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What is your Identity?

What is your Identity?

(some reflections from my life and career: dedicated to late V S Vyas, Udai Pareek, Ravi Matthai and Samuel Paul)

Some time in late seventies Prof. V S Vyas suggested to me that I should focus my work to a few areas rather than being everywhere. Samuel Paul allowed me to diffuse myself into various though I was recruited to work with Ravi on Education Systems. It was a well-intended and good suggestion. I kept thinking more after that encounter with Vijay to justify and continue to do what I wanted to do and whatever I enjoyed. I joined IIMA to work in Education Systems and simultaneously in Organizational Behavior Area. Since I worked earlier in National Institute of Health Administration & Education Prof. Satia invited me to join the India Population Project. We conceptualized and started the first Human Resources Function and called it HRD department. I worked with David McClelland for a few months had a joint project with him on psychosocial maturity of Indian students and managers. I was teaching course on entrepreneurship and even argued unsuccessfully in CFD for a center for Entrepreneurship to be set up. I became a member of the newly set up Public Systems Group and as a part of Education work the Jawaja project gained some prominence.  I was also doing some work for the Indian Society for Applied Behavioral sciences ISABS. I also taught a course on consumer behavior along with Sasi Misra and wrote a research piece on impact of sales styles on buyer behavior. Very understandably Prof. Vyas thought that I can’t be everywhere- Education, Entrepreneurship, Health, Public Systems, Consumer Behavior, OB and HRD. Around the same time Udai Pareek said that I should spend more of time in OB rather than on HRD. Though we started the HR function in L&T and SBI, it was not yet prominent and Udai felt OB is broader than HRD. Looking back frankly none of these got me to think of focusing on any area. I continued to do whatever came along and I n enjoyed every piece of work I was involved. I worked in each one of these areas- perhaps in the minds of some without focus. I am sure there was an unconscious meaning to all and an internal faith that these are interrelated.

As far as I am concerned life unfolded itself in very interesting way in the subsequent forty and an odd year. I continued to work in education and produced books including Handbook of training for education managers; and helped in self-renewal of many educational institutions. On entrepreneurship both Udai and I worked with many groups in Malaysia and trained them to be facilitators of entrepreneurship and had even brought out a couple of books. My latest in entrepreneurship in the last decade is the book I joined with Kuratko on entrepreneurship. In recent times I promote developing entrepreneurial qualities as a mission of HRD facilitators. HRD emerged as a profession and I became a strong promoter of HRD as a function, philosophy, HRD values, systems and processes and wrote many books on HRD starting with HRD missionary, HRD Audit, Future of HRD etc. I took a totally different view of HRD when I was invited as a consultant of the Commonwealth Secretariat, London and brought out a report “Foundations for Future: led by Sam Pitroda  and circulated at the CHOGM meet and published a book of HRD at National level with several country experiences. I established the National HRD Network  and the Academy of HRD to promote HRD philosophy, concepts, and research in HRD and perhaps added a new dimension to my work on Institution Building. While I was at XLRI I started the center for HRD and went on pursuing with XLRI thereafter not to kill the center. Inspired by the repeated suggestions during my instrumented feedback session in OB, when participants repeatedly sought feedback on their personality patterns from their coworkers, I stumbled on a methodology and offered a program on top management styles and organizational effectiveness which alter on named as 360 Degree Feedback. I unsuccessfully promoted assessment centers in mid seventies as a part of my work with entrepreneurship Development programs being some by GIIC, GIDC and GSFC under the leadership of Dr. V G Patel. I tried in small way to introduce assessment centers in 1975 when Manohar Nadkarni introduced me to this concept bud it did not work beyond Parishram. Post liberalization we picked up Assessment centers and promoted them left and right with NTPC, ONGC, LIC, ESCORTS, SAIL and such big corporations. If you ask me today what my focus has been, all these 40 years I have no answer. My work is as diffused as it was in late seventies. I am into HR, OB, Health, Education, Institution Building, Entrepreneurship, HR audit, Psychometric testing, climate surveys, HRD audit, 360 Feedback, Performance Management, Self-renewal of NGOs, and what not? I have no real identity and perhaps I would still have the same answer to Prof. V S Vyas. It looked that Vijay appreciated my diffusion into every area which he may have called earlier a lack of focus. I never discussed with him this issue. But his warmth and appreciation spoke a lot than his advice in late seventies. Udai never approached this issue again after 1981 and he supported every single activity I was involved in.  I think this diffusion and lack of focus may have fitted with Ravi’s concept of a Faculty member at IIMA. Ravi used to say that every faculty member is a professor on mission and there is not one way of fulfilling your mission but many. Once when I asked him to join PSG as a member, he said “sure but don’t bind me with the identity of any one area or a center or a group. Everyone is free to use my work”. I suppose that broadly sums up my lack of focus.

If I must live a life all over again I will still be focus-less and diffused. I proudly start always introducing myself as a student of science, then moved into education and ended up as a Psychologist and remained behavioral scientist all through the rest of my life. My core discipline if you like is scientific temper and behavior focus and all the others are application areas. Life itself is an application area and it does not matter if you keep shifting your focus. Rolling stones may not gather mass but do stop at times and leave their mark wherever they pass through if they’re heavy enough.

My suggestion for Faculty is enjoy your work and do what you feel involved and take it to the full end whatever you do. It does not matter the number of things you do if you see meaning in them.

If you don’t like what I have written please do not bother. Have your way and do it your way!

T. V. Rao

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T. V. Rao on HR- Unpublished Interview For BW HR December 2016.

In Conversation with Dr. Rao:-

1.        What is your opinion of HR in the country?

Both good and not so good. HR as discipline and a profession has made some impact but not as much as it could have. HR professionals are continuously missing opportunities to make a higher-level impact. Post liberalization when IT sector and new economy industry are putting India on the world map, and knowledge economy was developing HR should have lead the knowledge economy. It should have focused on continuous competency building and creation of learning organizations. In some of the sectors that have created a learning culture it is more attributable to wise CEOs than their HR professionals. Similarly, with the emphasis on skill development, startups and make in India, HR professionals should have been in the forefront to conceptualize and run the massive effort to transform the country. The current drive against corruption through demonetization needed a lot of HR interventions. We hear no one consulting HR professionals on a massive HR issue caused by demonetization. No one even thinks if HR has a role. HR’s failure is its limiting itself to corporate sector and keeping itself away from the rest of life while it is supposed to deal with human beings.

2.       Do you think Indian HR & HR Leaders are running in the right direction? What would you like to change, if given an opportunity?

Yes, HR and HR leaders are running in the right direction in terms of short term management and getting immediate results and managing the show in corporate sector. They have been contributing to employee recruitment, engagement, retention, and such other issues reasonably well but can do far better with some originality and creativity.

I would like them to focus more on long term building of human capital within and outside the firms. I would like them to focus a lot more on values, culture building, leadership development, and employee motivation. They should begin to work with the government and transform the government to deliver better services. HR’s main job is to make the organizations, institutions and nations happy places to live through competence, commitment and culture building at all levels.

3.       What do you think are the competencies which Indian HR Leaders should work on, keeping in mind that we would be one of the youngest workforces in few years?

In my view OCTAPACE values is very critical: Openness (giving ideas and creating a culture of openness), Collaboration (enabling people to sacrifice narrow individual interests for larger team, organizational and national goals) , Trust and Trustworthiness, Authenticity speaking what you feel rather than what pleases other person), Pro-action and Initiative, Autonomy (exercising discretion and creating space for people to sue some discretion), Confrontation (of issues and fearlessly giving views and opinions) and Creativity and innovation. Commitment to the firm, to the communities and society which give us the context to live. Professionalism, change management, influencing the CEOs, Giving right direction to the CEO and customer sensitivity. Ability to design and use HR policies and processes that cater to the changing needs of the people with a view to identify, harness, develop and utilize their competencies 

4.       How do you think they should upgrade themselves and these competencies, keeping in mind the globalization?

More self-reviews need to be undertaken by HR fraternity. They should seek 360 Degree Feedback. They should have a lot more international exposure, more exposure to customers and business, more focus on competency, commitment and culture building. They should review their roles in administrative tasks and focus more on developmental activities. They should focus on human capital building activities and get their performance reviewed on intangible contributions a lot more. They should also spend time in villages and work with NGOs and other groups to understand the country, its roots and culture. 

5.       Any advice to the one-click generation readers of BW HR who are making a career in HR or have just started their career in HR?

Learn about the business you are entering. People have taken long time to build institutions. Read history and learn about the need to be customer driven and committed. Stay long enough in a company. Don’t shift jobs like you change your screens at a click.  We appreciate your speed, and your need for independence and entrepreneurship. Invest your talent in the company you work and make a difference. Companies offer you lot more scope to experiment and make things happen.  Pick up right systems and work on them. Improve your own expertise and credibility. The world is changing and seniors are beginning to show their willingness to learn just as your parents have begun to learn from you. If not, change the culture and that is your challenge.

6.       Is Engagement an overhyped term? Are we not having enough right implementers? I am coming from the overall fully engaged score of 13% globally and 9% in India.

I am not sure if I agree fully with the statistics and figures that indicate low levels of engagement in Indian workforce. They are certainly engaged, although it could be improved a lot more. We have built our country as a subsidy culture. Everyone expects their organizations, HR departments and country to create conditions for more engagement. This approach itself is wrong. It looks as though employees depend on the firms to make them engaged rather than they themselves taking ownership for engaging. Our consulting firms have wrongly promoted employee engagement as the sole responsibility of HR policies. Rather we should turn the tables and make employees responsible for enhancing their own engagement levels. A less engaged employees does a lot more harm to self and his/her family and creates stress all around. No HR policies can make all people equally engaged. High time HR works for shifting the ownership of engagement equally to employees.  Today’s youth will leave as soon as they feel they are not engaged. So, measuring employee engagement and commitment have become very important HR challenges. If talent is not utilized engagement comes down.

7.       Most HR leaders in large organizations have become more HR administrators than HR implementers. What is your take on it?

Yes. I am afraid that is true while there are some honorable exceptions. This has become so particularly true in the Public sector including the banks which is the largest employer in terms of people. HR has administration driven and innovation e averse. The days of uniform HR policies are gone. We now need innovative and heterogeneous HR policies and practices a to contain complex and diverse workforce.

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