The balancing act

My college buddy 'Deepa Mahtani' forwarded a mail to me. It's a small speech by Bryan Dyson ( CEO, Coca Cola).

It's as follows:

"Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air.

You name them - Work, Family, Health, Friends and Spirit and you're keeping all of these in the Air.

You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back.

But the other four Balls - Family, Health, Friends and Spirit - are made of glass. If you drop one of these; they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked,damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for it."

Extremely thoughtful!!!! When I told a close friend about this speech, he said ''But in order to keep the glass balls ticking and proper, we need the rubber ball in it's best condition".

I responded to this by saying that " One needs to realise that the biggest challenge for an employee is not in deciding where to give their due attention ie the rubber ball or glass balls. But the real challenge is to get the balancing act of giving the right attention to all the dimensions ie work, health, family, friends & spirit."

Purpose of this blog???

Today, i am going to discuss the purpose of this blog. I guess this post should have been my first post but this is my 104th post .

It has been a nice & commited journey till now. I started this blog while I was working in TCS as a process associate. I was happy with my job but I was not able to persue my true passion [Human Resource Mgmt] as I was not in the HR dept.

Yet, I was an extremely keen observer and tried to learn more about HR functions from various friends and collegues. That helped me to come out with fresh ideas and thoughts on people issues and I needed a medium through which I could share them with my internet buddies.

This led to the birth of ideate zone.

Blogging has been one of my best learning source. During this course, I read blogs by many HR thought leaders and practitioners. I even got a lot of encouragement from them and I have been a huge fan of all the bloggers who helped me in this process.

Some of the key lessons which I had learned from blogging were:
1. Being open minded
2. Strive for learning and development
3. Being humble
4. Leverage creativity in all oppurtunities

Apart from HR thoughts, I also used this blog for my short stories, interviews, poems and other random thoughts.

Blogging has also helped me to make new friends.

To sum it up, it has been about ' an attempt to ideate on life, HR & beyond' ;-)

An interactive session with Dr R Karthikeyan

I had a very interesting interactive session with Dr R Karthikeyan, Director, Gemba Management Consulting Pvt Ltd & Secretary ,ISTD, Chennai Chapter during today's HR Sangam meeting.

The topic was 'Competency Assessment' which draws a lot of romanticization among HR enthusiasts. However the session was refreshingly beyond the usual romanticization associated with such upmarket and spunky HR topics.

He emphasized on the competency assesment process with genuine sincerity which comprised of the following steps:

1. Identifying competency
2. Competency dictionary
3. Preparation for assesment centre
4.Competency assesment centre
5. Individual development plan

Each steps were explained with very candid example from real organisational scenerio.

The session included a role play excercise on 'customer centricity'.

He also gave a humourous analogy on how the internal customer is like a wife as we deal with the same emlployees on a daily basis and how external customer is like a girlfriend as we deal with different sets of external customers on regular basis.

He focussed on the fact that observing people in action is the most important feature of competency assesment.

He made a special mention on how the attitude aspect is of prime importance in KSA[Knowledge,skills,attitude] framework and how it makes the biggest difference in results.

While talking about customer focus; he said it's very important to say 'no' with utmost warmth when required.

He even mentioned that the 'real' success of E- commerce will be determined on the day when silk sarees can be sold online [if u dont have a smile on your face then you are not a women or probably you do not understand women's mind well].

Recognizing 'attitude aspect' in competency mapping...

As we all know, competency comprises of three dimensions ie knowledge, skill and attitude.

In most of the competency mapping exercises , 'skills & knowledge' are given it's deserved consideration. However, we hardly notice the attitude aspect of competency being given any consideration.

Thats probably because many HR proffesionals believe that attitude can not be modified easily and investing too much of time in it might not be justified.

But I feel recognizing the attitude of the individuals with a purpose of maintaining a repository of the collective attitudes of the employees would help to get the pulse of the organizational culture.

There is also a good chance of the proactive set of employees making genuine efforts in changing their attitude towards realising more favourable results. In the long run, this will surely help.

So it makes sense in knowing what kind of attitude your employees are wearing?