Managing Performances is getting a Big Deal!

I have very recently read thru the post of a Human Resource Leader Kevin Freitas with InMobi, the post was on the performance management handles, I really appreciate his thought process behind designing such an impressive system at InMobi.

I am just a young turk on the block and thought to share few of my observations on the performance management process industry wide; these according to me are the opportunity areas which require immediate attention:

1. There is an abrupt need of building confidence among employees about the Performance Management process an organization follows.

2. Transparency is one major factor which has proved to be a credibility killer, not only for the human resource team but also for the mid level managers and leaders. I have always been wondering of the reasons of so many organizations failing to be transparent and letting their resources feel resentful.

3. Performance discussions has to be an ongoing process rather a half yearly or an yearly thing, managers must realize that an employee’s demonstration at each moment spent in the organization has to be calculated as his performance, they must know the art of delegating and monitoring the show from the backstage and work along with the employee in case of any difference in the expectations, will lead to a powerhouse organization.

4. In an organization where everything or almost everything happens at Manager’s discretion creates a lot of ambiguity, human resource must take the control and drive the performance process!

5. Something which needs advancement at manager’s level is a strong training/ coaching (may be even before someone takes on managerial role) so as to create a strong sense towards being unbiased, transparent, creating a culture of high performance in the team and being aligned to the vision and the values of an organization.

Human Resource team across industry will have to be on their toes to not only allow the access to great talent but also building in them a sense happiness towards their choice!

Link to Kevin’s article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/focus-outperforming-kevin-freitas?trk=object-title

Are You Tweeting?

While I have been away from blogging for quite a long time, I could not keep myself away from the thought of commencing it again and this is sheer happiness to get back to blogging on my birthday today :)

Writing this to share my views on a question raised by Sarang Brahme, a Talent Acquisition Leader with Capgemini, of being fair to people by judging them on socializing via Twitter :) Well I found that be an interesting perspective and scribbling down few thoughts over it.

I have very recently joined Twitter and absolutely thrilled with its potential, I am yet to explore its effectiveness for Talent Acquisition but writing this basis what I could explore in the past few weeks :)

Twitter- A platform for all: Linked In apparently has built its identity as a great platform for professional, an HR Professional or anybody else for that matter on Twitter is free to share their views and perspectives on any aspect, be it Work, Sports or any other interests they might hold. That gives Twitter an edge cos people will prefer to be on a platform wherein they can discuss and share anything in which they hold interest. 

I truly believe and see Human Resource Professionals as the key to great organization and recipe to become so is to:

1.  Keep yourself updated with the latest trends.

2.  Keep yourself engaged with the thought leaders or simply hear them out, keeping in mind the 70-30-10 principle where in 10% of the learnings come from observing and hearing out leaders J

3.  Twitter offers a great virtual platform to be a part of groups and chat with likeminded or otherwise people with ease, I can’t think of a better world where in you are not even required to step out to mingle with people unlike NHRDN n SHRM etc. (keeping in mind how many people can afford to find out time & money for such mega events, a harsh reality)

4. Fastest and the most crisp way of getting information is Twitter- Who understands the  importance of time better than a Sourcer or Recruiter always pressed by time ;)

5. Knowledge never goes waste and what could be a better platform to discuss variety than Twitter. While people bestow a lot of time on FB, they tend to become too formal on Linked In.. ;). The Blue Bird portal truly is Therapeutic for an improved horizon ;)

Would love to share more as I explore it further, till then Happy Tweeting :)

 

The Phony Saint!!

I remember a recent statement made by BJP’s leader and Gujrat’s chief minister Narendra Modi regarding our worthy/unworthy Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calling him “Maun Mohan”, got highlighted in almost all the newspapers and magazines of the country even made a place in the minds of all the Indians.  I believe not only Narendra Modi but anybody else is not being wrong in making such  statements for him as our PM has been inactive, inefficient even indecisive in almost all the political matters. Our highly honored economist and scholar has remained quite unresponsive to any such comments and even at many events where he needs to be pretty active and striking.

“It astonishes me when he talks so little and be so barely visible that we might be forgiven for thinking that India has an imaginary Prime Minister,” wrote a celebrity-journalist in his blog a few months ago.

Where in India with issues like prices hike in Petrol & cooking gas, scams like 2G, Coalgate and CWG, with serious allegations on Salman Khurshid, Virbhadra Singh, Sushil kumar Shinde catching fire at a high pace our Prime Minister has remained insensitive and has nothing to say, not sure about others but this certainly has taken my breath away.

Our Prime Minister is nothing less than a “Saint in Disguise” who’s living in the Self Actualization phase of his life. We can easily sense his abstinence from the political matters and him maintaining a state of nothingness has actually become a national issue. As a prime minister of India was't he supposed to be active than just following solely asceticism. The man who has been accepted by majority of the Indians as their leader should be more efficient and prominent in his activities. Mr. Singh has been talking about the economic growth ever since he got the status of a PM but unfortunately he did not understand the fact that the lack of direction, delays in much needed reforms are the reasons stopping us to achieve the same.

I am quite apprehensive about his vision for our country as well, in a speech he gave at a public conclave held in the Capital, Manmohan Singh said: “I do not want India to be a super power; I just want India to stand in the comity of nations.” has certainly left India embarrassed at an international stage, even then if we see him as a leader of our country, I must say that the benchmark of being a leader has certainly gone down to a great extent.

Mr. Singh's abdication of responsibility and his aversion to risk is striking today, not least because it encourages others in India's government to go into hiding the moment there's a sign of trouble, our former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee stated this in one of our Lok Sabha meeting. During the “anshans” held by Anna Hazare as a part of the revolt against corruption Atal Bihari Vajpayee went to meet PM asked him to take a decision. He told, I said to PM, “Pradhan Mantri saab aap koi nidnaya kyun nahi lete? Desh main itna sab kuch ho raha hai. Aapko nidnaya lena chahiye.(PM sir why don’t you take any decision? A lot of stuff is happening in our country. You should take a decision.) Then He told what our PM replied, “  unhone jawaab diya ‘nidnaya na lena bhi ek nidnaya hai”. (PM answered ‘Being indecisive is itself a decision’) and he seems to be true to the current scenario since the buck never stopped with him at the first level, somebody else (Sonia Gandhi) is holding the political reins.

He undoubtedly seems to have no stakes either in his political party or in the country? He is being reluctant to the odd situations we are facing. The man carrying the highest authority, power and stature in our country is nothing less than a phony saint and we still respect him for the nobility and sorry to say but the lackadiasical attitude he carries.

Nobody else but we are responsible for what we are facing today!!

Beautiful Days..!!

The sun is still not up..here we are awake at 6 o clock sharp..adorned in uniform & bag packed with new note pads & text books, pencil & lunch boxes, that’s how the innocent childhood took a step forward. I don’t remember any single day when we did not collectively prayed to God at the bus stop for a surprise school holiday! (No wonder some of us ended up being such staunch atheists)

Bells of assembly, singing chorus, the inhibition of being caught up during inspection for anything wrong or not so good was always there.

We started off with pencils & wanted to color the world with crayons & sketch pens. With new books & happy faces we began with remembering alphabets & numbers followed by tables, every mathematical problem we did in school was the easiest of all while the home work ones used to be really tough, cant forget the way teacher’s gave us a helping hand & were always ready to listen and be a friend, they brought in the confidence in us, every praise by them was the biggest achievement for us. Time spent in Hindi classes doing chit- chat (as if we were the masters in Hindi) or sometimes reading our favorite comics, brings smile on face even today. Playing Dum Charades, pen fight, what color you want and many other games which I don’t even remember now in every free lecture was so much fun. School was the place where we perfected the art of making planes & boats. We used to finish lunch in the short break so that the lunch break can be for our favorite candies, popins, mango bite or sometimes for the games I just talked about, ate Lays for their Tazos, bought Complan instead of Boost for the free tennis ball.

The games classes was awaited more eagerly than any thing of utmost importance, we probably played every sport known in the world that too in the scorching heat & we never felt tired with that. Those were the days of fight with friends and making up, without any conspiracies…those were the days of competition…those were the days when we wanted to raise our hands before any of our classmates to answer the questions of our teachers. Celebrating birthday’s at school was another lovely experience where in we had the courtesy to wear any dress of our choice, giving out chocolates to everybody and getting their wishes in chorus made us felt like none less than any Oscar winning celeb.

The craze of being a part of the Sports or Annual Day & excelling & giving our best in them (as if we were the Michael Jackson & Sachin Tendulkar) makes me excited even today.

Half yearly & annual exam days were the only stressful days for us, I remember the long nights we spent in practicing & mugging up long chapters, trying to give our best even in the subjects we detest the most. Anxiety for results & umpteen ideas to defend ourselves in case of average performance in any subject was a part of it.

It’s in school that we made our first friend, had our first crush, competed to excel, ate lunch boxes during classes and learnt our first lessons about life. Can’t bunk classes now…gone are the days when we sat to chat with friends on stairs for hours..!!

 

Will cherish the School Days Memories Forever!! J

Kashi…Where time does rewind..!

Sitting at my workstation, it isn’t too difficult to close my eyes & hear the oar splashing into the river and coming out rhythmically…I want to go back and ride on the wind in the beautiful campus of BHU... I want to go back to the city where the 'shikhara' of the Sarnath temple is probably apparent from every roof there.

 I miss the lovely summer vacations and good time I spent in the beautiful city.

The holy city…Kashi…the city of religious & spiritual lifestyle where people are known for being the exponents of literature, music, philosophy, arts and craft. All you can experience there is life in multitude colors…Colors antiquated and utterly beautiful. The town is not only a heritage town by the virtue of its lifestyle, culture, language and food but I believe because of its beautiful people too..!

Mythology reins the city and you can easily find a glimpse of many religious beliefs from Buddha, Jain, Tirthankars to Vaishnavs which makes it the most lively city on the bank of Ganga Maiya..!

Kashi presents a cultural and linguistic pluralism, one gets to explore the city of intellectuals, personalities, professions and communal harmony. Gamcha, thandai, akharas, kushti and banarasi paan are still an integral part of the cultural identity. Music, drama and entertainment have found a place in the lives of the people and is quite synonymous to the city and of course the rich stock of folk music will keep winning hearts forever…

One of the best experiences for me was to be a part of the Ganga Aarti at dasaswamedh ghat, everything from the swinging lamps to the tunes of chanting brings in a lot of mental peace and energy as if the holy water of ganga has taken off away all the negativity in me and I felt so close to the Divine power. Celebrating festival there was also another wonderful experience for me and during all these years of my stay at Delhi I realized that people in metro cities have lost the spirit of celebrating festivals, I guess the essence of it is lost somewhere in the cacophony of busy and stressful life, I truly want to go back, enjoy and paint myself in that spirit, excitement and jest with which people welcome and celebrate festivals. I also remember there were more than one occasions when I was just not able to answer questions asked in ‘Khadi Boli’ as I was mesmerized by the sheer sound of Parichay, Swaccha, Pavitra, Sandhya(these are the simpler ones) and many more difficult words.

Food there was more than a heavenly experience from paapri- chaat which plays with the taste buds with its tangy and spicy flavor of ginger & tamarind chutney and the cooling dahi, I also had the pleasure of munching on the best of samosas, kachoris and the perfect milk dessert. Varanasi probably was the only lovely place for me as a kiddo (specifically in summers) because of the morning walks at sprawling BHU campus which was fortunately very-very close to our place, the variety of mangos, mishramboo and the evening fun with my cousins. 

The potpourri of happiness does not seems to have an end there and I just can not afford to wrap up with out talking about another exciting aspect...Yes...shopping and the hot spots from Chowk, Vishwanath Gali, Godoulia(I suspect the best market), Dashswamedha Gali to Gyan Vapi where exploring out the options of Banarasi Saree(an indespensable part of every brides trousseau), royal work heavy sarees, world's famous gold and silver brocades, heavy design gold jewellery are quite charming...! 

This one is dedicated to all my VNS friends. J

Nation Again…st Corruption

Corruption has become synonymous with the Indian economy in recent times. It is thus, not surprising, that the people have had enough. Corruption is one of the biggest hurdles in India's growth. Corruption hinders growth through its adverse effects on investment in physical capital, human capital, and political instability. In fact, a recent survey suggested that high levels of corruption in Asia could derail the Asian growth story. 

The Jan Lokpal Bill, which is supported by Mr. Anna Hazare is a much needed step towards a corruption free India. There are a few things that I really like about Mr. Hazare's version of the bill -an independent, single body capable of conducting end-to-end investigations; This stand when coupled with a speedy trial is one of the best defenses against corruption.

A strong Lokpal bill ensures that even when there is an opportunity and pressure to commit fraud. A rationalization will be difficult for a potential fraudster because of a speedy trial and a strict punishment. The government, as expected, opposes a strong Lokpal bill. Many people claim that government has taken such a stand to safe guard its own interests. Regardless of what the truth may be, I believe that we - the people of India -have shown to the government the true power that a democracy possesses - The right to fight for what we think is right. No doubt there will be trails in the next few days and month. But i believe that the movement has too much momentum now to stop and a strong Lokpal bill definitely see the light of day. 

If we were to suppose that government with its supreme power a strong opponent. It will be appropriate to assume that Anna Hazare led movement against corruption with unwinding nation-wide support is an equally strong contender. If you have stayed in Delhi for as long as most of us here in Delhi have, you will be surprised. Streets are full of people, with a candle in their hand and a hope in their heart. Hopes for a corruption free India.


I am all in support for a corruption free India and in awe of the great man, who has sacrificed so much to support a great cause - Mr. Anna Hazare.

Silly Thing called Luck..!

Show me a person who avoids hard work, and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t found their purpose yet.

Glad that I am back to scribble down after a long time, I was desperate to explore and talk about luck, is it just a self fulfilling prophecy or truly an essence to success.

There is an urge in all of us to insist that others are more fortunate than we are. When we face “bad times,” we often comfort ourselves with the idea that we are special in our level of misfortune. To rely on our understanding of luck – to believe that life is a kind of lottery – is just an attempt to escape reality. I believe it’s not a question of luck when we talk of success and failure, in fact when I think of icons like Sachin Tendulkar and Oprah Winfrey it’s their hard work and attitude which reflects on their success and not that silly word.

When you live life for a strong purpose, then hard work isn’t an option it’s a necessity. If your life has no real purpose, then you can avoid working hard and it won’t matter because you’ve decided that your life itself doesn’t matter in anyways so who cares if you work hard or take the easy road? But if you’ve chosen a significant and worthy purpose for your life, it would require hard work to get there. If you avoid working hard, you simply avoid doing what it takes to success and believe me your desire to work and rise in life would melt all the adversities. The choice in life is always yours, whether you want to go with the flow of life and circumstances, act passively, let things happen to you and end up in a pretty screwed up situation, so start accepting and liking where the flow takes you. You would truly be an unlucky guy with mediocre results followed by a great deal of time and efforts spent on giving excuses and justifying results.

I would also say…Yes you are unlucky because you missed the opportunity, as you were too busy in looking for something else.

Yes you are unlucky because you see the rational side of any situation.

Yes you are unlucky because you can not take risks, love the routines and just want to be in the comfortable zone.

Step up and start driving your life, learn to associate the pleasure of success and tremendous growth you would gain with the discomforts you experience, it would become a lot easier for you to endure hardship required. You are the only one to use your abilities, it’s an awesome responsibility. J