Subjective work

On Twitter I posted a tweet asking folks why is it that even though marketing and HR both deal with issues of engagement and connectedness - inherently subjective - does HR struggle with its credibility while marketing does not?

The response from the twitterverse was quite enlightening:

SaliSantosh @GautamGhosh Marketing Vs HR ? Marketing returns very tangible returns - HR professional fails to show returns in concrete numbers .right ?

sajin8 @GautamGhosh Most key performance indicators in HR still revolve around cost. "Investing in People" by Wayne Cascio is an interesting read!
sajin8 @GautamGhosh thats a very interesting topic! I guess Marketing budgets are accounted for financially through sales.

gurdeepak @GautamGhosh important parts of transformational actions r taken by division heads. little business knwledge of HR doesn't help either.

anaggh @GautamGhosh Perspective creation:) And in India #HR still treated as extension of Personnel

nimmypal @GautamGhosh Because marketing deals with customers and customers are considered more important than employees?

abhishekrungta To a new person in business or very traditional one marketing relates to revenue and HR relates to expenses @gautamghosh

kokobano @GautamGhosh Because HR people are wicked and trouble marketing folks. Marketing people trouble faceless and anonymous folks. That is okay.

justmohit @GautamGhosh HR needs to start talking abt business for business guys to take them seriously. It ain't abt subjectivity or objectivity...
justmohit @GautamGhosh b'cos mktg is able to demonstrate a connect with org goals of Revenue & profitability. While HR guys struggle

Some of my thoughts were also posted on Twitter

What do you say?

Twitter and Social Media as a learning tool

The Center of Learning and Performance Technologies has compiled a list of top tools for learning in 2009 after inputs from more than 100 learning professionals and increasingly a lot of social media tools make it to the list.

Most surprisingly, Twitter is No.1, followed by URL sharing app Delicious, Google Reader, Wordpress, Slideshare.

So what makes social media tools overwhelmingly come out on tops?

My thoughts on Twitter echo that it is an overwhelmingly social tool.

And adult learning is essentially a social process. 

Kolb has said it. John Seely Brown has said it. And we can see how sharing experiences and knowledge leads to a better input for learning.

However, be aware that these are only tools.

You still have to apply and practice the information you get from these tools to ensure that learning takes place. Social tools can help one to support and encourage each other during the conscious competence phase when one really needs support and encouragement.

Different Kinds of Leaders

I'm going through this book called An American Journey of Barack Obama and at this moment the final of the IPL cricket tournament is also on.

Cricket, Politics, Business.

The search for leadership remains as elusive as ever - whichever the field you are looking for leaders.

However there are different kinds of leaders - because there are different kinds of followers.

There are the people who perhaps know what to do - but lack the knowledge of the direction. They need a leader who can point the way and then not come in their way.

Then there are those who are dispirited and down. They need a leader who can inspire them, and stand in front of them and show them the way.

Then there are the ones who don't think they need a leader. They need a leader who can ask them tough questions, confront them and get them to figure out the way.

The question is - what kind of a leader are you trying to be for what kind of a follower?

Money is a sign of Value

The Evil HR Lady believes that counter-offers are, well, evil.

CEOs who speak about "People being our most important assets", need to put their money where their mouth is.

As she says :

Sure, your boss would love to give you more money but company policies prevent it.

Stupid company. They need to be watching out for their best people and meeting their needs. And if you truly loved your boss you wouldn't have been out looking for a new job in the first place.

There is another reason why you went out job shopping. Think about that. Most people who accept counter offers leave within a year anyway.

If you decide you want to continue on with the negotiations, go ahead and show them the offer letter. If you are concerned that doing this will jeopardize your job offer, that means you don't trust your boss or the HR person. Why on earth are you staying with a company where you don't trust your boss not to actively screw you over?

Think about that for a moment.

Take the new job and good luck.

The Social Ribbon and Other Connects

If you're seeing this post on a browser directly (as opposed to a feed reader/email subscription) you might notice that there's a light blue shaped ribbon on the top of the page.

That's a Google FriendConnect social bar which enables a blog/site's community to interact via the site. So if you've not added yourself to the community you can do that by clicking on it, and leave comments for me and other readers to respond. These are not posts specific to blog posts.

If you're on Facebook you can follow the blog posts at the "Gautam Ghosh page" if you become a fan

You can also follow the blog posts on Twitter .

Of course, there's also the HR Professionals community which is approaching 700 members on Ning and the HR professionals Network on Facebook that's got more than 300 members now that I'd urge you to join if you're a HR professional

If you'd like to get updates via email go here and register , there are more than 2000 people who get their updates via email/feedburner.

The URL to add to Google Reader or any other feed reader is this one .

How NOT to do team building

Definitely don't do it in the evening. Some time ago I tweeted about something similar.

Often we training folks get too caught up with our tools and interventions to think about how it is fitting in with the overall context of the organization.

And team building events done without any linkage to how learning (if any) would translate into the workplace is literally money down the drain. As the Evil one says:

Sometimes we get caught up in the latest fad or program and we think, "gee, won't this be fabulous!" and we forget to ask if this is actually helping the business by truly meeting the needs of the people. Yes, the activity you came up with might be "fun," but most people consider work, work and want to find their fun elsewhere.

Or we think that for a team to be effective they need to be bonded in some significant fashion. And that perhaps trusting my coworker to catch me as I fall backwards will improve performance all around. Frankly, I'd rather trust my coworker to get her part of the project done on time. That builds team cohesiveness better than anything else, in my humble opinion.

So, next time you go implementing some sort of program, stop and think about how this will really affect business performance. Is it helping or inadvertantly hurting?

HR's redundancy

The Don't Compromise blog takes my tweet thought and makes a thought provoking post on business linkages and HR. Go ahead and read the full post, but here are some excerpts:

HR may be professional in the subject matter, but they’re as much “another department” as Accounts, or Estates, or Maintenance. Or like war reporters, at least embedded where the ‘action’ is, rather than commenting remotely. Now I’m not saying line managers should mend toilets or fix broken windows, but … how many of them use the existence of HR as a ‘get out clause’ when it comes to developing their staff?

Shouldn’t HR’s strategy be more like “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”? Not just engaging with the business’s top management – a good thing, but there’s always the danger of a faint squeak of trumpet blowing – but with the line managers nearer the ground, enthusing them about developing and encouraging their teams?

Workloads, human nature, professional self-interest – and the reward and recognition schemes that mobilise them – won’t see Gautam’s daydream turn into reality any day soon, but it’s still an interesting thought for an HR consultant to have had.

And after all, the point of learning and development isn’t to produce as many blunt pins as possible, just the right number of sharp ones.

And the thought "HR should make itself redundant" isn't really my thought. I first heard it articulated by Dr. Udai Pareek in 1997 at the National HR Conference at XLRI Jamshedpur.

Yellojobs no longer active?

Cheezhead reports that Yellojobs (previous coverage here and here ) has now shut down office in India.

According to WebNewsWire.com, the site has not been updated for some time and the staff left after several months of not receiving a paycheck.

The company is a joint venture between Yello Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based online advertising company, and Contract Recruitment Ltd, a London recruitment company claiming a strong presence in India.

Yellojobs.com fell to 13,92,031 in last week of Alexa rankings from an average of 94,134 in the last three months.

Last August YelloJobs’ American division dissolved after Jim Newfrock, CEO, their VP of Business Development, Brad Wells, and COO Alex Conway left the company due to a clash of opinions.

Well the slowdown is going to have similar effect on many of the smaller job sites.

I wonder who's next?

According to WebNewsWire

Recruiters are reporting that there are more aggressive mailers from job portals such as monsterindia.com for taking their services. Monster India has come up with a special package at over 33% off regular pricing.

The leading recruitment company, Naukri.com had its profit after tax growing at just 0.75% as compared to FY 07-08 (QoQ) in its financial results announced today. With the leading player feeling the heat, others are not far behind.

Smaller players are also not safe from the current slowdown. A vendor has informed that Careernet (www.careernet.co.in) has been evading calls for payments due in the last financial year. Like Yellojobs.com, Careernet's website fell in Alexa Rankings to 12,86,622 this week from an average of 5,00,000 for several months.

Life in the Big Four in India

Interesting article at the Consulting Network site (Hat-tip JoyAndLife)

Some insights that the article shares:

1. Route you’re resume through an internal employee, higher the designation of the employee, more the chances of you’re resume being noticed.
   

2. Don’t clog you’re resume with excess clutter. Be to the point and precise. Focus on highlighting you’re leadership and teaming skills
   

3. Keep track of the financial cycles being followed in the big 4 firms, for example EY follows a July to July financial cycle. Hiring during the month of May and June is relatively less owing to budgetary constraints at the end of the year as compared to hiring in July, August where most teams are looking to filling in vacant spots.
   

Though each big 4 claims to have an individualistic work culture, the enormity of these firms and the prominent trend of employees switching between the big 4 firms has led to development of what can be called as the big 4 culture, some of the key characteristics of the big 4 culture are

1. Working Hours One can expect a typical working day of approximately 12-13 hours a day. However, the lengths of you’re stay in office or at the client site is totally dependent on you’re engagement team and manager and work load.
   

2. Trainings form an integral part of the Big 4 culture, you can end up clocking approximately 10 -15 hours of training each month. These training comprise of both technical and soft skill’s trainings
   

3. Quality and risk management practices also take up a major portion of your time at big 4 firms, you could spend a significant number of you’re working hours filling up forms and taking approvals.
   

4. Individual vs. the Team – There is a strong focus on teaming at all of the big 4’s, however, individualistic traits such as taking up the ownership, making decisions is also encouraged.
   

So if you want to get hired Network with Consultants with visibility and credibility , be prepared to work hired (maybe Deliberate Practice to build expertise!) take initiative (one of the 5 career skills for success) and stick to organizational processes (and build your organizational quotient ) 

Reflections of a Laid Off Job Hunter

This was emailed to me by an old friend who was Director of Consulting Services at a large organization in the US. I wish him luck soon in his job search and thought it would be useful to reproduce his email for others to reflect - whether they are job hunting with or without a job - or even if they are happily employed.

By the way, this friend of mine is looking for a role in the following areas: P&L responsibility for a cost center/ Program & Engagemnt Director role in a Consulting Company or a Service Assurance Leader role in a Telecom Service Provider/ Equipment Manufacturer. If you are looking at people like this then I'd connect you to him.

Here is his reflection on his experiences so far:

Friends


It has been six months to date that I have been without a job. Inspite of almost a thousand applications, I am still unemployed...do not know where the next lead is going to come from. I have pretty much applied at most of the places I know and have exhausted all my contacts.


Almost around the time I was let go, one of my friends (probably in jest) advised me to write down my experiences and be ready to share the learnings from this experience with others. Here is my take so far (warning: its a long email. You can stop here or continue on at your own peril !! ...:) ):

1. Firstly, this is a very painful and exhausting experience both mentally and physically. The reason being one feels totally out of control of the overall situation. One can only guess the reasons for why this happened, only try to submit application and apply for jobs and then hope someone will try to look at your profile and take the next steps. Other than that, one has nothing under control as far as putting the effort for job search. One feels totally at the mercy of recruiters and their whims; along with hoping for great dollops of good luck.
   
2. The whole experience is very hard on the ego and self esteem. Its like, just because of unemployment one becomes a person with very low IQ and a social pariah. At one end are people who will try to avoid you completely....emails will be lost, phone numbers will get lost, voice/emails mails will remain unanswered for weeks and months...numerous excuses..(I have heard everything except for perhaps dog eating my stuff in the past 6 months).
   
3. On the other end will be people who will be offering you unsolicited advise in plenty. Its like everything one is doing or has ever done becomes questionable. Your beliefs will be questioned, your attitude will be doubted, work ethics will be challenged etc. Even the people who have known you for decades will come up outlandish ideas. In the past many months, I have been advised to sell the house, apply and live off multiple credit cards, move in with my parents/in laws, work in grocery store etc. etc.
   
4. There will be many who will be prepared to lead you on. The companies will continue to dangle a role in front of you for months...only to let you know at the last minute that the role is no longer there or the business case is not there, or the client has not signed or we still need to create a job requisition etc. Some instances
   

- a company I have talked with for several rounds since January came in early April that they have a freeze
- a company verbally offered me a role one day and took the offer back the next day because of some corporate restructuring
- another company talked with me on and off for 3 months and then decided to completely go awol with not even coming to say yes/no
- a good professional friend who took the approach of not returning my calls/emails for 4 months just because he could not summon the courage to say no. BTW, I had the whole cycle of multiple rounds of interviews (off site and in person) before the avoidance tactic
- another person has led me on for almost 5 months with efforts to help me out with network, job search etc. Now, I am myself ready to cut that person off soon.


5. This experience teaches and forces one to (re) evaluate all the relationships one has cultivated over the lifetime. It impacts pretty much all the relationship...including the relationship with the family members, spouse, kids, friends and professional acquaintances. Less than ten percent of the people one knows will truly understand the situation, (em/sym)pathise with you, offer the right advise, be there to actively help out and provide (emotional) support. Others will indulge in the activities listed in points 2 and 3 above. Based on my interactions, I have had to/given up on quite a few people and acquaintances over the past few months


6. It is also a very humbling and a learning experience. One starts looking at life from an overall perspective and not just from the viewpoint of one's job and professional achievements. One really starts caring about savings, income and expenses. We personally have had to live without health insurance in spite of health conditions in the family, track every penny in expenses, forgo quite a few things whcih unil a few months ago were taken for as necessities. Festivals, celebrations, birthdays etc acquire a new meaning of frugality and are often accompanied with long unconfortable silences. Like in the game of cards when one is dealt with a very bad hand... life becomes a constant struggle of decisions among the very limited choices.


Also, one learns how to put on a brave and happy face for your kids inspite of very conflicting emotions on the inside. One finds out real friends who are there to help you out in probably the lowest point in your life. One even finds some great support from unknown quarters...sometimes one even gets help/support from not so known and even unknown strangers. One learns what to do and what not to do for people who may go through the similar situation.


In summary, it has been a very challenging past 6 months. I hope that no one that I know has to go through the experience that I have gone through over the past few months. I will sincerely hope and pray for that while I continue to hope that I find a job someday.

Let employees draft the Organizational Identity

Very often businesses are caught between various business strategies, turning around to different market niches and segments.


However, when that happens it might be making a lot of your employees confused about what you really want to do.


Wasn't it Porter who said that strategy is as much about knowing what choices you do not want to make as it is about what choices you do make.


Well, strategy defines the organizational identity as much as the norms and values that are promoted and encouraged within the organization - and frequent changes of strategy can leave your workforce confused.


If you're a business leader and there are strategic choices that you're waffling about - or frequently changing - then communicating about them to the employees and explaining those choices is a good thing to do.


However, it would be best to involve them in the brainstorming process, and seek their inputs in actually help in making those choices. 


Depending on where you are in your business maturity, using a process like Open Space Technology or Future Search would be an answer. 


Frontline and middle level employees often know better about the market, consumers and competitors than top leadership gives them credit for and do not over-intellectualize the problems and opportunities.


Of course, real time employee feedback and sharing can be incorporated in the DNA of the organization by means of social media and knowledge management .

Thoughts a-twitter

Ok, I admit it. I'm being lazy and am just posting some of my tweets .

• If the journey is your destination do you linger and slow down to enjoy it?
  
• If life's a journey and not a destination then why do people seek to find out when they've arrived?
  
• A coach is most valuable if he/she can make you more self aware.
  
• Line managers should be the real HR people. HR department should be minimal and in the background
  
• Can HR reconcile its Janus identity of being a "employee champion" and a "business partner" during these tough times?
  
• Does the internet help introverts to be seen as extroverts? Happens with me :)
  
• Advice is always easier to dish out than to take :)
  
• In an ideal world we wouldn't need a HR dept. Managers would not require guidelines to hire, assess, motivate and develop their people.
  
• HR should work to make that ideal world a reality. To make themselves redundant
  
• If people share so selflessly on the web, helping out total strangers, why don't they share info with colleagues in office. I've a theory
  
• Tear up your org chart. Put the customer on top. Frontline staff next. Ceo comes bottom of the pile. Humbling eh?Context of knowledge is more important than raw info. If your R&D guy has no knowledge of users' contexts they cannot make a better product
  
• learning means changing one's behavior. Which is uncomfortable. That's why we don't learn until a crisis blows up in our face.
  
• People confuse knowledge with learning. Not the same thing. You cannot learn by knowing only. Practice is the key.
  

How to Run a Scrappy Startup

This is a presentation by Rashmi Sinha of Slideshare  on how to run a scrappy startup - that is - not burning too much cash.

Interesting point in making sure the CEOs salary is very low.

How many startups can make sure that happens?

Scrappy Startup2

View more presentations from rashmi.

I still get excited

I don't really earn anything much from this blog (apart from a little bit of ad dollars :-) ) so every recognition that comes this blog's way is always welcome.

Got  a mail from EvanCarmicheal.com - which says that it is the #1 internet resource for small business motivation and strategies- saying this blog has been featured in their list of top 50 HR blogs to watch in 2009.

When I headed over to the site I see my fellow bloggers all listed there too. Absolutely great list of HR blogs to follow. My blog is listed under "Organizations" and while the category is fluid I am sure they put some thought behind it :-)

More details about Evan here .