Football and HR

During the last NHRD conference I heard this beautiful anecdote by Mr. Natarajan Sundar a man of great experience and great knowledge. He was started off with this question "Name the only activity in which all the people compete are not different" people came close with the answer but the answer was football where it is 11 vs. 11 and the intentions of both teams are same to put the ball in the back of the opposite team's net and winning the game and the job of a coach is to motivate them

He talked about using Welch curve while grading the players as indispensable the essential ones and the ones who could be replaced and it was the most interesting anecdote as it combined the two passions i shared in football and human resources
and one special person i remembered was a footballer called ole gunnar solskajer a person who sacrificed his personal choices for the team and helped the team to do personally an under rated player who is a legend

U rock Ole Gunnar Solskajaer, coz of the fact he was able to take a backseat and excel in the role he is given just like in any corporate world where a manager expects his subordinates do well in the job they are given and it was more special because when he came to Manchester united from Norway he was prolific scorer who averaged a goal per game which was so high and starting every game and then to come off the bench which was not a certainty as it was up to the manager to use a substitute so he could never play during a game if the coach felt if it was necessary but to be focused and do the job on the keen occasion was great work.

And this is even more admirable because if I was in his shoes I would have quit and moved on to another club but to see what sustained persistence can do is breathtaking.


Cheers

Arvind

The goal and the decision

There are days you get up and you just cannot wait for the activities to begin and there are days when u feel sandman has cheated on you and well it was the latter case when I had to go attend the soft skills class for this semester and as usual there were people talking on usual aspects of self confidence, goal setting and all stuff and I never had any expectations from these classes but today I had a really good class on decision making by a person called Mr.G.Ramasubramanian and the crucial thing I liked about his whole session was the way he finished it off, It was a great way to end of a session. He performed a small activity and told the essence behind it

The activity was simple. He called a person as the volunteer and asked them to collect six objects from the class and keep it on the table and then he asked the volunteer to first remove three objects and then two and finally the remaining object was a pen and he asked to lift his diary where there was a plain paper and on the reverse of the paper the word "PEN" was inscribed everyone was amazed how it was done and came up with long theories of attention, ignorance and blah blah!!! But he put it to us in a simple way and it was as follows

He had already written down the word pen on the paper and when he asked the person to volunteer he ensured if they took a pen from someone as a object if not he would offer it and then when it came down to eliminating he said that among the objects if the pen was when which the volunteer selected he would ask them to remove the non selected ones and so on to somehow ensure the pen comes and this he said is how we should be in our life with our goal should be firmly set and our decision process around it whatever be the target it is essential to ensure you have the goal and work to ensure the goal is reached

I personally felt so much attracted to his thoughts and just wanted to share it

Cheers

Arvind

Straight from the gut

i had this magnificent chance to read the autobiography of jack welch and what a book it was aptly titled straight from the gut rather it should have been about his guts. A beautiful book on how he succeeded in life through tough situations and there were a lot of things you could relate to and some of them which i could relate and found very motivating were

1)The role his parents had in shaping him up their insistence on religion and also to encourage him to venture out

2)The way he waited to find green pastures with education rather than take up a job even when he was offered

3)Accepting the rejection of a higher university and moving to a lesser known university which helped him to do much better and strive much more harder in life

4)The way he wanted to learn and keep move forward

5)to trust his instincts and take on a new challenge and prove it. Not believing on the doubts people lay on you but rather on your abilities

6)The willingness to fight bureaucracy by taking it head on

and many more it is a must read book for any management graduate

Cheers
Arvind

Keep standing to view the top

It's so often easily pointed out on how as Human resources professional it is indispensable to ensure we stay connected with the employees and no denying how bare essential but at some time you have to question is it the duty of HR to dig out information from employees and help them out ?

In an interaction with a senior HR professional I posted this question to which she pointed out one thing which was very crucial was that it is essential we don't stoop too much into a simple issue relating to a particular case and if we do that we are not able to act as the link between organization and the workforce but rather we end up taking sides and thus we leave ourselves short of Hara-kiri, but if we dint do that properly where will we go?

Here came the answer that the responsibility was there but it is also to remember the level because only if you are standing up only you can see the top of a tower and in this context the tower refers to a business and pinnacle refers to the peak performance so in order to do this it is essential petty things are cleared out and important issues are focused.
A famous incident she said to connect with that was of a famous Indian conglomerate where there was the position of AGM was open and the existing HR mangers were given a chance to see if they fit the bill and one senior manager with over two decades of experience was shortlisted and when asked the question what will he change for better efficiency he started pointing out individual cases of employee grievance rather putting it as a complete picture to make it appear big and get the solution and thus he was put out of running highlighting how pointing out small things can lead to !!!

Cheers
Arvind

I QUOTE

This quote was said to me by a senior HR manager who has had diversified experience and this quote epitomizes the role of a HR person.

all the products in the world come with a product catalog the only exception to it is humans

And i have a chosen a profession which deals with people and i emphasized on the inner meaning behind that was the unpredictability of what you could face and how to face it


Cheers

Arvind

Talent retention and prediction analysis a critical view

I was recently at the Chennai chapter of NHRD and the topic discussed was talent retention and management which was thought provoking.

But there were certain things which I felt needed proper addressing the speaker Priya Gopalakrishnan was talking about her experience in HLL and "how a person was almost shaped up to take over from others because of the sheer experience under them and today it is not possible so and people have to be promoted early.

But I felt that this was the case cause if we take the scenario 15 years back employees still had the lingering sense of loyalty as changing jobs very often was not socially acceptable unlike now where it is a part of the culture.

And based on that I was reading this article on prediction analysis where people try to find out how long an employee can stay with a firm. My frank opinion is it that I can’t figure out how it works? Now if you are pessimistic with your predictions then you expect nothing from your people and that is worse or if you’re too optimistic you end up banking on one guy which violates the basic HR principle.

So my take on this is that prediction analysis needs more time to grow to be assessed how powerful it can be as a tool.

HR at its worst

The reason why I am writing this post is still unclear to me. This was about the practices in an organization which disturbed me to an extent that I was questioning myself how I can share the same profession with these people. The actual incident was when I was speaking to a family friend of mine and in a general discussion about his office and my foray into asking for fieldwork and internship. His organization is one of India's biggest private organizations in renewable energy with a concerted presence pan India and then he revealed me the facts that it was worthless to try it in his organization as the HR managers do not even interact with the staff and only talk with their bosses. I felt shocked but this was just the tip of the iceberg the next incident he narrated caught me off guard and I was stunned. He told me about a HR practice which is followed on the presence of the managing director he described the incident so vividly that showed the anger in him. He told me that whenever the MD arrives to the office in Chennai. The office of the organization is bolted inside and people are supposed to stand in a queue like school children to wish him this is a must for all employees and then when he leaves this process has to be followed again and he was venting his fury at the HR department. I was wondering in the time we are wondering on employee engagement and employee morale we are seeing these things also. If anyone has heard practices like this I would be more than eager to listen and just hope this acts are removed.

Cheers
Arvind Srikantan