I often find myself reviewing job description documents that our Human Resources routes my way. I also discuss with our hiring managers regarding the customer facing and the back office roles that they propose that will enable us to execute our organizational and revenue goals. We do this as a part of our Workforce Planning process. I also get into brief conversations with prospective employees who come to interview with us. In all these situations a point of discussion is what are the key qualities that will make the new hire tick?
As you would expect, the flavors of the response are varied. The MBA types will call out education, communication, integrity, conceptual skills, leadership, intellect, analytics, execution et al. Others will categorize honesty, hard work, relationships, knowledge, quality of work as key attributes for success.
All these assumptions are true and why not? Possessing these skills requires tremendous resolve, focus and discipline. These make up the professional’s arsenal that will take the owner a long way! However, what is the quality that plays an equally crucial role, if not more … an attribute that all organizations look forward to in the employees and test them on it over time? Nobody, (even the glib talker!) gets away talking through this – the proof lies in the actions of the employee and takes time to judge! I do not want to leave you hanging there but let us look at this from another perspective. The greatest professional & individual successes within organizations, Gates, Jobs, Buffet, Grove, Iacocca, Ellison, Welch have happened after these individuals focused their attention and effort on one single company over many years. Granted that some happened to be the promoters of the organizations that they worked for! Still it is undeniable that they worked hard, demonstrated commitment and passion, earned the loyalty and trust of the employees within the organization and progressively earned their stripes. Conversely, the organizations also recognized the capability of these individuals, the sincerity of their intent and progressively entrusted them with more authority and responsibility knowing well that these individuals had the capability to carry the accountability that comes along with it! And boy, did they and some of them are even doing so today…
The missing attribute for success I am talking about is ‘Loyalty’, a quality not discussed or probed much in most interview sessions. You cannot talk someone into believing that you are a loyalist. You have to demonstrate it with solid proof points and do it over time! Not just in fair weather, that’s easy but when the going gets tough, the adversities run high and when the organization needs believers! That is when true loyalty shows up and believe you me, there are people looking out and checking in to see who are the ones demonstrating this trait and sticking with the company!
In fact this is so not just at the corporation’s level, even within departments, workgroups and functional teams. Loyalty is an attribute that does not go unnoticed. It never should! It does not really matter how capable, experienced, influential or connected an individual is. Any demonstration of lack in loyalty will certainly not be an ingredient that will propel professional growth and success! Take this as a thumb rule in small family run businesses to global multinational corporations. Many organizations will state this in their manifesto, many will not … instead they will bracket the skill as ‘ability to align with the corporation’, ‘be committed to the corporate culture’ etc. the verbal flavors are many but the expectation is the same!
Put yourself in the shoes of the ‘power be it’ within the organization, most of who have risen to their high offices after having contributed to the development of the organization over the years! When they are ready to look around to hand over the mantle to someone to lead the organization in the next leg of the race and take it to the next level of success, what competency will they seek in the individual after all the ‘ticket to entry’ qualities have been checked out? They will without doubt seek out for their trust in the individual’s ability of carrying out the mission as closely as possible to what they would have done themselves! An individual who while shouldering the responsibilities of the organization will also keep an ear out for the recommendations and suggestions of the ‘old guard’! An individual who gives the confidence that he will honor the past legacy and preserve the building blocks on which the organization was built while driving the next level of growth and ensure that the bank is not broken!
Any career guidance session that I speak in is always laced with ample discussions about ‘patience and commitment’ towards the organization. If your job is a downright drag and you are gaining nothing from it then move on! Go someplace which will serve your career and your personal growth better. Else, patience is your best friend as you progress through your organization. Remember to demonstrate loyalty to your team, region, function, supervisor and the company at large in every instance along with demonstration of your capability in the role you play. Be assured that people are watching you and the rewards will come when the time is right!
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Let me give you the bad news first!
I am fairly liberal and open to providing my opinion about how I view situations, circumstances, opinions and propositions and how I respond to them to anyone who genuinely seeks it! Life has seen me in different circumstances at work and play - good, bad, memorable, rewarding and downright ugly! Some, I have responded to well while others have been not much to write home about. Irrespective of the outcome, I have tried hard to learn from them, to reflect upon them and to promise myself to deal with them better if I were to face them again in the future, especially the not so rosy ones!
No one is in doubt that we live in a complex world, a complex society within very complex relationships. People I know, that is me included, fervently believe that by sharing our collective successes and the hard knocks that we have taken, will benefit others and save them time, pain recovery and missed opportunities! So we venture out and ‘seemingly’ sermonize when solicited!
Look at the flip side though! Just try expressing your views in any forum … everything we say or write is examined and inspected under a microscope! The more visible you are the deeper the inspection! In a world were bad news and negativity sells more than the good stuff, I am not even a bit surprised! Then there is the human ego that internally belittles the individual himself if he agrees to another’s opinion without punching one or more holes in it and then heroically filling that hole with another view that reflects his intellect to the audience around! The more ‘knowledgeable the circle the more sensitive you need to be with your every statement else the arrows will come hurtling down on you!
Having debated with myself on my position regarding this going forward, I have chosen to stay my course and continue to voice my learning for people to benefit from. There have been a few downsides even ‘debacles’, but the upside where people appreciate, joyfully receive and even benefit from these shared learning purely outweigh the not so memorable outcomes. Most importantly, doing this gives me joy which I think I deserve, more so if it makes the other person happy as well! I have just learnt to build some caution and tact in my style instead of the good ol’ cavalier run!
I have also learnt to be absolutely candid! To give a balanced view and to put my point of view purely as my opinion – merely my perspective, not the absolute truth! But see, when people seek my opinion, it is because they expect me to know! Well since I am but a mere mortal, far removed from a Da Vinci or a Nostradamus, I do not know it all nor have I ever seen the future! I candidly say so upfront and sometimes see their faces fall – naturally so but it sets me up with them on the right foot and sets their expectations exactly where it should be. I also set the tone at the onset that anything I say is my opinion, my finding, my perspective. Purely put together on the basis of my experiences which are in no way complete nor are they absolute references to the subject. It is for the individual to take it, rephrase it, re- orient it and use it as she deems fit.
Finally, I have learnt to dwell on balance! People who approach me want to hear me say all the bright and positive things about what they want to talk to me about. See this is how the mind works! Your mind expects to seek out agreement and reinforce what it already knows from others. Especially those individuals they have confidence in and categorize as ‘knowledgable’ in the area that they need advice. I have learnt to be more useful by going exactly against that current. I try and talk about all the things that I do not expect the individual to have thought about regarding that proposition. I give them the bad news first – not exactly what they want to hear but heck, at least I am giving them an alternate perspective rather than echoing their inner thoughts and just making them happily biased! The good news is already in there, the bad news helps these folks objectively weigh in on the pros and cons before deciding whether the option is worth pursuing! I like the honesty of this approach and also the fact that it indemnifies me from any backlashes about ‘Deb did not tell me so when he spoke about this…’ when undesired results occasionally but predictably show up, very contrary to some people’s expectations!
No one is in doubt that we live in a complex world, a complex society within very complex relationships. People I know, that is me included, fervently believe that by sharing our collective successes and the hard knocks that we have taken, will benefit others and save them time, pain recovery and missed opportunities! So we venture out and ‘seemingly’ sermonize when solicited!
Look at the flip side though! Just try expressing your views in any forum … everything we say or write is examined and inspected under a microscope! The more visible you are the deeper the inspection! In a world were bad news and negativity sells more than the good stuff, I am not even a bit surprised! Then there is the human ego that internally belittles the individual himself if he agrees to another’s opinion without punching one or more holes in it and then heroically filling that hole with another view that reflects his intellect to the audience around! The more ‘knowledgeable the circle the more sensitive you need to be with your every statement else the arrows will come hurtling down on you!
Having debated with myself on my position regarding this going forward, I have chosen to stay my course and continue to voice my learning for people to benefit from. There have been a few downsides even ‘debacles’, but the upside where people appreciate, joyfully receive and even benefit from these shared learning purely outweigh the not so memorable outcomes. Most importantly, doing this gives me joy which I think I deserve, more so if it makes the other person happy as well! I have just learnt to build some caution and tact in my style instead of the good ol’ cavalier run!
I have also learnt to be absolutely candid! To give a balanced view and to put my point of view purely as my opinion – merely my perspective, not the absolute truth! But see, when people seek my opinion, it is because they expect me to know! Well since I am but a mere mortal, far removed from a Da Vinci or a Nostradamus, I do not know it all nor have I ever seen the future! I candidly say so upfront and sometimes see their faces fall – naturally so but it sets me up with them on the right foot and sets their expectations exactly where it should be. I also set the tone at the onset that anything I say is my opinion, my finding, my perspective. Purely put together on the basis of my experiences which are in no way complete nor are they absolute references to the subject. It is for the individual to take it, rephrase it, re- orient it and use it as she deems fit.
Finally, I have learnt to dwell on balance! People who approach me want to hear me say all the bright and positive things about what they want to talk to me about. See this is how the mind works! Your mind expects to seek out agreement and reinforce what it already knows from others. Especially those individuals they have confidence in and categorize as ‘knowledgable’ in the area that they need advice. I have learnt to be more useful by going exactly against that current. I try and talk about all the things that I do not expect the individual to have thought about regarding that proposition. I give them the bad news first – not exactly what they want to hear but heck, at least I am giving them an alternate perspective rather than echoing their inner thoughts and just making them happily biased! The good news is already in there, the bad news helps these folks objectively weigh in on the pros and cons before deciding whether the option is worth pursuing! I like the honesty of this approach and also the fact that it indemnifies me from any backlashes about ‘Deb did not tell me so when he spoke about this…’ when undesired results occasionally but predictably show up, very contrary to some people’s expectations!
Friday, August 28, 2009
You have read the driver’s manual – now take the keys and drive the car!
It is an early week of a wet August in 2009 as I board a flight to Manila. As the Singapore Airline flight taxies down the rain soaked Ninoy Aquino International airport’s tarmac, I look around into the gathering dusk at the hazy silhouette of the adequately lit airport terminal – nothing much has changed since the ten years I have been travelling to this country! As I disembark, I literally zip thru immigration and customs, I thank my lucky stars that it is early week or is it that the efficiency of the airport has just got better! I had to find out. Frankly, I have had my trysts with destiny while trudging through the crowd at this airport during previous visits and they have indeed been a challenge! My last visit was a year ago - I half expectedly start peering out of the window of the hotel car that whisks me from the kerbside lounge as I am chauffeured down the well lit streets by a chauffer whose infectious exuberance that characterizes every Filipino has thankfully not altered one bit!
Manila did surprise me! The streets are cleaner, the traffic more orderly and as I discovered in the two days I spent there - a tremendous focus on urbanization, infrastructure development and employment. Singapore has always been an influence on the ASEAN. A visit to the Fort Bonifacio, an office, entertainment and residential district a stone’s throw from Makati Manila is a great example of this influence. I was at the Fort to meet a business contact ten years ago and all there was at that time was rolling, dusty & barren land left behind by an army garrison! What I see today is a spanking metropolis, tree lined boulevards, commercial and residential city scrapers with glittering glass facades and enough dining & wining options to keep a social animal spoilt for choice and occupied for a year! The place does reflect the orderliness, completeness and structure of a very modern metropolis! Well done Philippines!
During the couple days in Manila, my agenda was peppered with speaking assignments with customers and business partners and in getting seduced by the lucrative infrastructure development opportunities that the country presents that our organization with its technology can address. I took the time to meet some business associates who I have learned to trust as friends over the ten years that I have known them. It is great to be humbled by their progress and more importantly it was great to see them and share a drink or a meal with them and take a moment to talk about the nostalgic past and the exciting future. Absolutely fantastic!
Manuel Bobiles, Chairman & CEO of NetConnect Technologies (not the real names to retain privacy), a leading network system integrator is a man I have known and respected for long. Manuel came to Philippines years ago as a student, started NetConnect and grew it over the years into a multi million dollar technology corporation. One of the corner stones of Manuel and his organization’s progress is the way the organization hires, trains, grooms and evolves employees while preparing them to take on the challenges and opportunities that the ‘ever changing’ contemporary world presents. What Manuel does within his organization is also a subject very close to my heart!
I have been lately preaching the need to bring our workforce up to speed on workplace readiness and leadership development. I do believe that this is the single largest impediment that we face as a society to tackle the challenges that an increasingly complex workplace is incessantly throwing at us! As I travel around and ask any business leader what their primary challenge at work is, they do not blink an eyelash before saying – ‘people’. Well Asia has no problem with ‘quantity’ – it is the ‘quality’ that is the major concern! I am not downplaying the credentials or the capabilities of our educational institutions – there are many good ones and a few outstanding establishments in Asia. It is just that there is a very large divide between the environment that the typical Asian educational institution provides that an average student grows up in and the ‘work world’ environment that they face the first day they start at work. While the specialized tertiary institutes arm the employee with the hard skills to pursue the careers that they seek, the real gaps are in the soft skills department. Unfortunately, these soft skills or the lack of it within the new employees become glaringly visible as they start work and get them off on the wrong foot in the workplace. Many never recover from this less than desirable start while others pick up some steam as they go along but never attain their full potential!
The trick to get the best out of the people we hire is to choose the ones with the best hard skills needed for the roles that they are hired for - academic accomplishment and documented grades are good measures of these skills. In addition to these ‘hard’ attributes look out for at least some soft skills. Attitude, passion and communication are some that I rate very highly. I will double down and take on an outsider with unproven skill set in my team as long as they come with a ‘first class’ attitude – trust me, everything else builds from there. I have seen many a relative ‘outsider’ make it big despite multiple shortcomings riding on that priceless attribute – their Attitude! On the contrary show me one single achiever with a lousy attitude towards her trade and I will show you polar ice caps in the midst of sub terrain Sahara!
Besides practicing the concept within my own organization, I am recommending the business leadership community to spend time and effort in getting their people workplace ready as quickly as possible and reduce their time to productivity! The exercise routine that is needed to accomplish this is split into two logical parts. One, provide every employee with an opportunity to master the soft skills that they need to excel in their chosen profession. These could be interpersonal skills, operating in a crisis, managing and delivering on expectations, communicating upward, leveraging executives, goal setting – you know there are many! I prefer an analysis on the individual based on feedback from the supervisor, coworkers and the individual herself to determine the areas that need the most development rather than taking very broad swipes and not optimally utilizing the limited time outside of the job function that the employee will normally have to hone these skills! This analysis can be followed by a courseware routine – instruction set, group activities followed by an evaluation process to determine sequential progress. The courseware and its implementation can be developed and implemented within the organization (not the best choice unless you have the breadth, total commitment and the bandwidth to do so) or help from external providers with first class content and delivery consultants can be solicited. This done, most organizations stop at this stage and conclude that they have done a great job. Hardly!
Analysis and follow up development exercises may be great buildup activities to skill building but it is like taking a budding driver thru a well documented driving manual and then throwing the car keys at them and expecting them to drive effortlessly on the rain soaked streets of Manila! Hardly the right expectation! The missing link that most organizations overlook is a stint of ‘Mentorship’. Having an experienced campaigner who has all the battle scars sitting next to the newly minted, instruction manual trained rookie driver, showing the tricks while pointing out the pitfalls seems to me what makes the real difference and effectively closes out the learning process for life. The more sincere the mentor and the mutual engagement he drives with the student, more complete the education and the skill development of the student. Mentorship is not about a single session or even one involving days and weeks – it is an ongoing commitment that the student and the teacher need to sign off on to be able to see real results – fabulously fulfilling!
Manuel and his leadership team at NetConnect are committed to the development of the people they hire. They take away elementary employee concerns around healthcare for the employee and his family, basic amenities of life, small interest free loans for life’s little joys etc. Employees free of these little concerns and consumed by the care that the organization showers on them show up for work with absolute commitment towards their roles and responsibilities. What follows is high quality projects and services for NetConnect’s customers that naturally leads to revenue and profitability! An incredible formula! As we slug our last drinks for the night, Manuel does emphasize that asking his people to read a manual and drive a car would never deliver the results that his team is producing if it was not for the ‘mentors’ in his executive team who are jumping in the car besides the drivers and passionately sharing and helping elevate the ‘young turks’ to the next level!
I am hoping that more Asian organizations are doing something similar. If so our businesses and the people within will very soon start to look as slick as the glittering business districts of Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore or even Fort Bonifacio!
.
Manila did surprise me! The streets are cleaner, the traffic more orderly and as I discovered in the two days I spent there - a tremendous focus on urbanization, infrastructure development and employment. Singapore has always been an influence on the ASEAN. A visit to the Fort Bonifacio, an office, entertainment and residential district a stone’s throw from Makati Manila is a great example of this influence. I was at the Fort to meet a business contact ten years ago and all there was at that time was rolling, dusty & barren land left behind by an army garrison! What I see today is a spanking metropolis, tree lined boulevards, commercial and residential city scrapers with glittering glass facades and enough dining & wining options to keep a social animal spoilt for choice and occupied for a year! The place does reflect the orderliness, completeness and structure of a very modern metropolis! Well done Philippines!
During the couple days in Manila, my agenda was peppered with speaking assignments with customers and business partners and in getting seduced by the lucrative infrastructure development opportunities that the country presents that our organization with its technology can address. I took the time to meet some business associates who I have learned to trust as friends over the ten years that I have known them. It is great to be humbled by their progress and more importantly it was great to see them and share a drink or a meal with them and take a moment to talk about the nostalgic past and the exciting future. Absolutely fantastic!
Manuel Bobiles, Chairman & CEO of NetConnect Technologies (not the real names to retain privacy), a leading network system integrator is a man I have known and respected for long. Manuel came to Philippines years ago as a student, started NetConnect and grew it over the years into a multi million dollar technology corporation. One of the corner stones of Manuel and his organization’s progress is the way the organization hires, trains, grooms and evolves employees while preparing them to take on the challenges and opportunities that the ‘ever changing’ contemporary world presents. What Manuel does within his organization is also a subject very close to my heart!
I have been lately preaching the need to bring our workforce up to speed on workplace readiness and leadership development. I do believe that this is the single largest impediment that we face as a society to tackle the challenges that an increasingly complex workplace is incessantly throwing at us! As I travel around and ask any business leader what their primary challenge at work is, they do not blink an eyelash before saying – ‘people’. Well Asia has no problem with ‘quantity’ – it is the ‘quality’ that is the major concern! I am not downplaying the credentials or the capabilities of our educational institutions – there are many good ones and a few outstanding establishments in Asia. It is just that there is a very large divide between the environment that the typical Asian educational institution provides that an average student grows up in and the ‘work world’ environment that they face the first day they start at work. While the specialized tertiary institutes arm the employee with the hard skills to pursue the careers that they seek, the real gaps are in the soft skills department. Unfortunately, these soft skills or the lack of it within the new employees become glaringly visible as they start work and get them off on the wrong foot in the workplace. Many never recover from this less than desirable start while others pick up some steam as they go along but never attain their full potential!
The trick to get the best out of the people we hire is to choose the ones with the best hard skills needed for the roles that they are hired for - academic accomplishment and documented grades are good measures of these skills. In addition to these ‘hard’ attributes look out for at least some soft skills. Attitude, passion and communication are some that I rate very highly. I will double down and take on an outsider with unproven skill set in my team as long as they come with a ‘first class’ attitude – trust me, everything else builds from there. I have seen many a relative ‘outsider’ make it big despite multiple shortcomings riding on that priceless attribute – their Attitude! On the contrary show me one single achiever with a lousy attitude towards her trade and I will show you polar ice caps in the midst of sub terrain Sahara!
Besides practicing the concept within my own organization, I am recommending the business leadership community to spend time and effort in getting their people workplace ready as quickly as possible and reduce their time to productivity! The exercise routine that is needed to accomplish this is split into two logical parts. One, provide every employee with an opportunity to master the soft skills that they need to excel in their chosen profession. These could be interpersonal skills, operating in a crisis, managing and delivering on expectations, communicating upward, leveraging executives, goal setting – you know there are many! I prefer an analysis on the individual based on feedback from the supervisor, coworkers and the individual herself to determine the areas that need the most development rather than taking very broad swipes and not optimally utilizing the limited time outside of the job function that the employee will normally have to hone these skills! This analysis can be followed by a courseware routine – instruction set, group activities followed by an evaluation process to determine sequential progress. The courseware and its implementation can be developed and implemented within the organization (not the best choice unless you have the breadth, total commitment and the bandwidth to do so) or help from external providers with first class content and delivery consultants can be solicited. This done, most organizations stop at this stage and conclude that they have done a great job. Hardly!
Analysis and follow up development exercises may be great buildup activities to skill building but it is like taking a budding driver thru a well documented driving manual and then throwing the car keys at them and expecting them to drive effortlessly on the rain soaked streets of Manila! Hardly the right expectation! The missing link that most organizations overlook is a stint of ‘Mentorship’. Having an experienced campaigner who has all the battle scars sitting next to the newly minted, instruction manual trained rookie driver, showing the tricks while pointing out the pitfalls seems to me what makes the real difference and effectively closes out the learning process for life. The more sincere the mentor and the mutual engagement he drives with the student, more complete the education and the skill development of the student. Mentorship is not about a single session or even one involving days and weeks – it is an ongoing commitment that the student and the teacher need to sign off on to be able to see real results – fabulously fulfilling!
Manuel and his leadership team at NetConnect are committed to the development of the people they hire. They take away elementary employee concerns around healthcare for the employee and his family, basic amenities of life, small interest free loans for life’s little joys etc. Employees free of these little concerns and consumed by the care that the organization showers on them show up for work with absolute commitment towards their roles and responsibilities. What follows is high quality projects and services for NetConnect’s customers that naturally leads to revenue and profitability! An incredible formula! As we slug our last drinks for the night, Manuel does emphasize that asking his people to read a manual and drive a car would never deliver the results that his team is producing if it was not for the ‘mentors’ in his executive team who are jumping in the car besides the drivers and passionately sharing and helping elevate the ‘young turks’ to the next level!
I am hoping that more Asian organizations are doing something similar. If so our businesses and the people within will very soon start to look as slick as the glittering business districts of Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore or even Fort Bonifacio!
.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Asking for that raise is fantastic, but are you worth it?
Getting ahead at work and taking home more money than you did the year before is all good and I see people these days very focused at this and rightly so! Other than fulfilling the material desires that today’s world presents and even using the money for philanthropic work that some are involved in, I totally understand the financial pressure that today’s cost of living presents in every cosmopolitan city. All this needs money!
So how do you go about making more money? I see, hear and read about employees being very proactive in seeking that ‘raise’ very passionately. They mostly do so without a proper plan that justifies their intent. Supervisors at work are often confronted with these demands and often do not know how to respond to them creating employee dissatisfaction and often a dip in workplace productivity. Then there is the other type of employee who will suffer in silence, they come to work every day with that miserable feeling that they are worth more than what they get paid. I have tried to understand the mindset of the people who do so – very often they are unable to articulate why they deserve more money! Many are gripped by fear at the thought of doing so and being rejected. For others, the environment, culture or norms within does not allow them to do so! Naturally, this affects their performance as they keep reaching out for their next employer even if the new job pays just a little bit more that what they currently make. They are willing to bail out and leave behind everything that they have worked for and accomplished within their current employment over the years for a few dollars more! None of this is desirable for either the employee and the employer and there must be a way to fix this .. but how?
Firstly, compensation is a topic that I do not believe needs to be approached emotionally – neither by the employee nor by the employer. Today’s businesses can use very sophisticated third party developed compensation models that classify the employee by skill type (i.e. sales, technical, marketing, administration et al), skill level (i.e. years of relevant experience), work impact bands (low, medium, high) and location of employment (i.e. country, cost of living index). These published industry standard models should be the tool that should be used to logically determine the targeted compensation for any employee and should help provide consequential guidelines for other compensation components like stock options and restricted stock units. The publishers of these models do ongoing market research and regularly update the data. Organizations and hiring managers should use this data with confidence during workforce planning, budgeting and determining employee compensations. There might still be some factors outside of this model that a supervisor might want or need to consider in determining the final outcome, but this should be more peripheral than core.
Now let us take a look at the employee, and let us get real here … if you really want to determine how your organization or even your industry rates you – just look at your paycheck, period! You have attained your paycheck specifically because of the skills and attributes that you have built over the years. Your paycheck is not higher than what it is today, not because it cannot be but because you do not posses the skills or attributes that are needed to get you there! Identify these skills, practice and perfect them with commitment and I can assure you that you will see your compensation curve zoom! So understand this very clearly, your compensation is a ‘scorecard’ – it shows your standing in your profession relative to others. There are many different causes that lead to this ‘score’. Successful professionals do not spend time and emotions on the ‘score’ other than using it to set their next goal – they focus, plan and implement their efforts around the ‘causes’ that they have previously identified that leads them to their new targeted ‘score’ – be it position or compensation!
Now, while it is absolutely fantastic to look at your paycheck then target what it needs to be in the near future and work at building the missing pieces that will take you there – greed is the biggest derailer to this process! I have seen instances where employees come across and even get considered for opportunities that are either well above their capabilities or get considered for a position that matches their skill but pays far more than what they are worth! See, both these situations are career traps that you should look out for and avoid at all costs!
The first situation happens where individuals go through an imperfect recruitment process (not uncommon at all!) or have internal influencers within the organization whereby they are found suitable for a position that they are incapable to fill. This inadequacy becomes visible very quickly and the consequences are never pleasant! In today’s connected world news travels faster than you will imagine and in the least, the credibility and integrity of people who become victims of this circumstance gets deeply dented. The second situation is more common and this is how it unfolds. An organization might be a new player in a specific market segment and might be in an urgent need to hire someone with the skill to help them go in. The easiest way in is to lure an employee from a competitor whose skill matches the new business need – a higher than market offer usually follows to get this person in quickly. The organization sees this as a short term tactical move, but to the employee the impact could be long term! The business priorities that led to the hiring of this individual at a premium sometimes stays and at other times tapers off! The employee who is hired might sometimes do well or gets moved to another position but sometimes stays and stagnates in the position which is not anymore a priority in the company! Many of these situations then lead to a termination as the position becomes redundant leaving the employee without a job but with a life style that cannot be funded by what the market is willing to pay him! What a tragedy … many a career has been destroyed by this unnecessary greed of seeking something that you are not worthy of! Some of these unfortunate victims are forced to take job openings that come along but are not able to cope with a reduction in compensation even though they try hard! The employee starts work at the new organization disillusioned, demotivated and disgruntled from day one. From there on his future in this new role is a self fulfilling prophecy!
I am forever a big fan of ambition and enterprise in all humans to reach for greater heights and larger achievements. While setting your sights high and running towards your goals, just be wary and constantly watchful of the small rocks and pot holes strewn along the way! Some of them will be very well camouflaged! Just make sure that you do not stumble and trip on any of them and kiss your bigger dreams goodbye!
So how do you go about making more money? I see, hear and read about employees being very proactive in seeking that ‘raise’ very passionately. They mostly do so without a proper plan that justifies their intent. Supervisors at work are often confronted with these demands and often do not know how to respond to them creating employee dissatisfaction and often a dip in workplace productivity. Then there is the other type of employee who will suffer in silence, they come to work every day with that miserable feeling that they are worth more than what they get paid. I have tried to understand the mindset of the people who do so – very often they are unable to articulate why they deserve more money! Many are gripped by fear at the thought of doing so and being rejected. For others, the environment, culture or norms within does not allow them to do so! Naturally, this affects their performance as they keep reaching out for their next employer even if the new job pays just a little bit more that what they currently make. They are willing to bail out and leave behind everything that they have worked for and accomplished within their current employment over the years for a few dollars more! None of this is desirable for either the employee and the employer and there must be a way to fix this .. but how?
Firstly, compensation is a topic that I do not believe needs to be approached emotionally – neither by the employee nor by the employer. Today’s businesses can use very sophisticated third party developed compensation models that classify the employee by skill type (i.e. sales, technical, marketing, administration et al), skill level (i.e. years of relevant experience), work impact bands (low, medium, high) and location of employment (i.e. country, cost of living index). These published industry standard models should be the tool that should be used to logically determine the targeted compensation for any employee and should help provide consequential guidelines for other compensation components like stock options and restricted stock units. The publishers of these models do ongoing market research and regularly update the data. Organizations and hiring managers should use this data with confidence during workforce planning, budgeting and determining employee compensations. There might still be some factors outside of this model that a supervisor might want or need to consider in determining the final outcome, but this should be more peripheral than core.
Now let us take a look at the employee, and let us get real here … if you really want to determine how your organization or even your industry rates you – just look at your paycheck, period! You have attained your paycheck specifically because of the skills and attributes that you have built over the years. Your paycheck is not higher than what it is today, not because it cannot be but because you do not posses the skills or attributes that are needed to get you there! Identify these skills, practice and perfect them with commitment and I can assure you that you will see your compensation curve zoom! So understand this very clearly, your compensation is a ‘scorecard’ – it shows your standing in your profession relative to others. There are many different causes that lead to this ‘score’. Successful professionals do not spend time and emotions on the ‘score’ other than using it to set their next goal – they focus, plan and implement their efforts around the ‘causes’ that they have previously identified that leads them to their new targeted ‘score’ – be it position or compensation!
Now, while it is absolutely fantastic to look at your paycheck then target what it needs to be in the near future and work at building the missing pieces that will take you there – greed is the biggest derailer to this process! I have seen instances where employees come across and even get considered for opportunities that are either well above their capabilities or get considered for a position that matches their skill but pays far more than what they are worth! See, both these situations are career traps that you should look out for and avoid at all costs!
The first situation happens where individuals go through an imperfect recruitment process (not uncommon at all!) or have internal influencers within the organization whereby they are found suitable for a position that they are incapable to fill. This inadequacy becomes visible very quickly and the consequences are never pleasant! In today’s connected world news travels faster than you will imagine and in the least, the credibility and integrity of people who become victims of this circumstance gets deeply dented. The second situation is more common and this is how it unfolds. An organization might be a new player in a specific market segment and might be in an urgent need to hire someone with the skill to help them go in. The easiest way in is to lure an employee from a competitor whose skill matches the new business need – a higher than market offer usually follows to get this person in quickly. The organization sees this as a short term tactical move, but to the employee the impact could be long term! The business priorities that led to the hiring of this individual at a premium sometimes stays and at other times tapers off! The employee who is hired might sometimes do well or gets moved to another position but sometimes stays and stagnates in the position which is not anymore a priority in the company! Many of these situations then lead to a termination as the position becomes redundant leaving the employee without a job but with a life style that cannot be funded by what the market is willing to pay him! What a tragedy … many a career has been destroyed by this unnecessary greed of seeking something that you are not worthy of! Some of these unfortunate victims are forced to take job openings that come along but are not able to cope with a reduction in compensation even though they try hard! The employee starts work at the new organization disillusioned, demotivated and disgruntled from day one. From there on his future in this new role is a self fulfilling prophecy!
I am forever a big fan of ambition and enterprise in all humans to reach for greater heights and larger achievements. While setting your sights high and running towards your goals, just be wary and constantly watchful of the small rocks and pot holes strewn along the way! Some of them will be very well camouflaged! Just make sure that you do not stumble and trip on any of them and kiss your bigger dreams goodbye!
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Is Changing a Habit even Worth It??
It is the summer of 2003 and I am standing on the kerb of the Newark International Airport with my brother–in-law puffing furiously on the last inch of my cigarette. I feel like my life depends on it before boarding my nine hour ‘non-smoking’ flight to Amsterdam en route to Singapore. It has been a hell of a busy week that started in California and then took me to the east coast. We decided to wind down over the weekend and drove out to Atlantic City to roll some dice and throw some cards and hope to hit some 21s. Then again, what is a downtime without a few vodka martinis and some greasy junk that often ends up being called ‘food’. So there I was, loaded with greasy meat, alcohol, nicotine and sleep deprivation barely making it to the airport on time, feeling more drained than rejuvenated! Security check was announced and we hugged and said our goodbyes. I vividly remember my cigarette butt still clasped between my fingers as I did so – then as I turned towards the trash bin and flicked my cigarette into it like I had done a thousand times prior, the haze suddenly cleared! “Let this be my last cigarette” – just like that, clear and loud!
I rushed through immigration and security and boarded the plane. I was so tired that I dozed off even before the seat belt signs came on! Daylight finally shone through my lids as the airplane thudded on the tarmac at Amsterdam. Guess what, the first thought that blazed in was –‘gosh I quit smoking’ – a swell of emotional pain followed soon … the pain of parting with a 24 year old habit is never an easy one! I slept through the Amsterdam stopover and most of the next 14 hours into Singapore. By the time I woke up again, most of the fatigue had washed away, my mind had cleared and I was able to reflect on what I had done more objectively. By the time we landed in Singapore, I was getting very comfortable with my decision and almost had a plan to deal with it and make it happen!
For years, like many before me I gave up smoking many times only to pick it up again. Smoking did not do me any good at sports, my clothes and hair must have borne the tobacco ‘stink’ that I knew was not pleasant for any non-smoker close to me, it was not good for my health and most importantly would leave me feeling embarrassed and awkward when my daughter (seven years old then) asked me pointed questions about when I would quit and I did not have a confident answer that would satisfy her! All that changed in a nano-second … that moment in time when all the past thoughts, awareness, questions, everything in my sub-conscious mind snow balled into a critical mass that made me take a decision to change it all! I write this in such great detail because it is indeed one of the most impactful and fulfilling decisions I have taken in my life - it impacted my life in more ways than one! It also taught me how to successfully make massive changes in life that initially looks too monstrous to overcome.
We live in a changing world where change has been universally touted as the ‘only constant’! Easier said than done really! Change requires resolve, courage, determination and massive actions. While I see many people resisting change (which by the way I do not endorse), what is more alarming is to see people or even organizations ‘overdoing the change bit’. They do not clearly understand the reasons that require the change and often let their emotions run wild, pushing for changes purely on emotional grounds! The actions that will drive the planned change needs solid commitment and commitments need resources (time and money that are both finite) to bring the right results. If the expectation about results is improperly set or if the results do not show due to poor or inadequate execution the ‘change exercise’ often does more damage than good!
All I am asking of you is to pick your battles (read ‘Changes’) wisely! If you think there are things you need to change in yourself - list and prioritize them. Be absolutely certain why you need to change in each of these aspects? Where are you falling behind in your life by holding on to these habits and how you will benefit if you let them go? What will your net gain through this transformation be and how it will impact the people around you? Your findings need to be pretty dramatic to consider the change seriously!
Once this is done, talk to someone you trust, friend, family, whoever you feel comfortable with. Someone who will candidly tell you who you are rather than make up things to make you feel happy. Seek their opinion on your list and how you have stacked them. Very often we are over critical on ourselves; many of us are out to find too many faults that really are not there. Talking to others smoothen this criticality out while identifying other new areas that might not even be visible to us. During these ‘tell me about me’ sessions, be aware that all you need is their opinion only. The final list will be for YOU to decide – do not let others do this for you!
I ask for selectivity because as I have said earlier, successful change will need incredible commitment and massive actions. Being able to manage this is never easy as you go through the following stages -
Commit to dramatically transform a deep rooted behavior rather than progressively replacing it. I firmly believed that my kerb side cigarette would be the last cigarette I would smoke. I did not decide to slow down on my daily intake and progressively wean myself off like many do – I just stopped!
Next, build walls around the change related actions so that initial hardships do not make the resolve wobbly. I would at every opportunity speak to everyone around me about how rapidly comfortable I was getting without a cigarette and how I was absolutely convinced that I would never have to get back to it. I also placed some wagers with the naysayers. Every time I spoke those words, I strengthened my resolve and strengthened the wall around the change that I was driving!
Finally, supplement your change related actions with other parallel actions that are empowering. These actions should support and reflect in a positive light the change that you are implementing. I revved up my gym work, improved my eating habits and felt my energy levels soar! I felt calmer and started to relate better with people around me. My confidence sky-rocketed with the awareness of the fact that I had accomplished quite easily what others struggle to do in their entire lifetime etc etc.
Honestly, I chanced upon this opportunity to change and learned a very valuable process from it. Try these steps I laid out – this is no rocket science and can be accomplished. If the desire exists, voila you will see the magic unfold!
It has been six years since that afternoon at the Newark Airport and I have not smoked since! More importantly, I have not felt the urge either ….. well, not that much! The human mind and intent is indeed more powerful than what we normally give it credit for. Use this amazing force wisely!
I rushed through immigration and security and boarded the plane. I was so tired that I dozed off even before the seat belt signs came on! Daylight finally shone through my lids as the airplane thudded on the tarmac at Amsterdam. Guess what, the first thought that blazed in was –‘gosh I quit smoking’ – a swell of emotional pain followed soon … the pain of parting with a 24 year old habit is never an easy one! I slept through the Amsterdam stopover and most of the next 14 hours into Singapore. By the time I woke up again, most of the fatigue had washed away, my mind had cleared and I was able to reflect on what I had done more objectively. By the time we landed in Singapore, I was getting very comfortable with my decision and almost had a plan to deal with it and make it happen!
For years, like many before me I gave up smoking many times only to pick it up again. Smoking did not do me any good at sports, my clothes and hair must have borne the tobacco ‘stink’ that I knew was not pleasant for any non-smoker close to me, it was not good for my health and most importantly would leave me feeling embarrassed and awkward when my daughter (seven years old then) asked me pointed questions about when I would quit and I did not have a confident answer that would satisfy her! All that changed in a nano-second … that moment in time when all the past thoughts, awareness, questions, everything in my sub-conscious mind snow balled into a critical mass that made me take a decision to change it all! I write this in such great detail because it is indeed one of the most impactful and fulfilling decisions I have taken in my life - it impacted my life in more ways than one! It also taught me how to successfully make massive changes in life that initially looks too monstrous to overcome.
We live in a changing world where change has been universally touted as the ‘only constant’! Easier said than done really! Change requires resolve, courage, determination and massive actions. While I see many people resisting change (which by the way I do not endorse), what is more alarming is to see people or even organizations ‘overdoing the change bit’. They do not clearly understand the reasons that require the change and often let their emotions run wild, pushing for changes purely on emotional grounds! The actions that will drive the planned change needs solid commitment and commitments need resources (time and money that are both finite) to bring the right results. If the expectation about results is improperly set or if the results do not show due to poor or inadequate execution the ‘change exercise’ often does more damage than good!
All I am asking of you is to pick your battles (read ‘Changes’) wisely! If you think there are things you need to change in yourself - list and prioritize them. Be absolutely certain why you need to change in each of these aspects? Where are you falling behind in your life by holding on to these habits and how you will benefit if you let them go? What will your net gain through this transformation be and how it will impact the people around you? Your findings need to be pretty dramatic to consider the change seriously!
Once this is done, talk to someone you trust, friend, family, whoever you feel comfortable with. Someone who will candidly tell you who you are rather than make up things to make you feel happy. Seek their opinion on your list and how you have stacked them. Very often we are over critical on ourselves; many of us are out to find too many faults that really are not there. Talking to others smoothen this criticality out while identifying other new areas that might not even be visible to us. During these ‘tell me about me’ sessions, be aware that all you need is their opinion only. The final list will be for YOU to decide – do not let others do this for you!
I ask for selectivity because as I have said earlier, successful change will need incredible commitment and massive actions. Being able to manage this is never easy as you go through the following stages -
Commit to dramatically transform a deep rooted behavior rather than progressively replacing it. I firmly believed that my kerb side cigarette would be the last cigarette I would smoke. I did not decide to slow down on my daily intake and progressively wean myself off like many do – I just stopped!
Next, build walls around the change related actions so that initial hardships do not make the resolve wobbly. I would at every opportunity speak to everyone around me about how rapidly comfortable I was getting without a cigarette and how I was absolutely convinced that I would never have to get back to it. I also placed some wagers with the naysayers. Every time I spoke those words, I strengthened my resolve and strengthened the wall around the change that I was driving!
Finally, supplement your change related actions with other parallel actions that are empowering. These actions should support and reflect in a positive light the change that you are implementing. I revved up my gym work, improved my eating habits and felt my energy levels soar! I felt calmer and started to relate better with people around me. My confidence sky-rocketed with the awareness of the fact that I had accomplished quite easily what others struggle to do in their entire lifetime etc etc.
Honestly, I chanced upon this opportunity to change and learned a very valuable process from it. Try these steps I laid out – this is no rocket science and can be accomplished. If the desire exists, voila you will see the magic unfold!
It has been six years since that afternoon at the Newark Airport and I have not smoked since! More importantly, I have not felt the urge either ….. well, not that much! The human mind and intent is indeed more powerful than what we normally give it credit for. Use this amazing force wisely!
Monday, July 20, 2009
Who Bombed my Company - Preparing for the Inevitable!
Some years ago I started my ‘stock market investment’ initiative as a part of my Investment Portfolio. The ‘analyst’ in me demanded that I learn the game from the masters before putting in my hard earned money. I picked up a Warren Buffet book at the airport on my next business trip and read it from cover to cover understanding most of Mr. Buffet’s philosophy if not all! As my awareness grew, I learnt of Benjamin Graham (the man Buffet attributes his financial market education to) and his famous narrative - The Intelligent Advisor
(Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intelligent_Investor).
These masters taught me the fundamentals of value investing and the art of profiting from market follies and disruptions rather than by participating in it! How to identify and buy into ‘value’ companies and invest in them for the long haul. How to stay away from speculating in organizations and businesses I was not familiar with irrespective of how lucrative their valuation and potential seemed to be! Many other anecdotes and advise that I have come to understand and appreciate. I actually followed up by reviewing Berkshire Hathaway’s famed Letter to the Shareholders that Mr. Buffet writes every year. (http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html). I also got insight into the Mr. Buffet’s own stock picks and other well regarded recommendations and then feeling fairly well ‘covered’ I put in my money in the market. Despite this attention, all my famed and well researched ‘blue chips’ are significantly down today!!! Mr. Buffet and Berkshire were not spared either! In the 2008 Letter to Shareholders he wrote – “Our decrease in net worth during 2008 was $11.5 billion, which reduced the per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock by 9.6%. Over the last 44 years book value has grown from $19 to $70,530, a rate of 20.3% compounded annually. As the year progressed, a series of life-threatening problems within many of the world’s great financial institutions was unveiled. This led to a dysfunctional credit market that in important respects soon turned non-functional. The watchword throughout the country became the creed I saw on restaurant walls when I was young: “In God we trust; all others pay cash.”
While I trust in God, Mr. Graham and Mr. Buffet like the rest of the investor planet, I begin to wonder why these famed organizations that I trusted my money with are actually failing to perform as the financial markets go sour and what other established and upcoming organizations can learn from them! Once you think about it …there is plenty!
All organizations are destined to face ‘market disruptions’, ‘conflicting and negative internal forces’ at some stage of their evolution that will force them to take dramatic measures to survive and hold on to their positions of leadership. When this situation is coupled with a larger macro economic slowdown that we are in the middle of now, the impact obviously is further amplified! Unlike what is usually the norm, I do not blame the management team for the organization’s fall though this is easiest to do! The lackluster results are hardly because of a single wrong strategy that the leadership has implemented or a specific move of the competitor that the leaders failed to see. Rather, the root cause often is a sum of many different reasons – inability to see a prominent market shift early enough (normally called a ‘disruption), unwillingness to change the way of doing things, inability of hiring the right skills into the company and surprisingly the inability to see an emerging competitor who leverages the disruption and changes the game for the incumbent market leader!
Lets be realistic though, this is a natural consequence and will happen to every organization – not just once, but many times in the history of the organization. It will happen despite the skill, diligence and track record of the management team – no exceptions! The forces that make these happen are far more diabolical than the people who are impacted by it! So the end game is not about prevention but about how to respond to these circumstances.
Very often I see organizations and their leadership going straight in with knee jerk reflexes trying hard to do things that make them look good in the short term to their boards and shareholders. Sometimes they do not really have a choice either, as the larger forces start to lean on them! However, given the choice here is my pick of pointed actions by the leadership team when the going gets really tough…
Stay the course, show that you know what you are doing – Demonstration of confidence is critical in troubled times. It is natural for the leadership team to be concerned and worried but they need to be able to face their troops, stakeholders and customers with demonstrated confidence. Demonstrate ability to face the situation however bad it might be and lead through the crisis riding on the plan that they have built with their leadership teams! While doing so they can be vocal about what is unknown to them – taking this position does not weaken them, on the contrary, this makes them more credible and human!
Ensure complete consensus amongst the leadership team; commit to consistent & extensive communication, both internal and external – A classic fall out of a crisis is a flurry of misguided activities by executives who make a valiant attempt to demonstrate that they are doing ‘something’. These actions are not products of collaboration, consensus and in many instances are conflicting and counter productive. Hard times call for complete consensus amongst the leadership. Resources are usually scarce in today’s competitive environment, more so in troubled time. It is absolutely ridiculous to squander this rare asset due to irresponsible and unsynchronized planning by management. Once leadership gets around the table and determines a common set of actions, consistent and regular internal and external communication is a must – over-communicate rather than go soft on it! Communication gives people the belief that things are progressing and will hopefully be in control, positive data if available, heightens this optimism!
Focus on your customers more than ever before – Customers either make or break organizations. During the tough times, it is great to have your customers along with you. Do not just be happy satisfying them, wow them off their shoes! Knowing the situation that your organization is, they will admire your gesture even more than they did during the sweet times!
Focus on the areas of strength, in parallel fix your gaps – As I have mentioned earlier, it is common for crisis to bring in a flurry of activities that are neither properly orchestrated nor necessarily good for the organization. The leadership team has to agree on some key areas to focus the limited resources on and they better be areas of visible strength! These done, use the ‘downturn’ to let the bottom open out – discard wrong products, processes and people! Fix the engine that will propel the organization forward. This is as a good an opportunity as any that will come along!
Find every opportunity to differentiate – Leadership in revenue, margins and share has to be driven by differentiation. In today’s world of readily available information, it is hard to do anything that someone else has not already done or is not in the process of doing. Yet, a Yahoo happened despite an Alta Vista, a Google happened despite an Yahoo and an ipod despite a whole array of portable mp3 players that preceded it. You get the plot – great examples of differentiation and value creation. Do it better, faster, cheaper and easier than anything anybody has ever done before and you have a chance to win! Differentiation comes out of innovation and innovation is a product of attitude! Good times or bad, this attitude and commitment at every level of the organization is an absolute must for any organization to turn the corner. If you are in any doubt, ask a certain company in Cupertino and they will clarify your doubts!
I am confident Mr Buffet’s handpicked stocks (and the organizations that stand behind them) are staffed by executives who share my beliefs in one way or the other and are actually implementing them! I feel this way, not only in protection of my investments but the millions who are dependent on how these organizations will do, going forward. If they do, Mr. Buffet’s next letter to the Berkshire’s shareholders will be a lot more optimistic!
(Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intelligent_Investor).
These masters taught me the fundamentals of value investing and the art of profiting from market follies and disruptions rather than by participating in it! How to identify and buy into ‘value’ companies and invest in them for the long haul. How to stay away from speculating in organizations and businesses I was not familiar with irrespective of how lucrative their valuation and potential seemed to be! Many other anecdotes and advise that I have come to understand and appreciate. I actually followed up by reviewing Berkshire Hathaway’s famed Letter to the Shareholders that Mr. Buffet writes every year. (http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html). I also got insight into the Mr. Buffet’s own stock picks and other well regarded recommendations and then feeling fairly well ‘covered’ I put in my money in the market. Despite this attention, all my famed and well researched ‘blue chips’ are significantly down today!!! Mr. Buffet and Berkshire were not spared either! In the 2008 Letter to Shareholders he wrote – “Our decrease in net worth during 2008 was $11.5 billion, which reduced the per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock by 9.6%. Over the last 44 years book value has grown from $19 to $70,530, a rate of 20.3% compounded annually. As the year progressed, a series of life-threatening problems within many of the world’s great financial institutions was unveiled. This led to a dysfunctional credit market that in important respects soon turned non-functional. The watchword throughout the country became the creed I saw on restaurant walls when I was young: “In God we trust; all others pay cash.”
While I trust in God, Mr. Graham and Mr. Buffet like the rest of the investor planet, I begin to wonder why these famed organizations that I trusted my money with are actually failing to perform as the financial markets go sour and what other established and upcoming organizations can learn from them! Once you think about it …there is plenty!
All organizations are destined to face ‘market disruptions’, ‘conflicting and negative internal forces’ at some stage of their evolution that will force them to take dramatic measures to survive and hold on to their positions of leadership. When this situation is coupled with a larger macro economic slowdown that we are in the middle of now, the impact obviously is further amplified! Unlike what is usually the norm, I do not blame the management team for the organization’s fall though this is easiest to do! The lackluster results are hardly because of a single wrong strategy that the leadership has implemented or a specific move of the competitor that the leaders failed to see. Rather, the root cause often is a sum of many different reasons – inability to see a prominent market shift early enough (normally called a ‘disruption), unwillingness to change the way of doing things, inability of hiring the right skills into the company and surprisingly the inability to see an emerging competitor who leverages the disruption and changes the game for the incumbent market leader!
Lets be realistic though, this is a natural consequence and will happen to every organization – not just once, but many times in the history of the organization. It will happen despite the skill, diligence and track record of the management team – no exceptions! The forces that make these happen are far more diabolical than the people who are impacted by it! So the end game is not about prevention but about how to respond to these circumstances.
Very often I see organizations and their leadership going straight in with knee jerk reflexes trying hard to do things that make them look good in the short term to their boards and shareholders. Sometimes they do not really have a choice either, as the larger forces start to lean on them! However, given the choice here is my pick of pointed actions by the leadership team when the going gets really tough…
Stay the course, show that you know what you are doing – Demonstration of confidence is critical in troubled times. It is natural for the leadership team to be concerned and worried but they need to be able to face their troops, stakeholders and customers with demonstrated confidence. Demonstrate ability to face the situation however bad it might be and lead through the crisis riding on the plan that they have built with their leadership teams! While doing so they can be vocal about what is unknown to them – taking this position does not weaken them, on the contrary, this makes them more credible and human!
Ensure complete consensus amongst the leadership team; commit to consistent & extensive communication, both internal and external – A classic fall out of a crisis is a flurry of misguided activities by executives who make a valiant attempt to demonstrate that they are doing ‘something’. These actions are not products of collaboration, consensus and in many instances are conflicting and counter productive. Hard times call for complete consensus amongst the leadership. Resources are usually scarce in today’s competitive environment, more so in troubled time. It is absolutely ridiculous to squander this rare asset due to irresponsible and unsynchronized planning by management. Once leadership gets around the table and determines a common set of actions, consistent and regular internal and external communication is a must – over-communicate rather than go soft on it! Communication gives people the belief that things are progressing and will hopefully be in control, positive data if available, heightens this optimism!
Focus on your customers more than ever before – Customers either make or break organizations. During the tough times, it is great to have your customers along with you. Do not just be happy satisfying them, wow them off their shoes! Knowing the situation that your organization is, they will admire your gesture even more than they did during the sweet times!
Focus on the areas of strength, in parallel fix your gaps – As I have mentioned earlier, it is common for crisis to bring in a flurry of activities that are neither properly orchestrated nor necessarily good for the organization. The leadership team has to agree on some key areas to focus the limited resources on and they better be areas of visible strength! These done, use the ‘downturn’ to let the bottom open out – discard wrong products, processes and people! Fix the engine that will propel the organization forward. This is as a good an opportunity as any that will come along!
Find every opportunity to differentiate – Leadership in revenue, margins and share has to be driven by differentiation. In today’s world of readily available information, it is hard to do anything that someone else has not already done or is not in the process of doing. Yet, a Yahoo happened despite an Alta Vista, a Google happened despite an Yahoo and an ipod despite a whole array of portable mp3 players that preceded it. You get the plot – great examples of differentiation and value creation. Do it better, faster, cheaper and easier than anything anybody has ever done before and you have a chance to win! Differentiation comes out of innovation and innovation is a product of attitude! Good times or bad, this attitude and commitment at every level of the organization is an absolute must for any organization to turn the corner. If you are in any doubt, ask a certain company in Cupertino and they will clarify your doubts!
I am confident Mr Buffet’s handpicked stocks (and the organizations that stand behind them) are staffed by executives who share my beliefs in one way or the other and are actually implementing them! I feel this way, not only in protection of my investments but the millions who are dependent on how these organizations will do, going forward. If they do, Mr. Buffet’s next letter to the Berkshire’s shareholders will be a lot more optimistic!
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Criticism is for the ‘Fortunate’ – so use it wisely!
Criticism is for the ‘Fortunate’ – so use it wisely! Everyone, everywhere normally view ‘Criticism’ with unhappiness, concern, disdain and even negativity! Criticism is best done without and usually makes people visibly uncomfortable – not only those who face it but even those who happen to be around when it is doled out, especially in Asian circles!
I am currently enjoying being a judge the MBA Challenge – an online reality show in Singapore and part of my role is to put up contestants for elimination by ‘online voting’. In course of doing so, all the three judges are verbally and visibly critical on the contestants with the objective of either showing them the ropes that they need to learn to survive in the show or to make it very clear to the viewers, why some of the contestants should be eliminated.
In several instances, I feel we are too harsh to these contestants, but then I have second thoughts! I recall my growing up years .. I was the only son, the only brother and the youngest member in a nuclear family and always had my way! Never did anyone at home see or judge me and my actions critically! Seemed great at that time and I did not mind a bit nor do I blame my dear ones who lavished that treatment on me. As I grew up and came in close contact of the outside world, I started to see the disadvantage of my privileged childhood! I could not face up and cope with anything ‘even faintly not-so-good’ that was spoken about me. It was not that I was dumb enough not to realize that I was not ‘right’ in everything that I said nor that I was not the ‘best’ at everything I did – but it was very difficult to accept, leave alone digest the reality!
As I worked my way through primary and tertiary education and then through my work life, I met, worked with and learned from highly talented individuals who I was fortunate enough to associate with. I learned about work and life, about people and relationships. All this learning has shaped my career and what I have attained over the years. I am happy that as I progressed, I was more willing and agreeable about stepping outside my comfort zone of ‘personal perfection’ & seeking feedback from these people who saw me from up close and were thankfully willing to be critical about personal and work attributes that I needed to work on – many of these were indeed true and I knew about them if not acknowledge them! These corrections (some, if not all) molded me and made me more adequate in addressing today’s challenges at home, work and play!
Along the way, I learnt that any criticism is a gift really! It is advice that enables an individual to visualize a shortcoming that others see, which might or might not be immediately visible to him or even if visible, he might be in denial for different reasons. Whether this observation is considered valid or what the individual does with it, is absolutely personal – but atleast it presents a choice. Being aware of an area of weakness is halfway to resolving it! If you are not even aware of a shortcoming – how are you going to eliminate it?? So the next time you are criticized, view it as a free feedback routine – no one knows you better than yourself. You have the absolute and ultimate authority to determine whether you will accept this feedback or reject it. If you do determine that the recommendation is one that improves your current standing then by all means accept it and take massive action to implement it. Strengthen yourself and thank the outside world and the individual for presenting you with this ‘gift’!
I have also seen people who accept criticism in the right spirit and then some who go overboard and often overdo the personal transformation bit! While being ‘closed’ to acceptance of feedback is not a desirable position, acts of dramatic acceptance are not recommended as well! Look, we all have individual character traits. Depending on age and circumstances, many of these traits are fairly deep rooted. These traits represent us, make us what we are and help us to be accepted by our family, friends and co-workers despite our imperfections! Trying to change these is not only difficult but not desirable as well! When people try to overdo this, the changes that follow might work for a while but will definitely not be sustainable!
So here is the balancing act that I will recommend. Be self aware – be a firm judge of your strengths and perceived areas of improvement. Be prepared to actively solicit feedback from people who know you well and will judge you without bias! While feedback on ‘Strengths’ are welcome and pleasing to the ear, lean more on determining areas and traits that need more development. Find every opportunity to eliminate (to whatever extent possible) your weaknesses and strengthen your strengths! Be open to criticism – even if some of these are unfairly directed at you, use them wisely, not emotionally! Whether you accept or do anything with these is totally upto you, consequentially if you choose to do nothing is also upto you. Your attitude and actions will determine where you go from where you are today!
I am currently enjoying being a judge the MBA Challenge – an online reality show in Singapore and part of my role is to put up contestants for elimination by ‘online voting’. In course of doing so, all the three judges are verbally and visibly critical on the contestants with the objective of either showing them the ropes that they need to learn to survive in the show or to make it very clear to the viewers, why some of the contestants should be eliminated.
In several instances, I feel we are too harsh to these contestants, but then I have second thoughts! I recall my growing up years .. I was the only son, the only brother and the youngest member in a nuclear family and always had my way! Never did anyone at home see or judge me and my actions critically! Seemed great at that time and I did not mind a bit nor do I blame my dear ones who lavished that treatment on me. As I grew up and came in close contact of the outside world, I started to see the disadvantage of my privileged childhood! I could not face up and cope with anything ‘even faintly not-so-good’ that was spoken about me. It was not that I was dumb enough not to realize that I was not ‘right’ in everything that I said nor that I was not the ‘best’ at everything I did – but it was very difficult to accept, leave alone digest the reality!
As I worked my way through primary and tertiary education and then through my work life, I met, worked with and learned from highly talented individuals who I was fortunate enough to associate with. I learned about work and life, about people and relationships. All this learning has shaped my career and what I have attained over the years. I am happy that as I progressed, I was more willing and agreeable about stepping outside my comfort zone of ‘personal perfection’ & seeking feedback from these people who saw me from up close and were thankfully willing to be critical about personal and work attributes that I needed to work on – many of these were indeed true and I knew about them if not acknowledge them! These corrections (some, if not all) molded me and made me more adequate in addressing today’s challenges at home, work and play!
Along the way, I learnt that any criticism is a gift really! It is advice that enables an individual to visualize a shortcoming that others see, which might or might not be immediately visible to him or even if visible, he might be in denial for different reasons. Whether this observation is considered valid or what the individual does with it, is absolutely personal – but atleast it presents a choice. Being aware of an area of weakness is halfway to resolving it! If you are not even aware of a shortcoming – how are you going to eliminate it?? So the next time you are criticized, view it as a free feedback routine – no one knows you better than yourself. You have the absolute and ultimate authority to determine whether you will accept this feedback or reject it. If you do determine that the recommendation is one that improves your current standing then by all means accept it and take massive action to implement it. Strengthen yourself and thank the outside world and the individual for presenting you with this ‘gift’!
I have also seen people who accept criticism in the right spirit and then some who go overboard and often overdo the personal transformation bit! While being ‘closed’ to acceptance of feedback is not a desirable position, acts of dramatic acceptance are not recommended as well! Look, we all have individual character traits. Depending on age and circumstances, many of these traits are fairly deep rooted. These traits represent us, make us what we are and help us to be accepted by our family, friends and co-workers despite our imperfections! Trying to change these is not only difficult but not desirable as well! When people try to overdo this, the changes that follow might work for a while but will definitely not be sustainable!
So here is the balancing act that I will recommend. Be self aware – be a firm judge of your strengths and perceived areas of improvement. Be prepared to actively solicit feedback from people who know you well and will judge you without bias! While feedback on ‘Strengths’ are welcome and pleasing to the ear, lean more on determining areas and traits that need more development. Find every opportunity to eliminate (to whatever extent possible) your weaknesses and strengthen your strengths! Be open to criticism – even if some of these are unfairly directed at you, use them wisely, not emotionally! Whether you accept or do anything with these is totally upto you, consequentially if you choose to do nothing is also upto you. Your attitude and actions will determine where you go from where you are today!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Leadership Models – What is relevant today?
Leadership Models – What is relevant today?
I had to go ‘off-line’ from this blog for about 6 months or so! While I felt guilty every day for being away, I was busy doing something very meaningful at Brocade. After stamping our leadership in the Fibre Channel based Storage Area Network (SAN) space for 12 years we at Brocade needed to expand our total addressable market beyond the datacenter into the broader Ethernet LAN/WAN space. On 22 December we completed the acquisition of Foundry Networks for $2.5Billion, a staggering sum in the difficult money market of today! Having made such a big bet, it is critical for us to ensure that the integration between the two organizations concludes satisfactorily and communicates comfort and confidence to the customer and partners that enables us to bring our end goal (revenue and non-revenue) behind this acquisition to fruition! Pleased to say that things are on track and I am happy as a leader with the progress we have made. Enough said … for more details, please visit http://www.brocade.com/
Starting June, I am also playing ‘Judge’ at the MBA Challenge – Asia’s First Online Reality Show (use this search string on the Facebook search field) i.e. aired EXCLUSIVELY over the WEB with 2 MBA seats worth $25,000 up for grabs (http://www.mbachallenge.tv/). This is the first season of MBA Challenge and from the interest that is quite visible, I am quite certain subsequent seasons are in the offing! The organizers are already putting plans to export the show beyond Singapore. The elimination process has commenced and we are down to the ‘last 8’. The contestants are young, energetic and bubbling with ideas, energy and perspective – very eager to learn. It’s a pleasure and joy to be amongst these young folks and my interesting co-judges. I do confess that I come out of each session (definitely not a walk in the park!) having learnt more than what I have contributed besides having a lot of fun! Go take a look at the website and you will know what I mean! Better still vote for the remaining contestants and aim to compete in the next season if you are one of those who are after an MBA!
In one of the episodes of the MBA Challenge (The Active Channel biz plan – Episode 3), the judges me included came down on the contestants hard for not demonstrating ‘leadership’ in a group situation which goes without saying, is a key attribute of a business leader and for what an MBA stands for. Leadership need not just be linked to a position – a person does not need to be a designated team leader to demonstrate leadership qualities. Leadership can be demonstrated by an individual contributor as well. This core trait shows up because of some specific skills – subject matter expertise, communication skills or just the innate ability of an individual to get people in the team to participate, collaborate and contribute irrespective of their competencies. While doing so a ‘leader’ demonstrates the ability to guide the discussion to its intended conclusion rather than have everyone rambling on endlessly!
Talking about rambling endlessly brings me to the common sight of certain people hogging air-time and not really communicating meaningful substance. Their belief is in equating visibility to importance. This is hardly so! The audience in every possible forum is intelligent and educated to decipher substance from baloney! In today’s connected world, where news travels fast the results can be catastrophic!
In some of the elimination related discussions and deliberations at the show and the Facebook entries, I chanced upon selfless leadership – the ‘servant-leader’ model. The willingness of the leader to set aside personal needs and wants in seeking the greatest good for others, in accomplishing through others rather than seeking personal wins. I have also read about beliefs where the model ‘super leader’ is expected to know where he needs to go and how to get there! They should then be able to communicate with and convince their teams with adequate passion and conviction. Both these concepts could be real and there could be individuals who successfully live out these roles. However like in other instances, I will advise reader discretion and will recommend that these concepts be viewed in the right perspective keeping ‘real world’ workplaces, businesses and circumstances in mind!
The real world has an incredible scarcity of leaders who ‘do-not’ have any personal ‘needs and wants’. These need not be financial or even material! I just find it hard to perceive a leader being successful in leading a team across the line without any personal skin in the game at all! On the contrary, I would call it a risk in hiring or nominating a leader who has no motivation of a personal gain at all and is purely ‘serving’ the team by leading them! To me the servant leader is a relevant philosophy with a specific place in the leadership doctrine but not wholly relevant on a practical plane at least in today’s world gone crazy!
Next, the leader who knows where to go and how to get there… concept wise okay but I question how realistic this is in today’s context?? At work I mostly face management challenges that are mostly multi dimensional in nature. Solving or even addressing these situations by a ‘generalist’ leader or one with a single core skill is virtually impossible! Yes, the leader should be able to set directions towards a ‘landing zone’ in terms of outcome expectations but can hardly do every thing else to take the team to the desired outcome by himself!
Good leader’s build their teams with great people! When faced with a situation, they get these smart guys who ‘get it’ & posses different core competencies and expertise around a table, define the situation, the end goal and then pretend to be the dumbest person in the room! Almost without exceptions, the leader asks great questions, solicits involvement and opinions from everyone on the table (the broader the skills mix the more rounded the discussion & the cumulative opinion) and ensures that the discussion stays on track. These leaders are great at timing their own entry and exit from the group discussion. They do not hog air time, prefer to be great listeners instead! In almost every instance they demonstrate immaculate timing in closing the meeting. They successfully consolidate, summarize and direct the actions that evolve from the ‘session’ that will likely address the required end goal. So you see – the savvy leader of today did not exactly know where to go and definitely did not know how to get there, but leveraged his team members to determine the possible answers.
I had to go ‘off-line’ from this blog for about 6 months or so! While I felt guilty every day for being away, I was busy doing something very meaningful at Brocade. After stamping our leadership in the Fibre Channel based Storage Area Network (SAN) space for 12 years we at Brocade needed to expand our total addressable market beyond the datacenter into the broader Ethernet LAN/WAN space. On 22 December we completed the acquisition of Foundry Networks for $2.5Billion, a staggering sum in the difficult money market of today! Having made such a big bet, it is critical for us to ensure that the integration between the two organizations concludes satisfactorily and communicates comfort and confidence to the customer and partners that enables us to bring our end goal (revenue and non-revenue) behind this acquisition to fruition! Pleased to say that things are on track and I am happy as a leader with the progress we have made. Enough said … for more details, please visit http://www.brocade.com/
Starting June, I am also playing ‘Judge’ at the MBA Challenge – Asia’s First Online Reality Show (use this search string on the Facebook search field) i.e. aired EXCLUSIVELY over the WEB with 2 MBA seats worth $25,000 up for grabs (http://www.mbachallenge.tv/). This is the first season of MBA Challenge and from the interest that is quite visible, I am quite certain subsequent seasons are in the offing! The organizers are already putting plans to export the show beyond Singapore. The elimination process has commenced and we are down to the ‘last 8’. The contestants are young, energetic and bubbling with ideas, energy and perspective – very eager to learn. It’s a pleasure and joy to be amongst these young folks and my interesting co-judges. I do confess that I come out of each session (definitely not a walk in the park!) having learnt more than what I have contributed besides having a lot of fun! Go take a look at the website and you will know what I mean! Better still vote for the remaining contestants and aim to compete in the next season if you are one of those who are after an MBA!
In one of the episodes of the MBA Challenge (The Active Channel biz plan – Episode 3), the judges me included came down on the contestants hard for not demonstrating ‘leadership’ in a group situation which goes without saying, is a key attribute of a business leader and for what an MBA stands for. Leadership need not just be linked to a position – a person does not need to be a designated team leader to demonstrate leadership qualities. Leadership can be demonstrated by an individual contributor as well. This core trait shows up because of some specific skills – subject matter expertise, communication skills or just the innate ability of an individual to get people in the team to participate, collaborate and contribute irrespective of their competencies. While doing so a ‘leader’ demonstrates the ability to guide the discussion to its intended conclusion rather than have everyone rambling on endlessly!
Talking about rambling endlessly brings me to the common sight of certain people hogging air-time and not really communicating meaningful substance. Their belief is in equating visibility to importance. This is hardly so! The audience in every possible forum is intelligent and educated to decipher substance from baloney! In today’s connected world, where news travels fast the results can be catastrophic!
In some of the elimination related discussions and deliberations at the show and the Facebook entries, I chanced upon selfless leadership – the ‘servant-leader’ model. The willingness of the leader to set aside personal needs and wants in seeking the greatest good for others, in accomplishing through others rather than seeking personal wins. I have also read about beliefs where the model ‘super leader’ is expected to know where he needs to go and how to get there! They should then be able to communicate with and convince their teams with adequate passion and conviction. Both these concepts could be real and there could be individuals who successfully live out these roles. However like in other instances, I will advise reader discretion and will recommend that these concepts be viewed in the right perspective keeping ‘real world’ workplaces, businesses and circumstances in mind!
The real world has an incredible scarcity of leaders who ‘do-not’ have any personal ‘needs and wants’. These need not be financial or even material! I just find it hard to perceive a leader being successful in leading a team across the line without any personal skin in the game at all! On the contrary, I would call it a risk in hiring or nominating a leader who has no motivation of a personal gain at all and is purely ‘serving’ the team by leading them! To me the servant leader is a relevant philosophy with a specific place in the leadership doctrine but not wholly relevant on a practical plane at least in today’s world gone crazy!
Next, the leader who knows where to go and how to get there… concept wise okay but I question how realistic this is in today’s context?? At work I mostly face management challenges that are mostly multi dimensional in nature. Solving or even addressing these situations by a ‘generalist’ leader or one with a single core skill is virtually impossible! Yes, the leader should be able to set directions towards a ‘landing zone’ in terms of outcome expectations but can hardly do every thing else to take the team to the desired outcome by himself!
Good leader’s build their teams with great people! When faced with a situation, they get these smart guys who ‘get it’ & posses different core competencies and expertise around a table, define the situation, the end goal and then pretend to be the dumbest person in the room! Almost without exceptions, the leader asks great questions, solicits involvement and opinions from everyone on the table (the broader the skills mix the more rounded the discussion & the cumulative opinion) and ensures that the discussion stays on track. These leaders are great at timing their own entry and exit from the group discussion. They do not hog air time, prefer to be great listeners instead! In almost every instance they demonstrate immaculate timing in closing the meeting. They successfully consolidate, summarize and direct the actions that evolve from the ‘session’ that will likely address the required end goal. So you see – the savvy leader of today did not exactly know where to go and definitely did not know how to get there, but leveraged his team members to determine the possible answers.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Leadership when the Chips are Down!
- The economic abyss that we are all in will eventually level off just like the 18 recessions and the 3 depressions that have come and gone in the last 100 years!! It will take some time though! As organizations face persistent uncertainty and the necessity to adapt to rapidly fluctuating fiscal and monetary situations, leaders are facing some truly exciting time to demonstrate their core abilities or the lack of it!!! Organizations that are used to regular home runs will also not be spared not to mention the big names which have already sunk in the dark choppy waters in 2008!.
This ‘negative’ shift in paradigm will impact employees, customer loyalty, security, budgets and everyday organizational decisions. As strange as it may sound, it is far easier to find leaders who know how to cope with success rather than those who can cope with success AND failure alike and still triumph!! Knowing how to lead during these extended times of uncertainty can help organizations maintain their leadership advantage, weather the immediate storms, and emerge stronger in the process.
Make ‘Caring’ People Decisions
Downturns normally herald missed revenue, margin and productivity goals. As organizations review their performance and ability to perform given these circumstances, leaders are often tempted to scale down or eliminate employees and employee development initiatives.
While this may be necessary (not that I absolutely subscribe to them outside of sheer practicality), utmost care must be taken to communicate and implement the decision in a way that will still reinforce the organization’s commitment to its workforce. If done poorly, it may seem like a “panic attack” to the workforce and create a self-reinforcing cycle that loosens the bonds of loyalty across the business.
Poor or un-weighed decisions at this stage can very adversely impact immediate priorities and have larger long term ramifications that the immediate gratifications that these actions were intended to serve not to mention the dent to the organization’s credo that these actions often deliver.
It is crucial to bear in mind that these dark clouds will ultimately go away – the way in which the organizations and its leaders have dealt with this period will largely determine how strongly the organization shines when the sun comes out!!!
Lead Well in Tough Times
As I have repeatedly said, leadership is about rallying people behind shared vision, mission, and goals through awareness, collaboration, accountability and empowerment. It is about connecting human action with specific objectives and aligning people and groups to work together toward those ends.
In the midst of circumstances that spell fear, uncertainty and doubt leaders are responsible to ensure calmness while providing clear guidance and directions to the teams that they lead. They are responsible for keeping the team focused on its immediate short-medium, term objectives while making them aware of the changing circumstances which might need them to re-evaluate the mode of attaining the goals that they seek and flag any associated risks.
The leader’s ability to generate a collective feeling of existence and accomplishment within the team is crucial!
Align Talent base to Business Strategy
Organizations need to strengthen the link between its business strategy and its talent pools. The commander of the ship needs to consider: are short-term commitments vulnerable due to lack of talent to help achieve core strategies? Are the right people in the critical roles, how are they being retained?
Leaders need to focus their teams to address the short-mid term exigencies. The status quo questioned, reviewed while a new set of behaviors need to be cultured, monitored, and reinforced. All of this is best done through collaboration rather than a autocratic mandate. Collaboration drives broader buy-in, larger ownership and better execution
The resurrection might call for attainment of multiple targets. This will demand a sense of balance. People will need to be explained the ‘Why’ and encouraged to find ways to determine how their goals can be connected without the need for a binary choice. Most leader5s and teams struggle with this balance. While there is no perfect solution, but the desire to question status quo, adopting a change in how things are while aiming for the best possible solution for the current situation sounds pretty darn good to me!
If a restructure or a reduction in force is absolutely needed, set progressive expectations and ensure that the remaining workforce is re-engaged. Cutbacks create a sense of helplessness in the organization. Leaders need to acknowledge the associated pain and frustration and ask teams what they believe are the top priorities at this time. Effective leaders will always take steps to ensure that the newly created groups become effective teams in the new setting and do not just consider themselves as “survivors.”
Treat your Employees and Customers right
Know your people very well! Tough times (as goes the adage) bring out the best in many people. High-potential staffers and teams may be ready to step up sooner than expected. This is a time to help people learn from experience, to let the capable ones soar! This is the time to share the best practices that demonstrate the depth of the talent already on board!
Ensure that top performers are retained at all cost. Besides providing the results, they are also capable of setting and driving the right attitude, mood and tone across the whole organization. Get closer to these people and show your ‘love and support’ for what they are doing.
Take customer loyalty very seriously! Don’t just respond to customer expectations; find out proactive ways to anticipate what the customer wants as the environment, industry and markets change. Make these changes faster than anyone else. Accelerate the implementation by leveraging technology. Reinvent the depth and breadth of relationship with top customers before your competitor does it!
Overdo the Communication bit
There is a reason why we have two ears and one mouth. Spend twice the time listening rather than talking. By the way do not do both at the same time! These times require leaders to listen to their teams and provide them the right guidance, advice, directions or inspiration. Leaders need to use every tool in the bag to accomplish this.
Communicate business challenges, the gaps and the associated risks with absolute candor. It is crucial to communicate even when there is nothing to communicate. This helps employees realize that communication channels have stayed open.
Create timely forums to host collaborative discussions regarding the organization your company wants to be in say three years from now and what needs to be done right now to attain that. An exercise of this nature helps disperse hope, a sense of belonging and a shared future within the employees. Use these forums to share demonstrated best practices regarding employee collaboration, customer satisfaction, employee driven initiatives, skills development, workplace and work force efficiencies etc.
State the key takeaways, the individual accountabilities and the follow up actions. Rally support for the initiative. Ask people what assistance they need to deliver what is expected of them.
Set a GPS for the Future
An organization becomes what its people and the leaders guide it to be. When there is proper alignment between the business strategy that the organization wants to drive and the internal or outsourced
Talent that it has access to, when the organization and its leaders relate well to employees and customers and when the leader practices honest, clear and open communication, the organizations can take on uncertain circumstances, weather the macro economic storms and consequently create a brighter and fundamentally stronger future as the dust begins to settle!t.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Organizational IQ
What is your organization's IQ (intelligence quotient) ? By this I do not mean how smart it is, but how aware it is and how it operates in its own, unique environment. Do customers find it easy or difficult to do business with your organization? What type of feedback does your company receive from its business partners? What about you? Do you find it easy to get things done within your organization or does everything simply seem more difficult than it needs to be?
This blog is posted by: Dennis Rose
This blog is posted by: Dennis Rose
What is your organization's IQ (intelligence quotient) ? By this I do not mean how smart it is, but how aware it is and how it operates in its own, unique environment. Do customers find it easy or difficult to do business with your organization? What type of feedback does your company receive from its business partners? What about you? Do you find it easy to get things done within your organization or does everything simply seem more difficult than it needs to be?
The concept¹ of organizational IQ traces back to research work done at Stanford University and is defined as a measure of how organizations assimilate information and put together their decision and information architectures. Much like a personal psychological IQ, an organizational IQ relates to how an organization can take in information, process it, makes decisions based upon that and then put those decisions into action. However, a company therefore regarded as smart or dominant in their particular market segment does not necessarily have a high organizational IQ.
I once worked for a small start-up that focused on optical character recognition technology based scanners. Their one and only product scanned typed paper pages, converted the words into text streams that were then fed into word processing software or databases. The productivity savings for law firms, hospitals, government agencies and just about anyone who had to re-type a lot of paper documents into computer systems was significant and made the product very successful. The company had a gifted technical leader and generally the core technology of the firm was considered leading edge at the time I joined them. The management style of this company, however, was very centralized and a bit parochial. People outside of the headquarters location were treated as “doers” (e.g. go get the order, go do the repair) rather than as team members. It was surprising, even after factoring in that it was a start-up, that the product marketing manager was also the marketing communications manager and the events manager and the technical publications manager. Even if she had wanted to, she didn’t have enough time left in her schedule to seek out any input from the field or to review what we voluntarily chose to send her. There was little to no collaboration between HQ and the field. The executive team rarely met with customers, analysts or the trade media, as they were more concerned with the engineering road map. Most of their external relationships went no further than a few professors at the renowned engineering university that the chief technology officer had graduated from.
These factors led to a near absence of being in touch with what the market wanted and market shift in packaging of OCR scanners that would soon have a large impact on our business. Two competitors introduced smaller desktop scanners with the ability to easily support more type styles at a lower price, as they standardized their scanning engines on commodity PC class chip sets. All at once, we had competitive offerings that were more easily connected to the rapidly growing base of PCs being adopted for the first time by customers, while also being less expensive and more versatile than our company’s product. To make matters worse, our company failed to react to the new competition, refusing to supply the field sales and SE personnel with competitive analyses for these new products or to suggest selling strategies designed to protect our market share until we could respond. The engineering leadership of the firm even dismissed the competitive desktop models as a “passing fad”. In the end, my employer lost significant market share and ran out of cash before they were able to bring a new product to market. They subsequently went out of business.
In this situation, the company had no functioning process in place to ensure sufficient awareness of external information such as changing market preferences, the shift of word processing from mini-computers to desktop PCs and threatening competitive movements. Having external information awareness is a critical element of an organization’s IQ. A company cannot possibly expect to be able to react to changing events if they do not know that events are indeed changing. Yet, we see numerous examples of companies with stove-piped or blocked communication channels lose growth momentum and market share – or sometimes go out of business altogether – because their internal structure, process or culture prevented them from seeing “the big picture” in their market.
In addition to external information awareness, it is critical for an organization to then disseminate or share that information. Information has no value unless it is shared with the people who need it. Many of us have encountered at least one person in our careers that initially seemed to be the smart “go-to” person that knew everything. Unfortunately these people sometimes turn out to be information hoarders that hurt the organization more by holding back useful knowledge instead of proactively sharing it with others that could benefit from it. I worked with an IT manager many years ago that was the proverbial “keeper of the keys” in terms of any knowledge about IT systems, processes, operations, forthcoming IT initiatives, etc. He bathed in the glory of being the only one who knew what was going on with our IT systems. Finding out the most basic information about scheduled down times, desktop rollouts, application fixes and even printer network path names was difficult. As a result, line managers invested time and budget into systems that were inexplicably taken offline or retired, costs were duplicated when the field offices bought low-value assets like laptops not knowing the IT manager had a room full of them that he had told no one about. As the company grew (I sometimes wondered how!) the “drag effect” he created became intolerable and his behaviour was called into question and he was eventually fired. The region I worked in, however, had a lot of catching up to do as compared to the other international regions where the IT leadership had been open, sharing and highly collaborative at both a strategic planning and tactical execution level to help drive the business forward.
Assuming an organization does have external information awareness and also shares the information that it gathers, it still needs to be able to process that information to make meaningful and effective decisions to run the business. The decision architecture of a company has a lot to do with its culture. Organizational culture will often determine whether decision-making authority or empowerment is highly centralized, entrusted to the people with the best first-hand knowledge to make the decisions or whether it lands somewhere between these two scenarios. An effective decision architecture allows people who have the relevant information to act on it without having to waste time relaying information up and down the hierarchy². If executive management is involved in deciding tactical issues such as product names, launch dates, where the 100% Club trip will be held and the like, then they are not doing their jobs. Their primary role is to develop a vision and strategy for the company and to develop the organization’s overall ability to execute to that plan. Micromanaging disempowers people and eventually leads to a breakdown in accountability within middle management and their teams and devalues the roles of people who really ought to be making those decisions. In many cases, good people leave under these conditions. Companies with poor decision making structures and practices tend to then suffer from not only attrition and the costs that go with it, but also an inability to react quickly to changing market conditions. As the second half of 2008 has shown us, things can change rapidly – very rapidly.
If an organization is able to remain aware of what is happening externally, share that information with all relevant team members and then make decisions efficiently, then they are likely to be in a position to focus on their core business objectives. Without any of the preceding three conditions being achieved, focusing becomes difficult as an organization struggles with incomplete information, the inability to collaborate across teams and uncertainty over who should make decisions in reaction to changes or better yet, in anticipation of them. With the conditions set for increased organizational focus, it becomes easier for teams to prioritize, to avoid distractions driven by process ambiguity and to become more decisive in the face of changing market conditions.
The final principle of organizational IQ is continuous innovation. The ability to constantly examine and reinvent products, services and processes is a hallmark of successful companies. McDonald’s expansion into breakfast foods, Nike’s success in expanding their market share with teens, tweens and Generation Y consumers through their “design-your-own shoe” NikeID offering and Toyota’s similar “design-your-own-car” Scion product line are examples of established companies that seek to listen to the market and reinvent themselves. These types of companies tend to proactively disrupt their established markets to either expand them or reinvigorate growth and profitability within them.
A company that is able to orchestrate external information awareness, information sharing, effective decision making , organizational focus and continuous innovation is likely to achieve a high organizational IQ. Research studies at Stanford University³ have shown that organizational IQ is a key success factor for businesses. This research, which studied hundreds of companies during the 1980s and 1990s showed that organizations which exhibited high organizational IQ had higher, sustained growth rates than those who did not. Many of the firms which were measured to have low organizational IQ and did nothing about it went out of business or were eventually acquired by stronger companies.
Clearly, all of us would like to work in an environment where there is high organizational IQ. Organizations with these characteristics tend to be market leaders that succeed in reinvesting in their operations and people, thereby creating broader career opportunities for their team members. All of us have an opportunity to contribute to the five principles of external information awareness, information sharing, decision-making, focus and continuous innovation. We can approach this through shaping the culture of our organizations and through building and using systems and processes that help to facilitate it. A lot of it starts with basic communication skills....becoming an effective listener and then sharing information in a collaborative sense to make the team more effective. Unlike an individual’s psychological IQ, which experts say can only be increased to a limited extent in adulthood, an organizational IQ can be increased to a great extent and more quickly. As you think about your own employer, or perhaps a prospective one, assessing and contributing to their organizational IQ is perhaps one of the greatest opportunities you will have with them. Doing your own assessment of your organization’s IQ, or perhaps leading one with your team, is a good place to start.
¹ = Haim Mendelson and Johannes Ziegler in their book Survival of the Smartest
² = Ibid
³ = Ibid
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