Meeting blog readers in real life

It's been over a decade since I started this blog. I primarily meant it to be a chronicle of my thoughts as my career progressed and my points of view changed.

Somewhere along the line, people started discovering blogs and reading them. I remember sometime in 2006 when I was at a SHRM India meetup at Hyderabad I was shocked to find many people in a group of 30 people come up to me and say that they read my blog. Until that time I had assumed only other bloggers would be reading my blog.

I remember back going to a friend after that and saying that meeting people who read my blog is unnerving. "Why?" he had asked. "Because they know so much about my views and I don't know them at all. There's information asymmetry"

Yes, I am an introvert. I find it very difficult to meet people in a real life social setting and have conversations. I guess that is why I find it easier to connect with people on social media.

So last week it happened again. I was introduced to many people and quite a few exclaimed "Oh, I read your blog!" or "When I was home for three years, I kept myself in touch with HR through your blog"

It is surprising and gratifying to meet you and hear that this little blog on a corner of the internet has succeeded in getting your attention.

Attention is the least thing we have in our lives, and the fact that you choose to give me yours, I am thankful.

Thanks for reading, commenting, critiquing and helping me improve. This blog is not just mine. It is a shared space, and you by reading, curating, sharing it make it "our space".

Stories and Purposes for the HR Community

Over the last few weeks I have been having conversations with members of the HR community on attending the 16th National conference organized by the National HRD Network. The reasons for attending and not attending were interesting to hear. “I hope to carry one learning that I can implementThere’s hardly any learning” “There’s hardly any learning, I only go there for the networking”

Some would say that perhaps the HR community is suffering from “conference fatigue”. However, it is my belief that while that may be true, a conference like this is important for the dispersed HR community., which has its credibility and reputation questioned in organizations most of the time. It is a time for HR professionals to tell themselves stories.

Stories are not just entertaining – they are also tools for sensemaking of all the data and information we are inundated with. Stories are what adds meaning to experiences and gives us the space and time to step back and reflect. Many believe that values are communicated by myths in the form of stories across millennia. So what are the stories that HR professionals are telling in this conference?

In the first part of 29th November, the stories we heard (by the Young HR Thought Leaders paper presentation and the Best of Breed HR Showcase) were about thought leadership and innovation – of understanding how others and their teams faced an issue and had done something innovative to impact their businesses in a positive way. These are stories which I hope we will carry forward and spread – to learn from and spread positivity in the larger HR community.

The second half of the day was for stories for the future – of creating meaning and larger purpose for the HR Community. To stop thinking only in organizational silos and contributing to the larger community. About defining our role differently – from moving from drivers of engagement to becoming Happiness Champions.

Stories were also communicated by what was left unsaid - the lack of diversity in the conference speakers and lack of topics dedicated to the long term challenge to the HR community.

NHRDN Seminar on "HR & Social Media – What more can you do?" at Mumbai

National HRD Network and NHRDN Mumbai Chapter along with FORE School of Management, are organizing a one day Seminar on "HR & Social Media – What more can you do?" on Tuesday 11 December 2012 at ITC Maratha, Mumbai.

The Seminar seeks to deliberate and discuss on hitherto less tapped opportunities for HR professionals to use social media effectively and make a uniquely positive difference at the workplace, and in the process, be seen as the profession that is leading the adoption of this technology from the front.

I would be speaking on a panel discussion on "Using Social Media to foster a culture of Innovation"

If you're in Mumbai and want to attend the seminar here are more details on how to

Looking forward to seeing you there :)

Going to the 16th Annual National HR Development Network Conference

From tomorrow I would be attending the 16th Annual Conference of India's largest HR body, the National HRD Network.

I was lucky last year to be involved in a small way with last year's conference in Bangalore.

This time I am looking forward to attending the following sessions:

• Special Session on Beyond Strategy by Robin Speculund, Founder & CEO, Bridges Business Consultancy Int Pte Ltd - UK
• Decisions by Design or Accident: The moments of truth in HR Strategy - a panel discussion by Sameer Khanna, Saurabh Das Patnaik, Azim Jamal
• Big Fight: Is HR in a Box? A discussion between S Varadarajan, Ishant Manaktala, P. Dwarakanath
• Mega Session: Humans First, Resources Next: The Missing Focus - A panel discussion between Guy Dillela, Deepak Mangla, Anand Shankar 

Look forward to a flurry of blog posts :)

And if you're going to be there - would love to meet up :)

Disrupting LinkedIn - who will do it? An excellent answer

I came across this fascinating answer on Quora to why hasn't been LinkedIn disrupted yet, and I so agree with it. The answer points to "Talent Communities" built around specific domains as the places where people learn. Something that I have often talked about in the past :)

Read Quote of Jon Bischke's answer to LinkedIn: Why hasn't anyone disrupted LinkedIn yet? on Quora

Career Advice to a young HR professional

Someone asked on Quora:

>What advice would you give to a young professional who is just starting his career in Human Resource?

I have just graduated from college and wondering what can I do to stay ahead of the curve and ensure my long term growth? I try to keep up with the latest trends in HR, Management and Technology, read the books that senior fellows recommend and also religiously follow HBR. But I find that many of my friends are also doing that. Also, I am not great at networking and find it difficult to strike up a relationship with strangers quickly. Will it prove to be a handicap?

This is what I answered:
Read Quote of Gautam Ghosh's answer to Human Resources: What advice would you give to a young professional who is just starting his career in Human Resource? on Quora

On Employee Attrition metrics

Someone asked a question on Quora , and I answered

Read Quote of Gautam Ghosh's answer to Human Resources: What metric do HR departments typically use to measure employee turnover? on Quora

Job specifications are changing

A friend, Atul Karmarkar, shared this picture of a job description he came upon.

Shared without comment.

Thoughts?

The paradox of HR in a people dependant business

I just finished reading Anant Rangaswami's free ebook "Elephants in the Room" on the future of the Indian advertising industry. You can download the book for free here.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a copywriter in the advertising industry. Then I sat for XAT and got into XLRI and discovered HR. But the fascination with the (what I thought) glamourous world of advertising never went away. When I was at 2020 Social my colleague went to the "Cannes of the Indian ad family" Goafest, and I so wanted to go for it too.

So when Anant's book was free for download, I was amongst the first people to download it. He talks about the big challenges facing the advertising industry (the "elephants in the room") and how the industry can meet it.

There were two big "elephants" that stood out for me when I had put on my HR hat. One was, clients were dependent on "people brands" like Piyush Pandey, R. Balki, Prasoon Joshi in the ad industry. Anant says that the clients want great creative people to work on them, so creating a second line of "people brands" is critical once the older folks retire. And yet, no one seems to be doing anything about it.

The other interesting part of the book, is where Anant draws out the HR challenges of the advertising firms, starting with the fact that many of them to do not have full fledged HR managers or follow HR systems and processes.

That triggered this thought in my mind, "why does an industry which is so dependent on people, not invest in HR"

Thinking about it, I have come to the same sorry conclusion as in the past - great HR happens when work is commoditised. When work/people are a differentiator to bring in revenues as in a case of an ad agency or a professional services firm, HR is seen as expendable, without people realising then that it's the most critical.

Even tellingly, better HR professionals don't think of joining as HR managers/heads in industries like media and advertising adding to the vicious cycle of mediocre HR practices and people decisions being taking whimsically by business heads.

The downfall of Michael Porter's strategy consulting firm Monitor Group

Michael Porter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Steve Denning has a scathing take on the fall of the former blue chip strategy consulting firm, Monitor Group. Founded by Strategy uber-guru Michael Porter, who propounded the five forces model. In fact I had questioned the model on this blog way back in 2005 - but of course Steve Denning does a much more detailed analysis.

The shocking part of the analysis is this:

it (Porter's model) was “lacking any foundation in fact or logic.” Except where generated by government regulation, sustainable competitive advantage simply doesn’t exist. Hype, spin, impenetrable prose and abstruse mathematics, along with talk of “rigorous analysis”, “tough-minded decisions” and “hard choices” all combined to hide the fact that there was no evidence that sustainable competitive advantage could be created in advance by studying the structure of an industry. Although Porter’s conceptual framework could help explain excess profits in retrospect, it was almost useless in predicting them in prospect.

Read the full article here.

Also read The Economist's Schumpeter's take on Monitor's demise

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