On being a Free Agent

HBS Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, in her latest blog, "Stay Home and Work", http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2009/04/stay-home-and-work.html, strongly and ferverently puts forth a case for enlightened employers to permit employees to stay back at home for at least one day in a week and work from home. Strongly arguing that this will enable more women to return to the work force, result in less traffic jams, cause less fuel consumption and pollution, and allow for extra time for parents to tend their children.

The biggest transformation for such changes will need to come, not from employees and people but from organizations themselves. They should be flexible enough and be willing to rewrite their policies for a flexible workforce working. They should review their rules that allow people to work in offices or at homes depending upon their schedules and their requirements.

I still remember that there were some US companies in the high technology sector that were practicing the flexi-time concept in the mid eighties - Texas Instruments (TI) in Bangalore being one of them. As the Head of HR of TI-India and as a member of the Senior Management Team, I would tell employees during their induction program, "It does not matter when you come into office or when you leave your office. Keep in mind two cardinal principles - (1) keep your supervisor informed where you are and (2) You should be present in office when your team requires you for a team meeting or for review of the work done by the team."

At a time when flexi-time was just a concept written about in magazines and books and talked about by professors in hallowed halls of academic institutions, TI practiced it in India. It was a great learning place for me, as a practitioner of HRM.

Peter Drucker predicted long time ago that the post industrial era would be marked by people working for large organizations as "free agents"....in today's parlance - as individual, independent contractual employees. So did Professor Charles Handy in his delightful book, "The Gods Of Management", talk of an organization run and ruled by a Greek God called Dionysus...the most individualist of all Gods.

It is amazing that what these academicians "predicted" so long ago has been practiced by a few "Great" ( by Jim Collin's definition ) organizations. Currently, flexi-time is being bandied about as saviors of our planet for new social evils ( a la traffic jams, pollution, etc ). The same social evils that have cropped up by ignoring the academicians "gyaan" in the first place.

Selection Decisions - in Politics and in Business

I still remember my Professor of HR stating in a HR Management class in 1976, "Selection in India is purely based in sufferance, preference, reference and deference" and while being witness to all the sordid stories of how people cling to power ( a la the CM of a famous South Indian State ) or stubbornly refuse to exit their jobs even when they are mired in controversies ( a la the CVC or the ex-Telecom Minister) makes me wonder whether what my Professor uttered in 1976 still holds good as pearls of wisdom. The Times Of India dated Dec 14, 2010 also reveals further tapes of Radiia of how key important portfolios were filled in the current cabinet resulting in a lot of Red faces all around for Congress Parliamentarians who did not think of the consequences of their remarks in a public domain.

Lest this is seen to be prevalent in Politics only, I was witness to how Managers "click their heels and salute their bosses" in Organizations until recently.... And this is seen to be being "aligned with the boss".....or being smart enough to "manage your boss" ( as the last Corporate Dossier pull out of the same Times Of India calls it ). I have been witness to very senior Regional HR Directors stationed in countries in Asia to be singularly focussed on a one point agenda - what their US HR Bosses would like ( or not like ) - and to scramble to get what they "like" fulfilled.

I have also heard that when different Business Units are about to split or spin off, even VPs of HR jump across like Circus Trapeze Artists to "catch their places" in Organizations of their choice, never mind even if there is a freeze for the rest of the technical folks in the Organization....and so the show goes on - both in political and business arenas - while students of HR - diligently study how to deploy people based on Competency frameworks established by Organizations and how to "fit the right person for the right job".......no wonder we say that the graduates of today's PG Classes from various B-Schools are not "ready for the industry yet" and they have to go to schools and institutions to "finish" what they learn in B-Schools and what Organizations practice in reality.

A big gap indeed !!

Reputation - thy other name is Fragility

Not many people knew who Dave Carroll was until a few months ago. He was a Canada based singer ( a guitarist ) who used to give public performances in and around Canada and the US.

One day travelling from Halifax to Nebraska, looking out of his plane window he saw three Baggage Handlers throwing and mishandling his guitar. Before he knew it he was handed a broken guitar with an unrepentant Airline called United Airlines.

He was made to run from pillar to post with United trying to shrug off their responsibility to compensate for it.

So Dave did what came to him naturally....wrote a song about this episode and uploaded it on to YouTube. It is on the link to this blog - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo . His YouTube music was soon downloaded like the very plague and had over a million hits. Dave followed it up with two more songs on the same episode.

United went into a tizzy as soon as they knew that their reputation was in tatters. They issued a rejoinder ( also in the same vein ), agreed to compensate David and were red faced. They even learnt a lesson or two out of this episode and updated and modified their Customer Relationship Management lessons for their staff.

Dave used the power of the YouTube - a social media ( video based ) site to vent his frustration.

Imaging what this tool will turn out to be in the hands of an employee who is upset and angry either with his Manager or with his Organization. While a majority of Organizations today have all policies now in place prescribing what employees can and cannot do on social media sites and they do have the power of penalizing ( Otherwise known as sacking ) an employee who transgresses these rules, nothing still prevents a disgruntled employee to wreck havoc to a Company's reputation with the push of a keyboard button.

It will be a good positive move on the part of an Organization to, at the time of induction itself, let employees know of all the avenues open to them to approach the various people in the Organization with their grievances. No use embedding them as rules and policies in thick Employee handouts and books and ask them to read it....it has to be debated and discussed and put across to the employee as to what is acceptable and not acceptable behavior as far as damage to reputation is concerned.