Are you a Batman at Work

When I started out my HR career in 1999 my boss sent me to a process work lab called Role and Identity in Oganizations. It basically got people to start thinking about whether they want to be seen as a "manager" or a person - how you see yourself is essentially how you end up behaving. A kind of Pygmalion Effect on yourself.

Yes, roles are masks that we wear - and wearing different masks makes us feel conflicted and torn like Bruce Wayne in the Batman movies.

So I jumped for joy when I came across this article on Businessweek. Read it and ponder over it. And of course, it made me blog about Batman (my fave superhero) on my management blog :-)

Do You Hide Your Inner Bruce Wayne?

We all play different roles in our lives, and it's the rarest of people who can be the same person no matter what role he or she is in; to be fully authentic, all the time. We all feel pressure to put on a certain face, depending on the situation. We all wear masks some time, for we must. At what cost?

The mask is a boundary between the different parts of his life. Yet underneath it, there is but one man. We all need to draw boundaries among the different parts of our lives, of course. We have to find ways to shut work off, for example, in order to pay full attention to our families, and vice versa. But those boundaries can be too thick; the mask's costs can be too dear.

What Does the Mask Cost?

In the real world of work, we often feel as though we have to cut ourselves off completely from the other parts of our lives. But take a moment to consider:

• Is it really necessary to forsake what you hold most dear in your personal life in order to be the person you think you need to be in your life at work?

• To achieve important goals in your career, do you have to adopt a mysterious visage in order to be seen as powerful and effective, even if inauthentic?

• What masks do you wear? Is there a price for the invulnerability they seem to give you?

• What would it mean for you to reveal more of what lies beneath—what's to be gained or lost?

Succession Planning does not mean getting carbon copies

The SuccessFactors blog talks about a common problem:

76% of all companies in the survey were found to have some kind of succession plan in place, yet 40% of companies lacked any process or capability to identify future talent. You simply cannot identify successors effectively, if you do not have a regular process in place to identify talent within your company. Talent reviews should be the starting point, not the end point of the talent management process. Managers should have plenty of tools to help identify talent. 360 reviews, performance reviews, and competency assessments can all be used to make reasonable assumptions about the potential of an individual.

My view is that successors are identified not by looking at competencies, but who seems more like the current leader. That is a disastrous way to go about it.

Look at people who can get results, and not those who work like the current leader. That is why often a successful CEO when he/she gives way to the successor - the business press usually exclaims "They have so little in common" (like Reginald Jones and his successor Jack Welch)

That's because those who do a thorough succession plan also take into account how things might change - and they know that to be successful in the future they do not need to replicate the blueprints of the past.


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B-School Alumni Cells turn Placement Offices

That's what is happening in the US according to BusinessWeek

Free career services for life are a perk for most MBA graduates. And while most MBAs may not need them, in an economic downturn like the one we're facing, they're a valuable resource. Career services offices, which are reporting an increase in calls from alumni, are ramping up their offerings for MBAs.

While using a career center to help start your job search is a good move, it's also important to keep in touch and continue to build a network during periods of employment, say experts. In fact, many of the calls career centers are getting these days are from employed alums who want to help others who may be looking for work.

Unfortunately Indian B-School placement offices don't work like this. If they become more professional they can actually give the big-ticket headhunting firms a run for their money thanks to their database and the trust they enjoy with their alumni - and open up a much needed revenue stream for the B-School. Maybe then Indian B-School grad students will not be charged sky-high fees!

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