CEO - not entirely an insider

My recent experience made me think through the role of a CEO in context of representative of inside of organization and outside. While CEO is an entirely internal role paid for by the organization to promote its private objectives, to that extent, its perfectly fine if this role always remain sided with internal interests; I have a feeling that a CEOs role has also to do with some commitments towards the outsiders. Lets dwell deeper in this.

Typically, if as a customer, you feel upset about the service of organization, you want to write to the CEO of the organization. As a vendor, if your payments get delayed, you connect with the CEO or as an ex-employee, if your final dues aren't coming in time, you do the same. SO in all these cases, if our first assumption about a CEO being a total insider was true, all these outsider actually would not hold any hope for favorable response from CEO's office, isn't it. Fact is that, most of the time, outsiders do get attended to their concerns by writing to CEOs. This also suggests that not just the outsiders consider a CEO as someone who'll hear them as a neutral party but even CEOs see themselves responsible for even outside interests in outsiders dealings with their organizations. Call it corporate governance, or fair play, or organization culture, whatever; role of CEO does seem to have an accountability towards outsiders in safeguarding their interests along with driving business interests of their payee organizations.

Do outsiders also expect some assurance from the CEO of the organization that they interact with? Are there some assumptions here, let me try to lists down a few, my own guess;

1. Outsiders expect CEOs to be people with high integrity to society at large, sure about value of their own product/ service and sincere towards their organizations dealings with outsiders.
2. They also expect CEOs to be by and large fair. Along with that , they also feel that CEO is capable of taking the risk of siding with outsiders if fairness demands as long as its not entirely against organization's interest.
3. They also believe that a CEO is fully capable of going extra mile, put extra authority, spend extra time in helping outsiders, if she thinks its fair to do so.

Now some of this might not be true or consistent across the fraternity, but by and large, whether written or not, CEOs do seem to have the responsibility of guarding outside interests of people who deal with their organizations.

I once met a senior lawyer, who told me that if he is working for me, he'll write documents that are fully one sided in my favor; I am sure people see CEOs differently.

Its a complex subject and I have just shared my opinion. More comments are welcome.

Tagged Business CEO Governance HR India Management Organization Training

SMEs offer great experience - do they?

Last month, I attended two efforts around understanding human resource’s resistance towards working with small & medium industry. First as a panelist at SME mentoring session put together by Dare & Dell at Bangalore and more recently at SME roundtable held at WE School Mumbai. Incidentally while two forums were slightly different in their participation and agenda, I could see a common pattern emerging.

In both, amidst lot of democratic distribution of knowledge & sympathy, I could sense a somewhat frustrated cry from SMEs around the fact that professionals including fresh MBAs do not like to join SMEs. In Bangalore discussion, MNCs were blamed for bringing this curse on Indian SMEs while in Mumbai, way and means were being discussed to push young MBAs by force into SME workplaces.

There was talk abound, of the great work experience that awaits professionals once they join SMEs.

Somehow, I hold a slightly different view and I did raise it in both the forums but may be I couldn’t say it enough. So here it is once again.

Let’s for a moment look at a typical SME set up that one can see, on any bad day walking through some by-lane of Andheri East in Mumbai. The workplace would for sure look far from inviting and one can be almost certain to be greeted by a rude, smelly, cluttered reception. If you feel thirsty or get nature’s call, you can rest assured to catch an infection without much effort. Imagine how motivating this workplace would be for professionals to come in every day and gain that valuable experience.

Now, in most cases, during interview not much would be told about the role & career progressions, in fact the whole discussion might revolve around how part of money would be based on performance. If you expect that you’d be told about performance parameters, you’re being a typical MBA. Your interviewer may not have any idea about what kind of targets exit in business plan; in fact business plan itself might not exist.

If you join, don’t expect good appointment letters, Induction is a joke and training – you are supposed to have taken during MBA.

Now frankly, I haven’t met many young MBAs who would have slogged to get through a competitive exam and then read best of management work through two years, dreaming about a career opportunity at an SME of the kind I just helped visualize above. So my take is that rather than focusing on hiring MBAs, SMEs would do well to sponsor few of their existing employees to evening education and they’d do well by joining one such class themselves.

I am not saying that SMEs do not offer good experience, may be they do, but you can’t figure that out in absence of any communication around it. Also absence of basics and indulgence of top management in mundane stuff completely gets professionals wondering how long will the ship sail; it doesn’t sink you’d say but remember the experience of turbulence during flights; now imagine traveling like that all through.

SMEs must look inside and focus on turning themselves bit more attractive to be able to attract talent. Blaming MNCs or blaming MBAs for getting attracted to great workplaces won’t help. Good news is that its not all that impossible but that’s for another day….....

Tagged Business HR Hiring Human resources MBA Management SMB SME Team building

Get a Manager - set KRAs right !!!

How to make a manager do his job?

A run through the manager hiring process in companies tells a story - that no one differentiates managers from frontline staff and hence hiring basis remains the same - is he good at work.

Now the big question is "What is work for a manager", writing codes, getting sales orders, attending client complaints or hiring team, making plans, communicating, motivating team, reviewing performance.

Love for action orientation of entrepreneurial leadership teams has completely eroded role for managers which has become almost same as frontline. What can managers do, leaders themselves are doing frontline work themselves leaving no space for managers to do their real job. And frontline is wondering why they were hired in first place.

Job of a manager is not doing but getting done and only if this is clear can a manager focus on right deliverables like team formation, risk mitigation, monitoring, coaching, redundancy building. This way managers can contribute significantly towards organizational goals.

Starting point in this direction can be setting manager's KRAs right. Try not to put more than 50% weight on core output putting rest across team building, planning, review, derisking their deliveries, coaching teams, innovation etc.

Similarly while hiring managers, assessment must be done on managerial qualities as indicated above. Remember a good manager can give performance upside from whole team, so do not waste talent letting him write codes.

Comments/ questions can be directed to prashant@plughr.com

Tagged Appraisal Business Hiring Human resources Key Result Areas Management Organization performance

HR can build a business

So I am at it again, professing the role of HR as one that builds business right from the core rather than playing people charmer in organizations. In most of our start-up accounts, we have started realizing that one of the severe limitations founders have here is their inability to put discipline in most of their initiatives. So you have a business desire with very little plan, you have hiring ambition with very little form filling, organization structure that resembles flow of neurons in their head and business ideas that move like Amoeba.

One significant contribution that plugHR team seems to be making at these places is forcing discipline across levels. Need to make a manpower plan is forcing founders to write their business plans. Policy structure document is making neurons work overtime and we have tried to save the organization from ever changing Amoeba. Can't say we've succedded all along, but attempting is pretty much half way through.

So when start-up goes on overdrive, you better have plugHR on the navigator seat :)

Tagged Business Corporate Entrepreneurship HR Management Organization Scaling up