An Onboarding Mindset

In previous posts, I have talked about how an onboarding process can be created – a process that meets both aims of organization and onboarding individual.

But there’s an important piece in entire jigsaw – what ‘mindset’ should onboarding individual approach onboarding process with?  Crack this piece- and you might have set up lever that will ensure onboarding process stays on track.

Here are a few pointers on ‘an onboarding mindset’:

·         Its OK not to be OK: There will be extended periods of uncertainty/learning anxiety. You need to live with it. If you are relocating cities/countries, then add in the entire personal transition piece. Uncertainty might last for months – and even for a year. There’s no way out. You need to get comfortable with being ‘NOT OK’.

·         Student Mindset: 

o   Be curious to learn. Don’t let your past experience color your experience of new environment. Different is not necessarily bad. When you find something different, ask yourself ‘Why might it be this way? How might it make sense in current environment?’. You may not get answer immediately but stay at it.

o   At same time, keep on questioning what doesn’t make sense.

Essence basically is to keep a balance.

·         Professional mindset:

o   Figure out what are expectations from your job. Focus on identifying what uniquely you can bring to job that can create maximum impact for organization. Think of what are least ‘nuts and bolts’ you need to know to start performing on your job.

o   You are not alone. Identify and contract with those who will help you in onboarding process. A professional is not necessarily an ‘expert’. S/he’s focus is on effective outcomes. S/he’s not worried about being known as SME/expert – who should have all answers – or should have necessarily ‘owned’ entire piece.   A professional say ‘Thank You’, ‘I Need Help’, and ‘I am Sorry’ – when required.

o   Focus on building trust in important partnerships/relationships. That’s lubricant which will later ensure speed in these partnerships/relationships.

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Sourav

Transitions

Currently I am in midst of a ‘transition’ at work.  I have been thinking about ‘how do I ready myself for next role while keeping focus on current role’.

Then I realize we face a related challenge throughout our work lives and possibly our lives itself - ‘How do you manage current while preparing base for future?’. There might be some additional elements involved in a role transition – building up new relationship networks, understanding a new context, etc. But more or less approach should be similar.  It also with right focus should be doable.

Here are few thoughts on how to approach a significant role transition at work:

·         Build a short term plan – 30/60 day plan – with milestones.

·         Focus on how you could ready yourself better even before landing in role. So an element of pre-work might be necessary.

·         Keep aside time periodically (possibly every week in the first month) to reflect on what you achieved against milestones and where you need to course correct.

·         Remember 3 quadrants of onboarding – networks (trust and working partnership with stakeholders), contribution (early successes), and learning (nuts and bolts of job).

·         Prepare for being uncomfortable. In first few months, you may be passing through zones of Unconscious Incompetence (you don’t know what you don’t know) to Conscious Incompetence (you know what you don’t know) to Conscious Competence. Be intentional, stick to your efforts, and don’t let uncertainty impact you too much. It should pay off.

·         As for current role, contract with your current stakeholders on what you will achieve in your remaining few weeks/months in current role. It is important that you leave still feeling on a high.

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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

 

Short Term!

'When did I start work on this project? Seems like a long time back. How long back was it? Hmmm. .wait...hold on! I started work on it in early October. That's just a month back. That's not long back! ....or… is it not?'

I have gone through this chain of thoughts on a number of occasions over last few months.

I wonder 'what's different?' Short term isn't really feeling like short term.

There is a lot of action in my job, for sure. I'm doing work on

• designing & driving programs, &
• creating frameworks and setting up teams.

Number of variables and stake holders I am working with are high.

Maybe it is a phase- I am learning tricks of trade here and/or I am working on creating a number of atleast 1 year agendas.

But still October can't feel so long back!

I sense 'performance every quarter' focus prevalent in most publicly listed companies is at play here. Every quarter we must show a green performance.

Over a period of time every quarter starts feeling like a mini year.

But then the challenge also is to balance this reality with need for a longer term view needed for most people initiatives.

I'll make an assumption here.  Least count required to make an impact in most people initiatives is atleast one year.

Keeping our eye on one year horizon while meeting quarter performance numbers is important.

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Sourav

 

Bell Curves and Identities!

Visualize you are having  one of your best periods or year at work!

Things are going well for you. You are stretching but enjoying. You are getting the results. Your teammates are also doing a damn good job. It's a successful and energizing workplace.

At end of year, you are told your performance doesn't meet expectations!

Well! Are you taken aback? 

In all probability you must have been.

Obviously, the Bell Curve and relativity is at play here. :)

It doesn't matter how well you perform; what matters is how well you perform relative to others!
 

This seems to be true in most of our institutions -schools, colleges, and workplaces.

It does make logical sense to say that we are upping the bar of performance and there are consequences for those who are at bottom of stack.

But logical from whose perspective? The organization´s!

What kind of an emotional impact might this have on employees? Will employees relate to organizations?- they might if the tide is with them -everyone wants be a rating 1 but no one wants to be a rating 5:).

Think of a family or a friends circle where the least effective member´s membership in family/circle is in question at the end of the year. 

What kind of an emotional response or a preventive mindset might that lead to ?

In companies, over a period of time the emotional relationship/identification will possibly be more with one's team members/work, etc and lesser with the organization.
 

Probably that's why, with the advent of Bell curves in organizations, the focus has shifted from loyalty (to organizations) to employability (of one's career).
 

Does organization lose? i don't think so!
 

Do employees lose? 

Over a period of time they might realize what's at play- they might choose to still put in discretionary efforts- but that will be for reasons beyond performance based incentive.They might also choose to be loyal to a particular organization - but that will be because his/her employability or other needs is being taken care of adequately.

Is there a better alternative possible?

Well! For that we first need to find an alternative to bell curves :).

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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!

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Sourav

Dividing Limited Resources Appropriately!

How do we react to limited resources/win-lose scenarios?

Performance bell curve is a classic limited resource example. 

There are only a few slots for top performers- usually a manager wants just a tad bit more slots for his/her top performers and a tad bit less slots for his/her low performers.

What are different ways of dealing with this situation? Two obvious ways are:

• ·         Give limited resources proportionately to each team – everyone gains or loses equally.

• ·         Give limited resources appropriately to each team – some teams may get more than others.

Usually a leaders´ decision (1^st line of authority that both/multiple teams report up to) is required to drive non-proportionate/appropriate division of resources amongst different teams.

What happens when a leadership decision is not possible ?–maybe because leader isn´t there.  Is only solution to delegate decision higher up in hierarchy?

I would place responsibility on manager of each team. They have to come together and discuss allocation of resources. 

What are imperatives in such a process?:

• HR is facilitator in this process. I might be asked to recommend appropriate division of resources. But that makes it easy for managers to abdicate responsibility for decision taken. I would put responsibility squarely back on shoulders of managers – it´s your teams and you have to take a decision.

• Before we start discussion division of resources, managers have to debate and agree on principles on basis of which resources would be divided appropriately.  When there´s no principle, it´s difficult to find agreement.

But what does a facilitator do when he finds managers not willing to come on table and discuss?

• First, it´s a symptom of managers behaving ´territorially´.

• In such a case, discussion needs to be taken a notch higher. Discussion is no more about merits of coming to table and discussing.  Discussion should be about exploring with each manager ´why is s/he not coming on table and how might s/he being perceived because of that´. That is not an easy discussion but is certainly a necessary one. A Type A (go getter) person might respond to this process. Would a Type B person respond to this kind of a process? I think discussion with a Type B person would be about what is right thing to do.

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Sourav