Inclusion!

Inclusion at the workplace has been one of my recent interests.  It is nice to say 'we value diversity'. It is more difficult to ensure that employees ensure that everyone feels welcome and comfortable to contribute. 'Meetings' are a significant mechanism through which which employees can be made to feel included/excluded.

A blog post i have written about how to ensure 'inclusive' meetings was recently published by Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group on their official blog. Here's the link to the article.

http://blog.kjcg.com/index.php/2012/02/meeting-norms-that-make-us-big/

Do you agree/disagree with observations. How would you go about ensuring 'meetings' are inclusive?

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Sourav

S Curves!

Sometime back, Megha was telling me about a concept she had learnt. It was the application of S curves to our lives and work.

Everything that goes up, comes down!

So it's necessary to have multiple S Curves in our lives. Ideally the next S curve would have started and would be on its way up; much before the current S curve would have started dipping.  How does one know when the next S Curve needs to be started? When you start getting disproportionately big results even when you put in negiligible/restricted efforts, it may be a sign that you are currently at the peak of your current S curve. You should start looking at initiating your next S-curve then.

Conceptually, the model appeals to me. There are 2 things in model which strike me as being critical:

• How does one know what next S-curve should be? One would need to have explored and figured out beforehand what options for next S-curve are.
• There might be an emotional attachment to current S-curve. One has to overcome this and dissociate progressively with current S-curve to ensure adequate attention is given to emerging S-curve. Especially, the period when both S-curves are co-existing might be characterized be intense emotional conflicts/dilemmas.

Both things mentioned above are constraints. We need to work with/around them to ensure this model works for us.

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Sourav

Rhythm!

Here is 2nd post i had written over 5th-6th Feb weekend.
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Would you associate the word 'rhythm' with word/terms 'stretch' or 'burning the midnight oil'?

If  rhythm (what we do as part of our day-to-day work) causes us to 'burn midnite oil' over a significant period of time, what does it tell us?

For a start, it tells me that things aren't in rhyhm/flow.

There can be various reasons for this, viz:

• Work unit may be understaffed.
• Work plans/processes may have redundant (can be removed) process steps
• There might be too many 'streams of rhythm/flow' running simultaneously. This might cause a sense of lack of rhythm in the larger picture .

Are these the reasons at play or is it something else?

Well! I will be intentional about finding out and finding back a daily rhythm in life and work.

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Sourav

Bell Curves!

I had drafted this post a little more than a week back. 

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I have been neck deep into moderations (fitting employees in bell curve) over last half a week. I managed to complete the exercise by the end of the working week too. There was this sense of exaltation when I completed the exercise.

Over weekend, I have been wondering 'Moderation exercise has been completed successfully. But  has that ensured in better performance management?'

This question led me to another question 'Why do we have performance management systems? Why are they required?'.

The following are my answers. A good performance management system would have 4 elements effectively incorporated:

• Goals- clarity, mutual acceptance (SMART is one way of defining characteristics of effective goals), etc.
• Work planning- it's important that along with the 'what' the 'how' also gets captured. The 'How' is largely company specific.
• Review/feedback- an individual needs to know whether s/he is headed in right direction; and what changes in 'what' and 'how' need to be made.
• Rewards- employees must experience rewards process to be procedurally and distributively just.

What I experienced over last week was only distribution part of 'rewards' piece in the performance management framework.

I am eager to see what is the quality of discussions between a manager and his/her reporting employee at goals, work planning, and review/feedback stages.

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Sourav

Focussed Group Discussions

The week gone by was a week full of FGD’s J.  I have already written a few posts about these FGD’s. Here’s another one! In this post I have penned some of my thoughts, observations, and reflections on the week gone by.

I love the word ‘we’. Someone stands up and says ‘We feel this way!’. I am left wondering ‘Who is the we out here? I saw no-one even nodding his/her head in acknowledgement of what you were saying?’. So finally I had to tell someone ‘I acknowledge the concern you have but would you please use the word ‘I’. Let others speak for themselves.’

How does one hijack a conversation from someone else - make someone else stop dead in his/her tracks and veer the conversation towards what one wants to discuss? In Group Discussions at college, it is common to hear ‘conversation hijackers’ like ‘Taking forward your point….. ‘, ‘I agree with you… ‘, ‘Let me flesh that out a bit more…’.  In the week gone by, I heard another version of a conversation hijacker.  ‘He is right. Let me illustrate through an example……..’ ; by the time the hijacker finished enumerating the example I was left wondering ‘Where was the linkage between the example given (which in some cases was not an example) and what the first person was trying to say?’

‘Let me tell you what happened to me once…’ statement is a conversation diverter. Well if I really had to know what happened to you once, I would ask you so.  We are attempting to look at what is our current state and how can that be improved. Events in the past that have no or little bearing on the present don’t help us improve the present.

‘Let me tell you what happened to someone …’ statements is another conversion diverter.   We are here in FGDs to explore your experiences. Let everyone take responsibility for sharing their experiences.

Whenever I talked about concepts to participants, I found them discussing issues.  But whenever I started asking them specifics, they could easily latch on to the same and discuss. Maybe when one works with an hourly focus, one’s mindset becomes very ‘event specific’ and ‘here and now’.

I managed to put together a HR toolkit for these discussions. I went in and said ‘We can discuss processes or we can discuss networks. Specifically, we can choose 1/2 processes and discuss how we can improve them; or we can choose 1/2 stakeholders and discuss how do we improve the ‘conversations’ between you and these significant stakeholders.’ The toolkit did provide a structure/framework for the discussion.

There was one particular conversation that has stood out in my mind.  During one of FGD’s, the group was insistent on understanding what my role would be when it came to process escalations.  Every few minutes the conversation would veer towards this point. After some time I realized that this was becoming a stumbling block – if I didn’t address this the discussion would just not move forward. I was not sure if I could make a commitment. I myself am learning the ropes - the way things ‘currently’ get done here. But I also realized the group was looking for answers. I told them ‘I don’t think I can make a commitment at this point of time on what my role in process escalations’ would be. But I am committing that I would come back to you with an answer. Would this commitment do?’. The group accepted the commitment and we could make progress on a number of other things we wanted to discuss.  I realized ‘Sometimes a group is not necessarily looking for an immediate resolution. What they are looking for is a commitment that a resolution would be reached.’

I was told, People Manager for the group should not be present in FGD’s. I am not sure why – somewhere you would need to get both the parties face to face and make them talk. So I did do the FGDs without the people manager being there in the room, but I also am aware that in some form or the other the people manager would need to be, and s/he would need to feel, involved in the process.

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Sourav

Citizenship Behavior

It was around 4:30 p.m. on 26^th January, India’s Republic Day.

Megha and I were sipping on ‘Filter Kaapi’ in Mysore Café, Matunga and reflecting on the events of morning and afternoon.

We had spent 4 hours in Babasaheb Ambedkar Hall in Matunga Labor Camp, Dharavi witnessing a ‘Citizen’s Workshop’ for residents of the area.

It had taken Megha and me some effort to figure out where the Hall was.  We had weaved our way through a row of narrow alleys to make it there. I was reminded of old streets in Asansol and in villages of industrial Bengal – buzzing with activity but might make a newcomer feel ‘enclosed’.

We reached the Hall around 12 p.m. Not many people were there in the hall at that time. There was a group of young kids practicing a dance sequence they were going to perform on, and Vinitha and her friends/team members.

I was anxious and excited about this event. I had been working with Vinitha on how to ensure, efforts of her organization made an impact. ‘Impact’ for We-The-People meant people understood their rights and duties as citizens, took responsibility for the same, and displayed appropriate behaviors.

This workshop was built around a theme - what could residents in Matunga Labor Camp do in next few weeks, to ensure that they did the right things in upcoming Municipal Elections.

So the workshop had ‘immediate relevance’ for people we were targeting. They could implement almost immediately what they would learn.

Around 100 people turned up – that was an impressive number given that the workshop had been advertised entirely through word of mouth. Most participants were young mothers, and old men/women.  I wondered why I didn’t see too many young men and unmarried women – I still don’t have an answer to this. .

Soon we were into thick of action. 100 participants had split into 8-9 groups, discussing 1 of 3 themes of Role of Citizens, Role of BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation), and Role of Councillor. 

I was eagerly awaiting this part of the discussion. Vinita and I had talked at length, about need for making people take ownership for their behavior.   The facilitators themselves were a stumbling block towards ensuring we achieved this end.  They viewed themselves as ‘problem solvers’, but this mindset ensured that citizens/participants became perennially dependent on these facilitators when trying to address new situations.  It was necessary to make the facilitators empower the participants (helping them find their own solutions).

I was eager to see if both facilitators and participants accepted and played these new roles.

I was a bit uncomfortable during the initial part of the discussion within the groups.  The facilitators seemed to be instructive. I heard a lot of ‘Do this if you are faced with this situation’. I was becoming impatient and wondered ‘Where was the attempt to empower people to respond effectively irrespective of the situation?’

My anxiety started ebbing mid-way through the discussions. Slowly I found the participants connecting the dots, and stating to ask questions on how what they were learning could be implemented in other situations too.  By the end of the discussion, all groups had ‘citizen’ volunteers who came forth to present to the audience what their group had discussed and learnt, and what they were committing to do.

I realized that the journey from being dependent on a parent to being independent takes time, and can’t be an immediate process. Probably journey for any newcomer in a situation, would usually start from being dependent on a parent. The only variable might be the period and amount of dependency.

I noticed something else too. When the groups were presenting to the audience, everyone in the room listened with rapt attention. There were some 100 people in the audience, there was noise coming in from outside, and the sound system wasn’t the best you would come across. It was difficult to hear what was being presented, but everyone seemed to be zoned in and concentrating. I wondered ‘why don’t we see so much attention/concentration in classes in schools/colleges and in classroom training sessions at workplaces?’

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Sourav