Vital 3 elements for career management

Organizations are often interested in designing career management or career progression frameworks, Whatever be the sophistication that you want to build into it there are three basic factors that must go in to the design considerations to ensure that from a people perspective these systems can attain desired success (goals of your framework or system).

a) What the individual wants (Aspiration)

b) What he / she brings to the table (capability or Competency)

c) What the organization wants (Need)

If you have an imbalance or misalignment between these three you are bound to fail in meeting either the individual or organizational need

For simplicity call them ACN.

The three need to be in alignment for an 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.

Pretty Simplistic indeed, but in hindsight doesn't everything look so.  

Knowledge Management,How HR can Influence

In an earlier post I had written about Knowledge Management and how it is relevant today and can't be ignored in the context of today's business.  Read Here.

In this post I will try to explore how HR can play a role in facilitating knowledge management.  While the context may be more specific to services industries it can be extended to any other industry.

As companies have diversified and spread their operations across geographical and state boundaries and as technology has provide ample ways to stay connected and share work seamlessly, it is very common to find teams working across multiple locations requires remote teams to come together and deliver solutions and it is here that knowledge management processes play a key role in the collaborative effort.   In such an environment the willingness of team members (employees in general)  the aspect of give and take needs to be forthcoming.  The willingness is addressed by driving the culture of sharing and caring.  Explained below, are seven areas of influence whereby  the HR function can play an important role in enabling learning and sharing knowledge through a collaborative effort.

Creating a Culture for Knowledge Sharing

Espoused Value of Learning & Sharing: HR Should Influence That

As highlighted earlier, culture plays a significant part in ensuring sustenance of the knowledge management effort.   The effort to create a culture of learning and sharing starts right from the directional strategy of the company. The organization should design and deploy experiential and cognitive learning programs  throughout the year to sharpen the understanding of the core values of the organization understand how learning and sharing as a value is manifest in resultant behaviors and to  percolate the values into day to day working.  Through these programs employees can be made ready to deal with situations when there is a defocus or a deviation from the very values you want to promote and instill among your teams.  The knowledge management efforts get a key boost through the value of  Learning & Sharing.   Apart from a pivotal role of being custodians of the processes to ensure value adherence  HR can play a key role in embedding the knowledge sharing culture by reinforcing this in induction and hiring process.  

Create a Knowledge Sharing Platform

HR can influence knowledge sharing through appropriate reward and recognition programs that Communities of Expertise (CoE’s) can aspire for and thereby bring together people working on related areas of functional and technical expertise.  These can be areas for e.g. Engine Optimization and tuning in an automobile company,  or infection prevention post surgery in a hospital ICU, or process throughput design in a process plant.

Apart from sharing explicit and tacit knowledge the CoE’s also help in creation of knowledge assets and artifacts like case studies,  white papers, Points of view etc.  Some companies have even gone to the extent of aggregating these expertise platforms and created learning universities or knowledge universities that drive creation and sustenance of knowledge within the organizations.

HR needs to implement a structure to sustain these knowledge platforms by designing appropriate governance structures and putting right kind of metrics in place to drive effective implementation and roll out.  These kind of processes and structures are not easy to copy and duplicate.  It is culture specific and driven by the fact that the substance is more important than the form that these systems take.

Capability Building

In a diversified multilocation organization dispersed organization learning will be effective only if it reaches the audience irrespective of time, space and distances.   HR Technology enablement  focus should ensure the deployment of learning through e-Learning modules accessible seamlessly across the globe.  Technology today can ensure right access to learning modules, libraries and other learning platforms that are accessible across the globe and available real time to employees.  

Compliance and Intellectual Property

Another important role for HR is by being an integral part of addressing any issues on violations of  knowledge copy rights and intellectual property. Any transgression or violations are addressed and necessary action is taken by the company's Ethics Redressal Committee of which HR is usually a key governance stakeholder.   The HR team should ensure  that principles of natural justice are followed during any such scrutiny in alignment with the corporate guidelines on value and ethics. 

Staffing & Resourcing Intelligence

One of the key areas by which HR can influence knowledge management is by ensuring  visibility on availability of right competencies across businesses and ensure staffing on a real time basis.   HR can also play a pivotal role in creating this internal system that provides various resourcing and staffing managers and business leaders with information on the availability of right resources and capabilities that are required for the delivery of customers’ business requirements. 

Facilitator & User

While HR plays a role in enabling knowledge sharing, the HR function is also a significant user of  the knowledge management framework and infrastructure.  All HR communication to the associates on various organizational policies, processes,  procedures,  change initiatives etc, are communicated through multiple collaboration mechanisms such as Email,  Bulletin Boards on the intranet, web chat tools,  the Knowledge Management portal etc.  There is a significant use of collaborative tools such as Pod Cast and Webcast Sessions for sharing and communicating information on real time basis with participants across the globe and these are extensively used by the HR teams.   By being an early adopter and consistent user of the KM tools HR has the onus to lead by example in driving the culture of  knowledge sharing.

Conclusion

As highlighted in previous sections HR does play a key role in driving an organization’s knowledge management efforts. HR can set an example by being both a proponent and user of the knowledge management processes.   HR can play an active part as a custodian of key processes that facilitate knowledge sharing as well as facilitate the creation of a culture for knowledge management.   Operationally organizations face a challenge of lack of time or less  band width of managers.  It is here that a robust communication effort and creating awareness by sharing and highlighting success stories, case studies, informal sharing etc., are vital.  HR can also influence the adoption of knowledge processes by including relevant component in the performance appraisal thereby driving adoption and usage in the early stages of adoption.  Thereafter it is the constant reinforcement of practices, recognizing and rewarding adoption of knowledge management processes that would play a key facilitation role.   In the coming years with more and more emphasis on knowledge and management of knowledge for competitive advantage HR will play a vital role in enabling a key and vital strategic lever. 

Comfort Zone Trap and How to Get Out of It

Comfort Zone can be understood as "a settled method of working that requires little effort and yields only barely acceptable results".   As humans we often get into this trap (whether in personal or professional life) and need to be egged on or put in substantial effort to get out of the same.

Is it possible to come out of the comfort zone?  Experience and research shows yes. You can get out of a comfort zone surely... but to do that you need to understand what is your comfort zone and gauge and understand where you stand.  Measuring your comfort zone is really possible.

To understand a bit about comfort zone...

Generally we feel "bit nervous" and it is a likely indication we are not in our comfort zone. It is a mental condition where we believe we 

Problem Elimination, Not Problem Solving Should Be the New Focus

I met Ballu, a good friend, sometime back.  He happened to be of the very sociable types who always had a tale or two to tell.  Here is an interesting one he narrated.

"Some time back I happened to be in a review meeting and one of the things being discussed was a tool to automate some of the work being done by the people engagement managers.  The biggest selling point was that there are many problems that the team had to address and hence an automated tool would help them manage this in a manner that is simple, gives them flexibility and lets them be mobile and at the same time come up with wonderful snapshot of the problems solved.  This was the problem solving mind-set. And the natural tendency is for people to feel very happy to able to help address and solve problems. And our systems recognize this.  People are rewarded, they are encouraged, they are praised. And the problems continue to appear… from somewhere or the other….and it seemed like there is a factory for manufacturing problem that keep appearing and people waiting to solve them."

Our conversation continued… “How long will this solving the problem stuff continue?.  The next thing was to look for an alternative which was “eliminating the problem”

What we realized was that the more people came up with stories of how they solved a problem the more they were rewarded the more they were glorified…. they were promoted,  they had a great future....and That was the problem.

We needed to change our view point and look at focusing on “problem elimination”. rather than "problem solving"  Remember from my earlier blog on FOCUS.  (Click Here To Read the Focus Blog). So if your choice can be from among two things…solving the problem to eliminating the problem then the one you focus on gets the attention. .

There are some of you (or many..) who would have experienced that the same problems are recurring time and again. What problem we solved last year is up again the next year.  The problems faced by the predecessor are repeated just the way it happened earlier. 

When we focus on “problem elimination” the attention shifts from the problem of how to handle problems to a new way of looking at it… how to eliminate the problem.   What problem elimination means and how it can make our lives (both working and otherwise) more relaxed and enjoyable is what we shall explore in a coming post.