Tag: RECRUITMENT

Two Perspectives about Getting on and off the Wrong Train

Life sometimes puts us on the ‘wrong train’. How to decide if we need to get off the train or just enjoy the view?

Life rarely goes as planned. Maybe you didn’t plan on the having the job you currently have, even five years ago. Sometimes, we chase after opportunities and sometimes, we are made to create opportunities for ourselves. We decide on one thing and another thing happens. There are two perspectives to these ideas about change (of life and plans of life for us) and growth.

The Cost of Change:

There’s a well-known Japanese proverb that goes:

“If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station. The longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be.”

This can be applied to so many scenarios of life:

-Feel stuck in a job you don’t like? Quit before your mind gives in to the habit of comfortable misery. Get off the next station.

-Feel stuck on an idea you know doesn’t seem to be working out? Stop and check if you should put it on the side for now, quit or course correct. Decide the ‘station’ you want to get off and do that before the train rams into your sense of competence.

-If a project needs you to test something on a user, test on one user, in a controlled environment, so in case there’s a flaw, it doesn’t reach thousand users later. Decide if it works and make the required changes as early as you can. The more you stall, the more expensive the return ticket becomes. As the writer Steve Krug puts it, ‘the cost of change grows over time.’

The Suprises of a Journey:

On the other side of this coin about ‘getting off’ from the ‘wrong train’, there are countless writers and philosophers from across the world that remind us how it is the journey that is more important than the destination. One may get on the wrong train, one may not reach their originally planned destination. But they still get to take in new, undiscovered scenery. The ‘wrong’ train may eventually make us find new a destination we didn’t even know we needed.

This too can be applied to many scenarios in life:

-Stuck with a job which you didn’t plan on having? Might as well learn something about it now and try your best to do it well, with your full presence. We may know people professionally who didn’t plan on getting in a career they are in right now and somehow, managed to be at the top of that career they ‘originally’ hadn’t thought of choosing.

-Your initial idea has turned all topsy-turvy and you don’t know what to do with it now? Maybe there is a new direction your idea is meant to go in.

-Testing on a thousand users led to a different outcome than anticipated? Maybe think if the users can still benefit from this ‘new’ outcome.

Getting on a wrong train may either lead you away from your planned destination, or it may lead you to a destination you were more suitable to go in. Our decision then lies not in quitting, or staying but deciding the cost of staying on the ‘wrong’ train. And both decisions can be sensible ones depending on our situation. Some questions we may ask ourselves are:

  • Is the cost of change likely to make your life miserable?
  • What will you lose if you stay on the wrong train?
  • Is there something you may gain if you stay on the wrong train? 

These are the answers we need, which may help us decide whether to get off at the next station or enjoy the scenery. So dear reader, would you like a new ticket or would you like to get off at the next station?

One Question, Three Answers, Three Outlooks

Three different answers to ‘what are you doing?’ can help you to be present, set goals and find meaning.

Can three people be doing the exact same thing, with the exact same tools and still see three different possibilities?

Three brick-layers are doing their job of laying bricks, neatly in a row. Someone asks one brick-layer: ‘What are you doing?’

He responds: ‘I am laying bricks.’

Someone asks the second brick-layer: ‘What are you doing?’

He responds: ‘I am building a wall.’

The third brick-layer gets asks” ‘What are you doing?’

He responds: ‘I am building a house.’

Three different people, doing supposedly the same job, having completely different answers. The beauty is that none of them are wrong.

Having said that, they do point to three different mentalities, which we have to adopt in different situations.

  • The Immediate Present/Task at Hand: The first brick-layer’s answer of ‘I am laying bricks’ is grounded in the immediate reality. No looking forward, no looking backward, and taking things one brick at a time. There are some tasks and situations that demand this kind of a mentality. Stressed about the outcome of something, wondering if it will go according to the plan in your head? We take it one brick at a time, one small task at a time. Not sure what to do next? We take it one brick at a time and eventually, a structure will start building itself. Overwhelmed with a huge seemingly impossible to-do list? We take it one small task at a time, and eventually, the boxes will be checked off.
  • The Larger Perspective/The Point: The second brick-layer’s answer of ‘I am building a wall’ is grounded in planning and setting realistic goals. It looks ahead, and that looking ahead gives the rationale of why something is being done in the first place. And in what sort of situations can we apply such an attitude? Your team is not sure why you are asking them to do a task? Tell them what doing that task will lead to. Your meeting agenda seems to be a list of random things to do? Structure them in a list of tasks, objects and expected results, and see the magic of reason taking over the assignment. Tasks make a hundred times more sense when we understand the point of doing them.
  • The Meaning/That’s What it’s All About: The third brick-layer’s answer of ‘I am building a house’ is grounded in giving meaning to life. It is the grandest of mentality and thus will require a slightly larger (than life) explanation. There are times when whatever we do, we feel it won’t matter. The commute to and from the office, the constant weeks of tasks, the meetings, the overtime- it all just seems to be a waste. Even when we do understand why we are doing something practically (to pay the bills, to finalise that deal, to ace that interview, to streamline the office), we sometimes do not see the point of anything. The reality of the mundane drains us. It is in times like these the third mentality comes in: it forces us back into the big ‘why’ of our choices.  The brick-layer became a brick-layer to build houses. Maybe you became a recruiter to help people find a job that matches their inner calling. Maybe you became a teacher to guide the young folks who are the future of the country. Maybe you went into finance to understand the use of abundance in the right way. Maybe you became a lawyer to give justice to everyone. In the daily office-work we sometimes forget why we were drawn to something in the first place. And when we remind ourselves what’s all this has been about, hope and motivation renew. Laying bricks to build a house.

Every day is not the same, and perhaps we can ask ourselves ‘what are doing?’ and decide the answer that is needed.

Are you an Intrapreneur?

Dear employee, do you dream big, and always seem to find new ideas to drive innovation?

Do you find a way to expand your role in a way that not only helps you with job crafting but also helps the company you are working in?

Do you always find a way to rethink a seemingly odd idea into something sellable? Well, you might be an intrapreneur!

An ‘intrapreneur’ is essentially an entrepreneur within a company, who can bring innovation and success for the company through their unique skills, their competence and perspective, that is, through their enterprising nature. So, employers, how to recognise the intrapreneur within your company? And employees, how to cultivate or recognise that streak of intrapreneurship within you? Here’s a quick list of qualities that makes one an intrapreneur:

Making Lives Better

An intrapreneur, much like the entrepreneur, has great ideas for innovation and change. What does an entrepreneur do? They find a way to add meaning to their life through a business idea, an innovation that will change the life of the community/the people around for the better. They find this one need, that one gap, and find a way to fill that gap, such that it will add benefit and meaning to their as well as the customer’s life. Similarly, within a company, an intrapreneur, through their enterprising nature, constantly finds ways to make their job more meaningful, and develops new competencies, fills the existing gaps within their role, expands it, and thus expands the scope of change within the company. An intrapreneur makes a company’s ‘life’ better.

Expert seller

One doesn’t have to be in sales to be a good salesperson. Who is a good salesperson? A good salesperson is someone who recognises that a product has great selling potential. They recognise the ideal customers, the ideal way to approach those customers, and the ideal way to market that product so that one can sell it well.

As an article by HBR points out, an intrapreneur is similarly a great salesperson of ideas. They recognise a good idea, even ideas that are underutilised or dormant; a good intrapreneur has the ability to revitalise a seemingly dead idea. They can market or remarket the idea such that the idea is ‘sold’ in the right manner, to the right clientele. In other words, an intrapreneur has the ability to look at ideas innovatively, and thus change the world, and the company, through that idea.

Well-connected

What makes an entrepreneur stand out from everyone? One of the qualities is their ability to network, and establish a reciprocal give and take of services with other businesses. A true entrepreneur understands the value of meaningful connections with other entrepreneurs as well as their ‘loyal’ customers.

An intrapreneur within the company similarly, is an expert networker. They not only get along well with their colleagues, but also have a great network outside of the company, that will enable the company to engage in collaborative endeavours, retain clients and consultations. They will always find new avenues for growth for the company. An article by People Matters brings to notice the side of the intrapreneur that wins over people, and the fact they are not afraid to take risks or fail publicly- they will simply learn and get better.

The intrapreneur thus, could be anyone, who is proactive, who understands the value of meaningful networking, and who sees the potential in ideas, and knows how to bring those ideas to fruition, to better their own as well as the company’s life. An intrapreneur thus brings the enterprising spirit within the company, for the company. So, dear employee, do you see the intrapreneurship bug in you? Dear employers, do you recognise the budding intrapreneurs in your office?

How to Handle a Newly Created Position

A newly created position means you might have to be your own mentor and create your own systems from scratch.

You have just got a new job. In fact, it is not just a new job but it is also a newly created position.

Or perhaps within your current organisation, you have been shifted to a newly created position- you are the first person to hold this title.

Companies often create new positions based on their requirements, long-term goals and even due to concerns about employee retention. While such innovation is a great idea to ensure smooth transitions on paper, implementing it in real life can be challenging.

What can you do if you have been put in a newly created position? Read on!

Define, define, define:

A newly created position has no predecessors- no former holder of the position who could mentor or looked up to. No one knows how a day at work for them is going to look like. In such a situation, it is a great idea for the employer and employee to work in collaboration and define the working aspects of the role.

  • Define the expectations
  • Define the long term and immediate goals
  • Define the duties expected and not expected
  • Define who is going to be a part of the interactions in terms of departments, personnel, and teams

It might be tempting to wing it and make the new role as it comes, but before one could have a scope to learn, adapt and improve, some structure needs to be there. Think about it this way- while working in and with a newly defined role might feel freeing, like skating in an empty rink, it is also necessary to ensure the rink itself has strong railings and boundaries, and that one has an understanding about the kind of skates to be worn to ensure a graceful skating experience. A game, no matter how new, requires some rules to ensure there is some method to the madness.

 A newly created position means it is unlikely that a system is going to be in place. Working in already established roles has the benefit of simply replacing someone in an existing system. Working in a newly created role means you may have to develop a system, and that’s an opportunity to build a best, if not the best system. And the first step to do that is to define and concretize.

Be Flexible:

On the other end of this spectrum of defining expectations is the urge to follow a preconceived template of how systems are meant to function. It is important that one keeps an open mind, and remains flexible and receptive to the possibilities that might crop up.

It is also possible that the expectations and systems that you defined and set up earlier may become unnecessary, obsolete, or may need constant tweaks for a while before something gets settled. Be open to such possibilities, rather than fretting over things going wrong.

Things might go wrong indeed, initially as one tries to apply the position into the real world, and real repercussions are discovered about certain steps. Be open to trial and error, be open to change, and be open to reworking and redrawing plans until something stable is formed. As author Jon Acuff says: ‘momentum is messy’. Creation and change can be messy because they change the existing status quo, and that can be quite a tumultuous process. But that also means that things are moving, which is a great sign in itself.

‘Hybrid’ Roles:

A newly created position is often a mix of two to three other roles, and as a result, concerned with two to three departments or teams at a time. This means a person in this new role may have to correspond with all those departments, along with the team-leaders of those departments.

A mix of multiple roles, and reporting to ‘multiple bosses’ demands a certain level of interpersonal and social skills, dealing with multiple perspectives, along with an ability to integrate all inputs into a coherent system. It helps to draw up clear expectations and a plan to balance the multiple departments.

Newly created positions are created for a reason, and it is important to remain true to that reason, and at the same time accept that one will need to take a growth-oriented, flexible and open-minded approach towards the newly created position. Creation of systems, expectations, objectives and tasks might undergo a change, and that is but a natural result of momentum.

Better Together: Growth for the Companies is tied to Career-Growth of its Employees

career-growth of employees, companies

Thinking about career growth is one of the favourite pass-times, it seems.

We have thought about it in the middle of a meeting, or when we were having a quiet moment in the office, or maybe when we were on a holiday, all happy and relaxed. Suddenly, muscles go tense, and the mind goes racing. Sometimes, these thoughts act as motivating factors, the ‘positive’ stress that propels us to think ahead.

Individuals think about career growth a lot.

It’s time companies think about it too. Thinking about career growth shouldn’t just be a concern of the individuals. Companies can benefit a lot by sharing this concern. Yes! Companies can benefit from thinking about the career growth of their employees! How so? Let us delve into it quickly.

The first benefit is right there in our introduction! Individuals think about their career growth a lot. When the company they are working for is genuinely concerned about it as well, it can motivate them to stay. Talk about retaining talent! When companies show interest in helping their employees advance in their careers, it attracts more candidates, because of course, people like to work at places where they see a possibility of concrete growth on paper.

Secondly, companies can reduce their talent acquisition costs by thinking about the career growth of their employees. An employee who sees a career growth while staying at the company means that the company would be able to hire internally. Hiring internally means cutting down on sourcing and onboarding costs. And think of all the time that could be saved on background checks and references.

Thirdly, companies can improve their employee engagement when they think about the career growth of their employees. Employees who know there is a scope to grow professionally within the walls of the company, that there is a chance that they will get an opportunity any moment, are naturally more likely to engage with their work. When the employees know that what they are working at is nota dead-end job, it is likely to increase their motivation and engagement levels. They can attach more meaning to their work and to the company, because they know it is indeed leading them somewhere, that is, it’s not a dead-end job.

So, what can companies and employers do to implement this idea of showing interest in their employee’s career growth?

Think which positions and skill gaps are hard to fill in the company. Talk to the employees about their goals. A few conversations later, it should be possible to align the two, and realise the kind of opportunities the company can offer so that those hard to fill positions and skill gaps are no longer that hard to fill.

Opportunities can range from digital learning, workshops and seminars, sponsored L&D opportunities, shadowing positions and so on.

Now, companies may or may not be able to offer everything to everyone, and even if they do, there’s still a chance that the employee might have different priorities and choices.

That doesn’t mean companies should only and only think about offering career growth opportunities to those who would promise to stay, or to those who would directly, most certainly, be helpful to the company in some way. Benevolently given career growth opportunities to employees ensure a good word of mouth of the company, a good employer brand, and a chance that someone might come back as a boomerang employee!