Hiring: Skill vs Attitude

I believe the purpose of interview is to find out what the candidate knows and NOT what the candidate doesn't know. We try assessing the candidates on four broad levels:

1. Skills (C/C++, DSP, Data-structures, etc.,)

2. Knowledge (Insights, how well the candidate can apply the skills to the problem at hand, ability to trade-off, finesse, etc.,)

3. Attitude (team vs self, taking initiative, self-awareness etc.,)

4. Values (something that is the core/character)

It is obvious that it is easy to assess someone in the above order. It is also obvious that it gets harder and harder to train someone for say attitude compared to say train someone for a missing skill (provided other things like academics and other vitals meet NI's standard).

I get annoyed that we often get stuck at skills, saying that guy could not solve a simple problem (often in the area that the interviewer loves - it doesn't matter whether that particular area is required as a part of the job or not),which is more like finding what the interviewee doesn't know. Often times we would not have bothered to check what is the kind of problems that the interviewee might have solved in his prior work, for it requires an amount of intelligence to first understand the work the interviewee has done and ask meaningful questions and then assess - finding out what the candidate indeed knows.

While we often get feedback on the quality of hires, we will never know the mistake we might be committing by eliminating someone quickly because he could not answer our pet question.

What do you think?

Effort vs Impact

At the end of a long day you feel you didn't accomplish anything; long week and still feel you wasted it; a complete month you have nothing to show. And your boss is not happy that something is not done. Now you wear your victim cap and tell everyone that cares to listen (or atleast pretend to do so) how unfairly you've been treated that despite your stellar "efforts" no one recognizes and blah blah. Sounds familiar? Most of us have fallen or keep falling into this trap, hopefully not often. In the end, we are paid for results and hardly for efforts. Our customers wont pay us for "efforts", not do we pay our vendors for their "efforts", then why do we expect that our boss applauds our efforts if we have very little to show. Sometimes it is helpful to catch ourselves "busy being busy". Such busy-but-no-results happen for several reasons:

1. You are spending a lot of time in office no doubt, but that also includes some or all of periodic checking of twitter feeds, updating facebook status, checking out latest cricket score, ultra long lunches, interesting water cooler discussions and all that (I can hear some of my friends asking me to add yoga, zumba etc., also to the list)! Not only these activities take time, but also will not give an uninterrupted stretch to do something meaningful.

2. Rework from a poor quality job

3. Procrastinating on something because you do not have competence or required skills to do the job and hesitant to admit it.

4. Poor work ethics in terms of when you come, when you go, how you respond to team member queries etc., etc.,

5. Taking on tasks that is of no value to the boss

6. Not knowing what is good-enough and instead chase perfection

7. Being very rigid about everything and keep doing things in the same way as you were doing several years ago

How do we fix it? First step is always to identify that you are busy-being-busy. Once this is done we have to see the "excuses" we are making to not move the needle. Put some structure to make sure that we do not fall into this trap. A daily self-assessment that asks whether we gave our best in everything we did.

Do you know more methods to fix such things? More reasons why we fall into the trap? Love to hear.

Initiative

Its a pet feedback of many managers "You should take more initiative" and most reportees do agree to that. Normally many won't have a clue of how to actually take "more" initiative. Thought I'll quote one of my favourite authors Seth Godin on this topic:

"Initiative is the privilege of picking yourself.

You are not given initiative, you take it.

Pick yourself.

If you are not getting what  you want, it may be because

you are not making good enough art, often enough".

Simple but profound message. What do you think?

What RamP's Reading: Dec'15

Tom Peters month!!!!

In Search of Excellence: (Re-read). The "Greatest Business Book of All Time" (Bloomsbury UK), In Search of Excellence has long been a must-have for the boardroom, business school, and bedside table. Based on a study of forty-three of America's best-run companies from a diverse array of business sectors, In Search of Excellence describes eight basic principles of management -- action-stimulating, people-oriented, profit-maximizing practices -- that made these organizations successful.

Design: An inspirational and informative series of compact handbooks by the influential management guru and author of the best-selling In Search of Excellence sheds new light on key concepts in the business world and provides helpful guidance on how to achieve success in the high-pressure, fast-moving arena of modern business.

Thriving on Chaos: (Re-read).  Addressing American industry's continuing decline in foreign and domestic markets, Peters (In Pursuit of Excellence) here offers a detailed plan for unstructured business activity in which some readers will see not only chaos but anarchy. Nevertheless, the author's perception of high quality as a determining consumer motivation and his radical recipe for achieving it are persuasive. Noting that smaller service-oriented businesses like Federal Express prosper while mammoth GE and GM falter, Peters would largely eliminate top-heavy management superstructures in favor of creative worker involvement and customer participation, with supervisors on hand to encourage. This textbook cites dozens of specific business situations and person-to-person responses in support of its step-by-step instructions for turning a failing enterprise aroundif those involved can act fast. 

The Pursuit of WoW!: (Re-read) Organized into more than 200 thought- and action-provoking elements—from the importance of clean trucks and bathrooms to conversations with entrepreneurs creating new markets—Tom Peters, bestselling management guru offers a practical guide to impractical times. In The Pursuit of Wow!, Tom Peters offers readers the words, the tools, to survive in tumultuous business environments. Getting to a place called excellence is no longer the idea.  You’ve got to take that leap, then leap again—catapult their imaginations, blow their mindsets—in a word, wow! them.

Quotable Quotes

• Working smart instead of hard sounds great until you realise that you're competing with a lot of very smart people that work extremely hard
• A river cuts thru the rock not because of its power, but because of its persistence. Chase your DREAMS every single day.
• We can't direct the wind, but can adjust our sails
• You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere. 
• Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lifes, but no idea how to lead their own.
• The smallest deed is better than the grandest intention
• The only person you need to be better than is the person you were yesterday.
• Where you are headed is far more important than how fast you are going
• Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere!!
• SUCCESS IS A MINDSET

Are you a wandering generality or a meaningful specific?

This is a famous ZigZiglar quote. It took me a while to digest. 

A keen study of the lives of people who excel will reveal that the main ingredient for their success is usually one thing: passion. Their dedication to a cause, belief in people and commitment to living their best life come from their passion. They find the one thing they really enjoy doing, then do it with passion. Passion is the key ingredient to success.  

Where does passion come from? How can we use it to become meaningful specifics? Passion is born out of desire – having a dream, vision or longing to see something different from a current situation. What do you see in your future? What’s your dream? Martin Luther King Jnr. was a very passionate man because he had a dream for racial equality. Princess Diana had a passion for charity work because she wanted to see a better world. Your passion will enable you to soar from obscurity and into the limelight. Your passion will enable you to realize something greater than yourself. Your passion will enable you to be a meaningful specific. 

Passion is effective when it is birthed from the inside. You must be motivated intrinsically. You cannot exhibit passion on the outside when deep down you are shallow. You’ve got to cultivate it deep within yourself. That comes by immersing yourself wholeheartedly into pursuing your vision or dream. Here are two keys to help you birth passion: 

a). Relentless Dedication – In order to become a meaningful specific, you must be relentlessly dedicated to making your dream come true. What are you doing on a daily basis that is adding value to your ability to fully become who you were born to be? Are you being true to the voice within you that is calling you to perform at your optimum level?

b). Steady Focus – Steady Focus comes from always having your vision right in front of you. Think about why you have immense success driving every day – the windshield is right in front of you and you are always looking out through it! It’s the same thing with your dream. You must keep it right in front of you. There are many ways that you can do this. Write it down and recite it throughout the day. Design your environment to remind you of your vision every day.

Are you a meaningful specific?

What RamP's Reading: Oct'15

 


Product Strategy for High Technology Companies
One of the key determinants of success for today’s high-technology companies is product strategy―and this guide continues to be the only book on product strategy written specifically for the 21st century high-tech industry. More than 250 examples from technological leaders including IBM, Compaq, and Apple―plus a new focus on growth strategies and on Internet businesses―define how high-tech companies can use product strategy and product platform strategy for competitiveness, profitability, and growth in the Internet age.

Wooden on Leadership: How to Create a Winning Organization
John Wooden’s goal in 41 years of coaching never changed; namely, to get maximum effort and peak performance from each of his players in the manner that best served the team. Wooden on Leadership explains step-by-step how he pursued and accomplished this goal. Focusing on Wooden’s 12 Lessons in Leadership and his acclaimed Pyramid of Success, it outlines the mental, emotional, and physical qualities essential to building a winning organization, and shows you how to develop the skill, confidence, and competitive fire to “be at your best when your best is needed”--and teach your organization to do the same.

Thresholds of Motivation: Nurturing Human Growth in the Organization
This book explores a fundamental question for managers in today's rapidly changing, and often perplexing, business environment: What truly motivates people to function and perform at their highest capabilities within the framework of an organization? Is it man's "intrinsically" competitive nature, as Western society has believed since Darwin's time? Is it a purely materialistic craving for money, power, and status - a view that seems a lot less compelling in the 1990s than it did in the 1980s? Or is it something else - something that reveals human nature in a new and entirely different light?

Problem with anonymous feedback

I have never been a big fan of anonymous feedback. It just says that the culture might punish you if the feedback is direct. Further, I've seen too many people taking umbrage under the anonymous system and use the process to give feedback that is not actionable, or generic or in some cases even settle scores (especially if the feedback is being given on the immediate manager to the skip level manager). I've also seen people that feel very secure are comfortable sending it directly to the person in question (even when they might be giving the feedback on their manager to their skip level manager). Assuming the manager is seeking honest feedback, this works the best as it opens a direct communication channel and fosters a dialog that can benefit both and ofcourse the organization too. Finally, as managers we need to be creating an environment that values direct and honest feedback. Next time when you are asked to give anonymous feedback, please make sure you send the same to the person to which the feedback is for. Better still feel free and seek honest feedback directly from people that know your work.

Why this post now? I read a very interesting FastCompany article Why Anonymous Feedback Does More Harm Than Good. They give three reasons:

1. It reinforces the impression that it isn't safe to speak up openly.
2. It can set off a witch-hunt to find out who said what, leading away from the issues at hand.
3. It discourages the level of specificity that's needed to make real changes.

The article also talks about how to give better feedback and also has tips managers can use in order to encourage good feedback or move ahead productively with feedback they've received.

Take a look and let me know what you felt.

What RamP's Reading: Sep'15

Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business
Whole Foods Market cofounder John Mackey and professor and Conscious Capitalism, Inc. cofounder Raj Sisodia argue that both business and capitalism are inherently good, and they use some of today’s best-known and most successful companies to illustrate their point. From Southwest Airlines, UPS, and Tata to Costco, Panera, Google, the Container Store, and Amazon, today’s organizations are creating value for all stakeholders—including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, society, and the environment. Read this book and you’ll better understand how four specific tenets—higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, and conscious culture and management—can help build strong businesses, move capitalism closer to its highest potential, and foster a more positive environment for all of us.

A Game Plan for Life: The Power of Mentoring
After eight books, many of them bestsellers, A Game Plan for Life was the one closest to John Wooden's heart: a moving and inspirational guide to the power of mentorship. The first half focuses on the people who helped foster the values that carried Wooden through an incredibly successful and famously principled career, including his father, his college coach, his wife, Mahatma Gandhi, and Mother Teresa. The second half is built around interviews with some of the many people he mentored over the years, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton. Their testimony takes readers inside the lessons Wooden taught to generations of players, bringing out the very best in them not just as athletes but as human beings.

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance
Freakonomics lived on the New York Times bestseller list for an astonishing two years. Now authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with more iconoclastic insights and observations in SuperFreakonomics—the long awaited follow-up to their New York Times Notable blockbuster. Based on revolutionary research and original studies SuperFreakonomics promises to once again challenge our view of the way the world really works.

Craftsman mindset vs Passion mindset

Utilizing the long weekend effectively, I'm reading this book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport. In this book, the author (interestingly Asst. Prof of Computer Science at Georgetown University), argues that skills trump passion in the long run with a lot of examples. According to him, the craftsman mindset “focuses on what you can offer the world” and the passion mindset “focuses on what the world can offer you.” The former is built upon the importance of consistent practice and developing your skills to do the work you want to do, while the latter believes that once you find what you love to do, you will magically succeed at it.

I find this idea very interesting. In my work, I come regularly across folks that are not happy about the job and need some advice. I used to point them out to folks that have become invaluable by the sheer amount of value they seem to be adding to the organization. I now have a better vocabulary to articulate.

Closely observe someone you think love their job and check the route they followed, was it obvious up front, following a long held passion or was it a longer, more circuitous path? Did they follow their passion or become a craftsman? Chances are most people have become a craftsman because it is hard to tell what your passion is when you start out, much less find a career around it.

The problem with "passion mindset" is that it keeps people looking outside of themselves and what they do, always looking for and expecting to find some "right" job that would provide them satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment or even help increase the value of their resume. As it is indeed difficult find such projects on a regular basis, they're never happy, never committed to doing what is necessary to excel at the work they have. Many leave their current jobs in search of their ideal job and will soon realize that it is just the case of grass being greener on the other side, if they remain stuck in "passion mindset"

The "craftsman mindset" looks at the world differently. Instead of "What can the world offer me?" it asks, "What can I offer the world?" The craftsman wonders how he can get really good at what he does, creating value with his work. They are always learning, getting better, always practicing, and quickly becomes a "go-to person. Such people while enjoying work are also constantly seeking feedback to improve and often harsh in their own assessment and Over time has become passionate about his work. The point Calport makes is that Passion didn't the person to it, it was a result of it.

What do you think? Have you seen examples where people having mastered something, have become passionate about it? Most importantly are you working with Passion mindset or Craftsman mindset? What type of people you've seen are enjoying their work - people with passion mindset or the ones with craftsman mindset in your experience? I'd love to hear.

What RamP's Reading (Jul'15)

Monsoon has set in. Bangalore is seeing incessant rains and great monsoon weather. Nothing can be more relaxing than reading a book in such a setting with healthy dose of strong south Indian coffee. Thats what I've been doing in the past week. I completed this beautifully written book "TED Talks: The Official TED guide to public speaking". Written by the head of TED, Chris Anderson, the book is full of presentation tips from some of the greatest TED speakers. Tips include detailed steps for preparation, delivery, tools available, pit falls to be avoided and even how to dress. It generously and regularly references the actual TED talk from where the example is being made. At the end of the book, there is a list of all the TED talks referenced and the TED website has a playlist of all these - this makes the book unique in that it is very easy to learn the topics. While everything is coming from how you could give a great TED talk, the principles can be applied for our day to day and mundane presentations as well.

What RamP's Reading: May'15

Profit from the Core: A Return to Growth in Turbulent Times
In Profit from the Core, authors Chris Zook and James Allen show that a renewed focus on the core is more critical than ever as firms seek to rebuild their competitive advantage coming out of the downturn—and that a strong core will be the foundation for successful expansion as the economy recovers. Based on more than ten years of Bain & Company research and analysis and fresh examples from firms responding to the current downturn, the book outlines what today’s executives and managers need to do now to revitalize their core, identify the next wave of profitable growth, and build on it successfully.

The Power of Purpose: Find Meaning, Live Longer, Better

Purpose is an active expression of our values and our compassion for others—it makes us want to get up in the morning and add value to the world. Leider details a graceful, practical, and ultimately spiritual process for making it central to your life. This revitalized guide will help you integrate it into everything you do.

Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works
Strategy is not complex. But it is hard. It’s hard because it forces people and organizations to make specific choices about their future—something that doesn’t happen in most companies. Now two of today’s best-known business thinkers get to the heart of strategy—explaining what it’s for, how to think about it, why you need it, and how to get it done. And they use one of the most successful corporate turnarounds of the past century, which they achieved together, to prove their point.

What RamP's Reading: Mar'15

The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation
How you can increase and sustain organic revenue and profit growth . . . whether you’re running an entire company or in your first management job. Over the past seven years, Procter & Gamble has tripled profits; significantly improved organic revenue growth, cash flow, and operating margins; and averaged earnings per share growth of 12 percent. How? A. G. Lafley and his leadership team have integrated innovation into everything P&G does and created new customers and new markets. Through eye-opening stories A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan show how P&G and companies such as Honeywell, Nokia, LEGO, GE, HP, and DuPont have become game-changers.

Leadership 2.0
Sharing discoveries from a groundbreaking study that separated the leadership skills that get results from those that are inconsequential or harmful, Leadership 2.0 introduces a new paradigm of leadership. Leadership 2.0 delivers a step-by-step program for increasing 22 core and adaptive leadership skills. Core leadership skills (those that get people into leadership positions) will sharpen your saw, and adaptive leadership skills (those that set great leaders apart) will make you into the leader you've always wanted to be.

Better Than Good: Creating a Life You Can't Wait to Live
Written in Ziglar's trademark style, this book isn?t just about success now, excellence tomorrow or even motivation for next month, but about making a lasting impact ? an impact that goes beyond financial gains and creative partnerships. Everything we are and do, he says, must be seen in the bigger perspective of continuously investing your spirit, mind and talents in what endures. Better Than Good offers Zig's practical and spiritual vision for what life can be when we allow the power of purpose and passion to permeate our soul.

What RamP's Reading: Feb'15

The Google Story: Inside the Hottest Business, Media, and Technology Success of Our Time

The Google Story takes you deep inside the company’s wild ride from an idea that struggled for funding in 1998 to a firm that today rakes in billions in profits. Based on scrupulous research and extraordinary access to Google, this fast-moving narrative reveals how an unorthodox management style and a culture of innovation enabled a search-engine giant to shake up Madison Avenue, clash with governments that accuse it of being a monopoly, deploy self-driving cars to forever change how we travel, and launch high-flying Internet balloons. 

How Would You Move Mount Fuji?: Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle -- How the World's Smartest Companies Select the Most Creative Thinkers
For the first time, William Poundstone reveals the toughest questions used at Microsoft and other Fortune 500 companies -- and supplies the answers. He traces the rise and controversial fall of employer-mandated IQ tests, the peculiar obsessions of Bill Gates (who plays jigsaw puzzles as a competitive sport), the sadistic mind games of Wall Street (which reportedly led one job seeker to smash a forty-third-story window), and the bizarre excesses of today's hiring managers (who may start off your interview with a box of Legos or a game of virtual Russian roulette).

Repacking Your Bags: Lighten Your Load for the Good Life
“Living in the place you belong, with the people you love, doing the right work, on purpose.” This is how Richard Leider and David Shapiro define “the good life.” Technological advances, economic shifts, and longer life spans mean most of us will need to repeatedly reimagine our lives. In this wise and practical guide, Leider and Shapiro help you weigh all that you’re carrying, leverage what helps you live well, and let go of those burdens that merely weigh you down.

What RamP's Reading: Jan'15

Thinking of better managing your time this year, just like me? You may want to read the books I plan to read this month!

First Things First: (Re-read) In First Things First, Stephen M. R. Covey advocates categorizing tasks by urgency and importance so that you can focus on what actually needs to be done in the limited amount of time that you have. Using personal examples and insight from years of business experience, he argues for a new way of looking at your “to-do” list. Rather than offering you another clock, First Things First provides you with a compass, because where you're headed is more important than how fast you're going.

The 10 Natural Laws of Time and Life Management: (Re-read) Written for anyone who suffers from "time famine", this essential handbook provides simple, effective methods for successfully taking control of one's hours--and one's life. Smith shows how, by managing time better, anyone can lead a happier, more confident and fulfilled life.

Unwinding the Clock - 10 thoughts on our relationship to time: A physicist draws on her own inside knowledge of science to discuss the impact of technological progress on human bodies and minds and shares practical suggestions on how to preserve our humanity in the fast-paced, high-tech modern world and how to slow down and enjoy life.

What Matters Most: In What Matters Most, bestselling author Hyrum W. Smith explains why so many people feel something is missing from their lives because of conflicts between actions and personal values. Through compelling examples from others and from his own extensive experience, Smith outlines a simple but powerful formula to help you identify your own values and live them to the fullest. This strategy consists of three valuable steps: Discover what matters most to you Make a plan Act on that plan By incorporating Smith's strategy into your life, you will not only re-embrace your values but you will make them your priority. What Matters Most is an indispensable and timely guide to living a truly fulfilling life and becoming the person you always wanted to be.