This morning a senior colleague wrote me a good-natured line: “It takes a village to keep employees happy, focused, and engaged”. It triggered a cascade of realizations transporting me back briefly to a small dose of my village life in Southern India as a young child, that I felt compelled to share. Though I was brought up in India’s premier City, Mumbai I used to love my family trips to Trivandrum, in ‘God’s own country’, the state of kerala in India. Here’s what I remember of things that went on there that may have some ideas for how we work in the corporate world. Takeaway #1 : Everyone treated everyone else well. Everyone was greeted, was smiling and cheerful, there was some happy gossips and above all there was great mutual respect. The word that is closest to respect is ‘admiration’. Takeaway #2 : There were two families who were cantankerous. One of them was borderline criminal. The strategy adopted by the villagers was patience, tolerance and willingness to seek external help, if situations got out of hand. You could not take the easy way out and evict these people. The villagers did not. Takeaway #3 : There was division of functions. There was a spiritual leader who’d take care of the spiritual wellness needs. There was cousin brother, the doctor, who the people could go to for medical consultations. My dad’s brother was a much respected individual who worked in the King’s palace as the palace accountant. So he was the accountant for the village investors, etc. Takeaway #4: People lived holistically well day in and day out... read more
In 2014 Microsoft took over Nokia and the Nokia name was removed from its devices altogether. Things changed with the rise of the smartphone, and in particular the launch of Apple’s iPhone in 2007. The disruptor had got disrupted. Mika Grundstrom, a former senior manager at Nokia’s R&D site in Tampere is quoted as stating, “Things became much more complex. We were not so sure anymore what we should actually target. Is it ease of use, is it battery life, is it size?”. The answer for future Nokia’s in the making is here. Customers look for value. Value = Benefit – Cost The mistake that Nokia made may have been, looking at isolated features and trying to beat the daylights out of each of them. Every device making company’s bane. More of a good thing can only take you to some length. Beyond that you’d have to proactively disrupt your own product lines or uncover a new need segment, if you have to stay in business. This is mainly true for device manufacturers. “If you think about the battery life – we had devices that could last for a week. Then you have this new device, it’s excellent but you need to charge it every day. Ok so how do you actually sell that to the customer?” Sounds like one clueless state. Value = Benefit – Cost Here’s what was happening, that had Nokia played its game to win, they could well have continued to be in market as a leader and not yielded to Samsung: On November 5, 2007, the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of technology companies... read more
On 2 MAY 2016, Leicester City won the Premiership of the English Premier league( EPL) 2016. It was most unlikely title triumphs in football history. They had a 5000:1 chance. They had never won an EPL since the earliest recorded games in 1889! That’s in a 127 years. Here’re some standout things that happened: 1. Buy the best players money can buy. And Leicester’s funding for all the player put together costed less than one player on some other team. In fact the cost of the most used starting XI players was GBP23M while the same for last years winner (Chelsea) was GBP 200M. So they really had to buy the best player for the limited budget. – Talent Acquisition is a big responsibility. 2. Imagine the finish line is beyond where it really is. This helps you over-prepare and finish strong. 3. Unyielding commitment. Winning players visualize the spectacle that they want the spectators to see of them winning-its very powerful. Coach Claudio Ranieri stated. “I told my players: ‘When you go on the pitch and you hear the song ‘Fire’ from Kasabian, that means they want warriors.’ I want to see them as warriors for the fans.” 4. The coach is a forward thinker and multiplier. “I don’t like to speak about what happened..lets focus on tomorrow” when being questioned about an adverse decision. 5. The coach as a multiplier (as opposed to a diminisher) acknowledges that the players are maxed out yet says “we’ll give each other a little more”. 6. Ranieri himself played to his strengths. At 64 he is a father figure and refers... read more
The Singapore National Library recently invited me to deliver a talk on the subject with relatively short notice. It was a great privilege to deliver this talk at the Central Public library here in Singapore. A greater privilege to be speaking to an audience of professionals taken from a wide range of domains and industry from academia to real estate to IT management and sales. I am both grateful and deeply honored by their attendance. In an earlier post there was a quote from Gallup stating ‘Mere transactions between managers and employees are not enough to maximize engagement. Employees value communication from their manager not just about their roles and responsibilities but also about what happens in their lives outside of work. The Gallup study reveals that employees who feel as though their manager is invested in them as people are more likely to be engaged. My answer as a people manager and a managed employee is – most managers don’t have the social skills, training or tools to do justice to this important communication opportunity. i.e. curiosity about what you do outside of work. All the more reason i applaud the folks which by the way included a bright young student studying to be a radiographer and her professionally engaged parents. One of the reasons i agreed to speak at this venue was to because it was Friday evening and i could get people to attend it right after work with no incentives to attend besides a genuine curiosity. Below are a sample of the feedback and Learnings some of them got. The two numbers in the end... read more
Hello all my friends, I hope you are enjoying a great day! As many of you know I worked very hard to publish my book, and launched it through Amazon as a Kindle product as well. I appreciate all the help and support you have all shown me along this journey. I have just one more goal I would ask you to help me achieve…A Bestseller’s Distinction! My book went on sale 20 July, 2016. Please take a minute out of your day, and for the price of a coffee, pick up the Kindle version of my book “The 6 Dimensions: Overcome Presenteeism: Excel In Work And Life – Powerful New Ways To Know What’s Stopping You And Do What It Takes To Get Ahead” by clicking any one of these 5 countries’ Amazon links that’s most convenient to you for an instant download. US : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00SCRMWCC UK : http://tinyurl.com/T6DUK Japan : http://tinyurl.com/T6DJP India : http://tinyurl.com/T6DIN Canada : http://tiny.cc/T6D With a little help from you I hope to make the bestsellers list. I appreciate your help and support, and want to thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart! Warmest regards, Gurunath Hari Review “This book very effectively uses presenteeism as a springboard to confront corporate wellness in a sophisticated yet practical manner” Gary Johns (PhD, Wayne State) Professor, Department of Management, Concordia UniversityResearch Chair in ManagementAuthor of Presenteeism in the Workplace: A Review and Research “Presenteeism is even a more costly problem for business than absenteeism, and this book helps to understand what an individual can do to overcome it and get better work-life balance” Prof. Sir... read more
Prof. Sir Cary Cooper invented the word Presenteeism more than a decade ago. It’s a word that few had heard. That was, until Hillary Clinton made it famous a couple weeks ago. But for researchers and authors on the topic, Presenteeism has been well known. They look at it as a serious and significant opportunity for organizations to boost performance and productivity. One of the corporate world’s biggest strategic omissions. This was not the new shiny object that entices and makes organizations vie with each other to adopt. But all that may change very soon as CEOs begin to wonder, ‘Could this be happening in my company?’ So read on if you have become more aware of the need to know how you can benefit from addressing presenteeism. Presenteeism is defined as the phenomenon of people who are unwell going to the workplace. Researchers look at tackling presenteeism as a serious and significant opportunity for organizations to boost performance and productivity, in ways that are fundamental to the ‘human’ in the human resource. That approach is not to send the unwell employee home, or asking the unwell employee to take leave. The approach is a lot more strategic. Its about proactively assessing and actively managing the 11underlying barriers that could make an employee ‘unwell’. Researchers in Rhode Island came out with a study titled, Well-Being Assessment for Productivity A Well-Being Approach to Presenteeism in July 2011 wherein these 11 factors are called out. See the pix below taken from the study: (Reproduced with permission from the publisher) The study indicates that the current approach of focusing on physical health... read more
What breaks the camel’s back almost always is when a dilemma is converted to a problem and ‘solved’. This and the fact that there exists of a myriad of dilemmatic constructs within corporate philosophy and culture in every organization, makes for a disaster waiting to happen. It happened in Wells Fargo recently. On first pass everything about corporate strategy, values, mission and vision looks fine and in place. Then you get this: Wells Fargo, will be the poster child of what is actually happening in some shade or form, in almost every tech and banking and sales driven organization today i.e. not everyone in leadership in the organization are aware or adept at recognizing, calling out and managing these dilemmas daily. If you think about that for a second, you’ll know its scary. On the other hand, reading a situation as a dilemma and not a problem – and managing it as such- is the one sure way to get ‘out of the box’ and start thinking. The purpose of this post is 2 fold. 1. To remind the esteemed users of Linkedin about recognizing dilemmas. (You guys are smart and you can go and do your learning on what a dilemma is. Please don’t guess) 2. Attempt to pinpoint a couple of ‘seat belts’ that were not worn – for whatever emotional reasons or otherwise, that the referenced article alludes to. Even seasoned CEO’s like John Stumpf could be blind-sided or lead to believe that the tactics are right. The dilemma for Wells Fargo’s CEO would have been: “How do we expand revenue and profit while adhering to... read more
In corporate America sacking 54 poor performers would hardly make the news, but this is Singapore. Barely two weeks into the new year, Surbana Jurong- a Temasek Holdings-owned infrastructure consultancy, let go 54 employees over a period of 2 weeks. Of the 54, 26 were professionals, with nine in senior positions, including managers, senior executive architects, principal architects and principal engineers. So it does look brutal. The press got to know of this. Given the uncertain economic outlook and a lacklustre labour market the company clarified that these were not retrenchments but they had been let go purely for performance reasons. All hell breaks lose The matter got onto the radar of Singapore’s Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say. Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday (February 7), he said, “I spent many years with the labour movement and now MOM. To the best of my recollection, this is the first time an employer has conducted such a major termination exercise and announced publicly it was due to the workers’ poor performance,”. If the organisation cannot substantiate claims that the affected worker’s performance is below the required level, the employer may be ordered to reinstate the worker or offer compensation. How could Surbana have avoided this? A reconstruction of events What lead Surbana to this situation? First, Group chairman Liew Mun Leong reportedly speaks ‘vehemently’ about poor company performance, which will drastically affect the bonuses of those business units that operated below par last year, despite efforts to grow the projects pipeline. Then, Surbana Jurong group chief executive Wong Heang Fine sends staff a strongly-worded e-mail. With extracts reportedly stating: “. .... read more
My mentor sent me a whatsApp with this above newsprint clipping. He must have been as shocked as the rest of us are by the massacre of innocent merry-makers by Stephen Paddock. Paddock graduated from John H. Francis Polytechnic High School in 1971,[13] and from California State University, Northridge, with a degree in business administration in 1977. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Paddock) Before i thought of sharing with you the conversation i had with my son that followed, i wanted to check the veracity of this printed clip. It can be found here. Do we need to take cognizance of this With more and more humans populating the planet, the base of the social pyramid is getting broader and the pyramid itself getting bigger. More Paddocks are likely but can be minimized. Here’s the balance of the text of the photo-clipping: …Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths or educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.” After every inhuman incident, the mind, however briefly, wonders in bewilderment at what might have caused such monstrosity. One wonders what Paddock learnt at high school and at California State University that got so easily over-ruled by some other inhuman motive. With this recent incident, at the back of my head, I was lunching with my 17 year-old son and asked him, “Did you have moral science or any other subject on human values?”. He tried to recall and said, ” We had VIA, values in action, we had social studies-which i sucked at” he said bashfully, “and some other stuff”. I told him,... read more
If you are looking to ‘do’ the focus, focus, focus thing day in day out and getting stressed, you are not alone. The over-emphasis on focusing on tasks to achieve daily goals has become boring. Useful but boring. What can be another, simpler way? Is there even such a thing. The answer unravels by asking ourselves, what is/are the thing/s that detracts us from focusing. More commonly referred to as distractions, we all succumb to its seductive, insidious embrace to varying degrees and once we realize it, it often leaves us annoyed with ourselves, embarrassed, anxious about the irreversible loss of time. If you see the meanings of the word distraction from Merriam-webster you’ll know why. A state of wildly excited activity or emotion The act or activity of providing pleasure or amusement A state of mental uncertainty With the lethal combination of mobile phones and internet we can see how much of wild excitation, wild emotion, pleasurable activity and amusement is within arm’s reach…nay in our palms. Contrast this to the meaning of the word “goal“: Again Merriam-Webster: “something that one hopes or intends to accomplish”. That’s it. Lets check out “task“: ‘a piece of work that needs to be done regularly’. Can there be more boring definition!! Contrast these two words even when combined, with ‘distraction‘ and you can clearly see who wins. There is no way that humans would naturally gravitate to focus on tasks when we are naturally pre-disposed to seeking the dopamine rush of distractions. So is it hopeless? Maybe not.. In Machine learning, much time and effort is spent upfront in ‘cleaning’ the... read more
