Being Big!

A post i have written for Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group.

My attempts at intentionally transferring some of my learnings from a workshop to workplace.

http://blog.kjcg.com/?p=273

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Sourav

So! What Exactly Is Different?

What is different? You have been here for sometime. How do you experience this place differently?

These are questions i have been frequently asked over last few months. 

At times I have wondered ´things maybe different but why is that important´.

When I had come in here I was clear that what´s I experience differently would just be classified as something that is different. 

I joined here with a mindset ´What´s different would be classified as something that´s just different. I won´t put a ´like´ or ´dislike´ tag against it´.  

Have I been successful in living up to my initial thoughts?  Well, Yes and No! It has not been a trouble free journey. But overall I do think I have been comfortable with non-judgmental hat I have chosen to worn.

But then experience has been different in parts.   What have these perceived ´differences´ been?

Initially, obvious ´visible´ differences struck me - Dress people wear to work, absence of formal work timings, preference for emails over phones, focus on punctuality (meetings starting/stopping on time- well, not always!), usage of quite succinct and sometimes unique terms (program manager, rhythm, decks, etc), prevalence of ´lunch meetings´, etc. 

Over last few months, I´ve had deeper realizations and insights. Am I done yet? I am not sure whether I can be ever done. I feel I am peeling off layers of an onion. I´ve peeled off a few layers. It has taken me sometime to do so. I´ve seen some visuals but then I realize those visuals itself might change tomorrow. There are a number of layers yet to be peeled.

Here are some visuals/realizations/insights I have had till now:

• Quarter Focus - I do perceive urgency in meetings and at work to meet metrics for current quarter.  This  quarter focus seems to be a double edged sword. It  does seem to keep everyone on their toes but most of focus of work is current quarter.  What in our work are we doing today for the long term (even the next quarter)? Balancing my daily work around areas that have immediate impact and areas that have slightly longer term impact does seem to be a ´tension´ I have to manage. Do I see everyone around me focusing on or being able to manage the same? Well! Yes and No!

• Metrics, Scorecards – I do perceive a focus on meeting scorecards (mostly quantitative). This focus is prevalent in HR areas too, including ones traditionally considered ´soft´ and not amenable to quantitative measurement. The principle ´what gets measured gets done´ certainly does hold true here. But there are times I observe a seeming neglect on what might be important but is not a part of the scorecard (probably because it is too behavioral/soft to be quantitatively scored).  I have perceived this organization as one that runs on scorecards.  I see challenge as ´Can we make these scorecards more encompassing? Can important qualitative metrics, that measure subtle and soft HR areas be included in scorecards too?´ I do sense we have distance to travel in this area.

• Listening and Expressing-  I sometimes observe an impatience to express oneself.  But when everyone wants to express, who listens?  I smile to myself when I hear the oft made statement ´I´ve heard you but…´.  I am tempted to ask in return ´What have you heard…?´ J.  I wonder whether the ´quarter focus´ leads to this phenomenon.  I like listening and I express in my own way.

• Disagreements and Feedback – Sometimes I realize that someone is disagreeing with me but is not saying so in so many words. The first few times I experienced something like this, I was left feeling confused. Over a period of time I have started sensing when someone is possibly disagreeing with me, even if s/he was not expressing so. I wonder whether our focus on being Respectful to each other gets probably misperceived by some as not expressing disagreements with each other. I also see this manifested in some groups where there is an aversion to having ´crucial conversations´, disagreeing, and providing critical feedback. Does it mean that individuals are not provided feedback? Sooner or later they are given feedback. Are they taken by surprise in such cases? Yes!  Do they like such a surprise? No! What has my response been? Well, when I have disagreed I have put my point forth. But I have tried to be respectful to the other person too. We can be respectful while disagreeing too.

• Confidence – I sense there is importance attached with projecting ´confidence´.  I find pockets where employees are mature to understand the implication of such a focus. I find other pockets where employees seem to misunderstand focus. In these pockets projecting confidence seems to be equated to not being perceived wrong and need to have immediate answers/solution to any situation. I remember something I had heard a long time back ´The 3 most difficult things to say in an organization are I don´t know, I am sorry, and I need help´.

• Channels of Communication – I initially perceived that it this was an email driven organization.  But then over a period of time I have observed subtle nuances too. I quite often hear ´I´ve heard about you …´. There are times when people come back and say ´Give me a call if you want to talk … ´So emails do work but I also perceive the need for ´high-contextual´ means of communication.  I sometimes wonder ´what is comfort of some of our employees with low contextual means of communication?´ This does seem to be an area of focus. Additionally I do perceive unsaid rules about who gets talked to and for what.  So yes, need for both ´high context´ and ´low context´ means of communication seems to co-exist here.

• Rhythm – I have talked about this before too.  I like the delineation of what´s in rhythm of business and what´s not. It provides a relevant yardstick to remind us whether we are working enough in taking the business to next level.  But are we fully understanding and utilizing this delineation? I think we could do more.

• Multiple Cultures/Group Norms – Is there a common overarching culture here? I perceive various sub-cultures across different businesses even within same geography.  Meeting norms (when do meetings get called and for what,  what gets discussed in meetings, what´s pre-work expected before meetings), email norms (what kind of emails with larger group get exchanged,  what gets responded to, speed of response), inter-personal norms (how frequently do people talk to each other and for what, what gets acknowledged/recognized, etc) seems to vary a bit across teams.  I am reminded of onions again. There are different onions. In many ways they are same but in some ways (maybe taste, smell, or looks) they are a bit different from each other.

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Sourav

Employee Engagement Surveys

What do employee engagement surveys tell or not tell us? 

Over next few weeks, I would be supporting managers/leaders in interpreting results from an organization wide engagement survey and creating action plans from them.

I observe such surveys are taken seriously by even business managers. I wonder whether they are complying (a part of their assessment does depend on results) or whether they truly believe in the possible benefits from such surveys.

Well! I would not know till the time I am neck deep into exercise too.  Here are some initial thoughts on my mind

• Surprises – what conclusions can I draw if a manager/leader is taken by surprise by results of the survey? I would know that at the least he has not had his ear to the ground. He either has not picked up what´s been expressed, has discouraged the expression of possible concerns, or has not acted on what has been expressed.  If I observe surprises, I would want to explore ´What has been the manager/leader doing to understand pulse of his organization and consequently act? What needs to change?´

• Statistically Significant shifts in scores-  I have heard this term often. It is a criterion for deciding possible action areas/strength areas.  I do agree that  we should consider this criterion, but what other criterion we may be missing out on?  I think ´context´ is a relevant term here I need to  interpret scores in terms of larger ´context´ a team is in.

• Context –  I support a growing business with a large number of new employees. They obviously are in early stages of employee life cycle. Feel good factor prevalent in ´initial days´ might have bumped up scores. I certainly need to segment scores of employees as per their stage in employee life cycle.

• Segmenting Scores by Employee Groups– there is a need to identify trends for relevant groups (as per demographics, specific job types, specialist teams, etc). If I were to take only an uber level view of things, I might not sense some important under-currents.

• Qualitative responses –  can be a double edged sword. Subjective answers provide richer understanding of emotions behind the different scores, but I am unsure of their utility in confidential surveys.  If I come across a ´concerning´ subjective answer, I would  discuss the same with the leader/manage and give him/her a chance to respond. How s/he responds is what I would be more interested in.

• Why this survey? – What is primary objective of conducting such a survey? I am not sure whether allocating rewards for managers/leaders should be primary outcome. The intent should be to understand what we are doing well/bad at a certain point of time, and take a collective decision on how can we progress further.

• Action Plans – ´Best plans are best executed plans´.  Administering a survey (ensuring high participation rate and a safe environment for employees to respond authentically) and interpreting and sharing results don´t necessarily lead to increase in employee engagement. Co- creating action plans that have buy in of different stakeholders and ensuring their execution are the more monotonous, more difficult, but the most crucial aspects of ensuring  a successful employee engagement survey.

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Sourav

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