Evolution from Collaboration to Competition

Long ago, in the village of Karmapatna, life was peaceful. It was an agricultural community.  Men would return from the fields before sundown.  Before supper the young boys who had some energy left would love to play the game of Corbat.  Corbat was a game similar to the modern game of table tennis or badminton.  Instead of the sophisticated racket and the ball/ shuttle cock, this was played using a light wooden spatula type bat and a light cork ball. The court was similar to the badminton court. There was one player on each side and both had to keep the ball in the air as long as possible. They continued to play as long as they are able to keep the ball in the air and 5 set of games are allowed, before another pair takes over the court to play. Sometimes, there were more pairs of players waiting in the stands before they got a chance to play.

Let us draw a comparison between the modern game of badminton and the game of Corbat.  In the game of Badminton, each player tries to hit / place the shuttle in such a way that the player on the other side is not able to return the shot. Points are given for every such successful hit and the game comes to end after one of the players has scored 21 points. The player who reaches the target of 21 points is declared the winner. In this game the player’s compete to beat the other one down as soon as possible. In the game of Corbat, the players collaborate to keep the ball in the air as long as possible. In both games, the players enjoy and burn enough calories!

So how have we moved from collaboration to competition? For this we need to thank the Industrial Engineer and the Management Accountant.  They felt that there should be improvement in each of the sub process and that there must be stretch goals, individual performance and incentives. They believe that the total performance will be more, if all the individual performances are improved. After all “The total is the sum of the parts”.  The rational thinker will agree that to achieve total optimization, each of the components must be fully optimized.   So these scientific managers came up with the idea of a fair reward system.  The players should not drop the ball at their end to keep the game continuing. So they rewarded the opponent with a point, if you missed and failed to keep the ball in the air. What the other player understood was that he should hit the shuttle in such a way that you are not able to pick the serve. The ultimate result was that the rallies became shorter and the game ended sooner.  Everyone cheered, as now we have a faster game and an efficient one, supposedly. 

Our frame of measurement and evaluation has thus changed over the years. Whether it is the game of test cricket or the old 3 hour movie, we have moved to things like the T20 or the shorter versions of cinemas or TV serials. In education, we have moved to the semester system from the annual examination system, where the focus is to clear the semester and never to look back again. The priority is on scores and credits rather than overall concepts and knowledge.  Everything is so modular, that ignorance in one area can still ensure a good overall rank. The emphasis has been on specialization rather than on overall problem solving.

In industry,cost accountants have been able to assign a cost to every activity. Isn't this very important?  We can certainly eliminate those activities where we see no value. Historically, when an activity was carried out, there would have been some value derived, but the activity might have become a ritual because of improper implementation. Since the frame of reference has changed, we would not be able to see value in some activities now.  A typical example is training.  We may not be able to see immediate value and hence it is a cost in the short term and not good for the bottom line, but then it has immense value, provided it is properly implemented. Because of these costing systems, departments within organizations move from collaboration to competition to prove their self-worth and fight for resources. Organizations exist to serve customers, but then these benchmarks and metrics of efficiency do not enhance in achieving the overall vision and mission of the organization.

Collaboration ensures that mutual weakness is addressed, lacunae covered up and there is overall good. Competition tries to exploit the inherent weakness, foster jealousy and weakens the overall system. Different organs in the human body do not compete, but collaborate. There is no superior or inferior organ – The ear lobe is as important as the brain!

How should you hire?

Why is it that talent is difficult to find? We always hear that there is always a shortage of good talent. This comment is like talking about the economy, inflation or weather! This is the only area, where no license is required to pass a judgement.

We want to be specific, but aim to create everything generic. This mentality gets ingrained right from school days. If you want to teach history of India, you tend to cover everything from Mohenjo-daro to Modern India. Everything has to be crammed. If you do not remember some portions, and unfortunately if you get questions from that section, you will be judged as “No good". The emphasis is mostly on testing what you do not know, rather than what you know. Let us now shift to the corporate scene.

It begins from the "Job Description & Skills". Someone in the past must have written a verbose piece about the job and subsequently generations have copied and modified from a historical piece. Why so? Let's take a standard line that can be seen in most job descriptions: “Must have good communication skills” - Is this not to be taken for granted? Will any applicant concede that he has poor communication skills? What is meant here is that, the potential incumbent must be able to effectively communicate his thoughts & ideas. However what are mostly assessed is the accent and style and a judgement passed on the incumbent. Most of the statements in – a typical job description are - generally vague (“Cover Your Ass” types) and not objective and measurable. Another example of a job description could be : “The incumbent will be responsible for all sales for the state of Karnataka”. What should the interviewer assess here ? He would have to get himself convinced, if the incumbent has covered a similar territory and handled similar type of customers. What was the incumbent’s person contribution and achievements? What metrics did the incumbent use to show that he had done a good job. Did he do anything creative in this role or was it just a supervisory role.  Many sales guys have good gift of the garb, so the interviewer must ensure that he is able to see through.

 The next step is the interview process. In the guise of involving the "team” in the hiring process, and to ensure that there is acceptability of the incumbent, the number of interviewers invariably is large. The interviewers nominated have, in many instances, just a little more experience than the interviewee. What happens is the inexperienced (experience in the assessment process) interviewer, instead spends time in trying to impress the candidate, with a display of his own knowledge in his limited areas. For this, he would pose questions from his domain of strength. If the quality of answers does not match with his knowledge, the candidate is judged as not suitable. How will the interviewer ask something that he himself does not know?  After all, the interviewer has also learnt many things, in course of his work. So this is like the Johari window – (I know, you do not know quadrant - the facade)  From my experience over the last 25 years and more, I have seen that 95 % of the organizations do not have a proper framework for assessment. Even though the interviewing process is classified as Technical interview / HR interview, these are mostly skewed. Hardly any one understands the concept of “Fitment”. Assessment of fitment can be done only at the level of a Business Manager or higher.

Since doing a post-mortem for rejection is seldom done and not worth doing, it is safer from the interviewer's perspective to “fail" a candidate rather than “pass". The fear of the interviewer is that if an incompetent candidate is judged as “good" the interviewer would have to morally and even maybe personally accept the blame for the wrong selection. Why should he take the risk? Will a junior interviewer have the maturity to hire or acknowledge someone who is smarter than himself?  So the result will always be to hire someone less competent and thus a giant builds a team of pygmies.  After all in today's fast changing environment, where the "average engagement span" of an employee in a company is just about 3 years, how can the impact on contribution be assessed?

In Public sectors / government organization, how many times does a junior officer have a say in the selection process? Never - and the result is far lower attrition. Most of the employees in a public sector are generally competent and fundamentally strong (skill wise), but then the problem of performance (in most cases) is not on account of the individual ability, but the working environment.

Conclusion:  

Always hire for Attitude, Sincerity and Core Values.  Check out the motivation level of the candidate. What is it that he is really looking for? You have to go behind the veil to see the driving factor. There will always be a mismatch between what the candidate says and what the candidate really wants to do. What is really frustrating the candidate in his current role? For the initial hires, please have multiple meetings in different settings. The 2^nd or the 3^rd meeting will uncover a lot of things, which would have gone unnoticed in the earlier meetings. Now days, because of traffic and internet, face to face meetings are reduced and some are telephonic. Please understand that you will miss out the body language if there are no face to face meetings. As a thumb rule, at least the first 25 employees must be met and screened thoroughly. If you get this right, skill can always be built and anyway, one needs to re-skill on a regular basis to meet the market needs. Attitude is very important. There are people who work only for money or monetary rewards; some require a lot of ego massage. In the start-up phase stay clear of hiring such people. Their ethos attitude percolates in the system and integrates with the DNA of the company, which is the foundation of company culture. No doubt, not hiring may delay the company in their product launches or take off phase, but it is worth it.  Focusing only on performance at this stage might look rational, but is the seed for tempting the founders to bend the rules or negotiate on values. Once these are negotiated, you will lose the moral high ground to preach to employees- especially during all hands meetings.

-0-

(A slightly different version was published in Yourstory.in, with a focus on hiring for start-ups)

The Human Factor - Employer Brandbuilding

The Human Factor

I had recently shared my experience in Employer Brand building for the job seekers. Word of mouth ,sharing  of pleasant experiences are the most credible initiatives, and it has a snowballing effect.