Language We Use at Work

Language we use supposedly influences what our mind focuses on. So if we say that ‘I want to have an ice-cream’, our mind focuses on ice-cream and that’s where our energy is drawn. But if we say that ‘I don’t want to have an ice-cream; even then our mind focuses on ice-cream, but not on the ‘no’, and our energies are drawn towards ice-cream again.

So a better way of saying that ‘I don’t want to have an ice-cream’ maybe would be to say ‘I feel like dieting today’ J. That’s the closest I could get to forming a positive, affirmative statement in this case.

If we were to implement this learning in the organizational context, what all organizational terminologies/phrases would change?

Let me talk of a few commonly used organizational terminologies and their possible ‘more positive’ alternate.

• 0% offer rejects or 100 % offer accepts (in recruitment)?

• 0% employee attrition or 100 % employee retention?

• Compensation or Rewards?

• Reduce Dissatisfaction or Increase Engagement?

• Reduce conflict or Increase co-operation/collaboration?

• Don’t make mistakes or Do things right?

• Think out of the box or Think in another box?

• 0% deviation or 100 % compliance?

• Don’t intellectualize too much or Its time to action?

• Do things beyond ordinary or Innovate?

• Don’t be so task focused or Be task and people focussed?

• Don’t be inauthentic/artificial or Be authentic and genuine?

• Don’t be harsh/nasty or Be sensitive?

• Reduce stress or Enjoy and be happy?

I can instantly relate to the 2^nd option in each of the above cases.

I could also think of how some of the language we use outside work can undergo changes too:

• I want to lose weight or I want to be in shape?

• I want to reduce my health problems or I want to be healthy?

• I don’t want a meaningless and boring life or I want a meaningful life?

What are some of the languages, terminologies, and phrases you use that you might want to change?

Can you think of some other ‘negative focussed’ terminologies/phrases frequently used at work?

What ‘positive focused’ terminology/phrase can we use instead of their ‘negative focused’ counterparts?

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Sourav

Effectiveness of Work Relationships

What is the unit of performance in organizations today –Individuals or Teams? ‘Teams’ would be the answer at most places.

What do we mean by teams? What is the nature of teams? Is a team a self contained unit with a boss and a set of subordinates or a complex network of independent individuals/team collaborating on a project?

The visual I have in mind when I think of a business organization is this vast criss-crosses and interconnections of various teams, with different kinds of working relationships between them.

So there are individual and multiple teams and nature of interaction/relationships between them varies.

How would you measure effectiveness of working relationships in teams? e.g. - How would you measure levels of partnership between a line and staff (HR) function, or levels of service orientation shown by a service team towards customers?

The building blocks of relationships are ‘interactions’. If there are no interactions, there can be no relationship. If there are interactions, it is not necessary that an effective relationship exists. Presence of interactions is a necessary but not a sufficient condition.

So the first thing to do would obviously to list out what are the interactions (as mandated by process) that two people/teams would need to have.

But does just the presence of minimum number of interactions ensure effectiveness of relationships?

We would also have to look at quality of interactions too. How does one figure out quality of interactions?

This is an area I am still exploring but I think the answer would be both generic and context specific. Let me illustrate through an example.

How do we measure the effectiveness of interactions in a partnership relationship? A few things that can be observed are:

• Is there collaboration in:

o goal setting

o work planning

o implementation

o review

• Are successes and failures owned/attributed equally?

• Are all stakeholders involved in celebration of successes?

• Are interactions between two/multiple teams limited to only the process or is there discretion shown in interacting more number of times than as mandated by the process?

I do feel that i am still scratching the surface when it comes to measuring ‘effectiveness of relationships’. How would you go about measuring the same? Do you know of research in this area?

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Sourav

Using Frames of Reference to Think out of the Box

How would a thinking out of the box process look/feel/sound like? Would it be akin to an aimless search? I let my mind wander and see what emerges.

What is the end objective of a brainstorming exercise– thinking out of the box or innovating? Innovating is the end objective. Thinking out of the box is just a way to push people towards innovating.

A few weeks back I was a participant in a workshop facilitated by Judith Katz and Fred Miller from Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group. Judith was talking about an experiment carried out by researchers in Harvard School of Education. The experiment was about what kind of play behaviour do kids exhibit in different kinds of parks. The researchers discovered something interesting.

When kids played in parks that had no fencing/boundary, they tended to all congregate and play close to each other. No kid seemed to veer out too much from the group.

When kids played in parks that had fencing/boundary, they tended to be dispersed and even go right up to the fencing/boundary. The presence of the fence seemed to give comfort to the kids to venture further out than they had before. Play behaviour in this case was more pronounced.

What can we infer from the results of this experiment for thinking out of the box?

When we tell a group ‘Let us think out of the box’ but nothing else, we probably are giving rise to conditions akin to a park without a fence/boundary. People would venture out, but not too much.

When we tell a group ‘Let us think out of the box’ and then give frames of reference, we probably are giving rise to conditions akin to a park with a fence/boundary. People would venture right up to the fence/boundary.

Hence’ frames of reference’ should be used to facilitate teams in thinking out of the box. The first discussion in any brainstorming meeting should be around what frames of reference should we use today.

Let me illustrate through an example.

Let’s say we are trying to come up with the name for a new HR initiative that we are going to rollout. We tell the group ‘Let us come up with an unconventional name. But first let us decide what frames of reference would we use.’ We can then go ahead and say that we would use the 5 senses as the frames of reference. Hence we would first look at names which would describe how the initiative would look like. We would repeat the process for the other frames of reference; how the initiative would sound like, how the initiative would feel like , how the initiative would taste like (if it were to be a food :)); how the initiative would smell like (if it were to have an odour :)).

In this way we would have encouraged the group to have ventured further out than they would have without frames of reference. My sense is we would have come up with more creative alternatives than we would have come up with if we had just focussed on thinking out of the box.

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Sourav

Tertiary Education Sector in India

The other day I heard this talk on NDTV.com where Union HRD Minister- Kapil Sibal, host of Indian IT company CEOs, and individuals involved in the education industry were talking about the Indian demographic dividend and what it meant for India.

Kapil Sibal made a point about number of graduates India produces. He said that for every 100 citizens in the age group of 18-24 (young adults), only 13 Indians go to college. The corresponding number for developed world is around 40.

He further contended that given Indian’s large young population, there is an opportunity for Indians to constitute around 25 % of global workforce by 2022. But this would require massive improvements in tertiary education rate (%age of young adult population that goes to and graduates from college).

The numbers Sibal talked about seemed alarming. I was not sure what to make of it. For a start, is 13 % tertiary education rate – good, bad, superb, or ugly?

Average tertiary education rate for the world is 30 %. Developed countries are at much higher levels – around 50-60%. Let us assume that the average tertiary education rate for developed world is 50%.

The country with the 3^rd largest population in the world is USA- 312 mn. Most other developed countries in world are around 100 mn mark. Let us take the average population figure for developed world to be 150 mn (I am approximating on the higher side here).

Around 60% of developed world’s population is in working age (18-59 years). Hence number of graduates in working age from a developed country is = 150*0.6*0.5 = 45 million.

Around 55% of India is in working age (18-59 years). Hence number of graduates in working age from India is = 1210*0.13*0.55 = 86 million approx.

In pure numbers India has a larger graduate population than most developed world countries have. But does that mean we can do without improving our tertiary education rate? Indian Government is targeting getting the tertiary education rate to around 30%. I think there is a good enough reason for us to work on this immediately.

China’s made immense strides in education. Their tertiary education rate is 28%. Hence their number of graduates in working age (18-59) bracket = 1339*0.28*0.6 = 224 million. Number of graduates in China is 3 times number of graduates in India! That’s something Indian education policy makers should be concerned about.

There’s also another employment related figure that stands out. Skilled workers (those who have come up through the vocational training system) in India constitute 2% of workforce. If you were to ask parents in India “Would you want your son/daughter to be an engineer or a technician?”, the answer you would get would in all cases be – ‘Engineer, obviously!’. Skilled workers in certain developed countries constitute significant proportion of working population – South Korea (land of Samsung, LG, Hyundai, KIA, Daewoo, etc): 96%; Japan – 80%; Germany (famous for it’s apprenticeship system of training)-75%; UK – 68%. I hear Singapore, Switzerland, and Austria also have evolved vocational training facilities which are sources for significant proportion of working population.

All the above mentioned countries have per capita incomes significantly higher than that of India’s. I wonder why India has not aggressively pursued the vocational training system to meet its talent/manpower needs.

It is obvious that India’s young population would cater to growing demand for manpower across the world. But the larger question is ‘What quality of jobs would they get into?’. That in turn is a determinant of what skills would working age Indians bring into the market. There does seem to be a lot of work to do in secondary and tertiary education sector in India.

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Sourav