PwC HR consulting Head to join iDiscoveri

This is big news.

Mohinish Sinha (featured earlier on this blog here), who heads the HR Consulting practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in India is leaving the big 4 firm to join iDiscoveri as a Managing Director. PwC lost its earlier HR consulting head Smita Anand to rival Hewitt Associates, who joined them as the country manager.

iDiscoveri seems to be beefing up its focus around leadership and transformations in organizations, as Mohinish gets his consulting experience from Andersen, the Hay Group and PwC there.

Led by Ashish Rajpal, iDiscoveri has traditionally focussed on promoting learning in schools, enterprise and communities. It would be interesting to see how its work in coaching and learning for the enterprise impacts the incumbent players.

Vault's Indian site

I never realised that vault has an Indian site.

In the US vault and wetFeet are amongst the biggest sites for finding out the inside information about organizations. In fact, universities buy memberships to these sites so that the students can have insider information before joining any organization.

It would be interesting to see how Vault's Indian site grows and develops. As of now it does not seem that WetFeet is still here. My personal view is that WetFeet guides are much better and in-depth.

I still don't think that prospective employees are ready to pay money for reports on organizations, but vault's discussion boards can become a healthy (or unhealthy) way to share company information (or wash dirty linen in public).

For example you can share information and research employers with company specific message boards and employee surveys.

It would be also interesting to see how employers respond to this new entrant. And would vault's relevance be maintained in the age of Orkut and blogging in India?

On the same page

David asks: What does “being on the same page” really mean? And how is it done?"

According to me being on the same page, means not just understanding, or agreement but something much deeper.

Something that has the words alignment and commitment with it.

It means coming to a shared decision about the course of action to take, and a common commitment to shape that reality.

It also means understanding not just the external visible symptoms, but also agreeing to the underlying causes.

And that is difficult, because it often means going out of our comfort zones, and looking at someone else's realities, and that is fraught with risk for the corporate drone.

And so, in organizations, when we should be striving for alignment, we settle for agreement.

When we should be driving towards commitment, we go with the comfort of command and control.

As one of the organizations keeps telling its employees in its learning initiatives, every action has a consequence. Often when you look at the consequence you can make a pretty good guess about the action.

Looking at the corporate world as an external consultant sometimes I am surprised that we achieve even so much. That actually fills me with hope. Imagine if we started building in commitment and alignment. What all we could achieve then !

Article on Corporate Blogging in India

The Asia Times Online has an interesting article on the rise of corporate blogging in India:

Indian corporate giants such as the Tata Group are happy with returns from blogging. Ankush Gupta, corporate marketing group manager and "blog evangelist" who runs the Tata Interactive Systems (TIS) blog, told ATol that his people set out with a clear objective to give the world a window to Tata's inner working - and he said it's working, both inside and outside.

Software giant Infosys (US$4 billion in revenues in the current fiscal year) operates a blog, "Think Flat", with postings from its top brass including from Nandan Nilekani, the chief executive officer and managing director; Aditya Jha, the head of global brand and communications; Stephen Pratt, the CEO and managing director of Infosys Consulting; and Richa Govil, the group manager of its corporate marketing section.

While the Infosys blog is heavier with shop talk, snacks major Fritolay started a blog this month offering a more informal report of office outings such as a river-rafting expedition on the Ganges River and events in the company factory. Abhijit Bhaduri, who runs the Fritolay blog, said it is getting popular with employees.

"Corporate blogs will grow as we realize the ability to impact on opinions," Bhaduri told ATol. "Today people use networking sites for information about prospective companies even before they have joined work, like networking groups of all MBAs [masters of business administration] or engineers. The corporate blogs help you join the conversation."

Other corporate head honchos such as Rajeev Karwal have begun to publish personal blogs. Karwal's blog says it's intended to "express gratitude to people, organizations, stories and situations which have taught me some important lessons in professional and personal life".

But all this is just the tip of the ice-berg as far as I am concerned. Watch out for video blogging and local language blogging as broadband and technology increases and catches on.

As the saying goes, you ain't seen nothin' yet ;-)

HR Trends for Energy sector

Executive Search consultant Nishith Srivastava has shared his article on the subject here.

Some interesting points to note:

• all these recent developments and macro-economic factors affecting energy and utilities sector are going to create an immediate requirement for experienced and talented leaders to tackle these issues. Eventually, executive search and HR consulting firms will get new opportunities from all these developments to consolidate their positions in a sector which till date was quite unexplored.
• The industry requires leaders with deft management skills, international experience and the ability to navigate politically charged situations. This is especially critical as companies expand operations to capture growing reserves in countries such as Russia, and reach new markets, most notably in China.
• Smaller exploration companies springing up in major centers also have become a hiring force. These companies typically are founded by oil-and-gas executives who have left larger players either voluntarily or as part of a layoff due to mergers or reorganizations.
• Attractive candidates typically have 15 to 20 years of experience, with at least five years in management and a few years' working overseas, says Lue Gates-Weiss, an independent oil-and-gas industry recruiter in Houston.
• oil-and-gas companies occasionally hire finance executives from outside the industry from sectors that typically are stronger than in the oil-and-gas industry in other areas, such as investor relations.
• An industry expected to deliver a 50 percent increase in energy supplies by 2030 faces this expanding demand with a shrinking pool of available talent. The industry is on the verge of losing a whole generation of professionals who are reaching retirement age, creating a huge vacuum of talent and no experienced replacements.

Well I know that HR consulting firms in India are now routinely consulting for Oil and Gas majors in the Middle East region, and the HR consulting practices of big 4 firms are also booming there locally.

HR people who can get some major exposure to the Oil, Gas and Energy sector would be in for some exciting times ahead.

A list of 200 websites and their predictions

I was more than a little surprised to find that this blog had linked to my post My 8 Predictions for 2007.

Surprised because I was in no way speculating on technology per se, but how jobs and careers would have be impacted in 2007.

Go ahead, check out the list specially if you are interested in Web2.0, Hardware, Software and IT. There are more than 5000 predictions in all.

Linkedin starts a corporate Blog

Vincent Wright wrote on a yahoo group that Linkedin has started its own blog. Interesting thing to note is that the community guy who is behind it is an Indian called Mario Sundar :-) [Update: Mario has a personal blog too, and he blogs about his involvement with the Linkedin blog here]

Linkedin has quite a few bloggers who are passionate evangelists of the networking site, like Guy Kawasaki, Penelope Trunk and Vincent himself.

It'll be interesting to note how Linkedin positions the blog. The stated goal is:

to not only help you leverage LinkedIn more effectively but also to provide you a sounding board for all things LinkedIn. So, if you’re looking for a singular information source on LinkedIn with regular updates on upcoming product features, tips-and-tricks, and events or if you’d just like to hear about all the fun stuff associated with working at LinkedIn, you have reached the right place.

On a related note, here is another factoid that Vincent shared:

LinkedIn, the best-known career social network, reported 89% growth in members from 2005-2006. The site has grown from 85,000 members in its first year to over eight million members.

Some large US employers are conducting searches on social networking sites to recruit highly qualified prospects that may not be actively job hunting. Today's job hunters are not only looking at online classifieds, but also are likely to view themselves as brands to be marketed online.

Full article here.

It's interesting to note that when I joined Linkedin (was among the first 20,000 people to join) the site did not have a "career" focus, but a pure "business" focus, but over the years the focus has shifted to career networking as I guess sales, VC, marketing and deal-making does not make such a large proportion of requests (I'm guessing. I hope the Linkedin blog gives us some figures :-) as career change. Increasingly in India I am being contacted by recruiters to reach out to my contacts for job, through linkedin. One only hopes that Linkedin offers city areas to be shown in countries like India, like it enables zip search in the US.

The hilarious consultant

You know the caricature of the consultant as the conman? The guy who takes your watch to tell you the time and then keeps your watch as fees?

Getting Drunk in First Class is the hilarious and saddening blog of such an (anonymous) consultant. Read it to know what really some consultants are thinking as they give you those jazzy presentations, for example:

The scope of work is simply a umbrella “cover your ass” statement. It more or less states what the consultancy will do but more importantly, what they will not do. Also, if you read closely, the statement of work usually has some clause that “we are ultimately not responsible for anything, no matter how bad we fuck things up.”

HR in Partnership firms

Prasad has an interesting post on the various pulls and pushes that the HR function (and indeed, any support function) faces in a partnership firm.

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 .

The key is the desire of the partners to have it in the first place, and looking at their roles themselves as that of grooming future partners. If that does not happen then HR gets reduced to recruiting and resource management roles without looking at development and growth.

Conversations build trust

Steve points out why conversations are necessary, and I would add, not just the electronic or text communication that passes off for communication these days.

Ongoing conversation between people at work serve at least two important functions:

1. They help enhance our sense of worth and life by being an accepted and contributing part of a community
2. They give people cues as to how our life is going

The first is literally a preventive function. By being included--or "part of the conversation"--our need to belong is met, at least in part. When our most basic needs are being satisfied, we feel more satisfied.

The second provides a chance to ring the alarm in the minds of our colleagues. If something is wrong, they may very well sense it and listen for the level of severity. When we've established relationships through conversation, we're more likely to believe there is help in the form of those around us.

However, in my view, conversations are also the basic building blocks of that elusive quality called trust.

In fact if you are a service provider (whether internal or external) and want to move into the space that David Maister calls being a "Trusted Advisor" then you should read his book. It tells you that technical skills are not enough to be called a trusted advisor. If you want to move from a subject matter expert to a trusted advisor then the key is interpersonal relationships. It talks about being upfront with your clients and not to focus on just yourself or your skills or lack thereof. It also means confronting the client sometimes and the skill of conversations, specially difficult conversations, is key to it.

Making Self Assessment Matter

I was in a different city for a learning program recently and there decided to spend a day extra and stay with a couple, who are both batchmates from my B-School.

The husband is a Manager with one of the tech MNCs and the wife is handling marketing for a division of a MNC bank. It was a Sunday morning when after a great breakfast, the guy got up and said "I'll take some time and be back. Got some work."

"Oh really? On Sunday? OK"

"Actually I have to fill my self-appraisal form as part of the Annual Performance Management Process"

At which point the wife said "Do you guys really take self-assessment that seriously? We also have it, but only fill it when our manager says - one hour to go - that means he's got to fill his self -assessment then!"

"Well, it is important in my firm as the self-assessment is the basis of how my manager evaluates me, and during the normalisation process, it is the thing my manager leans more on"

"Well theoretically we have solid HR processes in our bank too... however..."

"You can't have a theoretical solid process, while practically it's being taken for a ride"

The conversation came to a natural end at this point, and as I listened to it, I could not help but wonder how the same process is made to work in one organization and taken for a ride in another.

So, how do you see your processes, as a ritual, or as something that adds value.

Remember, if often how you see them, that will determine their value or not.

Making it worthwhile

Sometimes business blogging seems a one sided conversation, and suddenly something happens like being recognised by peers, other bloggers and it seems good.

But what really makes blogging worthwhile are comments and feedback like this:

I am a finance person , who is a regular reader of your blog. The insights I gained predominantly from your blog , has helped to contribute substantially to the HR strategy of our company.

Wow ! That really made my day. Another stunning feedback was when recently I got an email from a B School student that said:

I am a regular visitor to your blog ... and should attribute some of the grades which I have in my courses to the knowledge and links given in your blog :) Thanks for the good work.

Now, if I could take the credit and add it to my grade sheet retrospectively :-))
Another email that I received reinforced the fact that many HR professionals who come into the function from other functions do not have a network or ready to tap body of knowledge of HR. If this blog helps such people even a little bit that'll be something I'd be proud of. The email said:

i am the human resource head at xyz firm , an advertising agency you may have heard of. we are a full service communications company that offers (besides mainline advertising services) media, pr, crm, healthcare communications, event and talent management...

i just got off your blog (interesting stuff)...and i read that one could email you to bounce off ideas. i am not a human resource professional. i am from advertising (client servicing - i hate that term!!!) who wanted to do something more meaningful than get disrespected by clients everyday.

If my little blog has changed some perceptions about HR I really feel I have done my little bit for the profession :-) On the same lines, a scrap by someone on Orkut stated:

i have been reading thru ur blogs.and.thou we think that hr is the easiest job in the world..after reading thru ur blogs..i found that its not so easy

Heh. Yeah, that's true. Some people might find software coding easier than HR after attempting to do it :-)

The Kurkure train

The Frito-Lay India blog tells us that they have a tie-up with Indian Railways to brand a train !

In yet another first, Kurkure became the first brand in the country to have a branded train. In a path breaking initiative, Kurkure has tied up with the South Western Railways to brand 3 summer special trains emanating out of Bangalore (Bangalore-Chennai, Bangalore-Hubli, Bangalore-Nagercoil). These Summer special trains would be branded by Kurkure and would be called the “Kurkure Masti Express”.

According to newsreports South Western Railway had called for bids for a unique initiative called Brand Train, under which a brand name would feature along with the train's name in all announcements, on reserved tickets, on reservation charts, on destination boards of the train, coach indication slips and during all information dissemination about the train.

Hmm, I wonder if they will also offer Kurkure on the house (or train?) for all the passengers?

But seriously, does it make sense for Kurkure to brand a train in today's day and age? Should they not be targeting the family that is flying budget airlines as a more lucrative demograhic? Or does that demographic care more about health food than stuff like Kurkure?

Also remains to be seen what are the other brands jumping on to the wagon (pun intended!)

Flying the Thunderbird

I finally moved to the Thunderbird email client, and I love it. Checking multiple Gmail accounts is an absolute breeze compared to MS Outlook. It has web 2.0 features like tagging and familiar Gmail ability to store conversations together, starring items, etc.

It also has a built in RSS reader which makes life so easy. Exporting subscriptions from Google reader and Bloglines as an OPML file and importing them into thunderbird makes it possible for me to read emails and RSS feeds from the same application. Very similar to what Yahoo Mail beta does.

Speaking of webmail, I discovered that Linkedin now gives you the ability to see which of your webmail contacts are on Linkedin, and if you are not connected to them, to invite them to connect with you :-)

This is particularly helpful if you use gmail, as it stores all the addresses you sent mail to in the contact list (Yahoo mail beta can do that too, if you configure it)

Careerbuilder comes to India

Oh, wonder when this slid under the radar :-) The jobsite space is getting crowded in India. After Monster, another US jobsite opens an India specific site, Careerbuilder India.

If you visit the site, you immediately know what their biggest challenge is...that's getting the number of resumes up on their site, so they are running a contest for giving away free iPods as prizes and to enter one only has to submit one's CV.

Without resumes, they won't get the big ticket advertisers to post jobs. If one clicks on the Top Management jobs one sees "head waiter" kind of jobs posted currently. One thing is that they have some good content, but at the moment it's copied from the US site and there is no India specific content up there.

So how's the jobsite market going to evolve? How is it going to solve the issues like irrelevant jobs being emailed (I get technology jobs and biz analyst jobs mailed to me!), recruiter spam, confidentiality as more and more senior level executives get on to job portals? How does it help organizations who want to brand themselves? That is still now the place where print scores over online areas.

Coaching or Managing

Steve blogs about how some coaches are becoming players, thereby undermining the manager's capability to develop expertise.

I hope this trend is stopped, and soon. Obviously that means that some executives have no idea what a coach's role is and that the coach is insecure about his/her ability to build a trusting relationship with the client and so probably wants to show that he/she can play too.

These relationships will not result in either independence or interdependence. They will spawn coaches and clients who are satisfied with the status quo and dependence. It'll be great for the coach's short term billing, but the consequences for his long term trustworthiness would take a beating.

Branding in the blogosphere

Fellow HR blogger and friend Regina Miller has started writing for the Gyan Gurus column on the Times Ascent site. Her first article deals with Your Employer Brand in the Blogosphere.

Regina talks about two approaches to deal with employer branding in the blogosphere. The need for HR to come up with a metric to measure the impact of the blogosphere on the employment brand, as well as to proactively build an employer brand. As she says:

Two types of initiatives that drive an employee value proposition are career development and leadership development. Career development cannot take place without employees accepting responsibility for their careers, managers stepping up as leaders and the organization designing people practices that drive the culture of the firm and advance the Brand. These efforts need to be designed and delivered with the same tone, volume, energy, creativity and brand gusto as customer acquisition and retention programs.

The rough way to find out what's being talked about your firm on the blogophere is to search for the name on Blog Search tools like technorati. Here is what is being talked about Infosys, Wipro, Satyam.

If your firm is known by slightly different names, search for all the variants, like Infy/Infosys Technologies along with just Infosys. Are these your employees blogging, or prospective employees? Use combination search phrases with descriptive words like "XYZ Company is great", or "ABC company sucks" and so on to search for how many positive and negative references are about your firm.

So what do you plan to do about it?

Ah, you could always call me ;-)

Accenture to expanding consulting workforce in India

Seven-Eight years ago Accenture (then Andersen Consulting) focussed attention away from the domestic consulting business to focus on setting up the technology and outsourcing capabilities. Now things are coming back a full circle:

US based IT services company Accenture is expanding its management consulting capabilities in India to serve clients globally and support its clients in the domestic market. The company is planning on increasing the number of management consulting professionals worldwide. Accenture expects India to play a key role in that expansion, with up to 2,000 management-consulting professionals here by the end of its 2008 fiscal year.

“Expanding our management consulting capabilities in India will complement the capabilities we have in technology and outsourcing, benefiting both domestic clients in India and clients in other markets,” said Mark Foster, Accenture’s group chief executive–Management Consulting & Integrated Markets. “India has a talented workforce with strong intellectual and research and development capabilities that can benefit Accenture clients around the globe. We are actively recruiting management consultants, professionals with deep industry and functional expertise, and graduates of India’s top business schools.”

Good news I guess to many management consultants in India, and that means sleepless nights to their employers. However much will also depend on the quality of projects that Accenture is able to get from the domestic market. Would they focus on strategy consulting and change or will they focus on technology consulting, competing with IBM and HP who have a grip on that market.

Wipro and TCS HR slides

The CIO weblog shares some slides

The TCS slides talk about the number of employees and the additional employees they hired last year and the demographics of their workforce.

Wipro's slides talk about how they are one of the top 3 recruiters in India and how they manage their talent pipeline. Interesting that they talk about a database of 600,000 profiles of which 400,000 are passive candidates.

The Carnival of Human Resources

The Evil HR Lady hosts the fifth HR blog carnival.

Go check it out for some really thought provoking and informing stuff about Human Resources, business and training.

he next Carnival will be May 2 and will be hosted by Susan Heathfield at About Human Resources.

Send your submissions directly to her (humanresources dot guide at about dot com) and put “Carnival” in the subject so she doesn’t miss it. One submission per blogger please.

When a client does not get it

Aastha asks:

Others who've become part of an archaic organizational machinery; have no idea why they're doing what they're doing, other than to make money; and visualize their business in terms of financial equations, functions, divides, vaguely related roles, will find it easier to pick out the whole 'make people happier' piece and put it in the overhead column.

As an OD person, this places an imminent dilemma for us: it's immensely satisfying and fruitful to work with the first type of business. But god knows the second needs change a lot more.

It is frustrating for OD people to work with such businesses, where "people processes" are viewed as overhead, because it also says to me that they view their people as overhead.

You know, those people who say "People are our most important asset (and we wish we could save some cost there!)"

These business leaders are the type of people who are typically assholes as Bob Sutton describes them in his new book. Assholes and jerks. People who would not hesitate to demean and humiliate co-workers. Transforming and changing such workplaces is possible, but only if you fire all the assholes. It's not just a behavioral change that we are talking about but an attitudinal change. These views are shaped by a person's own self-concept and the worldview he/she has. It cannot be changed by OD professionals like us in 2-3 months of client engagement.

I was having an email conversation on Prof. Sutton's book with a very senior Organizational Development consultant who's based in Delhi and he wrote:

in my experience an unwritten rule of my practice is for A**h's to get publicly exposed with an opportunity for reform. some do reform partially many end up leaving the organisation.

Thankfully I am no longer part of an organization. In many workplaces jerks are tolerated and even promoted. If you are part of such an organization, then my advice is to quit. Or you'll model your behavior on such jerks and become one too.

Related readings:

Guy Kawasaki's post on Prof. Sutton's book

Googlers resign on Flickr

Leading tech-blogger Amit Agarwal blogs about how Alex Rainert and Dennis Crowley, Dodgeball founders who became Google employees after the internet giant bought their baby, have quit in the most unusual style.

They advertised their resignation on Flickr (does that mean they're going to Yahoo! ;-))?)

Amit says:

The duo announced their decision to resign from Google on Flickr with thumbs-down. And they have tagged the picture on Flickr as "G00G" (that's the stock symbol for Google with Zeroes)

The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us - especially as we couldn't convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space.

Another irony is that Twitter, which gets much attention than Google-owned DodgeBall, is the brainchild of an ex-Googler.

Let's do a quick recap of high-profile exits from Google:

March 2006 - Google acquires @last, developers of SketchUp. March 2007 - Sketchup co-founder quits Google. [Life as Googler : 12 months]

January 2006 - Google acquires radio ads firm DMarc. February 2007 - dMarc founders leave Google. [Life as Googlers - 13 months]

February 2003 - Google acquires Pyra Labs, developers of the Blogger platform. October 2004 - Founder Evan Williams calls it a day at Googleplex. [Life as Googler - 20 months]

Does this indicate any trend ? Not really as the founding teams of other popular Google acquisitions such as YouTube, Writely, JotSpot, Picasa, MeasureMap, Urchin and others are still enjoying life at Google.

On a related note: Jim Stroud's article on Google employees are leaving!

Heh, there are somethings that even great free lunches cannot buy after some point.

The actual issue is does the acquiring firm only want to acquire the technology and not the talent? Or is it that once an entrepreneur has been there and done that, and has been adequately compensated, he/she will hardly ever be satisfied as an employee of a corporation...even if it is Google.

Describing Google

You know, there will always be two types of bloggers. The one who, well, just blog. The other is the group that can take words and make them sing.

I mean, you must have read enough blog posts on Google and its workplace.

But you'll never have read anything like Dilip's account of a visit to Google.

There are quite a few reasons I am thankful to the blogosphere. To keep track of ideas. To find out what the biggest minds in business are thinking and talking about. To discover new voices and ideas. And one of the reasons is to read awesome writing. Like Dilip's.

Complexity of HRIS reporting

HRIS is something I've never done.

So am thankful that Prasad identifies some of the issues and outlines some ways to go about it:

(1) there should be a set of business rules that are clearly understood and consistently applied across geographies and businesses (which would lead to 'patterns in data') AND
(2) the data standards embedded in these business rules should be used to form the logic/criteria for generating the relevant reports (that capture the data patterns) AND
(3) it should be possible to express the criteria in terms of HRIS fields AND
(4) the query tool should be able to pull out the data as per the criteria

Yeah, I know.

Always, easier said than done !

What is process work?

I had earlier posted a few times on Human Process work. Stuff that is being done by bodies like ISABS, Sumedhas, ISISD and Aastha in India.

Process work owes its origins to the pioneering work done by NTL in the US. However, in India they have been quite adapted to Indian culture and ethos.

Sushanta Bannerjee, one of the original founders of ISISD and then Sumedhas, and one of India's first freelance OD consultants has written a paper on "What is process work?"

It seeks to answer the questions, where does it come from and what it is.

Take a look.

My previous posts related to process work:

Process Work's relevance to HR
Human Process Work

The hardest thing

In India we constantly hear how easy it is for US firms to "hire and fire" and how our labour laws need to be changed for Indian firms to be competitive and to increase labour mobility. So this BusinessWeek article called Fear Of Firing might come as a surprise:

"It has never been easier for U.S. workers to go to court and allege that they've been sacked unfairly. Over the past 40 years federal, state, and local lawmakers have steadily expanded the categories of workers who enjoy special legal protection—a sprawling group that now includes women, minorities, gays, whistleblowers, the disabled, people over 40, employees who have filed workers' compensation claims, and workers who have been called away for jury duty or military service, among others. Factor in white men who believe that they are bias victims—so-called reverse-discrimination lawsuits—and 'it's difficult to find someone who doesn't have some capacity to claim protected status,' observes Lisa H. Cassilly, an employment defense attorney at Alston & Bird in Atlanta."

The article also goes on to say who should be pulling up their socks to ensure that underperformers actually go:

But it's often the supervisors themselves who bear much of the blame when HR says someone can't be shown the door. That's because most fail to give the kind of regular and candid evaluations that will allow a company to prove poor performance if a fired employee hauls them into court. Honest, if harsh, reviews not only offer legal cover, but they're also critical for organizations intent on developing top talent.

The mythical attrition numbers

If there is one thing that always raises an outcry amongst organizations is attempting to showcase which one is the better employer, by showing lower attrition numbers.

The problem is that every organization chooses to define attrition numbers as they deem fit.

Since the attrition number is a percentage, it gives an organization ample scope to do some creative statistics and number crunching with it.

Let's start with the basics. If you have 100 employees and 12 resigned, you would have an attrition of 12%, right?

So far, so good.

Now imagine you have 100 employees in January, 2006 and 135 employees in December, 2006. And in between those months 12 people left. What's the attrition percentage now? Ah.... this is where it starts to get tricky.

If you take the starting figure, then you have 12% attrition. If you take closing numbers for the year your attrition percentage drops to below 9%. So to disguise the numbers some organizations take only the closing number. However, the most acceptable way to do it is to use an average. The average would also vary depending on whether you merely have the average of the yearly starting and closing number, or a average of the monthly numbers.

If you do take the first average you get a attrition of 10.2 %

Now let's assume that of the 12 people who left, 2 were asked to leave for reasons ranging from unethical conduct to non-performance. Well, many HR professionals would take those 2 and reduce their attrition percentage to 8.5%.

Some won't stop at that. They further analyse if any of them had left in the first two/three months of joining. This is not really an 'attrition' they rationalise, and the reason varies (from "they are still in training" to "they are in a contract and might pay us back our money"). So of the 10 if 2 had left in the first couple of months of joining the attrition figures drop to 6%. Ditto for people who just fail to show up at work without resigning (called "absconding", the language reminding you of police jargon).

So the next time you hear your company touting its attrition numbers, take the HR guy to a side and ask him how he arrived at it. You'll see your company in a new and less flattering light.

Like most statistics, attrition percentage should be viewed in a context and with an objective. If they are viewed as a feedback to the recruiting and retention processes, then all attrition (either for non-performance, or early exits or no-shows) should be taken into account. That's because each of them makes a statement about the HR or management practices at a firm.

McKinsey reports companies don't like blogs

MBA blogger Biswajit Das points me to this post about McKinsey Reports Businesses Loving Web 2.0... Except Blogs

That sounds a bit familiar to me.

Most of the arguments I have heard against blogs in organizations is:

1. Are you sure that grown-up people read blogs?
2. You mean, grown-up, employed people?
3. What? I can't outsource this blog thing to my ad agency? I have to spend time to do it?
4. How do I monetize this then?
5. What? I have to turn out content...and, good content? What's good?
6. You mean, I can't buy these backlinks stuff to push up my rankings?
7. What do you mean, blog about my business? What if my competitor starts to read my blog and gets some ideas?
8. Let my people blog? Are you crazy? In these days of talent shortage and trigger-happy headhunters?
9. How will this blog help me cut costs and raise productivity?
10. It'll help me get closer to customers? Are you crazy? We're trying to push them away! Our focus is to make sales?
11. What do you mean, it's a short-term focus? Look dude, I am here to meet my numbers... otherwise I'm going to be the one looking for a job..

That's why I have always maintained that blogging is much much better for freelance knowledge workers and professional services firms. Sure, big businesses will start some blogs, and maybe one or two might be big hits too. But I won't bet on it.

Naukri vs TimesJobs

When I saw the TimesJobs ads, even I could not believe that they were playing some "sleight of numbers" trying to take on Naukri.

For more details, take a look at Rashmi's and Content Sutra's posts.

So I sent off an email to Sanjeev Bikhchandani asking for his take on TimesJobs' claims. This is what he replied:

We disagree with the Economic TImes article and the advertisements released by Timesjobs :

1. As per Alexa and Comscore naukri remains by far the leading jobsite in India. On Alexa the three month reach of naukri at 855 on April 15 is more than thrice that of Timesjobs which is at 257. According to Comscore, Naukri got more than 2.3 million unique users in February as compared to slightly more than 1.3 million of Timesjobs.

2. In fact as per Alexa, Timesjobs has slipped to fourth place behind Clickjobs.

3. The statistic that Timesjobs is referring to is "Active" resumes in the last six months. Here Timesjobs has a different definition of "Active" as compared to naukri. In Timesjobs if you open a job alert email and click on a job in the email to go to the site you are treated as an active user. In naukri you are an active user only if you update your CV or apply for a job or are a new registrant. We do not count clicking on a job in a job alert as being "Active". If we did have the same criteria our active resume count would be far higher.

4. Finally, Timesjobs is encouraging people to register more than once on their site. The email from Timesjobs to a job seeker given below is self explanatory (the bold and highlighting in the email is ours).

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Neha(Times Jobs )
Sent: Saturday, April 7, 2007 1:31:08 AM
Subject: Interview Call

Dear Candidate,

Sub. : Upload Your latest Resume In 1 Step & Get An Interview Call
Immediately!

If You Have a Ready and Latest Updated Resume with you ,we Have a Ready Job
for you,now injust one step! Click the link below and upload your latest
resume:

http://times.tribalddb.co.in/landing_main.php?Ref_Site=jc_281x51_hp_wc

If you have already submitted your resume , please do it again with your
latest updates,valid contact number and new fresh working email ID.If your
resume is applicable for muliple posts,please submit your biodata with
sepearte email Ids and with respective resume headings or titles.

For example :
Say, if your resume is applicable for sales,marketing and business
development- all three categories or posts, then please upload the same
biodata with sepaerate biodata name and with seperate email ids for three
times. Like : with your name_resume_sales with one email id , then
yourname_resume_business development with second email id and your
name_resume_marketing with thrird email id of yours.

Please upload your resume now.Your username and password will be mailed to
you for future references

Warm Regards
Neha
Link to Upload Your Resume :
http://times.tribalddb.co.in/landing_main.php?Ref_Site=jc_281x51_hp_w

Wow! The online classified job market is really hotting up in India.

What is needed now is a disruptor to disrupt the prevailing business model !

The future of media and adverstising

Interesting comment on the ZDnet blog that not only the future of online world is advertising, but that slowly content will become advertising and marketing, in the light of Google's acquisition of Doubleclick.

I guess that is true to some extent. Traditional TV in the US is being TiVo'ed. People are sick of content being interrupted by advertising.

Contextual ads online is just the beginning.

The real online commerce will take off when global micro brands and large conglomerates use content as marketing.

Indeed, most blogs are marketing something intangible right now. Points of view, actually. But some are marketing something much more tangible, like English Cut, the blog of a Savile Row tailor, and people are reading and engaging with that marketing.

I guess this is what permission marketing is all about !

Scam masquerading as job offers

This is interesting.

As a variant of the famous Nigerian scam emails, these days the crooks have got more ingenious.

Check this scam email disguised as a recruiting offer!

Succession planning at the top

Businessweek reports in The Accidental CEO (Not Really):

"Fashions are changing in the boardroom: Outsiders are suddenly out. Mackay is among the 85% of CEOs appointed to S&P 500 companies last year who hailed from inside their companies: 61 out of 72 appointments, reports executive search firm Spencer Stuart. This is a sharp increase from prior years. Only 60% of a total 60 CEO appointments were internal in 2005 and 66% of 67 in 2004. White knight saviors with stellar records at other companies, once all the rage among boards that sought to shake up tired management teams, are becoming increasingly passé. 'People have been burned by the glamorous outsider,' says Warren G. Bennis, a professor of business at the University of Southern California."

There is one thing that insiders have at the CEO level that takes an outsider months to learn, and seems so non-glamourous. That's the advantage of knowing how everything works in the organization.

Knowing what kinds of products are made where, knowing what suppliers are facing an issue with, knowing who your biggest retailers are, knowing the culture.

An outsider CEO needs to spend time on learning these, however, a lot of the energy goes in managing external stakeholders like Wall Street and the learning that should be critical to solve the business issues get left behind.

Having a great succession planning process is a great way to build talent in an organization, and needs to be done at every level, not just the CEO level.

How big is Orkut in India?

According to Alexa it's the second ranking website in India ! Coming below Yahoo and above Google India and Google.com. So Google owns three of the top 4 sites in India.

What is more interesting is after Rediff and MSN (the .com version, not the .co.in version!) YouTube comes in at number 7. We've heard of lack of broadband in India, but YouTube's popularity is really staggering in that light!

Jobsite Naukri.com is number 8, showing up as the first specialised website in the ranking (being the first jobsite in India obviously contributes to that), followed by Blogger.com. Yes, Indians are taking to social media like ducks to water. Orkut, YouTube and Blogger's Alexa ranking shows that. Again, all three are owned by Google.

Indians also like to share files over the internet that shows the popularity of Rapidshare and Megaupload, both coming in on the top 15 websites.

The first mainstream media website is Indiatimes at number 13 followed by soft-porn site Debonairblog.

Cricket's not really taken a beating, as cricinfo which is the preferred site for NRIs to follow the game is number 17 followed by music site Raaga.com and desi portal Sify.com

Job Hunting Tip 1

So you've made an online CV at one of the leading job portals.

And you wait for some time. And some more. And some more.

No recruiters or organizations call you.

By this time you're feeling angry at the job portal that advertises so many thousands of jobs every week. What's the point if you don't even get a call for interview.

But, what can you do?

Edit your resume.

Ask a friend to go through your resume. Check for typos. If you are applying for a certain type of job can you broaden the functions and industries?

Check whether your email id is entered correctly.

Oh another thing, every time you edit your resume, it stands a better chance of ranking higher in the recruiters' searches. That's because most of the job portals have a option for recruiters to search resumes which have recently been modified. That's to ensure that people who are actively looking for a change get the visibility.

So go ahead, if you are actively looking, keep editing your resume. Do it at least once every week to remain top of the searches. Of course, this is a approximate figure. If you are competing for visibility along with very few people, then you can edit your resume at a longer time frame.

[Join this blog's MyBlogLog Community]

Rex Harrison and Tata Sky

What's the connection?

Well as Dipta tells us, it's a word called 'jhingalala', which Bollywood buffs would recall as a refrain in a Hindi song in the movie "Shalimar"

Quite correctly Dipta points to the mistake Tata Sky is doing in trying to usurp that word into its advertising campaign.

Coming from a marketing and sales guru, that's some advice Tata Sky should listen to.

What would be your nomination for the worst byline in an advertisement?

On a lighter note, Dipta has thoughts on branding and film-makers as brands. Enjoy !

Jaxtr adds India to the list

Finally !

A text message on my jaxtr inbox informed me that India along with 190 other countries had been added to jaxtr's list of 29 countries where we can receive calls and activate the phones.

That means if you are in the 29 countries (includes US, UK, Japan, Australia amongst others) you can call jaxtr members in 220 countries for the cost of a local call.

So if you want to call me, go ahead.

I hope India also gets added to the list of countries we can make calls out from. Then it would be goodbye to ISD calls. Konstantin Guericke, CEO of Jaxtr, (yes, the same one who co-founded Linkedin) mailed the jaxtr egroup to say:

The calls you receive are still limited to people from the 29 countries where we have local numbers, but we are working to add local numbers in more countries and also allow users in other countries (where we are not able to get numbers that send calls abroad) to call you through numbers in the US

We're keeping our fingers crossed !

Rediff vs Technorati

I wanted to check out the Technorati profile of Rediff.com CEO Ajit Balakrishnan's blog, and instead I got an error message that says:

There are blogs, and then there's whatever you just typed in. If it's a blog, we don't know about it. Maybe you made a typo. Or maybe it's a blog that doesn't exist. Maybe you don't exist. (In which case, please ignore this.)

Technorati doesn't provide any link by which we can tell it that rediffiland.com is a "sort of" blogging service. The problem I guess is that Rediffilands do not offer RSS feeds which is readily 'read' by feed readers. I am not a technical geek by any chance, but it does offer a non-xml feed whose URL looks like " http://ajitb.rediffiland.com//scripts/diary_rss.php " for Ajit's blog.

Is that what is costing the Rediffilanders to become actual islanders in the blogosphere?
Shouldn't rediff be doing something about it?

You'll find physician jobs on The Recruiter.com.

Thought leadership from Accenture

Consultant News reposts:

" Over the last year, Accenture has succeeded in putting far more space (at least in volume terms) between itself and its nearest rivals, to a point where it now matches McKinsey's share of the thought leadership market with 9% of the total and IBM is in fourth place with 5%. Indeed, if anything, Accenture seems to be modelling its position on that of a strategy firm rather than a broader IT and consulting firm, with over a third of its output focussed on economic/market studies and strategy formulation."

In India, Accenture's entry was as a strategy and operations consulting firm, and only after 2000 did it start reflecting the US firm's technology focus. Now it's slated to have more employees in India than in US.

So it's interesting that it is moving focus back to strategy consulting from the technology and outsourcing practices.

What is interesting is that Indian IT firms are also showcasing their thought leadership though their focus is mostly technological.

"As the Indian offshorers develop their consulting practices they are already having an impact on the thought leadership rankings. In terms of volume of material, Infosys is the leading offshore firm, marginally ahead of Wipro, with Tata Consultancy Services trailing some way behind. The thought leadership of all three remains very technology-centric.

Certainly as far as thought leadership goes, the boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred between the traditional "strategy" firms, the big IT consultancies and the offshorers. "

But what is thought leadership and why is it important for consulting firms?

Thought leadership, according to me (feel free to add to it) is the ability of a firm to bring out original ideas to the area of consulting it offers. It is dependent on what issues clients are facing, forecasting the future and thinking of new and sometimes, conceptual models that benefit both clients and the overall management community. The McKinsey 7 S model and BCG's growth matrix are two classic examples of thought leadership.

Why is thought leadership important?

Simple, great thought leadership means never having to 'pitch' or 'sell' for business. You are invited for talks with the CEO (in the case of strategy firms) and the CTO (in the case of IT Consulting firms)

That ensures that no Partner from the big consulting firms approaches a CEO like Bill Gates or Howard Stringer and says, "Let me tell you how our Managment Consulting Group can help you craft the strategy for your new gaming console."

Heidrick & Struggles establishing non-search practices

Consultant News tells us that :

"Stephen Langton has been appointed Regional Managing Partner - Asia Pacific and Stephen Miles will head the Americas' regional Leadership Consulting business.

'Leadership Consulting is a critical element of our go-to-market strategy,' said Heidrick & Struggles Chief Executive Officer Kevin Kelly. 'In recent years we have worked to build out and globalize this business. Placing these talented leaders to run Leadership Consulting in Asia Pacific and the Americas further enhances our ability to present a stronger offering to our clients around the world.'"

The whole issue for firms like Heidrick & Struggles as they strive to establish practices that are non-search related is to not let conflict of interest between the search business and the newer practices come in. The whole "succession planning" approach will give it a huge insight into the talent of a client, but can it resist itself from pushing it's much more lucrative search business there?

SHRM comes calling

SHRM in India:

"The world's largest human resource management association is set to offer its expertise in India.

If you were to believe Susan R Meisinger, president and chief executive officer of Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), HR in India is all set to witness “very exciting times.”

On her maiden visit to this country (SHRM India has been operating since October 2005), Meisinger was impressed by the level of development in HR here."

I'm surprised if they haven't sounded out the National HRD Network in India to collaborate together.

True, that in the times of globalisation there will be less and less needs for "national" networks and more and more Industry and Functional networks.

A "HR Association for IT Services" which cuts across countries would offer greater value. Same true for a "Society of Retail HR Management".

True, logistically it makes more sense to think geographically, but surely someone can come up with a way to get around logistical issues.

Linkedin sponsors Brazen Careerist

I was thrilled to know that one of my favorite bloggers, Brazen Careerist a.k.a Penelope Trunk is being sponsored by Linkedin, the business networking site.

I think it's a great move for Linkedin, as they have become the default site for career change for people. Penelope of course, is an authority on that :-) Even Yahoo believes so.

After The Cheez's sponsorship by JobCentral, this is another example of how businesses can partner with bloggers.

While Penelope has not disclosed the details, Joel's deal with Job Central is worth $ 100,000 for two years. Sweet !

Now if only someone paid me half that amount to sponsor this blog ;-) At least my readers won't have to see those pesky Google ads they seem to hate so much ;-))

Not Hygiene Anymore?

Post Contributed by regular reader R Karthik:

How many of us HR professionals in today's era still agree that compensation is a non-factor so far as employee motivation is concerned?

How many takers still alive and around for this theory here… (Fred must be turning inside his grave now... :) ) The grounds for establishing this as an empirical finding must have been too strong lest we would not be holding on to this so long.

But it is worth revisiting these theories once in 100 years to see how relevant or otherwise they are to this day.

Why? They may be too anachronous for today's age!

Marketers do that; we all know Kotler was here in India two years ago or so fielding questions from our bold and beastly thinkers about how relevant are his 4Ps to today's business environs!
While he vouched for the sanctity of his 4Ps; he was wise enough to introduce a few more Ps realizing that it would prove a pro-active exercise to revisit them and explore scope for enhancements.
And we must admit he struck gold!

So let's advert to the afore-said thought again!
The thinkers of the past have bequeathed pearls of wisdom upon us in postulating these theories.
But fraternity! Won't they become dogmas unless we keep revisiting them and reviving them from time to time?

The business of Indian cricket

It's Big Business but Not Businesslike
Knowledge@Wharton on the business of cricket:

"Sachin Tendulkar, arguably India's best-ever cricket player, earns some $30 a minute. India's highest-paid CEO, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries, gets $10, and celluloid superstar Amitabh Bachchan, $8. Ordinary people like Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh get 3 cents and 1 cent respectively. These figures from PaycheckIndia, which describes itself as an Internet-based labor market research tool, are back-of-the-envelope calculations. But even if you ignore the numbers, the conclusion is that India's cricket stars are handsomely paid.

Last year, Forbes magazine attempted a valuation of the different cricket boards. According to its calculations, the BCCI was worth $1.5 billion, the England & Wales Cricket Board $270 million and Cricket Australia $225 million. The ICC was pegged much lower at $200 million. The others were Pakistan ($100 million), South Africa ($65 million), Sri Lanka ($14 million) and Bangladesh ($5 million). "There are 10 full members of ICC, but in terms of revenue India contributes more than 70% to the game," the magazine wrote. "Most sponsorships and broadcast rights come from India, and Indian tours make foreign boards rich."

"I see three problems with the business model of Indian cricket," says Jitendra Singh of Wharton "First, the market is not as deep as it is in the U.S. It allows those who have talent to command a very high price, while those who are not part of that small group don't make money. In the U.S., performance is what drives your compensation. In India, the money from endorsements exceeds payment for performance by many multiples. We should ask if these incentives are structured the right way. Second, the governance system for cricket is not functioning effectively. The third issue is the motivation of the cricketers. In the past, it was an honor to play cricket for India. Now some players make $30 million to $40 million a year. If you make so much money, to what extent does that take away your motivation for the game? Money has changed the nature of the game." "There is a distinction between individual incentives and collective incentives," says Jagmohan Singh Raju, a professor of marketing at Wharton. "The individual gets a lot more from outside sponsorships than from playing cricket. If all the money came to the BCCI, and it was then allocated to the players based on how popular they are, it would have been a different story. But if that money comes from outside, the players' incentive is not to retire but to keep playing as long as they can. They may spend more time in front of the TV cameras rather than on the cricket field. It creates an incentive structure that is not good for the game.""

I met Prof. Jitendra Singh once in Bangalore on a social occasion, unfortunately we never got around to discussing cricket :-)

I've never viewed or thought too much about the business of sports, however the Cricket World Cup recently has got me thinking about the HR aspects. Some questions that have bothered me are:

1. How do you keep exceptional talent motivated? How do you coach them?
2. Cricket is driven (indeed, some would say it's consumed by) statistics, where individual performance sometimes clouds team achievements (witness Saurav Ganguly's lack of piling on the run rate against Bangladesh). How does one create a culture of team in such a place?
3. The quality of management is distinctly one of "command and control". In fact the BCCI must be the only cricket body that calls itself the Board of "Control". Compare that to "Cricket Australia". Does the name reflect the mindset? I would think so.
4. The BCCI is not a company. It does not have shareholders to be answerable to. In fact the only people it has to be answerable to are its constituent state clubs. So the ordinary cricket fan has no say in the functioning of a body that governs his much loved game.

Innovation a strategic priority for India

Innovation strategic priority for India Inc- CII-BCG Survey

The problem with words like innovation is that everyone agrees it is important but not everyone understands what is to be done to achieve it. Which is quite different from the quality movement.

The CII-BCG Survey has also revealed that 74% of the companies are planning to increase the funds invested in innovation. However, Indian companies seem to facing the innovation paradox as almost 60% of the respondents are not satisfied with their returns on innovation. There is thus a need for advocacy and awareness building in the area of innovation

The important thing to remember is that innovation resides in one's mind, and worldview and the ability to be flexible in adapting that worldview. Hence throwing money at innovation is not likely to achieve it.

In some ways, Indians are great at adaptive innovation, taking what is finished and finding new uses for it. However, we lack the ability to really craft new markets and blue oceans.

2006 McKinsey Award winners

From Consultant News.com:

"Harvard Business Review has announced that Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer are the first-place winners of the 2006 McKinsey Award for their article Strategy and Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility. Gary Hamel is the second-place winner for The Why, What, and How of Management Innovation."

I believe that Hamel's approach to innovation is a bit of old-school, monolithic, enterprise focussed. However Porter and Kramer's work sounds very interesting. Have to get my hand on that article.

HR lack skills

HR staff 'lack skills' to become business partners

Mercer HR Consulting surveyed 300 senior European executives and discovered that HR staff are missing a lot of key skills, including business and financial understanding, the ability to manage projects, deploy technology and to improve customer service.

Philip Vernon, principal at Mercer, said: "Europe's HR executives tend to agree that HR is exhibiting broader business and operational management skills, but there's still a very strong emphasis on HR's traditional expertise.

As if we needed a research survey to find that out :-)

I am constantly surprised on meeting fellow HR professionals and discovering the shockingly low regard for broader business knowledge, specially sales and finance.

Well, that includes me too...my financial knowledge is pathetic :-)

The father of management consulting

In his latest post my buddy Dennis Smith at Wireless Jobs raises a virtual toast to the father of wireless.

Which got me thinking: Who is the father of management consulting? I should do a blog post on that person for making this profession a reality.

Is it Peter Drucker? The greatest management thinker that the world has seen, and who's engagement with GM and Sloan was called the consulting engagement of the last century.

Or was it a certain accounting teacher called James Oscar McKinsey, whose name would go to the Firm he founded.

Er, no.

The shape of the consulting profession, the advice business, goes to Marvin Bower.

If you know some bit of consulting you would know who Bower was. If not, your response was probably "Marvin who?" If so, then read on.

Bower was the driving force behind McKinsey and Co. after his mentor, James O. McKinsey's death, and modeled the new profession on the lines of original trusted advisors, the legal professions. The partnership model, the stewardship of the firm, the democracy and meritocracy that would go on to become the hallmark of the consulting profession all bore Bower's stamp.

Rakesh Khurana's views on Bower's legacy are here. He quotes:

When McKinsey ventured into executive search, he persuaded the firm to get out. Then, when some of the partners wanted to form a joint venture with an investment bank, Bower helped talk them out of it. ''He got very upset at some of the things McKinsey was talking about,'' says Jack Sweeney, editor of Consulting Magazine. Bower's influence was also felt in McKinsey's refusal to go public, though a sale would have netted the partners millions. Today, in an age when values often seem malleable, it is fair to wonder at the source of such Calvinist rectitude

Yes, Bower placed the "independence" of the firm over all else.

Update: Thanks to Tanujit for the pointing out the typo of Marvin's name.

The MECE way

I first came across this term when I read the McKinsey way by Ethan Raisel. MECE (pronounced "me-see") stands for Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive.

I later ran into the term again when I worked in the OD function of a fortune 100 technology firm, where MECE was used in training how to put forth ideas.

The basic tenet of the MECE principle is that when you present an analysis of a problem or issue it has to be analysed and decomposed so that the smaller issues are presented as

• Mutually Exclusive (each idea is distinct and separate; overlap represents muddled thinking) and
• Collectively Exhaustive (you've covered all the possibilities; you've thought of everything)

So next time you think about a business issue or problem can you present the data and analysis in a MECE format? The way that McKinsey consultants do? As the author says:

“MECE structures your thinking with maximum clarity…when you think you have determined the issues, take a hard look at them. Is each one a separate and distinct issue? If so, then your issue list is mutually exclusive. Does every aspect of the problem come under one (and only one) of these issues? If so, then your issues are collectively exhaustive,” Rasiel explains. MECE is a cardinal rule so much so that “every document (including internal memos), every presentation, every e-mail and voice mail produced by McKinsey-ite is supposed to be MECE.”. The McKinsey culture is mainly about “structure, structure, structure, MECE, MECE, MECE, MECE, hypothesis-driven, hypothesis-driven, hypothesis-driven,”

the International Association for Indian Management Research

It's about time that management research in India found an organization to own it. I got an email from my friend Niti Singh who stated:

In light of the low visibility that currently plagues research pertaining to India, we badly need an association that can work towards fulfilling this vacuum. The germination of one such initiative has taken its roots in the form of IAIMR [INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR INDIAN MANAGEMENT RESEARCH], which is based out of Great Lakes at Chennai, and is supported by Yale-Great Lakes Center for Management Research, of which Dr. Venkat R. Krishnan is the director.

The association’s main objective of providing visibility to research pertaining to India will be best served if we provide a common platform for scholars to meet.

You can read more about the IAIMR here. If it can be even close to achieving what the Academy of Management has achieved in the US, then it would be an awesome achievement ! All the best to the IAIMR.

On talent management....continued..

Steve picks up my blog query "What Exactly Is Talent Management?"and points me to some great resources to add to my ever-growing RSS reader list.

He refers me to Jim Holinchek's posts All Talent Management All of the Time and CEO Views of Talent Management, as well as Don Taylor's definition.

So I am left with a question...is talent management what HR wants to be when it grows up?

I certainly think so. If we are talking about managing people and capabilities to reach business goals as the objective of Talent Management then isn't that the overall goal of HR?

So is Talent Management just old wine in a new bottle?

I think not. From what I sense, there is some way in which the philosophy of Talent Management might be different from traditional HR. It's not about getting a one size fits all strategy. It's about putting the needs of the individual up front and in center of your processes. Or as the Evil HR lady says "what is the size of your gas mask?"

If Talent Management makes HR flexible and in tune with the needs of both the individual and the organization, then I am all for it !

Six years ago I attended a Management Development Programme that the OD doyen of India, Prof. Udai Pareek was facilitating. There was a Compensation Manager from a firm in the program who kept complaining that her organization constantly reworked policies to suit various individuals and the HR people were always trying to figure out what the updated policy was.

Prof. Pareek replied "If your organizations puts the people interest before the needs of the process then that is the holy grail of HR" or words to that effect.

From that day the way I've viewed my role in HR very differently :-)

Top Learning & Development terms

Donald Taylor compiles a list of 120 'top' terms that Learning & Development professionals should know and asks what should be added to it?

Here is my list to add to Don's:

• Learning Objectives - What is the overarching learning objective for a program? Most organizations put a "laundry list" of 8-10 learning objectives from a program that lasts 2-3 days. What are the two key learnings you'd like participants to take away?
• Performance Consulting - I notice Don has Performance Improvement and Support in his list, but Performance Consulting enables a L&D person to diagnose the issue better.
• Case Study - An often undermined way to facilitate learning.
• Role Play - The closest that you can get to real life and experiment with different modes of behavior.
• Human Process - Understanding where the group is and what are the processes that are playing under the surface.
• HPT
  

What would you add to Don's list?

Networking with Visibility and Credibility

In the recent past I delivered a training program in which the concept of Networking was linked to the concept of Visibility and Credibility.

It basically says that Networking depends on three factors, which are Relevant Information, Working Relationships and Track Record. Networking without relevant information is "hoarding" names and email addresses and you see a lot of such people on various fora. They collect visiting cards never to glance at them again.

Networking without working relationships causes people to lose the strength of those relationships. Knowing why you seek to network with some people (the kind of work you might help them with, for example) helps you in purposeful networking.

Networking without a track record of performance will also lead to people not really look forward to network with that person. What you do is as important as who you know :-)

The Visibility-Credibility questionnaire helps people chart themselves on a 2x2 matrix in which the desired quandrant is of course, being high on both visibility and credibility. Such people are both "Seen and Heard" and are the ones who get all the plum assignments.

Where are you, in your own estimates, in your organization. Are you "heard but not seen", the advisor, or sage that the leaders approach, but who never gets the limelight. Or are you high on visibility and low on credibility, seen but not heard, the person who strives for attention, without performance results and therefore ends up looking foolish. Or, I hope not, are you low on both visibility and credibility, where you end up working and never rising in the organization?

Targetted recruiting

US Army recruiters are approaching extreme sports players to hire potential army recruits (Hat tip: Praneeth Reddy)

CPX Sports in Joliet looks like the perfect playground for paintball players, but army recruiters see something much different: a field of potential new recruits.

"We probably gain about 50 leads from people interested in the Army each time we come out," said Maj. Levie Conway, U.S. Army Recruiter.

"It's pretty much all of us playing army, so especially some of the younger kids that are coming out might be looking at something like that for a career," said paintball player Lonnie Colson.

"Usually the people that are interested in paintball have a propensity toward enlisting into the United States army. So what we have to do is just get them to get a chance to speak to an Army recruiter," Maj. Conway said.

Maj. Conway says because of the success the Army's already seen with this program, they are now looking at targeting other extreme sports that appeal to players in their target demographic.

Wow ! I'm impressed !

Blogging and careers

From the Wall Street Journal:

Ryan Loken, a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. recruitment manager, says he spends one to two hours a week searching through blogs for new talent or additional information about the candidates he has interviewed. "Blogs are a tool in the tool kit," he says. Since he joined the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant three years ago, Mr. Logen estimates that Web journals have helped him fill 125 corporate jobs. Most of the recruits were referred to him by bloggers and blog contributors, and some were the writers themselves.

The blogosphere has become a virtual career center for job hunters seeking advice. See what job seekers can gain from blogs about recruiting.In addition to blogs that focus on their industry or field of interest, recruiters say they check candidates' blogs about noncareer-related topics for evidence of writing skills and clues to how well rounded they are.

Some job seekers call recruiters' attention to their blogs as a way to boost their candidacy. In an interview for a public-relations job in late 2004, Kevin Dugan says he told recruiters at Cincinnati-based FRCH Design Worldwide that he had been writing a blog for two years. "Blogging was a way for me to build credibility," he says. "It was a way to show my writing skills pretty easily as well as my knowledge of blogging and the public-relations industry." Mr. Dugan, 36, got the job and continues to write his blog, which he says generates about one job lead a month.

Companies that allow their employees to continue to blog run the risk of having a competitor poach their talent. Mr. Balfour, who continued to blog after he joined Zoom, says he has been invited on several job interviews because of his blog, though he turned down the opportunities that were offered.

Some companies encourage employees to blog because they can use them to recruit others. When recruiter Harry Joiner was hired to fill two positions at Musician's Friend Inc. in November, he used an employee's personal blog to help sell his client's rural location of Medford, Ore., to job seekers. "Candidates were using Medford as a reason not to consider the jobs," he says. "As a marketer, I thought, if you can't change it, promote it."

The blog, by So Young Park, the company's director of e-commerce marketing and customer-relationship management, describes her move to the area a year ago from New York City. It includes details about her work, her experience owning a car for the first time, a bear sighting near her new home and related topics. While she started the blog to share information about her experiences with family and friends back East, she acknowledges that it has also been a good resource for attracting job hunters.

So there is more than one way in which blogs and bloggers can help organizations to recruit talent. However, in India there is not too much of blog searching that employers are doing to recruit talent at the moment. However as blogging is embraced by more and more business school and undergraduate students, when they move into hiring manager positions in a couple of years you can be sure that they will tap the blogosphere network for getting candidates who stand out.

Have you used blogs to hire people, or have you been hired by an employer because of your blog? Let me know, and I'll do an interview with you :-)

Innovation and Connection

How Innovators Connect - A book review

This is the first book I am reviewing that I received because I'm a blogger here :-) I got an email asking me if I'd like a copy, and since innovation is a BIG interest area for me, I readily agreed.

Rohit Agarwal, CEO of the social networking site for techies called techTribe, has written this book which focusses on the importance of connections for innovations. And the connections he talks about in the book (that he co-authored with Patricia Brown) is not just with other people, but to connecting with self, an idea, the environment, timing, the team, partners, money, customers, humility, failure and spirituality.

It might seem strange to how a person connects to self and what implication it has for innovation. Or even other abstract concepts like humility, but Agarwal and Brown bring excellent examples (though, primarily from Silicon Valley) to bring alive the ideas of the book. Therefore, this book is about innovation at various levels.

At one level it focuses on the nuts and bolts, from how collaboration is a life-line of innovation (why should a larger firm partner with a smaller firm?) to what's a good time to raise capital to how timing can make or mar a breakthrough idea.

On the other side, it also explores the inner mind of the innovator, how failure impacts, how to deal with your ego to how faith and equanimity impacts your innovativeness.

Therefore, this is a book filled to the brim with ideas and examples, and yet the ideas are not joined in a simplistic "how-to-innovate" framework. While that can be challenge for the casual reader, the innovator who wants to bring out his ideas into reality will walk away with learnings from others that are relevant to him or her.

It also has a great collection of stories, from the more well known recent stories like YouTube's success to the habits of successful innovators like Steve Jobs.

The book has been based on a series of 40 interviews that the authors had with people like Guy Kawasaki, Gururaj Deshpande, Jan Baan, Kiran Karnik.

The focus for the book has been technology innovations, with the exception of Sula Wines, which is the only non-technology firm covered in some detail.

The other drawback of the book is that the focus seems to be Silicon Valley innovation, and while that is a great aspirational view to have, there have been quite a few domestic technology innovation and apart from Quintant that later was acquired by iGate, none of the Indian technology innovations are covered in much detail.

In fact, the richest story in the book is how Rohit brought about techTribe to fruition. It's a personal story, and blends in some of the various "connections" that an innovator needs to make to bring an idea to reality. I only wish that the story could have been been a little longer :-)

I think the book delivers on its promise, though at Rs. 950 it seems to be little overpriced.

Serendipity ?

Prof. Madhukar Shukla of XLRI meets Nobel peace prize winner Mohd. Yunus the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship '07 at the Said Business School.

Why don't such things like being "at the right place at the right time" ever happen to me?

HR as a business partner

....means you do not be friends with the boss. According to Bill Conaty, GE's HR head who worked with Jeff Immelt as well as Jack Welch:

Too often, says Conaty, HR executives make the mistake of focusing on the priorities and needs of the CEO. That diminishes the powerful role of being an employee advocate. "If you just get closer to the CEO, you're dead," says Conaty. "The HR leader locks in with the CEO, and the rest of the organization thinks the HR leader isn't trustworthy and can't be a confidant."

Conaty tries to counteract that risk by distancing himself from Immelt in public settings. While few people spend more time with Immelt than Conaty, he deliberately socializes with other colleagues at functions. Moreover, Conaty says he is the one to "purposely throw the daggers at Jeff that the other guys don't dare do. He knows what I'm doing. I need to be independent. I need to be credible." He also makes a point of being candid with leaders in private. As Immelt recently remarked: "I call Bill the 'first friend'...the guy that could walk in my office and kick my butt when it needed to be."

That's a perspective I am sure a lot of HR heads have lost :-)

Lyro - the digital business card

After the spate of business networking sites web 2.0 folks are training their guns on something more basic- the good ol' fashioned business card.

Enter Lyro, which is trying to do a Linkedin and ZoomInfo to business cards.

For example you can see my virtual business card here, and as they say, it's searchable by all major search engines.

As they say:

During the coming days and weeks we’ll be adding features and functions that will give you the ability to build a comprehensive portfolio about yourself and your work – giving you broad capability to brand who you are and what you do. All of this will be done under a premise that allows you to control what information you want published. You have absolute control over the information you provide to others through the LyroMail messaging system. Lyro will never release your email address to other users!

With the success of Linkedin I think a lot of startups are trying to focus on what has enabled linkedin to be successful. It'll be interesting to see how Lyro develops itself.

In fact, Jobster, seems more and more like Linkedin these days, there's even a contact management system these days like Linkedin and additionally Jobster has added "blog buddy" on the lines of mybloglog to cosy up to bloggers even more. As Jason Goldberg says it is a

"dynamic flash widget which shows who visits your blog with quick links to their profile and to send them a note. It shows if your blog visitors are hiring and what jobs they are hiring for."

When you do a mouse over on a profile, it even tells folks what your "workplace tags" are. Yeah, radical transparency, I guess, this is called.

It might work in the US, but I am sure India is very far away from this yet :-) So no "blog buddy" widget on my blog as of now. Bloggers are still not people who are making hiring decisions in their firms :-)