Solve, Don't Manage the Problem

In hindsight everything appears simple and uncomplicated !!

Have you realized that we take many many things for granted.  What is there is a simple chemical reaction such as 2 parts of hydrogen combined with one part of oxygen gives 2 parts of water...  or the fact that we human beings tend to display five levels of needs ranging from physiological to esteem at the other end.  In hindsight everything seems so simple and straitjacketed to the non discerning but to have thought of it this way and put the effort to come up with the framework or the model or the reaction or the observation is the challenge not everyone can do all the time.

Organizations have problems and HR functions have their own share and in every problem lies an opportunity to come up with some serious creative solutions.... a galore of opportunities if I may say so. But often I find that people are good at identifying the problem and defining it but the transition to finding the creative solution is missing.   

What gets focus is how to manage the problem and not solve the problem.  This comes from our patterned thinking and we look for patterns to be imposed on any problem we see. If we don't see a ready pattern we try to force fit one.  Therefore one outcome would be : Here's a problem how do I react.... Needs to be managed and keep the boat from rocking and bingo.... that is the end objective.  

To realize that the root of the problem needs to be fixed we should break out from that pattern and make  a determined effort to do so.  This involves many simple and effective steps.  We'll look at examples and how to issues in the coming post

Competency Bytes !!

Competencies are important and even some say DNA of your organization capabilities.  Much has been said about competencies being relevant to today's business. Most organizations are doing something or thinking about doing something.  Here is my favorite punchline

"You can be certain that If you don't currently take care of your competencies, the day will surely come when your competitors will end up taking care of your current customers"

That was light, quick but serious !!

Read More on Competencies

Competencies: What?

What Drives Competency Utilization

Competency:  Sum of Parts

Simple Story to Illustrate Competencies

BPS Industry In India? Some Elaboration of What it Involves.

There are lot of myths about this industry viz.,  Business Process Services (BPO or ITeS as it is also known) has been a story of rapid growth in India having grown  from less than a Billion US Dollars in  revenues around 2001 to about 20 times that revenue by 2013.  Truly with the forecast for 2020 being 50 Billion US Dollars the industry is in a sweet spot.

However popular perceptions are an issue, for e.g. .... thanks to Chetan Bhagat (novelist who wrote a novel describing the complicated lives of a few characters and put this the context of a call center) there is a common belief that BPO companies are all about telemarketing and making those pesky calls to clients who don't need them in the first place, of strange people working odd hours and living lives stressed out to the edge.   Well reality is very different.  Sample this....

Imagine you want to launch a product and worried about the price you should launch it in a particular city or region or geography.   What should be the price and how much share will this give you potentially?

Imagine you are a Procurement Leader for a global paint manufacturing company and want to optimize your sourcing of pigments across the globe from various geographies.  Where should you order the next batch of  pigments for your plant in New Zealand.   

Imagine you want to set up a process to engage with a large group of regular clients through a loyalty program and make them feel great each time they connect with you on your network through various channels or touch points.

Imagine a pharma company wants to launch a new vaccine in a much shorter time frame, and you need to work in alignment with various regulations that govern the trials and outcomes. With the development of a vaccine being a long elaborate process (several years) it is greatly beneficial if the process can be speeded up without compromising any of the  steps.

Imagine you have a great retail banking product and need to really understand quickly which are your most valuable customer segments and how to increase your revenues and at what level of income potential should you sell these to maximize your profitability from this line of product.

Imagine you want 20 to 30% improvement in your gross margin and looking at some transformation of your processes to realize better contribution and profitability.

Well all of these scenarios above are some of the ways in service providers can add value to businesses that look to become better, more agile, more profitable, better performance at business outcomes.

Business Process Services is a very large industry today and several companies are working in this space to make all of above kind of scenarios a reality.   Couple process focus with technology innovations and solutions that blend technology with business process and you have increased marginal returns on your investments.

In short the industry is surely in a sweet spot and looking to change business outcomes by more than just running contact centers.  The industry has matured to an extent that it is a formidable partner to businesses globally and set to be here for a long haul journey of excellence.

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Some Sectoral Challenges: BPS

Robotic Automation in BPS

BPS Industry in India

BPS Industry: Need for Mainstream Curriculum

BPS Industry: Myth Busters

Power of Alumni? The How Part 1

In an earlier post I discussed about Power of Alumni Networks. We spoke about how alumni can be a great source to hire from (or call it rehire) and also as brand ambassadors.  What are the ways in which you can engage with the alumni?  A few thoughts.

Alumni meets are a good way:   Bring your alumni together for a day meet once a year or every two years.   It can be a proud moment for those who have been associated with your organization.    However remember don't try to get all your alumni to the meet at once. It can never happen this way and won't serve you any good.   Do make an inherent effort to get the A' listers to attend.   These should be the one's who you valued most either performance, attitude or even discretionary contribution.   To get the clarity on A listers the segregation should happen at time of exit itself.  You need to capture this in your systems otherwise with the kind of turnover we have in organizations these days you may always find that neither manager nor HR who interfaced with a specific alumni is with you today when you need information on who is A and who is B in your target segment.

Question is what do you do when you get your alumni together.  Speak about how the company's been progressing.  Spell out strategic direction and give them opportunity to understand how much has happened over the past year.   You can also highlight changes in leadership and any new ways of doing things that would not have been existent previous  year.

The second important aspect to remember is avoid selective invitations and create a kind of inner circle feeling among alumni.   You will lose out on brand ambassadors.  Those who believe they aren't invited will actually become your brand slayers probably because of the pent up negative feeling that this kind of segregation will convey.  However if you build a segregation based on recency... say inviting alumni who have left us post year 2010 this is much more acceptable and also will serve you better chances of targeting on people who you feel you can get back to work with you.

There are other innovative ways... for example calling back all R&D folks who left us in past five  year..... or calling back production planning experts who left since 2012.   These would also serve as similar interest groups and people would know each other better and would serve as more attractive forums for them.   But it all depends on size and volumes you have for various groups and this is a function of company size, age, spread and so on. 

Even though you don't discriminate based on A,B, C Listing for invitation when it comes to engaging with any pursuit to get individual to think of coming back,  then you surely need your ABC classification.   Only pursue those on your A list.  Best 20%.   This is given a 20:40:20 classification.  You can have your own guidelines on how to build the ABC.

There are few other kinds of forums to attract back your employees who left which we will discuss in subsequent posts.

The Archers Lesson

A renowned young man who had many feathers in his cap when it came to archery visited  a guru who was renowned for his skill with bows and arrows.  On first attempt the young man hit a distant bulls eye followed by yet another arrow which split the first one.   

"Behold" he said to the guru, "Beat That"

The guru quietly asked the young man to follow him and led him to a mountainous path.   Soon  they reached a deep dangerous chasm with a log placed across the gap.   The guru coolly stepped onto the precariously placed log and picked a distant tree as his target, aimed and fired a shot that hit the middle of the trunk.  The next one went on to split the first arrow.

"Now its your turn" said the guru to the young man.

Leave aside shooting the target the young man could not even stand on the log that was precariously standing across the deep chasm.  His hands and legs were shaky.  He gave up even trying to perch himself on the log, leave alone making his mark.

"You are extremely skilled with the bow" said the guru "but you have little skill with the mind that lets lose the shot"

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Quite a few lessons....   

We often believe that we have mastered the art.  There's always scope for improvement.   At work -  people today have just 2 to 3 years of exposure to a filed of work and claim boredom, claim mastery and a desire to move to the next skill.   They have probably not encountered situations that have to combine skill of mind with the practice.   When it comes to champions it is the mind and attitude that defines success apart from skill.   Every sports coach knows that.    The champions are made of strong minds,  they push them to train on their minds and not just on their game.    

Talent and a discipline mind go together to creating display of excellence.

Short lived is talent of the one whose mind swells with ego.

The champion applies his skill on all kinds of terrain.  Imagine Sachin Tendulkar the cricket guru if he said he could play only on slow pitches or only in high altitude locations.  A true champion is prepared for all conditions. 

Perfect your talent before you try to display it publicly. 

Attitude is the building block for competency.  Consistent application of skill and knowledge with effective outcomes is what competency is all about.   Attitude is essential for effective performance. 

The above are few.... There are many more interesting lessons to be drawn.  

BPS Industry In India: Some Sectoral Challenges

Earlier I had written about the BPS industry being at a sweet spot.  However the bitter truth is that we are staring at big numbers when it comes to employability too.  A survey by Aspiring Minds (www.aspiringminds.in) in 2013 reports that about 47% of graduates are not employable in any area primarily due to poor cognitive as well as English language skills. Computer knowledge and application is another weakness.  Only about 21.37% of the graduates are employable in the ITeS sector and mostly for non functional roles.  

If India has to maintain its competitive advantage in the ITeS sector (today it is talent availability more in terms of numbers) then quality and consistency are key in the future.  With forecast 2020 revenues in the region of 50 Billion USD my estimate works to about 1.9 million direct employment in this sector by 2020.  Around that time we can compute that the ITeS industry alone would need about 100,000 to 150,000 graduates per year.    This is based on the trend where we grew from < 1 Billion USD in 2001 to about 16.8 Billion USD over next ten years.   

Each year Indian universities and colleges graduate about 5 Million every year from over  30,000 colleges and of this over 85% are non-engineering graduates.   If you look at the demographics as per the Aspiringminds report female to male ratio is about 100 to 109 for general degree programs versus 100 to 196 for engineering degree programs. 

Reasons for lower employability is that today's curriculum is not job oriented and from our experience in working with colleges and universities the curriculum lags by anything between 1 to 10 years from what industry demands across various skill areas in ITeS. 

While the ITeS sector caters to several global clients the challenge is that today organizations don't have the luxury of training (unlike previous decades of 60's to 80's) hires for extended periods of time.  Today's customers need a quick turn around in taking over their business processes and running them real time.   So it is not about one organization in India losing business to another rather it is about other countries vying for the same business.  We have a threat from Latin America,  Eastern Europe as well as Asian Countries like Philippines.

Unless something drastic is done on the employability front it would be futile for India's competitive edge in the coming decade.   Solution required cannot be only in hands of the education sector.  Lot of investment has happened in education but it is only a collaborative effort with industry working closely with academia that can bring about this change in focus.

More on how and what can be done in a later post

You may also like to browse

Robotic Automation in BPS

BPS Industry in India

BPS Industry: Need for Mainstream Curriculum

BPS Industry: Myth Busters

When Normal Becomes Abnormal: Bell Curve Phenomena

Fundamentally I wonder why people see red when you speak about the normalization or rationalization process connected to performance management framework  in organizations.  I tried to figure this out listening to diverse perspectives whenever I had an opportunity.  One common denominator that I found was that people usually get disillusioned with the process rather than the concept and that is the good part to begin with.

When organizations fail to avoid the feeling of "I'm a victim of the process"  or the "I wish I was told before"  or "Why did he /she get a better rating" then the aversion or disliking for the normalization process is much higher.   

To understand why this happens we need to understand why the normalization process was introduced in the first place. The normalization process was brought in as a tool by decision makers to distribute reward (pay rises) in some controlled way and to have some fixed slots that can be mapped to a certain level of increase. (merit increase)

However it is this very fact that causes the heart burn.  People can't digest why they should be up for lesser uptick in their compensation compared to their colleagues if they don't know how this difference stacks up.  

One argument made by opponents of the bell curve is that "when we hire best of best talent" why do we expect low performers.  (tail of the bell curve).    The key to this mystery lies in the terminology and I will elaborate more on this later.

How does the organization  make this important concept more acceptable and the process more tolerable.  Key Focus should be on :  Execution ;  Transparency ; Governance.

Execution:  Excellence in execution implies that common understanding or shared understanding is important.  Managers / Leaders and HR play a key role in creating this shared understanding.   Chose the Labels correctly.... Rather than say Excellent, Good, Average... Stick to Outputs   Way Beyond Expectations,  Beyond Expectations,  Met Expectations,  Just Below or Below.  You cannot expect more than 5% at the maximum to be labeled under the Below expectations.    Also in a good year and with a good team you can have almost everyone beyond or meeting expectation. Be ready to shift the curve (moving bell) and be flexible.  That way everyone celebrates.   So terminology is important.  Avoid any more than 2 to 3% actually being below.  And if someone meets expectations then should the payout be 100%.  Not necessary.... In high performance organizations an element of variability (15 to 30%) can be introduced which is for higher than expected and you need to ensure people focus on how much of that component they get. The problem today with way compensation is understood is by Gross Numbers so people compare Gross with Gross.  They should be shown how to compare (and get used to that...) Fixed with Fixed and Variable with Variable over fixed time periods over which the payout was given.   Easier said than done... but it's not impossible to do this.  

One good way to take care of the disgruntlement is to publish openly what the achievements are for all those who are above or way above expectations and this way you won't have people resorting to water cooler whispers and stoking grapevine.  This is the element of Transparency that we speak of. 

Governance and a eagle eye for misuse is very important.  Do a regular audit as to who are the stars,  what did they achieve,  was it more than what was expected in hind sight or was it something that that was fixed post the achievement.   Just like an Audit Team for your financials you need a audit team to review your performance assessment outcomes and how individuals were rated across groups.   Don't leave it to the HR team to do this but let it be a business driven initiative. 

How many CEO's and Directors of Operations ensure this audit as a practice. If you can tick off a YES to this practice being practiced in your organization you are on the right track.

Again as I said earlier it is not about the Mountains that we need to worry when we drive the road but the small rocks, stones and pebbles along the way. Once again I would emphasize that the shift in view of the Bell Curve need small things to be ironed out and it would be a much more acceptable with a more robust and acceptable process in place.

Lessons from Stories: The Wise Man's Pot

One day a wise man came to Emperor Akbar's court and he said he wanted to challenge his courtiers by testing how intelligent they were.    Akbar readily agreed. The wise man kept a pot covered by a cloth and asked them to tell him what it contained.   Every one was dumb founded and kept starting silently at each other.     

Then Birbal came forward, he opened the cloth and said there was nothing in the pot. It was empty. 

"But you opened it."  said the wise man. 

"You did not tell us that it can't be opened"  shot back Birbal the clever minister.

The wise man was cornered.  He quietly left. 

What can we learn:   Often the barriers, the inhibitions about things around us are in our minds.  We set limits and boundaries,  even those that never existed in the first place.   

Just because someone thought it so... it became the accepted norm.   How often we face this in our organizations.   Soon someone questions and then all assumptions seem to no longer hold good.  

In hind sight it seems so simple.   But the creative view or creative solutions needs to be different from what is normally understood or expected. 

We can also realize that there are others around us who can be more intelligent than we are.  Those that outsmart you, those you never expected to.   The world is full of people who are operating at a fraction of their potential when it comes to achievement or even thinking. 

Other posts on learning from stories

Power of Patience

Egotism: Lessons from Stories

Zen Story: What can you infer from this.

Book Chapter in Responsible Leadership

Authors:

Rajiv Noronha, Gen Manager & Head Organizational Effectiveness (BP Services @ TCS)

Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, VP & Global HR Head (BP Services @ TCS)

Venkatnarayanan N K, Gen Manager & Head- HR, Banking Services (BP Services @TCS)

Responsible Leadership, Vol 2, XLRI Symposium Proceedings,  Excellent Publishing House, New Delhi

Published Nov 2013,   Pages 50-71

Publication was based on presentation by Rajiv Noronha at the Symposium on Responsible Leadership at XLRI Jamshedpur which won the Outstanding Paper Award

Chapter Summary

Responsible Leadership is about making business decisions that, next to the interest of the shareholders, also takes into account all the other stakeholders such as workers, clients, suppliers, the environment, the community and future generations[1]. Since 1991 Indian economy has made significant progress and opened up new opportunities for the youth. Yet two areas we have not addressed seriously as a nation, in order to keep up with the pace of changes that happen around us, are employability and education. 

On employability - today job opportunities are much more abundantly available for graduates and those with advanced degrees in their field of study. Talent supply from colleges has also increased several fold since 1991 but the paradox is that there is a shortage in the midst of abundance. This is primarily an outcome of the lower levels of employability. Several studies and surveys have indicated employability levels of between 20 to 30% among all graduates. In many cases the graduates are employed in jobs that are far below their real potential leading to disguised unemployment. On education – the issue that one needs to worry is the extent of contextual relevance of the curriculum being imparted. Industry captains have been talking about the time lag to update the curriculum to make it relevant to current industry practice. In the learning imparted at colleges we are few years behind in terms of what the industry does and what students learn thereby making it a problem both for the students as well as for the industry. Significant time and effort in training the fresh graduates to make them up to date before they can be gainfully productive can be avoided if this gap is minimized. This case study highlights how Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been able to display the well intentioned facets of responsible leadership to address these two critical challenges that we face as it is directly relevant to the business we are in. A significant point of departure of this case study is that we look at defocusing “Leader” in the sense of a person and focus more on “Leadership” and how the organization can create significant capability in terms of making the difference, enabling a culture that facilitates the needful display of leadership that builds on synchronous and pressing needs for organizations, individuals as well as the nation. We call this a win-win-win and try to understand facets of Responsible Leadership at TCS through this case study. While there are numerous examples that one has seen at TCS we try to bring out how Responsible Leadership is fostered by using two examples from recent years.

[1] Financial Times: Internet reference http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=responsible-leadership (Acc: 10 Sept 2012)

Robotic Automation? The Emerging Differentiation for BPS

As organizations look for ways and means to become more productive, more efficient we look for ways and means to achieve faster, more accurate work processes,  to eliminate unnecessary steps or to design and implement alternative process steps.  

Robotic automation is one such quest that business process services organizations are chasing these days.   In the world of business processes - robotic automation is very different from the industrial automation that we find in manufacturing.    In the BPS industry "robotic" is used a metaphor - akin to industrial automation - but done by software tools that produce generic automation of processes both business and clerical (that are generally repeatable, manual processes) and augment them into the client processes.  Don't imagine moving robots, looking like humans that you may find in factory or manufacturing shop floors.  Consistency, scalability and ability to deliver the process in a very secure manner are some of the key levers that drive the search for robotic automation in services as an alternative to manual repetitive work flows.. 

Will the cost be justified?  Unlike industrial process automation the capital investment will be lower in services automation as the tools are reusable (or with some customization) and can be replicated over and over thereby bringing down the operating cost significantly.  So you can expect a surge in robotic automation adoption in the coming year and beyond. 

What would be the implication?  Would there by mass scale redundancies created (lay offs').  Not really.  As global businesses outsource more and more of their work the simple repetitive ones get automated and others move in.  This would of course mean that you would need people to perform the more complicated stuff and some amount of re-skilling would happen.  

At the same time you would need a whole new set of skills to create these automation tools and also to manage and run these tools.   These would be more automation technology skills and skills to maintain these systems in steady state (operations).

As we enter the new financial year keep looking for the buzzword "robotic automation" in the quest for business process services becoming more agile, more efficient and moving up the value chain.