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. 

A Sure Recipe for A Failed Change Effort

In one of the conversations I was having with a colleague he/ she asked "Why are these things changing so frequently, every now and then".   Cant' we have a permanent change once for all".... Paradoxical it seemed at first but in hind sight it goes to remind us that change is permanent.  It is here to stay and will always be... it was slower but will be faster.... it is something permanent.

Not Only is change permanent, the effects of that can also be permanent.... like going out of business for ever,  or taking a hit on your performance and leading to a downward seemingly never ending downward trajectory.  OR alternatively.... you can manage change to ensure you don't get the wrong side of where you wanted to end up.

In an earlier blog I spoke about the capabilities required to manage change that every organization should look for.  Read Here

What is interesting is that there are some conditions when change cannot be successfully navigated (I like this term as it draws from turbulent conditions akin to a mid ocean storm or air turbulence which skillful commanders are used to handling every day).   One kind of sure condition for failure is when the organization faces disruptive forces (Externally) and at the same time faces internal resistance then you can read it as a signal 4 hurricane sure to leave the scars for long on the landscape of your organization. 

Here is an example:  Imagine a new product is launched in your industry that magnifies some service capability or product feature or deliverable by a factor of X.   This can be anything ranging from "new low cost airlines with a completely untested model entering a fragment airline industry" leading to mass adoption by flyers,   a robotic automation tool by a competitor that can make a fully functional document format meeting your customer spec in a time which is a fraction of the manual effort,  or a completely different retail format where economy of scale can deliver volumes at huge discounts.    

Now if you are in one of these contexts and you have internal dynamics where people resist your ability and efforts to counter that then your organization is heading for failure.   Imagine a situation where your employees are focusing on bargaining wage hikes,  working hours reduction etc when the industry is facing the threat of  disruptive force.  Or if your employees resist automation and are completely uncooperative when a new bank brings in unheard of service quality with great amount of automation and technology adoption then you have little chance of surviving long or you can survive as long as you decide to do something to address the disruptive forces. 

When faced with this diabolic choice then the only way out is "sense making" driven by the organization's change leaders.  The reluctant participants should understand the choice between fighting for more of what they want versus not existing (as an organization) to fight any more.  The more effort put in by the organization to communicate this aspect the better the chances to overcome this resistance and tide through the crisis of sorts that might prevail.  

A combination of disruptive forces combined with internal resistance is something that can be a sure shot recipe for failed change efforts. 

Read More on Change Management  Below

Arise Awake, Don't Be a Boiled Frog

HOPE To Kindle Our Live

The Quest for Delivering Lasting Change

The Quantum Does not Matter, The Focus Does

A student went to a Zen master and said, “I am devoted and keen to study your martial art system. Tell me Sir, How long will it take me to master it?

The teacher looked at him casually and remarked “About Ten Years”

“But I want to master it faster than that, I will work very hard, practice twice the number of hours per day... and also slog at night" and "Sir, Then how long will it take me?”

The teacher thought for a moment and said “Twenty Years”

What we can learn is that it takes time to master something. It is not the quantum of time rather the focus and attention that we can pay that makes the difference in how much skill or knowledge gets accumulated.  

The more one focuses on the task the better is the learning.  If you tend to push through you are bound to undermine the learning. 

There is an optimal speed at which we can learn, understand and synthesize knowledge and we can get more adept at it but short circuiting it in something new we seek to learn will not help the learning any more than walking around with a dictionary makes you an expert in english language. 

Read more about the power of Focus and How It Makes a Difference in What we Do and What Gets Done.  Read Here

Discussions on Creative Leadership at Asia Pacific HRM Congress

It was interesting discussion at the session on Creative Leadership For Tomorrows World. I was part of a session wherein there were three presentations bringing in diverse views on leadership and talent..  

First presentation by Vinod Bidwaik, HR Director at  DSM India Pvt Ltd,  brought out how leadership is key to securing the future for company which is driven by innovation.   The company had evolved  over a period of 110 years from a mining company to a high tech specialty plastics products company and also getting into some amazing innovations that will drive the growth.  To enable this you needed to shape the right behaviors right from entry  screening to retention and motivation and the right leadership was needed to provide that direction.   After all Leadership is a verb and not a noun.  It is all about driving momentum and bringing change and not about remaining good where you are.  The six stage model that was presented made an interesting learning from the companies five year journey. 

The second section was on an interesting point of view by Wing Commander Naresh Taneja Head HR for IRB Infrastructure Services,  who spoke about Toxic Talent Trap and how you can go on for a long way without noticing the side effects of talent that is toxic.  Basically the session was a discussion about what extent do companies go in the pursuit of talent, what extent do you let go of your core values just because you don' want to lose a good talent.  The discussion raised questions about role of leadership in addressing this issue and ensuring that we don't end up as boiled frogs (of course with the internal environment changes) 

The third leg of the session was that perspective I shared from TCS about how leadership is not just at individual level but leadership also extends to the organization as a whole.   The small story about how TCS displayed responsible leadership at the industry level to drive augmentation of talent to enable the industry become more competitive was the essence of what we discussed in this part.  There was an interesting discussion on how competition is no longer between company A and B within an industry but going beyond to competition among nations and  leaders have to quickly understand how the dynamics of talent shortages and unavailability makes your industry uncompetitive due to salary wars and wage inflation and how it gravitates towards a competition between nations.  That is where responsible leadership as a corporate entity comes into picture to secure a sustainable competitive organization.

Chairing a Session @ Asia Pacific HRM Congress !!! Bangalore

This week on 11 & 12 Sept 2014, the Asia Pacific HRM Congress will be held at Bangalore.  The theme of the conference is "Building a Great Place to Work with Powerful Results".  Several discussions and theme based technical sessions are slated as part of the two day event.

I will be chairing one of the sessions with three presentations on theme of Creative Leadership which is a very essential component in creating a strong innovative organization that can be leader in tomorrows world. 

There will be interesting presentations by folks from IRB Infrastructure,   DSM Group and Renault.  The question always remains as to whether leadership in decline and downturn days is same as leadership when growth is all round.  May be we would have a few insights coming up during the discussions. 

Missed Opportunities: Part II

In an earlier post (Read Here) I spoke about missed opportunities.  We discussed four major reasons for these including lethargy in general, being unaware,  being extra cautious or lack of planning. 

While people do keep regretting missed opportunities we should understand how we can avoid unnecessary regrets.    For this consider couple of things.

Often in life many things require decisions to be time bound.  If you delay the decision you may lose the opportunity forever.  We keep hearing, Oh No',  If only I had decided to buy that apartment today I would have earned five times the investment and its just five years since the opportunity went by.   See my friends who joined that company.... I took time to decide and they are at the peak of their careers.

The question to ask is each time you make a delay in decision is :   "What's the Good Reason to delay the decision for".   Once you make that decision don't view it as a missed opportunity,  just view it as a different path or option you chose.   This is what Andrew Lincoln once said about missed opportunities.

Second let us look at it the way the noted motivational speaker Zig Ziglar does when he says  "The top sales person in your organization probably missed more sales than 90% of the sales people on the team, but they also made more calls than the others made."     This sums up another way to look at it. You missed out something to gain something else.   What you did not get by making more sales calls was "low sales".  So even though you missed some you ended up the winner. 

Third and most simple way to look at it is "If you did not try or attempt to do something" then it is not a missed opportunity.  It becomes missed opportunity only if you made a conscious choice to opt for something but then did not do it, not out of constraints or limitations, but as an act of omission.  Only then you should accept it as a missed opportunity. 

Have you heard anyone regret he / she did not become like Michelangelo the painter.  If you did then you must have put in efforts to become a master painter.  

In short, what you did will decide whether you missed out. Did nothing, missed nothing.  

That way you will be able to rationalize your experiences in a manner that does not make you unnecessarily worried and set your mind wandering for a comforting solution. 

Economy in a Sweet Spot? Implication for HR

Euphoria over new Government taking office in New Delhi is slowly fading away.   Now all eyes are on the future.  Economic trends globally are showing an uptick in recent months.   A global survey of over 1300 CEO's including 77 from India shows that 49% of the CEO's surveyed are very confident of their growth prospects in short term and 70% have a very positive outlook on growth in the next 3 years.   

The days to come will now see talent wars as growth and economic confidence returns.  When chips are down you don't worry much about attrition, you give cursory attention to talent shortages (with exception of few critical areas each time there is a down turn) and tide the calm without much problem.  

As things change now,  it is interesting to know that over 55% of those CEO's surveyed saw the loss of key talent as a key threat in coming days.   HR Leaders and Managers need to consider how to ride this wave of growth and progress and how their organizations can come out unscathed.  Some points to consider

a) How do you retain your top talent?  If you have ignored them in the recent years, now's the time to pull levers on all fronts to retain the top talent.  Engaging the solid citizens who contribute to your growth is key.  They need to see something valuable for them, a good career, rewards, recognition (constant reinforcement) and providing greater responsibilities.  Easier said than done.  However for those organizations who looked the other way during the slow down or low growth period the challenge will be enormous.   Your best folks who felt they got a cold shoulder would be the most vulnerable one's when it comes to "continuance commitment" dimension. 

b) Look for alternative talent pools?  In many industries smart thinking in terms of how you can augment your talent supply is very important.  Otherwise the companies will out price themselves on the compensation front and eventually make the industry uncompetitive.  Remember your competition is not going to come just from your industry, so HR and Talent managers should be on the look out where the next boomerang comes from E.g. e-Tailer flipkart.com  is suddenly growing and needs hundreds of new employees every month to keep their supply chain running.  They are giving a run to folks in the pizza delivery chain.   

c) Build Capabilities for the next wave:   As you grow it won't be wise to look at linear growth.  100$  2 people,  1000$,  20 people.  This formula won't keep you growing.  Companies have to look for productivity improvements,  technology and automation to deliver the same with less and keep the bottom line in shape.  This will call for investments both in the people development space to build up and quickly create capabilities required to run the new technologies.   Training functions will also need to rehash their strategies to quickly up skill and / or re-skill sections of the workforce based on the changes anticipated. 

d) Relative Growth of Industries will Vary:  As economies revive the turn around rates will differ across industry. Some will speed up faster and other relatively slower.  But remember your HR challenges does not necessarily come from your own industry.   When Business Process Services companies grew at a rapid 30% plus rates in India in the early years the pressure was felt by banks, accounting firms, financial services companies as well as by retailers.  The need for industry vertical experience among the BPS organizations to serve their global customers led to influx of many banking, financial services professionals as well as retail experts moving into another industry.  HR Leaders need to assess where the next challenge would come from.  

e) How do you attract the right talent:  When economies review the other challenge for HR and Talent Managers is about how to attract the best talent.  After all you would need to hire for growth and this is tough in a growing market.  There will be cost pressures if you relentlessly pursue a wage war to get your talent.   With digital forces like social media and a host of networking platforms making a big presence felt now, it is imperative that the next wave to attract new talent would be predominantly digital marketing challenge. This will need employer branding focus in organizations and creating that pull factor with the right audience.   

While the above are not prescriptive suggestions it is important for HR and Talent managers to reassess their strategic position in the talent market and equip themselves with the right approaches and tactics to survive getting hit by the talent war as economic revival seeps in.