Are you better than your boss?

A lot of Performance and Talent Management blogs that I read have been talking about this Executive Quiz by Korn Ferry International (one of the largest recruiting and outsourcing firms in the world).
I assume you will use the link to read up on the survey results.
Here I have a few observations on the results

Employees are impatient these days. They want to jump on to the golden treadmill, get running and retire rich very early. There is a sea of opportunity waiting there to be converted. Hence a big feeling of being unemployed

A corollary from the above is that everyone wants the boss’s job as fast as can be.

Also companies are facing real talent crunch as they charter new territories and cultures. As a result a lot of them have to compromise on the occupants of the leadership positions. Once upon a time, that was true for new economy companies; today it is true for everyone.

The results of the ‘trust in boss’ factor is quite interesting. About 35% have mentioned that they do not trust their boss enough. That is also because
1. Employees are extremely competitive and goes well with their aiming specific jobs in a specific time frame
2. The uncertainties related to the modern world where you either shape up or just die

Also, ego and self image plays a huge role in self assessment reports. One needs to factor that part in this study as well.

Professorial Headhunting

In a shocking article under the Investigation section on Businessweek magazine, I read that the jury is still out on whether faculty (and the school) can accept research grants and other sponsorships from corporate organizations in lieu of recommending best students for open positions. It seems that teaching assistants in a number of US schools were lured by prospective employers by freebies into giving up the names of the best in the graduating class.
And I am concerned for
There is big money involved
Where do we put morals and ethics in this scheme of things?

Some recruiters like Valero Energy are quite candid about their utilizing graduate teaching assistants as a quick lead into talented possible hires. There was a time when royalty and government would fund most of new research and would also provide the consulting assignments to academics. But times changed and the corporates took over from them. While professors are the best source for reference and recommendation for fresh hires, there is a sure conflict of interest involved over here.

The question to be asked is how would we question Ethics and Values in organizations if schools and professors are not stable on clarifying their values? While it might work in the favour of most students and recruiters to get the right recommendations, it might not work for the majority when it comes to questions of equal opportunity for all.

In India, with the soaring economy and great demand for Indian managers abroad, making it to the first slots during placement season in the premier B schools is like an Olympic race won for recruiters. Campuses have rules and regulations on acceptable behaviour for both students and recruiters however most of it is managed by students and slips are not too less. We often hear of students getting an unfair opportunity or breaking a rule.
We went to a hallowed institution for hiring the last season and were met by confusing rules, bullying students of the placement committee and unprofessional attitude overall. While we wrote to the faculty in charge and were assured of proper redressal, we, as ethical recruiters are not sure if we got to meet the best breed or if the students we went looking for got information of our opportunity.

Readers may read on in the link below:
The Professor is a head hunter

Hire me, if you can!

[Photo courtesy: Fortune]

We have been facing an utter talent crunch when we go looking for our organization. And the ailments seem to be applicable for people across the industries, levels and background. However our experience is the worst with the booming IT product and services sectors.
Candidates are unprofessional and unscrupulous. They do not think twice about misusing air tickets issued to them to travel for interviews, lie about their references, background and credentials and worst of all go back on all kinds of commitment.
Given that our economy is booming, there is a huge demand for talent (irrespective of quality and values). As a start-up not only do we have to pay astronomical prices for sub-standard talent, most of our efforts in search and closure, go down the drain.
My colleagues in recruitment have no answers and are constantly looking at new and innovative ways to gather prospective employees. They seem to be constantly bettered at their own game!

I regularly interact and spend at least a day with fresher recruits during our three-four week rigorous induction program. There is so much promise in them (we, of course, pick up the best), spunk in their ideas and excitement that it is very easy to get lit up and I enjoy it thoroughly. From them, I try to understand what drives them and this is what I found
It is money for everything. They come at a price and wouldn’t mind waiting and buying time if the best price doesn’t come by. Anyway they are spoilt for choice and do not have financial responsibilities like the previous generation. Most of their parents are still working or have retired rich.
They are smart and even though they do not have work experience, they are uber-cool and confident and the employers better keep their minds well engaged, otherwise they will pack their bags.
They’d rather be kept in good music. Good entertainment, plush office, infrastructure, flashy pay-offs and a lot of expensive socialization and vacations are a must.
They do not think much of completing assignments and sticking on for the sake of their team for as less as even a couple of weeks. It is impossible to think of a three year stint, at least a year? They require a lot of reasons to commit that too. Most of them want to start off on their own.
Surprisingly, their parents are much involved in every choice they make. We often get calls from parents checking every detail about company background, work profile and benefits beyond pay.
They can never be told that they are wrong or can improve. Self esteem is in and that’s the final word.

All in all, I can tell you that today’s twenty-somethings are the most high-maintenance workforce that we have ever encountered

People processes in the New World

My colleagues, in the profession, and I have often discussed on integrative people processes in organizations by which we mean that the entire organizational life cycle of an employee will be governed by a single vision which in turn will touch his/her org life at various stages through regulations, interventions, development and transition. Often all the well-meaning efforts by Business Managers and HR get nullified due to lack of integration and a larger vision on people processes flowing from the Organisational Vision and Goals.
Those thoughts were at one level.
As I read, think and talk more and more on the level playing field in economies and societies across the world, I wonder how the integrated HR Value Chain will take shape in the New World in Transition.

We ‘do’ it differently Now
The concept of business has changed. We no longer conceptualise, design and manufacture goods to be sold across the road. We mostly create digitized services and pack them through fibre channels across the world. When we do create products (like the baby products I referred to, in my previous post) we do all of it real-time. We do usability studies in emerging economies where there is a booming population with huge purchasing power, design it in talent rich places; get the final zing from the sophisticated expertise of the Old World and manufacture it where the regulations are friendly, labour cheap and assembly lines are tireless. My organization defines, designs, creates and populates a product platform in India and offers it as a digitized service (SAS) to clients in the US. We do the information mining, texting and structuring in India and thereby hone our clients’ decision making skills in the developed financial markets abroad. It is all about across the time zones, climates and culture. (Our CEO even names his blog page on a time zone)

Different HR realities in the ‘differently done business’ world

Talent Acquisition
Talent is spread all over the world and the employer-employee relation is undergoing major change. It can be a contract defined by content of delivery, time period, expertise and knowledge sharing rather than a full time commitment basis a work-day.
We are increasingly using professional networks/international organisations (e.g. LinkedIn, Ryze, SHRM, IEEE etc) to search for the expertise and social networks (e.g. Orkut, Tagged) to break into communities of professionals to understand their preferences and views before we can even think of offering to hire them. We are consulting employment law experts from the country of the consultant to define specialized contracts. We lure them with our flexibility to let them work virtually, pursue their research/interests, maintain their greater life goals and yet lend us their expertise.
In this scenario, our age old teaching of understanding body language and using graphology to read behind the façade of the candidate are redundant. There is talent with its characteristics and you buy it, much like browsing the shelves of huge marts to pick up a brand of cheese or chocolate.

Retention—do we aspire for it at all?
The challenge is that statutory laws are unique and diverse and professionals like us are looking at international certification to have a window into the lives and laws of our well spread employees.
Then there are those corporates who have taken over behemoths in developed countries which already have established norms, benefits and commitments made to the employees. It is a challenge for HR to maintain those and yet create value through higher ROCE on people.
However it is interesting to note how the level playing field has made certain age groups of population across the world quite homogeneous. Given a certain socio-economic eligibility, most new entrants in the job market eat, talk, dress, learn and get entertained similarly across the world. But they might have different aspirations given their society and upbringing. And that is the most difficult thing to catch for so-called ‘Talent Magnets’. But since the life cycle has been drastically brought down, what we rather do is manage and document tangible knowledge and let go of the rest.

Organisational Intervention—unique, every moment
is no longer a planned process across structure, systems and processes. We are amoebic in structure, we do as the Romans do and we set processes to see value gets created. Our talent is not committed to us beyond this moment.

That’s the end of the story or creation of a new story, whichever way you wish to look at it. Hence diversity and cross cultural sensitivity is of such prime importance for managing people across boundaries. People and organizational development is no longer a singularly defined method.
How we pan out the original organizational goal through such diverse and multi-cultural lands and people should be our primary concern now.

In the flat world, while at one end, there is immense scope for People Professionals to make a difference by being flexible and insightful and by seeing the storm before it hits us, at the other end, if you ask me, it is the death of my profession especially as I have been told and taught in school.

Today’s People Professionals
1.Ought to be soothsayers or naysayers with the ability to tell the business logically where they should tread in search of value through human-effort.
2.Cannot be vague and without data-points. The age of rhetoric in managing people processes is over.
3.Should be hard core sellers of ideas. I increasingly see myself as a seller of my vision and idea to the Business.
4.Should provide customized solutions once the ideas get sold.
Should have the implementation ability to pull off the idea and the solution to create credibility and
5.Should stay in the ‘business’ by reinventing themselves everyday. I no longer have a set process of dealing with my people and it gives me cold sweat.

People professionals like me might be increasingly crowding themselves out of sleek businesses. And that led me to think of this post. However while starting with modes of integrating the HR Value Chain, I concluded that while we are planning to shape up we might just get shipped out…so much for a cliché!

Hail the soothsaying People Professional with a third eye on the effervescent flat world.

The Talent Trap Quandary

Tagging Talent Trap--The Cost of Development by Niladri Roy,
I have to say the following
I somehow think that the only way to manage and develop Talent in any industry, especially the knowledge based ones, is to improve their employability.I will always look for 'what's in it for me' if I have to decide whether am growing or not.Monetary incentive as we all know is a base motive added is the wage bill burden, so it is a loss-loss proposition for both the sides.

Organisations in the knowledge economy (read especially KPOs) space might look at the following options:
i)Develop opportunities for learning on the job (both role related as well as e-learning) so that man-hours (maybe billable for such organisations) are not eaten up.
ii)Look at introducing sponsored higher studies (most old economy and services companies already do this one)
iii)Develop systems and cost structures keeping in mind high attrition figures. There will be a constant churn of people leaving to pursue higher studies while freshers arrive to take their place.This one is not directly related to Roy's talent trap point of view. However it has implications on the ability of companies to support talent management programs
iv)Look at introducing re-employment opportunities once people come back with higher qualification.
For all these programs, serious consideration needs to go in while selecting nominees.

At the end of it, we must appreciate that India is a destination for knowledge process outsourcing given the overhead cost advantages. [atleast under-graduates hope to land themselves plum jobs which was unthinkable even half a decade back.] If we cannot service that, then it will anyway not serve the economy as long as we do not move up the value chain in outsourcing. Some behemoths like GM,GE,DuPont have started outsourcing high-end research but given our infrastructure we have a long way to go. it is easier for them to suck specialised talent to their age old research centres.

HR be damned....

Half said and half unsaid thoughts from a business leader:

1. Intellectually challenged people make it to a career in HR.
What is your IQ? Oh am sorry, yours is slightly better but if you average it out among all professionals, then it will hover around 90.
2. HR can never understand the business. How on earth do you think you will strategically partner me in my growth plans?
You don't understand my product idea. I mean, you do, but with lack of technical knowledge you half comprehend it!
3. I will do my own thing and not include you in my forward thinking and ideas. However I will expect you to manage talent, envisage the challenges to talent management processes as a result of the changes I make and build my organisation.
4. I think you are a glorified clerk.

Wow, do you expect your colleague in HR to make any sizeable difference to your organisation? God save thy people!

Human Resources as I am experiencing it

HR in Startups (KPO's /BPO's/Consulting)–Some Reflections by an esteemed and much senior colleague recently led me to think about how we are organizing and setting up processes in our organization
As I had mentioned earlier we are a start-up into our second year involved in company research, which we offer through our patent-awaited product platform. Our business is niche. We employ people with proven academic track records and more often than not we are on the look out for very specific areas of specialization and skills. Given this, it is a great challenge for us to initiate robust systems so that we not only give a good base to our people processes, we also go a long way in developing and thereby retaining our valued workforce.
To begin with, we have two clear verticals within HR. One is responsible for Talent Acquisition and Employee Relations and the other for Talent Management.
As the owner of the second piece, I have my work cut out. We really do not have the luxury to expend a lot of resources on setting up processes and challenges are aplenty. Hence I often find myself doing a little bit of everything and thereby losing focus on the main piece (as has been mentioned in the post I tagged above). But we are learning fast.
The main challenges that I face as the owner of Talent Management piece are:
# A highly evolved middle management team, who have joined us looking for freedom to experiment, learn and get rewarded in the process. Are we able to give them that experience?
# A junior management team who have been loyal and have chosen us right in the beginning of our life and by virtue of their vintage have progressed up the ladder. How do we differentiate them on the basis of performance, valuing their loyalty yet building a meritocratic organization?
# Alternatives for our employees are many and varied. How do we engage them and maximize their satisfaction given the constraints of cost, organizational life stage and maturity of people capability?
# How will the Talent Management piece fit like the other end of a puzzle to make the rest of our processes like Talent Acquisition, Employee relations and separation a single whole?
# How do I hone my team and my own skills to contribute fairly?

To institutionalize Talent Acquisition processes,
# We have started building relationships with various sources like B school/special school campuses, manpower vendors and especially existing employees. Our co-founders have employed their networks, both online and offline and the resources of their alma maters.
# We have developed extensive Hiring Kits and have identified Hiring Managers across the different functions who’d partner with HR in the process
# We are in the process of drawing up behavioural and functional competencies for every role
# We are looking at various methods like BEI, Case Interview, Role Playing and psychometrics to capture the identified competencies.

Parallely on the HR operations front, we are looking at
# Selecting a cost effective HRMS (Human Resource Management System) meant for SMEs which has the flexibility to key in our specific customization demands and at the same time has scalability
# Cleaning and channelising processes like employee joining, induction (we have one of the best and most comprehensive induction programs for our Research Associates) and maintenance of employee database which have come to be in the last year of our existence before HR could formally take over
# We have outsourced payroll but right now we have cleared specific roles and work flows for the inputs to be passed to the vendors through appropriate checks and balances
# We are in the process of designing an HR page on the Intranet which can be later merged with the Employee Self Service on the HRMS

However the pressing need, right now, is to develop supervisory skills in our front line managers who are managing people of same age group and for the first time. I have been talking to individual trainers, specific schools and experts to arrive at a method to go about it. We need supervisors and they need to see growth in terms of compensation and designation to stay put.
I am also devising a performance management ethic for the organization from the Organisational Vision and Values. This would incorporate the Competency Dictionary we are otherwise developing and thereby take on the next level of career development and succession planning.

My friend here doesn’t think too highly of my efforts given the vision and dreams of his former colleagues who have co-founded this organization. However I see value in his concept of HR as a people supply chain function, I have always been a great believer of integrated systems in HR. And we are trying to learn from the world around as we trip and again put our act together.

You will hear more from me on our little milestones, successes and learning on this page.

To all ye Managers and Leaders—Part 2

As early as in 1998, a McKinsey research survey (War for Talent) claimed that a company can attract and retain the right people only when
# talent management is put as a corporate priority
# there is a unique employee value proposition and
# The management can well explain why a smart and talented individual would work for them rather than the one next door.
And the primary key to keeping the good people is a constant initiative to develop and develop them further.

Companies which are so particular about their ‘hard’ results in financials and assets, do not look at their most vulnerable resource—their people!

According to HR Institute, a leading not-for-profit, a good worker-supervisor relationship is the primary reason behind retention. Companies which tolerate underperforming people, especially under-performing bosses, pay the greatest price. Sub-par managers drive talent away from the company and also pre-empt positions which could have been used as development opportunities. McKinsey’s War for Talent, 2000, survey of 6500 senior and middle level managers in 35 large US companies noted the following as the significant ways that an underperforming manager affects the career of people
# Impediment to learning
# Hurting career development
# Impediment in creating a larger contribution to the bottom line; and finally
# Making them leave the company.
The finding of this survey resonates Jim Collins’ idea quoted in my previous post.

I have left positions with previous employers because I have found the mentoring relationship with my supervisor meaningless and have failed to see any value for my career and individual development in spite of being nominated to organization wide leadership development initiatives which seemed more of window-dressing than anything serious.

Most employees look for meaningful work, feedback and recognition apart from a good working relationship with the team and the supervisor. While most managers do the day-to-day supervision regularly, they do not do the rest of the managerial role.
They need to ‘engage’ employees by showing the big picture, there is always a feeling ‘Aha!’ when my work is connected clearly to the company’s vision and objectives. Good managers also discuss career development options proactively with the employees. They advocate learning opportunities and develop an employee’s strengths and skill sets with a long term goal.
Stretch assignments are a key mode of adult learning so often a manager, who matches the right employee to the stretch projects available, becomes a winning retention manager!
Sensitivity to diversity among employees is another major factor. In India, we have always lived in a community of diversity but it is shocking to find the stereotypical thought impressions we carry about others and hence unconsciously get guided in our behaviour.

The common pitfalls are a plenty
# Often managers lose the long term view and push people for short term goals which not only affect the commitment levels of employees but also fail to take the talent pool to the next level. # Often ‘High-fliers’ are identified subjectively because they reflect something that a manager sees in him or herself.
# Also at times organizations/managers use a single method for assessing/identifying talent potential among people which gives a limited view. Talent management initiatives exist as islands within the company or in one-off processes which do not bear any fruit.
# The Senior Management should be clear on its motives behind the entire talent management strategy. It should not be to play up to the gallery of media, analysts, investors etc.

Retention initiatives maybe expanded to Transitioning processes. While there may not be scope for vertical growth all the time, our age old job enrichment processes come to play in terms of expanding an employee’s role. Stretch assignments are quite popular as an intervention at this stage.
Effective managers network with each other to share and transfer talent across businesses and geographies. A talented employee usually has competencies that can be of value across different buckets of the organizations and it also keeps the employee in the learning loop thereby helping in employee engagement and retention.
Great managers also know when to ‘let go’ and end the working relationship. They manage the exit well to learn why the employee is leaving and what could have been done differently in the earlier stages of the employee life cycle in the organization.

A Towers Perrin survey on Talent Management in 2005 revealed that
1. Most respondent companies believe that they are not providing enough support to their managers to play their role as talent managers effectively.
2. Respondents do not generally believe that their HR organizations are equipped to partner with the line especially in areas connected to data and measurement for decision making.

These are disturbing findings especially if one looks at the scenario today in 2007 when there is an essential dearth of skilled workers as well as qualified managers accompanied by an ageing workforce across the world and Generation Y-ers (those born after 1980) requiring skilled supervision to be productive.

Acknowledgement:
Talent Management: The State of the Art, 2005, Towers Perrin HR Services
Managers as Talent Leaders by Catherine J Rezak, Paradigm Learning, Florida, USA
War for Talent, Part Two, The McKinsey Quarterly, 2001, Number 2

To all ye Managers and Leaders—Part 1

I have been losing sleep lately on the issues of Talent Management. As I define and envision my role as a meaningful professional, there are some insights which come in. A reader, here, recently commented that HR, at times, is not even involved in Hiring. The way I read it is that HR as a sub-organisation within the larger one is not adept/keen to handle the process. While that maybe partially true, hiring managers cannot push the ultimate accountability saying “it is HR’s job and I have other better things to do” simply because they know
# what is to be done on the job
# the culture
# the team dynamics
# the results they and the organization need.

HR needs to add value by providing inputs on methods of prospective talent assessment, sources of attracting them and retooling the employee orientation, training and mentoring programs. However research shows that these very tools may backfire if managers rely too heavily on “it’s HR’s job” approach.

The organizational life cycle of an employee can be defined thus: Attracting→→Retaining→→Transitioning

Attracting new talent is really a war cry and there is huge competition across the trans- national space. I work for a niche start-up in the bundled space of technology and company research services. We are finding it equally difficult to hire talent in USA as much as in India. We pay above-par at times but look at very strong academics and competencies to fit the role and the culture here. The difficulty we are facing leads me to believe
# Prospective employees do not look for money all the time (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs still holds true)
# Niche skill sets and differentiating competencies (like we are looking for) are hard to come by # There is too much competition in hiring from the existing talent pool which may involve compromises on quality and other parameters. This fact, in turn, leads to high overhead costs and not necessarily high productivity.
# Recruiting organizations must go one step behind in the value chain and get involved in training people while they are still in under-grad schools. A lot of companies have already taken this route.

On-boarding is a key part of the attraction stage in the cycle. It is seen that dissatisfied employees leave within 3 to 6 months of being in a new job.
Good hiring managers create a support network for the new employees to help them quickly get on to speed.
They show the ‘big picture’ to help employees understand the value and place of their contribution towards the organizational collective goal. They also understand that being available for questions and feedback is a critical investment of time.
In our organization, we value ‘High Quality Moments of Truth’ meaning that each and every interaction with every stake holder is a ‘moment of truth’ for the organization at large and have to be given that importance. During the talent attracting and hiring phase, this Value would translate for us, in HR, as
# Establishing quality processes in short listing and selecting talent
# Helping Hiring Managers with the right tools of assessment and providing insights into the potential and hidden competencies of candidates
# Creating a positive experience and making it customized as much as possible, when new employees join us
# Helping Hiring Managers to be ‘present’ as the new employee struggles through the choppy waters of settling down And am sure we will find and add value in the process.

In his book ‘Good to Great:Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Other’s Don’t’, Jim Collins says that the best companies, those that have gone from good to great, “get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats and the wrong people off the bus.” Collins goes on to say that it doesn’t matter if you are in the right direction with the wrong people because great vision without great people is irrelevant.

Leave you to chew on that till we come back on the next stage of the employee life cycle.

Acknowledgement:
Good to Great by Jim Collins, 2001
Managers as Talent Leaders by Catherine J Rezak, Paradigm Learning, Florida, USA
Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon, 1987

From the desk of an HR guy--Part 2

The other day P told me that he was asked by his HR department to submit his job description and two references after he was working for almost two years. Also when he wished to know about the car leasing rules they had no idea and once organized an offsite where all HR guys sat in a gang and drank while the employees were left to themselves! He works on highly intellectual stuff for 12-14 hours a day and has no fitness/entertainment zones at work. His friend D told me that line HR discussed his manager’s development areas and the solution thus provided by HR in an open forum. Also when D wished to check one of his team member’s exit formalities, he was quizzed on compensation and while he answered on the negative, he was shown the entire confidential report of the employee in question at the click of a button while doling out expert advice.
Mind you, my friends P and D are from the best institutes of the country, have the best brains and work for the ‘dream come true’ investment bankers!

Does it mean that HR survives on a false sense of acquired power?
Does it mean HR is unprofessional and unethical?
Where did the ‘healer’, the ‘employee champion’ and the ‘strategic partner’ vanish amidst all this?

No wonder HR is a bad word in everybody’s lexicon…

D has some observations on this A student gets acquainted to the HR professionals during internships when they are treated like ignorant no-bodies, the attitude being “here I make or break your future!” During the final placement, the situation is no different, it seems! Questions stinking of ignorance are doled out and decisions made.

No wonder for years I have wondered why people think HR is relegated to hiring alone! And why often people pass an under the breath “HR must be kept in good humor”?

Does it really make it meaningless for believers like us who with all faith, thought and deed are here to make a difference?

From the desk of an HR guy!

After more than five years of corporate time, I am quite used to the glances, not-so-polite jokes and regular comments on ‘HR Guys’. Am also quite used to ‘Why HR is hated?’ discussions in HR forums. And for the first time am putting a post on my work area. (This is definitely not a technical discussion.)

Often HR is seen as a choice for those who really do not have any other. However I (and many others like me) have chosen to be in this field because we see HR as a healer and a helper in an organisation. Also as a contributor to people development without which organizations will come to a standstill. However much we bring in robotics and chips to do our bit on shop floors and software development centres, I believe Hawthorne’s experiments are equally valid today. I also believe that each one of us have this innate need to grow and develop as programmed as a plant goes towards light or a wasp towards a flicker. So the correct initiatives in people development can never go waste.

I do not contest that in India we, HR folks, have definitely left a lot to be done, we are far from where we ought to be. To the extent that I often get to hear that it is a surprise that being an HR person I need to work for such long hours while in reality most of my friends in the fraternity work for extended hours everyday and often over the weekend too. Have we sold HR poorly or is it that, as a friend from the line puts it, we lack expertise? I just look upon it as gross mismatch of expectations.
While few of us contain ourselves within the fencing of this function, it is actually 50% of a line manager’s and 80% of a leader’s job. However people look upon the HR Department as the doer of all decisions---the face of Devil! Which brings me to conclude that probably we couldn’t align ourselves with those for whom we exist. We are still ‘they’ who dole out the bad numbers, ‘they’ who mess up stuff; ‘they’ who have no work and DON’T deliver.

This year, Talent Management, has been voted as the greatest challenge for organizations worldwide. (Workforce Magazine, Jan 2, 2007)And talent is as potent as a bomb. In the shrinking world, choices are plenty and organizations will remain organized till they can keep their key people.
The second greatest area of concern is Succession Planning. Until and unless leaders are developed organizations can’t grow. But leadership development has five major dilemmas [Leadership Development through corporate universities, J Storey (2004)]
1.The extent to which and the way in which leadership can really be taught
2.The changing nature of leadership
3.The comparative nature of leadership
4.The measurement and evaluation of leadership development interventions
5.The integration of leadership programs with other organizational systems—such as career development or reward systems—and the degree of linkage with business strategy

The survival and success of HR fraternity depends on whether we can pull through these challenges in keeping with the needs of the business. We will succeed only when others see value in what we do. This is a much clichéd statement. One which we cannot ignore. However much I tell you that am one who really believes in the purpose behind this existence, am sure people even of my own organization would still think that not me as an individual but the function as a whole has no right to be here.

To create value we need a holistic approach, not one of stunted initiatives here and there with a short term view. And there will be a way to show the purpose behind our existence.