Career Bloom

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Over last 25 years, I have experienced multiple R&D roles in small startups and large multinationals, across multiple geographies (China, US, India) and domains (payments, e-learning, edtech). I consider myself a mix of leader & strategist, entrepreneur & org builder, product creator & problem solver, and now, researcher & systems thinker.

  • How engaged are you at workplace?

    Consider these data points:

    • According to a HT-Shine.com-AbolutData survey, talent acquisition and employee engagement are top 2 challenges for the HR managers.
    • A recent Tower Watson Study suggested that “Only just over 35% of global workforce is highly engaged.
      “
    • According to Assocham, “Attrition rate has fallen sharply in IT, ITeS and the BPO sector to the level of about 15-20 per cent during the last six months of this year as against about 55-60 per cent in the year-ago period”
    • According to a survey by MyHiringClub.com, “India Inc has witnessed attrition rates of as high as 21 per cent during the three months ending September on account of improving job scenario”.

    While you may doubt some of these numbers because of the suspect quality of respondents and sample size, I think these do paint a singular picture: employees are not engaged at their workplace. Whether they leave the company or not depends on external job market, but from company’s perspective, these employees have partially checked out and their productivity has gone down.

    Consider the benefits to the organization if they could improve the engagement numbers – it would improve productivity and reduce their attrition numbers, which in turn means they have to worry less about hiring.

    I have seen many employee engagement/satisfaction survey results, and time and again, employees make 2 clear points:

    • I don’t have career development opportunities
    • Company/manager is not invested in my career

    My recommendation:

    • Invest in making managers a better coach/mentor
    • Help employees be proactive about their career and seek opportunities on their own within the organization.

    If this is done well, here is how it plays out :

    1. Employees are clear about their career goals and career development needs
    2. They discuss with their managers proactively and frequently to seek out opportunities that align with their goals and development needs
    3. Company facilitates this by encouraging employee movements across groups – short-term assignments as well as transfers. Company also support on-job training for employees who want to venture in an area they don’t have skill but have high interest (engineer moving into marketing for example) and help them succeed
    4. There is high engagement all around, attrition is low, hiring needs are largely filled by internal candidates, and company gets crucial multi-skilled employees

    What is your engagement level? What keeps you engaged at your workplace? We are very interested in hearing your point of view on this and would love to publish your views here.

  • Book Recommendation: Crossing the Chasm

    Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffery A. Moore is a book about marketing technology products. For many people in product marketing in technology companies, this is a bible of sorts. This was written in 1990 and revised in 1999, so it is very old when you measure by technology pace. However, the principles presented and discussed here are as pertinent today as then. One of the best parts I liked about the book is that it is written for everyone in technology, and not only for marketing. As the author says in the book, “high-tech marketing is too important to be left only to the marketing department!”. When I read the book for the first time, it was a ‘wow’ moment for me – very crisply written, in a language easily understood by engineers, and examples that appeal to you.

    The problem that the book attempts to address is this: We see new products getting launched with much fanfare, some initial traction achieved with initial enthusiastic buyers, and it seems the product is destined to take off; then suddenly, the projected growth doesn’t materialize, problems start surfacing, and all hell breaks loose; and more often than not, the company dies, and disappears. Why does this happen to so many companies and how do you guard against it is the question Geoffery Moore tries to answer. This is a very relevant problem for everyone in engineering, and a lot of us have seen one or more of such stories play out.

    Here are the key takeaways from the book:

    • Technology Adoption Life Cycle – There are 5 main segments of adoption happen (think of it as target segments) – innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. Innovators and early adopters will pick anything cool and new in the market even when it is untested (in fact that is the pull for them – be the first one to try a new cool stuff!), and gives a sense to the product company that product is being received very well. However, the next set, early majority has a different expectation from the product – they want it to be well tested, and more importantly, they don’t want to be the first to adopt and would like to hear from someone else in their peer group (and not from some early adopter!), so this becomes a chicken-and-egg problem and early majority never adopts the product. This gap between early adopter and early majority is what Moore calls the ‘chasm’ and the book tells you how it can be bridged. This is pretty insightful if you think about it.
    • Beachhead Strategy – One of the strategies to ‘cross the chasm’ is to pick a small slice of the market (for example, if you want to sell spreadsheet software, you can pick finance departments of SME as your beachhead) and them completely dominate it. It is easier to dominate because use cases are more focused and specific, and putting all your resources in a smaller target set will increase the impact. According to Moore, this breaks the hesitation of the early majority, because you are so completely dominating the segment that they don’t want to choose anything else. Once you get 1-2 early majority pick you, you have crossed the chasm and others will adopt you fast (and in fact accelerate your adoption).
    • Whole Product – This is not a strategy per se, but a way to augment beachhead strategy – you not only deliver the core product (for example, PC is a core product), but a complete suite that takes care of all the needs of your target segment when they pick your product to solve their problem (so PC is a core product, but productivity suite, internet connection, and a host other software together comprise whole product for a small business owner for example). Not offering a whole product is how you fail to dominate a market because while early adopter will not mind putting things together around your product to get through, early majority will get more reasons to delay their adoption if they don’t see a whole product.

    A highly recommended book if you are a manager in a technology business, an entrepreneur, marketer or an engineer with a zeal to know how to build and sell successful products. An engaging read too.

     

  • Good boss is hard to get

    In this WSJ (India) blog, the writer talks about 4 types of ‘horrible bosses’ and goes on to record the stories of one of their reports in each category:

    “The Control Freak – ..boss demanded “mandatory hourly updates on anything and everything.” These included things like the number of press releases Ms. Banerjee had emailed and details of follow-up calls subsequently made..

    The Bully – ..boss bullied him into doing odd jobs: Depositing school fees for his eight-year-old daughter, purchasing groceries for his household and servicing his car at a workshop, and others. “My boss treated me like his personal butler,”..

    The Insecure Boss – (The boss)..started pulling her down in front of seniors and claimed sole credit for her work..

    The Pessimist – .. had a negative attitude on everything, which brought down the morale of the entire team. In the boss’ view, most of her team was “always underperforming,” her fellow co-workers were too “whiny,” and her superiors “too demanding,” ..”

    All of us have our own stories of bosses we (or our friends) have seen and dealt with. When I have analyzed these stories and my personal experiences, I see a few common reasons why a boss behaves in these weird ways:

    • Rookie Manager – This is by far the most common reason. People get promoted to be a boss for someone, even when they have neither displayed any capability to manage, nor have they been trained to be so. In technology companies, it is very common to promote the best technical performer into management position, even though these 2 are orthogonal skills and can result in disastrous situations.
    • Success breeds contempt – When something has worked for you in the past, you tend to think it will work for you now and in future too. Sadly, for management (and for many other positions), it is not the case. For example, managers who micro-manage have seen lots of success with this style, and hence they don’t change the style even when their reports hate it.
    • Poor interpersonal awareness – Not everyone can understand what impact they have on others with their style. So whatever random style they start with, it tends to stay with them.
    • No role model – There aren’t many good managers/leaders to go by. So it is not surprising that many managers haven’t worked with good managers, and so they haven’t been exposed to the value and impact of good management. These people start with a style they think works and then stick with it way longer they need to.

    What is your take on why horrible bosses exist in corporate world?

     

    Image Credit: freedigitalphotos.net

  • 3 Tenets of an effective one-on-one

    Being able to do effective 1-1s with their reports is one of the biggest strengths a manager can possess. 1-1 is the forum to guide, coach and inspire the report with maximum effect. It is also the place where difficult discussions can be done (performance review, coaching and mentoring, critical feedback, etc.) which helps in employee development and growth. There are 3 tenets of an effective 1-1 and they need to be practiced all the time to achieve maximum results from 1-1s.

    Create a trusted communication channel

    An effective 1-1 requires open and honest communication between the participants. This can happen only in a ‘no-harm zone’, a setting where there are no repercussions of being candid and critical at times. Otherwise, the 1-1 degenerates into a status reporting or a crib session, both of which are sub-optimal utilization of this valuable time. A trusted communication channel is created when the manager encourages openness, and demonstrates the same by being open themselves. It takes some effort, and patience to reach a situation when such a communication channel is created, but the time spent in creating this is worth it. Sometimes, you may not realize that you don’t have a communication channel established, and you may think things are going great. To check if you have such a channel established with someone, reflect on you last few 1-1s and check if you held back on communicating something for the fear of it being misunderstood or misinterpreted. If you did, you need to work on establishing the channel. Many a times, an established channel can break down, so a check is required once in a while.

    Be diligent about 1-1 process

    Once a trusted communication channel is established, the communication can become overwhelming in its intensity and volume. If this is not managed properly, effectiveness of 1-1 can reduce drastically. It requires a clear agenda, a framework for resolving issues, and prioritizing issues to be discussed and debated. It also requires setting some ground rules about giving and receiving feedback (more data-driven, less emotion-driven) so that discussions remain productive. It is always a good idea to focus on long-term goals rather than short-term ones (since short terms are usually urgent enough that they get your attention anyway), and it is important to be in a listening mode more than talking mode. Make sure you and your report are on same page about the 1-2 issues that will be discussed in an upcoming 1-1 (of course, unplanned topics can come up, esp. when your report wants to bring something up and is hesitant in giving a heads-up) so that there can be more productive, data-driven discussion on the topic and results achieved.

    Follow-through

    1. This is one of the many places where great managers outshine merely good managers. Discussing issues in a 1-1 is hard; but following through on the work needed to resolve the issues is way harder, and much more important. It is tempting for the manager to deprioritize them when compared to more immediate short-term work. However, doing so sends a clear signal to the report that you do not care about the 1-1 enough, and it breaks the trust and renders the 1-1 process useless in no time. If you can’t follow-through on something in time, make sure you communicate the reason to your report, keep them posted, and apologize when required. Demonstrating commitment to what you agreed to do in a 1-1 is extremely important for a manager. This is one more reason why the topics covered in 1-1 should be few and deep, rather than many and shallow (which generate many follow-throughs and harder to complete).

    Each of these tenets are stiff and require effort and commitment, but keeping them in mind when interacting with your reports will help you in having more effective 1-1s. Best way to know if you are doing good on these is to get feedback from the reports you are having 1-1 with. If they don’t tell you some areas of improvement, it is likely that tenet #1 is not working well! If they do, make sure you follow-through and get better. This is a continuous improvement process.

  • Book Recommendation: The Art of Woo

    The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas, by G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa is a great book on a topic that concerns all working professionals: how to sell your ideas to decision makers within your organization. The book illustrates the point that it is not enough to have a great idea that aligns with the company’s interests; it is equally (if not more) important to know how to persuade the decision makers and other stakeholders to buy into the idea and help you to make it successful. I have found the book easy to read and very valuable when I have to pitch my ideas within the organization. Couple of insights that have stayed with me from the book are:

    • Align your idea with the core beliefs of your decision-maker – Sometimes this requires digging deeper to find an underlying core belief that does align with your idea, other times it requires minor tweaks in the idea (or the presentation of it) to do the alignment. This is also expounded by Getting to Yes in a negotiation context, and is a very powerful concept.
    • Uncover shared idea and unmet needs of the shareholder that your idea can address. You need to create personal reason for the stakeholder to say yes to your idea.

    This is a highly recommended read if you want to be good at selling ideas within your organization.

    <<Excerpt from the book below>>

    The book outlines 4 steps to strategic persuasion:

    Step 1: Survey your situation

    • Forge and polish your idea
    • Map the decision process you face by understanding the social networks within the organization
    • Assess your persuasion styles
    • Confirm your own level of passion for the proposal

    Step 2: Confront the five barriers

    • Negative Relationships
    • Poor credibility
    • Communication mismatches
    • Contrary belief systems
    • Conflicting interests

    Step 3: Make your pitch

    • Presenting solid evidence and arguments
    • Using devices to give your idea a personal touch

    Step 4: Secure your commitments

    • Deal with the politics at the individual level
    • Deal with the politics within the organization

  • 4 Steps to a Sustainable Personal Brand

    Given that so much of personal and professional brand-building happen online, it is important to actively manage your personal brand as projected online. Here are 4 steps you can take to build your personal brand, in a sustainable way:

    Manage LinkedIn actively

    LinkedIn profile is the single most important branding tool online. With 175 million professionals, this is where people start when they want to know about you professionally. Don’t write it only with a job in mind; write it to showcase you to the world – your strengths, experiences, capabilities, interests and passion, group affiliations, etc. Don’t hoard too many recommendations, it starts losing value if you overdo it. Think before you add someone in your LinkedIn network (or accept an invite) – the company you keep suggest a lot about you (just like in the offline world).

    Use Twitter to build your knowledge community

    Twitter is probably the most confusing social networking tool – it is not very clear how best to use it professionally. But with its more than 500 million users, it is a potent tool for branding. I advise everyone to use it as your information filter to build a community around you. With so much of news, analysis, opinions flowing around, it is almost impossible to keep track of what is going on. Follow a few personalities and news sources that align with your interests or world view (if you think women entrepreneurs need to be encouraged, follow someone who is passionately doing something in this area rather than someone who is a well-known basher of the idea). To make sure your network stays fresh, make sure you actively stay on the lookout for fresh sources of information, and prune or augment your list as needed. Once you have this list of people and topics you align with, make sure you engage in the conversation by commenting, sharing and retweeting.

    Showcase your talent via blogs

    I can’t emphasize its importance enough. This is arguably the most important tool you can use to significantly impact your personal brand. Blog gives you an authority and influence based on your knowledge and/or passion. It also provides you with a platform to creatively express your thoughts, thereby creating a set of followers and like-minded peer group. While writing frequently is hard, if you can write first 10 posts, rest will come naturally through habit. Also, it is important to pick a topic that you want to write about, not something that you think people want to read about, only then you can keep the discipline of writing frequently which is key to maintaining a blog.

    Stay active in your domain and interest areas

    There are lots of online resources catering to any given domain, including discussion groups, news portals, influential blogs, industry forum sites, etc. Make sure you are active there, both in reading as well as in commenting and sharing. While sharing and commenting, make sure you share (or comment on) what you like, not what you think others will like. You should connect these to your blog through your comments (most sites will allow you to link to your blog while posting comment) and by commenting on them on your own blog and tweets, thereby adding value to the topic in your own way and initiating a discussion among your own followers.

    All online channels are 2-way communication channels, and they need to be interconnected to get the best impact. A successful personal branding strategy mixes them together to come up with a uniquely personal approach which is used consistently and frequently.

  • Your Career, Your Business

    Career Matters

    Career matters, good career matters greatly. Right perspective about your career can make a big difference to your career growth. While there can’t be an absolute ‘right’ model to think about careers, there can be multiple. Consider Sid who works in Awesomely Creative Enterprise (ACE). There are 2 ways Sid can think about his career and work.

    1. Hired-Help Model – Sid is a hired help (also called ’employee’) for ACE to solve a specific business problem. ACE defines what will Sid work on, changes the work to suit its needs, and uses Sid as a resource to maximize returns on its investment.
    2. Business Relationship (Vendor) Model – Sid is CEO of ‘Sid Careers Pvt. Ltd. (Sid for short)’, and enters in a business relationship with ACE to provide services to ACE under a contractual agreement about the scope of work and price. Any change in work or price is mutually agreed and stated clearly.

    Most often, we have hired-help model in our mind when we think about work. For a moment, let’s think about our work as a business relationship (vendor) model and visualize its implications.

    Implications of Business Relationship Model

    There are 4 dimensions of the implications of this model:

    1. Relationship of Equals – ACE is under no obligation to look after Sid’s interests, nor is Sid obligated to do so for ACE. However, like any other business relationship, mutual trust and respect will be practiced by both parties in normal circumstances and both parties will try to have win-win situations whenever they can.
    2. Business (Career) Strategy – Sid is on its own when it comes to its (career) growth, and it needs to spend a portion of its earnings on self-development, future planning and investment and other growth opportunities so that it can do well in the long run. Its goal will be to make itself indispensable to ACE as well as create opportunities of new business relationships by acquiring new skills, experiences and networks.
    3. Execution (Work) Strategy – Sid will work in the areas it has competency in to stay efficient. Any attempt by ACE to get him to work on any other areas will be carefully evaluated by Sid – if it takes Sid into an area of future growth prospects, Sid will be willing to do this for ACE, otherwise Sid will say no and ACE will find other solutions. When Sid sees a project within ACE which it thinks will create new skills and experience required in future, it will lobby ACE (influence the manager he works with, etc.) to get that project and work on it hard to make it successful and add to its portfolio of skills and experiences.
    4. Business (Career) Ownership – When Sid grows as a company, credit goes to Sid’s foresight and investment skills. When Sid fails to grow, blame also goes to Sid for not being proactive or insightful. ACE has very little say or contribution in this matter. Sid will not depend on ACE for growth, though Sid will leverage ACE for the growth. ACE can be a stepping stone for Sid, or a long-term vendor relationship, depending on how well ACE is meeting Sid’s long term goals.

    Point to Ponder

    Let me state the obvious: it is much harder to take a business relationship model into consideration than a hired-help model. However, if you do, you may realize that this is how many companies approach their relationship with their employees when it comes to managing their career. This perspective will help you correct your expectations and look at your career differently. Resulting change in your career outlook and planning may just surprise you.

     

  • Be the CEO of your career

    As Indians, traditionally we have taken very algorithmic approach to careers: our marks determine the college we are supposed to pick, family and friends determine the current hot areas of careers that should be pursued and externally controlled parameters (like performance reviews, what does my manager think, etc.) tend to shape our view of our career growth. There is a need to change this approach and be more proactive in managing your career. Very few managers these days have expertise and time to manage your career for you; and even when they do, they are not in the best position to do so since they don’t know you as much as you know yourself. So it is important that you manage your own career. There are a lot of skills required to manage your career proactively. following posts from our sister site touch on various aspects of career management activities that should be performed:

  • How do I become an effective people and project manager?

    A manager needs to handle a number of challenges around managing people, performance and career. A good manager understands his team, his peers and his organization very well and allocates right amount of time in managing each of them. A manager contributes to the organization by delivering results through his team members and by growing his team members to be managers and leaders in the long term. As a manager, you should be aware of the challenges you face and skills you need to overcome them. People are your biggest asset and you need to use and groom them well. As a manager, you should learn to handle these 5 challenges well:

    1. Managing performance
    2. Managing 1-1s
    3. Managing work
    4. Managing expectations
    5. Managing careers

  • Between individual and management career ladder, which one should I choose and why?

    In India, best known career paths are those of managers. An Individual Contributor track hasn’t really been developed by companies. This means that there is a natural push towards management if someone wants to grow.
    However, this is slowly changing. With the growth of product and internet companies in India, as well as constant desire of services company to move up the value chain, there is a renewed demand for high-quality individual contributors (IC), and they fetch a high premium in the salary. However, it is important to select the right company to be an IC, otherwise career will suffer. Most companies are bad at managing their star ICs and at offering them good career growth path. What is most important is to stay proactive about your career.