Employee Performance and Competency Assessment

Recently I attended a NHRD event in Bengaluru – a panel discussion in groups on “What does it take to become a HR Head”. The program was very unique with the participants divided into groups of 8 to 10 including an accomplished HR Head in each group sharing his/her perspective followed by a short group discussion. The same was then repeated by exchanging the HR Head.

THE ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND, ADDRESS AND SPEAK THE BUSINESS LANGUAGE emerged as the core skill to become a HR Head almost in all groups. The main ability was to align all the people to the organization/business need both in good and bad times. One of the tools used to do this naturally is the annual appraisal of competencies and performance. I am sharing my views on how the rating can be done, so that on the one hand the need of force fitting the assessments to a normal curve becomes redundant due to the inherent robustness of the rating scale and on the other simplified.

It is sufficient to rate just the following 4 factors to assess the performance. I have seen that the gut feel each one of us develop of others is quite uniform when the number of factors are reduced!

1. On time in full delivery of commitments and tasks
2. Safety and quality of products/services and work done
3. Effective and systematic usage of resources (Finance, Space, Materials, Equipment, Machinery, Skills, Time and People)
4. Timely thorough response to requests

The rating scale however has a wider spread of 1 to 7 as explained in the exhibit below.

In a similar way it is sufficient to rate just the following 4 factors to assess the competence. Even in the case of the competency assessment normally the gut feel each one of us develop of others is quite uniform.

1. Self-awareness and self-management competence
2. Social-awareness and teamwork competence
3. Business, professional and functional competence
4. Product, services and organizational core competence

The rating scale even for the competency assessment is spread from 1 to 7. 

The same factors and scale can be used for both individual contributor roles and leadership roles. In the case of the leadership roles it is a common assessment of both the leader and the leader’s team as one entity. Subsequently the most effective way of L&D would be either as individuals or as teams (Leader + Team Members).

Irrespective of different perceptions and opinions, the foundation to get every employee contribute passionately is a uniform assessment from various people. The uniformity in the assessment will be additionally safeguarded by getting the assessor note down evidences for the rating of each factor. This magic is then created since all the employees perceive a very high degree of fairness in the organization.

Wishing you all the best in your excellence journey!

Scarce Resources for Sustainable Profitable Growth

Scarce Resources in general is a result of demand exceeding supply. It was quite enlightening to me, as I recently read a book on economics, that this condition is the source of any business activity. Scarcity breeds businesses and drives progress of our civilisation.

What about competing businesses? The ONLY differentiator between competing businesses is the efficiency of the usage of these scarce resources.

1.        Relevant products and services (including the raw materials)

2.        Leadership bandwidth

3.        Right employees

4.        Willing customers/clients

5.        Knowhow both tacit and explicit

6.        Time to implement an idea

7.        Investors for finance

8.        Partnering vendors

9.        Office and production facilities

10.    Cooperative society

I have further explained each of these scarce resources and identified the key question as well as a rhythm to ask this question.

1. Relevant products and services (including the raw materials)

The most important scarce resource for a business is the availability of appropriate and relevant products and services to meet or fulfil a need, both explicitly stated and implicitly prevalent.

Key Question: Value Innovation?

Rhythm: Once in 3Y

2. Leadership bandwidth

The leadership bandwidth is a very common scarce resource for a business, especially due to us human beings commonly not being able to generate time for the important but generally not urgent tasks.

Key Question: Focus Areas – Maximum 5?

Rhythm: Annual

3. Right employees

I’m sure getting the right employees on board is a humongous challenge for any business due to the gap between what the organisation can offer and what the employee expects and inversely what the organisation expects and the employee can offer.

Key Question: Passionate and Enthused?

Rhythm: Quarterly

4. Willing customers/clients

It is quite obvious that willing customers and clients who are ready to use the products and services is always a major scarce resource irrespective of the life-cycle of an organisation, be it a start-up or a fully matured organisation in its milking stage.

Key Question: Value Perception?
Rhythm: Monthly

5. Knowhow both tacit and explicit

Knowhow of products, services, processes and practices is one of the key scarce resources which many a times is not very explicit, especially because of the gap between knowing and doing – we quite regularly believe knowing without doing and thus base our decision or inaccurate knowledge.

Key Question: Repeat Failures?

Rhythm: Monthly

6. Time to implement an idea

Time necessary to implement any new idea or change of course is a very scarce resource, especially to stay ahead of the competition.

Key Question: Waiting Time?

Rhythm: Monthly

7. Investors for finance

As we all know if we pull up all the available finance in our society, finance should not really be a scarce resource at all. However finance becomes a perennial scarce resource, since finding those investors who are interested in the respective business and are prepared to lend at affordable interest rates is quite a challenge.

Key Question: ROI?

Rhythm: Monthly

8. Partnering vendors

One generally feels that buying something what we need either as direct materials, indirect raw materials or knowhow is not very difficult as long as we have the necessary finance. Feeling and reality being different, it is really quite a challenge to find abundance of vendors who are proactively interested in partnering for a long-term win-win relationship.

Key Question: Reliability and Dependability?

Rhythm: Monthly

9. Office and production facilities

Finding an appropriate and affordable space for office and production facility is equally a challenge and therefore is also a scarce resource for business.

Key Question: Utilisation?

Rhythm: Monthly

10. Cooperative society

Finally, when one wants to achieve sustainable profitable growth it is primordial that inclusive growth becomes the DNA of the business and this can only be achieved with the cooperative society that on the one hand can understand the risks associated with the business and can on the other hand equally appreciate the progress that can be achieved through the respective business.

Key Question: Media Noise?

Rhythm: Monthly

In conclusion I realised that our thinking and actions will become totally different the moment we perceive these 10 business requirements as scarce resources and closely monitor the efficiency of their usage, both objectively and subjectively, and gradually improve to achieve Sustainable Profitable Growth and contribute to the progress of our society.

Standards for Sustainable Profitable Growth

I have been going to various companies from various industries like, manufacturing, construction, hospitality, commodities, etc. in the last the one and a half years and I see that one of the common areas of concern, mainly with the bigger companies, is that the freshers are not industry ready. On the other hand for the smaller companies the challenge is to get everyone across the hierarchy to perform as the owner or promoter intents, thus providing consistent quality and on-time delivery products and services to the customers. The challenge in the case of the smaller companies becomes extremely intense, especially when the next generation of the founder needs to take over.

In this regard I had some thoughts. I see across all companies that neither valid up-to-date standards pertaining to every role, product and service nor appropriate self-learning materials are available. Additionally the handful of “Experts” in every company are always very busy with no quality time to empower others to perform equally well. Therefore the only possibility of self-learning is generally through trial and error, which is a costly one – high rejects, low productivity, increased throughput!

I would now like to go to a totally different aspect regarding the freshers. Even when I graduated almost three decades back, the biggest ability that one would have acquired through formal “spoon fed Guides/Notes” education would be to reproduce the learning with precision, of course with some analysis and judgement, since the popular way of testing is largely during the examinations lasting a couple of hours. This ability surprisingly matches the need to reproduce consistently in almost all the roles in any industry.

Now putting these two together on the one hand most of the roles in a company need just consistent reproduction for developing, planning and delivering on-time quality products and services and to do this the freshers have the right qualification and mindset but on the other hand the companies don’t have valid and up-to-date “Guides/Notes for spoon feeding” and expect the freshers to learn by observing, questioning and practicing – “Trial/Error”. Will just creating Guides/Notes for spoon feeding every role, product/service specialties, etc. solve the dilemma???

I believe making the education system more industry specific first of all may not really be necessary and secondly may NOT BE POSSIBLE since every industry has its own specialties and every company have their core competencies, which cannot be and will not be imparted to public at large. This is what made me take a different approach to a win-win solution for this dilemma.

In my leadership roles in various countries, I have noted that the employees from countries with well-structured and disciplined societies are generally very good in performing few tasks with almost perfection and feel quite insecure to do others they believe they are not good at. In India and to some extent in Brazil, it is different though. The employees from these not so well-structured and disciplined societies are intrinsically self-confident in performing any kind of role after overcoming many obstacles in life, provided the racial discrimination deterrent to free expression is absent. Not only are they self-confident but can improvise a lot to succeed which results in lesser persistence and superficial expertise.

Therefore in societies not so well-structured and disciplined the need for Guides/Notes for spoon feeding every role, product/service specialties, etc. is extremely important for the employees not to learn based only on the Trial/Error strategy, which one would be intrinsically motivated to do! Additionally, since they are self-confident they will be more open to self-learning through Guides/Notes and then to experiment – possibly the most desirable condition in a learning organisation.

I want to thus conclude by encouraging every company to solve this huge competency gap by proactively creating valid standards and appropriate self-learning Audio-Visual Guides/Notes for performing every role and creating every product/service. This approach not only will resolve the dilemma that I had mentioned earlier, but also ensure sustainable, profitable growth through continuous learning.

Result Orientation

Long time ago a few friends used to play football just for fun. One fine day a star football player saw them and recommended them to the national team. Instead of being happy they were very worried, since all this while they played to just have fun without the worry of winning or losing. Losing now would let their country down.

On their way to joining the national team they met a Stranger. Looking at their great physique but worried faces he asked "What is bothering you so much?" They all said in unision "We play football and never used to think of the results. Now that we are part of the national team we cannot stop thinking, especially of not winning".

The Stranger said "Oh I see! How come you never focused on the results while playing?". There was a lull of silence. Then one said hesitantly "We enjoyed just playing so much and maybe always felt and thought there is always  a tomorrow for winning". Another chipped in "We just wanted do our bit the best and leave the rest". Some more comments came in.

Once everyone had spoken out their heart, the Stranger asked "While you waited for tomorrow you must have thought how to do better?”. Everyone nodded. He continued "What if you just thought that there is always another minute to win when you play". They said "Sure it can be done. We will not only be enjoying the game but also continuously thinking of winning!"

Now each one had a kind of a liberated feeling and became very enthusiastic - they had just got a Powerful Insight.

Now the Stranger asked them to think of something that would remind them of enjoying the game but at the same time continuously learning by seeing their results. Each one thought for himself calmly as the Stranger bid goodbye and moved on.

Clarity of Thought

I recently had a short conversation with a start-up entrepreneur stuck on what areas to focus on. He answered my question "What do you like doing the most?" very passionately and I listened to him very attentively. Once I understood his passion, I elaborated the ecosystem of his passion with both his vendors and customers. While doing so it became obvious that just wanting to stick to his passion would intrinsically restrict growth due to forward and backward integration need both his vendors and customers. This is when he got an insight, a powerful one, with total clarity of thought. The next steps then became very easy and we ended this 1h conversation with huge energy pumped in to both of us. This is a very typical coaching conversation. You may want to try this powerful method to get clarity in your thoughts and fulfill your dreams.

Manufacturing Competetiveness

Last week on Friday, 7th November 2013, during the national quality summit organized by the CII, lot of discussions were held about the manufacturing competitiveness in India.

I thought of writing this blog to record my thoughts of the enormous HIDDEN potential we have in our country that can be harnessed to reach great heights.

I would like to start by stating our JUGAD ability as a huge strength to improvise, that we learn from a very early age due to a huge uncertainty in the daily routine. This surely is not the case with the countries dominated by manufacturing industry. Are we using this huge JUGAD potential???

Let me share my views about the competence and qualification. We all know that we need to have exceptional merit or connections, good resources,.... to get qualified. On the other hand, ones landing in Industrial Training Institutes not necessarily are incapable. Thus it is really not uncommon, especially to have the fresh graduates as front line managers with significantly less competence that the workmen. Thus the FRONT LINE MANAGERS normally have a role of leading senior and more intelligent subordinates. Even with a good lot of leadership experience this kind of a team to lead is quite challenging. Just imagining their condition and their effectiveness. It is quite interestingly different in the advanced manufacturing economies, where education in based on merit and generally the less capable ones end up as workers, making the life of Front Line Managers easier. Do our workmen need FRONT LINE MANAGERS???

In all the advanced manufacturing countries the basic livelihood is not endangered, since arbitrary firing is not easy and even if a worker were to be fired, the social security system supports in some way. Whereas in India, unfortunately, many companies, the big ones, pride themselves in flexible manpower - outsourced CONTRACT workmen who can be "Hired and Fired" at will. Some companies come up with similar models but with different terminology of "On Job Trainees", Temporaries, etc. Just imagine what would be going through a worker who is either a temporary or a contract workmen for years - sometimes > 10 Y. Will these CONTRACT workmen be engaged with the company???

Imagine how it would be when we get the workmen fully engaged by first ensuring PEOPLE QUALITY and DIGNITY before product/service quality.
Imagine how it would be if we get our workmen to take on some coordinating roles on rotation to become a SELF MANAGING TEAM without the front line manager.
Imagine a system of remuneration based on CONTINUOUS LEARNING and TEACHING using the Jugad abilities.

The enormous hidden potential can in my opinion only be released provided we relook at some conventional wisdom, like our payment systems, hierarchical structure, accountability for down stream performance, etc. You may want to check out the functional value stream, BITS and Timeout in the following L2L system presentation.