Time to upgrade our software

Over the last few years, the world has witnessed unprecedented crises at multiple levels--- financially, environmentally, politically and socially. Many a finger has been pointed to the collective failure of leadership in institutions, particularly organizations and business schools across the globe. Over the years greed for profits and benefits at any cost has clearly compounded to result in the recent financial meltdown. With rapid strides in technology and communication, the world has not only become flatter but also woven into an intricate interdependent web. So organizations today can ill afford to be blind to other stake holders while fulfilling their purpose of business. There is an urgent need to shift one’s focus from being purely shareholder and investor driven to a multi stakeholder one, in which the society ranks foremost. The book, ‘Firms of Endearment: How world class companies profit from passion and purpose, 2007, Sisodia, Sheth, and Wolfe’ details how companies that followed the latter outperformed the ‘Good to Great’ (Jack Collins) companies, 3:1 over a 10 year period. Quite interestingly these companies were even able to deliver consistently over a 3 year period, indicating their propensity to deliver on long term sustainable success.

So while there is a critical need for organizations to relook at their ways of doing business, a shift in thinking also needs to happen at business schools. Are they doing enough in shaping management graduates with a mindset of seeing the larger integrated picture while sourcing from sterling qualities of authenticity and humility? American business schools trained many of the people who had their hands on the tiller when the nation's economic ship ran aground. Having plunged the world into a crisis of several ramifications; heads of top business schools were found asking themselves the degree of responsibility they bear. “That basic model — the fundamental model, which really made up the fabric of contemporary business education, has to be revisited," says Rakesh Khurana, a professor at Harvard. He believes that “business schools have drifted away from their original mission: to create a true management profession for the benefit of society, rather than churn out consultants and hedge-fund hot shots.”

The crises caused by gaps in leadership ability leads one to wonder whether our existing approach to developing our leaders be it at business schools or organizations; is adequate? For disasters of such nature to be pre empted one needs to adopt a new paradigm altogether. It’s not as if organizations and business schools have not been on a soul searching mode to find a fix. When the dot-com bubble burst schools were quick to add a course on business ethics. Organizations too have invested considerably and continue to do so, in training programs on values and attitudes. However none of these did help to avoid the economic fallout in 2008-09! 

So while an effort to shift mindsets and behavior patterns in being made, it hasn’t really shifted the human capacity (and therefore leadership effectiveness) to a higher order. They have merely scratched the surface without making a deep and sustainable impact.

The challenges of the outside world is compelling us to look within—our inner space of who we are. It calls for an alignment of our inner thoughts and feelings associated with it. The more we understand and expand this part of ourselves the greater will be the adeptness with which we respond to our circumstances. There seems to be a direct and a potent connection between who we are on the inside and what we do on the outside. In effect our state of ‘being’ has a direct bearing on our state of ‘doing.’ Our inability to respond effectively to the world around us implies that somewhere we are not sourcing completely from this part of ourselves. It’s important to question if courses on ethics and trainings on values have truly triggered the change in thought, feeling and action that we have been seeking? Is a mere intellectual understanding of “the right thing to do” enough to warrant a meaningful change in an individual?

Nebulous as it may sound; our inner world is like the powerful ‘Intel processor’ waiting for an upgrade to be able to run those snazzy applications and packages that are subsequently loaded on it.

The journey of understanding the ‘inner self’ may be a slow one requiring sustained effort and will.

The questions we need to ask ourselves are—

·         Are we willing to traverse this path of self discovery?

·         Are organizations and business schools ready to invest in nurturing this part of ourselves?

Adding more punch to Assessment Centres

Since its introduction in the 1950s by AT & T, the assessment centre (AC) method has classically been used to assess an individual’s potential with respect to behavioural competencies. Its results have been used for the purpose of recruitment, internal mobility, promotions and succession planning. As a process that is based on empirical data, it brings objectivity and a rigor to assessment. All assessors use the same set of criteria to rate a candidate’s potential based on pre defined behavioural indicators, thereby minimizing the element of assessor bias and/or error. Its use of different formats (e.g. interview, role play, presentation, questionnaire) to assess a common set of competencies also adds to its robustness.

While I appreciate its basis on researched fundamentals, I am also concerned about its heavy skew towards objectivity for something as complex as human behavior. Given that people respond differently to various situations, how fair is it to use an objective process alone?

Over a period of time, assessors too tend to get more clinical and judgmental in their analysis –a complete antithesis for an assessment of a subjective quality such as leadership potential. Are we as assessors even mindful of our slip into a critical, fact oriented process that impairs our discerning, intuitive ability to go beyond what meets the eye? An artificially created situation where a person is being judged by several hawk eyes can put undue pressure on the candidate.  It’s only natural for candidates to falter in such a scenario.  Many a times strong discrepancies are observed in the person’s performance at work when compared with that of the assessment centre. What then is the rationale for dismissing someone’s competence as a leader when he has demonstrated it amply at the workplace? In such a scenario, the relevance of the data thrown up in the AC becomes suspect.

What I am alluding to is a certain balance of a fact cum intuition led approach in assessments. As HR practitioners, we must constantly strive to enhance our perceptive abilities in spotting potential rather than be led by a ‘one size fits all’ process. Subsequently our developmental initiatives should also focus on drawing out the best in an individual. Adopting a set approach alone; in the interest of time and scale can be counterproductive in our efforts to tap potentially bright candidates. In addition the scores of an AC should be corroborated with other tools such as the 360 degree feedback and performance rating for a more accurate assessment of an individual’s potential to move up the leadership curve.

Since the world of managing talent cannot be driven by a set of frameworks and data alone, losing our deeper sensing abilities can be quite detrimental in the long run. Like I said, we carry an even higher responsibility of harnessing the latter in ourselves and in the people we are responsible for.  It may be a good idea to step back from time to readjust the fulcrum of assessment and development to a balance of an objective and subjective approach.