Reflection on the first Rozgar (Employment) Summit in #Lucknow organized by @NHRDN and UP Government

A few weeks ago, I had recieved an invitation from the Director General of the National HRD Network, Dhananjay Singh that NHRDN had partnered with the Department of Labour and Employment of the Government of Uttar Pradesh and they would hold an event on 29th of August.

So yesterday, my colleague from VBeyond, Bala and I made my way towards the Scientific Convention Center at the heart of the city. It was teeming with police and security staff , as the UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the Deputy CM, Minister of Labour and Employment and senior beaureucrats were expected to arrive.

From the NHRDN, Dhananjay Singh, Cheif Mentor of Maruti Suzuki, SY Siddiqui and Former Director of IIM Lucknow Dr. Pritam Singh. Dhananjay in his speech pointed out that UP's job portal Sewayojan is being seen by other states as a best practice. The CM also launched the mobile app of the job search portal on the occasion. It was shared that 600,000 job seekers have registered on the portal

The CM in his speech made a promise that 7 million out of the total unemployed estimated to be 10 million in the state will be ensured employment in the next 5 years. He said that for companies to be attracted to open their enterprises in the state, law and order and simplified labour laws would be a priority, He shared that they have already reformed labour laws and they have been sent to the centre for approval. He stressed that unionisation that is detrimental to the industry will not be tolerated and shared the example of industries in Kanpur and said that UP will not go the way of state like West Bengal. He also stated that he's ordered the engineering colleges who were keen to shut down, to instead use their facilities for skill development and delivering short term dilploma and certificate courses. The government is also looking at each of the 72 districts to have a speciality product for which it has historically been famous and to build the skills in people for that, like shoe-making in Agra, Brassware in Moradabad, Chikan stiching in Lucknow and so on.

Post lunch there were two panel discussions - one was on "Building a seamless Public Private partnership Model for Promoting Employment in State" which was moderated by Muninder Anand (MD - India and South Asia of Center for Creative Leadership). The private industry was represented by R Anand , Sr. VP - HR of HCL. HCL has been on a growth spree in their Lucknow centre and Anand shared with me before the discussion that they are looking to scale up the centre to 5000 people in next three- four years, by primarily hiring local talent. The government was represented by Rajesh Kumar, Mission Director, UP Skill Development Mission. It was an interesting discussion that focused on how employment is different from qualifications, and comprises of ecosystem factors as well as intristic factors like skills of the individual as well as soft skills. Anand was of the opinion that industry is consulted by the government when a policy is made but where the policy often falls short is at the "last mile" where if idustry is involved it can have a better chance of success.

The second panel was on "Small Towns- The next Destination for Mining Talent". It was moderated by K Lalit ,GM - HR, IR & Admin of Tata Motors - which has a manufacting factory for their commercial vehicles division. Others in the panel were Prof. SP Singh, VC of Lucknow University who bemoaned the lack of communication skills in students and wondered about where they could be employable. Alok Sinha, Principal Secretary, Industries, Sanjay Jha, VP-HR and Business Excellence, Mahindra First Choice Wheels and Dharam Rakshit Sr. GM (HR) Hero MotoCorp were the other panelists, The panel was divided over the issue if there was any difference in talent between small town and the metros. One panelist actually shared how on his flight to Lucknow how many people in the flight were Lucknow people who were working in the US and Europe. A point was made that since costs of corporate rentals and land is much lower in small towns what is stopping corporates from opening centres there. Which brought us back to the point of communication skills and how small town talent that does not move out to the metros, often is found lacking in English which is the language of business

As Bala and I were speaking later, the benefit and challenges of being located in a smaller city is something we know very well in VBeyond. We pay a fraction of real estate rentals compared to Mumbai and Gurugram (where we originally started) and since most of our talent is from Lucknow and nearby areas - the cost of living and therefore the compensation is also much lower than what we would pay for the same skills in a metro city.

All in all it was an educational experience for me to attend the Summit - my first such event in a non-metro and I look forward to connecting with the larger HR community to make Lucknow a magnet for talent :)

Coverage of the Summit in the media in News18

Thriving in a VUCA world

The term VUCA was made by the US Army to describe a world in which things are Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.

The world is becoming more and more VUCA and while organizations try grappling with it, what should individuals do? What are the skills needed to thrive in these VUCA times?

This FastCompany article makes a case that Generation Flux, people who embrace continuous new skills will be the one to succeed in this chaotic world.

Some excerpts, go read the full article:

What defines GenFlux is a mind-set that embraces instability, that tolerates--and even enjoys--recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions. Not everyone will join Generation Flux, but to be successful, businesses and individuals will have to work at it. This is no simple task. The vast bulk of our institutions--educational, corporate, political--are not built for flux. Few traditional career tactics train us for an era where the most important skill is the ability to acquire new skills.

DJ Patil is a GenFluxer. He has worked in academia, in government, in big public companies, and in startups; he is a technologist and a businessman; a teacher and a diplomat. He is none of those things and all of them, and who knows what he will be or do next? Certainly not him. "That doesn't bother me," he says. "I'll find something."

The new reality is multiple gigs, some of them supershort (see "The Four-Year Career"), with constant pressure to learn new things and adapt to new work situations, and no guarantee that you'll stay in a single industry. It can be daunting. It can be exhausting. It can also be exhilarating. "Fear holds a lot of people back," says Raina Kumra, 34. "I'm skill hoarding. Every time I update my resume, I see the path that I didn't know would be. You keep throwing things into your backpack, and eventually you'll have everything in your tool kit."
"Command-and-control hierarchical structures are being disintegrated," says danah boyd, a social-science researcher for Microsoft Research who also teaches at New York University. "There's a difference between the old broadcast world and the networked world."

 
On a related note here's a table from Tara Hunt asking you to be fox than a hedgehog 

Community Managers - What do they do?

In my previous post, I stated that soon Recruiters and Hiring Manager would evolve from users of search engines and headhunters - to also adding their skill sets by becoming Talent Community Managers.

A valid question is - what does an Online Community Manager do? What are the skill sets, and what is the nature of this new emerging role? Do they really tweet and facebook all day long? A dream job for social networking addicts, perhaps?

Here's an interesting post on the Responsibilities of Community Managers by Itamar Kestenbaum (@tweetamar) on the Techipedia blog.

Here's what the key roles are according to him:

1. Make friends in the Industry
2. Look at boring stats and make them interesting
3. Have a little knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
4. Develop Relationships with Clients
5. Get Co-Workers Involved Online
6. Organize Logistics of Social Media generated Operations
7. Connect Good-Will for brand
8. Work with web developers to update your site to web2.0
9. Strategize with your webmaster to create a better conversion
10. Create and Execute Email Blasts

As more and more organizations move into managing online communities of customers, partners and employees - be prepared to see more and more roles being added to this list.

Until then - go ahead and read the full post.

If you are a Community Manager I would love to hear from you! Drop me an email :)

cross posted at the 2020 Social Blog

The top 100 Influencers in HR by John Sumser

When I started blogging, I found out about John Sumser from the folks in the American Recruiting blogosphere. John was one of the voices that buyers of Recruiting and HR services listened to before they decided what tools to buy and deploy.

So I was kicked in 2005 when John chose out my blog for praise.

John is now on an ambitious venture, chronicling and understanding the 100 influencers in the HR domain. And I was again stunned and flattered when he said he wanted to profile me in the list :-)

So we had a conversation on HR and India and US - and John quizzed me about my career and where I am headed.

So here's John's article on me at the top 100 Influencers site.

As for me, I'll believe I am influential when traffic in Delhi stops to let me pass ;)

Trends Impacting Work Success

In this post I want to showcase two trends I see impacting how people work

Changing Nature of Role Models

Earlier the examples of success that were celebrated were the usual suspects, business leaders and political figures – however there is a growing realization by the popular media that successful people are from all spheres – and working not just for money or fame but other factors too – acts as a great motivator to people who are looking at different careers.
First of all they act as trigger for entrepreneurial ambitions, about how middle class salaried individuals can actually get ahead by creating their own enterprises. For example the Infosys and Mindtree founders have been an inspiration for lots of software engineers (and even others) to try and be the masters of their own destiny.
The examples of other people like SKS Microfinance founder Vikram Akula being featured in Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people in the world , or the example of Janaagraha co-founder Ramesh Ramanathan who left an MNC career to help co-found an institution that encourages citizenship has also triggered professionals to look at other careers.

Changing Support Systems

With the rise of virtual communities (social networks) – and the ability to find a group of enthusiasts about any obscure interest – people find appreciation and feedback and mentors across the world. Continuing the photography example – communities on Flickr – the photosharing site have helped the aforementioned amateur photographer to learn from better people and also to discover similar enthusiasts in their own locations.
Writing used to be a lonely activity – however a recent public novel writing contest on the microblogging site Twitter helped established and aspiring writers be motivated enough to be focused on completing their novels – with an explicit goal of getting it published soon.
Such support systems and the approval they provide are often more real than the perceived lack of enthusiasm of immediate family and friends who really can not understand the context of why someone is excited by photography or writing a novel and not their regular job.

What are the other big trends you see changing how people look at work?

Technorati Tags: work, future, role models, virtual communities

Is a personal brand really "personal" on Social Media?

The genesis of this blog post was also a tweet reply asking "how do regular social media 'veterans' working in a digital firm reconcile their personal and employee entities?"

I responded that whichever social media outpost I frequent be it Facebook, Twitter or my Ning community - I essentially keep it related to work and the things that interest me - people within the context of organizations, and emergent ways of working, managing and leading.

Then I thought about it - most people I know who are "personal brands" on social media are really "professional brands" with elements of their personal life that are woven into it. It's just that the degree of sharing differs - someone like Scoble does it to one extent and Penelope Trunk to a different extent.


However the picture muddies when a person has built up a brand - and it clashes with his/her employee responsibilities. Some employers benefit from the presence such people bring. Specially PR firms which have hired social media rockstars like Steve Rubel, David Armano. And yet for other kinds of employers having an employee speak out is not easy - so that's why we've seen HR bloggers like Lance Haun go through anonymity to openness. Whereas there are still others like Evil HR Lady who choose to be anonymous.

My hypothesis is that there is no real "personal" brand in the sense of talking only about "personal details" - except a few - but what is called a "personal brand" is actually an "Individual's brand" and which is about a passion/interest area he/she has.

This is critical.

The "building of the individual's brand" should not be the objective alone. If that is the objective, social media is not the solution.

Think of it in this way:
Unless you like gardening you won't have the patience to grow a tree over 3-4 years and then get its fruit.

New Social Business Careers: Technopologist?

The Fast Forward blog pointed me to this interesting article on someone in P&G who is the marketing brand manager for Digital Business Strategy.

I've always believed new careers emerge from a hybrid of earlier careers/skill areas and Dave Knox reiterates my belief. As he says:

In its most simplistic description, a Marketing Technopologist combines the skills of a Marketer, Technologist, and Social Anthropologist. As a Technologist, you might not be a “coder” but you know your way around the language and culture of tech.  You understand things like API and Open Source or why Facebook Connect working with Open ID is a big deal.  Through the lens of a Social Anthropologist, you can then look at that technology and understand the impact it will have on society and culture.  You can recognize that the technology behind the Social Graph can actually have a huge impact on how we make decisions or shop.  And finally, the marketer will build upon both of these elements, recognizing the business potential created.

Interesting to note how social businesses is giving rise to new careers.

The paradox of innovation

Life is a paradox. When a slowdown occurs people and organizations view in a linear fashion their own self interest. Quit spending. Hunker down.

Even though they cognitively (perhaps) know that the other kind of behavior, that probably leads to failure as much as success is what is needed. That's because while we yearn for yes and no, binary thinking, life's questions are probabilistic.

As Bob Sutton says :

U.C. Davis Professor Dean Keith Simonton, who has spent much of his career doing long-term quantitative studies of creative genius,  has concluded that a high failure rate is a hallmark of creative geniuses -- he concludes that the most creative people -- scientists,  composers, artists, authors, and on and on -- have the greatest number of failures because they do the most stuff.  And he can find little evidence that creative geniuses have a higher success rate than their more ordinary counterparts; they just take more swings at the ball. Check out his book Origins for Genius , perhaps the most complete review of research on the subject.

Hmm that sounds a lot like motivating someone for deliberate practice .

As I have posted earlier there are more paradoxes at work when it comes to innovation:

In fact in the first half of the innovation process is all about the things that large organizations are allergic to. It's about messy, chaotic, instinctive and insightful idea generation. It calls for suspending judgement. It even calls for suspending action orientation. That is not a role for management people. This is the part of the innovation process that is best done in startups, without too much analysis, or in pods away from the mother ship (skunkworks for example).

The management part of organizations comes into play in the convergence of ideas. This is when 'traditional' management and decision making skills come into play. Trade-offs need to be made, analysis needs to be done on feasibility, ideas need to be tangibilised into execution.

It will not be an exaggeration to say that philosophically, these two parts of the innovation process are directly in a state of tension with each other. The people who do one part well, resent the activities done by the other part. There is a feeling that ideas are superior and execution is inferior. However, as Bossidy and Ram Charan state in their book Execution, it's the implementation that makes the difference.

A little bit like yin-yang I suppose.

Critical Skills for Human Resource professionals

There are some skills that are never taught in HR courses, but once you join the workforce you realise how important all of them really are:

1. Business Acumen - It's understanding exactly how your organization makes money and what you as a HR professional can do to impact it positively. Business acumen has be the lodestone by which you measure and evaluate any HR initiative. (Even though some believe that the real business of business is to build leaders )
2. Communication Skills - It is painful when HR people don't get this one right. Written and spoken skills are both critical to being a successful and effective HR professional. It sends out wrong messages about your capability when you cannot communicate an intervention/initiative's objectives and salient points in less than 50 words. Try it. 
3. Inter-personal skills - Empathy. Respect. Listening. Openness. These are approaches that you are expected to have. But sadly, I have come across many HR leaders and professionals who are egotistical, snooty, pig-headed and totally disrespectful of others. They are also the ones who are servile to higher ups and contribute to the stories that stress "HR is a spineless dictator". Don't be one of them.
4. Negotiation Skills - When you have chosen to be part of a function that is evaluated by what others do, negotiating goes from a life-skill to a critical to succeed professional skill. 
5. Learning to Learn 
6. Consulting Skills 
7. Marketing Skills 
8. Sensemaking 

Any others you can think of?

Related posts:

What exactly should a HR generalist do ?

HR generalist or specialist ?

Advice about HR 

Deliberate Practice makes an Expert

Just finished reading this paper (pdf) on research done by Dr. K Anders Ericsson and others on how something they have labelled “deliberate practice” is what separates eminent performers from good performers.

What is deliberate practice?

It’s the focused time and effort that people take that is used to address and develop areas of weakness. It is usually assisted by a teacher/trainer and the benefits are apparent when a performer starts early and slowly increases his/her times over a period of years.

The researchers found that to get to a level of eminence it takes almost a decade of practice – this holds true for people from across disciplines from sports like chess to tennis to musical genius. And being consistent in your practice is the key to development.

The researchers notice that deliberate practice is not glamorous. It is usually done alone or with a trainer/coach. It requires lots of hard work and their is no reward linked directly to practice – just the promise of reward that when one performs on the world stage one might be the best.

Deliberate practice also means getting access to the training/ learning resources and the best teachers. It also means having the unstinting support of your family to help you develop your domain expertise.

According to this article:

Tiger Woods is a textbook example of what the research shows. Because his father introduced him to golf at an extremely early age - 18 months - and encouraged him to practice intensively, Woods had racked up at least 15 years of practice by the time he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship, at age 18. Also in line with the findings, he has never stopped trying to improve, devoting many hours a day to conditioning and practice, even remaking his swing twice because that's what it took to get even better.

What do you think can this research tell us about how to achieve success in organizations? In a sense one is ‘performing’ through the 10-12 hours of work that people put in – so how does one get the 5 hours of time for deliberate practice to sharpen their skills? And yet have the necessary time to recuperate from its mental and physical strain? The researchers note that deliberate practice must be only carried out until can do it physically. Overdoing it would erode motivational levels and lead to burn out.

More on deliberate practice from the authors of Freakonomics:

the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of clichés that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular clichés just happen to be true.

Ericsson's research suggests a third cliché as well: when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good. Most people naturally don't like to do things they aren't "good" at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don't possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better.

2009's first Carnival of HR!

Namaste and welcome to the new year's first Carnival of HR!

We've had some great entries for the Carnival, which proves that bloggers might go easy on blogging during the vacations, but the quality of their posts stays the same :-)

Without further ado let's jump straight to the thought provoking posts that talent bloggers from across the world have been posting about :-)

• Mark at Inlexion Point has some predictions for HR for 2009, drawing on the Chinese zodic sign of the Ox!
• Wally Bock at the Three Star Leadership blog focuses on a topical issue - drawing attention to the layoff survivors - and what organizations and HR groups should do to help them.
• Picking up the thread Rick at Flip Chart Fairy Tales (love that name!) asks if HR professionals are ready for the recession.While Rick's data looks at the UK - the lessons are relevant for all HR professionals in economies (like India and US) where we focused on 'development and recruitment' thanks to the earlier 'war for talent'.
• Moving on to Leadership, Nina wonders whether some leaders have leadership pheromones. What do you think? I think those pheromones reside in the behaviors that leaders exhibit and I guess Nina means that too :)
• Chris Young at the Maximize Possibility Blog reminds leaders that succession planning is a fiduciary responsibility. Whether it is Apple's Steve Jobs, or the top leaders of Unilever India caught in the terrorist attack in Mumbai, succession planning as Chris mentions is their responsibility to the shareholders.
• Dan McCarthy at the Great Leadership blog looks back at Best Leadership and Management Development books of 2008. Great list there, and reminds us that we should all take time out to read everyday!
• Continuing with the Leadership theme Denise at Team Doc shares how to fix problems on the leadership team.
  
• Anna at the Engaging Brand reminds us that creating new ideas should be what we do everyday.
• On the other hand, HR Minion would rather call them Goals than Resolutions because it adds structure, are attainable and have steps to achieve them. 
  
• Paul Hebert from the Fistful of Talent blog reminds us that to build organizational culture it's important to sweat the small stuff.
• Alice at the Taleo Blog reminds us that talent pools are no longer be constrained geographically, so is your firm ready to look at hiring people at a global level?
• Amit Avasthi at HR Bytes looks at Talent Management across a group of companies (a conglomerate) and the issues of different HR processes, systems that might impede standardisation.
• Ann Bares at Compensation Force recommends Variable Pay as the best way to build partnership between the organization and its employees, if it is done right. And she has the answer how it can be done right!
• And continuing with the compensation theme Abhishek Mittal has ideas for a benefits market within an organization. Interesting!
  
• And Jon Ingham points us to Strategy guru Gary Hamel's thinking on Management 2.0 and implications for HR folks.
•  Rowan from Fortify Your Oasis reminds us that 2009 would not be such an easy year, if you are job hunting (or even hunkering down and working) and I guess we should fortify our own selves and brace towards it :-)
• However Susan Heathfield of About HR reminds us that in turmoil lies opportunity and that we should continue to focus on the important things.
  

How's that to start off some food for thought to start the new year with?
Have a great 2009 people!

Negotiation Importance

It always surprises me when I realise that 'negotiation' is not taught as a skill at any stage in our formal educational life.

What is amazing is that negotiation is a skill that is useful in every sphere of our lives. However, most of us blunder our way through negotiations, due to our inherent self. People who are assertive can negotiate better but their focus remain themselves. People who are non-assertive (like me!) can get swept away when negotiating with an assertive individual and neglecting their own wants and needs.

Negotiation is a skill that is closely tied to one's personality and that is why a formalised education in the processes of negotiation is useful for everyone. It gives people like me an opportunity to claw back into the race. :-) Most of all negotiation is used in every aspect of corporate life...with external customers or vendors, with internal staff and line managers, to get budgets that one wants, to get one's salary or raise or to change one's role. It seems criminal not to develop this skill.


Originally posted in June 2004 

Everyone is replaceable?

Maybe, but in the new economy, there are certain differences. Alex blogs on the ReadWriteWeb:

For a startup, two months is an eternity, but even for large companies two months is a long time. Today, people need to be replaced real-time - one is out and the next one is in full-speed, day one. This is difficult, particularly because of the incredible amount of information that we end up processing daily.

Increasingly, modern business is becoming a complex, distributed information processing system. The nodes of this system are employees, tirelessly passing bits around to each other, crunching and filtering with the goal to compute, to gain competitive advantage, and to help the business survive.

The problem is that unlike factories or boxes in the computing cloud, employees in the modern company are not identical. Each one knows a unique piece of the information puzzle that makes a company tick. Two weeks is not enough to do the transition and two months is way to long to waste training up the new guy. This is why the old adage that everyone is replaceable may need some re-thinking.

Recently, my insurance broker switched companies. He quickly contacted me, offered an attractive new package, and then drove 1.5 hours from his office to my home to sign the papers. His commission would not want warrant the trip, but he was smart to make the investment of his time because he won me as a client. On the other hand, the cost of losing a talented employee for his old company just increased - they also lost a client, and I am sure I was not the only one.

Although my insurance agent lives in the technical world, he is part of new breed of folks that I call the digital elite. He uses Facebook to keep in touch with his friends, he was savvy enough to look up my company on the web, and he knows all the cool financial web sites. In other words, he is on top of what's going on. He knows all about the speed of information in our world. And this makes him a serious and important player, of the type that is really hard to replace.

As organizations become smaller and focused around the talents their employees bring in, we're going to see a lot of employee-organization branding together. Specially the "superstar" employees (a rainmaker in consulting organization, for example)

Yes, a lot of things are going to change, subtly but slowly :-) HR and management groups must be aware and open to these changes, specially in the small creative hotshops.

Becoming Global managers

We have started the phase where Indian companies are globalising. To succeed, they need to be led by global leaders and managers, people who are comfortable with viewpoints and cultures not their own. What are the characteristics of a global manager? Abhijit Bhaduri, head of HR at Frito Lay, himself a global manager, having worked with Colgate Palmolive in Malaysia and the US, has some thoughts:

Being a global manager means being comfortable holding almost two opposing thoughts and not allowing either one to overwhelm. Being able to flex one's style to address different business and people needs means that such individuals are a rare breed. They learn to manage change. Not in others or in other corporations but starting first of all within themselves.

If one has to succeed in the future, this is a skill one has to learn and build at the outset. Right now one can be leading global teams, because the going is good. However, when business goes through a cycle down, the ones that will be left standing will be the people who fit the definition of a global manager.

Of the outliers

One Japanese saying goes "The nail that sticks out, will be hammered in". Was reminded of that saying when I saw the new Aamir Khan movie Taare Zameen Par (detailed review on my personal blog)

However in this post, I won't be talking about the movie except for the thought that Aamir's character articulates that the world has always been changed by people who have been different and thought against the grain, because they have seen the obvious through other perspectives.

So as this year draws to a close, here's my wish for all of us. May we never forget the ability that we all had as children- of viewing this world with different views, different eyes, every single day.

That is what will help us be more innovative.

Remember, innovation consists of two steps, divergence (idea generation) and convergence (analysis and coming to a conclusion). Education and everyday living teach and reiterate the second step all the time. It is up to us to keep renewing the ability to generate different ideas.

The movie is about a boy suffering from dyslexia and here's an interesting research that says more dyslexics become entrepreneurs in the US compared to the UK (Hat tip: Businesspundit)

many of the coping skills dyslexics learn in their formative years become best practices for the successful entrepreneur. A child who chronically fails standardized tests must become comfortable with failure. Being a slow reader forces you to extract only vital information, so that you're constantly getting right to the point. Dyslexics are also forced to trust and rely on others to get things done-an essential skill for anyone working to build a business.

Sometimes our so-called weaknesses really are our strengths.

It's all a matter of perspective, you see (or you don't ;-) !

Getting Outta-the-[HR] Box

Post from R Karthik:

CII, XLRI Jamshedpur & the NHRDN in conjunction are evolving a competency model for HR profesionals.

Now, that is an interesting endeavour these 3 bodies have embarked upon and the effort has been on for about more than half-an year now. I got an opportunity to be audience for a presentation, one of the steering commitee members on this project was making to a group at Chennai. Some of the best HR minds across the country, i understood, have been handpicked to drive this and we were also enlightened about the methodology they employed to evolve the model.

While the theme of the evening's talk, as pre-announced to us, would by itself keep me at the edge of my seat, I was particularly intrigued to know what competencies would actually constitute 'the mighty model'. As i waited anxiously for 'the slide' to unfold, i was drawing a mind-map of competencies that would be deemed sine qua non for the profession.

The project has just matured beyond a semi-nascent phase as yet and the committee has defined the scope of the competency model to be as follows;

Generic Competencies

-generic technical

-generic behavioral

Technical Competencies

-technical behavioral

(This is only a sincere attempt to recall from last month; excuse me if the above-mentioned scope has something amiss about what it actually is.)

Underneath each head there was quite a long list of individual competencies and this is where to my eyeballs met with dismay.

I have always believed Creativity/the ability to think outta-the-box is a competency desired of any professional not to discount the sharp-witted HR guy. Through my modest 2 & 1/2 years in the profession also, i have seen those professionals who've consciously cultivated that skill have come to be lauded as some of the best and brightest HR minds.

I was a wee bit piqued at this oblivion or should i call it negligence to an all-important skill-set. .

When the floor was thrown open for questions, i raised this point in a manner that would clue the speaker to think on this line and i could not restrain myself from raising it. I could do only as much.

Now with that said, i wish to sound out the readers of this blog (including Gautam) on "is this non-inclusion attributable to commoditization of competencies (or) will a scarcity or bounty in supply determine the inclusion or exclusion in such a model that will find a really wide applicability?".

Unlearning about careers

I was going through this article that Dr. Madhukar Shukla wrote on Knowledge Workers: Implications for HR practices some time ago when this final passage jumped out at me:

it is important to appreciate that in the contemporary dynamic and changing world, knowledge depreciates and becomes outdated quickly. Moreover, emergence of new business realities and technologies also provide both a threat to older skills as well as opportunities for acquiring new skills. For instance, many expertise areas have lost their lustre during last few years, just as many of the new knowledge-based jobs - e.g., forex expert, web designer, derivative analyst, patent manager, etc. - have become important within just last one decade.

The implications for the career of the knowledge worker are significant. Conventional careers were built on skills and competencies which evolved in a linear manner - career moves were essentially moving up the hierarchy - either within or across the organisations. But for the knowledge workers, careers progression can be only across new skill- and knowledge-base which routinely becomes outdated and irrelevant. The key agenda for managing the careers for knowledge workers would be to facilitate such discontinuous shifts across skill-sets.

So the most important skills for this new age would not be a 'skill' but rather a mindset - that one needs to cultivate, of being a person who can let go of the past and unlearn faster and faster. Of course, this took me back to the two kinds of people that Dr. Udai Pareek's instrument talked about... enfolders and enlargers. It looks like it currently is the age for enlargers, and will be so for a long time.

Looming Leadership Crisis says IBM study

According to a major new IBM study of over 400 human resource executives from 40 countries released today, more than 75 percent of HR executives say that they are concerned with their ability to develop future leaders.

Companies in the Asia Pacific region are most concerned with their ability to develop future leaders (88 percent); followed by Latin America (74 percent); Europe, Middle East and Africa, (74 percent); Japan (73 percent) and North America (69 percent).

Rotating employees across divisions and geographies is also an important way to hone future leadership talent. Yet, according to the study, 36 percent of HR executives state rotating leadership talent is a significant challenge in developing future leaders. Another key challenge is the generation gap -- passing on knowledge from older to younger employees (28 percent).

52 percent of HR executives say a significant workforce-related challenge facing their organizations is the inability to rapidly develop skills to address current and/or future business needs. Furthermore, the study shows that more than one-third of study participants state their employee skills are not aligned with current organizational priorities.

Forty-seven percent of the organizations surveyed said that employee turnover has increased over the past two years, while only 16 percent said it has decreased.

Many believe their corporate reputations will allow them to attract and retain the people they need. While 52 percent indicate an inability to rapidly develop skills is a primary workforce challenge, only 27 percent state the inability to attract qualified candidates is a problem.

Retention also seems to be less of a concern; only 18 percent state this is a high priority workforce issue. However, changing trends in workforce demographics and mobility patterns suggest they may need to invest more resources in recruiting, selection and retention.

An underlying cause according to the study is that HR executives believe that despite the ongoing war for talent, they are more capable of attracting and retaining talent than their competitors. Almost 60 percent of HR executives surveyed feel they attract and retain talent better than their peers, while only 10 percent state they are less effective.

So, looks like some folks are deluding themselves :-)

Filling the Talent Gap

How to Fill the Talent Gap - WSJ.com

Interesting article that focuses on the truth that really matters:

Successful companies understand and exploit the capabilities that let them provide unique value to their customers. Your talent-management initiatives should focus on building those capabilities among your employees.

The best-in-class firms that we examined had talent processes that were marked by deep commitment, high levels of engagement and widespread accountability among senior leaders, line managers, human resources and the talent prospects themselves.

P&G for instance, focuses on identifying and developing talent at the local level and then integrating those people into regional and group talent pools as their careers progress. The company has an automated tracking system that can identify candidates inside the company who have the skills and experiences required for important assignments around the world -- letting the company fill key roles much faster and more efficiently. The company also tracks its hires and monitors the success rates of these people placed into key roles.

The issue is, business tactics and strategy changes from month to month and year to year, however the result of serious talent management interventions only come to light in the long term. So when the direction of the firm changes, the talent management systems need to be evaluated and changed as soon as possible, and calls for change management efforts to address uncertainty amongst the minds of employees. Hence if a business really wants its strategy to be executed as it plans then thought has to be given to how the talent management systems will also change. And this conversation has to be proactive and not reactive.

Psychometric tests are useful?

Came across this post on McArthur's blog:

92% of the 200 plus recruiters surveyed find psychometric testing to be either “useful” or “very useful”. This, the report claims, is down to the suggestion that academic qualifications give little indication of how graduates will perform in the workplace especially in “soft skills” areas such as communication skills.

I for one am very very sceptical about using psychometric tests for recruitment. For one, even "well-known" tests like MBTI are advised not to be used for recruitment purposes. It presupposes that the firm has achieved to understand that only certain "types" of people will do well in certain roles. What they forget to remember is that psychometrics is not an infallible science. It mostly points a direction to a person's preferred sets of behaviors. Using it for selection and recruitment is not very different from using astrology to recruit people.

Selection must always be on the basis of a candidates' past record of achievements in similar or related roles. Tests or simulations that give a result on a job-related skill would not technically be a psychometric test.