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

A report on “ Global Human Capital Trends 2014 ” (pdf) prepared by  Deloitte , which surveyed 2,532 business and HR leaders in 94 countries concludes that the most important and urgent concern for HR professionals today is developing “leadership” pipeline to achieve strategic objectives. In fact, it has appeared as ‘ highly urgent’  at number one in the list of concerns followed by ‘Retention and engagement’, and ‘Reskilling HR’. The report states that “Building global leadership is by far the most urgent: Fully 38 percent of all respondents rated it “urgent,” almost 50 percent more than the percentage rating the next issue “urgent.” Companies see the need for leadership at all levels, in all geographies, and across all functional areas. This continuous need for new and better leaders has accelerated.” Now, as an HR professional we have two choices available, first, recruiting from other organizations and second, proactively develop leadership pipeline. We may also lo

Work Rules! from Vijay Bankar Summary of the book by Laszlo Bock, Senior Vice-President of People Operations, Google "Work Rules!" - Insights from inside Google that will transform how you live and lead. 

“To adapt an old saw, transitions are marathons and not sprints,” - Michael Watkins.  [Tweet this] Importance of onboarding is significantly increased in these days since the average turnover at work is less than four years & lifetime employment strategies are out of date. (“The Alliance” by Hoffman & Casnocha) It means that roughly one-fourth of our employees are in the process of transition or are affected by them since their peers (Boss-Subordinates) are going through transitions. It might be on account of appointment in new position or promotion or transfer at a different location. Aberdeen  research found that 90% of organizations believe that employees make the decision to stay at within the first year. Traditional orientation programs are completed on the first day or in some cases in a week.  However, such short-term strategies do not reflect in improving retention, productivity, and engagement. There are some organizations where the onboarding proce

During the ‘Strategic inflection point’ as described by Andy Grove, (Intel, - book “Only the paranoid survive”) an organization is tempted to opt for either layoff or restructuring as a strategic choice to improve immediate performance. This sounds as an appropriate option considering it's visible & instant results. As Drucker suggests, the key activity that’s required in the course of transforming an organization is a wholesale shifting of   resources   from what was appropriate for the old idea of the business to what is appropriate for the new. And as stated by Grove, “Your best people—their knowledge, skills and expertise—are an equally important   resource .” [ Tweet this ] He further says, “it doesn’t take much self-confidence to downsize a company—after all, how can you go wrong by shuttering factories and laying people off if the benefits of such actions are going to show up in tomorrow’s bottom line and will be applauded by the financial community?”   Howeve