Having effective and efficient meetings

The article from LiveMint where MD of Spearhead Intersearch, Jyorden Misra was quoted, excerpts. For the full article go to http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/rOdmG3Po96SVN1JGdnS9aJ/Talking-heads.html

In his new book Read This Before Our Next Meeting!, Al Pittampalli writes that the modern-day meeting is not a tool to share information that could be sent out in an email or a free-flowing session to generate new ideas. What it is, is an opportunity to support decisions.

“Team meetings are an important tool for managing a team’s tasks and ensuring productivity, but they can lead to a loss of interest among people if overdone or if conducted without adequate preparation and leadership skills,” says Prashant Bhatnagar, director (hiring) at technology firm SapientNitro in India. Gurgaon-based Bhatnagar says that at SapientNitro, 30-40% of the senior management’s time is spent in “team and functional meetings”, and at the junior to mid-level, employees spend 10-15% of work hours in meetings.

First, some ground rules

Team members at ThoughtWorks conduct a 7-minute daily meeting, standing up

Going into the meeting, there must be a clear agenda, an outline of possible solutions and alternatives, and a proposed decision—the merits of which can then be debated in the meeting, says Pittampalli.

He adds that we engage in many different kinds of interactions in the office—the one-on-one conversation, the group work session and opportunities to brainstorm.

There’s another set of “meetings” that is becoming popular in the modern Indian office, the daily update. Teams huddle around to talk about the previous day’s achievements, where they got stuck and the tasks to be completed that day.

At financial services firm Bajaj Capital in Delhi, “there’s a 7-minute daily huddle, in which the teams highlight three things that happened yesterday”, voice any dependencies on others and set the tasks to be completed on that day, says Sunaina Mattoo Khanna, executive vice-president and head (HR), Bajaj Capital. “That meeting can’t be more than seven-eight people,” she adds.

Problem areas

Post-its dot a wall of the ThoughtWorks office

Bringing the laggards up to speed during the meeting can, of course, be a huge waste of time for others. Jyorden T. Misra, managing director at Spearhead InterSearch, a network of executive search firms, agrees. “Most often, people don’t do the preparatory work for a meeting and a lot of things are developed in the meeting rather than being researched beforehand,” says Delhi-based Misra.

Misra adds that we need to look at the anatomy of meetings. If you have an hour at your disposal as the meeting leader but it gets wrapped up in 15 minutes, end it quickly rather than letting it drag on, he suggests.

Ravi Dawar, India director of finance at medical technologies firm Becton, Dickinson and Co. (BD), says: “Open-ended, undefined and exceedingly long meetings add no value to the organization and often lead to delayed decisions.”

Gunjan Shukla, general manager (Pune) at software firm ThoughtWorks Technologies (India) Pvt. Ltd, says there are other ways to share ideas. Instead of calling others away from their workstations, hold on to that thought, and let the team come back to you when they can all spare some time to hear you out, she says.

Ideas mill

Colourful Post-its dot one wall of the Pune office of ThoughtWorks. Each Post-it is an idea on how to solve a problem, or even a new problem the team could develop and market a solution to. And once that concern is out there for others to see, it elicits responses from them, triggers new ideas in their minds, and allows employees to do this “interaction” with the idea when they are free, rather than being called away from their desks at an inconvenient time.

There’s another solution that Shukla says works well for her office: Teams can indicate entire chunks of time—“core working hours”—during the day when they will be unavailable for meetings. “Teams get to decide core working hours. Only certain meetings can violate these core working hours, like when we have a senior executive visiting the office (from overseas),” she explains.

Misra says at Spearhead they make the employees in charge of meetings by turns. The meeting leader is then in charge of outlining a clear agenda for the meeting and communicating it to the other attendees, collecting the necessary data points around the meeting, distributing copies of the necessary documents and presentations to everyone well in advance, Misra explains. That person also gathers intelligence from other team members regarding updates on their work.

Misra says this level of pre-meeting preparation has had two interesting outcomes for Spearhead. When employees talk to each other periodically to learn what has been keeping them busy in the workplace, it helps develop a greater appreciation for what they each do. Another plus is that if someone calls in sick or has to go out for work-related travel on the day of the meeting, the meeting in-charge can fill in for them, he says.

Dawar agrees: “The meetings are pre-scheduled to ensure effective participation and also agendas are circulated well in advance. In case of presentations, the presenters share the presentation and pre-reads ahead of the meeting to enable informed and productive discussions during the meeting.” This also addresses a key spoiler in the modern-day meeting: non-participation. Employees who come to meetings unarmed with information on what it is about, or data points to back their views, often have little of value to contribute.

Our coverage on Livemint: Digital Clutter: Can your online footprint affect your job/ hiring opportunities?

Get rid of digital clutter

Old posts can be embarrassing—scan and delete them from your old social networking sites

Subhashish Bharuka

Privacy settings are tedious, but well worth the effort

Facebook rolled out Graph Search in the US last week and plans to expand it to other users in short order—it’s going to be easier than ever for people to find your posts.

Your online footprint is larger than you remember. Did you ever have an Orkut account? What about that old Myspace profile, or Flickrpage? Everything you posted to them is still online today, unless you delete the posts or make them private. Today, it’s possible to get fired, end up in a broken relationship or in extreme cases, get booked for a comment you’ve put up on your Facebook wall.

Jyorden T. Misra, managing director of Delhi-based Spearhead InterSearch, a global executive search firm, says: “Social media profiles are checked as a part of the due-diligence process by many organizations today. There have been instances where candidates who were otherwise qualified were rejected because of lifestyle traits displayed online; references to drinking, drugs, bad-mouthing of their co-workers and employers.”

Deepak Kulkarni, director, HR, Asia Pacific, Bristlecone (a Mahindra Group consultancy service), adds, “At Bristlecone we use social media to validate the information provided by the applicant, to help make a decision on the interview.”

So how do you deal with this online “clutter”?

Filter access: Social networks like Facebook let you set different privacy levels. Want to keep your party photos for friends to see? Make sure they’re the only ones who have access to them. On Twitter, remember that everything you say is public. If you want to use Twitter to keep up with friends and share off-colour jokes and photos, then change the account settings to private.

Set a cut-off: Facebook’s Timeline includes the very handy feature of letting you control privacy by year—the year when you started working is usually a good point to draw the line between public and private space. We’ve all said and done stupid things in college—but even if that was 10 years ago, it’s not a good idea to air them for your boss too. Jump to the date, and set everything before that to private. After that, you can scan your timeline and mark some chosen items as public if you want. This isn’t just for Facebook either because recruiters often check LinkedIn and Twitter too.

Check those apps: Facebook and Twitter use something called API authorization through which you can grant access to your account to third-party applications. This is pretty cool for the time when you want a game to tweet your high score, or when you want to run the birthday calendar app on Facebook. But often, you’re giving those apps access to your personal information, and giving them permission to post on your behalf.

Check the apps that have access on these and other networks; you’ll find many apps which you activated years ago and haven’t used since. Remove their access rightaway. Do you need all the other apps that remain? If the answer isn’t a resounding YES for any app on the list, remove that one too.

Automate clean-up: Want to get out of Facebook, and don’t want to leave any traces behind? Download Facebook Scrubber. It’s free, and removes all the information you’ve ever uploaded to Facebook. After that, you can delete that account with confidence.

If you’re not ready for the nuclear option, then check out SimpleWash. This free app lets you pick and choose the content you want to delete, from photos and posts to likes.

SimpleWash also works with Twitter; the app scans all your updates, looking for offensive language and references to drugs and alcohol. Then you can choose to delete the content or leave it. And in case the automatic search doesn’t find something you remember, you can use the search bar to find things too. While you’re at it, you can also use Tweepi to delete the Twitter followers you don’t interact with—this reduces the odds that you’ll forget about someone following you and make an inappropriate post.

Go hands on: This is the last step but possibly the most important one. Once you’ve run SimpleWash, take a scan through your Facebook Timeline to make sure that there’s nothing objectionable left. With Twitter, scanning through all your tweets is difficult, but All My Tweets is a free tool that helps—it lists every tweet you’ve ever made on a single screen, so you don’t have to scroll through page after page to check if SimpleWash missed anything.

For older networks which you don’t use actively any more? It’s best to just delete or lock down the account.

Social Media as part of hiring policy

              
        While there is some data on companies using social media sites for recruitment purposes which shows that more than half of companies have used social media sites for recruitment, there is almost no data on how many companies use these sites for purposes such as backgrounds check or pre hiring checks. However, based on our own talks with clients, it is clear that the percentage of companies doing this is quite small. There is a reason for that.

Social media sites like linkedin, facebook, twitter are excellent ways of identifying qualified relevant candidates; connect with them and complement the overall hiring process. But taking the decision of not hiring a candidate based on what is posted on these sites, may make the company liable to law suits based on discrimination. No company would want to be in that position. Hence, not many companies will ask the interviewee about their facebook user id. We will also see more and more companies making explicit rules of how to use social media sites for their hiring practices. However, posting such things as drinking binges, drug use, or even spelling and grammar mistakes can bias the company against hiring a certain candidate, if the company decides to go through the social network profiles of the potential candidate.

On the other hand, a company can use social media for a two pronged recruitment purpose. On the one hand, they can create a presence which helps in building a brand identity, and increasing brand loyalty among job seekers or potential employees of the company. They can also use it to post jobs and create awareness of existing positions among active as well as passive job seekers. On the other hand, the company may be able to identify relevant candidates to contact for positions in the company. This makes the hiring process more efficient.

2.      Inappropriate content: We still dont know of instances in India where an employee has been fired because of inappropriate content. This is more prevalent among school students who are warned, suspended or rusticated for posting against teachers or the school. However, there have been instances of employees being warned against making derogatory comments. In some cases, social networking sites have been banned from the office altogether and in others employees have been gagged on networking sites against speaking about their employers.

Today, whoever uses networking sites is also careful enough not to comment about their employer or manager. Not only will it harm their present situation, it will also permanently scar their profile in the eyes of future employers.

3.          Social media profile screening has been complementing our hiring methods for some years now. Linkedin was originally created as a professional networking platform and today more than 90% recruiters are using it in some form in their hiring process. More than 50% use facebook for the same purpose. Today with this kind of technology becoming part of hiring, it becomes even more important for the screening process to be more stringent. Ironically, this screening is best done by an experienced head hunter, who, I dare say, can easily separate the wheat from the chaff, even from a linkedin.com or a facebook.com!

What you wish you'd known before your job interview: Pinterest

Saw a great pin on pinterest and thought of sharing it here...

Boss from Hell: Dealing with bad boss (Anger management in the workplace: Part 2)

In the previous blog post I had talked about the colleague from hell which makes one lose ones marbles in the workplace. But a bad workplace is just as bad as a bad boss. The top reason why a person leaves a job is a bad boss. So what do you do when...

YOUR BOSS SHOUTS AT YOU FOR NO FAULT OF YOURS

One might immediately think of harassment. One might think that one’s boss is bullying. The immediate reaction may be anger and frustration. One might think of resigning or even shouting back.

Think: If it is a genuine case of harassment or bullying, the first reaction should be no reaction at all. If it is a regular incident, one can gather evidence to support the claim and then take it to a higher authority. One can even garner support from colleagues and fellow supporters.

If however, it is a one off case, and not severe or lasting, one may bring it to the notice of the boss. If the boss had no intention of hurting, he/she would immediately understand if an explanation is given to the innocence of the victim/ employee.

Do:Communication is essential. If the issue is harassment or bullying, help should be sought. Otherwise, there should be free and frank discussion with the boss about the behaviour which might dissipate the situation. In case of an apology from the boss, the employee may be gracious in acceptance.

Dont do: Make false allegation of harassment. If the case is one off and not severe or lasting, this might result in the termination of employment for false allegation. One should never lose ones cool and shout back at a boss. One should also not stay silent and let him/her get away with occasional abuse.

And what do you say of the boss who will inevitably call you when you are in the middle of a romantic candle-lit dinner, and ask you to make a client call RIGHT NOW!

WHEN YOU GET A WORK-RELATED CALL ON A VACATION

Resentment and frustration may be the result of work spilling on to weekends or vacations.

Think: It is now a common thing to be working on weekends or vacations for many. Sometimes if the vacation is quite long, more than 5 days or so, one might be expected to clear ones mailbox periodically. Also one should realise, people do not remember differences in time zones or movements of others all the time. If it is urgent, try to delegate the work to someone in the know. If it is not urgent, one may want to remind politely that one would deal with this once he or she is back.

Do: This is not a potentially damaging situation. If it is very urgent situation which require only ones own involvement, then one needs to put in that work. Otherwise one may either delegate or push the work till the date of return to office.

Dont do: Shut down all communication especially if it is a long vacation.

Also, use of racial or gender biased words or comments in the workplace is a definite no-no. It is not just disrespectful, it also shows lack of self confidence and perhaps also low self esteem in the person doing it. One is often tempted to say something rude and hurtful to the cause of the anger, but it is always going to be construed into your being unprofessional and irrational.

So while it is never a good thing to give in to the anger boiling within you, it would be easier on your career and image to take a deep breath, count backward from 100, and channelise the wrath into constructive matters.
The Hindustan Times Brunch article can be found here http://www.hindustantimes.com/Brunch/Brunch-Stories/Why-so-angry/Article1-1087690.aspx

Colleague from Hell: Dealing with bad colleagues (Anger management in the workplace: Part 1)

Recently I was sent a questionnaire on Anger Management in the workplace by a journo who would base her article on my answers. While answering the questions, I found them quite pertinent and useful for us, who struggle in the workplace with various issues but cannot get them out in the open. The top reason for a person leaving a job may be a bad boss, but nasty colleagues are not far down the line. I have seen people leave their jobs after being hounded for years by one or a team of colleagues who had grouped up against them and made every passing day a nightmare. I have been (mostly) lucky to have worked with friendly, guiding and kind people, mostly, some of whom have turned out to be lifelong friends. Not always, though.
From the beginning of my career I have worked with people who would never come in on time, even if a team was waiting for him to start a meeting, would always sulk, would always be calling the boyfriend of the moment, would always be fighting over candidates, would always be saving yahoo chats for future (blackmailing) purposes, would always be complaining about everything at work, would always be negative, would always be gossiping... And I am talking of different people.
However, mostly I have had good working relationships in the workplace. Not everyone is as lucky and I know of more than one person who have gone through hell in the workplace and lived to tell the tale.
There are the colleagues who will not help you when you need help, there will be the groaner and complainer, who makes the air toxic with negativity, there will be the drama queen who always needs attention all the time, or the back stabbing type who will try to grab all the attention. Here are some situations you may face in the workplace and how to deal with them and most importantly, how to manage your anger in such situations:

WHEN A CO-WORKER REFUSES TO COOPERATE

Reaction: The immediate reaction might be anger and a feeling of revenge. One might even take it to the next level and talking to the supervisor to mediate and solve the issue.

Think: Refusal to cooperate might just be stemming from a lack of communication or from a conflict of interest between two people. One must try to gauge if there is a feeling of competition or fear of the other person being better. One might be trying to just do a good job but the perception of competition might create a conflict.

In such a scenario, one might want to resolve the conflict of interest. Keeping in mind the other persons needs, wants and desires, one might want to back off for a moment to see if there is a lack of training involved, or if there is any real issue. If the issue is only fear, then one might want to allay the fear by identifying the other person’s interests.

Do: The best way would be to show empathy and to align both people’s interests. A frank talk about the conflict of interest might solve the issue in an amicable fashion.

Dont do: Definitely do not increase tensions by taking it on ones ego and increasing the miscommunication. Not to strain the relationship further by not talking about it or by talking about it to others. 

WHEN YOUR COLLEAGUE IS RUDE/NASTY TO YOU

Reaction: Shock or anger. If the behaviour is chronic then it might lead to bad relationships with the colleague. Take it personally.

Think: React with dignity. Talk to the manager and explain the situation with objectivity. With the colleague, act with confidence and say that this behaviour is not professional and not appreciated. Remember that it is not personal.

Do: Damage control has to be usually done by the rude colleague. Communication is key with one keeping line managers and HR in the loop about chronic rude people. Otherwise, just a frank talk should suffice.

Dont do: Dont be rude or nasty in return. Or talk behind the colleagues back.

WHEN YOUR COLLEAGUE TAKES CREDIT FOR YOUR WORK

Reaction: Frustration and anger. 

Think: One should always keep a written record of one’s work. This should be shared regularly with the manager at intervals. For credit thieves, one should tackle them directly and correct misconception with colleagues and seniors.

Do: Again, communication is required. One should clear misconception among others about the work. One can also talk to the colleague in question and ask him or her to stop the behaviour.

Dont do: Talk behind the back of the perpetrator. Spread rumours.

WHEN COLLEAGUES BITCH ABOUT YOU BEHIND YOUR BACK

Reaction: Feeling offended, angry and reacting by saying something in return. 

Think: Usually not to react is the best reaction. The gossip monger/s should be tackled with dignity. It is also important to laugh about oneself to make the situation light and diffuse it. Also one may keep a distance with these colleagues. Remember people bitch when they are jealous of ones success.

Do: Deal with any rumours being spread by making it clear to all that the behaviour will not be tolerated. If it is a potentially harmful rumour then one should talk to the person it may reach and harm you most, and clear the air. Otherwise ignoring such behaviour is the best way.

Dont do: Spread gossip or bitch in retaliation.

The Hindustan Times Brunch article can be found here http://www.hindustantimes.com/Brunch/Brunch-Stories/Why-so-angry/Article1-1087690.aspx

Is technology killing intuition: a perspective on recruitment: Excerpts from and based on the article 'Healthy Hire or Miserable Failure' in Indian Management Magazine

Many years ago, a Europe based client in the infrastructure domain gave us a list of “desirable attributes” for a candidate for the position of COO. Among them were- a given number of years of experience and seniority, leadership skills, specific knowledge of niche technology etc. Among the first 2 or 3 candidates that we presented to them, was a lady with much fewer years of experience but having, what I thought was, adequate team handling experience and all the other skills which I understood would be necessary for the job at hand. The client however matched her in their own internal, and should I add, international parameter tool- a technology they were using for some years, across the board, in every country they operated. All my efforts to have them see sense fell on deaf ears. For months we tried to give them a solution which matched all their criteria but somehow did not fit into their indian remuneration brackets.

After about 6 months of desperate searching, I again insisted that they revisit the first lady. Something told me, she was “the one”. This time, she was interviewed by some other people too and they decided she was the right fit, tech or no tech. So, all was well that ended well. But this gave rise to this thought in my mind. Is technology over riding the role of plain vanilla intuition as far as recruitment is concerned?

But here is the catch. Intuition is never plain vanilla. It is the effect of years, indeed, decades of knowledge, experience, and sheer hard work. Only we call it ‘intuition’ because we cannot really follow the pattern of the mind as it analyses gigabytes of data in our brain.

We see it all the time in nature and our surroundings. One pertinent and rather sad example is from the devastating tsunami which lashed the shores of Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India in 2002. It was seen that some tribes of the Andaman Islands could escape the waves since they had moved to higher land in time. When probed, it was realized that they had relied on traditional wisdom and had heeded the warning of the birds and animal behavior and had moved. However, those so called more developed areas, where technology was present but still not used to that extent, people relied on it, and had been dulled into the state of mind which didn’t allow their intuition to dictate their moves. Is it true then that technology makes us forget our natural ability to follow our intuition? What about the West now waking up to the fact that Asians are more adept at mathematical calculation and do much better in school and aptitude tests simply because they did not depend on calculators in school? And how does this dichotomy of technology and intuition relate to our workplaces?

Especially in hiring, intuition has time and again proven to be that something which goes beyond the framework. A successful hiring is not just about the educational qualification, or years of experience or about the number of people led, nor is it just about the technological knowledge of the incumbent. These are important, but what makes a person successful in a company in the long run is what we call the “right fit”. That is a combination of the attributes of culture, character, communication and how they interact with others. And this is something which technology cannot determine. There are a lot of psychometric tests today which can go a long way in getting a fair idea about the characteristics of a person but turning it all into data. It works in most cases. Yet, the human brain has the capability to understand and process tiny movements of muscle along with words and actions, which, say, for a very good candidate on paper, may say “something is not quite right”. And that “not quite right” finally turns out to be a false CA certificate, as was the case with one of our hirings for a CFO for a hotel group.

Many arguments have been made on the greatness of intuition, case in point being ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell, but his examples only goes to strengthen this point- great intuition only comes from great experience.

There is also talk of, if too much technology may be harmful for the business. Recently a manufacturing plant upgraded their computer processors for better speed and spent more than Rs 40 lakhs for the same. However the plant workers uses simple spread sheets and databases, so this up gradation was wasteful expenditure. Technology is only valuable if it can make your business faster or better or make more money. In fact, where you make use of technology itself is up to the gut feeling of the manager in charge!

Intuition may also be a bad weapon in the hands of a bad hiring manager. Only a person with years of experience in handling both sides of the table- the client and the candidate- can make these very subtle distinctions and catch the nuances. Today with the advent of technology in the social sphere in the form of networking sites which are being used in almost every company for their hiring purposes, it becomes even more important for the screening process to be even more stringent. Ironically, this screening is best done by an experienced head hunter, who, I dare say, can easily separate the wheat from the chaff, even from a linkedin.com or a monster.com!

My view is that which intuition is infallible and will always be, it has now found a good partner in technology. Intuition is good in the hands of a person who second guesses, doubts himself and searches for data to validate his or her decision. One must remember that intuition also comes from the mistake one makes throughout ones career. Therefore, a wise person will not only use his or her gut feeling to make a decision but will also corroborate this decision with proper analysis and use of data. Intuition followed mindlessly can become dangerous for the company as well as or the person.

Jyorden Misra
Re-worded in parts for reproduction by Payal

Why making the right hire is so important

Have you heard of this one? Supposedly one bad hiring costs the company Rs 20 lakhs.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/business-news/CorporateNews/One-bad-hiring-costs-Indian-companies-over-Rs-20-lakh-survey/Article1-1058966.aspx

While the corporate world is still divided as to the importance of having a good executive search firm, it is now proven what a bad hire can do to the financials of your company.

"As per the study conducted by global human resource consultancy CareerBuilder, 88% companies in Russia said they were affected by bad hiring last year, followed by 87% in Brazil and China and 84% in India.

The percentage of such companies in the US was much lower at 66%.

The study further said that three in every ten Indian companies (29%) reported that a single bad hire -- someone who turned out not to be a good fit for the job or did not perform well -- cost the company more than Rs. 20 lakh ($37,150) on an average.

In comparison, 27% of US employers reported that a single bad hire costs them more than $50,000"

Recently we were approached by an NBFC in Chennai, a start up firm, and in my meeting with them, their HR Head confided that they have been trying from some recruitment CV sites and some networking sites to get solutions to their hiring requirements, but after trying for over a year, the "proper fit" has eluded them. What they get instead is a landslide of resumes from candidates who are remotely connected with the industry, function or any JD mentioned. Usually they are not equipped with the experience, time or energy to sort through this bombardment of resumes.

While global search firms do come at a price, (which you are not paying for your linkedin hire, or for the person your in-house executive searched from monster.com), it is still an experienced search consultant who is equipped with the knowledge of how to use the tools of the trade best. 

"When you add up missed sales opportunities, strained client and employee relations, potential legal issues and resources to hire and train candidates, the cost can be considerable," said CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson. "Employers are taking longer to extend offers post-recession as they assess whether a candidate really is the best fit for the job and their company culture," he added.

It has been seen that apart from poor performance, a hire becomes a failure when there is a skills mismatch. There might also be a culture difference. That is why the experience of a hiring manager is very important. If you are using external agencies for your hiring purposes here are the things to remember: 

• providing a clear job description, and stick to it. Take time to build the right job description. Many companies are not sure of their JD when they send it out to consultants and then keep changing with time. Try and avoid that scenario. It makes it difficult for everyone involved and is a waste of time for you, the consultant and the candidate being considered.
• meeting with the consultants to give an idea of the company culture
• being clear and precise in the hiring brief is very important
• spending time with the candidate, usually more than one meeting is necessary to even check the basic skills. Multi level meetings are required to understand the cultural background and attitude of a person
• checking soft skills like working in a team and attitude
• wooing the right candidate. It may translate to more money but the cost will be more than made up.

When it comes to hiring the right person, you need not leave anything to chance. A good agency and a good HR manager will ensure you get the right fit without having to swim through a sea of bad resumes and wasting any time. 

CEO SUCCESSION PLANS IN COMPANIES AROUND THE WORLD

INTERSEARCH SURVEY

Fewer than half – just 45 percent – of executives from 34 countries around the world say their companies have a process for conducting CEO succession planning, according to a recent survey by InterSearch Worldwide, a leading global executive search organization operating in more than 45 countries.

"Forward-thinking, responsible companies have robust processes for CEO succession planning, so it may astonish some readers that fewer than half of the companies represented in our survey actually do," said InterSearch Chairman Frank Schelstraete. "Our advice to the 55 percent that do not: never let an emergency situation catch your company by surprise. Executives can resign or even pass away unexpectedly. Establishing a CEO succession plan should be a fundamental obligation of public and private companies – of any size, in any region – and their boards."

Data by company size

In terms of company size, the larger the company the more likely it was to have a CEO succession plan. Among the largest companies in the survey (those with annual revenue of more than US$500 million or approximately 400 million Euro), 73 percent have a CEO succession plan.
The data were more evenly split among medium-sized companies (those with annual revenue between US$50-500 million or approximately 40-400 million Euro) with 49 percent having such a plan.
And among small companies (those with annual revenue under US$50 million or approximately 40 million Euro) only 17 percent had a CEO succession plan.

Data by geographic region

By geographic region, 38 percent of companies had a CEO succession plan in place in EMEA, which includes a wide range of countries from this diverse region.
In the Americas, where respondents came primarily from the United States, Canada, and a few South American companies, 74 percent of companies had such a plan.
And in Asia, 53 percent indicated their companies had a CEO succession plan. This region's respondents came primarily from Australia, Japan, India and South Korea.

Other data

Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of all respondents say their companies review and/or update their CEO succession plan at least every three years, with a majority (56 percent) doing so once every year. Twenty-seven percent do so only as needed.
Most companies generally think their CEO succession planning is satisfactory or better. Seventy-nine percent of all respondents rate their plans as good (43 percent), very good (33 percent) or excellent (3 percent). Nineteen percent rated their plans as fair (16 percent) or poor (3 percent).
Comments from survey respondents describing the effectiveness of their company's CEO succession plan in identifying qualified internal and external candidates included:
"My estimation is that we have a good process in place. Internal candidates are monitored and assessed regularly [and] we have a programme to attract external talents."
~Large private firm, Switzerland
"The updated and regularly reviewed database provides good number of qualified persons. External candidates are not properly followed."
~Large private firm, United States
"Both the succession plan as well as standardized nomination and handover processes are established. As always, there are situations where the defined process is violated."
~Large private firm, Austria
"The process [has been] clear and consistent over the years. The succession plan usually considers internal candidates who have been growing in the organization [in] high responsibility roles."
~Large private firm, Italy
Of the respondents, 70 percent came from private companies while 30 percent came from publicly traded companies. Of those, just 38 percent of private companies said they had a CEO succession plan, compared to 61 percent of public companies that did.
InterSearch conducted the online survey of executives around the world during the two months from 1 December 2012 through 31 January 2013.
Additional survey results can be found here:
https://intersearch.org/images/documents/news_releases/CEO_succession_IS_survey_statistics.pdf
https://intersearch.org/images/documents/news_releases/CEO_succession_planning_for_midsize_companies.pdf

About InterSearch

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Mothers at Work: An Indian Perspective on the Working Mom

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is again in the news for having scrapped the work from home policy of her company. Earlier she had returned to work days after delivering her baby and got panned by women’s groups for setting the wrong precedent. Then she made waves when she opened a day care center for her infant son next door to her office. She now runs WiT, Women in Tech, a volunteer group that helps talented women enter and stay in the workforce. 

Indira Nooyi, CEO PepsiCo, in a recent interview, confessed that she would not have been able to concentrate on her career if not for the help and support of her husband in childcare for her sons.
In contrast, the Mumbai local train ladies coup is a revelation. On a return trip from work, while a group of girls chatter about college, the older women have work to complete, before they reach home. Some of them catch up on much needed sleep, they hardly get 5 hours a night. One woman has the rice out, sifting through it, readying it for cooking. She will bring out the dal next. And some even have vegetables out on their laps, slicing and cutting them for curry to be cooked at home. They reach home too late to cut and cook the dinner.

Welcome to the world of the Indian working mother. More and more companies are waking up to the daily travails of the woman at the workplace in spite of the 12 weeks maternity leave provided by the Indian Government, and now realize one of the main cogs in the wheel to keep women in the workforce is to address the issues faced by the working mother.

India traditionally, has had low economic activity rates. Even now, a woman with a high level of education drops out of the race because they are overcome by the pressures of handling baby and work. 

A 2011 Nielsen study showed that 87% Indian women are stressed most of the time and 82% had no time to relax. The pressures of dealing with childcare without the accompanying support system of family or husband or proper infrastructure in the country in the form of nannies or crèches, adds to the stress. And still the number of working women has doubled in the last 15 years. There are about 5 % more women in senior levels in 2009 as compared to 2008 in Indian companies while Indian MNCs have seen a 15-20 % increase, a study by WILL, Women in Leadership forum has showed. 

However the problem lies at the mid level, where women, mainly in their 30s are seen leaving the work talent pool. Studies have showed that one of the main factors preventing women to return to work was childbirth.

What are the difficulties faced by the working mother

• Childcare and proper support during periods of illness of the child
• Stress of balancing motherhood and work, additional stress of domestic responsibilities
• Lack of exercise or proper nutrition leading to health problems
• Lack of support from family
• Lack of infrastructure in childcare

Companies are trying to bridge these gaps where they can. 

• A lot of companies like Wipro, Infosys and HUL, have day care centers and crèches where mums can leave their children and come and check in on them at intervals. 
• Various firms, including Vodafone and Mahindra and Mahindra have begun focusing on getting more gender diversity at senior leadership positions. This includes giving these women availability, location and role choices, as Ashok Ramachandran the HR Director of Vodafone India has said. The thought is that women bring plurality and different thinking in leadership style and values. Vodafone, which has 6% of their workforce as women, now plan to raise it to 15%.
• Cisco is concentrating on developing business practices that reflect Indian culture and that include sense of family, while Sodexho believes in providing work life balance in order to win their search of good talent and hire women in leadership positions. The trend is to provide the opportunity to work part time, work from home, or telecommute by which employees can work from home 1-2 days a week. Other measures include relaxation rooms, lactation rooms or special car parking privileges to new mothers or pregnant employees. 
• Zensar adopted such initiatives which have showed them remarkable results, increasing the percentage of women returning after maternity leave from 15 to 89%.
• TCS global HR Head, Ajoy Mukherjee concentrates on increasing the presence of women in their global work force. He is proud that 11% of senior management in the company comprises of women. This has come with the flexibility offered by the company in terms of role by job rotations, and by not breaking the service record of women who take a sabbatical due to family pressures and want to return after a period of time. DAWN or Diversity and Women’s Network, a TCS initiative focuses on inclusion and helps women grow in their profession in the company.
• PepsiCo has set up a Female Talent Council where women come together to share their experiences and provide help and support to each other. PepsiCo’s core senior team of 15 comprises 30% women. 
• Accenture has an Hours That Help program by which their employees can donate their leave hours to their colleagues who need additional paid leave for any reason, including child birth and caring for a new child. The company provides medical cabs and escorts for expecting mothers.
• While Google India offers insurance for all delivery and new born health related matters, IBM arranges workshops to train in house nannies and ayahs in order to provide better care for children at home while their mums are at work.
• Companies are even taking into account couples who adopt babies by including “adoption leave”. The employee gets 3 months paid leave when they adopt a child. Google also takes care of the adoption expenses, including legal fees.
• SAP India’s VP HR Bhuvaneshwar Naik has talked about the clear association between benefits to the working mother and retention. In 2007 19 of 61 women who went on maternity leave, came back to work. In 2012, the number was 128 out of 134.

This goes to show that if a company shows that it cares about its women employees and makes it easier for them to work after childbirth, more women will be interested in coming back to work and concentrate on their careers. While more can be done, like mentorship programs for new mothers or paternity leave, for instance, these companies have shown the path in terms of best HR practices which actually retains talent where it is lacking most- middle and senior management of the company. This is not just a fresh change in the Indian workplace but also great news for mothers who would like to continue working or return to work after having children.

Kellogg's new top level hires in India: Can this finally turn its tide?

In mid January Kellogg made news in hiring circles when it hired at the top level, even as their sales kept dipping. Here is the news item.

"The company this week appointed Harpreet Singh Tibb from packaged goods giant Hindustan Unilever as its marketing director. It has also hired TS Venketram from biscuits maker Britannia to head supply chain, Kenny Abraham from PepsiCo to head sales and Deepak Shrivastav from GSK Consumer to head legal divisions."

All top personnel hand picked from top competition of Kellogg's in India. 

This leads us to think... Kellogg's now will be betting big on these new honchos to lead- Sales, Marketing, Supply Chain- the three mainstays of their business in India, and also legal of course. Is this going to set a trend for our companies who are not faring so well. Maybe a shake up is what is needed for companies to turn around and start performing. Who knows maybe with better perspective at marketing, better targeted advertising, Kellogg's will finally rid itself of the issues which has haunted it since its launch in India. Will its gamble pay off?

Most important is what this will prove in about a year: WAS IT A GOOD IDEA TO HIRE BIG WHEN A COMPANY IS LOOKING DESPERATELY FOR A TURNAROUND

Much has been said of how Kellogg's, a worldwide phenomenon, failed to perform from the very beginning in India. Kellogg's launched in India in 1994 and pegged itself as an alternative to our traditional breakfast. Now, Indian's and in fact Asians found having breakfast cereals to be a novelty. What happened in India was- one group of people refused to have cereals at all, they are still much too enamoured with their rotis, puris or idllis. One group of people bought a pack or two as a novelty and either didnt like it or found it much too expensive a habit to continue. The third group likes having corn flakes for breakfast, but India already had some good quality, much cheaper brands of corn flakes available, which gained in popularity. In fact, in that era, I preferred Mohun's corn flakes to Kellogg's because the former was tougher in texture and retained a crunch even with milk and bananas. And it was priced at a fraction of Kellogg's.

Its first range of products were launched without much ado. Chocos were a favourtie at the time, but none of the other variants made a mark in the market. Even their Mazza variant, made for Indian markets, fizzled out because of the lack of marketing support. In 2012, they tried again to localise their product which was still alien to our culture. They had already launched their oats, but as a spokesperson for a competing oats brand said, they didnt really try to capitalise of their first mover advantage in the oats segment either. However in 2012 they came out with different Indian taste variants of oats, like pudina, tomato and garam masala.

Says ET: "Since Kellogg's first attempt at localisation, the convenience foods market has exploded. The breakfast segment alone is estimated at Rs 600 crore, growing at 18-20%, with Kellogg's the leader with a roughly 55% share. Others angling for a slice of this segment include PepsiCo, Marico, Bagrrys, Dr Oetker, Britannia and McCain."

In this highly competitive market, Kellogg's currently brings in an estimated revenue of about Rs 350 crores plus. After 18 long years in the country, this might be worrying the company management. Also recently their overall sales have dipped in the last 18 months. They have come up with some advertising with high recall but it is hardly enough. In the meantime competition keeps closing the gap in market share.

Can Kellogg's finally change the view point of the Indian breakfast eater? Or will it change its course and get into more biscuits and snacks category. That remains to be seen. But in the meantime, all eyes will be on the new top slots and how they perform in the next year or so.