Talent Development

In last few weeks, I have been in midst of some ‘talent development’ work.

A few thoughts have been running through my mind.

Someone is identified as ‘talent’ because s/he will be demonstrating differentiated performance consistently, behaviors/abilities that company is betting on in future, and/or demonstrating behaviors/abilities for higher order/critical roles for company.

Development options charted out for a 'talent' have to reflect atleast last two of above.

These options again can be in form of classroom trainings, development experiences (e.g: projects), and/or learning for leaders/coaching/mentoring.

What we attempted, as a first step, was learning from leaders.

We had 3 leaders speaking to ‘talent’ and what they left them with were clarity, inspiration, motivation, and reflection. Additionally having all ‘talent’ in one room provided them an opportunity to ‘extend personal networks’.

Question I am left with is ‘what’s next’.

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Sourav

 

Importance of Conversations for Change

Change formula nicely captures conditions required/necessary for change, viz:

D*V*F>R where D- Dissatisfaction with current state; V- Vision of the future; F-First Steps; R- Resistance to change.

What formula doesn’t seem to capture is ‘how of/process' for change.

‘Inclusion of’ and ‘conversations with’ affected parties are the two how's that seem to be important.

All affected parties/stakeholders need to be involved in change process. 

They need to see ‘need for’ change and be involved in ‘creating solutions’ for change. This involves ‘conversations’ with them.

‘Conversations’ need to invite two way flow of information and peer exchange.

These ‘how's’ form the bedrock of change process.

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Sourav

Pacing

Through work and life, you need to be able to pace yourself.

Visualize a bottle of water that’s full in the morning. Slowly water starts emptying out and by end of day there’s almost nothing left. In the night and during early morning of next day you fill up bottle again.  This cycle repeats itself every day.

Let’s visualize another scenario. Same bottle of water has an equitable inflow and outflow through the day. There might be slight variations in water level but overall water level remains constant. 

Which scenario is more sustainable?

I vote for second scenario. 

First scenario will work in a situation where you know that you will have enough time every day to fill bottle back again.  But that may be a flawed assumption – we may not have the dedicated time available every day.

Second scenario requires self-awareness- you need to know how to ‘pace’ yourself so that outflow and inflow rates more or less match. Secondly you need to know ways to ensure adequate inflow.

Both of these – self-awareness and skills at ensuring adequate inflow – can be worked upon by individual and hence are controllable by individual.

So how do you pace yourself through the day?

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Sourav

 

Contributions

Best ideas are best implemented ideas!

I do agree with statement above. The value of any idea is derived only once it has been implemented.

But does this mean you always should be in implementation mode? I don’t think so.

There are 3 different stages for an idea – ideation (or creation stage), building base (fleshing idea out), and implementation.

All 3 require their own space and time.

A good way of knowing whether you are doing all three adequately is to reflect on your workweek and see whether you got enough of all 3 in week.

Additionally you can pace yourself on different days – spending some days exclusively on one or more of stages. Else you can split day into periods and work on different stages exclusively during each period.

Implementation is important. But each of 3 stages require its own space and time.

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Sourav

Different Planes…..

At any point of time, you work on different planes.

You leverage your strengths to deliver a set of engagements. You pick up a set of engagements to hone areas you are looking at developing on. You work on a few assignments to explore previously unchartered areas or to work on ‘what’s next/leadership’.

It’s important to be able to look at mix of your work and to pace yourself. Compass to anchor oneself around is ‘does all this today keep me on track towards where I want to go?’.

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Sourav

What got you here....

The other day I read about this book ‘What got you here, won’t get you there’. Term has stayed with me.

I am aware of what has got me here – including a good understanding of myself and my strengths.

But what’s ‘there’? How is it different from ‘here’? What do I need to get ‘there’?

These are some questions I currently am exploring.

Do you have any thoughts/observations to share?

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Sourav

Role of numbers in driving culture change

A change in culture involves changes both at above and below the iceberg. Changes above the iceberg (measurable) can only hint at changes below the iceberg.  But measuring change is important, as it gives you a hint of what may or mayn’t be happening below the iceberg.

But should you just stop at measurement?

I think measurement needs to be backed up with ‘conversations’ within relevant stakeholders around important processes that characterize culture.

This combination of conversations around important processes that characterize culture, backed up by metrics can be a powerful potion to drive culture change.

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Sourav

Succession Planning

What are leadership and most critical roles in your organization? While leadership roles (based on position in hierarchy) might be easier to identify, you will need some guidelines to identify most critical roles. Some possible guidelines are:

·        Roles critical to current and/or future (next 2-3 years) success of your company.

·        Roles which require specialist knowledge/skills and for which the candidate pool is limited.

·        Roles that have a high demand-supply inequity and hence face high risk of attrition/continuous churn.

So is there a need to have a ‘succession pipe’ for your ‘leadership’ and ‘critical’ roles? I will contend yes.

That requires your leadership team to have an established succession planning process.

What are the important elements of a succession planning process? These include:

·        Role Identification.

·        Employee/candidate Identification.

·        Leadership buy-in and involvement.

 

I have already elaborated on ‘role identification’ piece. Let me know delve a bit more into other 2 pieces.

When thinking of candidates for succession pipe, think both internal and external. You might want to invest more in ‘internal candidates’ but it is important for you to have identified an ‘external pipe’ and have a possible sourcing strategy around it. There are a few other employee specific items that I have talked later about.

Leadership team needs to think about ‘organization’, beyond and above their own functional/team boundaries. There is a need for a ‘One Talent’ view for organization. This is easier said than practiced.

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It is very important to ensure alignment between succession planning, career management (including individual development). 

Succession planning focusses on talent needs of organization. Think about what is it in it for an identified employee? Employee’s career aspirations surely need to be factored in.

It’s important not to assume what an employees’ career aspirations are. A structured periodic process around having dialogues with employees on their career aspirations is needed.

Think period wise (e.g. – employee ready in xx months, aa years) and capture what are development needs and development experiences employee needs to go through.  You need to invest in development of your talent.

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Lastly, be patient and intentional!

A succession planning process doesn’t yield results overnight. Nor does it yield results without sustained efforts from leaders, managers, and employees.

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Sourav

 

Quality Goal Setting

Performance year has started. As a manager, you need to go about setting goals for your team members.

You think ‘what all are goes into a quality goal setting process? Who are stakeholders and what are their roles?’

A quality goal setting process should ensure alignment of individual, team, and organization goals, SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic/Relevant, and Time Bound) goals, and ownership of goals from employee.

It is important for stakeholders to understand their roles in order to ensure these objectives are achieved.

·        Manager – ensures linkage between organization and team/individual goals; plays a large role in ensuring conditions that enables employees to own their goals; ensures balance in workload across team members; and ensures synchronicity between work of different team members.

·        Employees- play a role in charting out milestone based execution plans for goals, identifying additional individual goals that further team’s work, and understanding how they need to support each other to achieve team’s goals.

What are the conditions that ensure ownership of goals from employees?  A feeling of ‘these are my goals’ might help here. Such a feeling will be an outcome of active participation in entire goal setting process.

So managers also have to ensure platforms that enable active participation of employees in goal setting process – both at a team level and at an individual level.

 

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Sourav

 

Compensation and Benefits

How much should you pay an employee? In what forms should you pay him/her?

In this post I will talk about a few key compensation and benefits related terms, viz- internal parity, external parity, salary surveys, non-financial rewards, variable pay, total rewards.

Traditionally C&B has been considered to consist of 3 components- pay, financial benefits, and non- financial benefits.

Pay is salary you pay to an employee. In pay, think about:

1) What's ratio of fixed to variable pay you want to pay an employee. Startups/smaller companies might prefer a higher proportion of variable pay. But do also note that fixed pay needs to be at least competitive with market. Else you might face employee attrition and face difficulty in attracting candidates to join your company.

2) What should be different pay components? Usually these are influenced by country specific legislation and market practices.

3) You need to have a periodic (usually annual) salary survey exercise in place. This will enable you to ensure salary you are paying for different jobs is competitive with market (external parity). Choose your comparator companies carefully. They usually will consist of competitors in your industry, companies you have attrites to, and companies you usually attract employees from.

4) You have to ensure there is adequate differentiation in compensation between roles of different complexities/values inside organization. This is called internal parity. For this you will first need to conduct a job evaluation exercise. There are a number of job evaluation models available in market.

Financial Benefits are monetizable components, besides pay, that you provide to employees, eg - life/medical insurance covers, bill supported reimbursements (e.g .- continuing education/child care),

Non-financial benefits are non monetizable component, rather benefits that employee can avail of, e.g.- housing, car facility, & sports facility.

How can you bring all of these components together?

Think of what is rewards strategy of your organization? This will encompass pay, benefits (financial and non-financial), and linkage of performance and rewards.

Think total rewards - entire gamut of rewards you are providing your employees.

Think how your total reward strategy links to and adds value to your business and employee value propositions.

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Sourav

Why do we need a performance management system?

This month I continue with my series of articles, aimed at grassroots organizations, on need for and basic structures of different HR processes.

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Two common terms used in organizations are 'Performance based cultures' and 'Performance management system'.

What do these terms mean? How are they relevant for your organization? Does your organization need an 'off the shelf' or a 'customized' solution?

I will draw an analogy with a business planning exercise, where we decide firm’s objectives and lay out periodic milestones.

Similarly, a performance management system ensures such an objective and milestone setting exercise at team and individual level.

Outcomes of business planning exercise are cascaded down to performance management system. Objective setting is an important but not only key component of a performance management system. Periodic reviews and linkage to rewards are other two key components.

If you refer to motivation theories you will find that these 3 components cover 4 important individual motivation aspects:

1) We need 'goal clarity'

2) We need periodic feedback

3) We need to feel differentiated

4) We need money to sustain our hygiene needs.

What kind of a performance management system does your organization need? What are choices you want to make for each of 4 motivational aspects mentioned above?

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Sourav

Onboarding

Is it an employee’s responsibility to onboard himself/herself on to the role or is the company’s responsibility to ensure that an employee onboards to a role?

 

I will contend both. But I do think that organization has a role to play in ensuring the employee is set up for success.

 

First, both external and internal hires have a need for onboarding.

 

Second, an onboarding plan needs to have defined objectives and a structure.

 

Objectives of onboarding primarily are a) establishing relationships with key stakeholders in/outside organization, b) understanding organization eco-system, c) learning the nuts and bolts to do the job independently, and d) starting to contribute in the role (with quick feedback loops) that in turn leads to increased confidence.

 

How do you want to go about building a structure around these 3 pronged objectives?

First, set a time limit for plan– a fortnight/1 month/2 months.

Second, create a week wise plan with defined objectives.

Third, have a review/check-in mechanism in place with employee’s manager.

 

Finally, a plan is only as good as its execution. So ensure that onboarding plan is executed well.

 

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Sourav

Ability

So you have figured out job specifications. Next step is to figure what is trainable and what do you hire for.

 

So how exactly do you figure out what is trainable and what is not?

 

I had touched upon this aspect in a previous post titled ‘Ideal Job Specification’.

 

Most capabilities are trainable given adequate time, effort, and cost.   Capability of a person is defined in terms of Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities.

 

Knowledge is easiest to pick up and possibly easiest to forget.

 

Skill is more difficult to pick up and more difficult to forget (e.g. – do you forget how to cycle or swim even if you have not cycled or swam for a long time).

 

Ability is most difficult to pick up and most difficult to lose/forget.

 

If you are have a constrained recruitment budget, then you might want to hire a candidate with high ability – who can make up for gaps in knowledge and skills with a focussed onboarding program.

 

So when ‘cost-constrained’, think ability!

 

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Sourav

 

Is it time you need an extra Headcount?

Before you start hiring, you need to a) know that you have a vacancy, and b) figure out how many vacancies you have.

So how do you get to know about these?

Look at following statements. Are any one of these true for you/your organization?

·        Geographical Scope: Your organization is venturing into new geographic areas

·        Customer Scope: Your customer base is increasing rapidly and you will need extra manpower to cater to increased customer base.

·        Scope of Skills: The changing nature of the industry/company requires that you hire for new skills.

These 3 will be usual levers that will feed into your company’s need for extra manpower.

 

Which of these are true for you?

 

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Sourav

Ideal Job Specification

Once you have decided that you need to hire for a role, the next steps are to create a:

·        job description (what are outcomes and processes in role), and

·        job specification (what knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) are you seeking in a job incumbent).

But a job specification doesn't end with only listing out what KSAs you are seeking in a job incumbent.

 

As HR Recruiter or Hiring Manager, take into consideration following factors:

·        Most things are teachable and learnable given adequate time, effort and cost. But different organizations have different capacities/appetite for time, effort, and cost. Hence what is trainable and what is non-trainable is an organization specific decision.

o   Ability is most difficult to teach and learn, followed by skill and then knowledge.

·        Ask yourself 'What is trainable/non-trainable for this role?".

o   List out Non-trainable K,S, and As. These should be criterion against which you will make a hire/no-hire decision for a candidate

What is advantage of following a procedure like this?

By following above mentioned procedure, you increase size of candidate pool you are looking at. Hence possibility of hiring a candidate at an 'affordable' compensation increases.

 

You may also want to keep the following in mind when formulating job specification:

·        If you are being particular about an educational qualification and that is causing you difficulties in hiring - ask yourself 'Is this qualification really required? Can someone who has relevant work experience but not this educational qualification perform this job effectively?

·        If you are being particular about a certain type of work experience and that is causing you difficulties in hiring - ask yourself 'Can someone with high learnability but having a different kind of work experience/no work-experience do this job with an accelerated induction program?;

These are some tips to ensure that you are hiring a candidate at an 'affordable' compensation.

 

Your next question might be - so how do we ensure high performance? Well! I will post about this soon.

 

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Sourav

 

Build or Buy?

Well! I am back to blogging.

And this time I want to share some posts I have been writing pro-bono for small MFIs who are trying to strengthen their HR processes. Here’s the first of these posts. You will find me sharing more of these posts from now on.

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You have realized that you have a personnel 'vacancy' that you need to fill.

 

Do you hire from external market (buy) or do you hire internally (a cross-functional move, role enrichment, promotion)?

 

Both of have their pros and cons and choice is probably context specific.

Buy

Pros -

·        A better fit for the role and so probably quicker time to performance,

·        An external candidate might bring in a fresh perspective.

Cons

·        Higher cost of hiring and possibly higher payroll costs

·        Cultural misfits might lead to periods of instability/conflict within team.

Build

Pros

·        Brings down cost of hiring and payroll costs.

·        Cultural fit will be ensured

Cons

·        Maybe will require more time to ramp up or more involvement from manager in ensuring ramp up.

·        No fresh thinking might flow into the team.

What will you prefer - build or buy- and for what kind of situations/positions?

Add one more to the options of Build or Buy.

You could also 'hire' services of a skill from market for a temporary period, e.g. - hiring services of a professional agency.

So choices you have are 'Build, Buy, or Hire'.

 

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Sourav

 

Symbols in dreams

 

Talk of psychology and you recall 3 names for sure - Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Alfred Adler.

 

While Freud is known for association of dreams and Adler for fictional finalism, Jung is known for concept of collective unconscious.

 

I had meant to read Jung’s work ‘Man and His symbols’ for quite some time, and I finally managed to read it.

What are some of the things that stayed with me? Are there a few things that have relevance to field of HR?

Here are ideas/concepts that stayed with me:

1. Dreams are representations of unconscious and they have their own significance. Hence we must pay heed to them.
2. Symbols in dreams are sometimes collected from collective unconscious - that has been shaped across generations of human beings. Hence certain symbols have usually standard meanings/representations. Additionally certain kind of symbols tend to pop up across dreams.
3. Archetypes -are symbols/representations from collective unconscious, e.g-archetype of beauty and beast.
4. Unlike the conscious mind, unconscious mind is not logical but it does have significance. Hence a dream may seem illogical but it still might have meaning.
5. Every individual has a shadow. We must acknowledge shadow before ego starts developing and being in control. ‘Mandala’ usually represents centered self with a completely developed ‘ego’.
6. Concept of Synchronicity- meaningful co-incidences that are not linked by cause and effect but nonetheless these incidences seem to co-happen.
7. Animus-male archetype; and Anima- female archetype. These exist in every human being.
8. Concept of Projection- when we see a part of our shadow (which we are not comfortable acknowledging in ourselves) in someone else, we tend to get very agitated.

 

Some of these concepts seem to have applicability at workplace:

1. When you come across an employee who can't stand a colleague for no apparent reason- projection maybe at work. Hence projection may be a cause of inter-personal conflicts.
2. If you were to lead a group of employees through an associated/dissociated visualization process about company/team-- what kind of images/symbols might pop up? This might give some hints about collective unconscious/cultural essence of a company/team and that in turn might hint to what need to be worked consciously within the team.
3. Synchronicity. If it is March, employees may be less receptive to development feedback. Frankly, this sounds more like cause and effect. But I do have a feeling that synchronicity has a place in workplace too.

 

These are some initial applications I can think of. Can you think of some other applications?

 

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Sourav