Sunday, January 26, 2014

Core Values: The beginning and the defining thing!

I have seen companies struggling define their values. They struggle because they do not know who these values are for and who has to live these values. How having values helps, what is the cost of maintaining and managing values, what are the consequences of having values defined and not lived.Simply put values are created, recognized, and reflected in everyday life. They are not special effects! They are not oath, they are not passive artifacts. They remind us subtly when we ignore them. 
We also find it hard to understand whether values are “what we do”, “What we believe we do”, “Are they personal values, work values, delivery values, client values, employee values, community values? Not sure how many values? Are they promises? Are they commitments? They are all but “Core Values” are very few and they reflect encompassing what all we do, everyday with everyone, for everyone.

If we look at McKinsey values, they will sound perfect for any services organization that provides services and consulting, blended in approach and delivery. Why struggle, add them to your core values and see if you really do all that today as you have written. Ask yourself, why you are not doing many things as you would like to.

You will find answers in one of these factors below-

1.     You do not consider environment much important in what you do. Environment mean people you work with as team or coordinates, organization and client.
2.     You consider ends as the only thing that matters.
3.     You believe others will take care of things around what you do and there is no need to worry about, whether your actions have met the meaningful and logical intent and purpose.

McKinsey values are quite inspiring and need to be looked at when you are thinking of working on your organization’s core values!
 "Our values aren't quasi-religious virtues but rather a set of interlocking and mutually reinforcing choices."

Our Mission
To help our clients make distinctive, lasting, and substantial improvements in their performance and to build a great firm that attracts, develops, excites, and retains exceptional people.

. Create an unrivaled environment for exceptional people
. Be nonhierarchical and inclusive.
. Sustain a caring meritocracy.
. Develop one another through apprenticeship and mentoring.
. Uphold the obligation to dissent.
. Govern ourselves as a "One Firm" partnership.

Though we share the same core values and passion for our work, you will be hard pressed to find two people with the same story. Our knowledge professionals come from a multitude of backgrounds and cultures. Our community includes accountants, engineers, economists, scientists, musicians, and recent graduates from a full range of disciplines. In addition to this rich diversity of professional profiles, you’ll find yourself surrounded by opera singers and pianists, marathon runners and mountain climbers, ballerinas and flamenco dancers, chefs and sommeliers*!

*A sommelier (/ˈsɒməljeɪ/ or /sʌməlˈjeɪ/; French pronunciation: ​[sɔməlje]), or wine steward, is a trained and knowledgeable wine professional, normally working in fine restaurants, who specializes in all aspects of wine service as well as wine and food pairing.

We believe we will be successful if our clients are successful.

Solving the hardest problems requires the best people. We think that the best people will be drawn to the opportunity to work on the hardest problems. We build our firm around that belief. These two parts of our mission reinforce each other and make our firm strong and enduring.

We are a values-driven organization. For us this means to always:

Put the client’s interest ahead of our own

This means we deliver more value than expected. It doesn’t mean doing whatever the client asks.

Behave as professionals

Uphold absolute integrity. Show respect to local custom and culture, as long as we don’t compromise our integrity.

Keep our client information confidential

We don’t reveal sensitive information. We don’t promote our own good work. We focus on making our clients successful.

Tell the truth as we see it

We stay independent and able to disagree, regardless of the popularity of our views or their effect on our fees. We have the courage to invent and champion unconventional solutions to problems. We do this to help build internal support, get to real issues, and reach practical recommendations.

Deliver the best of our firm to every client as cost effectively as we can

We expect our people to spend clients’ and our firm’s resources as if their own resources were at stake.

We operate as one firm. We maintain consistently high standards for service and people so that we can always bring the best team of minds from around the world—with the broadest range of industry and functional experience—to bear on every engagement.

We come to better answers in teams than as individuals. So we do not compete against each other. Instead, we share a structured problem-solving approach, where all opinions and options are considered, researched, and analyzed carefully before recommendations are made.

We give each other tireless support. We are fiercely dedicated to developing and coaching one another and our clients. Ours is a firm of leaders who want the freedom to do what they think is right.



Saturday, January 11, 2014

Some Thoughts On The ‘Reward & Recognition’ Program

Some Thoughts On The ‘Reward & Recognition’ Program 

Mrinal Krant, Director-Human Resources, Foresight Group, India

Recognition is a basic human need. From the research on people’s needs and performance drivers, works of Maslow, Herzberg, Herb Kelleher, Jack Welch, David Cooperider and Vineet Nayar, gravitated around ‘people’. People have always surprised researchers and business leaders alike; on “what people really want and what motivates them?” While ‘complexity’ of motivational factors and people’s responses to such stimuli will remain a mystery, it is proven fact, that, ‘right intentions’ work, programs may fail!  I like the word that a leader uses for ‘appraisal’; “sense of purpose”. Together with ‘sense of purpose’ and ‘right intentions’ can we not create a ‘portfolio’ mind-set for rewards & recognition? I used ‘portfolio’ as ‘pragmatically’ (using another leader’s word from an appraisal discussion) as senior management would look for the ROI in investments made in the process of rewards & recognitions. Investment of management and people’s time, cost and other resources! We all know, everyone loves being recognized. Recognition ensures ‘repeat’ high performance or sustained behavior results in ‘value creation’. Recognition is part of high-performance culture. Discretionary power to recognize empowers and engages managers and other leaders. Managers therefore, get sense of ‘participative decision-making’ and ‘sense of shared-leadership’ just not ‘shared responsibility! We have realized, we live in the collaborative world and things here are “co-created”.J Ideally we should make use of the ‘power of recognition”. Recognition is not appeasement, it is not ‘compensating’, and it is not a ‘trade-off either. It is priceless. It is about ‘recognizing those values’ that makes achievement so special, for individual/group, company and customers. Coupons, gifts, comp-offs are follow up measures, the ‘real’ thing is ‘recognition’! Recognition is the biggest of all rewards! Recognition has intense ‘emotional value’ which cannot be compared with a comp-off or a $100 dinner coupon. The emotional value touches both; the reward giver and the recipient, almost equally! People don’t work till morning and then catch flights ‘red-eye’ for recognition. They do it because they believe in the values! Values; that organization creates and gets created by! Recognition should be a leader’s top task!

Time to stop Employee Farming!

  #Twitter  handle in Nov 2022 tweeted: "bye literally everyone"! Elon's tweet confirmed that this action was needed as  #twit...