“So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.” – Peter Drucker As a trainer, as you grow older, you may not become wiser. But you begin to think and wonder if you ever thought about things before! What was I thinking of when I asked people to use ‘sandwich technique’ for feedback years ago?! Praise first, Criticise again, End with Praise. Who was I kidding when I asked people to not focus on the person, but focus on the behaviour. That keeps it specific and makes a person less defensive, I said. Both are specific suggestions, much lauded. Both reduce things to a formula. And formulas and human interaction; never have the twain met! What is wrong with the ‘sandwich technique’? As a feedback recipient, do you consider yourself a thinking person, someone who observes, learns and predicts? If you do, you know soon enough that here is a practiced technique on its way. Mechanical, contrived, and utterly predictable. And once you know what’s coming, you stop listening. I can very well…
Leader-ship : Lost at Sea
We live in a turbulent age. The democratic system of the world’s most powerful country, the United States, is being trumped up by a dangerous demagogue. A continental community ushered in to unite a continent ravaged by two world wars is being torn asunder. We have the highest ever number of refugees sequestered in camps because the countries they wish to enter have shut their doors on them. We have a terrorist group that wields state power in terms of – the territory it holds,the scale of violence it can unleash, and the identity it provides to its adherents. And we have a fragile environment that is breaking down to the point of no return, thanks to human depredations and excesses. First, the United States. To imagine Donald Trump having access to the nuclear button is a most fearful exercise. And this concerns the whole world, not just his country. The world’s most powerful democracy, the place where the world’s best intellects choose to live and work; this very place has seen the rise of a dangerous and manipulative demagogue. The world’s…
Goals : Ain’t as simple as they look
Even after knowing how important goals are, we are none the wiser in our pursuit of them. We sit down with a blank piece of paper and ask, ‘ What is my goal?’. The simple assumption is that because we were not consciously having a goal, there was no goal in our life until that point. Goals & goal setting are multifaceted topics. They have many layers & multiple interpretations. Here are just two observations to get a handle on them. First, You are already pursuing a goal that you are unaware about. A more helpful way is to assume that my current reality is an outcome of an unarticulated goal. Even if I knew nothing about goals in my life. For example, Ranbir Kapoor’s goal in the movie, ‘ Wake up Sid’ should he have articulated it was – live on my father’s money. I haven’t seen the movie, just a few scenes. In those scenes, I did not see him articulate that goal. It is not that he was living a goal-less life till he changes. The implicit goal…
Monday Morning Blues : Normal?
Monday Mornings If each day is a “gift”, I’d like to know where to return Mondays. – ( Put your name here) On Monday morning, you can’t hide it from yourself anymore. You are either happy to go to work or saying, ‘life sucks!’ And what is it you end up doing : look forward to the week-end. The ratio is 5:2. After five days of doing what you do not want to do in a place you do not want to be, you get two days to recover for the next five days of the same, old routine. And if your personal life is in shambles, you spend those two days seeing to it that is not going to pieces. There is no recovery, just damage-control. Am I painting too bleak a picture? I don’t think so. Here is the bleaker picture. You do not even know…
The Number One Reason a Successful Founder-Leader does not Invest in Learning & Development
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few – Shunryu Suzuki If a successful founder-leader is not willing to invest in learning & development (L&D) even after the organization has a settled look, this unwillingness can be traced to one’s own life-experience. These leaders successfully built an organization from the bottom-up and a full-fledged L&D set-up had nothing to do with it. As a result, the leaders reason thus : “If I could learn by doing, isn’t that the best way to learn. The results are there for all to see. What is the need for L&D” Such founder-leaders miss two important points. First. As business founders, they were explorers in virgin territory that held all…
Conceptual juggling : What is the difference between ethics & integrity?
Integrity is being true to your word. Ethics is making sure of the moral worth of that word. Ethics tells us what is right/wrong & good/bad, but one has to stay on course ( be consistent) in living life one way or the other before we can reasonably evaluate the moral worth. This staying on course is achieved by living a life of integrity. In cricketing terms, a batsman needs to stay at the wicket for being able to affect the outcome. This staying at the wicket is integrity. The outcome, the moral worth is ethics. Integrity provides a sense of continuity/ permanence long enough for us to talk about ethics. Integrity does not determine the content of ethics. It keeps alive the process of adhering to ethics. An individual full of integrity can be a die-hard communist one day but may become an equally fervent capitalist the next day. Narayan Murthy was a socialist-sympathizer until he was arrested & detained without legalities in a communist country. His integrity stayed the same ( sameness of thought-word-action) but the content of…
Values & Culture v/s System & Process : Which one is more important?
As a part of a Whatsapp group, I was privy to this question : What is more important – values and culture or system and process? The drift of the conversation was towards most people feeling that values turned into behaviour that are embedded in a culture is a positive state of affairs than a system and process holding sway in an organization. This set me thinking on how they relate to each other. And here are my thoughts. If you find people in an organization very empathetic/supportive & step out of the organization, you won’t find a concentration of people exhibiting the same behaviours across the street. The dichotomy of values/culture v/s system/process is conceptual, not real. In creating a new set-up, we can make a cognitive beginning with one or the other. In an existing concern, it becomes a chicken & egg story as both values/culture & system/processes end up getting transmuted into each other all the time. The empathetic/supportive behaviour in an established organization is a systemic attribute, not depending on specific individuals. It is a good thing…
Spotlight on ‘Spotlight’ – The ‘Best Picture’ Oscar winner
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter – Martin Luther King Jr A newspaper deals in stories. Are there stories and matters that an entire community becomes silent about- newspaper included? Yes, there are. Spotlight, based on actual events, is one such story. The story envelops the very city and community that the newspaper marks out as its own turf by calling itself ‘ The Boston Globe.’ And it goes on to reveal how we inflict the conspiracy of silence on ourselves – as an organization and as a community. The conspiracy of silence & cover-up In the summer of 2001,a new editor at the Boston Globe leans on its four-member investigative report team, known as ‘Spotlight’ to dig deeper into a story written by an in-house columnist. A lawyer has charged that the Archbishop of Boston knew a priest was sexually abusing children but did nothing about it. As the Spotlight team starts investigating, they realize that this one case is just the tip of the iceberg. An expanding probe uncovers acts of wrong-doing and non-doing by institutions like the church and…
What Disruption means for HR : Summary of a learning Session for marketing professionals
The Young & their interests We put ‘The Young’ as a customer category and spelled out what interests them. When time came to identify the industry/sector, we found that we had to scratch our heads a bit. This is significant. KEY POINT – The boundaries between industries and sectors are disappearing or getting blurred. Certain industries or product/service categories are fighting for survival itself examples – music industry, mobile service providers, movie halls, publishing industry, retail shops. This is because of disruption caused by technology. Disruption – Examples Netflix/ rentals ; Internet movies/ theatre screenings ; Uber/ rental cars & ownership itself ; Amazon/book stores ; itunes/Spotify / Rhythm house ; Kindle/ Printed books; Mobile apps/ television viewing ; Online booking/ travel agencies ; Paytm/ card-swiping. Bottomline is that a company can move into an entirely different product line or service category. is the most famous example. If watching television via app catches on, ‘television’ as a product category gets wiped out. Hotels will struggle big time if one house in every street decides to become an Air B&B partner. E-commerce…
How to be an Employee : Peter Drucker’s classic career advice
Being an employee is an art, says Drucker. And he says getting fired from your first job may be a good thing! Isn’t that interesting? Peter Drucker wrote on this topic almost forty years back. The Basic Skill He starts off by asking, ” What can you learn that will help you in being an employee?” The answer, unsurprisingly, is communication. Drucker calls it a basic skill which very few students bother to learn. This one basic skill is the ability to organize and express ideas in writing and in speaking. For Drucker, an early start is beneficial. ” The foundations for skill in expression have to be laid early : an interest in and an ear for language; experience in organizing ideas and data; in brushing aside the irrelevant; in wedding outward form and inner content into one structure; and above all, the habit of verbal expression. If you do not lay these foundations during your school years, you may never have an opportunity again. You should take courses in the writing of poetry and the writing of short stories. Most…