Emails!

Back in 1999, I got my first email account. 

My friend and I went to a cyber cafe next to college. While surfing the net, we were intrigued and excited. We fumbled with the keyboard, mouse, and UI.  Soon we had opened our accounts in yahoo.com. We were the first recipients of each other´s first email. We felt happy that day!

In the first few years since then, worldwide web felt like an exciting, unique, and possibly fruitful addition to life.

A decade down the line, emailing is not a unique or exciting experience anymore. But is it usually fruitful? I still am not sure!

Now the internet encompasses our lives. 

I have a smartphone. I can access the internet at a click of a button and I have access to my emails at all times. Or rather emails have access to me all the time! :)

So I realized over a period of time that I was not sleeping well at night. I felt that the phone will ring anytime, and slept light in anticipation of that.  

I tried keeping the phone on silent, but even then I found myself waking up every few hours to check my emails on phone.

So now I don´t keep my phone with me in bed when I sleep at night. Rather I keep phone on table- and that´s quite a distance away from my bed.

Now I atleast get a few hours of being just with myself.

At work, we usually spend our time reading, writing, or replicating emails every second minute.  With so much emphasis on staying connected, I have been wondering what all might we be missing out on at work.

Over last month, I have been trying a new way of responding to emails. I check and respond to my emails only twice a day – for about 45 minutes each – 1 slot in the morning and 1 slot in the evening.

All the other times in the day are creation/relationship building/contracting/project times. 

This POA seems to be working for me.

I feel my day is more easy paced. I do more and better work. I feel more satisfied at the end of the day. I manage to clear and respond to all my emails too.

Importantly, I have defined and contracted on what timely response to emails means to me – response within 24 hours until and unless an email is marked as High Importance.

Work seems to be more meaningful now, inspite of barrage of emails I receive every day!

In this connected/networked world , what has worked for you in doing things beyond emailing?

-                                                           

Sourav

Identities!

Who/What do you associate/identify with? 

How many groups/entities s can we simultaneously associate/identify strongly with? 

Well, to answer this question we first need to draw a distinction between association and identification.  We can associate with lots of groups/entities but needn´t necessarily identify with, and advocate everyone of them.  

Does this mean that ´association´ is characterized by emotional detachment? I don´t think so!

I feel  both association and identification are value words- they have an element of emotional attachment involved, though in different degrees.

I identify with myself and my family. I am shaped by them!

I associate with some individuals/teams who I am with, or have come across-  I somehow get intertwined with them and their mark stays on with me But I can´t turn around and say ´I identify with them´.

Sometimes  I find an expectation that if you are associated with something, you must also identify with it and even advocate it.  I´ve seen such expectations manifest across institutions, colleges, teams, functions, and groups I have been a part of. Such an expectation doesn´t necessarily resonate with me.

We supposedly at any time can identify strongly with maximum 2 entities. That´s what probably defines some of anomalies/confusion at work place/in life e.g. – we identify with our team and function (but probably not with company), we identify with our family and country (but probably not with state/region we come from).

So at any point of time I can be associated with lots of people/groups, but I will probably identify strongly with 2-3 groups only!

Which identity do we seem to choose when there are conflicts amongst our different identities?

I´m not sure. Probably the answer is case specific.

How might a relationship characterized by identification sound/feel like?

I recently met an old buddy after 3 years.  We spent a couple of hours with each other, immersed and seeped in conversation. Time flew by and soon we bid each other adieu. Our conversation stands etched in my memory.  

And so do conversations we had the second last time we had me ( back in 2008) and first time we had met (back in 1999).

Sometimes it is not number of hours you spend with someone that determines identification;  rather  it´s quality of time spent.

-

Sourav

Working Across Cultures!

Over last few months I have been in midst of culturally immersive experiences. I have been working with stakeholders from Germany and from a few Latin American (LATAM) countries.

I thought I was well prepared for working across cultures. I have had a deep interest in knowing how things work across cultures and have put in my discretionary time and effort over last few years in increasing my knowledge/skills around this area.

So yes, I was not overwhelmed by the things that I saw happening.  But I can´t say that I was not taken by surprise. There were quite a few times when I had to improvise my way through.

I am increasingly realizing that what is important in working across cultures are answers to:

• What do you communicate?

• When do you communicate?

• With whom do you communicate?

• How do you communicate?

Here are a few dilemmas I recently faced:

• LATAM– Who do I contact? – I hear hierarchy is respected and followed.  But what do you do when in trying to figure out the correct authority figure to be contacted, you are losing out on valuable time?  Well! I chose to write to the most relevant person I could get through to. Have I managed to make progress in my discussions subsequently? Yes, I do experience progress.

• LATAM – should I speak/write in Spanish? – Most LATAM countries, except Brazil, are Spanish speaking. I know Spanish and I can write to my LATAM counterparts in Spanish. But should I or should I not? I hear they appreciate it if I an outsider were even to make an attempt to speak in Spanish. But in initial few meetings, it is better to be safe than to be sorry. My communication with them till now has been exclusively in English.

• There was atleast once where I realized that the LATAM counterpart I was speaking to did probably not comprehend completely what I was saying. I had to make an extra effort to speak very slowly and ask a lot of clarifying questions – that seemed to work.

• LATAM – do people across LATAM countries behave similarly or differently? I am sure there must be differences but I feel I am just scratching the surface in figuring out the differences in way they have responded to me.

• Germany & LATAM – I hear building rapport/working relations is important in LATAM while in Germany interactions are more business-like. Well! I managed to translate this to an actionable item. I wrote emails to LATAM counterparts with ´how are you doing?´ introductions and ´Look forward to working with you´ endings . With German counterparts, on other hand,  I got straight to the point.

• Regards, Best, or nothing –

o   I find American counterparts signing off their emails by writing Best. In India, we write Regards. I prefer writing nothing. 

o   Some emails marked to me start off with Dear while I prefer writing HI.

What is correct way to star/end emails when I write to counterparts in Germany/LATAM? I don´t have a well formed answer yet.

• Who adapts - you or your counterpart? I don’t think there is a one right answer to this question. You must make an attempt to understand and be sensitive – probably that would make the other person be understanding and sensitive too. Well, to be frank. I am not completely surely how I have been perceived by my German/LATAM counterparts till now.

• What works – emails or phones? Well! First communication will have to over emails. Emails are necessary to ensure that there is a common acceptance of what has been communicated. But I do feel that with LATAM counterparts, communication over the phone helps more than communication over email.  I sense that response time to emails might be similar across both LATAM and Germany – not necessarily the quickest.  But then I realize that my definition of quick and theirs might be different.

• Pre-meeting agendas- I am scheduled to have a meeting with a German counterpart in next few days. I was reminded of fact that they prefer detailed pre-meeting notes. So I modified my Indian way of ´we´ll figure it out in the meeting´ and sent him as pre-meeting material, all the notes we will refer to during the meeting.  I feel he will have read through all material before our meeting.  I hear this is not necessarily the case for LATAM. A detailed introductory email note may be a necessity to a LATAM counterpart (given that you are communicating across different time zones) but expect to do a lot of explaining during the first telephonic call.

This is the first in series of my learning´s working with people from different cultures. I will post more soon.

What have been your experiences in working with people from different cultures?

-

Sourav

Equivalence of Goals & Rewards!

What´s most important step in performance Management? Goal setting – obviously!  You get goal setting process wrong, and all subsequent process steps possibly can´t correct damage done.

Should incumbents of similar jobs have equivalent difficulty of goals? 

Well! This situation might lead to one employee having a better chance of making an impact compared to another employee, & consequently get a better rating.

So what do we do? We have to be fair to employees!

I see 2 possible ways of addressing such a situation.

•  We could have a manager playing moderator role – ensuring equivalent (comparable) jobs having equivalent difficulty of goals.   
• We could also let imbalance in goals exist.

o  But then we have to ensure that the process is not deemed unfair. A significant portion of fairness/unfairness lies in allocation of rewards on basis of performance -  what is the rating used for  - how it impacts compensation/next year´s assignments/career moves also needs to be taken care of.  Since goals are for year, hence differentiation of rewards on basis of performance should also be short term (e.g. – bonus for the year, merit increase for the year, etc) and not long term (e.g. –career moves, succession plans,  etc).

But then,  I feel that non-equivalence of goals can be a by-product (something that happens because of changes in environmental conditions in year).  

At goal setting stage, equivalence of goals should be attempted, and that is a managerial prerogative.  This is important, because as humans we always strive for an equal chance to be unequals- and we trust our managers to provide that equal chance.

It is possible that even after this equal chance, the results across equivalent level employees vary dramatically (in terms of business impact) for equal levels of effort.  Environmental changes might significantly tilt the playing ground towards one/some employees.

Again, as managers, we can either moderate the results (factoring in environmental difficulty) or rewards in terms of business impact.

In later case, linkage of rewards system to performance system has to be tweaked. Since the performance is for the year, we should also reward (on basis of performance) for the year – a reward that at most has an impact for a year´s time!

-

Sourav