Exploring The Future of Work

Wrote this in 2012



Foretelling the future is always risky business, and in connection with HR doubly so. That is because HR’s field of expertise could be impacted by various things. Let’s take a look at what they are:




Competition and Globalization : While these are two different words, the impact they have on an organization is similar. Productivity needs to be increased and costs need to be optimized. HR is both an initiator of these changes and also stands to be impacted by these changes, which we shall see in detail later.


The “No Brands” movement: No Brand was the book written by Naomi Klein that focusses on how the big corporations’ “mass brands” concepts are being slowly rejected by the developed world. One way communication and branding is on the way out. Even in the developed world consumers are not seeing themselves as consumers but as co-producers of goods and services.


The Long Tail of production and distribution: taking off from point 2, the Long Tail was coined by Chris Anderson to describe the phenomenon of relatively tiny firms producing niche goods and services that get aggregated and sold using technology like Google, Amazon and eBay. This is giving rise to the workforce of Free Agents (coined by Dan Pink) and Fleas (as described by Charles Handy)


The Creative Age: As the knowledge age gives way to the age of right brain creativity, artistic, empathetic, a new class of professions will rise to prominence.

The skills that HR needs to have to meet the challenges:

The skills to translate HR deliverables into business metrics.

Too often HR people focus their deliverables in a way that does not make sense to line business. Let’s face it. The language of business is money, so if HR is only seen as a black hole for money, it will earn the sobriquet of a ‘cost centre’ and get delegated to the back benches. Hence the ability to talk in the language of finance is a critical skill for HR. Relevant people skills are the differentiating factor in most service companies. HR people must understand how to quantify those skills, how to keep track of them, how to measure them and how to upgrade them. Does a HR manager of a Consumer goods company understand what’s the difference between a great Brand Manager and an average Brand Manager? And how to measure them? Does he understand what the driving needs of the great Brand Manager are and how they are different from the average ones? And, does he understand if the policies of the organization support the needs of the average BM or the star BM?


The HR professional must not just be concerned with her internal customers but also with the external customers. The focus must be on the way they can together add value to the customer who keeps the organization in business. Only when HR professionals understand and demonstrate how they can add value to end customers will they be considered strategic partners of the business.

The Skills to facilitate change

All said and done, HR professionals mostly lack the skills to be effective ‘facilitators’ of change. Their own inability to not get involved in the content and exercise control on the process ensures that they are not accepted by the various parties as facilitators.


The focus is very rarely on the human effects of change. As we all know, any change causes heartburn and pain. Most often, either these are unacknowledged or brushed under the carpet by business leads and HR folks either collude with them. One of the foremost way to deal with change is to bring it out in the open – “the elephant in the room” way. Any attempt to wish it away or to deal with it in a secret/underhand way only makes us appear that way.

The Skills to understand communication and the changes in the processes underway.

HR needs to understand the processes of communication between organizations and how the era of one way communication is over. This has more implications than HR can realize. Newspapers in the west are seeing declining circulations and advertising. People are fed up being passive ‘consumers’ of news but are instead using free software and ubiquitous broadband connections to become ‘commentators’ on news. The culture of rip-burn-remix has spread from music to mainstream news, and organizations are struggling to grasp the reality. HR people have to understand how these generational shifts in how information is consumed impacts their business, both from the outside and from the inside.


The new way of learning: In line with the earlier point, the way how people learn is also changing. Gone are the days of the “chalk and talk” method and even the “guide by the side” method. Learners these days and in the future are the people who learn by “immersive” technologies. That will also have an impact on how they learn and perform in the organizations. It also has an impact on how the organizations’ solutions and products are used and experienced by the customers.

The age of the free agent and virtual teams

With the rise of the creative age, people are looking more at vocations rather than careers, and it is passion that drives them. These creative people will become more and more entrepreneurial and give up the comfort and the anonymity of large organizations to chart out recognition as independent consultants. HR needs to understand how to manage these people to enhance creative input and also needs to guide line managers. It needs to remember that for these folks, independence and eminence is the motivating force, and money is just a by-product. HR also needs to identify who are potential free agents in the organization and what to do to optimize their contribution.


As more and more work gets done in a globalized economy by groups of part-time, temp or independent consultants working along with full time employees in different cultures and time zones, creating a culture of inclusion and tolerance of diversity becomes an imperative for HR professionals. This would be a strategic differentiator for the business, because diversity if managed well, could give rise to ideas and innovation that the competition cannot come up with. HR needs to educate the business about the edge that diversity brings and that it’s not just a ‘nice to do’ kind of thing!




There are a lot of challenges facing us HR professionals, but nothing is unsurmountable if one maintains an open mind, surveys the business and technology landscape regularly and seeks a variety of mentors in various subject matter to build up expertise.

There have been some different things that have been running through my head. First there was this post triggered by JP and Debu's blogs. In addition there was a conversation I had with my friend Jayanth, and then there was Dub's post on employee engagement and maybe it's just economics - and some other conversations with traditional HR folks and what they expect from employees.

So here's my conclusion: employment as we know it - is broken.

The employer-employee psychological contract is coming apart and we all pretend that it's not an issue.

People are loyal to various other factors that the "employment brand" connotes. The increasing consumerisation of society has meant people want to work for firms that are considered "cool" right now. It was Microsoft some eons back, Google then, Apple now, and who knows that then.

Some people are loyal to their profession. When I was a HR Manager in a professional service firm - which did SAP consulting projects - it was pretty evident that if you hired a SD MM specialist and didn't have a project for him for a couple of months he would up and leave - irrespective of the fact that you had a great "employment brand". He wouldn't think of changing his skills as long as there was a market for it.

Some people are loyal to their bosses/ mentors - and follow them to whichever firm they go.

There is research that now more and more people want their brands and their workplace to be part of something larger than just being a market leader.

And sometimes they just want to be connected more to people.

Sure there are various kinds of industries employing various kinds of people - and there will be many people just getting by. Working for a paycheck. Waiting for the clock to strike the shift time - and to get out.

Those people are not going to be the one who're going to give you great ideas and make your firm more competitive.

So if you want to hire the best for the roles you have maybe you have to tear up that organogram and job description and how you want them to work. You have to tear up your performance management system. Get rid of that industrial era mindset to "work"

Because in the Organization 2.0 employment will not be anything like the employment that we know.

Debu Mishra has a great post on why Performance Management/ Appraisal doesn't work. He raises some pertinent points, the critical one for me is how HR leaders keep changing and going by latest fads on performance management. Just because it worked in one organization doesn't mean it'll work in your organizations.

There are no best practices. They are contextual to the culture and climate of an organization.

However, the nature of work is itself changing. JP Rangaswami (one of the most incisive thinkers I have come across recently) blogged about how the "maker generation" will force organizations to think about work in new principles. Go read the full post, I can't do justice to all the thoughts here.

So the future of work in the future knowledge-based organizations is all fuzzy. As I noted in my comment to JP's post:

if these principles are really embraced and integrated – maybe there will not be any “corporation/ enterprise” at all.. just a “brand” and free agents willingly aligning with that brand – to services customers, suppliers (and other stakeholders)

Will the future look like that at least for some knowledge-based organizations? Will they become the “un-organization”?

The idea itself is not radical. Visa (the credit card firm) emerged out of similar principles.

Dee Hock and his committee of bankers retreated to a hotel in Sausalito, California to try to envision the structure of the new organization. He says he began with a purpose, "enabling the exchange of electronic value," a vision far more expansive than that of his peers, and then set out to devise some principles by which to achieve that purpose:

• it must be equitably owned by all participants

• power and function must be distributive to the maximum degree

• authority must be distributive within each governing entity

• it must be infinitely malleable yet extremely durable

Using these guiding principles, Hock and a small hand-picked staff created NBI, which opened for business in 1970 with 243 charter members. In 1977, NBI changed the BankAmericard brand name to Visa, and similarly renamed itself Visa International.

So the future was already in the past. How long before the old structures go away and new organizations like Visa emerge?

Some more posts about the workplace of the future: PwC's scenarios, Gartner's predictions

What are your predictions?

This piece below is a work of fiction - by an hyperactive imagination. Taking career decisions on its basis might not be advisable :-)

Year - 2025 AD

Month - January

8:30 am - Anita grabs her coffee and boots up her communication device - it's been a long weekend and she doesn't know what to expect from her day at work.

Tonnes of h-mails. One is from her best friend with a collection of pictures and videos and an audio from their last vacation. Anita smiled
The next h-mail was from the HR Director of MegaCorp. He said he had an assignment for her. Could she go through the employee database and identify trends and suggestion areas? He needed an approach from her tomorrow if she wanted to accept it.
It was followed by a h-mail was from the People Strategy officer of GlobalBank - her voice came through the comm "Anita, we came across your thoughts on the learning professionals network on one of the HR networks, and wanted to explore if you can oversee our strategy to mentor the high potential employees of our finance function?"

Anita smiled. She was bored and tired of the employee database analysis kind of work. MegaCorp could go take a walk. However, before she agreed to GlobalBank's assignment - she had to do her own research.

Anita took a big gulp of coffee, fired up her personal search assistant and spoke into it: "People Strategy history of GlobalBank" - in instants all the videos, documents and inferences by the search assistant (who knew her areas of interest) was there for her to go through.

After an hour Anita grinned. She liked the challenge that GlobalBank was throwing her way.

In the next 30 minutes she put together a high level approach note about how she would like to go ahead with it, attached her HR skill certification which meant a specific fee structure that she would charge for the project.

She then attached her videos and texts on the specific intervention and sent it off by h-mail.

Phew that was a good morning's work. She needed a coffee.

11 am - Anita had finished her morning sandwich and salad and looked at her to-do list. She still had to recruit 4 people to work on a project for a real estate firm.  Over the next 2 hours Anita dipped into her contact lists - furiously working her virtual rolodex and got some great leads. Five people asked her to h-mail the videos of the project and one actually h-mailed back his Real Estate sales proficiency level to signify interest in the project.

At 1 pm Anita needed to eat something more substantial. She got into her electric car and drove to the nearest organic eating joint.

Back on her desk at 2:30 pm Anita decided to connect with some folks and merely chat up. She pulled out a h-mail video and saw which ones of her contacts was reachable.

Neil, a specialist in helping organizations mould their culture in these changing times was online and smiled when she pinged him. However he was on text only mode.

Anita spoke "hey Neil, what interesting stuff are you doing?" knowing that it'll show up instantaneously on his screen as text.
Neil typed :" Am on a boring conference call with the top team of the Distributed Collective and they're wondering how their new vision needs to be supplanted with a new organizational structure" he grinned into the video.

Anita spoke "That sounds exciting, Neil. Ok, I just wanted to share that there's a talk of a mentoring project for a big bank's high potentials and it seems that it'll be a long project. Possibly like 3-4 years. It's exciting for me to venture into this field - and it's thanks to your suggestion that I share my thoughts on the HR learning channel."

Neil smiled and typed "That's great news. Congrats!"

Anita typed: "Still too soon to congratulate me, but I want you to mentor me during this project. I'll need your help!"

Neil grinned "of course, and you know what my skill level and therefore rates are."

Anita made a face "Yeah I know and you'll surely get your fees"

Neil typed: "Great, I gotta go now. They want me to say something now" he grinned

Anita said "Ok, take care. Live long and prosper"

"Live long and prosper" Neil typed back.

Anita stretched out and turned off the h-mail. She needed to get out and exercise now. She grabbed her stuff and headed for the gym. Tomorrow seemed to be an interesting day ahead.

Actually tonight was an all night virtual conference where she was presenting the new compensation philosophy for GoodElectric - a client of hers, and the other HR project leads as well as project teams from Ops and Sales and Marketing worldwide would be there to poke holes into her proposal - she was sure of it. They had already left suggestions in the h-wiki of the GoodElectric HR collaborative space, but she was sure tonight they would not pull their punches.

She grinned.

Let them try, she thought.

Remember the scenario planning report by PwC that I blogged about almost two years ago?

Well I received an update from them which talks about how three fictitious companies (one each for the Blue, Green and Orange worlds they talked about earlier) emerge from the current downturn and where they'll reach in 2020.

So the metrics driven global organization emerges and thrives by taking the following approach to managing people:

1. Foster a small-business culture
2. A meticulous search and selection process
3. Invest in employee development, both in- and outside work
4. Link employee engagement, productivity, retention and customer loyalty
5. A competitive atmosphere and high performance equals unique rewards

Whereas the Green World company focuses on
1. Rich rewards instead of short-term incentives
2. People metrics paint the whole picture
3. High levels of employee engagement

The network based organization (Orange organization) focus on the following ways to managing people

1. Rich rewards instead of short-term incentives
2. Create careers in motion
3. Market individuals as companies, rather than freelancers
4. Shift from buying talent to buying product

You can download the report from this PwC site.

Overall I think it's an interesting premise - that slowly all organizations will veer towards three distinct kinds of firms (irrespective of ownership or national origin) depending on what drives them - and how they are structured.

In fact, the question about the vision of an organization and how it is structured is an oft overlooked one.

Structure influences the actual processes, metrics even the goals that people follow - than merely the ones they "should" focus on.

Coming back, I think there would be some organizations that would be hybrid of these organizations that PwC envisages - I can see Orange structures influencing the Blue as well as Green organizations too

No, am not talking about horror/thriller genre of films called 'slasher' movies - in line with how many people get slashed :)

No, I am talking of this phrase which is coming into vogue because lots of people, specially freelancers are carrying on multiple careers as "HR Manager/Photographer" The slasher in 'slasher careers' refers to the "/" symbol between the two careers. And its a progression of the portfolio careers that Charles Handy has spoken about.

I personally think new careers will emerge at the intersection points of careers/functions.

As this article says:

While a new vocation may begin as a hobby, slashers tend to view all their pursuits as careers; and while those who moonlight might quietly take on a second job, career slashers are generally open about their multiple interests. They may even have a business card to prove it: The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about the increased demand by career slashers for more than one business card so they can effectively promote their varied interests.

Slashers typically have a primary vocation, but they may pursue several other interests over the course of their working lives. For example, someone might be a copyeditor/aerobics instructor for a few years, and transition to a copyeditor/masseuse. As Marci Alboher, who coined the term, said in an interview with BusinessWeek, “Being a “slash” is a way to evolve without giving up the security of a job or losing the confidence in your expertise.”

Check this book by Marci Alboher 
The Blog that she used to write for the New York Times and the blog she writes at Amazon.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Use a "Slash" to Find Work While Unemployed [Career] (lifehacker.com)

Interesting article that showcases changes in office life. As it states the challenges of a virtual workplace is the loneliness that employees can get caught up in - which is why we see a lot of freelancers and telecommuters yearning to connect with others of their ilk, and tweetups and face to face meetings. By the way, here's a post on web worker daily when I was featured during my freelancing days :-)

The other challenges organizations would face would be to change their culture to facilitate this method of working. The ability to trust people and focus on the deliverables and not merely control the activities. Not too many organizations can make the transition easily.

Excerpts from the article

Imagine a work world with no commute, no corporate headquarters and perhaps not even an office in the physical world at all.

"We don't care where and how you get your work done," said Dan Pelino, general manager of IBM's global health care and life sciences business. "We care that you get your work done."

IBM says it saves $100 million a year in real estate costs because it doesn't need the offices.

The work force at the Accenture management consulting firm is so mobile not even the CEO has an office with his name on the door.

With no corporate headquarters, if you need a work space, you reserve it like a hotel room — checking in and out at a kiosk.

In the future, more companies with scattered work forces and clients may do what the marketing firm Crayon is doing: making its headquarters in cyberspace.

Crayon's workers rarely meet in the physical world — some are in Boston, others are in Nutley, N.J. — but their online alter egos in the virtual world gather once a week.

Michael has a good post on how the media is going overboard on reporting how people are losing jobs due to social media goof-ups like putting up Facebook status messages that communicate a bad impression about your employer.

Yes the lines between work and life - and offline and online world are getting blurred to a large extent.

As an employee who is also active on social networks here are some pointers how not to give your employer an excuse to fire you:

1. Don't Facebook/Orkut/Twitter on company time, unless digital communication on behalf of your company is part of your overall job description.
2. Don't post organizational documents/photos on to websites if you're not authorised to do so.
3. Don't use Facebook/Orkut status messages to show your disdain for your employer/ fellow employees
4. Don't use Flickr/ Youtube to showcase how you waste time in your firm - or treat customers/ co-workers badly.
5. Don't blog about how your workplace sucks - or at least don't do it with your name and picture splashed all over it. 

If you are ready to manage organizations in the future but don't know what Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed are, then you ought to learn.

Soon these (and similar) tools will have a huge impact in the way organizations operate. Both internally as well as externally.

Marketing and brand management are still reeling with the impact of these game-changing approaches to communication and filtering. Soon, organizational processes and HR would also bear the tsunami of these changes.

That's because these are not merely innovative tools - they are driving a fundamental change in mindsets.

Paulo Coelho is putting up his content for free and is connecting with readers across the world using digital media. Tom Peters puts his presentations on his organizations blog for free download by anyone. You don't have to do any registeration! Chris Anderson in his forthcoming book talks about how people expect a change in pricing for digital media - for free.

We've all heard of the quote "Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come", right?

The flip side of that quote is "If you're not on the right side of that idea - you won't be around"

So what is your organization doing? Putting up walls to stop collaboration and sharing? Or encouraging it?

And as HR and Managerial people are you spending your energies to fight it or facilitate it?

If you're fighting it - do you think you're attracting the best people or driving them away?

And if you're driving them away - do you think your organization will last - without processes that are congruent with the times and the best available people?

You're worried?

Yes. You should be.

You still don't believe me? Still think you should block Facebook in your organization? Maybe hearing it from a hotshot Accenture consultant might convince you....if you're that sort of person.

Check also this slideshare presentation by Hill & Knowlton on Enterprise 2.0.

:)

Checkout medical jobs at Health Jobs USA.

apeksha left a comment on "Talent shortage in HR in India?":

We have a whole lot of graduates being churned out each year..unfortunately most of them though talented, are not from a "recognized" college, or lack the right 'attitude'.

as for having a body like CIPD, i dont know. I just became a graduate member of CIPD, will get my degree from the university of Edinburgh..and i still cant find anyone who wants to hire me becuz i do not have "adequate" experience

Last Friday I attended a meet of SHRM India at the Satyam School of Leadership in Hyderabad. Nina Woodard head of SHRM in India, was talking about the PHR, SPHR and GPHR certifications that SHRM's HRCI body offers. While PHR and SPHR are very US specific certifications, GPHR certification seems to be the only one for non-US professionals to take. However the eligibility for that seems limited to HR leaders who are already delivering global HR processes.

Of course, there exists the other route to develop HR professionals, which is by building their skills like CII, National NHRD Network and XLRI are trying to do together. However, in my view that is a much slower model and might not take newer competencies that are becoming essential to HR professionals into account.

Interesting trend watch by i4cp:

-Sexual harassment claims by men have risen from 11.6% in 1997 to 15.4% in 2007
-This harassment comes from both men and woman; from other men, it's not necessarily homosexual intent, but rather men putting other men down "who fail to conform to masculinity norms"
-The Gender Public Advocacy Coalition suggests expanding to "Gender harassment" and other terms to be more inclusive.

More here.

I wonder what the corresponding figures would be for India?

Ok, this is interesting :-)

Senator Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, works for New York-based hedge fund Avenue Capital Group and previously held a post with international management consulting group, McKinsey and Company.

"We ... have to reward work more," US broadcaster ABC quoted her as saying. "By that I mean I have people in New York working on Wall Street as investment managers, as hedge fund executives.

"Under the tax code, they can pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes on $50 million, than a teacher, or a nurse, or a truck driver in Parma pays on $50,000. That's very discouraging to people.

"You just feel like, 'Wait a minute, I'm working as hard as I can,' " she said.

It's not the first time the former first lady has railed against her daughter's profession. In 2006 she told an audience that young people thought "work is a four-letter word".

OK, now I know why young upwardly mobile professionals are not voting for Hillary. I wonder what Barack Obama thinks about knowledge workers

Personnel Today says that HR people who are legally savvy have a better scope to advance professionally than others.

And now there's a new career trend taking hold, upstaging even the role of business partner: HR legal eagles.

Employers are crying out for legally-savvy HR practitioners to help them manage the ever growing octopus of employment legislation, say recruitment experts.

Alistair Cook, director at HR recruitment firm Digby Morgan, says he has seen a massive growth in demand for employment law specialists over the past year, especially on the interim side.

"There's been an increase of about 60% in the number of legal HR roles in the past 12 months. At a senior level, employment law and employee relations specialists can command £2,500 a day or £250,000 a year," he says.

Martyn Wright is director of Oakleaf Partnership HR recruitment specialists. He says that the advent of shared service functions has meant the responsibility for employment law is increasingly being devolved to HR, especially within London's square mile.

"Most generalist HR jobs involve some form of employee relations but now employers, particularly in the City, specifically want employment law specialists to work in HR."

In India, traditionally, for personnel and Industrial Relations professionals who paid their dues working in factories with blue-collared workforces, knowing the ins and outs of the various labour laws applicable to them was a prerequisite for success. Only in the recent past with more and more organizations applicable under the various state level Shops and Establishment Acts, has there been a plethora of HR professionals with a comparatively low knowledge of legal aspects.

I wonder if the UK experience would be applicable in India too in the near future?

We have started the phase where Indian companies are globalising. To succeed, they need to be led by global leaders and managers, people who are comfortable with viewpoints and cultures not their own. What are the characteristics of a global manager? Abhijit Bhaduri, head of HR at Frito Lay, himself a global manager, having worked with Colgate Palmolive in Malaysia and the US, has some thoughts:

Being a global manager means being comfortable holding almost two opposing thoughts and not allowing either one to overwhelm. Being able to flex one's style to address different business and people needs means that such individuals are a rare breed. They learn to manage change. Not in others or in other corporations but starting first of all within themselves.

If one has to succeed in the future, this is a skill one has to learn and build at the outset. Right now one can be leading global teams, because the going is good. However, when business goes through a cycle down, the ones that will be left standing will be the people who fit the definition of a global manager.

I'll be traveling to Chennai tomorrow for addressing a gathering of the Travel Agents' Association of India (TAAI).

The talk would be on how to have a strategy to deal with an uncertain environment, and the people processes to help one's organization negotiate change.

So if you are anywhere near the Ambassador Pallava hotel do give me a call and we can meet either before or after my talk.

There are some people whose name equals innovation in India. And a lot of them are unsung. However, a lot more of them might have remained unsung if it were not for Prof. Anil Gupta and his HoneyBee network. His former student and CEO of Naukri.com Sanjeev Bikhchandani writes:

In the last twenty years HoneyBee has documented in its online database more than 70,000 inventions by innovators in rural India. These include – a cotton stripping / plucking machine, a manual milking machine, a coconut tree climbing device, a garlic peeling machine, a device to draw water from wells, herbal remedies, a cowdung powered cell phone charger, a plow and weeding device that can be attached to a motorcycle, a low cost cell phone based switch for household appliances and farm pump sets, a beach cleaner made from an adaptation of a groundnut separator, and a walnut peeling machine among others.

The Network has filed for more than 142 patents and more than twenty have been awarded.

HoneyBee gathers ideas by staying in touch with people in rural India. Apart from a continuous stream of ideas that now walk in through the door the Network conducts Shodhyatras every six months. Basically a group of Networkers led by Prof. Gupta travel through selected parts of rural India over several weeks meeting people, uncovering innovations and recognising and rewarding inventors.

Several companies have come forward to license some these innovations and commercialise them. The Network thus is able to disseminate the innovations while protecting the intellectual property rights of the inventors and ensuring that they get a financial reward.

So how did the Network come about. Prof. Gupta was working in the area of agricultural economics and rural development at IIM in the mid eighties. He spent a lot of time in villages talking to farmers to gather data for his research studies. He would publish his research papers and would travel all over the world to speak at conferences. However he was always plagued by a sense of guilt – he was doing all this but the farmers who gave him the knowledge were getting nothing out of it. He wanted to rectify this injustice.

When I was his student at IIM around that time Prof. Gupta once told me that there is a lot of indigenous knowledge in rural India that is undocumented and may be lost to future generations with the advent of modern technology from the West and he was planning to document it. At that time I did not realise the importance of what I dismissed as a noble idea casually suggested over a cup of tea in his home.

Over the years however from a small beginning in a cubicle at IIM Ahmedabad, the HoneyBee network has created an entire ecosystem where indigenous knowledge and rural innovations are documented, inventors are recognised and rewarded and innovations are marketed to companies.

My earlier post on Indian Innovations.

Prof. Anil Gupta is doing a remarkable service to document and share the Indian's traditional way to innovate - which some call jugaad. A work around - because resources are scarce and work needs to be done. In a world which some say is going to be characterised by a scarcity of resources, are Indians better prepared because of our "jugaadu" ways? Here's something I wrote on a similar topic around two years ago.

Recently after we replaced our defunct DVD player, we've been catching up on quite a few movies that we missed.

In this post, however, I'd like to talk about two movies in particular. Delhii Heights starring Jimmy Shergill and Neha Dhupia, and Mumbai Salsa starring stand up comedian Vir Das along with a bunch of relative unknown actors.

The movies give us a bunch of insights into the urban Generations X and Y in the Indian metros.

• Note that both of the movies have the name of the cities in them. Pointing out that the stories are of the urban Indian as opposed to being for a pan-Indian audience.
• Delhii Heights is about life in a high rise apartment complex where DINKs like corporate executives Jimmy and Neha live, while Mumbai Salsa is the name of the discotheque and bar where Mumbai's hotshots gather, the increasing prevalence of The Third Place being brought out in the movie.
• The family, usually such an integral part of the Indian movie, plays no role in both the movies. There is no "Ma" or "Pitaji" to take the attention away from the main roles.
• While the female leads in both the movies are driven career women, and the male leads look like they will support them. However when push comes to shove, it is still expected by supposedly enlightened men that the woman will sacrifice their career (check video embedded below). However, both movies end in happly ever after tidings.
• The rocking dudes and dudettes are the ones with corporate careers. Advertising and Marketing seems to be the one that movie makers seem to identify most with. Vir Das even earns a Rs. 30 lakh salary in an advertising firm! His girlfriend seems to be a HR person, but it's never stated. However, Mumbai Salsa also shows characters pursuing 'alternative careers' like a tattoo artist, salsa dance teacher and gym instructor.
• While in Mumbai Salsa sex is the starting point that lead to long term relationships, Delhii Heights shows how couples even after knowing each other for 5-6 years may not actually 'really' know each other.
  

As the year draws to a close here are some pointers for those of you who might be heading for a performance appraisal:

1. If you haven't had clear goals to start your assessment cycle, you are in big trouble. Most managers can't set "SMART" (ask me what it means if you don't know) goals, which is the biggest reason for the heartburn during appraisal times. Would a carpenter cut a door without knowing how big is the door frame? Yet, that's what happens regularly in the corporate world.
2. If you have some goals, great. However, if the number of your goals (or KRAs, or KPIs) is more than 6-7 then you are in trouble again. Well, not as big a trouble as folks in bullet one, but a significant level anyway. If you have 12 goals (or KPAs...blah, blah) how do you know which ones to focus on? What are the weightages for each of them? So you could have done 10 goals but if your manager tells you, number 11 and 12 are the really important ones to consider for your role, then you are in deep deep trouble.
3. If points 1 and 2 are great, but your performance is subjective and lacks a measurement process, then you might be doing what we do in Indian markets, haggling !
4. Depending on the performance appraisal process, you might have a self appraisal step. Be sure to make it count by giving realistic estimate of your key skills, achievements and (if your company focuses on it) competencies as it relates to your current role as well as future roles.
5. During the performance discussion, ask your manager to be frank and list out your strengths and also weaknesses vis-a-vis your current role as well as your next targeted role. If you don't know what role you can move into next, ask your manager. If your firm has a mentoring process before a promotion is given, ask when will you be eligible for it.
6. If you've had more than one manager in the performance assessment period, be sure that the past manager has passed on the full feedback of your performance to the new one. Specially if you had done great work then :)
   
7. Don't use the performance appraisal process to blackmail the organization, using threats of resignation/offer letters from other firms to get a good performance rating. Even if your manager falls for it, during the normalization process it would not work and you might lose more than you would gain.
8. If you need help with headcount/other resources to be successful in your goals mention that clearly and ensure it is put down in the form.
   

Remember, performance appraisal time is for focussing on an honest look back on your performance.

All the best !