I want to be Captain

These days, with the advent of social media, any employee can mail, tweet, ping, comment and tag her/his top guy of the company. The line of control to provide higher powers and right to speak out or decide is becoming hazy over the last few years. Or has it?

Studies show and many optimists believe, the traditional hierarchical, top-heavy, controlled business scene is now diluted helping in being nimble and quick on decision making. I have my doubts. We love to believe that we are now living in an ultra-slick, modern, high performing, merit recognizing environment. Cultures within a company and the corporate environment as a whole is changing. I don’t think so. And it’s not just my belief. There are counter research studies and academic write ups elaborating the same. They have found that the way organizations function now exhibits hundreds of years of hierarchical structures and remain unchanged. This is so because these structures “can be linked to survival strategies” in the workplace.

I believe the biggest reason why hierarchy is still around, will remain so and should remain so, is that hierarchies work better. A human mind keeps looking for order and security. We are always looking for something to give us that extra push and an added cushion of comfort. We need someone, seemingly better and brighter to show us the way. Add to that, a more competent mind/individual will always want to be differentiated from his so called less proficient peers. Her/his need to grow, move ahead and access more power and accountability only accentuates hierarchy and layers of superiority. Another latent but critical factor as I have experienced is, professional and sometimes personal (out of office) relationships with superiors still matter for an employee’s current job and opportunities at work. I would call it as “in-house networking skills”.

It is not what leaders in the company say or publish in weekly, monthly or quarterly meets. It is the mind. And mind is very complex. We as humans need to perform well. But our need to perform well more often than not, comes from being competitive. We need to be better than the other. Added to that is the need to be seen with high performing, more influential crowd. It’s like becoming a fan of a cricket or football team. We all like underdogs. But we love and want to be seen as a supporter a winning team.  As it is said by some wise man, “if you want to improve, be with people who are better than you”.

Another very acute factor as I notice is during decision-making. Whether amicable discussions which turn into a constructive debate before becoming a never ending mail trail or a fire-fighting situation, wherein, on the moment trick decisions are to be taken. A person on a higher ground, apparently more effective with his repeat successes and hence cannot go wrong comes to the rescue of the quarrelling group. People at a higher pedigree are thrust with certain behavioural and performing characteristics which may not really be true to them. But with time, because of their successes in one area of specialization, broad and unjustified inferences are made for that person, many a times, finally making him falter.

But then, why do we want to believe in flat organisation stories? I believe, that’s how we are brought up. We all believe fairy tales till late in our lives. Partly it is make believe, aspirational thoughts. Then there is the sudden up rise of “ways to reach” your right audience such as in-house professional networking forums and social networking to make one believe it is a flat structure.

If everything is so flat and non-hierarchical, why is it that organisations still call some businesses as front-ending while others as back-end functions? Or, why is a certain function a support service or a shared service while the other is a critical market facing business? Because, it works!

11 players make a team. But there is still a captain. And everyone wants to become one.

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What many love to hate in my profession

People love deriding things they don’t like. That’s natural. And we all know one negative experience can dilute twenty positive experiences. With time, through word of mouth, even if a sad event or unfortunate experience has not happened to you, you start hating, avoiding, and maligning it. It’s just like fear factor. No one has seen a ghost. But we all hate and fear them!

With the pre-poll accusations, campaign hate speeches, post-poll exit number crunching and impending election results, it got me thinking. And I started realizing it happens with most things in life. Personal relationships or professional perspectives. Most things depend on how our immediate environment makes us believe it.

When it comes to my profession, I believe I am in the most precarious profession – Human Resources (HR). Companies need them but they don’t want them! There are people outside of HR who hate HR, naturally. But now, I see more and more HR professionals who are disturbed with the profession. They start innocently, perhaps, saying the title of the function needs to change and then go on to bigger misfortunes, challenges and accusations. In fact, and not surprisingly, it came into my recent attention, wherein, some companies do not have an HR function! And rightly so, what is in HR that actually cannot be outsourced? You name it and there is a more specialized, proficient, competitive and may be more economical option available.

The biggest issue that I believe facing HR is, HR is seen as a bunch of people advising people what “to avoid, first” at work rather than “what to do, right”.

In my limited years of experience I have come across some very smart, intuitive and competent HR professionals. They exhibited enormous amount of breadth and depth of information about their profession, industry they belong to or have worked in, appreciation of latest technologies that can be utilized in the profession and an overall impressive perspective to life.

HR leaders and managers are supposed to add value to an organisation by understanding and evaluating implications of inorganic versus organic growth strategy. Some are given the responsibility of leadership development while some are named “change agents” and bring in culture change. And yet, most voices of dissent we hear is HR does not understand business, is not adding any value, and most HR staff do not possess enough skills or intelligence to appreciate strategy, business objectives, technology, project and product management innovations, etc. According to most employees, HR is just a mouth piece of top management, good at doing what is ordered and great at misleading employees into unachievable horizons. At best, HR is decent at executional processes and basic statutory compliances. Of course, HR has to work on laws and regulations, labour issues, payroll and many other operational areas.

The real meat for HR, according to me, is in talent identification, developing such talent and make them culture ready for their organisations. They are responsible for creating leaders for tomorrow. And to do, what we are supposed to do, we need to break some of our own glorified assumptions. We are not and cannot be good at everything. If we really have a false belief on self, I fear, we will be outsourced, sooner than later. We have to leave our “Generalist” Garb and become Skill “Specialist”. We may know and practice basic HR operations on a daily basis, but we will need to learn, explore, incorporate and execute work as experts of certain specific domains. We will need to take best practices of organisation development, organisation behaviour, individual psychology, consumer behaviour, branding, learning and training and create our own customised models to help business and business managers perform. They need to sit and evaluate what is it that is required of them by business? They need to listen and understand business challenges, pick up the shovel and make things happen.

But before that, HR leaders need to realise that before making learning/development and training as their next big launch initiative, they need to train their HR teams for skills they are supposed to perform. HR folks need to be nominated for formal skill development programs. HR professionals are supposed to design, develop and implement some of the most critical and strategic frameworks in the organisation such as staffing objectives and manpower strategies, performance management, pay philosophy, employee and leadership develop programs. They need to be made professionally capable of shouldering such organisational initiatives!

And HR folks, need to wake up to the fact that no organisation, business leader or HR leader wants a “I love interacting with people” personality. They are looking for a highly business oriented, data-based, analytical and yet a psychologically soft-skilled person. They need someone who is a smart juggler, very adept at handling balls of business, technology, analytics and functional acumen. A smiling face is only the cherry on the cake now; not the cake anymore.

HR folks need to stop basing their thoughts on tried and tested, safe measures. They need to start thinking on their feet, fresh and quick. HR has to be equally creative like any advertising agency. HR has to think and act like product companies – conceptualise, test, implement, work out the rough edges and go live! Based on data, post implementation, they need to then work on improvements, impact areas and further innovation. Newer and better assessment models, bigger and brighter performance management systems highly scientific but evolving operational processes is the need of the minute. If it takes an hour, it is too late! As HR professionals, we need to start taking our profession seriously. If we value our profession and make it grow, our careers will blossom.

It is not hate, but ignorance which damages personalities. Let us not avoid our own self.

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Straight

Stars, moons & planets, together all are called a galaxy. But they all revolve in their own different orbits. Grand parents with fours sons, their four wives, who have two children each who are also married with children together, are called a joint family. There are different layers to each fold of existence. Even literal statements are constructed by so many ingredients; language, grammar, tone and a personal connotation and because it has so many variants it is bound to have multi-dimensions. It cannot be one-dimensional. Moreover, every individual has her own belief, values and perceptions to decode a particular statement. Hence, it may sometimes become a little confusing to comprehend one statement in a mutually exclusive way.

Some say, people over complicate things. But then, some people actually simplify things very conveniently, branding issues in two distinctive baskets. For example, good and bad, right and wrong, natural and unnatural …For them life is very simple. But, life is not black and white.

The biggest debate taking place these days is happening on a very feeble understanding. In essence, a relationship is an association between two human beings. Now, there are two subjects here. One is the association and the other is human being. Now, when we prefix it with a term “same sex” why does the definition need to change? It still remains an association between two human beings.

The section has been named or numbered to denote something special. The no. 3 denotes the three different orientations; female-male, female-female & male-male. The two 7s ensure same sex is highlighted & covered well. But from where I see it, there too many loopholes in the basic understanding of the concept. First, most of the debate that I hear & read is on the lines of the “act of sex” between people of the same sex. Declaring the “act of sex” between two people of the same sex as “unnatural” is another judgment. To top it, comparing it with ‘act of sex” with animals, super thought….!!

One, not all relationships are based on sex. Second, “act of sex” is a very natural act, irrespective of the “human beings” involved. (I will not comment on animals). For a moment, hypothetically, even if we consider that all relationships are based on sex, it may not be for pro-creation, which is the ultimate truth and outcome as per the super pundits of human life cycle. So, the particular act can be enacted by two individuals as per their wish to fulfill their “desire to explore other’s physical compatibility and satisfy one’s own physical requirement”. Period. If “act of sex” is such a huge issue of debate, why not create a separate section for such an important and imminent issue? Why keep it all in a state of confusion and mayhem?

What is one’s orientation is one’s own right and decision. Why not let it be? Why do we have to create single them out and brand them as “different”?

Or else, ban all left handed people as majority people are right handed! Can we?

Being biased is one thing. Having a prejudice is also acceptable. But matters which are subjective and personal in nature have to be just that, personal.

If we think straight, we will see clearly that life is not as “straight” as it seems.