Mumbai Attacks

The last three days have been a period of turmoil. I don't consider myself an emotional person (my MBTI profile is INTP , in case you want to know) but watching the Mumbai attacks unfold has been gut wrenching and heart-breaking.

In addition my mind has been trying to make sense of all this. And failing.

Then I remember that the human mind yearns for a simple solution, one explanation that explains everything. A simple formula to arrive at a definitive conclusion. In both personal as well as organizational and social issues.

We wish we could connect the dots and arrive at the root cause.

That's a fallacy. There is not one root cause. There are many. There is no linear connection. There are webs of complexity.

Which is not to say that solutions are impossible. Solutions are sometimes very visible and everybody knows what should be done. But it's the implementation that's fraught with danger.

As citizens of Mumbai and of India it's our duty to lead. Not just to vote and choose leaders. Each of us have to lead - be an example of the behavior we seek from others. To begin with what we can do. And then have the integrity to demand that behavior from others.

So what's the change you would like to see from this world? Can you be that change?

Mumbai Terror Attack

Too shocked to blog anything today. Ever since I saw the news about the terror attacks in Mumbai, I haven’t had the sense or the inclination to blog.

Here’s a list of my Tweets about the terror attack in Mumbai throughout the day.

We've recovered and bounced back after terror attacks so frequently that I don't even feel like saying about Mumbai's spirit. I just hope and pray that the outrage and anger is channelised constructively !

May you be safe.

Introducing White Spaces

Good news folks!

The new name of this blog is "White Spaces"

White Space, in an organizational context, in my view, is the space outside the boxes in the organizational chart. The focus is on recognizing that we need not be 'boxed' in by our roles, but that we can be much more than that.

Wikipedia also tells me of there are many meanings of White Space

• White space (visual arts), or negative space, the portions of a page left unmarked
  

• Whitespace (computer science), characters used to represent white space in text
  

• Whitespace (programming language), an esoteric programming language whose syntax consists only of spaces, tabs and newlines
  

• White space (education), term used since 2007 in the Singapore Education System to denote time reserved for teachers' personal reflection and planning.
  

• White Spaces Coalition, a group of technology companies aiming to deliver broadband internet access via unused analog television frequencies
  

• White Space (business), the part of a market or segment that is available to a business or entity for new sales or customers
  

• White Space (Process improvement and management), the area between the boxes in an organizational map, often an area where no one is responsible.
  

• In telecommunications, white space refers to unused frequencies in the radio portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
  

So there folks, as I reflect this blog is also the White Space in my life. It doesn't fit into my other roles, traditionally of being a Consultant/Father/Spouse/Son - but something my passion for organizational theory, HR and writing has created.

Tell me how you like it :-)

Need a new blog name

Ok, I grew tired of the name "Gautam Ghosh - Management Consultant" and I want you to suggest me a good catchy name for the blog.

Until that time the placeholder would be "Individual and Organizational Performance" (as someone said, descriptive but hardly exciting :) )

After the Bailout change the Culture

I totally agree with Bob Sutton's post. For things to change drastically at large organizations, everything might need to be changed, specially, culture and the other things that keep that culture glued in, processes and structure. Throwing money is not going to change anything!

My original post argued that one reason that leaders at GM were so
clueless is that power dynamics in meetings (and other interactions)
are deeply dysfunctional, with the highest status person in the group
doing all the talking and none of the listening, regardless who has the
most expertise in the room.  As a result, it seems to be a system
designed to preserve the status of those at the top rather than to get
the best information to the right people at the right time. This
conclusion resulted from observations (often measuring talking time)
during meetings I have attended at GM over the past 30 years for
diverse reasons.

Steps to transform HR to HR2.0

So there I was talking to some of my friends, who are HR professionals, who always look at me at bewilderment  when the topic turns towards social media and networking.

One of them shook his head and said "Why do you even bother? How is it going to help anyone in HR?"

The conversation meandered along. I tried explaining the Cluetrain manifesto , the Long Tail , the Wisdom of the Crowds , Swarm Intelligence and Emergence , the move from Control to Collaboration and Transparency.

However I realised looking at their glazed expressions that they were not really listening or understanding, probably because I wasn't presenting in a coherent manner.

So here's my steps of what an organization should do, to transform their HR to HR2.0 - for all my friends :-)

1. Employment Branding and Recruiting - Get onto Facebook, Orkut , Linkedin, discover if there are any communities about your firm, alumni groups, or your products. Identify 2-3 tech savvy young recruiters and encourage them to start or join conversations. Encourage them to also start communities of joining employees and keep in touch with them.Of course there is lots of material about how to find candidates using social networks and blogging. The other thing is to get your recruiters (like Microsoft , Accenture  and Oracle ) and also your employees to blog. The third option would be to get some of your HR communications folks to blog.
   
2. Employee Engagement and Communication - Having internal blogs and wikis to brainstorm and facilitating conversations is one of the ways you can get employees spread across various countries to connect and share knowledge. For example, I "met" people like Stan and Bruce online internally in an organization. And we've never met offline. Some more ideas would be to use Yammer , and enterprise wide Twitter tool. Suitable for large as well as micro-sized environments. Would be great to connect employees who normally would not come in touch with each other. Might help in tearing down organizational silos too. 
3. Learning and Development - Learning in the digital age (as JSB says ) is going to be a lot different that your parent's 'training classroom'. Organizations have experimented with virtual classrooms, blended learning and virtual worlds too. However I would vote for people learning through serendipity by connections and content  they make via blogging and wikis. And using by using collaborative simulations as close and real as possible. At the very basic level, using YouTube or an internal site to share and rate videos and commenting on them would be a great way for people to pick up conceptual knowledge.
   
4. Defining Processes and Policies - Using internal and external social media, to have employees co-create and have a say about processes and policies being designed for them would be an incredibly powerful way to have organizational democracy. Any organization actually doing something on that front?

These are my thoughts right now on HR2.0. Let the conversation begin!

Offer letter revoking

Anurag posted a Facebook note with a real story:

So there is this guy who till last week was looking forward to join [well known company] as Sr VP of HR . Wooed to the extent {name of Promoter} sent people to his home to ensure there is an "emotional connect" even before the guy joins. All was fine till he got a letter last week withdrawing the offer. No one spoke to him , no compensation whatsoever and the poor fellow is looking for a job at the age of 48 in this economy. So this is the story of what is happening with one of NSE50 companies. [Well known company] shares are trading at 15% of their January highs !!

Dr. Shukla linked to a story about something similar in Videocon's business.

Today I was talking to a HR head of a BPO firm today about the incident and he shared that while the economy was booming people had no qualms about accepting an offer letter, negotiating equity stakes, meeting their prospective teams, only to text on Saturday and say "I am not able to join because of [substitute with lame excuse]"

According to the HR guy this used to happen not just with the entry level people, but also with CXO levels. These senior guys actually picked up the trick from lower level employees. The thing is called "shopping" - having an accepted offer to negotiate a higher salary and role at a competitor.

Whatever be the case, either in the case of an economic boom or slowdown ... both actions of taking others for granted and breaking commitments cannot be condoned.

Wake up - employees and employers - you're doing your own credibility a disservice by acting so opportunistically.

Have the courage to take a decision and to stick to it.

There's always something a little better, seemingly, around the corner. It's a mirage. Here and now is the only truth. Have the courage to recognise that.

Lower Salaries in the Developed world

Thank you Mathew Hayden, for calling us 'third world'. As Sudhanshu blogs , things are getting quite bad in the 'first world' and 'second world'

From what I read, it looks like that at least for now, there is a lot of pressure to regulate salary. How come such a socialist attitude in the bastions of capitalism? One reason is that government money is being pumped into their financial institutions, and with that comes pressure to rein in the galloping pay packets.

Wall Street Journal reports that “More countries move to curb executive pay, at companies with and without government rescues.

AUSTRALIA: Prime minister seeking executive-pay rules for finance firms to discourage excessive risk-taking; he will then propose the rules to the international community.

FRANCE: Business leaders adopted code of conduct that prevents 'golden parachute' exit payments for failed executives.

GERMANY: Compensation for top executives at banks tapping government bailout funds capped at €500,000; bonuses, stock options and severance barred.

NETHERLANDS: Top executives of ING Groep NV agreed to give up 2008 bonuses and limit severance if dismissed in exchange for government financial injection.

SWEDEN: Participating banks in proposed bailout must agree with government to limit compensation for 'key executives.'

SWITZERLAND: UBS AG agreed as part of recapitalization to use international best practices for executive pay and government monitoring.

U.S.: Limits on corporate-tax deductions on executive pay and 'golden parachutes.' Firms also must recover awards based on inaccurate results and bar incentives for 'unnecessary and excessive risks.'

U.K.: Government is taking board seats at two big banks, permitting more oversight of pay practices; regulator wants investment banks to drop pay practices that may have encouraged risk-taking.”

I am praying that the Indian government does not get into the act. With their usual ham-handed approach they are sure to get it wrong and drive out talent from Indian industry.

NPA Asia Pac Conference

AK Menon attends the NPA Asia Pac conference it in Manila and comes away with some insights:

We had close to 50 recruiters from across different parts of Asia Pac-and a handful from the US- and needless to say-the discussions were rather sombre- considering that the 'sky seemed to be falling' almost everywhere!!

( I must confess there was quite a sense of relief in most of us. You know the kind of feeling- when as soon as the power goes off in our house..we rush to the balcony to see if our neighbours have light? And the kind of consolation..that aha-we aren't the only one affected..and so things would soon be normal :-)!!)

And so-there was a very conscious effort, from us recruiters too,.. to understand the drivers of economy in our regions- figure out one could leverage on some of the trends- as also with some global migration of professionals!

Needless to say-all the media everywhere has been crying out..layoffs, pink slips, cuts in spending, bail out, ....and economists predicting more gloom and doom for periods ranging from 2 quarters to 2 years!! Perhaps the silver lining in all darkness-is the hope for a miracle?

Exchanging notes- there was one distinct trend-most governments across the world-without exception, are indeed taking a lot of action to address it ...and see what best can be done to improve the confidence of the average citizen. It is always darkest before dawn,la??

Calling HR professionals in NCR

The National Capital Region in India is a name for the conurbation or metropolitan area which encompasses the entire National Capital Territory of Delhi as well as urban areas ringing it in neighbouring states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.

So if you are a HR professional who works out of this region, you can join the NCR HR group on HR professionals or the NCR HR professionals group on Facebook . The FB group has about 30 people already as members.

Hopefully these would be forum (fora?) for HR professionals to meet offline and connect in person. The end objective is that all of us learn and develop professional from other fellow professionals.

Layoff triggers murder

At a Silicon Valley semiconductor firm SiPort a man laid off recently from his job shot and killed three formerco-workers at an office park on Friday. Two of the 3 killed were the company's CEO Sid Agrawal and Brian Pugh the VP of operations.

This is really sad news.

While most employees can deal with layoffs in a mature way (provided the organization has been fair and transparent) they still go through the cycle of Surprise, Anger, Rejection before finally Accepting the bad news. Yes, it's known as the SARA model.

As a manager or HR professional you have to realise that sometimes an employee if not supported to go through the normal cycle, he/she can suppress the emotions and erupt in a totally different and unpredictable way.

Strategic Training and Evaluation

Am attending this four day training program and the interesting part is that there are training managers and trainers from different organizations who are going through it.

A discussion that emerged today was about training becoming more and more strategic. A model stated that as training moves from mere administration to management, the evaluation screen becomes more and more. From training management one can move up to strategic HR - and the trick for training professionals then becomes to actually think outside their box and look at non-classroom development.

When more and more investment starts to happen in training, with senior leaders spending time getting trained the organization wants to see 'effectiveness of training'

Of course there are the 4 levels of Kirkpatrick's evaluation that goes from

1. Reaction 
2. Knowledge
3. Behavior 
4. Organizational Impact

 A point that the facilitator mentioned is that the trainer has more control on levels 1 and 2. However going to levels 3 and 4 is when it starts  to get quite muddled to isolate factors that the trainer had an impact on. It also requires more investment (in resources and people) to get to those levels.


Learning for the day: A trainer has to get out of his/her comfort zones and also to give up control. Hence moving towards facilitation and becoming a facilitator of learning is going to be key to success for learning and development professionals.

How many are ready for that?

It's so much easier to arrange an off the shelf training program that the business thinks it needs. Isn't it?

Behavioral Event Interviewing

Chris posts about how a manager was getting an interviewing process all wrong. He mentions a lot of important points that managers should keep in mind.

As he suggests, it's great to get candidates to open up and talk a lot in the interview. Ideally as a manager you should not be taking up more than 20% of the total 'airtime' of the interview.

Use comfortable body language to make the interviewee comfortable. Maintain good eye contact. If the interviewee seems tense or nervous, offer a glass of water.

You need to get to know what all a job applicant has done - and his inner drive and motivation. One of the better forms of interviewing is the Behavioral Event Interviewing method. Research has proven that BEI is a better predictor of future performance than the traditional 'hypothetical/situational' interview.

Of course, it is most useful when there are competency models that help you to gauge what you should be assessing a person for. Without that it'll be like driving on a road to nowhere.

So what is a Behavioral Event Interview?

It's an interview that focuses on a critical event in the past where a candidate has been successful and attempts to find out what exactly he/she did/thought/felt through that process. The interviewer needs to isolate such events clearly and then probe deeper and in detail. These behaviors are the visible part of the competencies that one is assessing for.

BEI is not easy to do. And is much tougher to conduct than a regular interview. And needs lots of coaching and practice to be effective.

Need help? Call me :-)

Negative Rumors

Hello Gautam,


I have been following your blog since over a year now which has helped me immensely in managing the human resources for a small firm of about 100 people.Now, the business is 3 years old and is going through a major change (new services,new clients, projects being pulled out etc.).So obviously the core group is getting kind of insecure,and a few of the influential lot( who've been around for the longest ) are spreading false rumors about the company.Moreover, it's them who we look up to for getting through this phase.My boss (who also happens to be the COO) seems to be oblivious to this and when talked to believes in Theory Y.


Am in a fix as to how to handle such employees? We definitely can't terminate them on such grounds. It's a small company and in such times every negative comment would be harmful in sustaining a calmer and trustworthy work environment as earlier.


Looking forward to your guidance.

It can be such a pain. The people you need to rally the rest, end up making the most problems.

You've mentioned that the business is going through major changes. You also mentioned that  the core group are spreading false rumors.

I would ordinarily expect that any major change initiative would have co-opted this group for their seniority and influence. Obviously that has not been done, either because they are going to be 'inflicted' with change or are going to be left behind.

The rumors they are spreading are being fuelled by their fear. Your COO needs to have a conversation with them. Tell him as a a HR person that the workplace is getting affected by these negativities. If he really believes in Theory Y then he would take their views into account.

Blog post by Sudhanshu on the same problem.

Roles and People

Steve blogs about the way in most organizations people objectify based on role titles and not focusing on the people actually holding the roles.

While this might not seem be be worth considering, Steve does raise a very interesting point.

The worst part: it makes the person an object. Once we do that, we no longer see them as someone with the same kinds of needs, wants, frailties, talents, and humanity as ourselves

There's another drawback of thinking about roles and titles only. One can start to do it about oneself too. Therein lies the big problem.

One treats others as one treats oneself. And vice versa. Objectifying yourself is the worst thing you could do to yourself. Do you really want to tie your self image to an external anchor that gets decided by others and is tangible only in a visiting card?

Yes we HR people spend lots of time comparing job titles across organizations and job descriptions. That's because organizations like to ensure that people feel equity with others. However, don't let comparative equity be the only way you derive self meaning.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Creativity, fulfillment and Flow

An amazing talk by the foremost psychologist of positive experiences on how creative people work on flow.

HR person to be laid off

Got this email from a reader. What would you suggest to her?

Dear Sir


Hope you are doing great.
I have been a regular reader of your blog and find your posts quite interesting and informative.
Just felt like taking your advice on an issue bogging me since 2 months...
I am an MBA pass-out of 2008 batch, have been working in a Corporate HR role with one of the large Indian Group's company that is on the verge of winding-up and thus had to put down my papers.
As the job market is extremely bad, specially for a fresher in the field of HR....I have not been able to get a decent job since last two months and the market situation is getting worse with each day.. If you could kindly provide your valuable suggestions regarding:


1) Are there any good certifications/ short term courses for freshers to further build-up on my knowledge of HR and polish my resume?
2) Will working on a short term project/ assignment for an organization be worthwhile?
3) Should I take-up any job coming my way from a lesser known brand compromising on profile and compensation?
4) How far does a foreign language help an HR professional?


Being a novice in this field, your guidance will help me take informed and wise career decision.

Here's what I replied back.

apologies for the late reply - I was travelling on Diwali

Am sorry to hear that your division is winding up and therefore you need to look for another role.

My advice to you would be to find a HR role with any industry right now. You might have to take a salary cut or move locations, do that.

There are short term HR courses, but doing them after a full time MBA does not really make sense.

A short term project might be very interesting. But ensure that it offers adequate learning opportunity. Finding such organizations might be difficult. Talk to your MBA professors, since they might also be doing consulting for organizations, if they can use your efforts to support their own consulting assignments.

As far as foreign language matters, it would help only in certain specific cases, like you planning to emigrate into a non-English speaking country. I know a friend who moved to Hong Kong for personal reasons and couldn't find any HR roles there as they all needed some Cantonese/Mandarin skills.

warm regards,

Gautam

http://gautamghosh.net

http://gauteg.blogspot.com

HR salaries in India

Anurag of HR Next has compiled a rough but ready reckoner of HR salaries. So if you are a HR professional wondering how the market pays your peers here is the lowdown on his site.

Some interesting data:

Top dog : Heads HR for large MNCs , or group HR Head for large Indian business groups with over 10000 employees = Base salary ranges between 70-110 lakhs + variable pay +ESOPs. In Bombay - company flat upto 2000 sqft in South Bombay or Pali Hill likely. Is of batches 1985 or earlier maybe additional and is not costed.

Head HR : Large organisations but Category B or below brands or organisations that position compensation at median or less. Overall CTC not likely to exceed 100 lakhs with median of around 65 lakhs. 1980-1992 batch.

1995-1998 batch : Median salary - 35 lakhs ; range is between 25 to 48 lakhs . These are typically functional heads like C&B Head, OD head or HR Heads for a large division in an organisation handing around 2000+ employees

2) 1999-2001 batches : Median salary - 26 lakhs ; range is 18 to 42 lakhs. Most likely data points between 26-32 lakhs for the 1999-00 batches.

3) 2002-2003 batches : Median salary - 16 lakhs : range is 12- 26 lakhs. Most likely data points are between 16 and 20 lakhs.

4) 2004-2005 batches : Median salary - 12 lakhs : range is 8 lakhs to 20 lakhs

Note: Salaries in Indian Rupees. I lakh rupees is equal to US $ 2076 based on current exchange rates.

So median salaries according to Anurag for HR Heads would be US $ 135,000  p.a. approximately

Indian firms back in favour

At B-School campuses:

For students in the final year of management, pre-placement offers
begin next week. Those in the first year will start picking companies
to train during summer holidays. The upheavals in global finance have
hurt their optimism, but no one is worried about not getting a job.

There will be plenty of jobs on offer, and they are unlikely to come
with salaries lower than last year, students and faculty at several
IIMs and other management institutes told HT.

“There used to be a 10-15 per cent annual increase in salary offers.
This year, we expect 2-3 per cent growth, but companies will not reduce
salaries offered,” said Abbasali Gabbula, final year student at S.P.
Jain Management Institute in Mumbai, where pay offers averaged Rs 14
lakhs last year.

What could possibly be missing are the six-figure dollar salaries
from global financial firms. For instance, the highest offer made
during last year’s campus hiring at IIM, Calcutta was Rs. 1.36 crore
per annum, from a global investment bank that was not named. Lehman
Brothers topped the chart at XLRI, Jamshedpur, where overseas offers
averaged $90,000 and the highest domestic offer was for Rs. 32 lakh.

Such fancy salaries often prevented many homegrown companies from pitching for talent at these institutes.

While the financial turmoil has somewhat dented pay prospects for
management students,  “many companies that earlier went back empty
handed would have an opportunity to hire our students,” said Piyush
Sinha, who chairs the placement committee at IIM, Ahmedabad. Students,
who are keen on working overseas, might explore options in Asia, rather
than looking at Europe or the US, he said.

What the article does not state is that there is likely to be a shakeout in the placements of the B Schools outside the top 25. Let's hope the majority of the students get a good future.