A 'weird' Episode..

Very recently attended a hiring process of 'abc' company (name changed).
I don't really know why it felt very 'different' to me. The process started with a written test which went quite well and I was through, then it was turn for GD. There were 7 of us sitting for this round, 5 female & 2 male candidates. The coordinator entered the discussion room and announced that we'll have two topics for discussion, one will be of serious concern and the other one will be an 'ok-ok' type.
Alright, I was ready to take up this.. & then the topic was announced.

The 1st topic (serious one) was: "Should Prostitution be legalized in India?" :O
Before I could express anything (I don't really know why I felt like, 'this isn't something about which I'm gonna talk'), the other 6 in my group gave their consent to the topic for the discussion, and as usual, it went with the majority.
Well.. I had no idea about others, but it was a damn serious topic for me because I really didn't know what to speak..(Of course, I was 'against' it). I was pretty sure that I'm not gonna speak anything about this.. & the same happened.

Now, the discussion started. Some weird thoughts came from the other male & female candidates. Only 2 females were against the topic and rest 4 (3females+1male) were in favor of it. Below are a few excerpts from the whole discussion..
"(Male): If prostitution is legalized, then perhaps the no. of rapes in the country will become less.."
"(Female1): I don't agree.. Raping a girl is free of cost while to hire a prostitute, it will cost him."
"(Female2): Prostitution is the last choice which a lady makes for herself.."
"(Female3): I don't agree.. it's not the same case for all of them. They do it for pleasure.. It gives them both pleasure and money..!"
"(Female4): A person will never say that he has paid a 1000 bugs to a lady, just to sleep with her.."
"(Male): What crap!! I would say anybody that I paid so many girls to have sex with them..!"
....
....
"(Me): <<............................in silent mode...............................>> Just wondering, What would our country & its culture turn into, if it's made legal in India..!! How many more people would fall prey to AIDS!! How many wives would suffer with their post-marriage life..!! What would happen if the wives start thinking, why should husbands have all the fun..!! OMG!! :O :O"
-------------End of the serious - topic-------------
I was sitting like.. I was a guest invited to watch this all-happening..!

Now the next 1 goes like.. "The world is coming to an end very soon - 2012; We, 7, are selected to be transferred to moon.. The basic amenities are arranged there for us.. (Food, clothing & shelter).. Now, You have 5 minutes to decide what 5 most important & necessary things would you 7 like to take with you to the moon..!!"
Discussion begins...............
At once, the male jumps in and says.. I need "Condoms"!! & others (girls) agreed.. (I wondered.. God knows how those 5 girls agreed to have sex with him on moon.. Well.. it was protected one though..!)
Next, a girl jumped-in with her requirement, "Sanitary Pads - Stayfree, Whisper, etc." Then, the 3rd thing which came into list.. is "Alcohol.."!! & then some blah blah..!!
-----------Finally, it was over-----------
 
For me, it was like 'never expected' topic.. 'never-been-part of' kinda discussion.. 'never-heard-before' type from the 'ladies' section..!! I was speechless throughout the round.. You can figure out what would have been the result for me..! Well.. only 1 girl was taken for the next round, and to others, the coordinator gave a sexy smile, with her cute eyes & waved her beautiful hand "bye bye"!! :D :D

I was really not disappointed that I didn't speak a word.. The topic was still Okk.. but the way the discussion went.. was like sitting and listening to some sex crap.. the whole discussion was an absolute cycle of it..!!
Gosh..!! it never felt as if it was a hiring process for some hr position.. rather it felt like that was for some 'bro*er/ pim*' position for a *@*#*%

Anyways.. I don't really know what others' views are.. but what I felt is what I have expressed..

My favourite lines..

..Mitti ka hai khilona.. fanaa hone se darta hai..
Mujh mein hai jo bachpana.. wo duniya ki is bheed mein.. bada hone se darta hai..
-----

Are HR chiefs using "people data" to create value..!!!

Human-resources executives have aspired to be strategic advisers to business leaders for at least a generation. But it’s been a struggle for many because it’s so difficult to measure the business value of HR approaches. Questions such as “What is the ROI of training?” and “Which screening techniques yield the best performing recruits?” or “What target-setting approach will best motivate performance?” have been met with imprecise answers.

Today, however, new tools and methods for analyzing data enable HR to define the link between “people practices” and performance more effectively. This couldn’t have happened at a better time, since CEOs are hunting for value anywhere they can find it.

For starters, the widespread adoption of enterprise resource planning and HR information systems has made data on business operations, performance, and personnel more accessible and standardized. Furthermore, the rise of HR information systems has generated a community of software and technology intermediaries that can help HR and business executives use data to find links between talent management and labor productivity. Finally, the consolidation and outsourcing of transactional HR work has compelled many leaders of the function to take a first step toward quantifying and reporting HR costs and performance.

These trends, coupled with the universal imperative to get more for less, have led some companies to discover new ways of using HR analytics to create value.

Pioneers are emerging, particularly in industries where people are central to value creation (notably banking, health care, and retailing) and where scarce technical expertise governs growth (such as technology and upstream oil exploration). While the specific people-related practices that add value will differ by company—industry dynamics, talent scarcity, growth rates, and corporate cultures all influence the answers—the organizations that we’ve seen get the most value from investing in HR analytics all use some variation of these four steps:

1. Focus HR on business priorities.

Most HR teams view, organize, and measure their activities through the traditional employee life cycle: starting with recruiting, hiring, and “on-boarding” and proceeding to evaluation, training, and development. For HR analytics efforts to work, however, the function’s leaders must view problems—and value creation opportunities—as business leaders do.

Google is a company with an HR team that partners with business leaders seeking analytic insights. According to Prasad Setty, head of Google’s people analytics group, “We are looking to inform decision makers with data so they can be as objective and bias free as possible.” Setty’s team has, for example, provided business executives with a systematic approach to reassessing provisionally rejected candidates. The team’s analysis of profiles that lead to success at Google helps it identify potential false negatives and to revisit these candidates. This technique has helped the company “save” many hires it would otherwise have missed.

2. Start with what you have

Quantitative problem-solving skills may be hard to come by in the HR department. Therefore, senior executives who are eager to begin should push their HR leaders to draw in analytical resources wherever they exist. All that’s required is the ability to engage business leaders in efforts to identify issues and structure problems in a nuanced way and then to follow through with advanced data gathering and statistical analysis.

3. Go beyond traditional HR solutions

New insights often require additional problem solving to go from theory to practical solutions. HR analytics succeeds when human-resources and business leaders work together to address the root causes of problems and to pilot new ways of solving them.

Google, for example, did a study to examine whether good managers matter—and, if so, how—within Google’s specific culture. Setty explains that “through various methods, we found positive relationships between good management and retention and the performance of teams. We then conducted double-blind interviews to identify the key behaviors exhibited by our best managers. We found eight behaviors that make a good manager and five pitfalls to avoid. These are now incorporated into our manager-training programs and coaching sessions, and teams provide feedback to managers on these behaviors to help them understand where they’re doing well and where they can get better. The vast majority of our lower-rated managers have improved as a result.”

4. Make it stick

Once a company has a few successes with HR analytics, it can build a lasting source of value creation by integrating analytics practitioners into its day-to-day business and HR rhythms. Several companies, for example, have established a routine of having HR or other “people strategy” staff join business reviews to identify priorities for analysis. This practice helps senior line executives conduct problem-solving discussions around HR-related issues and to plan for action as findings emerge.

HR analytics practitioners must also commit themselves to the habit of measuring and reporting on success. At financial-services giant ING, for example, business units and HR share a comprehensive dashboard, supplemented by regular reports, to show progress on key metrics. Similarly, a global oil giant’s people-strategy group reports progress at four stages of a project’s development: data gathering, analysis, developing solutions, and piloting. This approach helps HR and business leaders understand that progress is happening even when stages may take weeks or months to complete. It also provides a clearer understanding, in both directions, of changing priorities and emerging findings from the work.

Advances in technology are creating opportunities for senior business and HR leaders to start a new kind of dialogue about the link between people and performance. That dialogue will help HR executives demonstrate the impact of their work and achieve their goal of strategic partnership with other members of the senior-management team—and, of course, it will create value for the enterprise.

The Value of Organizational Values

What's the value in values?
Organizational values define the acceptable standards which govern the behaviour of individuals within the organization. Without such values, individuals will pursue behaviours that are in line with their own individual value systems, which may lead to behaviours that the organization doesn't wish to encourage.

In a smaller, co-located organization, the behaviour of individuals is much more visible than in larger, disparate ones. In these smaller groups, the need for articulated values is reduced, since unacceptable behaviours can be challenged openly. However, for the larger organization, where desired behaviour is being encouraged by different individuals in different places with different sub-groups, an articulated statement of values can draw an organization together.

Clearly, the organization's values must be in line with its purpose or mission, and the vision that it is trying to achieve. So to summarize, articulated values of an organization can provide a framework for the collective leadership of an organization to encourage common norms of behaviour which will support the achievement of the organization's goals and mission.

Five ways to live out values
However, just as with a mission or vision statement, it is one thing to have a written guide to an organization's values that remains on the wall, or in a folder, but it is quite another thing to have living values which shape the culture - the way that things get done. So here are five suggestions to ensure you have living values…

1. Communicate the Values Constantly: Values should fit with the organizations' communication, both internally and externally. If we say that we're fun, team-oriented where everyone counts, then having a traditional style with a photo of the CEO may challenge this. Refer frequently to the values in talks and sermons, in articles in internal/parish magazines. Acknowledge and thank those people who have achieved something which particularly emphasizes the values.

2. Enroll New Folk: The values should be explicitly available as new members join an organization. If your organization is a business, this can be a part of the selection process, if a church, then explicitly stating the values of the church creates an expectation in the minds of newcomers. The church then needs to deliver on that!

3. Revisit and Refresh the Values: Revisit your values periodically - allowing members to update them. This has the power of enrolling those who have joined the organization recently, and avoids the stated values no longer reflecting the business culture.

4. Confront Contradictory Behaviour: Ensuring that we give feedback to those who don't live out the values of the organization. If people are allowed to live out contradictory values, then over time there is a clear danger that these will usurp the desired values, particularly if it is the more dynamic, dominant individuals who are espousing the contradictory values.

5. Periodically Check out with Feedback: Ask people what they think are the values of the organization - not only members, who may be influenced by the stated values, but outsiders - observers, customers, former members.

Cont'd.. -- The 5 types of Successful Acquisitions...!!!

Harder strategies

Beyond the five main acquisition strategies, a handful of others can create value, though they do so relatively rarely. This strategy works when businesses as a group can realize substantial cost savings or achieve higher revenues than individual businesses can. Roll-up strategies are hard to disguise, so they invite copycats.

Consolidate to improve competitive behaviour

Many executives in highly competitive industries hope consolidation will lead competitors to focus less on price competition, thereby improving the ROIC of the industry. The evidence shows, however, that unless it consolidates to just three or four companies and can keep out new entrants, pricing behaviour doesn’t change: smaller businesses or new entrants often have an incentive to gain share through lower prices. So in an industry with, say, ten companies, lots of deals must be done before the basis of competition changes.

Enter into a transformational merger

A commonly mentioned reason for an acquisition or merger is the desire to transform one or both companies. Transformational mergers are rare, however, because the circumstances have to be just right, and the management team needs to execute the strategy well.

Buy cheap

The final way to create value from an acquisition is to buy cheap—in other words, at a price below a company’s intrinsic value. In our experience, however, such opportunities are rare and relatively small. Nonetheless, though market values revert to intrinsic values over longer periods, there can be brief moments when the two fall out of alignment. Markets, for example, sometimes overreact to negative news, such as a criminal investigation of an executive or the failure of a single product in a portfolio with many strong ones.

Such moments are less rare in cyclical industries, where assets are often undervalued at the bottom of a cycle. Comparing actual market valuations with intrinsic values based on a “perfect foresight” model, we found that companies in cyclical industries could more than double their shareholder returns (relative to actual returns) if they acquired assets at the bottom of a cycle and sold at the top.

While markets do throw up occasional opportunities for companies to buy targets at levels below their intrinsic value, we haven’t seen many cases. To gain control of a target, acquirers must pay its shareholders a premium over the current market value. Although premiums can vary widely, the average ones for corporate control have been fairly stable: almost 30 percent of the preannouncement price of the target’s equity. For targets pursued by multiple acquirers, the premium rises dramatically, creating the so-called winner’s curse. If several companies evaluate a given target and all identify roughly the same potential synergies, the pursuer that overestimates them most will offer the highest price. Since it is based on an overestimation of the value to be created, the winner pays too much—and is ultimately a loser.

Since market values can sometimes deviate from intrinsic ones, management must also beware the possibility that markets may be overvaluing a potential acquisition. Consider the stock market bubble during the late 1990s. Companies that merged with or acquired technology, media, or telecommunications businesses saw their share prices plummet when the market reverted to earlier levels. The possibility that a company might pay too much when the market is inflated deserves serious consideration, because M&A activity seems to rise following periods of strong market performance. If (and when) prices are artificially high, large improvements are necessary to justify an acquisition, even when the target can be purchased at no premium to market value. Premiums for private deals tend to be smaller, although comprehensive evidence is difficult to collect because publicly available data are scarce. Private acquisitions often stem from the seller’s desire to get out rather than the buyer’s desire for a purchase.

The 5 types of Successful Acquisitions...!!!

There is no magic formula to make acquisitions successful. Each deal must have its own strategic logic. What’s more, the stated strategy may not even be the real one: Companies typically talk up all kinds of strategic benefits from acquisitions that are really entirely about cost cutting.  

The strategic rationale for an acquisition that creates value typically conforms to at least one of the following five archetypes: improving the performance of the target company, removing excess capacity from an industry, creating market access for products, acquiring skills or technologies more quickly or at lower cost than they could be built in-house, and picking winners early and helping them develop their businesses. If an acquisition does not fit one or more of these archetypes, it’s unlikely to create value.

Improve the target company’s performance

Improving the performance of the target company is one of the most common value-creating acquisition strategies. It is easier to improve the performance of a company with low margins and low returns on invested capital (ROIC) than that of a high-margin, high-ROIC company.

Consolidate to remove excess capacity from industry

As industries mature, they typically develop excess capacity. The combination of higher production from existing capacity and new capacity from recent entrants often generates more supply than demand. Reducing excess in an industry can also extend to less tangible forms of capacity.

Accelerate market access for the target’s (or buyer’s) products

Often, relatively small companies with innovative products have difficulty reaching the entire potential market for their products.

IBM, for instance, has pursued this strategy in its software business. From 2002 to 2009, it acquired 70 companies for about $14 billion. By pushing their products through a global sales force, IBM estimates it increased their revenues by almost 50 percent in the first two years after each acquisition and an average of more than 10 percent in the next three years.

In some cases, the target can also help accelerate the acquirer’s revenue growth. In Procter & Gamble’s acquisition of Gillette, the combined company benefited because P&G had stronger sales in some emerging markets, Gillette in others. Working together, they introduced their products into new markets much more quickly.

Get skills or technologies faster or at lower cost than they can be built

Cisco Systems has used acquisitions to close gaps in its technologies, allowing it to assemble a broad line of networking products and to grow very quickly from a company with a single product line into the key player in Internet equipment. From 1993 to 2001, Cisco acquired 71 companies, at an average price of approximately $350 million. Cisco’s sales increased from $650 million in 1993 to $22 billion in 2001, with nearly 40 percent of its 2001 revenue coming directly from these acquisitions.

Pick winners early and help them develop their businesses

The final winning strategy involves making acquisitions early in the life cycle of a new industry or product line, long before most others recognize that it will grow significantly. Johnson & Johnson pursued this strategy in its early acquisitions of medical-device businesses. When J&J bought device manufacturer Cordis, in 1996, Cordis had $500 million in revenues. By 2007, its revenues had increased to $3.8 billion, reflecting a 20 percent annual growth rate. 

This acquisition strategy requires a disciplined approach by management in three dimensions. First, you must be willing to make investments early, long before your competitors and the market see the industry’s or company’s potential. Second, you need to make multiple bets and to expect that some will fail. Third, you need the skills and patience to nurture the acquired businesses.

CREATIVITY...

Although creativity is often considered as trait of the privileged few, any individual or team can become more creative—better able to generate the breakthroughs that stimulate growth and performance. To perceive things differently, we must bombard our brains with things it has never encountered. Only by forcing our brains to re-categorize information and move beyond our habitual thinking patterns can we begin to imagine truly novel alternatives. Four practical ways for executives to shake up ingrained perceptions and enhance creativity—both personally and with their direct reports and broader work teams:

Immerse yourself

Would-be innovators need to break free of pre-existing views. Unfortunately, the human mind is surprisingly adroit at supporting its deep-seated ways of viewing the world while shifting out evidence to the contrary.

When presented with overwhelming facts, many people (including well-educated ones) simply won’t abandon their deeply held opinions. The antidote is personal experience: seeing and experiencing something firsthand can shake people up in ways, that abstract discussions around conference room tables can’t.

Overcome orthodoxies

Exploring deep-rooted company (or even industry) orthodoxies is another way to jolt your brain out of the familiar in an idea generation session, a team meeting, or simply a contemplative moment alone at your desk. All organizations have conventional wisdom about “the way we do things,” unchallenged assumptions about what customers want, or supposedly essential elements of strategy that are rarely if ever questioned.

By identifying and then systematically challenging such core beliefs, companies can not only improve their ability to embrace new ideas but also get a jump on the competition. The rewards for success are big: Best Buy’s $3 million acquisition of Geek Squad in 2002, for example, went against the conventional wisdom that consumers wouldn’t pay extra to have products installed in their homes. Today, Geek Squad generates more than $1 billion in annual revenues.

Executives looking to liberate their creative instincts by exploring company orthodoxies can begin by asking questions about customers, industry norms, and even business models—and then systematically challenging the answers. For example:

• What business are we in?
• What level of customer service do people expect?
• What would customers never be willing to pay for?
• What channel strategy is essential to us?

Use analogies

Five important “discovery” skills for innovators: associating, questioning, observing, experimenting, and networking. The most powerful overall driver of innovation was associating—making connections across “seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.”

Create constraints

Another simple tactic you can use to encourage creativity is to impose artificial constraints on your business model. This move injects some much-needed “stark necessity” into an otherwise low-risk exercise.