My Dear Reader,
As a facuty who see graduating students and as on who has recruited graduates over the years whilst doing duty in the corporate world , there has been a change in the kind , type and quality of the graduating lot.
However to know what are the seemingly ,'New roles , Rules and Resources enjoy your read below as you come across some significant shifts.
Happy reading
A.S.Prasad
Graduate Interns: New Roles, Rules and Resources
by Greg Williams and Stuart H. Weinstein
Most companies have made bad hiring decisions because they weren't able to validate an employee's performance. Since today's interns may be tomorrow's employees, getting access to and a sneak peek at potential talent provides progressive organizations with a distinct competitive advantage.
One of the best indicators of future performance is past performance. Yet many companies are not aware of all the skills and experiences interns have, let alone what new roles they might conceivably play. Given increasing competition for interns, talent managers must move beyond traditional mindsets and recruiting approaches if they are to set the stage for successful intern experiences. When coupled with recommendations from university faculty members, internships provide an excellent means by which to assess potential candidates' suitability and to see how graduate students perform in the workplace.
Graduate students who have progressed from undergraduate to graduate studies without a period of full-time work may have little or no related experience to include on their resume or curriculum vitae. Thus internships become an advantage to both parties, as they bridge a gap - between what the students have amassed in terms of completed coursework and on-the-job experience - by offering opportunities to learn and exhibit real-time application of skills, knowledge and attitudes.
Recruiting Practices Then and Now
Full-time employee recruiting practices have changed a great deal in recent years - for instance, with the advent of social networking - but intern recruitment practices have not. Traditional processes are still the most popular.
Typically businesses recruit interns by contacting a college or university career planning or internship office and indicating they would like to host interns in their work units. Students apply for the available positions and are interviewed. This passive approach is similar to traditional recruiting and interviewing processes, but companies cannot rely on this method alone.
They need to build ongoing relationships with colleges and universities that go far beyond internships. This approach usually has a number of similarities with corporate business development, a strategy that emphasizes building long-term relationships with clients, subcontractors and other enterprises. Forward-looking companies provide guest speakers in classes, access to resources and equipment in their industry, service on college and university committees and boards, and more. For example, Booz Allen Hamilton is taking this approach and has built a successful partnership with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
In most companies, it would not be necessary to commit a dedicated resource to oversee the internship program; however, most colleges and universities welcome a coordinator for these activities so they have a single point of contact. Further, if the program follows the procedures employed for in-processing, supervising and evaluating regular employees, the intern's supervisor will be more comfortable with the process, and this will better enable the intern to blend into the organization's daily routine.
Colleges and universities are more inclined to look favorably upon businesses that meet their academic needs, and they are equally willing to provide additional services in exchange for meaningful student internship placements. Therefore, the aforementioned approach takes a more long-term outlook, which may be too slow for many commercial organizations. However, it does seem to prove to be more effective.
In the past, graduate interns were stereotyped as young and lacking any paid professional experience, with few relevant skills, such as formulating job expectations, navigating workplace politics or demonstrating professional etiquette. It was often assumed that they had little idea what they wanted to get out of an internship and thus had few, if any, goals for the experience. This led many employers to think interns were of little value to their organizations. Subsequently, interns were relegated to sitting around unsupervised with little meaningful work to do. In a worst-case scenario, interns were given clerical tasks or work on projects that no one else wanted to do. Things are different today.
"Project teams were pleasantly surprised to discover that graduate interns were able to make significant contributions to training projects because of their expertise in instructional design and adult learning theory, as well as their maturity and wealth of other work experience," said Deborah Petska, director of workplace learning at Danya International Inc.
To provide the most realistic experience for the intern, it is beneficial to mirror a job setting, including a resume or curriculum vitae review, which may include courses taken; interviews; task assignments; formal and informal evaluations and feedback; and recommendations for improvement. Tasks should be assigned that will provide the intern with opportunities to reinforce academic courses taken. This likely will require some pre-planning. Supervision and follow-through will provide a relevant and meaningful outcome for the intern as well as the sponsoring organization.
The New Intern Profile: What They Want
Some talent leaders may not think internship programs are a good strategy to recruit experienced candidates. But one of the fastest-growing segments in the college demographic is graduate students of a nontraditional age. Today's interns may be in their late 20s or older, working full time, attending classes part time or potentially married and have other responsibilities besides their academic studies. These students also may possess a great deal of work experience. For example, at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, some of the graduate interns are so experienced that they could teach some classes in their program.
Graduate interns are typically career oriented and motivated to succeed. They're usually interested in capturing genuine learning experiences that will add to their knowledge, skills and competencies. Further, they want to gain experience working on projects in which they can claim a legitimate experience, one they can use to enhance their professional portfolios. In some cases, interns may actually have had more experience in one particular area, such as technology, than a number of employees at the internship site.
What Companies Want
Ultimately, companies want the opportunity to find qualified interns who they can potentially hire as full-time employees. They want interns who are capable of doing professional-level work. But many talent leaders charged with running intern programs underestimate the amount of time and effort it takes to recruit, select, supervise and evaluate quality interns. Further, if the only opportunity organizations can see in hosting interns is to procure various sources of free labor, they are taking the wrong approach, one that will only hurt them in the end.
Internships used to mean staff augmentation, with or without compensation, for the organization providing the opportunity. That approach yielded little benefit to the students if the work they performed was not challenging or their presence was viewed as a burden to the company's managers. The most unproductive results came from companies that thought of interns as an extra pair of hands to do errands. The organizations that benefited the most from hosting interns made an effort to create learning environments that reflect the same work assignments - usually on a smaller scale and under supervision; performance assessments; and outcomes their regular employees receive.
They Work if You Work Them
Managing interns effectively is not much different than managing full-time employees. It's critical that interns have an effective orientation to the organization as well as an initial training period in which to get up to speed. This is especially helpful to establish ground rules and set a positive tone for the experience. As with regular employees, clear, effective communication with interns is critical to promote their success. It's important to establish regular meetings to assess interns' progress, give them the opportunity to ask questions and assist them with any challenges they may be experiencing.
It's also helpful to ask the intern what he or she hopes to gain from the experience. This can help to clarify the intern's goals and determine which ones or how many are feasible to accomplish during the internship.
First and foremost, interns should have meaningful work to do. Since meaningful is a relative term, it is important to know that everyone's motivation is different. What motivates one person may not motivate another. Interns should have appropriate resources, information, supervision and support to complete any assigned work successfully. They should have close supervision, ideally by someone who can mentor them.
When it comes to internships, there are a number of benefits for both sponsoring organizations and interns. Interns benefit by getting professional-level experience they can add to their career portfolios. Companies benefit because interns provide them with fresh perspectives, new ideas and necessary competencies. More important, talent leaders have the opportunity to connect with prospective employees early in the recruitment cycle in a low-risk situation.
The hiring process to bring interns onboard full time doesn't need to be different from that of a regular candidate. Interns who complete their internships successfully should have to interview for full-time positions. However, each intern would have the benefit of documented experience within the company, a period of performance and a strong idea of what the company really wants from its talent. Effective organizations already have processes in place to orient and support new hires, so talent managers could conceivably adapt these same systems and use them to support interns.
Successful companies are approaching intern recruitment from a business development angle. They are engaging universities in a wide variety of ways that go far beyond the actual internship. The biggest challenge talent managers face when engaging this demographic is ensuring their organizations sincerely believe interns have new skills to offer and can play engaging and beneficial roles in the company.
[About the Authors: Greg Williams is director of and clinical assistant professor in the instructional systems development graduate program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Stuart H. Weinstein is a senior managing consultant with IBM human capital management training solutions.]
LULU PAGE
Friday, May 21, 2010
Five Traits of High-Potential Employees
Dear Reader,
Most of us are employees at some organization are the others .
There are those who are employers.
The majority of the people are employees
Of these many are high performers.
what makes them so?
In order to know more as you scratch away at your grey cells,
here's read that may accentuate the scratching process;
Five Traits of High-Potential Employees
By Eric J. Frankel
As the parent of 10th-grade twins, their differing levels of motivation toward academics are both fascinating and unnerving. While one says "no thanks" to schoolwork, the other thinks "never enough." An array of factors makes them perform in the way they do or do not: environment, confidence, maturity, interest level and vision.
No matter the managerial oversight (mom and dad), the training and learning (teachers) or the incentives (grades, college), they respond to academics at their own pace, in their own style and based upon their own internal stimulus.
The academic world is reminiscent of the unique emotions each individual carries toward specific subject matter and learning situations. While many have the ability to perform at an "A level," talent managers must find that unique combination of environment, industry and team that optimizes motivation and potential.
Do your key employees carry a "never enough" attitude, an unrelenting desire to move forward, and recognize progress as the only option, regardless of what recent business and personal situations dictate?
Talent managers need to ensure that leaders and high-potential employees:
1. Accentuate the exceptional.
Employees' best traits are magnified and spread exponentially when they are at the top of their game. In sports, the player with smarts and leadership skills vastly raises overall team performance. The "never enough" mentality delivers focus and charisma to generate immense functional and organizational buzz and goodwill.
2. Embrace their environment.
Certain situations don't captivate us. For instance, I left a large multinational company more than two decades ago because even though partners were seeking my involvement in sales and marketing, I had no interest. Six years later, I started my own business and embraced sales and marketing. At my previous employer, the timing, the industry and the people were wrong; as an entrepreneur, my creative passions and latent sales and marketing skills awoke.
3. Share knowledge.
The "never enough" crowd not only gets it (combined intellect as well as business and interpersonal savvy), but they also share it by investing time and energy to drive the performance of peers, subordinates and the entire organization. "Top-echelon employees don't just focus on narrow self-interest; they understand personal progress means a genuine desire to collaborate with others and promote the shared success of the organization, " according to Carol Bellini of Transforming Strengths LLC.
4. Possess vision where others don't.
To individuals with the "never enough" mentality, clarity results from hard work; listening intently to internal and external colleagues or thought leaders; and relying on finely tuned instincts.
5. Forge ahead with attitude.
To individuals who say "never enough," adversity is only a temporary obstacle; recession translates to innovation; problem means opportunity; and competition is recast as differentiation.
[About the Author: Eric Frankel is the creator of 10 Minutes to Change, a program that offers HR departments strategies for maximizing the effectiveness for all human capital initiatives.]
Most of us are employees at some organization are the others .
There are those who are employers.
The majority of the people are employees
Of these many are high performers.
what makes them so?
In order to know more as you scratch away at your grey cells,
here's read that may accentuate the scratching process;
Five Traits of High-Potential Employees
By Eric J. Frankel
As the parent of 10th-grade twins, their differing levels of motivation toward academics are both fascinating and unnerving. While one says "no thanks" to schoolwork, the other thinks "never enough." An array of factors makes them perform in the way they do or do not: environment, confidence, maturity, interest level and vision.
No matter the managerial oversight (mom and dad), the training and learning (teachers) or the incentives (grades, college), they respond to academics at their own pace, in their own style and based upon their own internal stimulus.
The academic world is reminiscent of the unique emotions each individual carries toward specific subject matter and learning situations. While many have the ability to perform at an "A level," talent managers must find that unique combination of environment, industry and team that optimizes motivation and potential.
Do your key employees carry a "never enough" attitude, an unrelenting desire to move forward, and recognize progress as the only option, regardless of what recent business and personal situations dictate?
Talent managers need to ensure that leaders and high-potential employees:
1. Accentuate the exceptional.
Employees' best traits are magnified and spread exponentially when they are at the top of their game. In sports, the player with smarts and leadership skills vastly raises overall team performance. The "never enough" mentality delivers focus and charisma to generate immense functional and organizational buzz and goodwill.
2. Embrace their environment.
Certain situations don't captivate us. For instance, I left a large multinational company more than two decades ago because even though partners were seeking my involvement in sales and marketing, I had no interest. Six years later, I started my own business and embraced sales and marketing. At my previous employer, the timing, the industry and the people were wrong; as an entrepreneur, my creative passions and latent sales and marketing skills awoke.
3. Share knowledge.
The "never enough" crowd not only gets it (combined intellect as well as business and interpersonal savvy), but they also share it by investing time and energy to drive the performance of peers, subordinates and the entire organization. "Top-echelon employees don't just focus on narrow self-interest; they understand personal progress means a genuine desire to collaborate with others and promote the shared success of the organization, " according to Carol Bellini of Transforming Strengths LLC.
4. Possess vision where others don't.
To individuals with the "never enough" mentality, clarity results from hard work; listening intently to internal and external colleagues or thought leaders; and relying on finely tuned instincts.
5. Forge ahead with attitude.
To individuals who say "never enough," adversity is only a temporary obstacle; recession translates to innovation; problem means opportunity; and competition is recast as differentiation.
[About the Author: Eric Frankel is the creator of 10 Minutes to Change, a program that offers HR departments strategies for maximizing the effectiveness for all human capital initiatives.]
Monday, May 17, 2010
Have Breakfast... or...Be Breakfast!
Dear Reader,
This article that i have shared below, with you is an article whose title is very much a part of one of the lessons i drive in my knowledge sharings at the academia.
Please do enjoy it as written by a distinguished faculty, Dr. Y. L. R. Moorthi at IIM-B, India.
Happy Reading.
A.S.Prasad.
"Have Breakfast... or...Be Breakfast!"
By
Y. L. R. MOORTHI
[Management Views from IIMB is an exclusive column written every two weeks for
india.wsj.com
by faculty members of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.]
Who sells the largest number of cameras in India ?
Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones.
Reason being cameras bundled with cellphones are outselling stand alone cameras. Now, what prevents the cellphone from replacing the camera outright? Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note.
Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India ? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours).
Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India . That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel's parent) are breathing easy you can't be farther from truth.
Nokia confessed that they all but missed the smartphone bus. They admit that Apple's Iphone and Google's Android can make life difficult in future. But you never thought Google was a mobile company, did you? If these illustrations mean anything, there is a bigger game unfolding. It is not so much about mobile or music or camera or emails?
The "Mahabharat" (the great Indian epic battle) is about "what is tomorrow's personal digital device"? Will it be a souped up mobile or a palmtop with a telephone? All these are little wars that add up to that big battle. Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question - "who is my competitor?"
Once in a while, to intrigue my students I toss a question at them. It says "What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak, explain?" The smart ones get the answer almost immediately. Sony defined its market as audio (music from the walkman). They never expected an IT company like Apple to encroach into their audio domain. Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer maker has both audio and video capabilities. So what made Sony think he won't compete on pure audio? "Elementary Watson". So also Kodak defined its business as film cameras, Sony defines its businesses as "digital."
In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had to. It did not ask the question "who is my competitor for tomorrow?" The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared "internet is a fad!" and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape. The point is not who is today's competitor. Today's competitor is obvious. Tomorrow's is not.
In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India ? Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget. So much so, that the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008. ( India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if there is one place where Newton 's law of gravity is applicable besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its original level in India . PC's price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are making money. Then it will surely be RIP!
India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie. Cricket became film's competitor. On the eve of IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what in India are called 3 hour "tamasha" (entertainment) . Cricket season might push films out of the market.
Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years. When did you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is "I don't remember!" For some time there was a mild substitute for the typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be seen.
One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms." What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!
On a lighter vein, who are the competitors for authors? Joke spewing machines? (Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, himself a Pole, tagged a Polish joke telling machine to a telephone much to the mirth of Silicon Valley ). Or will the competition be story telling robots? Future is scary! The boss of an IT company once said something interesting about the animal called competition. He said "Have breakfast ...or.... be breakfast"! That sums it up rather neatly.
---- Dr. Y. L. R. Moorthi is a professor at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore . He is an M.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and a post graduate in management from IIM, Bangalore
This article that i have shared below, with you is an article whose title is very much a part of one of the lessons i drive in my knowledge sharings at the academia.
Please do enjoy it as written by a distinguished faculty, Dr. Y. L. R. Moorthi at IIM-B, India.
Happy Reading.
A.S.Prasad.
"Have Breakfast... or...Be Breakfast!"
By
Y. L. R. MOORTHI
[Management Views from IIMB is an exclusive column written every two weeks for
india.wsj.com
by faculty members of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.]
Who sells the largest number of cameras in India ?
Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones.
Reason being cameras bundled with cellphones are outselling stand alone cameras. Now, what prevents the cellphone from replacing the camera outright? Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note.
Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India ? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours).
Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India . That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel's parent) are breathing easy you can't be farther from truth.
Nokia confessed that they all but missed the smartphone bus. They admit that Apple's Iphone and Google's Android can make life difficult in future. But you never thought Google was a mobile company, did you? If these illustrations mean anything, there is a bigger game unfolding. It is not so much about mobile or music or camera or emails?
The "Mahabharat" (the great Indian epic battle) is about "what is tomorrow's personal digital device"? Will it be a souped up mobile or a palmtop with a telephone? All these are little wars that add up to that big battle. Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question - "who is my competitor?"
Once in a while, to intrigue my students I toss a question at them. It says "What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak, explain?" The smart ones get the answer almost immediately. Sony defined its market as audio (music from the walkman). They never expected an IT company like Apple to encroach into their audio domain. Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer maker has both audio and video capabilities. So what made Sony think he won't compete on pure audio? "Elementary Watson". So also Kodak defined its business as film cameras, Sony defines its businesses as "digital."
In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had to. It did not ask the question "who is my competitor for tomorrow?" The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared "internet is a fad!" and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape. The point is not who is today's competitor. Today's competitor is obvious. Tomorrow's is not.
In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India ? Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget. So much so, that the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008. ( India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if there is one place where Newton 's law of gravity is applicable besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its original level in India . PC's price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are making money. Then it will surely be RIP!
India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie. Cricket became film's competitor. On the eve of IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what in India are called 3 hour "tamasha" (entertainment) . Cricket season might push films out of the market.
Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years. When did you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is "I don't remember!" For some time there was a mild substitute for the typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be seen.
One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms." What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!
On a lighter vein, who are the competitors for authors? Joke spewing machines? (Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, himself a Pole, tagged a Polish joke telling machine to a telephone much to the mirth of Silicon Valley ). Or will the competition be story telling robots? Future is scary! The boss of an IT company once said something interesting about the animal called competition. He said "Have breakfast ...or.... be breakfast"! That sums it up rather neatly.
---- Dr. Y. L. R. Moorthi is a professor at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore . He is an M.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and a post graduate in management from IIM, Bangalore
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Work is One Big Fat Teachable Moment by Merrick Rosenberg, MBA
My Dear Reader,
Many if not most of us are people with work - experience.
However how have we been looking at is the big Q.
As days pass, as we change organizations , the Q does not vanish , even if we choose to ignore it.
So to have a glimpse into it here's something which could interest you.
Happy Reading.
With Regards,
A.S.Prasad.
Work is One Big Fat Teachable Moment
by Merrick Rosenberg, MBA
When I speak at conferences about retaining winning talent and the problem of turnover, I often ask attendees to raise their hands if their fathers worked at three or fewer companies throughout their careers.
As you would expect, just about everyone raises their hands. I then ask them a second more revealing question: Raise your hand if you have worked at more than three companies in your career. You guessed it…just about everyone’s hands go up again.
The moral of this story is that people don’t stay at one company for their entire career anymore. In fact, twenty years ago if your resume showed that you switched jobs every three or four years, you would have been perceived as an unstable job-hopper.
Employers would have thought, “Why can’t this person hold onto a job?” Today, you would be seen as a career-oriented go-getter.
There has been a fundamental shift from lifetime employment to lifetime employability. People want to know that no matter what happens with the current employer, they will be employable elsewhere.
In a recent study by Career Systems International, career growth and development was cited by 43 percent of respondents as the reason for staying in organizations. And yet, a McKinsey study found that only 3 percent of 13,000 managers agreed that their organizations were effective at developing people.
The problem is that managers are often not great coaches, and organizations frequently don’t provide the needed training to retain employees. So on one hand, organizations complain about high turnover rates and lack of worker loyalty, yet on the other, these same organizations do not provide the very thing that employees most desire…the opportunity to learn and grow.
The best employees are life-long learners.
High-performers know that work is one big fat teachable moment. They recognize that learning comes from observation, practice, and experience. Further, they proactively seek opportunities to learn from everything they and their coworkers do.
According to research by the U.S. Department of Labor, 70 percent of workplace learning occurs informally, while the remaining 30 percent comes from formal learning programs, such as training and coaching interactions.
Superstar employees don’t wait for training programs to be offered, they seek them out. But more importantly, they also make connections and draw critical insights from everyday experiences.
Individuals who seek learning in everything they do often exhibit the following behaviors:
They are avid readers. They don’t wait for knowledge to come to them.
They pursue it.
They search for greatness and stay close to it. You’ll find these people hanging out with those who talk about what can be, rather than those who whine about what is not.
These individuals find mentors who have walked the path before them and seek their advice.
They volunteer for challenging assignments--the ones that nobody else wants for fear of failure.
They learn from their mistakes, but perhaps more importantly, they learn from others’ mistakes so they don’t have to repeat them.
Looking forward
Individuals who leave an organization hoping that the next employer will better develop them may be sadly disappointed. Growth comes from an unwavering passion to be better and do better.
The future of your organization belongs to individuals who drive their careers by seeking learning in all they do.
Ask yourself a few straightforward questions: Where do you want to be five years from now? What knowledge and skills will you need when you get there? What don’t you know yet or can’t you do yet?
What are you going to do to achieve your goals? Are you taking personal responsibility to develop yourself, or are you expecting your manager or organization to help you?
Commit to making learning a priority and watch your life unfold as the grand tapestry you dreamed it would be.
Many if not most of us are people with work - experience.
However how have we been looking at is the big Q.
As days pass, as we change organizations , the Q does not vanish , even if we choose to ignore it.
So to have a glimpse into it here's something which could interest you.
Happy Reading.
With Regards,
A.S.Prasad.
Work is One Big Fat Teachable Moment
by Merrick Rosenberg, MBA
When I speak at conferences about retaining winning talent and the problem of turnover, I often ask attendees to raise their hands if their fathers worked at three or fewer companies throughout their careers.
As you would expect, just about everyone raises their hands. I then ask them a second more revealing question: Raise your hand if you have worked at more than three companies in your career. You guessed it…just about everyone’s hands go up again.
The moral of this story is that people don’t stay at one company for their entire career anymore. In fact, twenty years ago if your resume showed that you switched jobs every three or four years, you would have been perceived as an unstable job-hopper.
Employers would have thought, “Why can’t this person hold onto a job?” Today, you would be seen as a career-oriented go-getter.
There has been a fundamental shift from lifetime employment to lifetime employability. People want to know that no matter what happens with the current employer, they will be employable elsewhere.
In a recent study by Career Systems International, career growth and development was cited by 43 percent of respondents as the reason for staying in organizations. And yet, a McKinsey study found that only 3 percent of 13,000 managers agreed that their organizations were effective at developing people.
The problem is that managers are often not great coaches, and organizations frequently don’t provide the needed training to retain employees. So on one hand, organizations complain about high turnover rates and lack of worker loyalty, yet on the other, these same organizations do not provide the very thing that employees most desire…the opportunity to learn and grow.
The best employees are life-long learners.
High-performers know that work is one big fat teachable moment. They recognize that learning comes from observation, practice, and experience. Further, they proactively seek opportunities to learn from everything they and their coworkers do.
According to research by the U.S. Department of Labor, 70 percent of workplace learning occurs informally, while the remaining 30 percent comes from formal learning programs, such as training and coaching interactions.
Superstar employees don’t wait for training programs to be offered, they seek them out. But more importantly, they also make connections and draw critical insights from everyday experiences.
Individuals who seek learning in everything they do often exhibit the following behaviors:
They are avid readers. They don’t wait for knowledge to come to them.
They pursue it.
They search for greatness and stay close to it. You’ll find these people hanging out with those who talk about what can be, rather than those who whine about what is not.
These individuals find mentors who have walked the path before them and seek their advice.
They volunteer for challenging assignments--the ones that nobody else wants for fear of failure.
They learn from their mistakes, but perhaps more importantly, they learn from others’ mistakes so they don’t have to repeat them.
Looking forward
Individuals who leave an organization hoping that the next employer will better develop them may be sadly disappointed. Growth comes from an unwavering passion to be better and do better.
The future of your organization belongs to individuals who drive their careers by seeking learning in all they do.
Ask yourself a few straightforward questions: Where do you want to be five years from now? What knowledge and skills will you need when you get there? What don’t you know yet or can’t you do yet?
What are you going to do to achieve your goals? Are you taking personal responsibility to develop yourself, or are you expecting your manager or organization to help you?
Commit to making learning a priority and watch your life unfold as the grand tapestry you dreamed it would be.
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