I would like to do phd in hr under your guidence from Bangalore. Having 2.3 yrs industry exposure and did MBA (HR) from a AICTE approved university.
I know having busy schedule can it be possible or not.

I eagerly waiting for your reply.

Regards,
Somashree.

A sorely needed viewpoint, all the more credible because it comes from a senior level professional in the industry.

Another key point we need to consider during assessments is the context - because no two humans get to experience the same context while delivering on their objectives.

Regards

Monitoring and measurment of carbon emmission may prove to be difficult.

The handy Carbon Calculator is a good idea (Wish the ‘Idea’ picks up this line )

An inspiring leadership will bring in people involvement

Good wishes for achieving the target

This may set yet another bench mark and inspire many others

Regards

Yashwant

We’re immensely delighted to read from you and are glad that you’ve accepted our request to share your learning’s with other members of the HR fraternity at the NHRD Network.

Look forward to your continued support and guidance.

Best Regards,
Ankur

Conditions. Often the conditions prevailing have a big play in success or failure, and we have to make a conscious effort to adjust for conditions. Metrics is one thing. Very often, metrics set at the beginning of a year are broad guesswork of what the playing conditions may turn out to be. Playing conditions change during the year, and measuring against the goals set beginning of the year then make little sense. An easy example is one of a fund manager who fails to deliver to the goals stated in the beginning of the year because equity markets underperformed in general. There may be more complex business examples. Talking of conditions, the rising tide syndrome too works positively over planned, and we need to adjust for that. Managers/ assessess need to make a conscious effort to adjust for this. An easy example is what we experienced in our insurance business this year, where just by the lift of markets from 13000 to 17000 has given us a revenue of Rs. 330 cr this year over last year.

But before we rush to adjust for conditions we have to think deeper. Where things go more complex, like assessing the performance of a business, we have to make an effort to benchmark ourselves to competition’s performance, and not just to our targets, and use it actively in our assessment process. That throws up how objectively we assess competition. In fact its not just about objectivity, competition often gives information/ take positioning as convenient to communicate to investors, and they too could be brushing things under the carpet, or taking a different approach based on their worldview, or based on the stage of their organisation. Yet an honest effort has to be made to assess our performance vis a vis competition, adjusting for these variables, to get a sense of how weve done, or how were doing. I would like to make special emphasis that we have to get this assessment as right as possible, and not getting this right may threaten the existence of the business itself. Citi for long in 2000 kept reporting to their senior management that indian private sector players had no clue of consumer fianancing, kept understating our performance and numbers to their bosses and themselves, and sooner than later they got wiped out from the scene on many of these businesses. How HR plays a role here is something to think about.

All this, yet, is metric speak. We also have to get away from metric speak and assess the performance on how well you played under the changed circumstances. That makes it subjective. And we have to agree that we are naturally biased when we assess our own performance on subjective matters (on how we played under the conditions, our rewards are linked to the assessment). I don’t have a good idea on how to address this compromise, but we have to work this out in the larger interest of the existence of the organisation or the business.

But competition alone is no benchmark though. Imaging being in the pager industry in 1995. The pager industry was booming, and maybe KPIs across us and competition was set at 100 pc growth. Saying we underperformed as all industry underperformed is useless, as the industry or the service or the technology itself got wiped out. Conditions may accorded its due, but to be caught flat footed when conditions changed is very much a management responsibility. Whether we structured the asset liability, or machinery, or positioning, or cost structures (flexible/ fixed) of an organisaton to suit a possible changed scenario is the responsibility of the prior management. To blame conditions is fine, but how well we set ourselves up is as much the responsibility of the management. If the pitch conditions are different in the morning, say it affords more spin than anticipated before the series, to be left with little options in spinners in the team, is as much a management responsibility. Then blaming conditions is not correct, and we should acknowledge it and factor for it when assessing. Metric speak can never address these matters.

Then there are some basic conceptual issues with scoring models in general. People whove seen cards from the beginning know this. Its called the incremental value of the variable, iv. The common mistake about scoring in general is that the same item gets dual credit without the scorers knowledge. While processing an application form for a credit card, we ask information like. Living in Mumbai since. Age. No of years of bank account. For a person above 40, working in a corporate in a senior management position in Mumbai for 20 years, he gets credit 10/10 for all these questions. But the statiscical model tells us that by being in a corporate for 20 years, and having bank account more than 3 years, the customer is getting credit again and again. For this reason the scorecard calculates through some iterative logic the incremental value of the variable, and tracks say 5 or 6 fields, and ignores the rest, to truly discriminate one customer from the other. How well we think about this incremental value when setting multiple dimensions in our scorecard is something to think about.

Finally there is the irrational mind. When we match gunas when comparing horoscopes, and it shows 75% match, the people concerned tend to believe they have a Godly match made in the stars. Just as much as often times people are able to relate very well to Bejan Daruwala or Sunitha Menon’s prediction for the week or day, and say yes she said it right. Because they begin to believe it works. (though it can be rationally argued that it is impossible to get all capricons to get the same fate in a week.). In some ways our belief in our assessment process in an interview follows the same rationalising, both parties believe it is a good fit because the horoscope is matched. It helps in performance in a way. But a true test of whether we are happy with a particular team is whether we would hire the person again now, without getting engaged with the trappings of the past association. Just as you might want to think if youd marry your partner again if you had the choice. Its tuffer in personal life but easier in a corporate world. Not that easy though, but a once a year check, even after giving some credit for trappings, may help. Irrationality wont go away, but we can adjust for it.