The Seed

A successful business man was growing old and knew it was time to choose a successor to take over the business. Instead of choosing one of his directors or his children, he decided to do something different.

He called all the young executives in his company together.

“It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO,” he said. “I have decided to choose one of you.”

The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued. “I am going to give each one of you a seed today – a very special seed. I want you to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO.”

One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed.

He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed.

Every day, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow. Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.

Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing. By now, others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn’t have a plant and he felt like a failure.

Six months went by – still nothing in Jim’s pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing. Jim didn’t say anything to his colleagues, however. He just kept watering and fertilizing the soil – he so wanted the seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought their plants to the CEO for inspection. Jim told his wife that he wasn’t going to take an empty pot. But she asked him to be honest about what happened.

Jim felt sick at his stomach. It was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life, but he knew his wife was right.

He took his empty pot to the board room. When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful–in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor and many of his colleagues laughed. A few felt sorry for him!

When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives.

Jim just tried to hide in the back.

“My, what great plants, trees, and flowers you have grown,” said the CEO.

“Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!”

All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered the financial director to bring him to the front.

Jim was terrified. He thought, “The CEO knows I’m a failure! Maybe he will have me fired!”

When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed.

Jim told him the story.

The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim, and then announced to the young executives, “Here is your next Chief Executive! His name is Jim!”

Jim couldn’t believe it. Jim couldn’t even grow his seed. How could he be the new CEO the others said?

Then the CEO said, “One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a seed.

I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead – it was not possible for them to grow.

All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers.

“When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new Chief Executive!”

Moral:

• If you plant honesty, you will reap trust
• If you plant goodness, you will reap friends.
• If you plant humility, you will reap greatness.
• If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment
• If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective.
• If you plant hard work, you will reap success.
• If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation.

So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap later.

Make it a great week ahead!!

The Poor Performance of Performance Management

Annual Performance Appraisals have always had mixed reviews. Managers do not like it because of the time consuming process and employees do not like it because of its perceived unfairness. The entire exercise loses the original intention of improving employee learning and performance and becomes a dreaded process.

In a survey by New York based On Point Consulting, only slightly over 40% of line managers and HR Managers think there is value in a performance management process. While the tool by itself might be useful, the prevailing culture in an organisation is critical for its success.

One way to improve is not to just do the annual appraisal but schedule quarterly meetings to discuss performance and make the meeting a feedback event. This requires managers to be coached.

A successful performance management system should:

1. Help employees build their skills and competencies
2. Is consistently applied across the organisation
3. Uses a rating scale that enables differentiation of performance
4. Helps to build a performance culture
5. Provides data for succession planning
6. Drives Leadership development initiatives

Effective Learning

By: Dr. R. Palan, Chairman & CEO of SMR Group 

How do we get learning to take place in a most effective manner?
Just list a few:

• Good Schools
• Good Teachers
• Action Learning
• Experiential Education
• Adventure Learning
• E Learning
• Instructor led Learning
• Active Learning
• Accelerated Learning
• FUN learning

We can go on discussing the various ideas proposed. Over the weekend I was rewriting my book The Magic of Making Training FUN! and as I was surfing the internet, I was overwhelmed by the amount of literature available out there. The bottom line still seems to focus on Attention, Participation, Retention and of course Transfer of learning.

Education Queensland highlights five principles:

In essence, the principles emphasise the need to:

• understand the learner;
• understand the learning process;
• provide a supportive and challenging environment;
• establish worthwhile learning partnerships;
• shape and respond to, a variety of social and cultural contexts.

Let us explore these in the next couple of blogs.

How do we develop people into clever people?

Is Learning a worthwhile intervention?

Preventing Poor Performance

By: Dr. R. Palan, Chairman & CEO of SMR Group 

We talked about Leading Clever People and Effective Learning in the last couple of blogs.

Over the last few weeks I had the opportunity to read the outstanding book FREAKONOMICS. If you have not read it, you MUST. The book will help every reader – all of us redefine the way we view the world.

The most important lessons I learned from the book – the world may be complex but is not unknowable if we just can ask the RIGHT QUESTIONS.

All it takes is a new way of looking.

I liked the concept of Broken Windows. I first read it in Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell and now again in the FREAKONOMICS by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

The concept first appeared in an article titled Broken Windows by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, which appeared in the March 1982 edition of The Atlantic Monthly.The idea is based on the following example:
“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.”

A successful strategy for preventing vandalism, say the book’s authors, is to fix the problems when they are small. Repair the broken windows within a short time, say, a day or a week, and the tendency is that vandals are much less likely to break more windows or do further damage. Clean up the sidewalk every day, and the tendency is for litter not to accumulate (or for the rate of littering to be much less). Problems do not escalate and thus respectable residents do not
flee a neighborhood.

In this context, I can only think of the Singaporean example of clean neighbourhoods.
The theory thus makes two major claims: that further petty crime and low-level anti-social behavior will be deterred, and that major crime will, as a result, be prevented.

How can we apply the broken window theory to the world of work to prevent poor performance?

Leading Clever People

Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones identify several things we need to know
about leading clever people.

It is essential to know the characteristics most clever people share,
these collectively make them a difficult crew to manage.

1. They know their worth.

2. They are organisationally savvy.

3. They ignore corporate hierarchy.

4. They expect instant access.

5. They have good networks and are well connected.

6. They are bored easily.

7. They won’t thank you and thye assume they know most of the things.

8. They are results oriented.

What it means to work here?

 By: Dr. R. Palan, Chairman & CEO of SMR Group

Signature experiences, Inclusiveness and Congruence seem to be the answer.

The Harvard Business Review article by Tamara J Erickson and Lynda Gratton describes the need for every company to have a signature experience that sets it apart. In the War for Talent, many organisations talk about being employer of choice. Signature experiences explicitly communicate what makes your firm unique and can improve employee engagement and performance dramatically.

My first question after reading the article was – are we doing that in our organisation?

Matching other organisations with the right offer may be attractive enough to bring employees to the door but may not be good enough to bring great employees enthusiastic about their work and fiercely loyal to the organisation and its mission.

To enhance the elements of engagement and to foster deeply committed employees, the following are needed:

1. A comprehensive understanding of the types of people who will be productive to the organisation over the long term. What are the competencies they need?
2. A well defined communication programme that conveys for employees the attributes and values of the organisation.
3. A coherent employee experience – none of your company’s environmental elements misrepresents what it’s really like to work there.
4. Respecting diversity, making people feel inclusive and enabling people from different races, religion, language, functions and gender to mix around. Small groups that cling must be educated to understand the importance of making others feel included. You will never know about others unless and until you work with them.
5. Celebrate success and share stories, identify and preserve the history but do not forget to identify the importance of change for growth.

How to stay calm when under pressure?

By: Dr. R. Palan, Chairman & CEO of SMR Group 

The answer is EQ.

When you bring intelligence to your emotion, it is known as Emotional Intelligence (EQ).

Emotional Intelligence is often rated as the single most important differentiator for success in a highly competitive world. It is far more important than IQ – intelligence quotient. More importantly, EQ can be learned.

We from the SMR Group had the honour of having dinner with the Honourable Secretary of Energy from the Philippines. To him, the entire day was a compact day. He said that with a smile. Speaking at several high profile events and meeting top diplomats had not put him under pressure. The sense of humour, he displayed was infectious. I loved his lines when he remarked in jest – “if you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance. Then baffle them with bullshit.” Laughter is indeed a great influencing tool.

I relate this as I have had a packed day and have another packed few days. I am just about to collapse into bed late at night – past 130 am. Just imagine how well you can sleep if you continue to think of your flight the next morning.

Today was one of the days when the battery for my mobile phone decided to play funny and I was stranded without my mobile phone. In a world where I get extremely stressed without my mobile phone, I was relaxed. The public phone and the public transport – the train were pretty good too.

Today was a day when some of our vendors behaved like customers. They expected us to behave like a vendor and meet their needs rather then they meet our needs. Today was a day when I wanted some of my colleagues to do something and they didn’t. Normally I would get a little impatient, albeit in a nice way. Today I was able to communicate my thoughts in a straight and objective manner. The world is strange place. Sanity is an important thing to survive in this complex world.

I suppose you only worry when you can do something about it. EQ is more important than IQ. Surprisingly, I was and am sane the whole day despite severe time pressures.

My wife says these things happen to you when you are ageing.

I thought differently. The Honourable Secretary of Energy from the Philippines was a great role model for me.

Oh boy! That is cool, right but I certainly do not want another such packed day to demonstrate my emotional intelligence.

Good night and be good – be emotionally intelligent.

ARTDO, Bali Conference 2007

By: Dr. R. Palan, Chairman & CEO of SMR Group 

I spoke at the ARTDO Bali Conference.

Around 300 participants attended the event. While I wished the Conference programme could have been more engaging, the hosts were very hospitable. And, Bali was wonderful.

I happenned to read the monograph from Hay Consulting who were exhibiting at the event.Two key statements from the monograph attracted me:

1. The phrase ‘our people are our greatest asset’ may sound like a platitude, but the evidence is that this is true.

2. In evaluating CEO’s, accountability for human capital is a key differentiator.

What do you think?

Deliberate acts of decency

Effective leaders use decencies to build great workforces one gesture at a time. Steve Harrison writing in the HR magazine talks about examples of best practices that he calls as decencies. You can mould a company culture by adopting small decencies. In my own experience, I have either experienced some of these decencies with the people who I worked for or tried them out. It is about the way leaders choose to behave – the actions leaders embrace – every day, especially during
the quite moments when we think no one is watching.

Some of them are:

1. Be sure that nothing important or creative is perceived as the leader’s idea,
2. Write personal notes to employees and customers,
3. Walk an employee or a customer to the door,
4. Always greet people in a sincere way,
5. Make as many allies as you can within the organisation all the time,
6. Talk about disagreements in private personally and try to resolve them or at least agree to disagree,
7. Let every employee have a sense of ownership – give them a business card,
8. Mix with people from other departments,
9. Praise in public and reprimand in private, and
10. Be accessible to people.

They do not like very difficult, do they?

Decencies need to be actionable, tangible, practical, affordable, replicable and sustainable. Once leaders practice the decencies regularly, employees start taking it seriously. Pretty soon, as a leader, you would have developed a new organisational culture.

Appreciate our Family

F A M I L Y

I ran into a stranger as he passed by,
“Oh excuse me please” was my reply.

He said, “Please excuse me too;
I wasn’t watching for you.”

We were very polite, this stranger and I.
We went on our way and we said goodbye.

But at home a different story is told,
How we treat our loved ones, young and old.

Later that day, cooking the evening meal,
My son stood beside me very still.

When I turned, I nearly knocked him down.
“Move out of the way,” I said with a frown

He walked away, his little heart broken.
I didn’t realize how harshly I’d spoken.

While I lay awake in bed,
God’s still small voice came to me and said,

“While dealing with a stranger,
common courtesy you use,
but the family you love, you seem to abuse.

Go and look on the kitchen floor,
You’ll find some flowers there by the door.

Those are the flowers he brought for you.
He picked them himself: pink, yellow and blue.

He stood very quietly not to spoil the surprise,
you never saw the tears that filled his little eyes.”

By this time, I felt very small,
And now my tears began to fall.

I quietly went and knelt by his bed;
“Wake up, little one, wake up,” I said.

“Are these the flowers you picked for me?”
He smiled, “I found ‘em, out by the tree.

I picked ‘em because they’re pretty like you.
I knew you’d like ‘em, especially the blue.”

I said, “Son, I’m very sorry for the way I acted today;
I shouldn’t have yelled at you that way.”
He said, “Oh, Mom, that’s okay.
I love you anyway.”

I said, “Son, I love you too,
and I do like the flowers, especially the blue.”

FAMILY
Are you aware that if we died tomorrow, the company
that we are working for could easily replace us in
a matter of days.
But the family we left behind will feel the loss
for the rest of their lives.

And come to think of it, we pour ourselves more
into work than into our own family,
an unwise investment indeed,
don’t you think?
So what is behind the story?

Do you know what the word FAMILY means?
FAMILY = FATHER AND MOTHER I LOVE YOU