Friday, March 11, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Theory in practice !!
Finally a`la "practice what you preach", I managed to embed my idea into somewhat implementable action plan. :) The conceptual Software Engineer Development Lifecycle saw the light of the day in the design of the management trainee program of an FMCG major. Based on the same principles of the SEDLC, the program is supposed to be a journey of aided self discovery, wherein active support is provided to the protégées in the incubation phase while a more "evaluatory" approach is being prescribed for the later phase. More of guaging the benefits of a growing seed, the germination phase is more of a guardian approach. The maturity phase is finally the differentor phase wherein the top performers career path gets differentiated to the not to top performers. I have added a brief schematic of the approach below. Hope it does make some sense.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Clickety Click !!
Sometimes i sit wondering on this photograph of the three heel clicking executives !! Exhilaration through coordination !! The more I watch it, the more I notice that there is no distinguished leader of this motley group !! I know this random photograph is wide open to varied interpretation, still as a HR professional, I like to vizualise this group as the perfect team, who through perfect coordination are marching towards excellence and achievement. :) No distinguished leader, no supervision, just excellent parity and a similar vision !! Just like Isaac Asimov's sci-fi prophecies of Level-3 civilizations with complete mastery over star systems, this would be my own small HR prophecy of an organization composed of self motivated leaderless teams hovering around higher echelons of level 5 - PCMM.
Envisage the end of top down management, rather an entirely meritocratic yet democratic organizations with complete control of the employees on the outcomes of the organization !!
This Isaac Asimov of Human Resources will continue to dare to dream big,
Hoping for a community (as in communalism) of capitalists ( as in capitalism). Every employee an owner of his/her own group leading his bit of the organization to stars and beyond!!
The Catbert Autopsy!!
“You're in H.R. now, it's ok to be evil” – Catbert
Inadvertly, there is always a Catbert in every organization.
The most hated guy (or cat..) in the strip, Catbert is feared for his penchant of creating new employee policies (read random [sic]) and hence loathed for his boorish implementation methods. The macabre policy maker colludes effectively with the manager ( the pointy haired boss) apparently to make the lives of employees a living hell.
Hence I repeat, there is always a Catbert. The quintessential fall guy, the policy maker, the implementer of employee practices, the HR practitioner continues to live up to the expectations of being the only hope of sanity left in the otherwise zany organization.
Yet in the rather fertile imaginative mind of Mr. Adams, Catbert dons the garb of a red cat with the implicitness of a rather slick devil. Don’t the HR practitioners bear the semblance to Catbert, if the fantasy is a bit tweaked to tone down the levels of normalcy?
If Catbert goes out searching for souls in free rider workers like Wally ( who can sell the remaining of their souls for a donut), the present day HR practitioners go searching for souls in the bodies of job-hopping crazy employees who so as don’t wink before jumping organizations for a lucrative salary offer.
The so called cost centers, the business support group, the HR practitioner’s ways have always been under the “evil” scanner of the employees. The so called keepers of the secrets of the organization, its HR DNA to think before uttering a word, yet it gives the impression to some as being manipulative or secretive.
Yet on other thoughts, have we, the HR practitioners of today, have actually forgot the real essence of our jobs and have become the evil geniuses that we are purported to be?
It might be a good aphrodisiac to self introspect on our present state of being in any organization. It will be well advised to any HR professional to realize that we are paid to look like Catbert and actually not be one.
In spite of being the safe-keeper of organizational policies, instead of implementing same without second thought, it’s our job to observe, analyze and hence understand the impact a policy holds for the entire organization.
To give an example, due to the recent downturn, an organization (real world) thought it appropriate to cut salaries of employees who were not getting revenue for the organization. Now the same organization is facing an exodus of good employees (ironically, who didn’t lose their salaries).
Did the organization’s policy makers think of this outcome? Obviously not! On hindsight, now, do the same policy makers think that this attrition is the result of higher hikes from other employers?
A real Catbert would understand that it’s cannot be the “carrot and stick” anymore for today’s knowledge workers! The results are evident and all across; in surveys, reports etc. Just that we turn a blind eye towards it.
For example, have a look at the results of the following survey from McKinsey Corporation!! When I sent this across to my managers, they dismissed it as another round of HR Gyan !! :)
Inadvertly, there is always a Catbert in every organization.
The most hated guy (or cat..) in the strip, Catbert is feared for his penchant of creating new employee policies (read random [sic]) and hence loathed for his boorish implementation methods. The macabre policy maker colludes effectively with the manager ( the pointy haired boss) apparently to make the lives of employees a living hell.
Hence I repeat, there is always a Catbert. The quintessential fall guy, the policy maker, the implementer of employee practices, the HR practitioner continues to live up to the expectations of being the only hope of sanity left in the otherwise zany organization.
Yet in the rather fertile imaginative mind of Mr. Adams, Catbert dons the garb of a red cat with the implicitness of a rather slick devil. Don’t the HR practitioners bear the semblance to Catbert, if the fantasy is a bit tweaked to tone down the levels of normalcy?
If Catbert goes out searching for souls in free rider workers like Wally ( who can sell the remaining of their souls for a donut), the present day HR practitioners go searching for souls in the bodies of job-hopping crazy employees who so as don’t wink before jumping organizations for a lucrative salary offer.
The so called cost centers, the business support group, the HR practitioner’s ways have always been under the “evil” scanner of the employees. The so called keepers of the secrets of the organization, its HR DNA to think before uttering a word, yet it gives the impression to some as being manipulative or secretive.
Yet on other thoughts, have we, the HR practitioners of today, have actually forgot the real essence of our jobs and have become the evil geniuses that we are purported to be?
It might be a good aphrodisiac to self introspect on our present state of being in any organization. It will be well advised to any HR professional to realize that we are paid to look like Catbert and actually not be one.
In spite of being the safe-keeper of organizational policies, instead of implementing same without second thought, it’s our job to observe, analyze and hence understand the impact a policy holds for the entire organization.
To give an example, due to the recent downturn, an organization (real world) thought it appropriate to cut salaries of employees who were not getting revenue for the organization. Now the same organization is facing an exodus of good employees (ironically, who didn’t lose their salaries).
Did the organization’s policy makers think of this outcome? Obviously not! On hindsight, now, do the same policy makers think that this attrition is the result of higher hikes from other employers?
A real Catbert would understand that it’s cannot be the “carrot and stick” anymore for today’s knowledge workers! The results are evident and all across; in surveys, reports etc. Just that we turn a blind eye towards it.
For example, have a look at the results of the following survey from McKinsey Corporation!! When I sent this across to my managers, they dismissed it as another round of HR Gyan !! :)
A real world Catbert better realize that the only way to prevent an organization from devolving into a bloody body shop is a well analyzed and thought-out talent management infrastructure with major emphasis on employee career growth and viable R&R initiatives.
How to do that? That’s another good question to ponder on !! :P :) :)
Sunday, August 30, 2009
The Software Engineer’s Development Life Cycle: A Career Development perspective (my first article)
With the onset of the Career Power week, my present organization is all ready to herald a new beginning to the very definition of employee first. The very objective of empowering the employees to choose their own career path can act as the harbinger of change for any organization, which is serious on reaching the highest echelons of empowerment.
Considering the garguantan-esque nature of the tasks entrusted to each of the Business Unit HR’s in terms of taking all their protégé employees through the entire career power portal, the seriousness and hence the commitment of the organization towards career improvement seems evident in itself.
As a student of human resources and a practitioner of the art, this posed a real opportunity for me to understand how an employee’s future can be molded by a few caring hands. This would give me a great chance to go and meet people’s aspirations as they arise and try to get them to see the light of the day.
Yet a small question reared its head in my mind, which subsequently led to some soul searching, the results are mentioned below thereto.
The question being, Is the organization really interested in the development of the careers of the employees per se or is it only “Career Power” that was meant to be promoted? If the former was the case, then how convinced and motivated are the grass-root implementers i.e. the BU-HR’s too see that the career power actually became a powerful tool in the hands of the employees? Can the BU-HR’s be committed enough to act as independent career counselors for the employees?
I know not the answer to these, yet being the so-called student of human resources; I did cerebrate a lot on the matter. Finally with the aid of some literature written by some of our most eminent HR evangelists, I could dare to give shape to my thoughts which I thought I would enumerate below.
As we all know Career Power begins with reflection as part of the “Earn” phase. Reflective exercise tend to pose questions and subsequent interpretations to the employees to make them understand their standing in the organization and then the counselors are supposed to guide them on their desired path for a successful and fulfilling tenure in the organization.
The first and foremost of all the things to come is the very realization by the counselors of the fact that careers are not absolute. Rather careers are fluid in entity, depending on the personal stage the employee is in at that present moment, placed at what juncture in the organizational rigmarole. Careers cannot be well trodden paths on which employees can be sent upon with the surety that it will lead to successful culmination to that person’s aspirations.
Taking a leaf from Mr. Levinson’s theory of Age linked Development Periods; I have come up with a small corollary that might just help the HR practitioners/counselors to conceptualize upon my idea. Mr. Levinson’s theory states that adult behavior moves through certain distinct stages related to chronological age. Based on this theory, my idea stems from the fact that the ultimate objective of career development is to help employees enjoy their work and then ultimately lead the rest of their productive life with the organization. This “enjoyment” factor is a sheer function of the stage the person is at that juncture oh his/her life.
Hence just like a software development life cycle (SDLC), I have envisaged a Software Engineer Development Life Cycle (SEDLC), if I may be allowed, in the poetic sense of word, to collectively call the IT professionals with the appellation of “Software Engineer”. This is an effort from my side to try and understand the fabric of the organizational person’s psyche from the point of view of a career counselor.
A Software Engineer is predominantly a graduate, mostly an engineering graduate, who is picked up from the campus or taken in through one of the numerous off-campuses. Presence of high aspirations or complete lack of it can be marked as the characteristics of this group of employees. Even taking from the point of one year since inception, the aspirational needs of the new joinees would have hardly changed.
All the HR practitioners in the IT industry would agree to the fact that these employees form the backbone of any Indian IT firm. The success or failure of any IT firm depends on how the organization is able to harness and utilize the talent of the employees at this stage of their “software” life. It is this stage that we as the counselors should exercise the utmost care. This period is marked by getting to understand the organization. This is the time when much of the impression regarding the organization can be created.
I call it the “Incubation” period. Employees in this phase face a lot of organizational pressure to perform even in the face of being just out of college and lacking the organizational repertoire for sustenance in the strata. Burn-out rates are highest in this class of employees.
Career Counselors should be empathetic towards their occasional “childlike” demeanor in terms of professionalism, handling them with care and trying to act as their non-technical mentors and thus help imbibe the organizational centric traits in them. It is only through the HR practitioners or the so-called BU-HR’s that the message of the organizational being a “feeling” organization, can be effectively communicated. It should also be understood that care in this particular stage of the SEDLC would lead to the success of the subsequent stages.
As the employee matures to the ways of the organization, comes the period when he just starts delivering value to the organization. This ‘value’ is not in terms of deliverables etc. but rather in imbibing in oneself, the fabric of the organization. This can be safely taken as the tenure that begins post 2 years in the organization. Now the employee’s aspirations would be centered on being an efficient “techie”. Projects, Appraisals, increments etc are the main concerns of the employee belonging to this major section of the IT professionals. This period, I call, the “Germination” period.
Like a germinating seed, the employee is vulnerable to external agencies. Like a sapling, the employee’s growth can be hampered by organizational politics, nepotism etc. Employees with considerable potential can be undermined solely on grounds of favoritism etc. A true counselor would be one who can empathize with the employee and listen to his needs; needs that can be, need for recognition, the need to work in challenging roles, the need for career opportunities like onsite trips etc.
The HR should take into consideration all his needs and based on their feasibility should forward them to his managers. This is where the concept of true mentorship ( mentorship can be defined in two ways, a. Initial mentorship that helps an employee to get comfortable in the organization and then mentorship in the real sense when the employee gains a mentor to further his career goals) can come into play. Showing the path for future development is the role that HR can successfully play in this phase. This is the time when the employees develop their true calling and hence should be assisted to gain ground in the organization.
The third phase in the SEDLC starts 5-6 years down the professional life. An employee starts moving up the value ladder. The employee’s KRA’s tilt more towards management of projects; this marks the beginning of the “Maturity” phase of the employees. Career aspirations tend to be more towards areas of responsibility and aims more towards increased managerial roles. People in this span of “software” life tend to be hassled with problems related to span of control, definition of portfolio of work, organizational/project parameters which have direct bearing on their career.
The HR practitioners should take care to handle these veterans. Though little can be done in managing aspirations like span of control in projects, senior HR management can make interventions based on inputs from counselor HR’s to help these employees decide on their road map to be sustainable value adders to the organization.
Disclaimers: I have not taken the compensation as tool of motivations for employees in different stages of the SEDLC.
Finally referring from Herbert A. Shepard’s treatise, “On the realization of Human potential: A path with a heart”, on the well being of any person and the conditions under which a person can achieve their full potential. I have tried to translate the idea to that of an employee working in the organization.
The Business Unit HR’s should always remember the following pointers related to the employee, before embarking upon the journey of becoming effective career counselors.
The effective well being of the employee can be judged on the following parameters:
1. Tone – This reflects the employee’s self image, his/her aliveness as an organism. This is basically how the employee defines himself in various roles in his present work role. The tone of the person defines how the person effectively translates his image to his contribution to the organization. A person who doesn’t feel an important role or doing a monotonous role in the organization would lead a negative tone and hence will never be the active contributor that the organization demands. This subsequently leads to the demise of the person
2. Resonance – An employee’s capacity for resonance is his/her ability to maintain healthy relationships in various intra and inter team roles. This is a measure of how much the employee is “in tune” with his immediate surroundings. Finally resonance reflects harmony in team relationships.
3. Perspective: This is a measure on how the employee feels about the choices that are presented before him/her. An employee’s well being can be judged by the perspective necessary to guide career choices. Thus if the organization provides “multiple potential of the moment’ choices to the employee, the chances of the employee choosing the best alternative that is available at the moment and hence the more the probability of the employee to be happy in his present environment.
Career counselors should always keep in mind that a poor tone, resonance and perspective can have a confirming effect upon one another and ultimately serve to limit the autonomy of the person.
Career Counseling, if implemented in the right way, can go a long way in understanding the employee’s inherent needs in the organization. A successful career counseling trait can help the business unit HR’s to make HR a strategic business partner working in tandem with the line function. Career development tools like the Career Power cannot really have teeth unless the business unit HR’s take it upon themselves to be an active participant in shaping an employee’s career and hence empowerment of the employees.
Considering the garguantan-esque nature of the tasks entrusted to each of the Business Unit HR’s in terms of taking all their protégé employees through the entire career power portal, the seriousness and hence the commitment of the organization towards career improvement seems evident in itself.
As a student of human resources and a practitioner of the art, this posed a real opportunity for me to understand how an employee’s future can be molded by a few caring hands. This would give me a great chance to go and meet people’s aspirations as they arise and try to get them to see the light of the day.
Yet a small question reared its head in my mind, which subsequently led to some soul searching, the results are mentioned below thereto.
The question being, Is the organization really interested in the development of the careers of the employees per se or is it only “Career Power” that was meant to be promoted? If the former was the case, then how convinced and motivated are the grass-root implementers i.e. the BU-HR’s too see that the career power actually became a powerful tool in the hands of the employees? Can the BU-HR’s be committed enough to act as independent career counselors for the employees?
I know not the answer to these, yet being the so-called student of human resources; I did cerebrate a lot on the matter. Finally with the aid of some literature written by some of our most eminent HR evangelists, I could dare to give shape to my thoughts which I thought I would enumerate below.
As we all know Career Power begins with reflection as part of the “Earn” phase
The first and foremost of all the things to come is the very realization by the counselors of the fact that careers are not absolute. Rather careers are fluid in entity, depending on the personal stage the employee is in at that present moment, placed at what juncture in the organizational rigmarole. Careers cannot be well trodden paths on which employees can be sent upon with the surety that it will lead to successful culmination to that person’s aspirations.
Taking a leaf from Mr. Levinson’s theory of Age linked Development Periods; I have come up with a small corollary that might just help the HR practitioners/counselors to conceptualize upon my idea. Mr. Levinson’s theory states that adult behavior moves through certain distinct stages related to chronological age. Based on this theory, my idea stems from the fact that the ultimate objective of career development is to help employees enjoy their work and then ultimately lead the rest of their productive life with the organization. This “enjoyment” factor is a sheer function of the stage the person is at that juncture oh his/her life.
Hence just like a software development life cycle (SDLC), I have envisaged a Software Engineer Development Life Cycle (SEDLC), if I may be allowed, in the poetic sense of word, to collectively call the IT professionals with the appellation of “Software Engineer”. This is an effort from my side to try and understand the fabric of the organizational person’s psyche from the point of view of a career counselor.
A Software Engineer is predominantly a graduate, mostly an engineering graduate, who is picked up from the campus or taken in through one of the numerous off-campuses. Presence of high aspirations or complete lack of it can be marked as the characteristics of this group of employees. Even taking from the point of one year since inception, the aspirational needs of the new joinees would have hardly changed.
All the HR practitioners in the IT industry would agree to the fact that these employees form the backbone of any Indian IT firm. The success or failure of any IT firm depends on how the organization is able to harness and utilize the talent of the employees at this stage of their “software” life. It is this stage that we as the counselors should exercise the utmost care. This period is marked by getting to understand the organization. This is the time when much of the impression regarding the organization can be created.
I call it the “Incubation” period. Employees in this phase face a lot of organizational pressure to perform even in the face of being just out of college and lacking the organizational repertoire for sustenance in the strata. Burn-out rates are highest in this class of employees.
Career Counselors should be empathetic towards their occasional “childlike” demeanor in terms of professionalism, handling them with care and trying to act as their non-technical mentors and thus help imbibe the organizational centric traits in them. It is only through the HR practitioners or the so-called BU-HR’s that the message of the organizational being a “feeling” organization, can be effectively communicated. It should also be understood that care in this particular stage of the SEDLC would lead to the success of the subsequent stages.
As the employee matures to the ways of the organization, comes the period when he just starts delivering value to the organization. This ‘value’ is not in terms of deliverables etc. but rather in imbibing in oneself, the fabric of the organization. This can be safely taken as the tenure that begins post 2 years in the organization. Now the employee’s aspirations would be centered on being an efficient “techie”. Projects, Appraisals, increments etc are the main concerns of the employee belonging to this major section of the IT professionals. This period, I call, the “Germination” period.
Like a germinating seed, the employee is vulnerable to external agencies. Like a sapling, the employee’s growth can be hampered by organizational politics, nepotism etc. Employees with considerable potential can be undermined solely on grounds of favoritism etc. A true counselor would be one who can empathize with the employee and listen to his needs; needs that can be, need for recognition, the need to work in challenging roles, the need for career opportunities like onsite trips etc.
The HR should take into consideration all his needs and based on their feasibility should forward them to his managers. This is where the concept of true mentorship ( mentorship can be defined in two ways, a. Initial mentorship that helps an employee to get comfortable in the organization and then mentorship in the real sense when the employee gains a mentor to further his career goals) can come into play. Showing the path for future development is the role that HR can successfully play in this phase. This is the time when the employees develop their true calling and hence should be assisted to gain ground in the organization.
The third phase in the SEDLC starts 5-6 years down the professional life. An employee starts moving up the value ladder. The employee’s KRA’s tilt more towards management of projects; this marks the beginning of the “Maturity” phase of the employees. Career aspirations tend to be more towards areas of responsibility and aims more towards increased managerial roles. People in this span of “software” life tend to be hassled with problems related to span of control, definition of portfolio of work, organizational/project parameters which have direct bearing on their career.
The HR practitioners should take care to handle these veterans. Though little can be done in managing aspirations like span of control in projects, senior HR management can make interventions based on inputs from counselor HR’s to help these employees decide on their road map to be sustainable value adders to the organization.
Disclaimers: I have not taken the compensation as tool of motivations for employees in different stages of the SEDLC.
Finally referring from Herbert A. Shepard’s treatise, “On the realization of Human potential: A path with a heart”, on the well being of any person and the conditions under which a person can achieve their full potential. I have tried to translate the idea to that of an employee working in the organization.
The Business Unit HR’s should always remember the following pointers related to the employee, before embarking upon the journey of becoming effective career counselors.
The effective well being of the employee can be judged on the following parameters:
1. Tone – This reflects the employee’s self image, his/her aliveness as an organism. This is basically how the employee defines himself in various roles in his present work role. The tone of the person defines how the person effectively translates his image to his contribution to the organization. A person who doesn’t feel an important role or doing a monotonous role in the organization would lead a negative tone and hence will never be the active contributor that the organization demands. This subsequently leads to the demise of the person
2. Resonance – An employee’s capacity for resonance is his/her ability to maintain healthy relationships in various intra and inter team roles. This is a measure of how much the employee is “in tune” with his immediate surroundings. Finally resonance reflects harmony in team relationships.
3. Perspective: This is a measure on how the employee feels about the choices that are presented before him/her. An employee’s well being can be judged by the perspective necessary to guide career choices. Thus if the organization provides “multiple potential of the moment’ choices to the employee, the chances of the employee choosing the best alternative that is available at the moment and hence the more the probability of the employee to be happy in his present environment.
Career counselors should always keep in mind that a poor tone, resonance and perspective can have a confirming effect upon one another and ultimately serve to limit the autonomy of the person.
Career Counseling, if implemented in the right way, can go a long way in understanding the employee’s inherent needs in the organization. A successful career counseling trait can help the business unit HR’s to make HR a strategic business partner working in tandem with the line function. Career development tools like the Career Power cannot really have teeth unless the business unit HR’s take it upon themselves to be an active participant in shaping an employee’s career and hence empowerment of the employees.
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