Tag: People Office

The Leadership Void.

~ PA ~ 2 Comments

Whether it’s the corporate world, the ever pulsating world of politics or about leading ourselves, there comes a time, when we experience or get to see the manifestation of the Leadership void. Join me here, we take a look at what this leadership void is about, it is not about having a leader for sure, it is about the reasons behind that and we also explore ways on how we can get this space fixed! This is the same void from where great icons emerge either to serve themselves (salvage of who and what they are) or at times they plunge ahead in the selfless service of the organisations & communities that they are part of- whichever path that they choose to go ahead with- it’s an empowering, enriching experience as long as the new found direction and motives align to the greater good! So where and how does all of this begin?

Whether it is about us, as Individuals, or about us as someone who is responsible to lead a firm or a nation, we will hit that odd patch at some or the other time, for one or the other reason and when that happens, the immediate reaction is to give away the reins- it’s like you have been driving just fine and it takes just those few seconds over your years of experience to change your whole outlook and approach towards driving! This is what creates the void- an incident, an accident, a missed deadline, a compelling commitment, promise, a promise which could not be delivered not because your competence was compromised or ineffective, but because the time that you traversed was meant to create that block at that moment and your reaction to it, is what sets up the void in the first place! In many cases, most of the cases rather, people will recollect themselves and will get their act together and keep walking ahead, so the void doesn’t precipitate further and in no time even perhaps forgotten as new achievements and new positive stories start to be created. There are those odd cases though, which emerge (and it happens when the stakes are high, really high) and hence you see this leadership void being played out in large stages of business and politics!

As Individuals when we loose that target, we have no other option but to gather ourselves back and again go for it! For example, say, you set a goal to get your self fit and arrive at a weight number in three months. When those three dreaded months are over, you find that you actually have ended up adding a few pounds rather then reducing- so what option do you have? Either begin to ignore and let live be- the Leadership Void impact- or analyse the issue and get going at it again because you know very well that your health is the key to your existence and irrespective of the social appeal that your fit body may get you- the fact remains that a healthy body alone will ensure you walk this planet for those many extra days or hours! Hence when it comes to matters which rare essentially individual and intrinsic, the void to lead oneself seldom remains long and deep and is quickly altered or replaced with some other pursuit and that’s how the story goes on for individuals either from one achievement to the next or one leadership void unto the next!

When it comes to the big stage of business and politics the ramifications can be deadly and intense! Consider this, you have a company whose CEO decides to quit and no one wants to take up that position! Call it acquired levels of incompetence or the complexity of the shit that needs to be managed or whatever the case may be the fact remains that the Leadership Void that gets created when you lead thousands of people- can be far damaging and may have irreversible consequences! When this reluctance of not wanting to be the CEO begins to manifest it starts to send signals which are subtle yet powerful internally and externally about the firm! Employees begin to evaluate if their individual growth is now going to be bottled up, if so how soon and at what level and what’s the economic damage that may come with it ( no one wants ton work for charity or passion- no one does and is they say so- fire them- because they are lying!). Externally vendors, clients all take note and begin to wonder if the problem is more fundamental and start to re- calibrate the competencies and abilities of the firm- few cases leading to law suits and termination of contracts etc. So you see one person’s exit and the inability of anyone else to step in, can cause an impact which is beyond ones’ control but plays havoc with all the stakeholders involved!

If you thought, this looks pretty bad and what could be more worse than this, welcome to politics! When a leadership void is created either by a leader stepping down or being made redundant by the polity (not necessarily form the same political party), chaos ensues! You see, most political parties (as long as you experience some kind of fair and free democratic process of elections in your nation) are evaluated by the voters by factors like the charisma of the leader, the promise, the vision, the track record, the future, the available strength of the team that a party has, level of acceptance internationally and nationally and the quality of views about the social fabric of a nation so on and so forth! So when the leader quits for whatever reason that could be intrinsic or a politically engineered plan; with the leader goes all the elements that were glued on to that party’s purpose and promise! So strangely enough, knowing politicians the way they are, you will find that when shit happens and a political leader quits, even as people may rumble, rush or create lobby groups to stake claim for that chair, the real truth is, everyone is wishing for the same person to come back and lead all over again until a time that there is more calm and clarity in the political waters and await for a time when they would want to make the move when acceptance will seem more natural, like a corporate success plan! In the ensuing period when this void thrives, needles to say the other parties, called normally as political adversaries make the most as the sun shines and are provided with enough of political ammunition that can last for years to come- where they keep on hitting hard on the other party- asking a simple question- That you could not lead your organisation, how can you manage the nation!

So, here it is more about playing to the audiences (the nation) like in the corporate world to the board of the company and the show goes on! When current leaders drop the ball, trust me even that, in a few cases would be a leadership move and if you were that odd person to end up catching the falling ball in a hurry, the weight of that will break your fingers and bury you in a lot of mess than you can ever think off! So the rule says- When leaders pull the brake for no reasons- put on your seat belts and be responsive – not reactive nor proactive! So what can be done about this and how can organisations or even the polity arrest this from manifesting?

It all starts and ends with how sensitive (as in- an acute ability to sense) the people experts are in the organisation or how astute and politically suave the members within a political party are for being able to judge whether a person should lead or not in the first place! Only when this space is analysed in detail with the allowance for failures, setbacks, rip offs , scandals, media assaults and all that you can think of; is when a wise people office of a major corporation or a mature political party will ask someone to lead! It all starts with the individual under the cross hairs to lead and it all ends with that- within the range of the highs and lows once it is understood how much of that swing will remain within the permissible limit- life is a party as long as the rope to the swing is not shredded or ripped off due to the ever increasing burden of the individual who is leading the team!

As long as this first step is fixed and a firm foundation is built around what the limits of leadership are and those are communicated and made clear to the person who leads- things are normally taken care of- most of the times! You see, even leaders are humans and being humans- at some or the point they will break down for one or the other reason and while if it happens for reasons of their own doing like health or some scam, that’s alright and an emerging void can be rapidly replaced and completed, but when that breakdown starts to spread like sepsis and the leader in chief starts to transform into the whiner in chief- that high level sabotage can not only wipe off organisation off the market map but in the case of political parties, end up altering the political landscape of a nation! When Leadership void begins to attain these level of massive unmanageable proportions- you see splintering of political parties and realignment of business units, mergers, acquisitions, stake sales, everything and anything that can be done to ensure that the organisation survives, the nation stays and does not get consumed by the leadership void which threatens to create an unsettling period for everyone around!

A few final thoughts, as I wrap this piece, Leadership Void assumes greater intensity, impact and influence in proportion of who the individual is, what that organisation is or what a political party is in a given contextual setting of a society or nation! The only way to stem this across any of the chosen levels, is about knowing the Individual, the gifts and the curses that the person brings along and how much of what is allowable , manageable and workable to ensure that the ecosystem stays intact when this person occupies the chair! Sure enough there could be, and certainly are, many more details that go on to make sure that these leadership voids are far and few in between and that again depends on the levels of competence of the people across the organisation or within a political party! What we see played out across society is nothing more than the presence or absence of human competence and the extreme manifestation of it, is the emergence of Leadership Void!

I leave you here, with these thought, reflect and seek the competence that you find or don’t within and round you and fasten your set belt, for the void may already be there or on its way!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article! Stay safe, stay wise and stay relevant!

Make a choice: People or Process.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Organisations often have something to guide them by, at times these are called as values, belief systems, way of working, agreed way of working, “the way we do it here”, you can take any of these approaches, but all of these will eventually end up taking you down one of the two only possible routes- either you are managing, striving for or struggling for a people centric organisation or a process centric organisation. This short read, we take a look at what this all means, and how it impacts us and what we can do about it, before we decide to join that dream job coming your way!So let’s roll!

Sure enough both these approaches have their own advantages and strengths, let’s not bother about weaknesses, because where strengths are, diametrically opposite end of it, you will find the weakness! If you are wondering even for a moment why does this matter- identifying whether a particular organisation is people centric or process centric, well hold your thoughts for now! By the time we finish this piece, I am sure you will be scampering to find some solace and once you know well, that you are aligned to, developing or contributing to one of these types, you will further appreciate why you are either a great fit or a misfit based on who “you” are and the type of organisation you have landed yourself in!

Fundamentally speaking, humans are always good at one of the two things- this, even as we have both the attributes- either we are good on the being creative and ingenious or we are great at doing repetitive and predictable tasks with great accuracy. Sure enough, we can do both and we end up doing both of these and everything that comes between these two extreme ends with varying degree of comfort, the fact however being that we all are naturally inclined to one thing over the other and when we find a workplace that reinforces our natural alignment to its work methodology- we excel at the function that we do and the contextual settings help us accelerate and excel as long as we continue to put in the required efforts!

If you take a short trip back into history and search for people who made a mark for themselves, name-fame -fortune, you will see a common thread, majority of them were mavericks- they ended up doing/creating things like no one had ever before, or their approach to run or govern a society was unlike anything ever before and their ability to think creatively, different;y, what is normally termed as “out-of-the-box” ended up creating our world the way it is today. Certainly this does not imply that those who continued to do routine functions are worthless, in fact they too are worth their weight in gold as they continually better the way they do things and create new benchmarks of doing the same thing over and over again with more finesse and sharpness! So what does this tell us? Well in a very simplistic manner it tells us that the ability to be innovative/creative, being able to set new ways and rules is one set that we have within us and the ability to better, develop something that’s already there by being at it-also called as perseverance- ensures that we create more value to something that already exists either by process or offering services-by doing what is meant to be done in a more refined and quality centric manner!

Typically organisations, which thrive on research , product development, innovation and new -age breakthroughs, creative pursuits lay heavy emphasis on the people that they have on board and that’s but an obvious choice! When you have people who are radically unique by way of their ability to think, collaborate, confront, debate and further a common idea- that’s the space where magic happens! Each individual will bring a new approach around a conventional problem at hand and that’s what will create pathways to developing/creating something unlike ever done before!- Certainly this approach is out rightly expensive and this route is normally deployed only when the odds are very high- typically when the solutions innovated/service provided have life-changing abilities or are able to influence people en-mass across regions and continents! Consider the world’s leading space exploration company- which has been at the forefront of space science ever since its inception- yes you got it NASA- what do you think they are hiring people for – following processes or for creating them afresh and leading humanity into a new frontier when it comes to space? Like NASA there are many more examples among different sectors wherein organisation have disrupted the way we go about our life through their products/services and this was possible because of the teams that they have had- the kind of people that they had onboard! This is how people centric organisations stand out and deliver! Needless to say this becomes possible only when the right people are onboard in the right contextual setting! This is how People centric organisations thrive and excel!

The other approach which has been equally successful and stood the test of time as well, is the approach wherein the Process is of vital importance. No this is different from red tapism and bureaucratic delays, this is more about following an established chain of command and staying within a span of control so that the whole unit works like a well oiled machinery and at any given time, even at a moment’s notice, the whole unit can align itself to increasing delivery pressures or adapt itself to meet the necessities of time! Sounds familiar, think you know a few of them, well yes you do, the defence forces, law enforcement agencies, medics, paramedics, you will find these instances even across various functions normally aligned to production of various goods and services, in the case of the manufacturing or world of services, you will come across the vital indicators like, well laid out clear structures, methodologies, process steps and communication channels which enable people to work individually or as teams to deliver what needs to be delivered under different conditions with no compromise on the quality of the finished product or service! This is where magic is created by being good at what is being done and doing what is being done in a better way each time it’s done!

Now you may be wondering, so why do organisations struggle all the time with n endless talent deficit! Why do we have organisations complaining about the quality of talent? The answer is deceptively simple! Organisations face challenges with talent when end up having onboard the wrong people for the right job! The problem is not of the people- the problem lies with the expectations placed on the people- who are basically not who you are really looking out for! Consider, you are a manufacturing firm and want to hire some kick ass engineers to supervise the forging unit- well things will work out for you as long as you are hiring an engineer with an orientation to follow rules, process and someone who believes in creating incremental changes by being in the system over a period of time, now instead of this if you end up hiring an eccentric innovator- he will start by stripping down every process and every work flow that you have ever built over the years with a single objective of simplifying and doing the things the way he would like to because that’s what his core intrinsic approach and belief system is- to create and construct something new!

None of them are right or wrong, neither the individuals nor the organisations, it is all about being wise and sane enough to know what you are hiring for- knowing what is that your organisation stands for and being able to decipher well , who are the people – that will be able to align themselves to the aspects of the business! Once you have the right type of people aligned to the right needs of the business, you have created enough space for both of them to grow and excel! If you are a process centric organisation hire people who are aligned to the way of the process centric environs, if you are an organisation that thrives on innovation and individual greatness, build an empire which celebrates individuality and also rewards collaboration, that’s how you will be able to excel in that space!

The choice, of whether to develop a people centric organisation or a process centric one should always resonate with the core requirements of the business and importantly this is something that should be loud and clear- visible through way of working and communication, so that even people who wish to embark on the journey with you are able to appreciate if they have boarded the right flight and look forward to the journey with equal enthusiasm as much as they have for the destination that lies ahead! More often than not you will come across organisations which are part process centric and part people cntric- when you are around that kind of a hybrid space- what really matters is having the right people at the right places for doing the right things!

I will leave you here for now, to reflect and think, what are you, a process person, or a creative wizard, what is the organisation that you are working for- people cntric or process centric, and what type of organisation will you like to build, if you ever want to build one! Keep thinking for now!

Ciao for now, I will come back soon with another article soon! Until then, knowing yourself create value in what you, by doing it the way you do it!

Connected gadgets and disconnected people.

~ PA ~ 2 Comments

As the world starts to pull up itself from the shadows of an ongoing pandemic and tries to grapple with the severe economic melt down which has come along with it (no the virus didn’t cause the economic meltdown; how we dealt with it, caused it!). As humanity we are flirting dangerously with a strange alteration in human behavior for the first time in over hundred years- this new changed behaviour- of being connected with the world through gadgets and not people! This article tries to explore the aspects evolving around it and what perhaps may eventually manifest from this new trait! So let’s explore and get our grey matter working!

Even before the pandemic broke loose, we have been living in an era where we have had technology uncomfortably in-your-face kind of scenarios and with the latest slew of people tracking applications required- few optional and few mandatory, our connection with the digital- virtual world has got far more creepier than you think!As individuals more and more of us wait for an opportunity to get online- whether it is to check the weather, the status of the pandemic, the latest update on the neighborhood or just to know if people still like you over your social media handles! The reasons can be many, few valid and few as dumb as they can be! Any aspect of technology and online driven compulsiveness may be essential for one individual and the same can be an absolute disaster for another, it all depends on- who these individuals are! Say if you are a successful artist and want to stay connected with your follower base through some short videos or pics, it certainly works and perhaps works pretty well to uplift morale of your followers- if you carry that kind of an infectious and inspiring persona, but what about if you are that odd one who has been struggling and these times have made your struggle that bit more spicier! Well, for an individual who is already at logger heads with time and space an overwhelming experience over the virtual world can be really dangerous and make a person withdraw or become over-expressive in ways which may not help, especially during these times, when the vital people connect is, all but missing!

Add to this the latest fallout of the lockdowns the world over- organisations and business have been quick to announce policies and measures asking people to work form home! Now what this has ended up doing in majority of the cases, is create an even more challenging work space for individuals! (unless you own a 5 room apartments- where perhaps two rooms can be occupied by the working members of the house, one by the kids and one by the pet that you have, not to forget even the kitchen is held hostage either by your maid or your in-laws or parents as the case may be!) You see, as long as people went to their offices to create value or destroy the existing value at their work place- all that got played out away from the watchful eyes and ears of your spouses, parents, in-laws, kids and pets. Now that people are working form home, or anywhere that they are (but not at workplace) people around – family and friends- get a first row seat to individual personalities and complexities like never before! All that verbal abuse, emotional tantrums, abrupt meetings, calls being cut, truncated, work that never seems to end, a lunch break that never seems to happen and a weird situation which just stays to hang on- like forever! Earlier even if you had a bad day at work- people would dissipate much of that negative energy by the time they finished their commute and reached their residences- now when all that negativity has lad home in your residence- needless to say there will be unwanted reactions and behavioral patterns erupting with closed confines of your home as well! Add to this that extra element of not being able to talk to reach out to your colleague at office for guidance and counsel- like it used to normally happen- a short break- a cup of tea or coffee on the way back or that 45 min quick beer to plan for the next day to counter what would have unfolded this day- you just end up getting stuck and consumed with your work- with no real cut off in the real sense of it!

Sure enough, office video calls, con-calls, emails and all of them work and work pretty well, but think about it, these tools have been there for such a long time- if these were indeed really that effective- why do you think any major corporations or a business house would have spent millions and millions of dollars to create reputed and state of the art workplaces? There would be some reason right? Well think around that bit when you have time! The fact is remains that, humans always knew the relevance and importance of having place of work and place of residence as two separate locations and it was perhaps a wiser thing to do- ask any innovator or a scientist- they will tell you, many a great things and moments in their lives which proved to be a breakthrough movement either happened at their designated workplace, designated home, or during commute , but never while doing WFH (work from home!) – it never really works!

Importantly if you thought only working professionals are facing challenges, think about it, even kids who are studying at school or colleges are facing and even more crueler scenario! The most badly hit, if you ask me are the school going kids, the youngest of them under 10 years- they have been disconnected from other kids at a vital time of their life when they are supposed to forge, foster and develop the social skills that are an essence of being a human and vital for social engagements and development of the society as these kids become grown ups in the next two decades! But if they have a weak foundation for social engagement set up right now, the ramifications in the long term will never be the ones’ that we desire! You may ask me, but this is just for a year or a few months, how can it impact? well think about it, experts have said, it takes about 21 days for a habit to cultivate and about 10,000 hours to master something that you wish to excel at! So either ways choose your metric and if your kids have been exposed to any of these, rest assured the new emerging behavior of your kids will be not what they had earlier charted the course for! They will unwittingly end up embracing the death hug of technology over the vital compassionate hug of humanity which comes only by being connected with people! We may end up cultivating societal failures and in the next two decades form now , many failures of social engineering/engagement will get attributed to this generation which did not build the vital foundation of social engagement with fellow humans- intentionally or unintentionally! So is there something that we can do about it? Well the answer is yes and no! Yes we can, that’s what makes us, humans special, and No- if the capitalist greed of the top 1% of the world doesn’t stop doing from what it is currently doing; Globally societies will end up driving their young generations into a space where they may just end up being the human extension of technology! We may end up in a space where we don’t lead technology and set the pace for the future, rather get pulled and pushed all over the pace as technology decides how it wants to use/abuse or not use our human services for its propagation! Let’s leave out those 1% and see what we can do within what’s possible at our own individual levels to ensure that we stay connected the way humans should!

Create rituals! Yes, organised rituals at your work desk as you start to crunch you day- and make people to people- non-work talk an essential aspect of this space! Make it a point to use the famed 80:20 principle when you connect with other people- let this 20% of time be used to have that human conversation which revolves around shared values and aspects that go to define and uplift human life! It could be as simple as , “How’s everyone at home?”, to something like “How’s your novel writing coming up?” or perhaps “How’s your thesis going?”, it could be about good times, planing small get- together (law permitting in your space and city), anything but work! Next, make space for those corporate and work life related – bitching calls- no matter whether you are good or bad at the job that you do- you will be a part of this- either creating and leading it or at the receiving end- as long as these remain harmless and don’t impact the sanctity of the work values and ethics, things will be fun and needed to vent out your frustrations where they need to be done! There’s no point breaking crockery at home because you had a bad day- you just end up adding to your won expenses and unwanted next set of complications dealing with people at home! Make an effort and time your exit from the day’s work- this is easier said than done! But, unless you don’t put your foot down, things will not change, remember- the organisation pays you as per the contract that you have signed up for- anything extra that you do- is the loss of the seconds of your life and a windfall gain day-in and day-out for the organization! It’s kind of you work for 40 days of the months and get paid for 30! Limit your screen times to what is vital and essential, stay away from the screens unless you are going to end up someone getting killed! Stop that unwanted urge to keep checking and re-checking that like, comment or views on our social pages and presence, the fact is, trust me it doesn’t matter, unless you are in that fabled 1%!

When it comes to kids, sure enough quite challenging to ask other parents to send in their kids for play dates and all that (depends on IQ levels of the parents largely)! So if you have young kids around in your family or extended family take a few minutes off each day- talk to them and explain to them what’s happening and keep up that conversation and curiosity up and running, for heaven’s sake don’t let a search engine be the answer to all the questions that their inquisitive minds have and if you do this right, they will emerge the other side of this storm – still curious, young, inquisitive and full of life and courage! This us what we need as humanity more than anything else- A resilient younger generation which has been formed and forged by a severe storm, which has not been dented or broken but rather become stronger and even more sharper, the way the things have unfolded around them!

Think again, when you have that compelling urge to stay glued to your gadgets! If you are still reading this, well it’s about time you complete the next few sentences and race back to your family/friends for that quick chat and re-discover the joy of being connected with humanity!

I leave your here, urging you to reflect and decide for yourself, the balance that you wish to cultivate with the gadgets that you command and the people that you cherish!

Ciao for now, will be back with another article soon! Until then stay wise and stay safe!

Meaningful HR & Business Integration-The way ahead.

~ PA ~ Leave a comment

Yes, I know what are the first thoughts that are crossing your mind, even as you read the title! No this is not about fault finding with the HR aspect of business neither this is a glorification of how business and HR need to work together and contribute- enough of unwarranted positive shit has been written about that and it seldom works! This is about knowing what really helps or strops from that critical integration from happening and is there anything at all that can be done to ensure true synergy which translates into individual empowerment to the people on the floor and at the desks, irrespective of the product or service that they collectively create!

The genesis of the today’s HR came through the dark allies of the industrialized world, where the given dictum was that the owners of the businesses were out there to exploit available resources (people and material), unfortunately some businesses did live up to that dubious label and with that saw the rise of the union movement which provided the much needed collective voice and put a plug to stop and arrest unwarranted exploitation form time to time across different sectors and industries. Certainly over time, few of these unions too lost their grounding – since they too were run by humans- add to that the element of greed and you have the right recipe to completely compromise business exploits and you reach a point where you really don’t know anymore which side is more wrong! Even as these aspects were unfolding businesses were busy working on scientific finding and technological break through to modernize and make processes and services more cost effective and thereby more profitable and just as businesses learnt to manage products and processes they soon understood that they could also manage people and there is the birth of the modern day HR! Sadly though the struggle of complete end-to-end integration of business and HR has always remained a challenge- at times for the right reasons- where businesses require that sterile distinction or segregation to function and more often than not, because of sheer incompetence either with one of the entities or both of them, in today’s context it is a heady cocktail of incompetence which keep shifting from one end to the other in a cyclical manner which results into a “dynamic yet static space”- hence many a times when you go back to organisations even after few years- seldom things are different! Nothing wrong or right about that- at times that’s what is needed and at times that’s exactly what limits the organisations! So what’s happening here, where’s the catch?

It all starts, with like everything else- right in the beginning, even today, in 2020, there would be hardly a few, maybe less than 1% of entrepreneurs who would want to look at HR as a strategic investment which will provide an ROI to their firm with regards to the qualified talent that it can get in and even more importantly manage and ensure that the ” talent”stays and grows with the organisation- sometimes leading it (at senior level), at times staying in-sync ( at mid-levels) and at yet other times, developing a followership (at the junior level). This foundational mistake of discounting the true value and essence of HR right at the begging- when a business starts afresh, or a new business unit is thought of causes more damage to the entity than anything else! I don’t need to explain I am sure about what price an organisation may end up paying for the wrong people at the wrong time, at the wrong place and at a wrong price! Importantly always remember people are never good or bad, it is their “contextual settings” that either make them shine and excel or dim and fade away! You may have an average intelligent person among dumb idiots and that person may end up looking like an angel to your eyes, out the same person against the backdrop of qualified hotshots from top A schools, you may might as well want to kill yourself for hiring that kind of an idiot! It also than says something about your ability to judge and hire people- well but I will leave that for now and maybe some other write up on that- some other time!

Unless HR is at the table with the business to understand and soak in every aspect of what the grand plan of business is and what’s the whole idea and importantly be listened to- there will never be a true integration! Sure enough in today’s times, even having people stick around at their own positions within the organisations- by itself is a challenge- and that just goes on to compound the integration challenge!– Even today,the normal brief always to HR can look like this- “The organisation would want to have an overhaul or a massive change once a CEO or a A level person moves on or just because the exiting one wants to have the HR do some work!”- you may ask “Why?” well you will almost always never get a sensible answer to that and with no “real HR” to question- the organisation will simply go into an overdrive to reinvent the same old wheel! Everyone will be happy doing that because it keeps everyone in the job and busy- but the fact remains , this unwarranted overdrive often ends up being the classical case of visiting history and needless to say- the results are always the same- “Nothing!” and every few years this nonsense continues and we have people coming and leaving and everything seems to stay exactly where it is! This is the fallacy of the much hyped integration of HR and Business when not carried out in a well thought and objective manner! So you may want to ask how does it look when it works and does it really work?

Well, when done right, HR can empower individuals, teams and business like nothing else can! You may want to ask me now, what is the right way, well the right way is the way of common-sense! If your business is heavily reliant on people and people are the reason for your businesses success or failure and if you don’t start your day without wishing “Good Day” to your HR Head, trust me no matter how big or small your business is, you will falter sooner or later and the reason for that faltering will be the disconnect with your people! So if you are a CEO, running a people centric business , make it a point to throw away your ego( which anyways is good to loose) and learn to walk out of you cabin to spend time with the person responsible for getting you the right people for your team- because when discussions happen here and the more often they do, you will begin to experience magic– magic in terms of the positive rub off that will happen within the existing people across your teams and the new ones that come to join your journey! You don’t need long meetings with endless one-sided communication expressing your dreams, fantasies or frustrations, you don’t need endless boring mails with subject lines reading something like “Form CEO’s Desk” or “It’s your HR” kind of gimmick! All that you need is a simple cup of tea or coffee once a day with the person who is responsible to get the right people for you day-in and day-out!

Now, don’t rush into patting your back, thinking that all the work to hold on to this integration lies only with the CEO’s or the business leader’s the HR leader’s too have to play their part and their part starts by behaving and acting like a business leader- who is leading the business of people! This approach seemingly deceptive but if played right, can make all the difference between having a HR and having a great HR! Awesomeness of HR comes not by knowing the rules and regulations and theories of HR, they do matter, but the real fun happens when HR understands and assimilates the business challenge as if they were their own (because they are their own problems- manifestations which are created by HR!) How?, you may ask, well here’s the simple test, When people leave when you least expect and business suffers, the question “How was this person evaluated and selected even?”, When a person leaves because he gets paid twice and more at the other place- “Why are we paying so less? are we?”, when the person destroys a million dollar machinery because of incompetence- “How did this person clear the evaluation and get in!” Well the lists and situations can go on and on- the fact is a HR disconnected with business problems and business plans is equally liable to fail as the business and what’s more a HR disconnected from it’s business can do more harm than a business that’s’ disconnected with HR!

True integration between HR and Business happens only when there is mutual respect and appreciation about what each of them do and how each one of them contribute to build and develop each other to ensure that the organisation keeps progressing with the right tools, both material and human! Unless Business teams stop discounting HR- assuming they don’t understand or see the point of business and until HR doesn’t stop hiding themselves away in files, operations and social media posts pertaining to job vacancy- this problem will persist! If you always wanted to understand why the HR never called you back or gave you an update for your hour long interview of multiple rounds of hour long interviews- well I presume you would have found your answer somewhere here! A disconnected HR with no insight into business revenues and business action plans- will try and continue the old classical way of reaching out to hundreds of candidates- when it is not required and eventually get stuck when the real time comes to hire- because by then externally the genuineness of the organisation has taken a beating!

There are and there always will be reasons and explanations for every connect and disconnect; some real and some are made up, irrespective of what they are, the fact remains that as long as people are involved and businesses require people, there will always remain a compelling need to to have people specialists and business aces to work together collaboratively in a transparent and purpose driven manner! This alone, If you ask me, this the real essence of integration, driven by purpose and proactive collaboration each playing to their strength, understanding the other team’s requirement!

I will leave you here, with these thoughts, depending on which team you are on- the business or the people team- do reflect on what worked and what didn’t and how can you make what matters work for you and the other team!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another article!