Making a Good Organization Great…(Friday’s 2.0 – 36th session)
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Neerja Verma former Senior Vice President, RMSI India spoke to us on the 36th session of NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0. The session began with a round of introductions, with the 32 attendees saying a few words about themselves and talking about their expectations from Neerja’s talk. The audience was a mix of people from HR, Marketing and the CEO community. Neerja started off with an overview on “What does it take to build a Great Company.” She emphasized that rather than depending on great leaders, organizations could become great by following a process and ensuring consistency in what they did.
Since Neerja had stated clearly at the beginning of her talk itself, that it would be an interactive session where she would talk less and encourage others to share the experiences of their organizations, the session was a collective brainstorming exercise.
Neerja got the discussion going from the first slide of her presentation, when she asked the audience what was missing in it. There were many answers provided by attendees, who said that issues such as growth for an individual and the company, etc. were missing. The next few slides saw even greater involvement from the audience.
Neerja meanwhile, continued her presentation by talking about the 12 principles of Great Management, evolved as part of the Gallop research undertaken on Employee engagement. Stating that it was not a single hypothesis, but centered around “evidence-based management,” with each element being actionable, she added that Gallup had been able to show a strong correlation between significant improvement in these elements and business outcomes.
Spotlighting one of the principles of the study, “Job clarity,” Neerja added that it was not defined well by the managers in most cases and hence created dissatisfaction amongst employees. Ideally, job clarity needed definition and review every six months. Sharing the outcomes with the employees was a must Neerja pointed out. Some of the other areas she touched upon were as follows:
- I know what is expected of me It’s not about understanding what my job is but how it fits into the role of others
- It’s not about what we need to do, but what we need to achieve–clarity about outcomes.
Neerja emphasized that matching strengths to jobs was very essential. Each person’s skills, talent and knowledge had to suit the team needs, she said. Developing the innate talent into strengths and applying these strengths to work would result in Greater engagement and higher productivity, enabling Managers to focus on building strengths rather than improving weaknesses.
Recognition and Praise, Neerja stated, was a very important factor in the study. Sharing her own experiences at RMSI, she recalled how a greeting card with a personal note was sent to the parents of employees who performed well and thanked them for sending them to the organization. She spoke about how the gesture had proved to be a great success and been appreciated by employees. She added that RMSI also sent a box of chocolates to the spouses of employees just before they joined the organization, to build a relationship with the company’s extended family. Some of the other aspects she touched upon included the following:
- In the last seven days, she had received recognition or praise for doing good work
- The seven day limit was important
- The Best leaders always found something to praise Praise outnumbered blame for very high performing teams (ratio of 5.6:1)
Caring was yet another important element indicated in the survey, Neerja informed. While talking about how RMSI ensured that its employees were taken care of, Neerja invited members of the audience to speak about the practices within their organizations. Vaibhav from Mahindra City gave the example of the South West Airlines, where new joinees were given a warm welcome by team members. The airline pampered them by having their desks decorated, readying their business cards on day one and sending across a wine bottle to their spouses. Vaibhav mentioned that the front office was called the “Director–First Impressions.” Other participants at the session warmed to the topic, and spoke about how they would take care of their new entrants and how, already, occasions such as employee birthdays were celebrated with considerable enthusiasm within their organizations. It emerged from the discussions that employees who felt cared for were in the 22 percent group who were less likely to leave the organization.
Mentoring was another aspect which was discussed as an important part of building a great organization. Neerja shared some of the Best Practices that had been deployed at RMSI, stating that the appraisal process involved an observer who was a senior person from the organization. The entire process was fair and greatly appreciated by employees. The innovative process, she commented, had enabled RMSI to rank as the Number One in the industry in this area. She also spoke about how RMSI encouraged friendships among employees within the organization as a means of keeping people within the fold. This could be encouraged by sending them to group trainings. Employees who were actively disengaged with the organization needed to be asked to leave as they tended to cause damage by influencing the engaged employees. What really worked in a mentorship program was two people finding each other at a time when one was in need of help and other willing to give it!
Valuing employee opinions was cited as an important factor in improving the climate within companies. According to Neerja, it made sure that employees got involved in the process and contributed more towards the collective good. The speaker also said that managers needed to ask their teams for solutions rather than telling them what to do.
Sharing other survey findings she added that “Connecting to a noble cause” would help companies craft a mission of purpose and make employees feel that their job was important. Quoting the Survey, she informed that 2/3rds of top management agreed, and 1/3rd of field managers agreed with the mission statement of their organizations. The high energy session threw up the following points: It was important to regularly talk to individuals about their progress Formal appraisal systems were good but what was even better was D2D coaching and feedback- using regular personal, two-way communication In order to drive growth within the organizations, managers needed to care about what the team wanted, understand what made employees tick and help individuals plan their growth.
It was a very interactive session and the speaker could have gone on for a few more hours. However, the event did wind up with a short Q&A. People also stayed back to network and spend some more time with the speaker.
Also with this session we completed 3 years for NASSCOM Friday’s 2.0. The first session was taken by Ajay Lavakare, CEO from RMSI on Challenges of Establishing a Sales Team In North America.
The next session is scheduled for 11th July 2008 and the speaker is Deep Kalra from Makemytrip.com.
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Congrats….So happy to see the summary notes on the event held, with PPT also seen.
That is ‘Good Quality’ when you summarise for those who could not attend or who are keen to know what was takeaways…….
My responses and anlysis will be sent in due course. I also belive we must ask all those who attended in this session as well as those who would have otherwise attended by virtue of frequent attendees ( pl call them on phone taking the liberty) to at least ack this summary note by reading it at least now.
Our aim is to build the community and let us start by calling those friends on phone to ack on this blog at least….
Great…..let us have conversation on this event with speaker etc at suitable time across though I am in Chennai…we can do that somehow …let us find and even invite those who attended also