Adding butter to coffee sends energy levels soaring

Adding butter to coffee sends energy levels soaring

Mining the Potential

Points to ponder upon

1.    Talent matters – more than ever before

2.    Managing talent – can and must be improved. It is complex and multidimensional activity. Can’t be bound by process rigor.

3.    Performance is hard to judge

4.    Future potential – is harder to judge

5.    Past performance – is not an accurate predictor of future ability

All about performance management:

Organizations put humongous efforts in the process. The main purpose of this process is to align the people and ensure they succeed thru robust feedback, coaching and course corrective actions as may be needed. 

This takes up most of the management time and somehow the part of potential and helping people for tomorrow is somewhere completely ignored or not well done.

Putting so much organizational effort into a process that is, at its best, “retrospective” in nature, no longer makes sense in a world where uncertainty reins and where the conditions for success are changing daily.

Performance Management is only valuable when it is balanced by an equal emphasis on what really matters – the future!

What also matters is the ability for continued excellent performance, in ever changing business context the - Continuity of business.

I believe that most organizations are negligent when it comes to their responsibility to the future. Performance matters – we are not arguing that point, it is very obvious. It’s just that there is an even more important consideration which receives far too little emphasis – “the managing of Potential”.

So let us talk about the potential:

All of us are aware of the GE‘s 9 box matrix wherein we plot performance and potential. I am sure many of us are aware of or have used the assessment tools to evaluate / assess the human potential. While we do this we don’t realize few points:

1.    Future potential of human beings is very hard to judge

2.    Human potential is just not measurable, yet several consulting firms make an attempt to do so with certain products and tools.

3.    Human potential is unlimited – it has no boundaries and no upper limits.

It is almost impossible or difficult for anyone to live up to his / her full potential in one life time. It is like an ocean.

The Human Potential Movement (HPM) arose out of the social and intellectual milieu of the 1960s. This was formed around the concept of cultivating extraordinary potential that its advocates believed lie largely untapped in all the people across the world.

The movement took as its premise, the belief that through the development of "human potential", humans can experience an exceptional quality of life filled with happiness, creativity, and fulfillment.

The definition of potential & what we can really do: 

All of us can have different views of the definition of potential and also about the potential that exists within ourselves. None of us know what we are capable of in the future. We keep discovering ourselves as move on with our lives and most of the times we are surprised with what we can do. Future realities can be very different from today and also our own assumptions of our capabilities.

Thomas Edison said, “If we did everything we were capable of, we would literally astound ourselves”. He obviously had a high standard in the definition of potential.

·         Think and contemplate what you could do if you really wanted to.

·         What could be the ways to do a thing, if you were truly committed?

·         What could be the definition of your own potential be if you just decided?

…… The answer is basically anything.

All of us are conditioned throughout our lives with statements from parents / elders / bosses such as:

·         Be realistic

·         Focus on grades and marks rather than acquiring and internalizing the knowledge, skills and capabilities.

·         Getting admission in the right college is crucial. Degree is a means to having a satisfactory life rather than a means of acquiring skills, knowledge and capabilities that will lead to a fulfilling life.

·         Focus on making the CV look good rather that exploring and developing various facets of the persona.

·         Quickly get a job, get married and settle down

·         Do this course or that course, even if you don’t like it, since this has better job prospects vs. do what you like most

·         This is not our area of focus.

·         Remain focused – You are almost expected to be paranoid.

·         Persons from our background / education can’t do this

·         This is not for us

·         No one in our family has ever done this.

…….And so on.

Our social and family systems just do not permit the people to explore full potential and similar ethos percolates down to the corporate world.

In corporate world we tell people what the processes and systems are and what the expected outcomes are. List of Dos and Don’ts. List of FAQs, well defined SMART goals and objectives, well defined business plans, well defined JDs, etc. Very little room is left for the imagination of the people.

Abraham Maslow, a humanistic psychologist, put forth the idea that self-actualization (the fulfillment of self through reaching one's potential) is the highest expression of a human's life.
In his research Maslow found that self-actualized people were those who are:

1.    Creative and spontaneous,

2.    Possess a good sense of humor

3.    They are able to tolerate uncertainty.

4.    They have an appreciation for what life has to offer,

5.    They have a deep concern for others, and are

6.    Able to enjoy close, meaningful, personal relationships.

Quotes:

Brian Tracy -  “The potential of the average person is like a huge ocean un-sailed, a new continent unexplored, a world of possibilities waiting to be released and channeled toward some great good.”

Dale Carnegie - “We all have possibilities we don't know about. We can do things we don't even dream we can do.”

Let us talk about the potential assessment in the corporate world:

When it comes to assessing the potential we depend a lot on the inputs from our managers and supervisors.

Now let us see the fallacy of this process. These people make their recommendations based on what they have observed or have known, AND this comes mainly from:

1.    Their own biases and beliefs on what is a high potential

2.    Immediate past performance demonstrated by the person becomes a main deciding factor.

3.    Criticality of the person as assumed by the managers.

4.    Some demonstrated behaviors appropriate for the next role.

Now if you really look at this critically none of them constitute potential. At the most it may indicate current capabilities or ability to take up next higher role.

Even if a manager is able to spot the potential, in most cases due to the tendency to hoard the talent we don’t allow or people to blossom.

Managers, supervisors and in some companies even the senior leaders are very tactical – completely focused on completing the tasks on hand. They just don’t have time / training or interest on potential spotting, they just are paranoid about the day to day affairs.

If you look at the traits that a high potential person has, it will tell you how in routine, most of the managers are just incapable of identifying / recognizing or spotting the high potential.

Traits of High potential people:

1. They have high curiosity. They have a need to continuously explore and learn. They may at times be mistaken as nosy.
2. They have an open mind. They try new things.
3. They question the statuesque. They think out of the box.
4. They are honest and are willing to take risks.
5. They are willing to take unpopular decisions.
6. They are willing to disagree and walk away from well-trodden path.
7. Their passion to achieve the goals can become obsession.
8. They use intelligence and work hard at whatever they do.
9. They are not afraid to open up to new experiences – willing to experiment.
10. They are generally mavericks – they think differently.
11. Take responsibility for their own lives and their own actions.
12. They do rebel when necessary
13. They are comfortable with ambiguity.

It is very clear that employees who exhibit the traits listed above are likely to get poor performance ratings. These people will be noticed for all the wrong reasons.

“The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to use full suite of knowledge and capabilities - - these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal potential and reach excellence.”

In reality paradoxically the organizations tend to favor those who are:

1.    Process centric

2.    Execution focused

3.    Fall in line with company discipline

4.    Perform as per expectations of the managers – generally  - compliant

5.    Tend to work well in teams

6.    Risk averse.

7.    Role and goal focused.

8.    Follow the organizational decorum

9.    Generally recognized and rewarded for hard work and goals achievements

In summary - Organizations have to adopt very different strategies to identify high potential and develop them.

The HR Function a big problem:

This seems to be another wrong group of people to identify top talent and help potential of people in the company is fully realized. Now let us see what is wrong with HR:

1. The very name – Human resource management. Here the people are deemed as resources / commodities. In BPOs and high attrition industries sourcing talent is like any other materials management function. They can’t do the job of helping people realize the full potential
2. The next name – Human Capital management – here we again look at our people as assets and we want to ensure that we sweat the assets completely.
3. The terms used by HR professionals: Right person for the right job – Just in time talent – again we use the term exactly like the materials management function.
4. The whole arena of HR planning is like a materials management function.
5. Productivity, multiskilling, multi-tasking, utilization rate, etc. – All these terms are again looking at people as just the source of productivity or an item that is a means of production and output.
6. Most of the HR professionals themselves do not understand the business well, hence are not in a position to identify and help groom top potential.

May be the HR Function should be called – Talent management function and the head be called Chief Talent officer. Just name change will not help the attitudes and mindsets have to also change.

So what is the solution?

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being." -   Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

In corporations we have to move away from an institutionalized method of mining the potential to a combination of multiple things.

First and the foremost - The leaders of the corporations have to personally play a significant role in this arena. Leaders must create an environment wherein people are allowed to blossom, and experiment with themselves and try out new avenues:

1.    Just get close to the people. Find opportunities to mingle with as many people as you can. Just break the psychological barriers that prohibit interactions.

2.    Create many deliberate and many informal forums for people to express their thoughts and ideas.

3.    Create opportunities for people to get spotted for who they are rather than what their managers want to project them as.

4.    Create an open culture wherein participation and free flow of communication is supported.

5.    Regular job rotation – There is no substitute. Free flow of people on regular basis wherein the people are expected to challenge themselves and experience different roles. A must.

6.    Provide opportunities in form of: multiple cross functional projects, several stretch assignments and exposures to multiple aspects of management.

7.    Encourage people to take sabbaticals / long vacations so that they can rest, relax and do some introspection.

8.    Recognize and reward people for out of the box thinking that makes significant difference to the company.

In a right environment the High potential people will automatically get noticed. Once noticed they need to be nurtured and developed.

Disclaimer: Images in this blog are downloaded from Google images

Diversity can be dysfunctional

Diversity is celebrated in the management literature for more than 2 decades. This is certainly an important element that we need to focus, especially as our corporations are becoming global and also domestically pan Indian.

The essential tenet of diversity is - each individual is unique, and needs to be recognized for the individual differences.  Diversity is all about creating a safe, positive, and nurturing environment for people with differences. It is about celebrating the rich dimensions of cultures, thoughts and practices, contained within each individual rather than just tolerance of differences. Diversity is beyond tolerance.  

Diversity also refers to human qualities that are different from our own and those of groups to which we belong; we tend to employ / support / like stereotypes and that is where we lose the advantage of different thinking, different perspectives and some where we tend to do the things in same old ways that we are comfortable with.

The importance of having Diversity can’t be undermined. It has several advantages, some of them are reflected below”

1.    Multiplicity of thoughts brought to the table leading to better decisions

2.    Multiplicity of experiences and knowledge from the different facets of the society leading to out of the box thinking and changes in the paradigms

3.    Varied relationship networks, different contacts and connections, etc. these can be leveraged for organizational success.

4.    Ability to attract best talent – not confined to a particular group. This is achieved by our ability to spread the net much wider.

5.    Customers need to be understood well, products and services have to be created that support the customer needs. If in the marketing and product development groups we have people who represent the customer base, this is best achieved.

6.    It can enhance the organization's responsiveness to a diverse world of customers, improve relations with the surrounding community, and increase the organization's ability to cope with change.

7.    Diversity leads to improved creativity in the organization.

8.    A diverse workplace offers more than exposure to employees from different cultures and backgrounds. Employees learn from co-workers whose work styles vary and whose attitudes about work vary from their own.

Dimensions of Diversity:

Diversity has multiple dimensions, some examples are given below:

• Gender
• Sexual preferences
• Nationality, ethnicity, religion, caste etc.
• Age – Gen Y, X, people in 50s, senior citizens in 60s, etc.
• Educational qualifications
• Pedigree – Quality of education, which campus you belonged to, etc.
• Close to owner’s family, not close to owners, etc.
• Political and social lineage, etc.
• Persons with physical disabilities
• Hierarchy: Owners, Leaders, managers, supervisors, workers etc.
• White collared workers, blue collared, etc.

It is important to minimize / eliminate biases and ensure right people are hired and in the process we achieve a good mix of people from various diverse backgrounds. Typically the workforce should represent the social demographics, customer base, the environment, the markets that a corporation addresses and several such factors.

Diversity has to be supported by Inclusive environment and team work:

Absence of “inclusive environment” and nonexistence of efforts to create strong teams, generally leads to completely dysfunctional behaviours and divisive environment. This happens mainly because people from similar backgrounds / interests, tend to come together due to obvious comforts and tend to create close groups / cliques.

Biases that exist in the people as well as within the leaders tend to keep the otherwise meritorious people away from them. Non inclusive environment may show some of the symptoms stated below:

• Non inclusive behaviors get reflected in multiple forms such as:
• Formation of cliques, coteries around the leaders,
• Though adequate delegation of authority may exist, the feeling of empowerment goes away
• Strong political environment, One-upmanship,
• Favoritism, nepotism, prejudices and biases of all types get exhibited leading to cynicism, skepticism and feeling of distrust,
• Common interest negative groups get formed who remain unaligned to the organization,
• Prevalence of a strong informal hierarchy that leads to person centric organizations rather than organizations cantered around the structures, processes and systems, etc.

Some Characteristics of the Inclusive culture:

 

Good leaders ensure an inclusive culture is created, some characteristics of inclusive culture are:

1.    People feel valued and are respected for who they are.

2.    Celebrations / recognition / respect exhibited for various backgrounds

3.    Existence of Policies and processes that support people from different backgrounds and cultures.

4.    Participative environment wherein;

a.    Free flow of thoughts are encouraged,

b.    An environment where easy conversations exist,

c.    Debates and differences are encouraged

d.    People are heard, they can freely express themselves.

5.    People are allowed to blossom – Meritocracy rules and not personal biases.

6.    Leaders are close to the people, empathy and team work exists.

7.    Deliberate efforts are made to ensure everyone in the organization is engaged.

Team work has to be encouraged:

 

Leaders ensure healthy teams are created. Some characteristics of good team:

1.    Team always has a leader

2.    Roles are well defined and right people are hired for each role

3.    Common norms and values are established

4.    Success is celebrated

5.    Atmosphere in the team is more relaxed, informal and friendly

6.    Setbacks and failures are rigorously reviewed and corrective actions are initiated.

7.    Participative decision making is encouraged

8.    Goals and targets are mutually created and people work for the same in a collaborative fashion. Focus is on outcomes.

9.    All team members feel valued and are recognized for the contributions, skills and capabilities they bring to the table.

10. Disagreements are dealt with in a healthy manner thru discussions and reasoning.

11. Strong lines of communication exist.

12. The criticism has a constructive flavour; it is oriented toward removing an obstacle that faces the group.

13. Full alignment to common goals is considered as critical.

To sum up:

 

Diversity on for the sake of diversity can become dysfunctional. It is better not to have diversity rather than have one without the supportive environment. If we want to get the best out of diversity a lot needs to be done to create an inclusive environment and team work. This applies to both the corporate life as well as society.

Disclaimer: Images in this post are downloaded from Google images.

Not anchoring to chosen path

Statements made by Shri Asaram Bapu and the aftermath of the same, along with what has happed over last few weeks made me think about the problems in our society. One of the thoughts that is taking shape in my mind is we as a society has lost clarity on the roles that each one of us has to perform, and therefore we have lost passion and the focus on excellence is gone. Some where we have lost our anchors. We are not happy with ourselves, we are just focused on doing what others are expected to do.

By virtue of choices that we have made, based on our own aptitudes and capabilities and interests each one of us have a role to perform. We have to perform our roles with full passion and interest with right thinking mind. If each one of us plays the role that is assigned to us most of the social problems will be minimized. Let us look at some examples.

Legislators:

They have to ensure that the Country / State has right legal system that is relevant, efficient and effective. They have a role to play in ensuring the system works, justice is not denied, it is expeditious and the whole system works as designed. All the laws are periodically reviewed for their continued relevance and amended as necessary. Questions:

1.    Are the legislators playing that role? Do they have awareness about their accountabilities and responsibilities.

2. Do they have intellectual depth and understanding of the work that needs to be done?
3. Do they take interest in their own subjects.
4. Are they connected with relevant sections of the society? Do they know what society needs?

Many film stars, sportspersons and other socialites and celebrities become the members of the Rajya Sabha – Do they look at these positions as the positions of status or the positions that bestow on them certain new responsibilities and accountabilities. Do they understand their roles and are playing the roles with interest and passion?

Politicians:

They are the backbones of the democratic society. Political parties have to be anchored to the strong ideologies and the politicians have to represent the chosen ideology. People of the country have choices to make, they have to decide which ideology is best suited for them at a point of time and which individuals can provide the leadership. Politicians have to be the role models. They have to personify the ideology, behave like “Statesman” rather than focus on the next election and populist gimmicks. Politicians represent he people, hence they need to be well connected with people. Questions:

1.    Do politicians understand their role?

2.    Are they role models?

3.    Are they perfect representatives of the people, are they well connected with realities?

4.    Do they represent the ideology on foundation of which their political party is created?

Bureaucrats, police and the allied services:

They have an important role to paly of that of management of the Government. Create right Strategies, management systems and the Governance. Ensure the bureaucracy is always kept relevant. They have to create efficient and effective systems that are citizen friendly. They have to ensure civil society fabric is preserved thru excellent Governance. They have to be aligned to the ruling political party (since it represents the will of the people at a given point of time) however in the process of alignment they can’t lose their independence as managers of the Government and the democracy. Questions;

1.    Are Bureaucrats playing their assigned role effectively?

2.    Are they becoming stooges of the political parties and losing their independence?

3.    Are they enforcing the laws with full rigor in letter and spirit? Do the citizens of the society have confidence in the rule of law?

Society as a whole:

 

Each individual has to ensure that he /she becomes a good responsible and alert citizen of the society. They have to participate in the democratic processes full heartedly with passion. Social activists too have important roles to play. They have to focus on social awareness, creating social institutions that benefit the society, etc. Questions:
1.    Are we a law abiding society?
2.    Do we participate in the democratic processes with passion and enthusiasm?

3.    Are we contributing back to the social causes?

4.    Are we alert, and active participants in the social processes or are we just the bystanders sitting on the fence all the time?

Parents and elders of the society:

Parents and elders of the society are important. They have to ensure younger generation is well educated, right education coupled with right upbringing is the foundation of the future citizens. Are we ourselves the right parents and elders? Some Questions:

1.    Are we doing right “Sanskars” on the youngsters?

2.    Are we ensuring right values, beliefs and objectives are set for the youngsters?

3.    Are we the elders - role models?

4.    Do we ensure concept of love, brotherhood, peace, and harmony are built in the minds of next generation, rather than just being selfish?

5.    Do we focus on the all-round development of the young population?

Religious /spiritual leaders:

These are other important constituents of the social fabric. Their role is to ensure right sanskars, right social norms and moral threads are intelligently woven in to the social fabric. They can’t afford to be fanatics. Every religion talks of Universal brotherhood, happiness, harmony, peace and spirituality. Religions are different from each other basis some symbols and rituals however the fundamental spiritual principles are very similar. Fanaticism of any type has no place in in any civil society. Religious leaders have following of large masses hence responsible behaviours and role modelling becomes their prime responsibility. Some questions:

1.    Are you a fanatic? If yes, you are not a spiritual leader.

2.    Do you make responsible statements that are well thought out? If not – you are a wrong leader?

3.    Are you interested in politics and social issues? If yes, you should move to become a social activist or a political leader and give-up the robes of the spiritual/religious leaders.

Our problems:

In this post, I have talked about very few roles as illustrated above. There are other roles too like the role of an entrepreneur, roles of teachers, etc., which I have not dealt with at this stage.

Some where we have lost the role clarity. We just do what we please to do. We just do things based on impulses, selfish motives and at times just based on free will and desire. We have forgotten that social fabric gets preserved only if we confine ourselves to our chosen paths and do an excellent job of what we are supposed to be doing.

There are five pillars of civil society, viz, legislators, Executives, Judiciary, press and the people. Problems come up if these pillars don’t behave the way they are expected to behave. Press gets focused on sensational news, executives get busy pleasing the politicians, legislators get busy focusing on populist initiatives and next elections,  people get busy with their own selfish motives, and judiciary becomes inefficient and everyone starts looking at judiciary as a source of strength.

There is nothing wrong for individuals to change the roles if they so desire, for example if a film star, religious leader or a sportsman wants to become member of the Rajya Sabha, he/she is most welcome to transition to the new role. However this role change has to be coupled with deep thinking, should be associated with full knowledge and awareness of the associated new responsibilities and accountabilities. Before a role change one has to ask a question - Am I the right person for this role? Do I have the right skills, capabilities and passion to perform? After the role change he/she should start playing that role with full passion and rigor. We need people who are anchored to a chosen path and do an excellent job.

The current problems are also reflected in the corporate world, where executives have a tendency to point fingers and poke their nose in each other’s areas rather than work as a team and discharge their own responsibilities diligently with passion and rigor. If all of us do what we are expected to do, with an objective of excelling, the society will become a good place to live.