm-hopping colleagues—a change from the situation a generation ago—but far fewer executives are spending their careers in one company. So perhaps only those who are advancing quickly choose to stay put.

The blog about Mediocre but Arrogant

This may be the Indian answer to Peter Robinson's cult book on MBAs "Snapshots from Hell". Abhijit Bhaduri, an alumnus of my alma mater, is publishing Medioce But Arrogant (get it, MBA?), a story of how the protagonist, an unambitious undergrad from Delhi Univ, lands up in the highly competitive Management Institute of Jamshedpur. How the 2 years there change him and his relationships.

The novel is scheduled to hit the bookstores in July 2005.

There are some great sketches of by Abbey up at his Mediocre But Arrogant blog. Check them out!

Performance appraisal and the rub off on HR

The performance management blog points to an interesting study by PeopleIQ that says that Only 13 percent of employees and managers and 6 percent of CEOs think their organization's performance appraisal is useful. And 88 percent say their current performance appraisal negatively impacts their opinion of HR.

This lead me to think...what would happen if HR palmed off the whole Performance Appraisal shindig?

Let's say, the Finance guy tells the business leads that $ x is budgeted for performance pay. The $x gets divided on the basis of the head count of each business line, and then the head of that business decides on how to hand over these dollars.

Why go thorugh the painful performance process if nobody thinks it adds any value?