Delving Deeper

Context: This is a digitised version of the print article which I wrote for the TQM Newsletter of Century Rayon , my first employer. This was published as Volume 1 in Feb 2001 by the then B.K Birla Group company. In today's dynamic business environment, Retention is perhaps one thought that is foremost in the minds of HR Managers in any organisation. In this article, an attempt is being made to analyse some aspects relating to retention of employees with special reference to manufacturing organisations. At the outset, I would like to state that what follows is not, as the title may seem to suggest an elixir to this pressing problem, but some thoughts which naturally are consequent to exposure to environmental stimuli, to be precise. Understanding the Manufacturing Psyche   Manufacturing setups are the offshoots of the Licence / permit raj, which is under threat with the advent of liberalisation. Needless to say, traditional job enablers like Job Security and Location a...

I have to say I loved reading this article by The Economist about Leadership and the way it' s perceived by majority of followers - you can ready the article here Ever since I commenced my own entrepreneurship stint with  SS Consulting , I have had the opportunity to watch leadership role players who were Founders / Co-founders from close quarters. These leaders come from the companies which came to us (we take referred clients mostly) to enable their organisation's growth journey. So I could relate quickly to the examples referred in this article. Here's what I learned from past 4 years of interactions with leadership role players in Kerala. Assessment of Quality remains a challenge  - Oratory skills, Charisma, Position, Caste and background comes in the way of relevant metrics for assessing leadership skills. Miss realising that Leadership is 'different' by itself -  Most leadership role players get elevated to their roles due to pre-disposition or proven Te...

It was back in 2012 that I was lucky enough to sign up for being a blogger with SHRM - I had blogged about that excitement back then.  Over the years, I ended up attending SHRM's annual national conference 5 times upto 2018 of which two more have been as member of the elite bloggers squad.  Frankly, I tweet more than I blog as I found that twitter, although not that intuitive to many, gave me the opportunity to simplify text and think deeper in an attempt to get the message to 144 characters.  No prizes for guessing the connection I found to the Title and the reason for my blog. So it is with special excitement that I am sharing to my blog readers that I will playing an active part in SHRM's Annual conference and Exposition   this year at Las Vegas, Nevada - as a #shrm19Blogger once again.  I shall be posting another blog about stuff I'm planning to do at #shrm19 around the them building better work places. So long.. Leaving you all with a link...

Over the past 4 years Whatsapp groups have become a huge source of learning and connections for me. Today I happened to see a discussion about how Women's cricket should not be compared to Men's cricket on a whatsapp group - where I had also posted a comparison and felt the need to explore this further. As I did my search for third party articles, I realised that this moment has within it an opportunity to help understand or connect to Career and career paths for individuals with  any Talent.  For this purpose - I would define Talent as anything that the seekers of that talent derive value from. Now Mandira Bedi is an actor starting and Shanti  was her major break in 1995. Her career path is explained via this Your Story article . To bring in the connection to cricket - let me paste a portion of text from this article below: Her love for cricket took her straight to hosting the ICC World Cups in 2003 and 2007, proving to people that women could host cricket matches too...

Here I am, blogging from an Uber rushing towards the venue of one of India's largest gatherings of Human resource (#HR) professionals, Vendors and newsmakers.  Yes, I had read what Keith Hammond had written about Why he hates HR some years back and from then on, I had been thinking about creating my own ways for getting stuff out of conferences like these. The roles I get to play in the function I chose back in 1997 had been giving me the opportunity (with some special access rights) to large gatherings of HR folks from 2012 onwards. For those interested in numbers, I have been attending upto 5 such events every year from 2012 - yes, every year. With that as a context, let me delve into stuff that's making me excited about my 4th such conference in 2018, the Annual gathering curated by SHRM's India entity - the first version of which I had attended in Goa back in 2013. 1. The SHRM Social media Squad has been my special Learning network from 2012 Atlanta conference, my f...

June of 2018 had been a hectic month for me.  Let me attempt to list the things I got to touch in June to set the context for this post: My special times inside Kerala's  IT SME Life... journeys via contributions to SME entrepreneurs . I had two retainer clients, one each in Kochi and Kozhikode who kept me clued in to the SME's journey.  Nipah scare in Kerala made some of my past clients reach out for help - to ensure they managed this scare staying within the freedom + responsibility approach that we had got them to take.  Last month of my term as Volunteer Secretary of NIPM Kerala Chapter  - four programs to plan - Young Managers Contest, Corporate Citizen Award,  revamping Legal Update and Annual General Meeting Annual meetup of Citizen Science enthusiasts at Thrissur for deliberations on technology and crowd sourcing enabled Bird Monitoring in Kerala - will blog about this soon as this meeting made the early 40's brain in me to take up an...

So I've landed in Chicago for SHRM18 after a 24 hour journey (over 21 hours in the air) from my home in Kochi, India. I'm very excited about the theme that www.shrm.org  has chosen for #shrm18 - 'Expand your world' - here are my reasons: From the first time I attended this conference back in 2012, SHRM has helped me expand my world via HR pals, connections with whom they have catalysed via special events organised at the annual conference and exposition - the international delegates get really pampered at any SHRM annual.  Apart from being an international attendee, I have been lucky to be part of SHRM's blogging squad as well - this platform which gives me a 'behind the stumps' (Cricket Umpire lingo) connection opportunity to some of the best content creators at a global scale - t hey are  - don't miss connecting with them as they help you traverse this year's conference via social media updates.  This excitement of being able to expand my worl...

I had missed SHRM16 but had not missed blogging about why I thought large conclaves like the ones organised by  www.shrm.org  are great social selling opportunities after reading about the power of social selling later that year. SHRM18 too has a carefully curated list of service providers who will be showcasing their wares at the Exposition which will be open from 4 pm on 17th June - immediately following the opening general session which will be featuring Johnny C Taylor, Jr. the new CEO of SHRM and Jeb Bush. The would be over 600 exhibitors and I have realised, with each of my 4 previous conferences that there will be exciting stuff which will keep attendees glued to most exhibits.  Here are some tips that I found useful as one attempts to traverse this maze looking thingy that we can call the exhibition floor! 1.  Identify at least 25 Exhibitors based on your current role or your companies immediate needs by speaking to your colleagues about your the oppor...

So people keep asking me this question - why am I geeked about #shrm18? Here's what on top of my mid now as I'm preparing for my fifth time at an SHRM Annual . SHRM12 opened out the world of possibilities to me when I managed to combine it with my annual visit to connect to work related matters with Arbitron (now Nielsen Audio) - I had blogged about it then - here is the first post  written excitedly as I got to be part of SHRM bloggers for the first time! Here are the other posts from that year - looks pretty silly now I confess.  A list of tweets  An attempt to capture the essence of shrm annual on video  3. SHRM has been my mentor on #socialmedia trends - I had blogged about some lessons after my second edition. This was the time when I could find my way around better and could connect to more learning stuff - this was at Orlando.  4. The need to reconnect to social media got me back for my third shrm conference - this time at Las Vegas where I...

Yep, this is one question I love to hear these days - especially when it is from someone based in my home state Kerala. Some context : So I got back to my home state in Dec 2007 to become first employee of a US Media measurement major (Now part of Nielsen Audio) who was then setting up it's Captive Technology centre in India, yes a GIC as per NASSCOM. Post a global acquisition by the Market research biggie - I set out to form a Boutique Consulting gig  with a purpose of catalysing the growth of the IT SME ecosystem in the state, combining with ex-boss - a Rocket-scientist turned Programmer turned CEO who I would need more than a blog to introduce. I have to confess that it was a bit tough for me to answer them initially. To give my readers a context, here are the assumptions that people keep while asking this questions: HR consulting means 'recruitment' - that too 'sourcing' resumes - worst still - the keyword searching variety. After I shake my head with...

June 2018 also means that I'm going to be stepping into my 20th year as a Human Resource a.k.a. #HR management professional.  I remember being very excited when I got to hear for the first time via our Organisational Behaviour class that Work itself is a classification of motivators. Looking back on my first five years of Corporate life - I cannot remember many role descriptions from recruiters including the ones I made for my first employer (a Rayon yarn manufacturing plant) which exemplified 'work itself'.  It's towards early part of 2010 that such descriptions were slowly found - albeit rare.  Come to think of it most other forms of motivations propounded by theories, have now being questioned - the famous among them being Maslow's  Hierarchy of needs  theory.  Why did it take over sixty years to question any theory is a valid question I have.  Maybe this podcast about Why Bschools should be bull dozed - by the Guardian provides some answers ?...

Yesterday evening while driving back from Alappuzha district where I had gone to Umpire an all kerala T20 cricket tournament, I happened to listen to this  www.ted.com  talk.  Not sure what made me tune in to this particular talk from the list of suggestions which my mobile app had thrown up for me at that time. I guess the words 'Great' and 'Coach' may have made some influence. Here is the talk which I'm referring to: It's interesting to see the comparison that the speaker makes between the traditional pedagogical view (read - as followed by most academicians) and the view that professional sportspersons take when they are attempting to travel from 'Good to Great'. What I liked about the whole thing is that there is no mention of any commercial connections like certifications while espousing the value of coaching.  To me the commercial interests have made very relevant concepts like coaching (discussed here) frowned upon by the very folks w...

Context for this blog is my recent interactions over social media with groups of people in my state who are kind of re-inventing the wheel when it comes to using updated pedagogy for teaching and learning. When one hails from the first state within a country which was declared 100% literate some years ago - one tends to develop a unique outlook towards teaching and learning. As a result, one's expectations from Kerala's teachers will be higher. If I put myself in such shoes, it gets coupled with the fact that my parents happen to be teachers (Mom taught Maths and Dad taught Geography to army men).  Due a combination of forces, my mediocrity meter may have become a bit more sensitive than normal. My exposure to the Education Industry (yes, it's become an industry during my time) as an HR professional gave me many opportunities to look under the veil. From the time I passed out with a campus placement in 1998-99, I've got to witness the transition of management educati...

It was during my BSchool days in Pune (1997-99) that I came to know about Richardo Semler via his book ' Maverick ' and it was to his teachings that I would turn to whenever I was faced with an uncertain situation in the corporate world - the world into which I ventured gleefully from mid 1999. Therefore, it was kind of natural that I bought his 2003 bestseller - The Seven day Weekend , around the time I took up my biggest ever role in Jan 2008 as Employee No. 1 of Arbitron India. For those of you who missed catching up with Richardo's work - You can get this highly recommended book from this link . Here are some videos from Richardo Semler - Some of the stuff which I read became bases for the arguments I had (and won) while setting up workspace at Arbitron India's 45k Sq feet office - yes we had a hammock in our open garden. Some of the 'Freedom' concepts became building blocks of the unique Culture which we documented later in our life story with ...

Stumbled on this talk via the youtube algorithm last week and as I was listening to it, I recollected stuff from another talk by Dan Pink about incentives. Posting the two videos for readers to connect in their own way.  Management is definitely in need of a renaissance... better late than never.  Glad that the  hbr.org  came up with this article - https://hbr.org/2017/09/management-is-much-more-than-a-science

If I would ever look back at my life in search of a time which by itself catalysed the disruption to my own thinking and approach to life, it would be the year 2015 without an iota of doubt.  I've been thinking about writing a note about those for a while now - having raved about the impact this year's events have been creating on my life. so here goes... Yes, it started off with a disruption. The baby i helped nurture was no longer going to be around. The baby grew up and was adopted by another much bigger family where the it's core will become just one of the areas of strength to the new parent company. From a very decent monthly salary  - After starting off as Employee No. 1 for # ArbitronIndia's captive unit in Kochi from Jan 2008, I had not thought about venturing out on my own ever. Yes, not even in my retirement plans. So when the circumstances presented an opportunity to try out something on my own, it was the closeness to comfort (Ex-Colleagues and Boss) th...

So this year we 'did not have' Onam. Yes, Keralites will quickly connect to meaning of this sentence.  Let me explain for the benefit of others. Whenever a Keralite family does not celebrate Onam - they mention that situation as 'not having' Onam.  The most common reason is when you loose a close family member and this particular Onam falls in the ensuing 12 month mourning period. So this year I ended up spending time to write stuff on Onam day and it resulted in this  Facebook post about a recent interest of mine. I realised that this post itself will be buried in my newsfeed on Facebook - going by the fact that I tend to post over 25 times in a day on this medium from the time we gave birth to our baby  - SS Consulting. So in an attempt to make the contents searchable, I'm converting the same into a blog post. On this  # Onam  day, I want to express my gratitude to my friends and related folks who via  Facebook  as well as in person, intr...

So why do over fifteen thousand HR (People Resources?) make it a point to attend SHRM's  annual conference and exposition? This is the question that many relevant stakeholders back in my country has been asking me whenever (it's been 3 times since 2012 now) I get back and start talking about it. Here is my attempt to provide answer(s) with some visuals.  Why pictures? Well, they will get my readers to feel free to imagine and thereby connect and maybe even find their own 'why'. View from baggage claim at NoLA Airport Look what I got to see when I landed at the New Orleans Airport on 18th June. I had taken an early morning flight from Dallas where I had an eventful time with my classmate and his family after I landed in US from Kochi (Via Abu Dhabi) on 16th June. SHRM has got the location into the design of the conference itself and attendees will get to feel and experience the conference in multiple ways - the above is just one of them. So later, when a speaker(s...