Development Discussion: Timing Matters

Performance Management is a key process in the talent management repertoire of any organization.   If this key process is done well most of the other processes will fall in place and align beautifully.   One of the downstream processes that depends to a large extent on a robust performance management framework is the employee development process.  Some part of the learning needs comes from what was mirrored in the PMS outcomes; i.e. the areas for improvement and enhancement in the coming year based on the observed performance in context.

The problem most designers don't notice is that this key process is bound to fail if you couple the development discussion too tightly with the performance appraisal.   The best strategy would be to keep the two distinct and separated in time by what we can call as a "Cooling off Window"   The best would be to have the development discussion after a 3 to 4 month window downstream from the appraisal process itself.

That way you would avoid a lot of unwanted discussion around the gaps in the performance observed from feedback.  Normally you would notice that when it comes to the appraisal process most people get very defensive about areas of improvement and so it gets difficult to have any meaningful dialogue.  On one hand employee is defensive about improvement areas as it is tied down to appraisal scores and performance bands which ultimately determine compensation rise and other downside implications related to pay.  On the other the same points go into determining what areas could be improvement focus.

However this does not mean that you can short cut the performance appraisal and feedback. The rigor of the feedback mechanisms - timely, periodic (2 to 3 times in a window of 6 months) and context specific still holds good.

By keeping a cooling off window the two processes get done at different times.  The feedback at time of learning needs should also factor in context specific inputs given to the employees when working on their job and performing their roles.  This reinforces the inputs on improvement areas.    Combine this with multi-rater feedback where the employee is given feedback on areas to improve and areas of strength and this becomes a design synergy.   

So next time you find that people are not forthcoming and development needs identified were not relevant to the context of the employee double check if you had the cooling off window or did you try to combine the performance appraisal with the development discussion. 

4P Framework for Career Choice Making

Its placement time once again and lots of students will be lining up for interviews, job search and in the process make decisions which can impact their lives.  How much thought went into this whole process is the question.  Did they do as much research as they would do to buy the next smart phone or to get a new winter jacket

The quest this season could be...To take up a job after graduation,  to pursue higher education, to follow their dreams, to take up something unconventional. However today the young generation at this critical point in their career are faced with abundance of choices.  When choices are many decision making becomes difficult, rather stressful and several interference's come into play. 

 These include Peer pressure,  popular choices of the day (remember the engineering and medicine craze of the 1980's and 1990's) , family pressures all play a part of being among the various interference's.   In such situations how does one bring back focus on their career choices.  A simple way is to ensure you are clued in to 4P's.  A simple yet powerful way to ensure that you are in sync with reality and make a more informed choice.   A brief discussion on the 4 P framework for effective career choice making is elaborated here.  

The first P is Purpose.  Sounds simple but you first need to have a clear purpose if you don't want to get swayed by the happenings around you else,  the slightest winds of disruption around you will distract you.   Most young college graduates think their purpose is clear but not more than 10% of them have actually written down their purpose.   Where do you want to go?  What do you want to do?  Writing down your purpose increases the chances manifold that you will achieve it or move in the direction to achieve it.   Writing down your purpose brings focus into your mind.   This is something you should take a few solitary moments to pen down.   Discuss it, if you need, with a close confidant - a friend, a family member.   State what you want to achieve and by when.  Write it down in a place where you can read it as often as once a day.  The mind has a beautiful way of rewiring itself when you are focused on your objective or purpose. (Read my Blog on Attention & Focus).  One thing that most students who are graduating worry about is what others will think of their choice.  It does not matter.  Your choice is something that is very important for you and if you don't make your choice to do what you want then you will only be living other's choices.  Your's or Others?  The Decision Is Your's.

Once you have your Purpose, you need to drive it to action.  This leads us to the second P which is Plan.   Plan helps give wings to your dreams.    You have to make deliberate attempts to make things happen and only a plan can take you there.   You need to understand your strengths, your values and how they align with your purpose.   Do you have what it takes to give wings to your dreams?  If not - Go Get It !!  It is never too late when you are making a choice for your life's dream.  A career is not a short term venture but something that where you can end up spending 3 to 4 decades of your life in a field of your choosing.   This can be the company you start your career with, the industry in which you want to work or even the field of profession you want to choose.    A plan needs to have milestones.  Break your journey to the destination into manageable bits.  For e.g. if you want to get into a career on animation and gaming it is not just enough to do a few courses.  Talk to a few experts who are already in the field of animation and design.  Spend a few hours talking to them, understanding what stumbling blocks they faced in their career and how did they overcome this.   Work on areas where you have assessed gaps vis a vis making entry into the career you are focusing on.   You also need to understand what would be the best place to start your career. Look for organizations that provide fertile learning ground and good training for early career starters.   Sometimes you need to trade this off with a few thousand rupees of salary that you may other wise get but with few training opportunities.   Finally just like you put purpose on paper you should try to do the same with your plan. 

The third P is very critical and most college graduates don't think about this till it is too late in the day.  Position...  It is like your brand promise.  What is that makes you different from others who are competing with you.  Chose something that is your strength.  Something which you can talk about as your USP.  Marry this P to the previous one if you want a job with a specific industry or have narrowed down to a particular choice of organization.   How will you position your key strengths during the selection process.   Things like Good communication skills,  hard worker and attention to detail are all given today.  You need to show how you are ahead of the learning curve,  what unique skill, capability or talent you have that is hard to come by.    This will help you stand out in a crowd.   You need to start working on this P early on in your college degree course.   Colleges where Training & Placement Departments drive this as a focus area to work on for their graduating classes will be ahead of the curve when it comes to fruitful placements of their graduating classes. 

Perseverance...the final piece of the 4P framework.  One needs to have a drive for perseverance in order to sustain  the focus or career interest area.   Perseverance helps to galvanize action,  overcome stumbling blocks, expand your horizon and achieve excellence.   When it is combined with performance it can create a transformation for individuals.  Remember the budding guitarist who strummed hours on end and became part of the rock band... or the avid writer at school who turned into a budding author or journalist.... or the accounting wizard who went on to become a seasoned Chartered Accountant.  All these examples can be found in real life.   What we are talking here is the never say die attitude that you carry with you and which will help aspirants sustain the quest for what they are looking in their careers. 

While it is important for individual students and graduates who are making career choices to consider these 4P's and strive towards using this simple framework to make a informed and aware choice, it is also in the interest of the educational institutes to set this focus as part of their mentoring the final year students.  Placement Counselors and Training Officers of colleges can subtly encourage students to think on these lines.  The earlier you make the start in college better are the chances that students don't get into last minute confusion and end up  enjoying the careers they strive for. 

Alternate Careers & The Shortest Path Syndrome in Careers

The thinking about careers is mostly linear.  However reality is that in today's fast changing global context there are always fundamental shifts in demands for skills and careers. Therefore one has to be ready to have a different perspective when it comes to the way one looks at a career.  

Consider this -  when it comes to deciding shortest and best way to cover the distance between two points one would logically  prefer a straight line.  However when it comes to careers it is not always necessary that a straight line be the best choice between the point you are and where you want to be.  Further when context changes  it is all the more  relevant. 

One should be willing to take risks and consider best alternatives.  So the fact that one looks at non linear ways to the destination or goal.   If one is staring in face of declining demand for jobs in a given field then it makes sense to prudently chose an alternative career. . 

Why?  The career market has definitely undergone shift. In UK there have been alarming increase in number of unemployed young people.  Also post college there is no surety of  a relevant job opportunity.   India has the worlds highest number of graduates.  In the engineering field alone the country produces over 500,000 engineers annual and over a quarter of them don't get placed and keep adding to the pool of unemployed.   Take the case of Philippines,  In the past 4 years the global recession and dip in demand for nursing professionals world wide caused a dramatic rise in the unemployment among nurses.  Estimates indicated about 400,000 unemployed nurses today.   How long do these nursing graduates wait to get a job in a hospital and work hands on in a profession they wanted to pursue.  

There are always alternate careers.  However they should not be random choices.  That way you end up with a sub optimal one and also leads to frustration. However if the chosen career is some way related to the core profession then it can be very enriching.   How and What do you do is something we'll see in coming posts.

MBA: Whats ailing the programs

A  field of study which landed students with very lucrative career options this field grew leaps and bounds -  attracted so many investors and several institutions started offering MBA programs and the growth was so rapid that by 2013 we have about 4000 colleges with capacity of over 350,000students each year.   Incidentally it is a vertical zoom upwards from 200+ colleges in 1990's.

Now, the tide has turned and there are large number (over half) where as many as 30 to 40% of students graduating in recent years are unable to get a job placement when they complete their MBA course work.   While the mushrooming of colleges did bring about lot of capacity this came at a cost of quality and big gap in employability.

According to the report on MBA employability by Aspiring Minds shows a dismally low 10% employablity in functional areas.   Employability in Operational roles was over 30%. 

When the first MBA course was launched at Harvard over a 100 years ago (early 1900's)  the objective was to help people who were well trained in their profession to sharpen their understanding of business and therefore run successful businesses.   MBA programs across the globe mirrored this and as the decades unfolded the objective changed.  Today Business Schools aim at building capability in decision making and leadership skills in a Global Environment, Most schools have a spattering of those who come with some prior work experience thereby forcing the learners to attempt a surrogate - try to learn from others experience, whatever value add that may bring about.  

The paradox - when there is over abundance of supply you would expect lot of innovation and improvement in curriculum it is not the case.  Reason for this can be attributed to the ingrained Indian' psyche to earn degrees.   Social pressure pushes students to opt for a PG degree like MBA even if it is not of high quality.  So what could be gaps in ability of the students who come to the corporate world after completing their MBA.  We discuss some of these below both from curriculum perspective as well as from the perspective of skills, knowledge and attitudes.  While all of these may not be equally representative  generalization across all colleges, especially among the top 100 or so colleges in India, it provides some aspects to reflect as some of the those graduating  in the lower ranks in these institutes also reflect these gaps.

a) Quick Fix and BOOM BOOM...Approach:  Business Management Graduates who join the industry afresh are full of ideas.  The problem.. solutions are configured in couple of hours.  What should have followed a set of decision making questions is often done in a jiffy.  Result:  Unworkable and impractical solutions.  Often the risk considerations are missing,  how the decisions impacts other parts of the organization are missing.... Systems Thinking.   Today's Solutions are Tomorrow's Problems.... Remember.  We can attribute this quick fix to the speed at which they are used to results.... Google Your Way in 0.052 seconds... seems to be transposed to real life too.  Look for quick fix.... solutions.  

b) Inference at Cost of Tools & Techniques:  More emphasis is placed on learning tools, techniques and so in straight situations the fresh MBA's seem to be very agile in application, but when it comes to drawing inferences,  there is a big gap.   Taking numbers sorting them into a organized information happens well but drawing inferences and linking the various concepts comes at a premium.

c) Synthesis as a Key Ability:   The ability to synthesize, link knowledge they gained across different areas to their decision and analysis is low.  While they are very fond of marketing,  QM and Operations Management integrating concepts of economics and social and behavioral aspects is much more lower.  Complete analysis and reports are prepared focused on strategy,  marketing concepts, operations parameters,  scenarios etc but economic principles, long term impact,  social and behavioral implications,  down side risks are left aside maybe unknowingly or assuming they are not that important pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.   Therefore the down side is that managers often expect that with new MBA's you need to spend lot of time  coaching them (hand holding) and this period of working along side goes for long duration even stretching 2 to 3 years into their career.  This can cause pressure and frustration among the new entrants as they look for being able to work independently much earlier.

d) Latest Concepts Inducted Late:  New trends in industry and business are slow to get into the curriculum and lag by anything between 6 months to 10 years. So at times it looks like Osmosis of Concepts from practice to class room.   For e.g. if you did a quick scan of the number among the top 100 B' Schools in India which have a full fledged course on Social Media on their MBA curriculum as a compulsory subject it is a very small fraction.   On a sample of 12 of the 100 only 2 had a full fledged compulsory course listed.   Even if they do have it they are not listed or among the electives which are easily avoided by the students who don't want to go through the grind.    This is so when today every industry and every business is faced with reality of  digital and social media strategy being part of the business realities. 

e) Ethics & Temporal effects:    When working on decisions in business it important that one learns to think analytically,  critically,  temporally as well as ethically.   While students are very good at the first two aspects when it comes to ethical considerations there is a big gap.   Similarly the ability to think historically as well as futuristically  is restricted.   This kind of tilt towards analytical and critical thinking leaves solutions less practical and often end up ... at the discussion level.  

f) Communication:  While written and oral communication do get sufficient focus in Business Schools it is a problem when it comes to how...  How does one communicate critical issues with employees,  how do you handle communication around issue management.   Fresh graduates are a a loss when it comes to this  aspect of communication - including those from premier Business Schools.  Communication with employees,  issue management,  strategic negotiation are important.  How communication in virtual and globalized context are different from communication in a factory where people work in one location are very different and need to be clearly understood.

g) Attitudes :  You may have great knowledge and skill repertoire but the attitude you have is often the success factor.   MBA's these days may think that the degree is a short cut from Class Room to The Board Room.  This is far from true.  One really has to go through the grind, get his or her hands dirty,  learn the ropes quickly and you will surely have a faster career, make better decisions or scale new and uncharted heights for the organization.  However today's fresh graduates want to move fast and consider the degree as the propeller for success but that's again a short sighted view.  You can get a foot in the door,  but post that it is your competitiveness, spirit and contribution that sets the MBA apart. 

g) Competitive versus Collaborative Mindset:   You are molded to be very competitive. Relative grading,  competing with others for marks in the presentation, staying ahead of the curve to get shortlisted for the plum jobs on campus, all tend to stoke the individual person and not the collaborative person in the young students.   This is carried forward as they enter the corporate world from their campuses.  The need in MBA curriculum is to design ways to encourage and visibly see how collaboration is rewarded.  Any success in organizations is culmination of efforts by several functions coming together to work on and delivering.

The above are some of the key gaps in graduating MBA students in recent years.   The world of business is changing so rapidly that what we call as gaps today may be dwarfed in next five years by something very different.   Society has many expectations from educational institutions and the curriculum is the best benchmark of the pressures acting on the educational institutes being fulfilled.   One has to be constantly aware of what those pressures are and how they can be addressed.   The way out for those who are graduating in these tough times would be to consider alternative careers.  

The straight line may be the shortest and easiest path between two points but when it comes to careers it is not necessarily so and if we understand how this can work to your advantage when there is an imbalance in demand supply (over supply) we can solve a number of problems with respect to employability.  How?  We will see in a subsequent post.

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.  

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. 

4P Framework for Career Choice Making

This is the time of the year when students studying in the final year of their graduate or post graduate degree courses would be making career choices on what they would be doing post college...To take up a job after graduation,  to pursue higher education, to follow their dreams, to take up something unconventional. However today the young generation at this critical point in their career are faced with abundance of choices.  When choices are many decision making becomes difficult, rather stressful and several interference's come into play. 

 These include Peer pressure,  popular choices of the day (remember the engineering and medicine craze of the 1980's and 1990's) , family pressures all play a part of being among the various interference's.   In such situations how does one bring back focus on their career choices.  A simple way is to ensure you are clued in to 4P's.  A simple yet powerful way to ensure that you are in synch with reality and make a more informed choice.   A brief discussion on the 4 P framework for effective career choice making is elaborated here.  

The first P is Purpose.  Sounds simple but you first need to have a clear purpose if you don't want to get swayed by the happenings around you else,  the slightest winds of disruption around you will distract you.   Most young college graduates think their purpose is clear but not more than 10% of them have actually written down their purpose.   Where do you want to go?  What do you want to do?  Writing down your purpose increases the chances manifold that you will achieve it or move in the direction to achieve it.   Writing down your purpose brings focus into your mind.   This is something you should take a few solitary moments to pen down.   Discuss it, if you need, with a close confidant - a friend, a family member.   State what you want to achieve and by when.  Write it down in a place where you can read it as often as once a day.  The mind has a beautiful way of rewiring itself when you are focused on your objective or purpose. (Read my Blog on Attention & Focus).  One thing that most students who are graduating worry about is what others will think of their choice.  It does not matter.  Your choice is something that is very important for you and if you don't make your choice to do what you want then you will only be living other's choices.  Your's or Others?  The Choice Is Your's.

Once you have your Purpose, you need to drive it to action.  This leads us to the second P which is Plan.   Plan helps give wings to your dreams.    You have to make deliberate attempts to make things happen and only a plan can take you there.   You need to understand your strengths, your values and how they align with your purpose.   Do you have what it takes to give wings to your dreams?  If not - Go Get It !!  It is never too late when you are making a choice for your life's dream.  A career is not a short term venture but something that where you can end up spending 3 to 4 decades of your life in a field of your choosing.   This can be the company you start your career with, the industry in which you want to work or even the field of profession you want to choose.    A plan needs to have milestones.  Break your journey to the destination into manageable bits.  For e.g. if you want to get into a career on animation and gaming it is not just enough to do a few courses.  Talk to a few experts who are already in the field of animation and design.  Spend a few hours talking to them, understanding what stumbling blocks they faced in their career and how did they overcome this.   Work on areas where you have assessed gaps vis a vis making entry into the career you are focusing on.   You also need to understand what would be the best place to start your career. Look for organizations that provide fertile learning ground and good training for early career starters.   Sometimes you need to trade this off with a few thousand rupees of salary that you may other wise get but with few training opportunities.   Finally just like you put purpose on paper you should try to do the same with your plan. 

The third P is very critical and most college graduates don't think about this till it is too late in the day.  Position...  It is like your brand promise.  What is that makes you different from others who are competing with you.  Chose something that is your strength.  Something which you can talk about as your USP.  Marry this P to the previous one if you want a job with a specific industry or have narrowed down to a particular choice of organization.   How will you position your key strengths during the selection process.   Things like Good communication skills,  hard worker and attention to detail are all given today.  You need to show how you are ahead of the learning curve,  what unique skill, capability or talent you have that is hard to come by.    This will help you stand out in a crowd.   You need to start working on this P early on in your college degree course.   Colleges where Training & Placement Departments drive this as a focus area to work on for their graduating classes will be ahead of the curve when it comes to fruitful placements of their graduating classes. 

Perseverance...the final piece of the 4P framework.  One needs to have a drive for perseverance in order to sustain  the focus or career interest area.   Perseverance helps to galvanize action,  overcome stumbling blocks, expand your horizon and achieve excellence.   When it is combined with performance it can create a transformation for individuals.  Remember the budding guitarist who strummed hours on end and became part of the rock band... or the avid writer at school who turned into a budding author or journalist.... or the accounting wizard who went on to become a seasoned Chartered Accountant.  All these examples can be found in real life.   What we are talking here is the never say die attitude that you carry with you and which will help aspirants sustain the quest for what they are looking in their careers. 

While it is important for individual students and graduates who are making career choices to consider these 4P's and strive towards using this simple framework to make a informed and aware choice, it is also in the interest of the educational institutes to set this focus as part of their mentoring the final year students.  Placement Counselors and Training Officers of colleges can subtly encourage students to think on these lines.  The earlier you make the start in college better are the chances that students don't get into last minute confusion and end up  enjoying the careers they strive for.