Dangerous Indifference

Yesterday's editorial touched on how everyday indifference of friends & family concerning dangerous inclinations of young minds can be blamed for such minds eventually crossing line. This was in context of Haneef & Kafeel, whose slide to extremist mindset is said to have happened over a period and no one in known circles stepped in to rescue young boys.

Indifference is well known to us. Right from poor roads, to lost playgrounds, to flooding cities, to dengue infested localities we've got a lot from it.

Why it figures here on a board that normally talks organization matters is because indifference hit organization big time. Often things about someone unhappy with boss, someone leaving organization (or taking interviews), someone bullying newcomers get known to staff members much earlier. Members normally consider it part of worklife and rarely attempt to counsel the colleague around organizational advantage. This responsibility is easily left to HR or CEO or immediate supervisor, who normally are not networked enough to have knowledge ahead.

What all fail to realize is that in the end its the part of their own ecosystem and any adverse development for ecosystem will sonner or later catch up with them. So in case of a great sales performer leaving the company, colleagues get affected by loss of performance of company (may be strengthening of competitor), lower profits, lower bonuses for all, additional pressure on existing staff etc.

So is there a way to beat indifference in real world organizations? Yes, just like there are communities, societies, groups that have beaten it in other walks of life. But ofcourse it requires effort.

A few things organizations can do is to create community groups comprising of employees across functions around focus area like " workplace improvement", "destress group", "employee retention group", nasty boss management group", "troubleshooting group" and as many as need be. Involvement with such groups would enhance ownership sense within employees and would show them the way to handle issues at their level itself.

But then what will HR do? Thats for some other day..... :)

Angry MD

In less than one month I have come across three senior level professionals who confessed to be in a state of concern around their own temper. This included two MDs, one of them only marginally considers it an issue.

Bad temprament at the top can be very expensive for both the organization and shareholders. How much shareholders pay in terms of lost performance because of hot temperament of senior management would be indeed an interesting exercise - at least as interesting as Mckinsey's TCJ (total cost of jerks) if not more. But lemme anyways put down a few very logical damages that these top managers end up incurring on their companies:

• Hot tempramental leaders are less likely to create creative & high initiative teams.
• In fact they proactively end up killing initiative and promoting fear.
• Lot of company's time goes in discussing & managing trivia.
• Dressing up becomes important for everyone to avoid conflicts.
• Only a mad man would bring up bad news to these MDs.

In current organizational formations, when frontline staff and managers are often well educated and trained professionally, leadership teams would do well focussing more on providing guidance, future direction, knowledge sharing, employee welfare and promoting a culture of fearlessness, intrapreneurship, performance.

A few minutes of Yoga or meditations would be time well spent for top managers....well for shareholders - paying for Yoga would be cheaper.... :)

Recruitment Freakonomics

This came through just yesterday whie I was talking to Senior Vice President of large listed public company. Ofcourse I used Steven Levitt's freakonomical model to build the relationship clear.

The way almost all recruitment firms operate commercially is that they make money when an employee is successfully placed in an organization. For each such hiring, firm makes a cool 10 - 20% of the annual salary of the employee. That the employee is "the right guy" doesn't play any role in determining the payout. Ofcourse there are clauses & terms that do no good......here are a few freakonomical pointers to how things really are:

1. Larger the attrition in the account, larger the potential business for the firm.

2. If the firm places people who stay forever, it is killing its own market.

3. If successful placement is the key, dressing up candidate seems business need.

4. Best guy comes your way if your commercial term is relatively superior to other contracts.

5. Superstar will to the highest bidder, not to him but to the firm.

We can agree or we can find out........long live Levitt...

A great appraisal challenge !!!

Imagine getting into a new client relationship at apparaisal time and finding that some fifty professionals need to be appraised in absence of any suggested KRAs. Further more their roles also may not be defined clearly and both they and their managers cary different versions about their roles.

Now imagine you are in charge for pulling off this appraisal and there is a deadline. You are wishing you were better dead. So did we.

Thanks to survivor skills of our Group Manager that we really pulled it off after some intense discussions, definitions, form filling, processing and late night coffees.

While India seems to be on a one way journey of growth, state of affairs within organizations remains pretty dismal as far as organization building is concerned. Short cut seems to be the flavor at both companies and training schools thus making original work uninitiated & unrewarded.

plugHR's own research points out clearly that top reason for high attrition in companies is not salaries at all but absence of basic people management practices apart from faith in senior management.

Its time for coporate India to revisit basics we guess and put money where the mouth is. HR is the mouth :)