Friday, May 29, 2015

Without Bell, Will It Be Another Road Hell !!!

Today's Solution,  Tomorrow's Problem.  

Peculiar are the ways in which organization change things without understanding the real issues, the real problems they are trying to address and then live with a whole new set of problems down the line.  

The same is to come with Big Bell.   The Normal Curve or Bell Curve approach to manage organizations came about for two reasons...

a) Do away with a small fraction of non performers each year and replace them with stars

b) Next year you should have more stars and less non performers and in the long run you don't have any poor or non performers

Oh La, this never happens.  Why? 

The assumption is flawed.  Here is a way to look at it. Your individual performance (of employees) will be randomly distributed (like a bell curve) if you hired them at random from a crowd of talent.  However organizations work on deliberate attempts to source, select and bring on their talent to their turf.  So fundamentally performance cannot be randomly distributed when selection is deliberate attempt to hire people who are good in the population. .

Furthermore if your work was about doing some sorting exercise or widget breaking exercise where everyone is doing same kind of work and same standards apply then you can expect work outcomes to have a normal distribution.  When buckets of work effort are non comparable or when team effort is determining outcomes then what normal are we talking about. 

The problem was GE brought in Bell Curve for axing non performers, good for them. Everyone tried to copy but remember you can never develop sustained advantage from any system unless you understand the substance behind the form.   So many organizations tried to follow and voila....... everyone was using bell curve.

Then came more problems,  people who were paying out rewards found it a good way to easily segregate people and dish out salaries and increments.  But that was also a flawed assumption. They were creating tomorrows problems.  Real pay differentiation should be skill differences (capabilities) and resultant impact created for business.  When you cant' do this you find the easy way out.  Use something else which really does not do its job well   (the bell curve)

Now everyone's talking about Doing Away With the Bell Curve.   This is the seed for tomorrow's problem. The idea behind the bell curve was that you did a fair discussion elaborated to your team why A was different from B, and B was different from C in a convincing manner giving feedback twice in a six month period and finally when outcomes came no one felt he or she was a victim of the system that was unfair.

If companies were really sure their bell curve worked then the best thing to do was to put up on the notice board (intranet that so many have, or the notice board) highlight all the A banders with their achievements.   Who would deny such open culture and when people see what was delivered for an A there would never be a complaint.    Today all agenda's are hidden... Managers dont' want to give feedback.  They just pass it as another HR bungling by bringing in the normal curve and escape the questions they cannot answer.   Don't you remember the most quoted line after the Great Dictator ..... "You were great but ... we have a normal curve so you were pushed down"

Now doing away with Bell has become a fashion because Cisco's and Big Co's Did it but what is that you will do after Bell Curve is abandoned is not even simulated in the mind.  If you really need to give up the bell curve ask the following

a) How will you award increases.   If you think you will leave it to managers of teams to decide you are in for a great .... challenge.  Managers will come back saying give me a spread, or  they will end up playing GOD.   The problem will be attrition due to unfair managers.  If they become socialists distributing increases evenly you will end up losing your best talent to competition as your best performers will become average salaried people within 2 to 3  years.

b) How To Make them Give Better Feedback and Improve Appraisals:   This was always the case, but how will that change happen.  It needs deliberate attempts to understand what is meant by excellent versus what is mediocre in each and every work function.   Then be ready for your compensation teams to start groping in the dark how to distribute merit increase, how to compare jobs and how to make people happy with the rewards system.

c) How will you promote people.   Today it is generally based on High Performance as a lag indicator compared to similar groups.  The down side of doing away with Relative forced Ranking is having  a good way to identify potential that is scientific and predicts performance rather than scuttles performance in the long run.

d) Finally it is about asking What Next on Distributing Annual Increments  With Bell curve managers were seen as forcing people into buckets without proper reason (Read it as poor feedback giving practice).  Without Bell curve managers will be seen as playing favorites or as being so non-discriminatory that their best performers will have no reason to stay back.

Just a couple of years down the pendulum will swing another way when maybe another CAPCO will start adopting the Bell and Everyone follows... without remembering that the last thing that can make your practice sustainable is the form, however the right substance behind the form is what needs to be understood. 

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Performance Management: Don't Miss the Woods for the Trees !!!

Everyone seems to be jumping right onto the band wagon.  Bell curve has become "passe"... So what's the in thing....  That's a million dollar question.

A clear mandate now would be to go back to the basics.  Pressure would now mount on such systems which have done away with Brother Bell to actually motivate performance and no longer manage it.. This is going to mean

a)  Regular and precise goal setting
b) Clarifying understanding and expectations clearly
c) Reviewing periodically and being transparent on the achievement / non achievement
d) Understanding what went wrong and what could be done better.

Over and above is the substantive element that needs to be covered.

One objective of a good performance management framework is to drive the right kind of behaviors within your organization and its various entities.   How does this happen? By Setting Targets and Goals with qualifiers.  It is important to emphasize both "how" and "why" aspects when setting goals and not just the focus on "what".  It has to be a deliberate attempt and should not be left to chance.

Take for example the highest achiever of sales in Pharma Co (name is irrelevant).  Here was Madan the highest grosser on sales.  For eight quarters he clocked over 40% growth each quarter and was the star salesman two years in a row.  About 9 months later when a new drug was launched by the competition the skeletons tumbled out of the cupboard.    Madan used his smooth talking skills and network with stockists to off take and store more than they needed and the inventory went piling up finally leading to zero off take in two quarters when things got tough.
We don’t need to mention the fake invoice generation by “unscrupulous” employees to show higher sales.  This happens in various industries and google your way to “Billing Scams”
So if you are looking for good behaviors aligned to your organizations value system then you need to ensure the “desired behaviors” are brought into focus.

This can be done through combination of the Performance Management and the Competency System.   The PMS should focus on the goals the “how” and “why” along with the “what”.   The managers should ensure that they anticipate how things can “Go Wrong” and discuss these with their teams in the process of setting goals.   
The competency framework should ensure that the behaviors of the competencies (managerial and leadership) do cover behavioral aspects of “how” apart from defining the core job related behaviors of the given role.

Focusing on just numbers,  targets and deliverable s you might end up like the proverbial  missing the woods for the trees.

Monday, May 25, 2015

FIVE THINGS THAT WILL IMPACT HR OF THE FUTURE

We know well that the future cannot be predicted exactly as it would unfold. However a few trends can give you an indication of things to come.   When it comes to organizations the biggest question in the minds of leaders is "What will change and how will the changes affect the work organization". Below are a few changes and the impact it would have on the HR Function.  Organizations that anticipate these and make deliberate attempts to circumvent them will be in a position of strength vis a vis organizations that believe in crossing the bridge when they reach there.  You may not need a bridge for all you know...it may be something else.    

ANTICIPATED CHANGES
WHAT IT MEANS FOR HR
Heavy Automation of basic level HR processes
Most employee data will be inputs by employees themselves

Almost all entry level HR jobs will disappear
Regulation and cross border movements will results in a maze of complex employment terms and conditions 
Organization will need specialist advisors to help them navigate this complex web of employment benefits administration and cross border movements and virtual configurations 
As organizations become more flexible yet complex leading to a duality it would need special skills and deep understanding of employment needs
Shift towards more specialist roles in the HR functions.  The era of generalists will be over


Data will be generated all round in organization both within and across interface of the organization.    Data generated will be more reliable, more robust.

Trajectory of HR professionals, their decisions and judgments will all be determined by insights and analytics from real time data

More statistics and big data experts and statistical modelers would be part of the HR department

Too many people will be chasing too few in the talent pool.




Curriculum getting specialized, niche skills will emerge.  Career orientation of students will no longer be linear
Having a right Employee Value Proposition and models to engage culturally diverse and remote sets of configurations will be key to surviving the talent war.



Shift will be towards building relationships and transitioning talent across boundaries (from campus to coporate) rather than vanilla hiring process. longer term strategic partnerships and tie ups with colleges and universities will be key to talent war tactics


Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Urgent Versus Important: Towards Effectiveness in Our Goals

President Eisenhower once said "The Urgent Problems are Seldom the Important Ones".  This can't be more true even in today's context .  Incidentally life is much more complex, much more fast paced, urgent and demanding than during the days of President Eisenhower
You will agree, the internet boom has brought in so much information at our finger tips and at the click of the button that one cannot find time to focus on something without getting distracted. If you are working on a word document for an hour you must have felt the urging need to go online and inform your friends on Facebook or Twitter of how you are enjoying every minute of your writing or,  the tingling urge to browse the internet.   Coupled with those distractions is the temptation to respond to that beep on your hand phone or tablet alerting you of a message waiting or a update from one of your favorite apps. 
 Given this urgency and sense of distraction how do you remain on top of your dozens of conflicting priorities.   These priorities stare at an average person every hour of the living day.  Be it a professional working in office, a lawyer, or even a script writer.  How do you handle your day to day priorities becomes the top issue many times.   Missed deadlines,  abandoned personal goals,  a fuming boss,  a irate customer are all downsides of not being able to keep pace.   This leads to more and more accumulation and you end up with a Himalayan task of prioritizing and re-prioritizing.    What would help is to step back and think about that long to-do list you have.  Just having one does not guarantee you are moving well on the tasks to be completed.   Are you effective or trying to be efficient in the process. 
Here are few things you can do to make most of the avalanche of items on your  to-do list. These simple steps will soon make you more effective in your daily tasks and can lead you towards improved overall performance and reduced urgency and stressful moments.
a) Pareto to the Rescue:  Use the 80:20 principle to segregate the list of your pending items into vital few and trivial many.   Pick up the top 3 to 5 things you want to sort as key priorities among the several awaiting your action.  Call them your Top Priority one's.  Remember the key is that it is not enough to know what to do but also know what not to do. 
b) Use those Ever Increasing Constellation of Apps:  Be it android or iOS you will find several hundred planning tools, to do lists which can help you with alerts, alarms and reminders.  Put these Top Priorities into the calendar and keep coasting along as you finish them one by one.  For the technologically uninitiated there's always the daily diary or the planner book that can come in handy.
c) Distance Yourself  from Those Digital Distractions: You need to put away these distractions like the SMS to waiting to be read, the latest Tweet from your rock star hero or the latest update on weather, or the email from office  all arriving incessantly into the digital device.  Keep a time window for such activity and stick to it.  If you follow that routine then it starts getting ingrained in your mind, in a few days the sub conscious sub system of the mind learns to rewire our brain circuit
d) Make Time for Reflection:  In the hurry and pace of daily life we rarely stop to look back on the day gone by.  It would be a good idea to look at how you had done on the things you did each day.  You would need not more than 5 to 8 minutes and this exercise also helps you to identify any priority items that you may have to focus on the next day.   The human mind has a uncanny ability to tune out what is not in focus and one could easily avoid missing out something which might fall between the no light hours that separate the two days.
e) What Are the Other Distractions:  Do you have too many things going on at the same time.  It is said that human's multitasking are more likely to make mistakes.  This is due to context switching leading to reduced attention.  However it is not impossible and people can be trained and become better at multitasking but that is only after training.  Otherwise several studies do show the down side of effectiveness while multitasking. So try to focus on the tasks one at a time as the brain needs to refocus as you switch between tasks making use of mental energy.   So this goes back to making a priority lists as in point a and re-look at what's important, whats not before you race ahead.   Some of us think we are experts at multitasking then you need to have a shared understanding - it is about doing two unrelated tasks.  Second the brain has an ability to switch rapidly between one and the other task so we should not confuse that with multitasking.

So next time think when you are overwhelmed by a long list of to do items.  Remember that efficiency can be in contrast with effectiveness and the choice is in our hands. 

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