Monday
HR Article Referred as Standard
Article on HR Branding referred as Standard in the “International Journal of Enterprise and Innovation Management Studies (IJEIMS)”. Page Number 12, 13 & 14 is exact replication. http://www.ijcns.com/pdf/10-14.pdf
Collaborative Experience – A Valuable Comprehensive Approach
We are living in a world with no boundary and the market is wide open. When we talk of a company, we find that neither the employer nor the employee has got anything to do with the geographical limitations. An employee seeks job for the organizations irrelevant of its location and an employer hires an employee without considering the geographical location but considers the skills and competencies inherited by the individual. For an organization, what matters most is the overall skill and competency, engrossed in all the units. Similarly, with the global factor coming into the play experience of the entire organization is the factor which the senior management look for rather than the experiences contained by individuals or teams. This makes the HR department think of the experience in an extended format and then comes the concept of Collaborative Experience. Let me count my own experience with this, which you may find interesting.
One fine morning, I was sitting with my Sales Chief and enjoying some good chat over a cup of coffee. He was sounding very worried as Sales was taking a dip because of no fault from his end. Then I intrigued and tried finding his cause of problem and he also very openly came to me for help and advice. This, not to say, but really satisfied my ego to a great extent. He said, “It’s not that my team is not making effort to close the sales and even it’s not the case that our prices are sky high but our operations team is not supporting us in the final closure in terms of solutioning the requirement.” In my opinion, this was a general complaint from Sales towards the Operations. We discussed for few more minutes and then I told him that let me get into the helm of this and find-out what exactly was the problem and then surely try to help him.
With all these inputs noted in my super computer, my brain, I went ahead to talk to the solutioning team. During our interactions, I heard a wonderful comment; which was not strange for me; that Sales guys will promise the moon to the client which is beyond reality to deliver. I smiled in my thoughts. And then further spoke to them on what are the challenges where you find it difficult to deliver. One interesting factor which came up was that, sales is relevant to the domain of the company but geography posed a constraint in terms of execution as relevant skills and competencies were not available in abundance in the particular geography where the sales was happening. This was an interesting and challenging problem statement for me.
Although I wrote only one paragraph above, but trust me it was a nice long session where we spent quite a good amount of time. I assured them to look into this problem and asked them to send me across the competencies/skills which were difficult to find in particular locations so that I can get some more insight. Of course, within no time I had all such competencies listed in a mail in my inbox. It was quite fast which I really appreciated but also felt that it’s a normal human tendency to immediately put the ball in others court and wait for them to make a slightest mistake so that they can put all their might in making the other person an escape goat. But I cannot complain of this, at least in this case, as I was the one who myself volunteered to get my neck extended for being chopped on the slimmest miss. Anyway, I collected the information, did some research and fixed an appointment with my recruitment folks who always cry about certain ever continuing complaints like we can fill all the open positions if we receive the feedbacks in time from the line managers, we put all our efforts to schedule the candidates but sometimes candidates will not show-up and sometimes managers will not be available from their everlasting meeting. I showed some real concern about their complaints and started my meeting.
I presented them with the list of competencies and locations as well as the salary bands for each of them and asked them how easy and difficult it is to fill-up these positions and how much time did they need to close these. By this time, I gained some confidence with them and they were quite open and honest to discuss the realistic picture for these requirements. They also agreed that it’s difficult, if not impossible to cater these requirements on an urgent basis because these profiles were available but not in abundance in a particular geography and if they had to ask the candidates to relocate the cost would go high and ultimately it won’t be closed because of budgetary constraints; which I also felt was valid and genuine. But I asked them that if it was not a big requirement and only some small number of such talents was required then in that case would it be possible for them to do some headhunting and close them. To which they firmly said, “Yes”. I took some notes from my meeting, thanked and appreciated them for their commitment against all the odds towards the job and company which gave them a new dosage of enthusiasm.
When I came back in front of my Laptop, I was thinking, “What shall I do to counter this problem?” I didn’t want to talk to my boss only about the problem as I was yet to find a solution out for this. So, I had to do some more of my brain exercise (I wish I could do at least a quarter of physical exercises to shed few kilos of those extra handsome additions and look a bit more attractive but …). Then suddenly I got an idea of doing a competency and skills analysis. It’s good that organization trusted and had invested into such HR initiatives without any restrictions. When I really started my analysis, I was not having any clue that what kind of results would come-out and the numbers were so huge that analyzing them in spreadsheet without any BI tool was a tough task. But I had no other choice but to work on it. While I started this it was evening and within couple of hours no one was there including my excel wizard, so helpless. But this had by now became a jumping rock(not stone) in my mind and I was not worried about the quantum of effort required to do this(but of course was worried as my wife was calling and I was not taking her call and just sending the text that I am in a meeting).
Finally, I was able to analyze it to a very great extent (I am trying to be a bit modest) and the outcome, I must say, was wonderful and had some unknown hinted solution to my problem statement. I reached home driving and had dinner but was undisturbed with the ire of my wife as I was still lost in my logics to align the outcome of the analysis to the solution of my problem. Now I decided that if by next day when I reach office, I am not able to find the solution; I will talk to my boss and give him all my research and ask him for his advice. Thinking of all these I went to bed and then this word appeared in my thoughts “Collaboration”. I felt that collaboration was the component which was missing all these days or I would say rather “Active Collaboration”. Finally I had some answer and was on the way to find a solid solution for the problem statement which was challenging me from past so many weeks. This relieved me and finally had a good sleep and morning with some good chef skills I was able to make my better-half also happy. So, now I could feel that things were going on a positive track.
Now next day I was talking about the Collaborative Experience and went to boss cabin to say Hello and he was also very surprised to see me after so many days in his cabin. I presented the entire picture in broader aspect to him and he was really happy. Then he suggested me to call the “Biggies” of the organization for a presentation meeting and asked me to present this to them. And before I forget to mention he appreciated my work and took me out for lunch but asked me to keep this to myself till the time we have everything finalized and approved by the senior leadership.
Now my work was half done, as I had a strong subscription from my boss to my ideas. I managed to bring a consensus on the meeting time from all the heavyweights. I was ready with my presentation with so many rounds of reviews and re-reviews and re-re-reviews. Finally it was the D Day and I was already with my laptop and presentation and analysis. Sales and Solutioning heads were also present with operations heads. I presented the challenge statement first and then went ahead with my analysis and finally the missing link which was Collaboration. And all of them were astonished to know that one of the major reason because of which sales deals were not closing was not that difficult to attack with this idea. Finally came the remedy part where we emphasized on the need of Collaborative Experience and the ways and means to introduce and infuse that into the organization.
We defined Collaboration as a methodology in which two or more units (individual employees or individual units, etc.) come together to work in a mutually productive manner for the realization of the goals. These goals can be targets of the team, targets of the departments or targets of the unit. All these target achievements will have one thing in common; they are being achieved by means of shared knowledge, shared experience, and shared learning. Collaboration always talks in larger terms where it takes a helicopter view of the things and then decides on the next courses. Collaboration is obtained by bringing two partners together. If we look at the previous sentence, at the first glance it looks correct but if we analyze it a bit further we will come to know that it is still under defined. Bringing two partners together is not the positive collaboration, but bringing two partners together and maintaining them in sync is a positive collaboration else this collaboration may go negative and either it may destroy itself or can destroy the work. An effective positive collaboration helps in achieving infinite success with a limited resource.
Collaborative experience, in positive senses, is a boon for any organization. For an organization to perform well, multiple dimensions of experience are required which not necessarily might be present in a single team or department but across the geography or organization. What collaborative experience demands is the spirit of working together. Each and every individual involved in any project should be made aware of their position in the project and what is in it for them in the project, basically the addition that they might be able to make in their Curriculum Vitae. At the same time, the collaboration should also be aware of the weaker areas that they may have. This collaboration should be made in such a way that all the participants mutually and symbiotically benefit from each other.
During this meeting we analyzed our requirements and support required to address these requirements. One of major ideas which I presented to address this was coming from the recent times. The idea which is very famous among the people of this generation – The Online Networking. In this we suggested to create a dedicated online space for the company employees to share their challenges and solutions. It was more of an internal blog which allows one to follow someone, to post ones requirements, to request for ideas and advice across the geographies. This was an idea which was very light on the pocket and yet very effective considering the trend. Also, it was giving a new shape and look to the organization so it was accepted unanimously and heads turned to our IT chief who immediately accepted this and agreed to get this up and running as per the finalized plan.
But this was only one solution and more was required in terms of making the different talents collaborate and deliver so we did some brain storming and agreed to one more idea which was to bring employees to interact in blood and flesh and diversify as well as enrich the competencies and skills with the within the organization available resources.
This also meant that we were encouraging the actual as well as virtual team work within our organization which was going to be a major break-through in the organization culture, but it was certainly positive. We were also allowing them to interact and intersect within themselves but of course positivity was imbibed in this exercise in which employees was getting benefitted by their knowledge enrichment and organization was getting benefitted by the business continuity, improved sales and resultant improved revenues.
You can find much more like this on my BlogSpot.
http://rohitminton.blogspot.com/
Please do send me your reactions and reflections on this to my mail ID – minton.rohit@gmail.com.
One fine morning, I was sitting with my Sales Chief and enjoying some good chat over a cup of coffee. He was sounding very worried as Sales was taking a dip because of no fault from his end. Then I intrigued and tried finding his cause of problem and he also very openly came to me for help and advice. This, not to say, but really satisfied my ego to a great extent. He said, “It’s not that my team is not making effort to close the sales and even it’s not the case that our prices are sky high but our operations team is not supporting us in the final closure in terms of solutioning the requirement.” In my opinion, this was a general complaint from Sales towards the Operations. We discussed for few more minutes and then I told him that let me get into the helm of this and find-out what exactly was the problem and then surely try to help him.
With all these inputs noted in my super computer, my brain, I went ahead to talk to the solutioning team. During our interactions, I heard a wonderful comment; which was not strange for me; that Sales guys will promise the moon to the client which is beyond reality to deliver. I smiled in my thoughts. And then further spoke to them on what are the challenges where you find it difficult to deliver. One interesting factor which came up was that, sales is relevant to the domain of the company but geography posed a constraint in terms of execution as relevant skills and competencies were not available in abundance in the particular geography where the sales was happening. This was an interesting and challenging problem statement for me.
Although I wrote only one paragraph above, but trust me it was a nice long session where we spent quite a good amount of time. I assured them to look into this problem and asked them to send me across the competencies/skills which were difficult to find in particular locations so that I can get some more insight. Of course, within no time I had all such competencies listed in a mail in my inbox. It was quite fast which I really appreciated but also felt that it’s a normal human tendency to immediately put the ball in others court and wait for them to make a slightest mistake so that they can put all their might in making the other person an escape goat. But I cannot complain of this, at least in this case, as I was the one who myself volunteered to get my neck extended for being chopped on the slimmest miss. Anyway, I collected the information, did some research and fixed an appointment with my recruitment folks who always cry about certain ever continuing complaints like we can fill all the open positions if we receive the feedbacks in time from the line managers, we put all our efforts to schedule the candidates but sometimes candidates will not show-up and sometimes managers will not be available from their everlasting meeting. I showed some real concern about their complaints and started my meeting.
I presented them with the list of competencies and locations as well as the salary bands for each of them and asked them how easy and difficult it is to fill-up these positions and how much time did they need to close these. By this time, I gained some confidence with them and they were quite open and honest to discuss the realistic picture for these requirements. They also agreed that it’s difficult, if not impossible to cater these requirements on an urgent basis because these profiles were available but not in abundance in a particular geography and if they had to ask the candidates to relocate the cost would go high and ultimately it won’t be closed because of budgetary constraints; which I also felt was valid and genuine. But I asked them that if it was not a big requirement and only some small number of such talents was required then in that case would it be possible for them to do some headhunting and close them. To which they firmly said, “Yes”. I took some notes from my meeting, thanked and appreciated them for their commitment against all the odds towards the job and company which gave them a new dosage of enthusiasm.
When I came back in front of my Laptop, I was thinking, “What shall I do to counter this problem?” I didn’t want to talk to my boss only about the problem as I was yet to find a solution out for this. So, I had to do some more of my brain exercise (I wish I could do at least a quarter of physical exercises to shed few kilos of those extra handsome additions and look a bit more attractive but …). Then suddenly I got an idea of doing a competency and skills analysis. It’s good that organization trusted and had invested into such HR initiatives without any restrictions. When I really started my analysis, I was not having any clue that what kind of results would come-out and the numbers were so huge that analyzing them in spreadsheet without any BI tool was a tough task. But I had no other choice but to work on it. While I started this it was evening and within couple of hours no one was there including my excel wizard, so helpless. But this had by now became a jumping rock(not stone) in my mind and I was not worried about the quantum of effort required to do this(but of course was worried as my wife was calling and I was not taking her call and just sending the text that I am in a meeting).
Finally, I was able to analyze it to a very great extent (I am trying to be a bit modest) and the outcome, I must say, was wonderful and had some unknown hinted solution to my problem statement. I reached home driving and had dinner but was undisturbed with the ire of my wife as I was still lost in my logics to align the outcome of the analysis to the solution of my problem. Now I decided that if by next day when I reach office, I am not able to find the solution; I will talk to my boss and give him all my research and ask him for his advice. Thinking of all these I went to bed and then this word appeared in my thoughts “Collaboration”. I felt that collaboration was the component which was missing all these days or I would say rather “Active Collaboration”. Finally I had some answer and was on the way to find a solid solution for the problem statement which was challenging me from past so many weeks. This relieved me and finally had a good sleep and morning with some good chef skills I was able to make my better-half also happy. So, now I could feel that things were going on a positive track.
Now next day I was talking about the Collaborative Experience and went to boss cabin to say Hello and he was also very surprised to see me after so many days in his cabin. I presented the entire picture in broader aspect to him and he was really happy. Then he suggested me to call the “Biggies” of the organization for a presentation meeting and asked me to present this to them. And before I forget to mention he appreciated my work and took me out for lunch but asked me to keep this to myself till the time we have everything finalized and approved by the senior leadership.
Now my work was half done, as I had a strong subscription from my boss to my ideas. I managed to bring a consensus on the meeting time from all the heavyweights. I was ready with my presentation with so many rounds of reviews and re-reviews and re-re-reviews. Finally it was the D Day and I was already with my laptop and presentation and analysis. Sales and Solutioning heads were also present with operations heads. I presented the challenge statement first and then went ahead with my analysis and finally the missing link which was Collaboration. And all of them were astonished to know that one of the major reason because of which sales deals were not closing was not that difficult to attack with this idea. Finally came the remedy part where we emphasized on the need of Collaborative Experience and the ways and means to introduce and infuse that into the organization.
We defined Collaboration as a methodology in which two or more units (individual employees or individual units, etc.) come together to work in a mutually productive manner for the realization of the goals. These goals can be targets of the team, targets of the departments or targets of the unit. All these target achievements will have one thing in common; they are being achieved by means of shared knowledge, shared experience, and shared learning. Collaboration always talks in larger terms where it takes a helicopter view of the things and then decides on the next courses. Collaboration is obtained by bringing two partners together. If we look at the previous sentence, at the first glance it looks correct but if we analyze it a bit further we will come to know that it is still under defined. Bringing two partners together is not the positive collaboration, but bringing two partners together and maintaining them in sync is a positive collaboration else this collaboration may go negative and either it may destroy itself or can destroy the work. An effective positive collaboration helps in achieving infinite success with a limited resource.
Collaborative experience, in positive senses, is a boon for any organization. For an organization to perform well, multiple dimensions of experience are required which not necessarily might be present in a single team or department but across the geography or organization. What collaborative experience demands is the spirit of working together. Each and every individual involved in any project should be made aware of their position in the project and what is in it for them in the project, basically the addition that they might be able to make in their Curriculum Vitae. At the same time, the collaboration should also be aware of the weaker areas that they may have. This collaboration should be made in such a way that all the participants mutually and symbiotically benefit from each other.
During this meeting we analyzed our requirements and support required to address these requirements. One of major ideas which I presented to address this was coming from the recent times. The idea which is very famous among the people of this generation – The Online Networking. In this we suggested to create a dedicated online space for the company employees to share their challenges and solutions. It was more of an internal blog which allows one to follow someone, to post ones requirements, to request for ideas and advice across the geographies. This was an idea which was very light on the pocket and yet very effective considering the trend. Also, it was giving a new shape and look to the organization so it was accepted unanimously and heads turned to our IT chief who immediately accepted this and agreed to get this up and running as per the finalized plan.
But this was only one solution and more was required in terms of making the different talents collaborate and deliver so we did some brain storming and agreed to one more idea which was to bring employees to interact in blood and flesh and diversify as well as enrich the competencies and skills with the within the organization available resources.
This also meant that we were encouraging the actual as well as virtual team work within our organization which was going to be a major break-through in the organization culture, but it was certainly positive. We were also allowing them to interact and intersect within themselves but of course positivity was imbibed in this exercise in which employees was getting benefitted by their knowledge enrichment and organization was getting benefitted by the business continuity, improved sales and resultant improved revenues.
You can find much more like this on my BlogSpot.
http://rohitminton.blogspot.com/
Please do send me your reactions and reflections on this to my mail ID – minton.rohit@gmail.com.
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