Vijay Bankar

Every year we see surveys carried out by HBR, PWC, Deloitte, and Gartner, and major concerns for management as highlighted at the top of the list are factors such as: developing bench strength, leadership pipeline, and leadership readiness. The following quote describes the importance of Leadership. “The first lesson is: To hell with centralized strategic planning. If you don't have a good leader, it's all nothing; it's just a bunch of papers flying around.” - Robert Townsend Developing Leadership pipeline has always been an important concern for HR Professionals. Moreover, getting a proper candidate for replacement is usually a very demanding task because that results in disturbing smooth flow of business. As Pam Brown says, “Every household has a box of odd keys. None of them will ever be found to fit any lock.” This happens when we are looking for leadership candidate from the internal talent pool. Hence, to maintain the flow of business, HR professionals h...

Once, I heard someone say, what is so important about the Job Description? After all, it's just a piece of paper & what difference does that make? The Job Description can best be compared to a  'User Manual'  which tells us  'how to'  operate particular device or machine. It gives precise details about components, requirements, directions for effective and efficient use. As they say 'When all else fails, read the instructions', and, 'When all else fails, and the instructions are missing - kick it'. In our case we can't kick it; hence a wise option is to 'read the instructions'. Let us see why a Job Description is so important. As we all know the process involved for this is called 'Job Analysis' and theoretically the output is 'Job Description' and 'Job Specification'. [While the Job Description describes tasks to be accomplished, the Job Specifications lists the Knowledge, Skills, and...

[Image source: Google Image] While going through SHL - "2013 Global Assessment Trends Report", trends reflected that 'Creating / implementing Competency Model (s) was ranking at number eleven (11) in list of 'HR Priorities - 2013'. And only one-third of respondents indicated that Competency Models are used effectively in their organizations.  Now, that was an unexpected finding, considering the fact that Competency Development and Management is an integral part of strategic HR initiatives. In fact mission critical for successful strategy implementation for any organization. ( 'The Execution Premium' by Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton ) It also reminded me of a well-known quote, "Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important" by Stephen R. Covey. As a matter of fact it was Hay Group that assisted Mr. Lou Gerstner Jr. Chairman & CEO, IBM (1993-2002) in developing eleven ...