Considering A New Career Tool? Three Key Elements

Many times we come across organizations interested in designing career management or career progression framework, tool or system.   From my experience there are three factors that are a MUST CONSIDER for success of any such systems.  In no order of importance they are.   

a) What the individual wants (Aspiration)

b) What the individual brings to the table (Capability or Competency)

c) What the organization needs (Need)

If you have an imbalance or misalignment between these three you are bound to fail. 

For simplicity call them ACN.

The three need to be in alignment for any kind of successful program you want to drive.  If you have identified A and C but there is no N then for the organization there is no meaning to invest in the same.

Similarly if individual wants A and there is N but no C then it is a decision about whether to Train and Build and at what Cost.

Organization may have the N and individual the C but the individual has a different A then you run the risk of losing the employee so look for other individuals with the same A.

Quite Simple in Hindsight Isn't It.  

Is Promotion a Reward for Performance?

"Promotion is not a reward for performance!!". I once made this rather bold statement at a employee town hall meet and it kicked off a good bit of discussion. In my view this came about as a rather provocative statement and I ended up meeting at least a dozen mid to senior level folks who came back and said they never saw it that way. It did change their perspective on how they look at their role and I tried to capture some of the sentiments in this piece.

In the past I have spent quite a bit of time detailing out, designing and running performance management framework and systems for large organizations and came across many many people (a good estimate can be as high as 75% and more) consider promotions as a reward for performance. The more this idea gets reinforced the more it creates a problem for the organization. Organizations that send this signal are setting themselves for failure. Sooner or later you end up with a entitlement paradox, where every good performer starts saying "When's my turn?".

Here are some perspectives on this...

Promotion is all about recognizing someone's capability for a job and making that fitment. If you had to promote someone for just for his good performance then you can be setting him up for failure. Remember the commonly encountered saying... "Your best operations guy may end up being your worst sales person"

One thing I often observed is that managers, at times when it comes to promotions, try to play GOD. They make every effort to give the promoted employee a feeling that they worked a lot through the network to manage their(his / her) subordinate to get a promotion.

How you manage the process in the organization will determine how others view it and who you promote matters because people read the message loud and clear when you promote the wrong persons and punish the right guys by not giving them the role they truly fit into.

In reality it will be an incidental thing that a person who is promoted is a good performer but not always true the other way round. Another point to remember is that performance is a necessary but no sufficient condition for a promotion. Take the simple case of A being the best territory sales representative for GETWELL PHARMA. As a Territory sales person he is responsible for ensuring good services to clients within a geographical boundary, increasing sales all at optimal travel and overhead costs. He is the star performer among sales folks. A is a a go-getter, loves traveling, loves meeting people and extremely achievement oriented. He always prefers to be in the limelight, gets excited and highly motivated when receives a praise and recognition from the Regional Sales Head or the Territory Sales Manager. The Regional Sales Head had just received a resignation letter from the Territory Sales Manager and was contemplating making A the new Territory Sales Manager in next 3 months.

When he discussed the proposal with the HR Manager he got the following feedback. A loves to follow schedules, meet Doctors as per assigned protocols and engage with them in a very pleasing and detailed oriented manner. However he really hates managing outcome of others. He just can't lead a team, motivate performance, coach or mentor others. He prefers being a star and can't stand losing out on sales targets. He gets completely dejected and takes the failures to meet targets as his own doing.

The regional sales head knows this very well and is not sure how to retain A if he is not able to promote him in at least next 2 years. But the question is will he be setting up for failure.

It is in the interest of the organization to do something else to retain him. So promoting your best sales person might leave you with worrying about having a bad fit for a Territory Manager role because he has to fix targets for others, drive up motivation, arrange team meetings, take stock of weekly performance all of which is not something that A is very keen on. He needs a fair bit of coaching to scale up and manage before he can take up the role of Territory Manager and the HR team feels that this can happen only after couple of years of inputs

So what options does a manager have to retain A. Here are three ways it can be done. While the first is essential you have a choice among the other two.

• Assign a performance coach and work through action and improvement areas. Needs to be a two way process starting with establishing objectives, working through with understanding barriers to improvement and then action planning followed by action to change

• Have an alternative engagement model for motivating and incentivizing the Sales Person (A in this case). This is very important and should be done in parallel to the coaching assignment. That way A is focused on the achievement and it is important this laddering (showing few more steps on the path towards something different or a new role is to be done)is important. Most organizations fail on this count and thus are unable to retain your good performer and lose them for lack of action taken.

• Look for a rotation to a new location or new product line in same role and change the context for the individual. It is more likely he / she will be engaged for the period since the change and in parallel you need to work on the coaching bit

At times you may be promoting someone into his or her area of expertise or capability then in such case it may be a good thing but if not then it is a recipe for failure.

The dichotomy comes in when you don't understand that performance is not a sufficient condition for promotion. To rephrase - it more appropriate to how people should see it... "Promotion is not causally related to performance" or "Performance is not the cause of promotion". It maybe a pre condition or given but the real precedence is good fit on capability or competencies and whether the organization is growing, whether there are roles in the organization for the individual to move. That is why companies known for their HR practices actually have multiple career path options for their employees. 

Hence we should look at the fallout of not communicating in clear and simple terms why someone did not get promoted. Most of your A raters who leave because they did not get promoted after being considered or were looked over for promotion could actually have been retained if only a bit of effort was put in to communicate the right reasons. 

Where HR teams and the managers fail, is their ability to communicate this aspect of a one sided relationship existing between performance and promotion. Also at stake are ego, self-esteem and motivation all a fall out of the perceptions about not being promoted that are in the minds of the people. Also the organizations often leave people who are not promoted to their own devices in interpreting feedback and finding ways to achieve their career goals. 

Vague feedback from managers like "You need to be a bit more hard boiled" or"You're just about there" add to the confusion in the mind of he employee and on top of it he / she is again worried that X got through the job but not me adding to the anxiety. This reference group effect only complicates the perceived injustice or aberration in the system that people then attribute to the the whole process of promotion. 

There is always some fuzziness maintained by organizations on the promotion criteria and how those decisions are made however it is generally a fit perspective that is considered. What capabilities do you need for the role being considered and the degree of fit which the individual brings to the table. We will continue to live with that fuzziness and cannot expect it as a problem that will go away sooner or later. Of course if we don't want performance differentiation and everyone gets the same rating we'll have to wait for those complete "Robot Teams" whose synchronous delivery of goods and services will be very different from the human element. And of course you won't have to motivate them except recharge or maybe at times tighten their nuts and bolts.

The challenge for HR as well as Line managers would be how else do your reward high performers and your stars. In days of stiff talent competition it is very important that you keep a very sharp focus on who you retain. Retaining your best performers will be on the top of your agenda and it is here that disgruntlement with not being promoted plays a key role in turn over. However the reason for this is the lack of understanding of the relationship between performance and promotion and normally confusing the advancement as something that is a validation of their role in the organization. So when you create clarity about these aspects on the table it plays a vital role in making people understand the stance and this is the only pragmatic way to approach promotions and the complexities.

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Day 2 Themes at World HRD Congress, Mumbai

Day 2 was a mix of sessions focused on the Balanced Score Card  (BSC)   Sessions on Coaching as well as sessions on managing talent.   There were interesting presentations on what the Balanced Score Card was, how does one align the score card with business objectives,  some practitioner views on pitfalls to avoid in implementing balanced score cards.  Booby Traps in BSC implementation by one of the consultants made interesting observations on how you could fail in your implementation.

The talent management sessions included 3 presentations one on Characteristics of High Performing organizations where a speaker from MDB Credit Solutions South Africa spoke about a transformation journey of a call center which had a lot of employees from disadvantaged communities.  The key message was about involving the people in the decision making process and creating a platform for change.   This was followed by a session on the Transformation dilemma of HR by a speaker from Mother Diary Fruit and Vegetable Ltd, which included some interesting analogy of change and readiness for change and its link to vision and achievement by using analogies from the Old Testament.  

My session on Augmenting Talent supply detailed out how TCS addressed the talent supply issues facing the country (viz.  employability and unemployment) through a integrated approach of  industry academia interface and affirmative action.   The session was well received and the chairman interestingly summed it up saying it was an effort that one can position in the strategic-proactive quadrant if you map HR transformation efforts on a 2 x 2 matrix of Strategic-Non Strategic versus  Reactive - Proactive.  You can read the gist here.

Some key Themes at World HRD Congress, Mumbai

The 22nd edition of the World HRD Congress kicked off to a great start today at Taj Lands End Mumbai.   The theme of the conference was "Mining Human Potential for Creating Great Organizations".  Below are key messages from some of the selected speakers.  

In the key note Dr. Arun Arora talked about how talent shortages in India would impact organizations whether it is about exploiting talent within the organization or getting talent from outside the organization.  Listening and observing and looking around the organization you have phenomenal talent that you have at your disposal.

Uma Ganesh from GTT spoke about impact of digital technologies on every aspect of business.  Companies should look for how this would impact them.  Key change from transformation to transfiguration. HR Leaders need to contribute by redesigning business in sustaining growth and competitiveness.   Impact of disintegration of activities like in hiring processes. Rethinking the culture. Move away from hierarchical structures to look at convergence thinking.  Every individual has a voice and can  be listened to and has a view. How can organization be more open to receive ideas.    Existing Processes may need to be removed  or reworked.   HR Needs to be more coaches,  respect and enable innovation within the organization. 

Ganesh Natrajan CEO of  Zensar spoke about how the IT industry is constantly changing and how each year it seems like a whole new list of things need to be done and past was not much relevant.   Early days of IT industry key focus was taking India's capabilities to the world through various speaking sessions and stories at conferences to provide a right perspective about India's potential to people across the world in major markets.   Another key point was about being very focused on the solution to drive the need of the customer and not just what the "obvious" solution you had.   Your responses should be context specific.  Contextualize everything.  He also spoke about how love makes the organization successful.  Love your employees for long term success.   This is way the IT industry works in India.   Look for what your people really want. Many youngsters look for other interesting goals in life but are here to work to pay back.  HR processes should work on understanding deep down passion of people.

S V Nathan from Deloitte spoke about spotting and nurturing talent.   He spoke about varying talent supply in various geographies.  China will face biggest talent crunch by 2020 and will need 23 million more college graduates than they could ever supply.  India has 3.5 to 4 Million graduates coming in and we have a low employability problem.  How do you tackle and get the right talent coming to you.  How do you spot talent.  He spoke about good leaders looking for sincerity,  passion, find ways to appreciate and motivate to bring out the best in people who work for your organizations.

Dr. Indira Parikh (Founder President FLAME) spoke about a very different concept on how to spot and discover your own hidden talents.  We use only about 50% of our capabilities.  Her session included a very creative way of presenting through a framework of visualizing yourself using some metaphorical symbolic images (in nature, mythology or folk lore, folk tales etc) and then boxing them into a framework she provided to understand and interpret one's context.  

Of course there were many other wonderful sessions by HR and business professionals from very many organizations.

World HRD Congress 2014, Mumbai 15-17 Feb 2014

Looking forward to yet another Congress.

The World HRD Congress is an annual event organized at Mumbai each year and attracts HR Leaders, Thinkers and Professionals from several countries.  This year the theme of the Congress is  "Managing Human Potential for Creating Great Organizations".

Slated to happen from 15 to 17 Feb 2014 this years Congress has an impressive line up presentations and discussions on themes ranging from HR Analytics, Global Compensation, Employee Engagement, Employer Branding.

A packed line up of speakers and panelists on topics ranging topics: - 

Diversity and Inclusion - The Global Game Changer in the 21st Century 
Rethinking HR - Managing Expectations in Rapidly Changing Business World  
Big Data Busts the Top Three Myths of Employee Engagement and Leadership
"Influence Talent Supply by Influencing the Cause of Education:  A Win-Win Proposition"

My session on Influence Talent Supply by Influencing the Cause of Education will focus on how TCS created a winning strategy to augment to talent pool for the Business Process Services Unit through an integrated program including Affirmative Action & Industry Academia Interface.

You can access the link for this event here. (World HRD Congress) and glance through the event brochure here.

What Capabilities? Change Management

Change is here to stay.  Managing change follows logically.  It is no longer a rare event occurring that needs to be managed rather it qualifies as a function by itself.   No wonder over 50% of companies today have some kind of change management functions. 

They say change is constant which can only mean that it is constantly present.  In relative terms change is variable. The pace of it is getting faster and faster.  For e.g. each year technology is making us adopt new ways, give up the old.   Business models are getting disrupted with new inventions.  Organizations are reinventing themselves.   To do this we need people who can manage the change agenda.  What are the top three competencies that change management folks require.   Read on....

Consider this....We communicated so hard,  we sent mailers, we sent reminders,  we put up posters and we did road shows for our diversity program but there has been very lukewarm response from the managers?  

Managing the communication effectively is a key capability in change management.   Understanding which sources resistance can come from and who are the opponents who are the fence sitters and who are the "friends" of change is important.   Change champions should be from bucket 3 and should attempt to put in more than just an effort to convert the fence sitters to rally behind the change.

Sample yet another familiar situation...By the time we went to the teams with news about the policy changes there was a lukewarm response as they already seemed to know through the news papers and grape vine.

Keeping employees informed as and when change is effected is very important element of building trust.  Openness,  honesty and  transparency are elements that reinforce trust building. The noted management guru Chris Argyris had emphasized the role of trust in high levels of performance of employees.  So building trust is the second capability required by the members of the change management function.  Trust is broken when they fail to keep stakeholders in the loop, when false promises are made verbally and refusal to put them in writing, when misguided decisions are upheld and when changes anticipated are not communicated.   

Nurturing collaboration is the third capability dimension that is important.  Today almost all change programs involve inter disciplinary efforts and team work.  In such situation a collaborative environment is essential for success.   Collaboration fosters successful team outcomes and rates high among the team building success factors.   

So when you consider the change management function do look at how you can build up a team who can operationalize these three capabilities viz; creating an environment of collaboration,  building trust in the change process and finally communicating effectively, unambiguously and with the right intent.   Remember Intent Content Gap blog post posted earlier.

HR Fault Lines: What are they and What Can You Do?

"Fault Lines threaten us on the earth." 

The second way to see it is that "Fault Lines Make us cautious, make us take proactive measures when we construct buildings so that we remain safe in the face of earthquakes, or tremors.  

Any break in the bedrock is a fault line.  Fault lines can be major...extending for several hundred miles (usually at the plate boundaries) or can be minor fault lines.  

Just like geological fault lines existing on earth, we have fault lines in HR.  These are at the boundaries.... the interfaces between key HR process areas.    If you look at it and reflect you may find this familiar.

We have a great talent sourcing process,  we have world class learning systems,  we have designed phenomenal talent management processes,  we have superb communication mechanisms.  Yet we have unhappy people.  Yet some of our employees don't  see the whole as a sum of the parts or greater than the sum of the parts.    You can attribute this to the fault lines in HR.   

Each process is like a plate.  The gaps between them are the fault lines. If you have a great sourcing strategy but yet are not able to convert the offers made and are shying away at 80% offer acceptance, there is a fault line in your post offer engagement.   If you have a fantastic performance platform but your career opportunities are least understood by the people you have a fault line at the interface.   So for the sum to be greater than the sum of the parts you need to design the systems such that there are seamless connections that avoid fault lines.  

If you look at the HR life cycle from talent sourcing then to recruitment and hiring right up to separations at each interface we should ensure that there is a seamless integration.  Any gaps existing should be looked at from the up stream process.   e.g.  if you have to design an effective promotion process or a career moves process then the data from the performance management as well as the HRMS (tenure, job moves,  role changes, experience details) and data on the  competency assessments, key strength areas etc need to be complete and of  good quality)   If this is not so then you have a fault line and down stream process gets affected as what goes into the process is what defines its effectiveness.   So from a design and effectiveness process you need to have an assessment frame work that maps the quality of inputs going into any downstream process and fix where the gaps lie.

That way you are able to avoid the fault lines,  the so called chasms that exist in the interface between the processes and that can result in tremors at the fault lines that are felt in both adjacent processes.  So next time you find the whole being less than the sum of the parts you know where to look for a solution.  In all probability it lies within the organization and a simple exercise of  mapping process flows can help you design a better HR system. 

Competencies: What?

Organizations are spending top dollars each year to develop and adopt competency models.  The end objective?  Improve organization and individual performance or rather develop organizational capability to perform through the capability of individuals.   

But that is the tricky part.   Let me try through this example :   What is Nike's Competency? Is it in manufacturing shoes ?   Surely Not.   Their competency is not in making of shoes per se rather it lies in effectively managing their supply chain,  managing the outsourcing relationship with vendors who make the  shoes,  creating and managing the  designs and so on that make it a successful company.  Read what Nike has said on its site.   There are over a million contract workers in the supply chain of Nike that are involved in the manufacture of shoes designed and made to specification.  

It’s not just about getting better at what we do – addressing impacts throughout our supply chain – it’s about striving for the best, creating value for the business and innovating for a better world.

So for organizations like Nike it is all about their ability to manage all aspects of the supply chain, the branding and marketing. These bundles of capabilities which we Nike has in managing the supply chain is the core competency, the one factor that gives it a sustained competitive edge.... the ability to earn sustained returns both top line growth and bottom line performance. 

The bundling of capabilities comes through building competencies in the people that deliver.  The designers have the capabilities (now we say residing in the people) which are individual competencies.   The marketing folks or product managers who manage the account and lines of products (running, sneakers, sports, running,  football etc) have competencies in brand management, or portfolio management.   These are all at the individual employee level but together these capabilities accrue to build and create the organizations core competencies. 

This can be a simple way to understand.  There are organizational competencies, there are individual competencies.   One needs to understand both to build a winning formula.   Just focusing on individual level can lead to myopia or de-focus on the organizational core competency.    Am I right, core competency helps you bring focus? at the organizational level. 

The next issue for us to understand is how do you measure competencies. 

Excellence in HR Analytics

In 2012,  Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM India) announced the first People's Awards and one of the categories was Excellence in HR Analytics.   The evaluation criteria can be read here.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)  emerged winner in the category "Excellence in HR Analytics" and my team working on HR Analytics & MIS proudly received the award at a glittering ceremony at Goa, which was the venue of the first People's Conference 2012.

I won't discuss specifics of our experience in HR Analytics in this  blog. You can read it here  (page 17 onward) .    However I have two insights that I wanted to share here.


a) The future of anlaytics does not lie in having great technical expertise alone.   Don't focus on the tools and analysis methods.... what is key is the power of big think.   Big Data is good but big thinking  should come first.   Need is for more insights and more data driven action.  The action is usually missing and we miss the woods for the trees.  What is need is ability to conceptually sort out the dimensions or variables you are working on and analyze them in your context.  Context is key.... you can copy all the methods of analytics that other great companies use but if you don't understand application in your context it is bound to be an effort that is good on paper.

b) Don't focus on expanding your repertoire of human capital measures.  It is very important to have a lean approach. If you find that your HR reports grown larger and more complicated as your organizations grows then you are surely on wrong track.   Chose those vital HR metrics which are relevant, important and need focus.   Finally what you focus on receives attention and what receives attention gets' done.   Remember if something is good well, drop it from your dash board and your target should be to focus more on areas which need to be addressed.

Objective should be to translate the raw data into intelligence (and not into elegant reports and charts that would) and insights that drive action. 

And here is my favorite quote.  We have a very simple philosophy and keep reminding ourselves  "In general we can argue, With data we can dialogue".