I do not know. There - I have said it. What do I not know? Well, the list is long.
However, I am not embarrassed because I have always felt that ‘I know nothing’ is a good starting point. To quote Socrates, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
I am not saying that ignorance is bliss, and hence, let us all remain ignorant. Quite the opposite! I like competent, dependable people—people who know what is going on, what is not and what is to be done to rectify that.
However, only if we realize that we do not know something can we learn. Experts in psychology say that people learn in four stages.

1. Unconscious incompetence: The stage where we are not even aware that we do not have a particular competence.
2. Conscious incompetence:  We want to learn how to do something but are incompetent at doing it.
3. Conscious competence: We can achieve a particular task but are very conscious about everything we do.
4. Unconscious competence: We have finally mastered a task and are not even conscious of it while we perform it, such as when we learn and ride a bike well.

These stages relate to the psychological states involved in the progress from incompetence to competence in a skill.  This is also known as the conscious competence learning model.
So I am at stage two as regards my long list. Hope to reach stage four soon. I am trying.
Do you have a list? Have you checked where you are?
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If you wish to check what skills you have and at what proficiency level you are now, maybe we can help. Click here, register for free, identify your training needs and find training programs.

X is going to resign her seven-figure salary job and work with an NGO for six months.
Is she deranged? No. Far from it.
She manages a team at a multi-national bank and is rated one of their best employees.
“So what happens after six months?” I asked her.
“I don’t know. I will decide then.”
She seemed at peace at what could be the defining point in her career. She is one of the many who are making conscious choices to leave the rat race and pursue personal satisfaction. 
I realize that we live in an age where the image of success is sometimes more important than actual success. However, people have started asking themselves: What is the definition of success? Do material possessions define life? Do we have to bear the drudgery of a job we hate?
They are finding that their definition of success is far different from others. However, they are not bothered; they do not fear being isolated from the mainstream.
So how do they do it?  They believe in:

• Appreciating themselves and their achievements
• Discovering  interests close to their heart
• Visualizing their future
• Developing realistic expectations
• Defining what success really means to them
• Choosing/changing their jobs/careers wisely
• Focusing on goals
• Not worrying about results

Are you dissatisfied with your current job or career? If not, retrain yourselves and choose another. For more advice on career change, read the resources given here. You can profile your skills, identify your training needs, and check the list of training programs given on the Individuals page at our site.
Find the work you love, train yourself and excel at it. Why leave your heart at home when you go to work?

Economists of all hues and shades would agree on one issue. It’s that the india story is generating this level of global interest mainly because of its sustainable competitive advantage : the demographic dividend. And if it sounds like jargon, rest assured it’s nothing more than the advantage our country has in terms of a large population of young people (in the working age group of 15-64). The 2007-2008 Economic Survey found that 68.4 per cent of the population will be within this age group in 2026, up from an already high base of 62.9 per cent in 2006.And that is saying a lot, when we compare it with the large sections of the older populace in China, Japan or South Korea, which will eventually erode the low wage advantage in many of these countries.

But will this necessarily turn out to be an advantage for India? No one can say for sure. Amidst this euphoria, a fact that we are conveniently overlooking is that this huge, young workforce could become more of a liability rather than an asset without proper, customized training at different levels of their career. In fact, this realization has set in rather late, going by the number of freshers who, after years of formal education, are branded brusquely as ‘not yet job-ready.’ by their employers. Where does the fault lie?

India Incorporated could do with a bit of introspection, too. Not too many in the corporate sector realize that the missing link that could make employees eminently job-ready is customized training—training programs that are structured not only taking the unique needs and cultural set-up of the organization, or the needs of different functions within the organization, but individual competencies and aptitudes, as well. And this applies not only to the entry stage, but to every stage of the professional life cycle. For middle aged employees it means crucial upgradation in their skills that could make all that difference between competency-building and redundancy.

The benefits of multi-level customized training are obvious

• Higher productivity at all
• For freshers, it means better integration with the company
• For mid career employees, it means crucial upgradation of skills
• Higher Return on Investment (ROI) for the organization
• Awareness on the part of employees about a company’s specific needs and culture
• Cutting down in terms of time and expenses on ‘one-size-fits-all’ training that is not relevant to all employees
• Gaining an edge over competition

And these are just some of them.

There is another reason why there needs to be a tectonic shift in human resource training. While the fast-changing and competitive global markets have seen mercurial  business cycles and short product life cycles for some years now, post-recession, ongoing employee development and up-skilling has become even more of an imperative as organizations penetrate into new markets and try to extract the maximum value for the capital they have ploughed into operations. For this, they need to recruit employees who can hit the ground running. That formal education cannot deliver the goods is now a reality. That is where flexible training modules come in. Their objectives supplement formal education, filling in the gaps in soft skills such as communication, leadership, initiative, aptitude, practical know-how, workplace realities, and other areas where formal education contributes next to nothing.

Industry analysts talk about the feverish haste with which the corporate sector is now tying up with training institutions to cope with changing needs. A very major challenge today is the breakdown of the traditional top-down model in the corporate sector, where earlier, freshers, after entry, had all the time in the world to take over gradually from their seniors. After the recession, ‘gradualism’ has become history. Add to this the ability variance across teams, regional disparity challenges from the opening up of non metro markets and the heterogeneity of geographically –dispersed  employees, and it should not be difficult to understand why divergent customized training solutions are such a necessity-- even internally-- within organizations that are cross-cultural, at all levels—from entry stage to a later stage, as well.

We go to a doctor when we are unwell. What does the doctor do? First, the doctor asks us several questions on the state of our health, how we are feeling, etc. If required the doctor then asks to get some tests done such as X Ray or blood diagnostics and so on.

The same is true for a financial counsellor. When one goes to a financial counsellor to take investment advice, the counsellor first analyses the “as is” position – current earnings and current savings and then analyses our temperament – our risk appetite, our lifestyle etc. He then uses his knowledge of the various financial instruments, their behaviour, pluses and minuses and makes us recommendations.

In short any consultant or a counsellor does two things – one diagnosis and then prescribe solutions.

The same should be or is true for HR specialist. We are expected to diagnose and prescribe solutions to individuals and organisations. When an individual approaches a HR specialist for advice on career development, the HR specialist should be diagnosing the “as is” state of the individual’s career and its related aspects. These would include the kind of progress the individual has made so far, the capabilities one has built, the aspirations of the individual and so on. Then the HR specialist is expected to prescribe solutions for the individual. The prescription comes from the HR specialist’s knowledge of the talent market, the pros and cons of various options, industry analysis and so on. The prescription has to be tailor made to the individual’s psyche or personality and specific to the individual. What works for one will not work for another. For instance, one who is looking for security and stability and is risk averse maybe advised to look for options within one’s industry or even company.

1. Good analysis of the individual’s as is state – hard (for example achievements, experiences) and soft (temperament, aspirations)
2. Good understanding of trends and behaviour related to the market dynamics and
3. Tailor making prescriptions for the individual or organisations

HR personnel need to be real custodians of latest trends and market behaviour. In my view there is little conscious investment by HR folks in this area because of which they are not able to assert themselves in the same manner that medical professionals are able to do in the field of medicine and financial counsellors do in the field of finance. Talent should be nurtured as the core domain of HR folks and if they need to establish themselves as such then their richness, comprehensiveness and awareness of latest trends should be as it is for specialists in other fields.

New ebook on career planning for the Era of Talent

Reflections on Career Planning, written by G Ramu, is an insightful exploration of various dynamics on career planning to help the individual make the right choices in this era of talent – era of immense opportunities. A free download of the abridged version of the ebook is available in Training Orbit website.

Chennai, India – Feb 15, 2010 – Where am I? Where do I go from here? How do I prioritise? How do I develop? How do I decide? All these questions and more are explored in this book – Reflections on Career Planning written by G Ramu. The beauty of the book is its simplicity in presentation and yet powerful and insightful in thoughts. Meant for any adult at any age in any geography the book will engage the reader in a dialogue in a structured manner on his or her career.

The author has carefully analysed the key aspects which trouble individuals with regard to their careers and how people make decisions. From another perspective, it connects these internal dynamics within the individual to the dynamics of the world today. He likes to call today’s era an era of talent, which with the power of the Internet has opened up immense opportunities like never before, the magnitude of which is only beginning to unfold. With opportunities and choices, also come confusion and the book helps the individual overcome and leverage the opportunities with clarity. The author has created models and themes which clearly articulate the choices for the individuals, yet presented them with real life examples and in a manner anyone anywhere can appreciate.

Please visit http://trainingorbit.com/Books/Register to download free abridged version of the ebook.

About Author

G Ramu, is a management graduate with specialization in HR from XLRI, India’s premiere B School. He has had rich corporate experience in diverse industries including Heavy Engineering, FMCG, and Software. In 2005 he turned into an entrepreneur heading a placement services company – Yoganishta. He has founded 3D talent Services to create online HR services which has launched Training Orbit, a global portal exclusively on training for trainers, training companies and training seekers.

Let us look at some of the possible options before the management or leadership of the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to mitigate the challenges in talent development of their human resource.

Mapping the available capabilities in the organization to the Business Plan by taking stock of them will enable SME’s to arrive at the required capabilities. This inventory assessment exercise need not be a time consuming one. Keep it simple and short will enhance effectiveness. The managers themselves could conduct such an exercise or else use the services of external consultants or tools like the one in training orbit. Similarly, identifying the required capabilities as per the vision and the business plan will help in identifying gaps in the capabilities inventory.

The inevitable priority of the day- to- day operations may take precedence over the long- term goals, leadership is as much interested in building a strong managerial workforce with adequate capabilities, which would take the organisation to the next stage. A particular SME, diversifying into news products, services or market segments will require expertise in business development. A SME, moving into a phase of consolidation and organisation building would be interested in putting operation processes and systems in place. This would mean that identifying the personnel from within the organisation, who can be trained and then training them on these responsibilities. Thus, narrowing what is required for the future and picking up the right people for training, in these areas will help the SMEs. At the same time, it may be prudent not to attempt “the” right person for training in these capabilities but choosing a “set” of most probable personnel who could be trained in these areas. The risk of focusing on just one person can be detrimental. The person may leave or may not prove to be the best or ideal fit for the responsibilities.

Sponsorships to outside programmes may be better option for SMEs rather than opting for house programmes, where a certain critical size of participants is required. However, in such cases input on the upcoming relevant programmes become critical. The challenge is finding the sources, which inform about upcoming training events. Portals such as the Training Orbit feed this challenge, as they give a calendar of the programmes, coming up in the different areas and the different locations.

The constraints of time- do not have enough people to spare a sizeable number for an external programme and space - do not have training room to accommodate 20 odd people at one time. They can be overcome by doing simple things, such as breaking the programmes into smaller modules, of one to two hours and conducted within the work area, or shop floor. Using experienced and qualified resources from within the organisation, to take such courses is a good option. If it has to be an external faculty then it is preferable to have someone from the same city or town so that the faculty can come, a number of times for short durations.

SMEs need not to fret over the difficulties in developing their resource, because of the size. There are mature options if there is a will to help in executing the development plans.

Unlike large firms, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) face a big challenge in training their staff. However, good planning will help meet this challenge successfully.

SMEs employ over 80% of the workforce across geographies. At the same time, they face enormous business challenges including their difficulty in scaling up, investing in innovation and research and maintaining growth. One of the reasons for these, is the lack of development of the human resources. Finding and hiring talent for SMEs itself is a big challenge. However, developing them to deliver the long term vision of the leadership is an even bigger one.

SMEs, given their size and other business challenges, face many issues related to human resource development. The problems come from number of factors including the size of the workforce, the (lack of) maturity of the HR function and (limitations in) execution of development plans.

The size of the organization poses very simple operational issues. Large companies can afford to release their staff for training programmes given the support mechanism available (absence of an employee can be covered up by the others in the department), the less dependency on individuals (given the strength of the processes) and predictable and planned business operations. SMEs do not have these advantages. Given the small number of staff, releasing even one person for a training programme can hamper the day to day operations. Similarly given the small size organising and conducting an in-house training programme would be difficult, where typically around 20 participants would be ideal.

The lack of HR function is another contributing factor to the efforts in training employees in SMEs. HR function when available in SMEs are mostly operational in nature which takes care of the basics such as payroll, statutory compliances, benefits administration and others. They may lack either the bandwidth or the capability to take care of the higher order activities of human resourceurces development such as as capabilities assessment, identification of gaps in capabilities of the workforce vis a vis that required as per the business plan and planning for the fulfillment of the gaps.

The leadership often understands the need for the human resources development and would like to focus on it. However, they are constrained in executing their development intentions. This could be due to factors such as lack of dedicated personnel for human resource development, as we saw earlier, priority of the immediate business goals taking over the priorities of the long term, inability to adequately invest in the development effort or being able to inculcate the spirit of human resource development in the second line. Thus the intention of the leadership remains unfulfilled to the detriment of the organization.

In the next posting we will examine some ideas by which SMEs could manage these challenges.

This is a very important article re-emphasizing a significant trend which we have been noticing for years now and are seeing accelerate even further. The analysis is primarily from the prevailing scenario in the US. However, I feel there are points which have implications or are indicators of things happening and to come world over.

Some of the key points made in this artilce include:

- recession has accelerated the process of finding alternates to permanent jobs including automation, temping, outsourcing and so on

- "diminishing job security is also widening the gap between the highest- and lowest-paid workers

- "....26% of the US workforce had jobs that were in one way or another "nonstandard". That includes independent contractors, temps, part-times, and freelancers."

Read:

The Disposable Worker - from the Business Week

My comments:

The fact that we are in turbulent times when change is accelerating the changes in the engagement model between the employer and the employee. This phenomenon of temping is not new. It has always been there. Labour was hired during the harvest season (seasonal workers). I worked in a PSU and notice that 30% of the labour was on contract (this was twenty years back). However, what may be new is that the so called temping and alternate models of engagement are happening at skilled and managerial levels too. Well, maybe we thought these levels were permanent. It is not. Alternate modes of engagement will increase for many reasons. Only one of them is the recession or the consciousness to reduce costs of labour. The other reason is also the changing attitude of the individuals to the engagement patterns of the yester-years. Many are opting voluntarily and consciously out of the corporate permanent regimen which would then force the corporates to find alternate engagement models if they desire to engage this pool of talent.

Whichever way it may be - whether the alternate engagement models are a consequence of changing behaviour of human beings or is driven by the organisations due to economic necessities, one thing is clear - the individual will have to take responsibility for one's career. And this includes career from a holistic perspective i.e. what is expected from work, how one wants to manage ones life for now and the future and so on. The era of individualisation demands maturing of individuals to take responsibility for their selves.

We do so many tasks during the day. In our job we are assigned projects that need to be carried out. We set out to plan for these projects and assignments. We prepare assuming things will happen they we plan. But more often things do not happen the way one plans. Good operations personnel understand this and have ways to overcome such unpredictable situations and deviation from the expected.

There was this colleague of mine who I worked with. He was a phenomenal guy in terms of making things happen. He had many behavioural traits which were his strength but then there is something I learnt and have tried to build in my own ways of working. It has helped. It could help others too.

The practice is of having backup or even better, backups.

We are talking of situations where we are doing the planning and not about those that we cannot or do not. Those situations are different from the ones we are considering. For example, one day we start to our office and take the route which we normal take to commute to the office but unusually we find that the traffic has got choked because of some accident. This situation is different. Take the case of something different. I am planning to go for an important customer presentation. I have worked for days and think I have made a world class presentation. I am really charged up to make the presentation to the customers. The morning started off well with nice cool breeze blowing. I walk into the room set my laptop. Suddenly the file would not open. Something has happened. I am fighting hard. The clock is ticking and my heart is beating fast and I am sweating badly. What was supposed to be an exciting day has turned out to be a nightmare.

What could have been done? I believe that I should have taken some kind of backup to carry my presentation. I could have carried the presentation in a pen drive or could have sent it the day before to a colleague to carry it with him or cut into a CD. Maybe it would have eased the whole thing.

 There are many instances in different areas such things do happen. Order from one customer is delayed. Approval which was expected to come has not. Material which should have arrived has not. Sample test which was expected to come has not come. Budget approval has not come for 100% of what was expected; only 90% of what was expected has been approved.

This happens often, sometimes on small and sometimes on large scale, sometimes at minor level and sometimes as highly significant level. Planning is not just about expecting things to happen the way we expect or want it to but to plan for contingency. What if? Let’s prepare ourselves thinking not just “Yes, it will happen” but also “What if it does not happen the way it should”. In one sense, i.e. psychologically this acts as a shock absorber in case we hit a road bump. Since we have factored the “what if”, we are not caught unawares when something untoward happened. Thus it helps us face the situation better. In another sense, i.e. practically this ensures that things move on. We after all have a backup to take care of the situation. Of course how many backups can we have? No hard and fast rule. But I would give a thumb rule of three. Think of two alternatives to “what if”.

Adapting to something unforeseen is being smart. Planning with assumptions that something will not happen the way it should is being smarter.

Lets get smarter. Lets have backup.

I have always been intrigued by the trainees’ dilemma.

When you nominate participants to behavioral training, the first question they ask is ‘why me’? If his/ her boss has nominated the participant for the program then ‘Does he consider this to be my weakness?’ is a question that the participant will not only not ask but take it as answered! Obviously in the affirmative!

If you are sending an employee’s nomination for an ISABS course, then this question comes up without fail, with greater force, unless the participant is an HR professional.

I have always felt that behavioral programs are like a glass of whisky; people want to enjoy it but they do not want others to know it.

For many managers training is equivalent to repairs to a car by a motor mechanic. That’s the real problem. If the boss notices a problem, he says “He needs training, [read: Ask trainer to fix it]”. There cannot be a more mechanical view of human beings than asking for training to address a behavioral problem.

This matter gets further complicated when the HR Manager does not realise the fallacy of this approach. He not only conducts training for the employee, which means he spends money, but he is at a loss to understand why they same manager complains of ineffectiveness of training. That often does not tally with the ratings given for training by participants.

Training does not result in change of behavior. People do not become more assertive, manage time [or themselves] better, learn to manage conflicts effectively, develop stronger inter-personal equations when they leave the training room.

Learning people skills is akin to learning to operate software. One has to be alert, explore, check ‘handbook’, reflect on what works, and discuss with others to gain quicker understanding. I said ‘reflect on what works’ because we tend to use people skills with different levels of effectiveness with different people. And in different situations.

The trainer cannot go beyond placing the ‘software’ in our hands.

Pre-program discussions with participants give good understanding to a trainer about expectations of participants. The HR Manager would be more effective if [s]he has a discussion with the recommending manager before a nomination is accepted. This ensures that clear expectations are set before the training begins.

But exception proves the rule. If you nominate an employee for an ‘Out Bound Training’, nobody complains. There are perhaps no expectations of change in behavior. In fact, you will notice enthusiasm. Being one with ‘nature’ is important. ‘Nature’ does the trick! Do you get me?

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By Vivek S Patwardhan

VSP as we call him, is an Executive coach and HR consultant. He is also a visiting faculty for the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.During his 33 years career with Asian Paints where he was its HR head at the time of retirement, he played a vital part in shaping the careers of many while shaping the organisation itself.

Please visit his website: http://www.vivekvsp.com