People at Work & Play

Read about a survey in CIOL on Blogging in India. The survey, released today, finds that India’s blogosphere is driven by youth and a passion for self improvement and entertainment.

• 42 % of online users read blogs to stay informed about world events
• 49 % cite entertainment as the main reason they read blogs
• Blogs written by business leaders rank as the most interesting.

This study also highlighted that while growing in popularity in India, the blogging community is still nascent - with only 14 per cent of India’s netizens actively blogging. 39 per cent was aware of blogs.

Men heavily dominate India’s blogosphere with 76 per cent of its bloggers being male.
Young adults fuel India’s blogosphere, with 54 % of them being between 25 – 34 and 32 % being under 25. Those over 35 constitute 15 %. I wonder how many, like me, are over 55!!

A fervor for self improvement and personal development was found to be a key driver of India’s blogosphere. A large majority of online users read blogs to stay informed about world events.

Do you :-

• Often feel overworked?
• Often have to take work home with you at the end of the day or at weekends?
• Have subordinates always coming to you with problems that you feel they should deal with themselves?
• Worry that the work you delegate may not be done properly?
• Spend a long time checking and correcting tasks that you have delegated to others?

If you have answered “yes” to 2 or more of these questions, you really need to delegate more effectively.

Read up some tips on delegation in Businessballs .

Today’s “Times of India” has an interesting graphic which depicts how much, on average, Indians buy every day. By the way, a Lakh is 100,000 and a Crore is 10 million:

Cars 2,416
Bikes 15,932
Scooters 19,332
Condoms 43.83 lakh
Cigarettes 26.02 crore sticks
Jeans 72,329
Washing Machines 4,274
Laptops 1,183
Soaps 151 lakh bars of 100 gms
Gold 1,918 kg
Movie tickets 1.04 crores
Air tickets 95,890
Packaged Water 57.6 lakh bottles of 650 ml
Beer 86 lakh bottles of 650 ml
Soft Drinks 1.96 crore bottles of 300 ml
TVs 22,740
Fridges 9,589

I, for one, was pleasantly surprised to see these figures. The best antidote to poverty is economic progress!This bit of trivia makes one marvel at the size of our country, its huge population and the potential to economic prosperity- if we get the basics right.

It is getting increasingly common for many to work with others in different parts of the world. Those who are well versed in cross-cultural competencies are able to take the different expectations and nuances in behaviour in their stride. They are able to hold their own in a variety of environments.

Those who are not so competent find it extremely difficult to understand and relate to cultural differences. These differences go beyond work ethic to social norms and values.

Dr. Karine Schomer and her firm Change Management Consulting & Training, LLC bring very interesting insights in this area. Strongly recommended-particularly their India practice.

We do not always like the way things are. Today’s environment makes us get angry sometimes. With traffic jams, with corruption, with spoilt brats of politicians , with the “I must get past you at any cost” attitude and so on.

Sometimes we wish we could change the way things are in our world. You and I know that you cannot change every thing to suit your needs.

Here is a small prayer called The Serenity Prayer used by Alcoholics Anonymous (and I am not a member!) which strikes me as being beneficial in such times.

God, grant me the serenity to
Accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And wisdom to know the difference

Acquiring happiness comes through looking at the good things you have….not what the other fellow has!!

The lure for money, it seems, drives some people to places one would not think they would go to. Recently, Harbhajan Singh’s appearing for a liquor ad with his hair let loose created a furore in Sikh circles. One remembers him as a sincere young lad who spoke with a lot of feeling in an early TV interview about the difficulties he faced to make it big.

Today is a far cry from the days when getting his first pair of cricket boots was a big event. With time and success, looks as if he has become too big for them!

Every organization today is grappling with issues relating to human capital. These include the challenges of Attracting, Retaining & Engaging talent.

Engagement means a high degree of commitment where employees go the extra mile and put in discretionary efforts.

Research from a recent study by Towers Perrin on “Winning Strategies for a Global Workforce” covering 86,000 employees in many countries underscored that not only are the key drivers for Attraction, Retention & Engagement different but also vary at different stages of the employee’s life cycle.

This finding has great significance for all of us who deal with human capital.

The context of today’s world, irrespective of where we are in the globe, is best provided in Stephen Covey’s recent book “The 8th Habit”. He describes 7 global seismic shifts that characterize the new Knowledge Worker Age.

• The Globalization of Markets and Technologies: New technologies are transforming most local, regional, and national markets, into global markets without borders
• The Emergence of Universal Connectivity: Proprietary communication channels that bound people/ companies together have become obsolete. The glue that held our economic activities together is melting in the heat of universal connectivity
• Democratization of Information/Expectation: No one manages/owns the internet.
• Exponential increase in Competition: Organizations must constantly develop better ways of competing against lower labor prices, lower material costs, faster innovation, greater efficiency and higher quality.
• The movement of wealth creation from Financial capital to Intellectual & Social capital: The wealth creation movement has gone from money to people; from financial capital to human capital.
• Free Agency: People are becoming more aware and conscious of options. The employment market is turning into a free agent market. Knowledge workers are increasingly determined to brand themselves.
• Permanent White Water: We live in a constantly changing environment. In turbulent white water, people must independently understand the purpose and guiding principles of their team/organization.

Attended the 10 th Annual Conference of the National HRD Network at New Delhi last week. Was delighted to find a corner kept for XL Alumni: those of us who have had the pleasure of studying at XLRI, Jamshedpur.

There were so many people there that I don’t obviously remember all the names. Some that I do remember are:

1. My seniors: Aquil Busrai of IBM, Anand Nayak of ITC, Hari Jha of ITC
2. My batchmate: Shyam “Shotgun” Rau of DCM
3. My juniors: As I passed out of XL 32 years ago, almost every one seems to be in this category! There were many but I do remember Emmanuel David, Sujatha Patel, Kumar Krishnaswamy,”Raja”Varadarajan,Prashant Sankaran, Gauri Sarin etc etc.
4. Profs: The inimitable Madhukar Shukla

Cards and quick stories were exchanged. It was fun to be there.

Days have simply flown past. Realized that there has been no post for 10 days. Most of the time I was away. Visited Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai as part of the Global Talent Delegation organized by the Human Capital Institute, (which we represent in India) along with DNL Global.

The event started with a 1-day Global Talent Summit at The Taj Palace in New Delhi. Our delegation had senior executives from organizations like Towers Perrin, Humana, Centre for Talent Retention, Johnson & Johnson, EDS, Fieldglass, Alcan, Parson Consulting and The University of Johannesburg.