Inspire Heroism – A great responsibility on shoulders of HRs and Leaders

How often have you thought about the other person having a great deal of talent, and yet performance not even a third of it? How often the thought that ‘I have caliber, but I am not performing to the best of my abilities crossed your mind? Most of us have thought about ourselves or others as having wasted talents or calibers, but scarcely have we done something about it, other than answering “of Only” to ourselves.

Such a waste of talent is a great concern for the HR Managers, and organization and world at large. Hypothetically speaking, we use not more than 10% of what we know to do a particular activity or job. To answer for your concerns, let me ask you, if you have fully utilized the knowledge you gained in formal education? Or have you fully utilized the new things learnt from the training, or the book you read? Scarcely! In fact, it’s said that we hardly use 2% of our brains in our entire life! Isn’t all this a great concern?

Think what it all would amount to if we start working to the full of our abilities! One man – Mohandas Gandhi, working to the best of his potentials, got India its freedom! One man – Alberst Einstein, thinking to the best of his capabilities, uncovered the greatest secrets of the Universe! One man – Thomas Edison, working to make life comfortable and make more business, came up with so many useful inventions! It just takes a man with determination to change or make the world!

Isn’t all this magical? Isn’t all of it inspiring? Don’t we all wish to be such geniuses and masters of our field? YES, we do!

Some people, by themselves have got the determination and an inspiration to grow and show the world what it calls magic, whereas, this passion, this inspiration has to be borne into the hearts and minds of every other individual, and for this, a great responsibility rests on the shoulders of current leaders, and HR managers in organizations.

If HR Managers are able to instill such an inspiration in every member of the organization, think of innovations that will come about, think of ideas and growth that all this will incur, think of beauty that all this will manifest in the world! And it’s not that difficult to do all this. The answer lies in working to the best of our capabilities and carving a path for others to tread along, and holding their hands while walking this path. The answer lies in storytelling, in letting them know the legends, the heroes who did it before them, who were no more than they are, and yet they attained heights that we can hardly imagine, and all this started with a step, a step towards growth.

As HR Managers and Leaders of the organization, take responsibility, take a step to do this. As Oscar Wilde said, “We are all in gutters, but few of us have our heads towards the stars. Make them all see the stars. It ain’t all that difficult, you’ll witness once you start walking. Take the first step.

The question would be what should I do, where shall I start? The answer simply lies in looking around. What do people need, is it a talk, compassion, stories of heroism and inspiration, daily dose of motivation, training? Identify what is it they need, and take the first step to make this dream a reality, and then shall you see the beauty, and joy, that the accomplishment and the fulfillment shall garner.

Productivity issues and ideas

Productivity is a concern of almost every manager and organization out there. Thousands of Rupees are invested on increasing the productivity of individuals in form of installing a router or system to curb unnecessary surfing of websites, installing biometrics and other such machines to log in 8 hours of work, worksheets to log time of every project, giving or getting productivity training, etc. But does it give ROI? Does making a rule always mean people following it?

We humans, by nature are distracted souls, especially when we are not interested in doing something.  School years are the best example of this. Did we not attend the class, out of obligations, which bored us to death? What did we do in this circumstance? When went into our dream world, allowing our imagination take us wherever it wished to flow, and all this while teachers were just remarking on physical presence of students! Similarly, all this expensive systems that we invest in, will only serve the purpose of temporary curbing of activity. Install a system to block websites, people chat on smartphones. Make people put their phones into locker when coming to office, people use office phones to make calls to dear ones. Make a regulation against this, people chitchat in the corridors. Discourage this, and people will again start the all-time favorite session of day dreaming! Even the lectures and training on productivity will be held for a day or two – a week at most, and then, people will again be the same. 

So what can be done about it? How to curb all of this?

The answer lies in inspiration. The answer lies in checking the interest of the people, and accordingly placing them. The answer lies in showing them the path and what the end will bring to them. How will you come about doing this? The following are some of the suggestions

• Right Recruitment: When you’re recruiting, check if their interest actually lie in the post you’re selecting them for. Many a times the basic interests of the people are somewhere, but for the moneys sake, they come to you for a job, for interview. Select only the people who are actually passionate about the work they’re going to do once selected. 
• The prospects of a growth: When in school, we always studied for the exams, especially end term exams, for we knew that the result will take us into a higher grade, similarly, people in the later years of their life are inspired by the prospects of growth. Make clear guidelines and communicate what are the growth evaluation criteria’s and what people need do to reach a higher level.
• Healthy Competition: When in school, I was always motivated to perform, because, I was ranked higher, when I got better marks. Similarly, try to imbibe healthy culture into the organization, but see to it that you don’t hurt the sentiments of the people while doing so.
• Inspire, like a soldier: In ancient times, when wars were common, soldiers were called in the name of God, in the name of country and the pride for the country and their motherland made them fight all those wars for the nation. What did Mahatma Gandhi do? How did he make all those people fight without weapons, or threats, and with absolute love? He called our pride, the human within us that can do anything shown the right way.
• Account for breaks: When accounting for productivity, we seldom account for breaks, whereas breaks are necessary for better and speedier performance. Moreover, ideas are communicated over breaks, solutions are discussed in free time. Also, a research says, a person needs breaks after every 90 minutes of work. So, always make an allowance and encourage taking breaks after good work.

I hope the above points help you in making a productive culture. I strongly emphasize the right recruitment, because, when the person is in the right field, she shall deliver the expectations. If you have something to add, I shall be glad to hear from you.

Roadblocks for a SME in pursuing International Business

Before delving deeper into the roadblocks of International Business, we should understand ‘what’ and ‘why’ of International Business. International Business is simply the business activities involving the cross border transactions of goods, services, resources between two or more nations. Companies enter into International business because of saturation in home market, lucrative opportunity in foreign market and to increase customer base.

SMEs always find it difficult to pursue International Business because of the following reason: 

1. Lack of insights in strategy formulation: Many SMEs lack in full-fledged International Business department and hence lack of competent resources. They also shy from hiring a good consultancy. Hence, they end-up choosing a wrong portfolio of countries. 
2. Lack of competent Human Resource: International Business requires special attention, persistent focus and global mindset. Anyone and everyone in the organization are not ready for these challenges. Specialized and competent human resource in International Business is not easily available. 
3. Lack of focus and commitment from Higher Management: Top Management of all the SMEs are very much fascinated by the International business opportunities. They also initially take up this activity with full enthusiasm but as time passes their focus and commitment shifts and International Business takes backseat.  
4. Lack of financial resources: International Business requires huge investment at its establishment phase. It requires lot of face to face interaction and hence travel, stay and other expenses at foreign location. All these expenses may or may not generate returns in future. Also, opening offices at foreign location add to the expenses. 
5. Lack of Patience: It takes lot of patience to establish International Business and return in monetary terms take a considerable amount of time. Initial one or two hiccups de-motivate the Top Management of many SMEs. Break-even in International Business requires patience. 
6. Lack of Infrastructure: As it requires huge investment in establishing infrastructure in International Business may be without immediate returns demotivates the SMEs from pursuing these activities. From their home location, they incessantly search for establishing the channel partners in the foreign country but it does not provide a desired result as whatever the advocates of Internet say, it still cannot replace the importance of Physical presence and Human touch.

As foreign countries are culturally very different from home country, business through channels is the key to success. But establishing channels also require substantial investment which may generate revenue stream for longer period of time but right strategy and patience is what it takes to succeed in International Business. 

Kite Flying: Can we take corporate lessons?

On 14^th January, we gathered for flying kite. That was an event with great fun and if we delve deeper into it, it was of course an event of absolutely great learning. 

If we compare the landscape where kites were flying with our business landscape, we will understand that there were hundreds of kites like hundreds of companies fighting fiercely in a defined landscape. Consider these kite fliers like those companies which do not have luxury to move out from that space because they are locked-in by committing their resources and hence huge switching cost. So, they have no options but to compete fiercely. An absolute Red Ocean and there is no option except bloodbath. 

Now, in that situation what a typical kite flier does and can we take any corporate lesson from that is my quest in writing this article. Kite flier typically does following things:

1. Investing in resources: For Kite fliers the resources are the Kites and the thread. From my experience of kite flying yesterday, the good kites have good paper material and hence a bit heavy, dexterously made for no air passing from kite and hence a bit more costly in purchase or acquisition. The thread should be of the best quality for competition in sky. Lousy resources won’t help. Same applies for the corporates fighting in Red Ocean. Categorize your resources and get rid of lousy ones.\
2. Tying the resources carefully: In kite flying, the kite and thread should be tied with each other and not only tied; it should be tied carefully as well and with calculated measures. 2-3 times it happened with me that due to carelessness in tying, my kite got untied while in air and hence gone.  Same goes with resources in the companies, there should be a common thread and hence synchronization in each and every resource a company invests in.
3.  Know your competitors: Initially 2-3 times while flying kite I didn’t think who is my competitor and hence beaten by them hands-down as they came from behind and attacked and I was caught unaware. They were fierce and I was ignorant. Same happens with companies which ignore the competition in the external environment. Know your competitors and their intent.
4. Ideate, strategize and mitigate risk: Before jumping into the bandwagon of flying kite, we strategized for 5-10 minutes about how to compete, ideated several ways of fighting in the air and also thought about the risk and the ways to mitigate it. Also, we set a certain milestone where we evaluated our performance. It was only 5 minutes for us but should be a continuous process for successful companies.
5. Execution matters: We thought and ideated but when our kite was in air, there were many uncontrollable factors like the flow of air, buildings and trees around etc. A concentrated and vigilant eye was needed for better execution of our ideas and strategies. Many times we won and many times lost, the execution created the difference. Similarly, for companies to succeed implementation of strategy is as important as formulation, sometimes may be more important.
6. Cut the competition:  Kite flying has taught a lesson that for corporates to succeed in extremely fierce competition the ways to fly high are; cut the competition or acquire them by whatsoever it takes and create an entry barrier for new entrants.
7. Shout on success: On successfully beating our competition we have shouted like anything and celebrated. We let the others know that we have done it. That may have made our competitors worried and hence prone to make more mistakes. Corporates with strong PR mechanism and social-media initiatives may create a winning image which will definitely always make their competitors worry.

Lastly, whether it’s a game or business both are fun and should be taken in right spirit but the winning always matters.