Treating the Virus of Negativity

Negativity spreads like a virus and just like any virus one must know the treatment for cases where negativity has spread and how to prevent future spread of it. It is particularly critical because many of these negative perceptions become the norm and the way the organization works.

CAUSES
Negativity mainly spreads through people; through the misconstrued or misunderstood or cynical perceptions of people. In a situation where most people may have a bright or hopeful outlook some individuals may build a negative perception and that's the origin point of the outbreak: as virologists would call Patient Zero.

OUTBREAK
Post the Patient Zero emerging it spreads to other individuals through interactions: 1 on 1 conversations, meetings, chats over lunch, water cooler gossip, trainings, emails, etc. And after this, it is very difficult to curtail the spread of it. Most cases there will be more than one Patient Zero so there will be multiple outbreak points.

TREATMENT
Conversations, Evidence, Data sharing to disprove the negative perception. A lot of reassurance is needed from managers and leaders thereafter on the issue. In some cases, strong emails dismissing negativity also helps. But most treatments aren't as effective and the outbreak causes widespread damage.

PRECAUTION
This is a more effective way of dealing with it. Major communication at the team, business or org level must be reviewed by managers and leaders to ascertain the possible negative perceptions that could emerge around it. Use of the Six Hat Thinking Technique is beneficial in this case: specifically the use of the Black Hat. It helps ascertain the possible roadblocks and problems and one can work out ways in which to address the situation.

FAQs, Service Desks, Feedback Forms, Townhalls, Discussions in Meetings, One on One chats different ways on the scale of increasing engagement that can be used to talk about the challenges and/or apprehensions.

PREVENTION
This is certainly great success rate in looking to prevent negativity from building and it comes from good practices one can follow at the workplace:
* Sharing positive stories on the matter and how it has worked in the past.
* Addressing common apprehensions and calming people even before they may get agitated.
* One on One conversations to get feedback on how it is affecting them.
* Identifying employee champions on the matter who can spread communication: oral or written form about the topic.
* Tracing as HR if there are certain constant negative elements in the organization and addressing their concerns through a structured intervention by senior managers and leaders.
* Creating an environment that is secure and open for people to share their apprehensions and treating them not as 'negative people' but as perceptive individuals and thereafter co-opting them to participate in alleviating the ill effects of the issue at hand.

With effective practices and proactive managers and leaders the virus of negativity can be kept at bay.

Posted via Blogaway

Standard Diversity

As I returned from Delhi to Mumbai last night a little observation caught my amazement. The airports had a very similar look and feel in both cities. In fact when I started recalling the airports at Bangalore, Mangalore, Ranchi and Delhi they are all similar looking to each other.

But you would almost always be able to make out which of those cities you are in if you were left on the roads of this cities. The buildings, the roads, the signage, the colour and life on those streets are unique to each city.

Compare that to the structure and life of the organization and you will find an uncanny resemblance. With benchmarks being defined the world over most systems and practices organizations follow, adopt and adapt are fairly standard. And in our enthusiasm, we may push for employees to "comply or perish" which may not always be the ideal thing you do. The life of an organization is in its people and in the diversity they possess. And through this comes forth its polity, its history, its culture and even its values (not stated but practised).

While we drive for Compliance of structures and systems we must not fail to Celebrate the diversity and differences of the people and the views they bring to the table. Eventually it is they that breathe life into the bricks and mortar, wires and nodes, laptops and desktops of an office!

Posted via Blogaway

Rise of Organizational Complexity

Over the last few weeks, I have been watching a unique show called CrashCourse on YouTube. It covers a lot of academic topics such as history and economics and psychology from school and college level courses in an interesting and fun way. There is a new course they have begun called Big History which is particularly interesting. It covers the entire 13.8 billion year history of the universe and the 4 billion year history of our planet. (You can find more information about it on www.bighistoryproject.com)

One theme that it constantly speaks of is the rising complexity. And somehow I see that transcending across galaxies of organizations and people just as easily as the galaxies of stars and its planets. The theory simply states that 'Systems tends towards exponentially rising complexity over a linear time scale. We see that evidently through the evolution of life on this earth where of the 40 thousand odd years of humanity's existence we have effectively had civilizations only for the last 1/4th of that time period. An extension of this theory is that rising complexity results in rising challenges: a never ending series of effects and side effects!

Pull the same concept to organizations and they too start with single member ventures or with a handful of founders with a startup. But as the complexity in companies begin to rise, as the organizations start getting bigger, wider, more complex and more diverse so do their challenges, worries and constraints!

As the challenges are so also will their solutions will be: big, wide, complex and diverse. But I see this more as an eventual state. Because there is another set of rules that govern this universe: that of emergence and evolution.

Every state of rising complexity is matched with a state of evolution and its building blocks being formed through a state of emergence. And while some organizations adapt and let change course through their veins, others resist and eventually implode like a death star.

Organizations have a life of its own in the sense that the noblest desires of its leaders to survive would not help if its DNA is built with resistance to adapt and become something else. So what really does remain permanent?
Targets? They change every year.
Goals? They change every 2 to 3 years.
Strategies? They progress every 5 years or so.
Business Models? Transform every 10 years (maybe sooner!)
Mission and Vision? They too will see an evolution sometime in the organization's lifetime.
The only permanent element is the element of change. And the change is gradual and continuous.

Posted via Blogaway

A 'You'nique Experience @ Work

I thought of beginning this blog with an aspect of Human Resource Development which I consider core to any organization: Employee Satisfaction. Since the beginning of the Agricultural Age and civilized living and even through the advent of Industrial Age, humans have always felt the need to organize themselves and pool resources to form teams with a common goal.
And with the delegation of work began the endless trouble of matching the right person to the right job. Understanding talent and identifying potential became key qualities in managers and with every passing day this need has only increased in intensity. No employee ever seems satisfied with the work at hand and no employer has a clue of what makes his employees happy. It all seems like a lost cause. It did to many thinkers like Karl Marx as well who found that business concerns and private landlords were exploiting the workers in London and felt the need to raise a voice by solving the capitalism problem. But not even socialism could really resolve the issue of lack of satisfaction among employees.

I believe the problem could be in the fact that an employee's job is not looked at as an experience he has during his life in the organization. Marketing Gurus speak of giving customers an experience through their product or service and they say that the consumer will buy the product. Why not apply the same principle to the human beings on other side of the product and service life-cycle: the employee. And the need for every employee is just the need of every consumer that is to have a unique experience at the workplace with the work they do.

A high value and expectation level is set with a job that can provide such en experience to the employee. A manager's job has a higher level of uniqueness than a worker's and a company head's job has a higher level of uniqueness than the manager's. Thus as we move up the corporate ladder and get higher responsibilities added to our job, we invariably end up having a greater level of uniqueness at our job. But this need not be the only way in which one can find uniqueness at the workplace.

The workplace has long been looked at in the image of the famous industrialist Henry Ford: the Conveyor Belt. This was where things moved in as raw material and after a million melting, moulding, hammering and polishing the final product moved out of the workshop. And in this image of the moving product, somewhere the employee lost his power of being moved by the virtue of the work he puts into his creation. And as days go by the hammering only gets more monotonous, the moulding only get more mechanical and the melting only gets slower. The conveyor belt may be automated now, robots may have replaced man at the workplace, but in many jobs the feeling of monotonicity has not moved out.

As you read this blog, go back to your workplace and try and recall the most mundane part of the job and you find that it is that part of it which is most monotonous as well. It may not be the part that frustrates us but it certainly is the catalyst in your losing interest in your work. Managers need to look at these areas and understand how can they change this about the job. Many times this may not be possible as the activity is most critical to your work. In such situations, the best recourse is to making the office environment one where the employee has a Unique & Pleasant Experience.

Many offices look at In-Office fun hours during the work week, Office Picnics, Lounge Areas and Meditation Spaces, Sprawling campuses and Activity Center. But we need to think of a lot more such unique experiences from which the employee can choose. Why not a Wallpaper Service that an employee can subscribe to in Office which will load a new image and quotation for him on his desktop when he logs in. Or a forum which the employee can join and participate in. Or a new language, dance form, musical instrument he can learn from an expert. Or just providing a box of doughnuts to the employees at the coffee machine one evening.
Most employees in our organizations today fail to see the beauty in anything. Bringing uniqueness to their work would enable them to see that beauty once again: in their work and in themselves!