“Soap bubble” - Transition to a new role

In the corporate environment, change of job either by joining a new organization or job rotations is important and inevitable.  These changes (new person in a new role) helps the individual to learn / contribute in the organization and also gives a fresh perspective to the function.

My questions to the hiring manger are, when we get a new person to the new role (internal or external hire),

-          - are we expecting the person jump start and produce results ?

-          - are we giving her enough time to settle down ?

-          - are we allocating resources in educating about the org / role ?

-          - do we have sufficient self-learning material?

I    I feel as a hiring manager we need to spend quality time with the “new hire” on induction, not just for the job role, also about the group, organization, people, culture, processes, decisions, goals, etc.   I often see Managers are in a rush to deploy the person into the role (billable project or otherwise) and expect the person to produce value (results) quickly and allow a natural path of long learning cycle about the rest of the organization.

I am sharing my experience when I joined this organization little more than three years ago.   I was joining this company after a long stint of 22 years in my previous organization;  I had some butterflies in my stomach.   I also knew in the new role, I will be inducting lot of leaders and hence decided to watch my transition bit more granular for the first 90 days.

First, I said to myself ; in my first 90 days, I will take over from the incumbent like a “soap bubble” and I will ensure “the bubble” does not break.  I also said, I will neither attempt to re-size nor reshape the bubble.  The meaning here is, will understand the details on its own merits; however set aside the changes / recommendations post 90 days.

Second, I did jot down all my interactions with the colleagues and categorized them as “value consumed” or “value delivered”.    If I had learnt / understood something from someone, I have categorized those interactions as “value consumed” and given a numerical value of “minus 1” and if have I have contributed something significant in the conversation, solutions, etc, categorized those as “value delivered” and given a numerical value of “plus 1”.   At the end of each day, computed the cumulative net value delivered to the organization and plotted a graph.   As expected the net value was –ve initially and more –ve later, less –ve over a period of time, break-even and grew +ve thereafter.    Interestingly,  it took about seven weeks for a break-even in my case.

Third, I have broken down the net value further by functions (ex: Delivery, pre-sales, Talent acquisition, etc).  The observation here is, some of the function had a more +ve net value and some of had more –ve net value at the end of 90 days.  I am not advocating more positive is good or more negative is bad.    The point, I am driving is depends on the role we are hiring the person, if we can steer the induction we may get better results.  

Fourth, I have also recorded the people who have spent time with me in my transition and group them as top management, Sr management (mostly peers in my case), team, self-reading, etc.  In my first 90 days, about 137 hours are spent on me in various forms of interactions.  Interestingly, self-reading was on the lower side.  The learning I had on this is, when we hire new people, it is important to spend time with in educating about the organization (beyond the job role)  and these interactions are not one way, it has to be on push-pull mode, meaning the new employee has to pull people into the conversations. 

Fifth, I had jotted down my recommendations on what we need to do better; more from an “outside-in” perspective and did present this to my mangers after about 120 days of joining the organization. My managers not only appreciated those views, also given me green signal to implement some of those and I am glad to say more the three-fourths of these ideas are implemented.

My transition has given me learning on hiring and inducting people in new roles, the key ones are

1      1) Allow new hire to understand the organization beyond the job role (don’t break the soap bubble).

2      2) Focus the transition on the key areas beyond the job role as well.

3      3) Allocate time and resources for transition (including the hiring manger’s time).

4     4) Motivate the person to get fresh perspective (outside-in) in the early days, before s/he get used the organization.    Recognize good ideas and explore implementation.

5     5) Create self-reading material.

Thank you for reading this, looking forward for your comments.

Correct is wrong?

Of late, I keep asking this question to myself “is Correct is wrong?”.

These questions come to me from few day to day activities. Let me quote few examples;- in our office campus, we have a long driveway from the main road to the campus and the speed limit set is 20Km/h in the driveway and parking lots. I normally maintian the speed limit; but I found many overtake me, some get irritated and honk and few even make gestures for my “wrong doing” of driving slow. Me driving slow (on the speed limit), make others to overtake, which is increasing risks to other drivers / road users (for which I am feeling bad), and so is my correct is wrong?

Very recently; I landed in Mumbai airport and went to queue “free phone counter” for taxi booking. There was only person on the phone; I was just giving some private space for him and wating for my turn for the phone. As soon the person kept the phone, a young educated lady barged in and picked up the phone for taxi booking. Here again, me patiently waiting for my turn and also giving private space for the other caller is wrong? – Correct is wrong!

There are many small instances, which I think it is correct, but others think it is not or not very appropirate. Do you also face these kinds of conflicts? What do you think?

Friday Lunch Box

First, a small introduction about me as a preamble to the topic. I am widowed about two years ago when my wife died leaving behind me and our 8 months old daugther and 7 year old son. From then on I had a play a dual role at home (father and mother). As a conscious fat(mot)her I wanted to give the best to my children and to an large extent they should not miss anything b'cos of loss of their mother.

Now, let me come to my daugher who is 2.5 years now and for the last four-five months she is in a play school, spends about 3 hours everyday. Mostly only moms come in to the playschool, to drop the children, school function, trip, etc and I will be lone dad in those school events. How do I make my daughter feel she is special?

I have started making her lunch box slightly different every Friday, the same food (dosas, chappati, etc) is made in a different look and feel. I started designing dosas on the “tawa” and called it (atleast me and my daugher), areoplane dosa, girl dosa, star dosa, shapes, giraffe dosa, traffic light dosa, etc. This little thing has helped my daughter to eat at school (without getting fed by someone) and at the same time she is felt very special. In fact the school teachers are now looking forward for Jasmitha’s (my daughter) “Friday Lunch Box”

Drawing parallel into the corporate leadership world, do you think we need to make our people special? My view is “yes” and we can do this in a simple way, it need not be weekly, but can be yearly or on some events. One idea is to wish them on their anniversary, not only birthday and marriage, on the anniversary day of joining the organisation. We shoudn’t put a software and make “auto text” these wishes, it should be so special, write personal mails, it will be even great if you handwrite them a card or even in a piece of paper.

Let me give you some examples which I came across on making someone special.
- Last year one day I got a mail which said “three years to go” from an ex-colleague who used be one of my supervisor earlier. The meaning was, it is three years to go for me to complete 20 years in the Company. This leader made me so special that day.

- Few months ago, one of my colleague completed 15 years in Wipro. On that day I and my colleague from HR made a surprise visit to his house at 730am, wished him for his long 15 years in the company and thanked his wife and daughter with sweets and flowers for their support. He and his family felt very special.

- During our recent event in our company, I have noticed a group of ~25 people together chatting and taking a group photograph. It is their leader who clings on every opportunity to connect with his team and he used the event more memorable for his team. It is not a surprise that this leader is one of the Best People Manager last year.

Do you think making somemone special in corporate world helps in bonding to the organisation / person? Can you share with the group on some of simple things you have done to make people around you special and the occassions you have been made special by someone.

Thanks for reading this blog and your comments and now I need to think of what snacks for next “Friday Lunch Box” (any ideas for Friday lunch box are welcome)