Reference check of Employers

These days, we hear & in some cases experience that employers are using internal and external resources to conduct reference check on candidates to verify claims on salary / experience etc as some of them encountered false declarations from candidates.

Who is to be blamed - Obviously candidates. You just cannot lie , be untruthful to organization which will provide you employment and career.

Let us reverse the discussions for a moment.

I am sure most of the new joinees in middle/senior management encounter surprises and shocks after joining a company. While they are communicated great things about the organization and its practices , they do find a yawning gap between promises and delivery.

Is it not fair for candidates to ask for names of ex candidates from these companies to carry out a verification on various things which impact his work and output. Work culture , Execution culture , delegations , independence etc.

Candidates should ask to spend a day in the organization meeting a lot of people asking and seeking out what they deem fit to be checked about the prospective employer.

Is it asking for too much.

I do not think so. I believe in next 3-5 years this will start happening.

In fact people may be reluctant to joing certain organizations and these very companies will offer such an opportunity to market them selves. What a day it will be!!!

Think !!!

Save Tiger Campaign - Whose Responsibility

You login in to any website - you would get a banner reading - 1411 left.

My question is this. Who is responsible to save them ? This answer should come from who is responsible in first place to get their count down from 4000 to 1411 in India in last 100 years.

Normal citizens like me can join campaigns - online, sign a petition to Govt, take out a candle light protest. Will something happen. Concrete actions has to come out from experts who are either not visible or are not heard / given the platform and freedom to so something.

Apathy.

Today Morning I read a news item. Supreme Court Judge has said in a petition filed to " Save Yamuna" that it is a " gandha nallah". -Dirty drain- He is right , when 25 major drains of Delhi city bring muck, filth,pollutants without processing in to the river , stangnant river at that, what would happen.

In last 15 years there were three occassions when Govt of Delhi has given a written undertaking to courts that drain water before being released into Yamuna shall be treated and only then allowed in to river. Has anything happenned - No - not even a single politician , bureaucrat has lost his job.

Apathy.

These areas are just a few which are not owned by any body. No one.Money is still being spent. Tax Payers money. No accountability.

I am reminded of a story- Everybody thought somebody will do it. Somebody thought any body could do it. In the end nobody did it.

3 Idiots - Who has learnt the lessons?

There was a virtual flooding in my Inbox of stories and presentations singing praises and enumerating learnings from the film 3 Idiots. Indeed a nice story telling by master craftsmen raju Hirani.

Trainers in India would flog this film snippets to death. Bore people with the film / scenes to highlight and emphasise learnings to the managers.

These very managers then would go back to their respective organizations after trainings. What would happen when they wish to put their learnings in to execution/application? Any guesses?. We know it and have seen it in the past.

One thing that I believe we all have missed and it does not find a mention in any of the presentations / messages being circulated - is the role of employer / organizations.

Behaviours are changed for good when they are encouraged , an environment is provided for people to flower. Is it just enough that only one stakeholder changes his approach and while all other key stakeholders in the system continue to live in the old world/order?. Here I believe stakeholders being looked at is only colleges institutions, as in the film?. Don't you think institutions success is determined by their ability to attract top corporates for placements and top drawer salary, whihc makes new headlines. Top corporates want to pick the first graders.

Is it a coincidence that in the film this aspect has not been highlighted enough.Perhaps limitation of an entertaining story to be told in 3 hours meant highlighting one aspect of a problem which has multiple tpuchpoints in our lives.

Clearly the company which hired Raju - what were they thinking?. Why did they hire a guy with more or less poor academic records? . Will anyone today hire similarly just on attitude. Major corporates go to Tier 1 institutes and would like to be first / second on campus to pick up best of the talent based on scores/grades. They are only offered brilliant candidates based on exam gardes.

Will the corporates now provide colleges a profile for shortlisting based on behavioral indicators and soft skills and not ask for students with grades above a certain level?

Will the Corporates when they go out looking for youngsters at entry level ( 1 -2 yesr experience) look for attitude and behavioral indicators. If so do they have knowledge / tools to do it?

Let these brilliant organizations lead the way - Infosys / L&T / HDFC / any one plZZZZZ...........

Let us not wait for Raju Hirani to make a sequel highlighting the responsibility of corporates to nurture the natural talent and skills. It will not happen. It is a commercial world and perhaps there is story to tell but not good enough script and moolah for Raju and Vinod Chopra.

So let us wait ..... or somebody write to Kapil Sibal ... he is making couargeous and right moves. We cannot wait. let us not wait.

5 day week -

Few days back, I was thinking about the rationale & logic used by companies to determine working hours/ days / week in their respective organizations. Times have changed since 80s when , If I recall correctly, most MNCs and large corporate had a 5 day week in their main corporate and regional/zonal offices while sales team had a 6 or 5.5 day/week.

This piece today has been triggered therefore by above and newspaper report “Deccan chronicle”.
Study: People happier on weekends
This study appeared in Journal of Social and clinical psychology. Briefly it states that free time allows people to chose things to do and this freedom results in their doing things which makes them happy.

There have been articles circulating on the net – Infosys chairman Mr. Narayan Murthy stating that people who work extended hours through the week and even on weekends – make mistakes on Monday and then work to correct all other days of week due to pressure and fatigue.
I am still wondering that when research, history and contemporaries are all vocal about the weekend why do organizations continue to have more than 5 day week? Is there still a belief that more hours spent = more output. I don’t think so. Do you?

Is there a case for 5 day week today again when with Blackberry/ emails etc there is actually no. start and end of day?

Is there a case for regulation to ensure max hours work/ per week?

Is there an issue of organization behavior? Will HR ever understand this subject and stand up for their most critical resource?

Usha Didi

There are inspiring stories around us. Do we even notice? The learnings from these, if we bother to understand, are quite profound. I think we are basically lazy as we want these stories to come to us. The person has to be famous for us to believe the story & get inspired.

Look around for an inspiration you will have one. I did recently. I must admit though that I was also lazy all these past 25 years.

My great learning got revisited when I met “Usha Didi” few days back at my parents place. My earliest memories of Usha Didi is when I was just 12-13 year old in Meerut, a small, sleepy (then) town in Western UP. I was too young to understand then. Later I left the city when I was 20 and hence was not privy to developments in her family & life.

Usha Didi is an illiterate lady, who had to fend for her 4 kids and a disinterested husband. The kids were all less than 5-6 years age. In the last 25-30 years, she has raised them, educated them, married them off and now lives independently a retired life with her two sons who live next door to her.

You must be wondering what is so unique in this. Let me share.

Usha Didi lived and survived by being a domestic help in houses in the vicinity including mine. She used to mop floors and clean utensils for a living. She ran her household on the meager amount. She has raised her two sons who have now grown to be business person working together. Both her daughters are educated, married , working and doing very well.

I met her few days back. Rather she came to meet me when she heard I am there. Smiling. I noticed now in that old face were two eyes “twinkling”. No worries look & fit as ever. Amazing self esteem. Pride in her children’s progress when she shared all what is happening in her children’s life.

I as ked her on how does it feel after all these years of hard, manual work. She only said I only wanted my children to have a better life than me. I have been able to do that. That makes it worth-while.

Who was her source of inspiration? Did she read books on positive thinking? Who told her about responsible parenting? How did she guide her children? She could not afford TV.
Being illiterate no reading of books, magazines and self help articles.

So I reflected on my way back from Meerut to Hyderabad – a good 6 hours of road and air travel. I recalled some incidents & carefully analysed various random incidents she shared and have to come to some conclusions. That is when I decided to write this blog.

She had aspirations. Aspirations were the motivation for her. Better Life.
She was realistic. Influenced her son to marry a working girl.
She was also good to spot talent. Got great Grooms for both her daughters.
She knew importance of networking. She is still in touch with families where she worked.
She read the environment. Knew importance of education.
She encouraged her kids to feel equal to anybody. The kids have grown up with lot of self esteem and confidence.
There are millions of stories and people around us which we tend to overlook. Because of what? Our learning disability.
Usha Didi is still smiling without knowing that her life has inspired this blog.
Usha Didi still cannot read.
She will never read this article. Perhaps one day when I meet her next I will explain to her what I wrote and why I wrote it.
Do you think she will understand. You guessed it right.

Do not Fight Pigs - You'll Lose Anyway

How many of you have been at the vicious end of political manipulations in the course of your professional life. I am sure most of us. How have we handled them ?.

I have been at the receiving end on probably more than one occasion. Frankly I remember only one. Other perhaps were too insignificant that they are completely erased from my memory.

It is very interesting that, in 1998-99 while working in a PSU, when I was subjected to political manipulations of some seniors & co workers, I experienced gamut of emotions. I was livid and with a vengeance was contemplating taking them on with a viciousness. It was providence that during this time, I was asked to attend a program by Shiv Khera “Blue print for success” in Oct 99 at Delhi. While the overall program was “Feel good” one thing made a lot of sense to me, probably due to the situation I was living and going through.

He stated “Do not fight pigs”. When you fight them you go down in dirt and filth and even if you physically win over them you have been laid low and dirtied. That is precisely the intention of the “Pigs”.get you down in the Filth they relish so much.

I came back a changed manfrom the program. I promised to myself that “I will never fight pigs”. I have not done so till date. I have been tempted though. I have dealt with them, not fought them.

This lesson has proved once again that persistence & values in life are important. The gentlemen, who started a vicious campaign against me, had the gall to seek certain professional help from me in 2003 when he was at the receiving end of a vicious political vendetta in the organization. By that time I was in another organization. I unconditionally provided him the required help. He did acknowledge at the end of it that he was probably wrong and was fooled by others in 98-99 to do what he did.

When he did apologize in a manner he did, I had already forgotten it. But I remember it today to be able to say Thank You Shiv for that lesson. I am happy to be not fighting Pigs. I can’t avoid them though. I know however how to deal with them. Don’t fight them. They will lose.

Beware of Bias

Well the question that I posed in the last blog - I have a solution. Solution that requires people working in these organizations to look at and implement.

Generally we are all are likely to go with what worked in the past very well and we are led further astray if that past outcome has worked out successfully by any chnace. It stays in our brain then for next 10 years. Me Ernest H Foreman Co - author of Decisions by Objectices calls it " anchoring bias". It is an unbelievably powerful influence that can impair your decision making process. Sounds familiar. It does. To me atleast.

The only way to counter it would be to look for disconfirming evidence. The first precedent that comes to mind is often nearer in time to the current decision than it is closer in similarity. get past the recentness bias by coming up with atleast two events from the more distant past that seem any way applicable , then try to make them work better. Phew !

Heavy stuff. But worth considering in terms of changing our thinking. It applies to all situations including those at personal, family front.

Bye.