A Post after Eternity

I know this post has been long time coming. I am now available on Twitter, follow me here.

I promise to keep giving you rapid updates via twitter. BTW I am available on LinkedIn and Facebook as well. I am an open networker, feel free to add me as your friend.

Life and Leadership : A Systems Approach

I am a great believer in "Complexity Theory" which attempts to explain an underlying order among the various chaotic patterns we see around.

I did some reading of Fritjof Capra lately (titles added to my shelf). He is certainly one of the greatest proponent of systems thinking. I was extremely intrigued with these excerpts from his website

The new understanding of life implies the following four lessons for the management of human organizations.

Lesson 1
A living social system is a self-generating network of communications. The aliveness of an organization resides in its informal networks, or communities of practice. Bringing life into human organizations means empowering their communities of practice.

Lesson 2
You can never direct a social system; you can only disturb it. A living network chooses which disturbances to notice and how to respond. A message will get through to people in a community of practice when it is meaningful to them.

Lesson 3
The creativity and adaptability of life expresses itself through the spontaneous emergence of novelty at critical points of instability. Every human organization contains both designed and emergent structures. The challenge is to find the right balance between the creativity of emergence and the stability of design.

Lesson 4
In addition to holding a clear vision, leadership involves facilitating the emergence of novelty by building and nurturing networks of communications; creating a learning culture in which questioning is encouraged and innovation is rewarded; creating a climate of trust and mutual support; and recognizing viable novelty when it emerges, while allowing the freedom to make mistakes

I think it explains a lot of things about organisations and how as living systems they thrive in an extremely complex environment. The subject has created a lot of curiosity in me, i am going to dig deeper!

SMR Team Blogs

At SMR we have taken blogging more seriously in 2007. If you haven't already visited them you must bookmark our 2 important bloggers.

Dr.Palan

Dr.Palan needs no introduction, he is our chief mentor and coach. His thoughts on HR ,training and strategic issues are most sought after. He is a regular blogger than me! you can visit his blog at
http://drpalan.blogspot.com


Dr.Nat

Dr.Nat is our Director of R&D. He is one of the greatest thinkers i have come across. One can bounce topics on vivid areas with him and you are guaranteed a very insightful discussion. He has a great inspirational photo blog at http://photo-reflect.blogspot.com

Hope you had a great 2007 and wish you even greater 2008!

Management Advantage : Gary Hamel is back!!

Gary Hamel is back to what he does best - writing management best sellers. After his path breaking treatise on "The Core Competence of the Corporation" and "Competing for the Future" with C.K.Prahalad, the fortune magazine has labeled him as “the world’s leading expert on business strategy” and the Economist calls him “the world’s reigning strategy guru.”

Gary Hamel is distraught at the way management is lagging behind all other sciences and that very little effort is being made by the academia. He is frusturated with the fact that so few management professors seem committed to inventing the future of management.

In his new book "The Future of Management" (HBS Press Book, Oct 2007) he goes onto argue that

Unlike their counterparts in medicine, engineering and computer science, business school professors do not see themselves as the inventors of new methods, tools and approaches. Most study management as it is and seldom dream of management as it might be, or should be. They describe, but they don't create.

He ponders the question: Why is the Management academia this way?

By and large, my scholarly peers are not romantics- they have not devoted themselves to a grand quest. With in management research there is no project equivalent in scope and ambition to reducing carbon emissions, curing AIDS, imbuing machines with intelligence, developing hydrogen powered vehicles, or commercializing space travel. Where is management's Human Genome Project? Where is its $100 laptop? Where is its manned mission to Mars?

Hamel is sure about what fuels long term success. To him it's not operational excellence, technology breakthroughs, or new business models but management innovation - new ways of mobilizing talent, allocating resources, and formulating strategies.

In the later parts of the book Hamel explains how to turn a company in to a continuous management innovator, revealing: the make or break challenges that will determine competitive success in an age of relentless, head snapping change; the toxic effects of traditional management beliefs; the unconventional management practices generating breakthrough results in "modern management pioneers".

The radical principles that will need to become part of every company's "Management DNA" and the steps your company can take now to build your "Management Advantage"

My Bookshelf on My Blog!!

Shelfari.com is a cool site, It lets you maintain a book shelf and share it with your friends circle. I stumbled across it, and published my bookshelf to my blog. From now on, you will know what inspired me to break my digital silence and do a blog post!!

Best Of Gitanjali

I happened to read the Geetanjali by Rabindranath Tagore this week end. It was an impressive read, no surprise it won a Nobel. Here is a gem

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake

HR Function : Old Myths Vs New Realities

I recently came across a HR Manager who wants to implement a OD intervention in his organisation. His approach was to include all key staff in the exercise, which is a genuine appreciable virtue. But during our interactions i noticed that the entire OD intervention was designed on a flimsy functional foundation. The program was designed with no clear parameters / boundaries designed with in which employees can contribute. The employees were not coached / hand holded to maximize the clarity of their contributions and are left to open interpretations on various issues. I was deeply concerned as these employee's contributions will be fundamental to success and can significantly affect HRD / Compensation policies. If adequate care is not given this exercise is going to be yet another example of GIGO(Garbage In , Garbase Out) principle.

I got furious when I heard him say "We want to give opportunity every one to contribute" and I will take care of assimilating some useful information out of the resulting garbage. Potentially such an attitude results in imposing will of a single individual / HR team on the exercise than using the actual staff contributions.

It is a genuine virtue to allow your employees to contribute ideas on issues affecting them, but that should be done on top of a solid functional foundation and unwavering guidance to ensure those contributions are valued and used. You donot become a "rainbow creator" just because you say "you want to involve everybody", you become one if and only if "You engage these employees with in a framework, get them to lap around it and thereby increase the understanding of their jobs and ultimately their performance".


One can as-a-matter-of-factly say HR function traditionally has spent more time professing than being professional. The HR function has been plauged by myths that keep it from being professional.

I would like to Quote David Ulrich on Old Myths & New Realities for the HR Function

I- Old Myths:


1. People go into HR because they like people.

2. Anyone can do HR.

3. HR deals with the soft side of a business and is therefore not accountable.

4. HR focuses on costs, which must be controlled.

5. HR's job is to be policy police and the health-and-happiness patrol.

6. HR is full of fads. 7. HR is staffed by nice people. 8. HR is HR's job.


II- New Realities:

1. HR departments are not designed to provide corporate therapy or as social or health-and-happiness retreats. HR professionals must create the practices that make employees more competitive, not more comfortable.

2. HR activities are based on theory and research. HR professionals must master both theory and practice.

3. The impact of HR practices on business results can and must be measured. HR professionals must learn how to translate their work into financial performance.

4. HR practices must create value by increasing the intellectual capital within the firm. HR professionals must add value, not reduce costs.

5. The HR function does not own compliance-managers do. HR practices do not exist to make employees happy but to help them become committed. HR professionals must help managers commit employees and administer policies.

6. HR practices have evolved over time. HR professionals must see their current work as part of an evolutionary chain and explain their work with less jargon and more authority.

7. At times, HR practices should force vigorous debates. HR professionals should be confrontative and challenging as well as supportive.

8. HR work is as important to line managers as are finance, strategy, and other business domains. HR professionals should join with managers in championing HR issues.

Confessions of a HR Manager

Recently i came across this flamboyant article on how helpless HR Professionals really are. A frusturated HR Manager goes on to say that

Business is not about managing people , its about managing money . CFO & CEO Runs the show here . HR is just a tool, an instrument to dress up their deeds in such a way that it is presentable. HR knows the real truth and still ask people to believe in fables .that's why people hate them . But believe me HR is as helpless as anyone else in company.

Well he seems to be striking the cord in many aspects, I have a close friend a HR Manager who would probably just agree with everything said in this article. Does that mean "Human Capital Development, People are our greatest asset, HR is a Strategic Partner" are all nothing but plain crap? Can HR ever break out of its self imposed cocoon of "not being business oriented" ?

In my view HR is, and will remain, one of the glues that ensure that the enterprise can operate as a cohesive whole. The line of sight should be focused on assisting the function in understanding, managing and improving the “business” of HR. This has everything to do with the profession attracting individuals who have the capacity to understand business, to think conceptually and strategically, and to express themselves as business people. When they do that HR professionals will weild the same power other operating groups such as Finance, Marketing etc possess. That power would help HR to stand up for their rights, protect the interest of the employees with a long term view and gain employee commitment.

Where HR cannot deliver at this level, the function would be in danger of having its influence reduced from insignificance to irrelevance. To me theories and scores of articles on promoting ourselves to be "Strategic, being business partners" are just a demonstration of how good our writing prowess are, ironically we flatly fail to hide our inability to perform at that elevated level.

Hopefully a new emerging new generation of HR professionals could change that for mere mortals!!

HREra

My work life has taken me far and wide and kept me from blogging for a long long time. However HREra's upcoming update forced me to resume it.HREra is one of the largest HR community out of Indian Sub-Continent. A herculian effort by Rajeev who founded this wonderful group & HREra team is forthcoming. With lot of articles, knowledge base and community initiatives http://www.hrera.com will be a nice fit to your list of HR Resource sites. As with any community initiative your contribution to this website would be welcomed with a broad smile. Please contact rajeev@hrera.com if you wish to help.

Stephen Covey has a new "Habit"

Fifteen years after his celebrated "The 7 habits of Highly Effective People" is released, covey has taken a leaf out of his own life and released his 8th Habit.

"Find your voice, and inspire others to find theirs."

That proves difficult to accomplish, and The 8th Habit is 50 pages longer than the original seven combined.

No. 8 is a half-ton habit that invites the merging of talent, passion and conscience that few mortals accomplish — otherwise we would be populated with Gandhis. Simply, Habit 8 asserts that everyone has an inner longing to seize the day and live a life of contribution. It requires heavy lifting, and Covey challenges readers to get there.

Read he full press coverage here.

Can Leaders be Modelled ?

After my long date with leadership issues I related them back to what we practice in the field. Everywhere I see some kind of modelling practice in place to determine the behaviors that make up a successful leader. All is well if these behaviors are universal and unaffected by time factor. But we are faced with a tough answer to the question : Would copying behaviours of "current" leaders would produce successful "future" leaders?

It seems to me perfectly natural to model a technical job or a purely managerial job but leadership is something special , something different isn't it. They are the ones who break conventions who strikes gold and who scales unknown peaks that others haven't even dreamt of. Are we not arresting the whole idea of leadership and by modelling it? I set out to find what is going among people who think on similar lines.

I found a perfect companion in Margot Cairnes author of best selling book "Approaching the Corporate Heart". Here are some of quotes from one of her articles titled "Competency theory Leadership". The full article is available here http://adtimes.nstp.com.my/jobstory/feb26b.htm

Dr. Mcelland (proponent of Competency theory and associated practices) believed he could take pieces of different men, sew them together, charge them with current and create a superior being. So he took features he admired in different people, joined them up, applied electricity and created a monster.

Competency theory is based on studying successful people, breaking down their behaviors, attitudes and skills into measurable bits, and then looking for ways of sewing those bits together to create beings who (most likely) demonstrate superior performance. Based on competency theory leadership development involves training the FUTURE leaders to mimic the observable competencies OF CURRENT LEADERS.The competency theory has even stretched to the realm of emotion where, through work on emotional intelligence, we have managed to turn how we feel emotionally into measurable competencies

Tomorrow's leaders cannot be created by having them mimic the competencies of yesterday's leaders. At best a competency approach can create managers - controllable cogs to grease the organizational wheel, without too much imagination, innovation or change. At worst competency theory can kill the innate brilliance of those with the spark of originality, creativity and inner power that lies at the heart of real leaders.

Leadership comes not from without but from within. Real leadership development involves nurturing the unique potential of each individual, having them be as much themselves as they are capable of being. Real leadership development encourages people to follow their own interests, develop their own unique insights, motivations and capacities. It helps them
bring their innate gifts into relationship with the people and the world around them, encouraging them to make their distinctive contributions to the greater good."

The madness of trying to mimic future leaders with yesterday's competencies comes to light fully when remember the incredible rate of discontinuous change currently occurring globally.Could Bill Gates have been created by training him to behave like the people who headed IBM when Gates worked there? It was those managers who rejected the notion of the operating system that formed the basic product upon which Microsoft was built. Would the competencies of the people who made sliderules have been of any use at all to Tom Watson when he developed IBM? The idea is ludicrous - yet it is the basis of competency theory.

Well that figures the answer isn't it?

More on Leadership

It has been a long holiday back here at Kualalumpur. I used those holidays to do more indepth reading on leadership issues. How can one miss John.C.Maxwell and his famous "21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" . I would term it is a "The Leadership Bible", while most of you would have read this gem, i found an online resource: a set of assessments that accompany the laws laid by Maxwell. You can try them for free at this site:

http://www.injoy.com/a21/

Assess yourself and pass me on the comments! Have Fun

Servant Leadership

I have come across this article "Practicing Servant Leadership by Larry Spears" quite amusing more holistic approach towards leadership.

>>Quoted from "Practicing Servant Leadership by Larry Spears"
The servant-leader is one who is a servant first. In "The Servant as Leader" Greenleaf wrote, "It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant--first to make sure that other people's highest-priority needs are being served. The best test is: Do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?"

At its core, servant-leadership is a long-term, transformational approach to life and work--in essence, a way of being--that has the potential for creating positive change throughout our society."

Read this intresting article here http://www.l2li.org/leaderbooks/l2l/fall2004/spears.html

Components of Competency

Found this picture from my old archives. It explains components of competency fairly well, could be used in your slides on competency awareness.

Unfortunately I donot have author information for credits!!

Skills Vs Competency

Too many practitioners and organizations mix up between Skills and Competencies. I have witnessed profound confusion on this topic all over . I found this book excerpt offering a comprehensive explanation on how they both differ and why we should focus on competencies than skills.

Excerpted from Creating A Culture of Competence, by Dr. Michael Zwell. Published by John Wiley & Sons, 2000. Pages 22-24

"In the business world today, there is some confusion over the definition of a competency. The biggest confusion is between competencies and skills. Skills generally refer to the mastery of technique and knowledge that applies to a specific area or profession. Sales skills include prospecting, handling objections, and closing. Drafting skills include measuring and drawing. Managerial skills include writing and forecasting. Some companies use the word competency to mean skills. This causes them big headaches for two reasons. First, there are so many skills in every position in an organization that management of a skills database is a time-consuming and difficult activity. The bigger problem is that the focus on skills distracts people from the use and assessment of competencies, which play a much bigger role in determining performance.

More importantly, focusing only on knowledge and skills misses the point. Having the greatest knowledge and skill on the planet won't make any difference if people have no desire and no drive to use that skill and knowledge.

It is not that skills are unimportant. A threshold level of skill is necessary to a job.If you are hiring an electrical engineer to work at a nuclear power plant, you need someone who knows electrical engineering. Assuming that technical ability determines successful performance, however, is a costly mistake. People with basic skills who are strong in the important competencies for a position will, because they're strong in those competencies, acquire whatever knowledge and skills they need to become a superior performer in that job. If people strong in Initiative do not know the answer to a problem, they'll use their Initiative to find it. If people strong in Service Orientation do not know the answer to a customer's problem, they'll find someone who does. Keeping the focus on competencies is keeping your eye on the ball.

It is paying attention to what matters, paying attention to the things that actually determine the difference between strong and weak performance."

You are Killers!!

I greatly admire the passion Tom Peters brings to work. Called affectionately as "Tom's Rants" are thoughts that puts TOM on war path. Here is his Rant on "Health Care"

"A recent report suggests that "acute care" facilities ("hospitals," to US civilians) kill 195,000 patients a year due to quality lapses. That is, one victim of crappy management every ... 2 minutes, 38 seconds"...whoops i couldn't digest it still, it is pretty scary!!!

Tom's Fury to Health professionals especially those on acute care facilities:

"You are Killers : Quality remains a bad joke. Stop using the term "healthcare",You haven’t earned the right to utter the word “care”!!

For more of TOM's Rants on health care download his presentation from his website http://www.tompeters.com

Got a point to ponder here: if US is 2 min 38 Sec, i am pretty scared to think about developing / under-developed countries....Reasons to believe the miracle of God .