Writer’s block? Stop!

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For a long time I thought I had a book in me…one fine day, it started gushing out. And then I hit a dry spell…

What an interesting experience…I am a writer…I must write…so I wrote…Forced it out..rotten stuff..stinking..and then even that ended…I kept forcing…Dry heaves like retching and nothing really coming out…

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Forced out by heaving muscles…no flow…no rhythm… it tears at your throat, leaves you feeling exhausted and hating the very thing you enjoyed a while ago.

That’s the worst kind of writing you can do. It stinks. Leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I know now…

I know now never to force…

I know now…to let go…and just refresh the reservoir, instead of trying to squeeze out every drop, by sheer force of will…

To go on as a writer, to not give up, to continue in spite of the first 9 refusals from publishers..that’s where you need will…

To write, you need love…you need a calm peace inside or a driving passion..you need to flow…

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If you aren’t a writer yet, I’m probably not making sense… If you are…you know what I mean, right? You’re shaking your head right now and smiling..and saying to yourself “I know”

And in spite of all the pain…all the self doubt…all the failures…I love it..

Many times I write because I think there is something inside of me that I must share with the world, that it will help…But sometimes I write just for myself, because I feel like it…like this one…I couldn’t care less if it’s published…or if you like it or you don’t or if it has any meaning to you…to me it does…And I love it…

And finally…I have learned that a good writer knows when to stop.

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Fun at work? What crap!

That’s what old world leaders tend to say!

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They say the same thing when you talk about Recognition programs. “We pay them don’t we?” is the usual response!

Can’t blame them.

HR professionals turn Fun @ Work into fun events at work. Which is not the same thing really.

To me fun is about enjoyment. Fun @ Work is about enjoyment at work. I am at work daily. Do I enjoy work Daily? That’s the question!

One quiz event a month is not going to make work fun.

Are your employees having fun AT WORK! At the work they do.

Are they stretched?

Are they challenged?

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Are they spoken to and managed respectfully?

Are they recognized when they do a good job?

Do they have development plans which are seeing action? Which are supported in terms of time and budget?

Do they receive corrective inputs and counselling from their supervisors?

Are they involved in key decisions?

Do they get to engage with senior leadership on a regular basis?

Do they know where their company is going? And how it aims to manage the challenges on that path?

Now THAT’s fun at work! And when you put it like that, no one’s going to sneeze at it.

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But ask me to cough up funds for an event a month, and do nothing about the above, and I’ll say “What crap! That’s not going to work!”

So…what next?

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Engaging today’s employees – Managing Attrition

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I have just come out of yet another corporate HR Review in which Attrition/Retention figures were shared. And leadership once again reaffirmed their expectations and concerns regarding the high percentages. HR once again promised to work on them.

Sounds familiar?

I am sure the HR folks have the usual internal dialog going, about how Attrition is not going to be controlled unless line managers own their role in the process. And I am sure line managers are wondering why HR doesn’t do more to stem the tide!

Sounds familiar?

Thanks to the slowdown attrition went down, but now with things picking up, the percentages are going up.

So what does this tell you?

I personally think we need to relook at this issue. I think the corporate world has been in denial way too long, and needs to move to acceptance. Wake up people! or should I say Wise up!

The world we live in has changed. Value systems have changed. The way people conceive a career and look at their jobs has changed.

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Sure we should continue to look at employee engagement, morale, culture, environment etc. But what each of these terms MEANS to an employee of today, are different from what it meant before.

I was recently speaking at a round table and spoke about Gen Y‘ers, when one of the audience said something that made a lot of sense to me. He must have been 50+, but he said, we’re ALL Gen Y’ers. And the moment he said it, I knew he had said something important.

We’re all spoiled for choice today. We’re all getting used to twitter and bite sized conversation, with a desire for quick bit of information/entertainment, wherever we are. Technology has yet again influenced our society, just as it always has before.

So I ask you, what keeps an employee engaged today? Change. Doing different things. A majority of us want to be doing something different every once in a while. We get bored with routine.

Movies are shorter. The dramatic pauses, long dramatic sequences are a thing of the past. The editing is slick, and we move frame to frame with rapidity. Music is getting a similar treatement, as are our newspapers and other information media.

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Employees no longer see long term careers with organizations. They would like to do their bit, add value, do something exciting, learn something new and then they start looking for a new challenge.

In this scenario as organizations struggle to improve retention figures, there are 2 ways to handle this issue.

1. Accept that attrition has become a part of life. Have processes and talent pipelines in place. Organizations which have effective incumbency and fresh talent pipelines in place, don’t have too much of a problem with attrition. They have a talent engine which ensures a regular supply of manpower almost JIT.

2. Change the outlook on engagement. The new world employee, which is you and me and the others, wants to have continuous challenge thrown her way. Build this into your processes. Find ways to job rotate talent. Those you can’t, ensure they get into Cross functional teams, or are exposed to new experiences/learning in other ways. If you can’t change their job, change their location. Or the team in which they work.

3. Change your outlook from employee citizenship to employee tenancy. Understand that they’re here for 3-5 years, and treat them differently, reorient systems, policies around tenancy instead of citizenship. Already organizations are walking away from Gratuity as part of CTC. Most employees would prefer it to be monetized today. Similarly, what other processes can we tweak, remake? Is a good question.

Only organizations that are growing at a decent pace, will be able to do the above. Stagnant organizations, slow moving organizations will see a steady drain of top talent.

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Most organizations are today providing world class work environments, compensation plans are getting so standardized, that they’re not a differentiator any more. You can only outpay the competition so long. Most organizations are putting in place robust and standardized HR processes and policies. Where then do the differentiators lie?

1. As above – Build Talent management processes and Change the outlook on engagement

2. Truly, with line management – The one thing that CANNOT be copied is how well supervisors manage their people. If you can get this in place, then you’re in good shape.

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If I were you, I would be asking myself, what does my workforce need in order to be engaged? Am I giving them what they want, or what I think they want?

The problem with Employee Engagement surveys – you only get answers to the questions you ask. You ask about work environment, they’ll tell you. You ask about leadership, they’ll tell you. What you’re missing out on, are the questions you are not asking!

Run the survey, but make sure you have a system that generates open free-wheeling dialogs, these will lead to insight into areas unexplored, and that’s the differentiator!

 

Lastly, a process that most organizations have not yet opened up to, but which my good friend, and global HR head, Prameela, pioneered. She calls it the Boomerang. By which she means putting in place processes that ensure Returns of employees who attrite. A process that tags a bungee cord to an employee upon exit, almost an umbilical, which is active and keeps a connect, so that when the employee is ready for another change, which she will be, she will consider a Return.

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If we could start measuring Returns, and have a process to raise the number of returns, there is a significant benefit to be derived:

1. Instant culture fit

2. Ready ability and knowledge of the political scenario and minefields

3. Half-ready network of allies

These guys hit the ground running, and how!

So when are you going to devise a Boomerang process for your organization?

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Mavericks in the workplace

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Question:

What is your experience of developing / or dealing with an entrepreneur inside an organisation?

Answer:

To my experience, it is a question of balance. Every organization I consulted with, wanted their people to be entrepreneurial, unable to realize that doing this would involve certain changes to the fabric of the organization itself.

The challenge of course, is that organizations (or their leaders) do not understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs are fundamentally rule-breakers or challengers. Organizations survive on conformism.

Entrepreneurs are focussed on finding new ways of doing the same things, most large organizations say, follow my way!

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Some organizations I worked with experimented with hiring Entrepreneurs and getting them on board as full time employees. That didn’t work either.

Over a period of time, after having tried to inculcate entrepreneurism and having experienced some Internal Entrepreneurs, I realized that to be a successful entrepreneur INSIDE an organization, requires some competencies that are different from a stand-alone entrepreneur. So I am going to respond from the perspective of the Internal Entrepreneur.

Here’s a brief note on what I have learned so far:

1. Internal Entrepreneurs (IE for short) need to be more flexible than their standalone counterparts in their ability to work within constraints and systems. They tell themselves that this is a necessary evil and learn to deal with it. Their standalone counterparts reject this reality and either try to change it (which usually fails because the organization culture is stronger than an individual) or quit the system
2. They have an ability to leverage the system against the system
3. They have an acute sensitivity to how much stretch the system they work within can take. And they stretch the system to near-breaking point and then pause there.
4. Networking/Relationships play a critical role in an IE’s success. Specifically, their ability to build Allies, to find Executive Sponsors, who in a sense “protect” them while they do some “wild” things, or who give them the legitimacy to do so.
5. IEs have an ability to clearly demonstrate that while their methods may appear to be “illicit” their hearts are in the right place and that they’re aligned to the same larger goal of organizational success as everyone else. This is a very powerful process and it leads to a dynamic where most of their detractors begin to see them as necessary allies in getting some things done which would normally not be possible. Kind of like old western towns hiring gunslingers to clean up the town –they didn’t like it, but they knew these guys were needed.
6. They ensure that when they do something outrageous, they have someone “watching their back”
7. They have an acute sense of corporate politics and while they don’t get ensnared in it themselves, they understand the minefield and are able to navigate it well
8. Unlike their standalone counterparts, IEs have more patience. They realize that in order to work within the system, radical things might take a little more time. They have a high emotional resilience and an ability to articulate, communicate and market their strategies and ideas – to the appropriate audience! And that’s another key differentiator.

I attended a 3 hour session by Prof. Bala Chakravarty of IMD, Laussane, who gave us this awesome example of an IE. He said James Bond represents all the qualities that are needed. The man is part of the British Civil Service – probably one of the most bureaucratic organizations of all time – and yet continues to defy systems, processes and rules, but survives because his commitment to cause and country is unquestionable. And delivers consistent results. I loved the example!

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I also think that in today’s day and age when competition is at warp-speed, we need to cultivate IEs and build the necessary culture to enable them to thrive and not just survive!

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The ugly duckling

 

This morning I spoke to a friend’s brother..connected with him after a long time…

He used to be a problem child…never able to retain a job…wild…different..

I learned today, that he heads a key role for a very large diversified business group, as country head! I was very happily surprised and pleased…and later…reflective…

How often I have come across people who’ve been “written off” or seen as “high maintenance” or “problems” who have turned it all around.

Most of us had life easy..Most folks toed the line…trod the beaten path…did all the safe things…got adulation…got acceptance…were not treated like wierd people..these folks..were mostly misunderstood, more often than not by their own family..burdened with a constant demand to prove themselves, settle down, do something with their life..

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And actually all they were doing, was trying to figure out what they wanted to become…who they wanted to be…what they loved…what caught their fancy in a way that they would be able to live with it all their life…

And time and again, I have seen them become successful…to the surprise of most and the chagrin of a few, I must add!

And having achieved their objective, found their dream, found their passion, I have seen these folks happier than most others.. I find they’re more stable, more at peace with themselves than most others, who chose the beaten path..

There is a lot to be said, for following your heart…for persevering…for refusing to accept anything less than what brings you completeness..there is a lot to be said for not allowing ridicule or social doubt affect your focus..

I wonder today, how we treat such people in our families? As business leaders in organizations, are we specifically attuned to such people because they have a tremendous energy and passion which if harnessed can add huge value. As friends, family, colleagues…are we sensitive?

 

The fable of the ugly duckling had a moral for the ducklings that read it, and for the nurturers around the duckling…which one are you?

 

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Are you such a maverick? Do you have a story to tell? I’d love to hear it here…

Have you known someone like this? How did it affect you? I’d love to know more…

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Making Breakthroughs happen

There is no science to breakthroughs.

There is no process. There is no system. There is no manual or guideline.

There is only one way. Discontinuity.

Set a discontinuous challenge. Set a discontinuous aspiration. And then  you will see magic.

It’s the power of your mind. If you want, call it the magic of our creation. But somehow or the other, our brain, our belief system, our resilience our very strength is designed to focus on making our aspirations come true.

The moment you set a discontinuous aspiration, all your energies intuitively, consciously and sub-consciously focus themselves towards finding a way to achieve that goal.

All breakthrough achievements in mankind’s history have come from people who set a discontinuous goal.

The aspiration needed to, and in successful cases, always was, backed by a fiery resolve to not quit.

These two put together are responsible for humankind achieving all great breakthroughs.

The journey to the moon. The conquering of the oceans – atop and below. The journeys to the poles. The conquest of Mount Everest – with and without oxygen.

Heavier than air flight. Nuclear energy. Splitting the atom.

I could go on.

All began with one man or a group of men who said “It will be done. It is possible. We will make it so.”

Sounds simple? It is.

Is it easy? No

Is it impossible? Read your history.

What discontinuous goals have you achieved in your life?

Experiments with trust

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It was a long flight and my co-passenger, noticing some of the stuff I was typing into my laptop, asked me if I was a trainer, and that’s how it started. He engaged me in a discussion about leadership and people challenges and as we spoke, I began to share, and thereby, remember

some of the things I had done in the course of my leadership journey.

His primary challenge was delegation, and we got to discussing the role of trust, in effective delegation.

My primary influence in this area came from Ricardo Semler (Maverick!), I finished the book in almost a single read, remember coming to the end somewhere around 3 am and I was so buzzed, I made a list of things I would do with my team. I used to run a computer training center, those days, with a team of about 35 people.

The first thing I did was I called a meeting with my team, told them about some of the things I had learned and asked them how they felt about trying some of these things. They were in hearty agreement. I tore up the attendance register (yup, we still used those back then!), told them I trusted them to be on time for work and work the required number of days in order to get the job done.

This done, I observed for a few weeks, and I found that no one abused the system! People continued to come to work on time. No one took undue advantage of the system.

Next up, we changed the way we hired new employees. It was decided that the team they would work with, would meet the prospects. If the team approved of someone and I disapproved, we went with the team’s choice. Team had veto powers over my choices. It worked.

When these 2 experiments succeeded, we all had the belief and desire to try more, and try a greater risk. A key team leader, who managed a team of 12 was leaving. Usually, I would have appointed a successor. This time, I threw it to the team. We decided to be democratic. Everyone got to cast a vote for who the next team leader should be, including the current team leader, who was exiting. You could also vote for yourself. We were absolutely amazed to find that the vote was almost unanimously in favour of one individual!

The euphoria we felt, and the reinforcement in trust, was a thrill, and we were all having a ball. Besides these larger ones, there were several smaller experiments with trust going on and they were all working.

The last one was probably the best and most powerful. It was time for annual increments. I decided to share the financials with every member of the team. And asked each one of them to decide their own increment for the year. With the exception of 1 person, every one of them chose an increment almost exactly in line with what I would have given.

It was also during this period, that we won every award that the company had to give. That we had record levels of performance and customer satisfaction.

Even today, I look back on that period of my life with awe. While it is easy to describe the successes as end-points, there were challenges on that journey that could have led us either way.

My key learnings from those experiments:

1. Trust is always repayed with trust

2. Almost all people are responsible and want to do a good fair job. People are innately good.

3. There is little or no malintent in people

4. If you give people broad guidelines and allow themselves to self-govern, they will do a better job than if you micro-managed them

5. When you trust people and let go, you unleash energy, creativity and employee entrepreneurship

Do you have similar stories? OR A different point of view? Please leave a comment!

First among Equals

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Today’s Wimbledon Final between Federer and Roddick was amazing to watch. More so because it brought out so many truths and learnings for all of us who aspire to peak performance, to staying ahead, to winning..

It is matches like these that help us understand the term First among Equals.

It may have appeared that both the players were evenly matched, and yet, Roddick was by far the better player in today’s match. In ability, in demonstrated class and play today, Roddick was by far the superior.

So how did Federer win? What do you ascribe his win to?

1. Persistence – He may not have been on top all through the match, but Federer never gave up. He never lost. He kept trying, again and again and again.
2. Emotional Resilience – In the final few games, he never succumbed to pressure. Stayed calm and when it counted most, played well Roddick did not lose to a better player today, but to his own loss of concentration. He lost to his own inability to handle stress beyond Federer’s ability.

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This match was as much about ability to handle stress as it was about ability to play good tennis. No, make that top class tennis.

In any inflection point, there is a moment of opportunity, which is open to all the players in that space. But to recognize that moment, to have a reserve of energy & resources and the focus to spot that moment and act appropriately, is what separates champions from contenders.

As also, does the ability to wait…and wait…and wait for just that right moment. To have the emotional resilience and belief that the moment will come and to be prepared and ready for it. That is the stuff of Champions.

Future Organizations

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Amidst the gazillion thoughts and discussions this economic downturn has signalled, thought I’d put up mine too.

This situation has made it amply clear that companies need to have the ability to respond with lightning rapidity. They need to be able to scale up or down, lay off or on, speed up or slow down, rapidly.

So I was wondering how do you do that, and somehow I began to think about Lego blocks. Anyone who has played with them knows that whether you have 50 blocks in your box or 500 or 5000, the possibilities are endless. You can make a house with 50, 500 or 5000 blocks.

And my proposal is a Lego company. How would such a company be formed? By smaller companies which are the blocks.

So there would be HR blocks, Supply Chain blocks, Sales Blocks, Manufacturing blocks etc. And each of these would be service providers.

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The company (i.e. the one with said idea or product or service) would have a tiny core team which would put together the blocks and manage that they functioned right. Scaling up blocks when business picked up, scaling down when it slowed down.

Needless to say, the skillsets required would be very different from a regular organization!

The blocks too, would not be permanently staffed because their success would equally depend on the ability to scale up or down the size of blocks. So it’s entirely possible that permanent staffing will die down, and we’ll all be interim hires brought on when things are good, and off work when they’re not.The parallel that comes to mind is farming. Where the core is the landowner and a skeleton staff, and during sowing and reaping season a lot of interim/temp jobs come up for which there are people who are ready and accustomed to that way of life.

If this happens, I see that employment will become floating, employee populations will move to the fastest growing economies because those are the ones that will have jobs.

Is the world turning full circle? Are we going to see the return of the nomadic way of life? From settlers to hu

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nters?

Would love to know what you think! Please comment, leave your thoughts and add value to this discussion!

Ramblings

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It’s interesting how thoughts get triggered. Here I was, being driven through the streets of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and I noticed the high presence of armed forces. They’re everywhere. A constant reminder that the country is at war.

And from there, my thoughts went to War. How war has changed. It’s not what it used to be.

Used to be, only warriors fought and died in wars. If the conqueror was benevolent, life went on. If not, you got taxed, or raped or lost your home. Sometimes you got beheaded or burned. But largely, civilians i.e non-warriors didn’t feel the effects of war, other than maybe financially.

In the last 150 years, this has changed. Cities are bombed. Select ethnic groups are targeted. Women and children are not spared.

War has become unreasonable. The reasons for war though, continue to be unreasonable.

Terrorism is the new war.

And armed forces, intelligence organizations, in countries that have suffered terrorism have learned that they must change their game. That the rules have changed.

That terrorists don’t give warning. Cannot be seen from a few miles or a few thousand miles away. Attack hard and soft targets. Any time. Any where.  Any how.

Entry barriers to terrorism have lowered. Guns, money, bombs and the means of manufacturing or stealing them, are freely available online.

The large size of today’s armed forces, the ICBMs, nuclear warheads are ineffective against this new threat that strikes within their borders with impunity. They now have to learn to be small, agile and respond quickly in the urban space. They weren’t trained for this.

Intelligence agencies have to be like an always on radar, for a threat that is small, well organized, agile, and has no known signature which doesn’t know what it is searching for! They weren’t designed for this.

And from here, my thoughts jump to organizations.

Disruptive change is here. Pretty much like a terrorist act.

Large, global corporations, very much akin to armies of old. Are under attack, from nimble, agile newcomers, who’re attacking strongholds. Leveraging technology, especially the internet, to leapfrog the older, slower, more encumbered corporations. What Amazon did to book sellers, what online travel bookings have done to travel agencies, how Zappos is doing it with shoes!

And these corporations are realizing that the game has changed. And they’re unable to change as fast as the newcomers who’re birthed with new DNA and are leveraging technology from inception. The brick and mortar, command and control structures of established players slow them down. Legacy mindsets hold them back.

The newcomers have no hierarchy, ideas are king, and they’re fast, nimble and responsive to change. Born in this age.

And yet, as an agent of change, I know that this too will pass. That the new of today, will be the old of tomorrow. And a new challenge, a new world will emerge. Sooner than anyone thinks possible.