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19 to 25 March, 2012

Leadership
To Build Trust, Competence is Key
Linda Hill and Kent Lineback via Harvard Business Review
In our last blog , we discussed the importance of trust. It's the foundation of all you do as a leader and manager. Your ability to influence others, which is your fundamental task, begins with people's willingness to be influenced by you. And their willingness begins with their trust in you — their confidence that you will do the right thing. We ended that blog by noting the two key components of trust — competence and character — and promising to explore each in subsequent blogs. This post, then, is on what it means to be competent as a boss.Read the whole article on Harvard Business Review.

Why "Big Picture Only" Bosses Are The Worst
Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D. via Fast Company
There is a difference between management and leadership, but focusing on it is dangerous. I sometimes mentioned this theme when I gave talks or did workshops based on this book. I wrote posts on it for Harvard Business Review and my blog, Work Matters. But I didn’t realize how important the topic was--or how worked up people got about it--until I did a Good Boss, Bad Boss workshop for a dozen or so CEOs of big high-tech companies. I said to them, yes, leadership is about things like taking a long-term perspective, vision, setting a strategy; and, yes, management is about operations, details, implementation, and the little things required to keep a team or an organization moving forward. Or, as guru Warren Bennis famously put it, “Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing.” Read the entire article here on FastCompnay.


Abhijit Bhaduri
The World Economic Forum has worked to engage young leaders to positively and proactively impact the global agenda. They have identified Young Global Leaders, who are under 40 years. They in turn have formed a new community – the Global Shapers Community for people under 30 – will provide youth with a global platform to shape the future – integrating the personal, community and global dimension. The Global Shapers (under 30) have formed a chapter in Karnataka. The driving force behind this is the charismatic VR Ferose who is the Managing Director of SAP Labs India. At 37, Ferose is one of the youngest Chief Executive of a Global Multi National Corporation (MNC) in India.
The other co-founder is Sangeeth Varghese who ranked among the top 10, from the Harvard and London School of Economics. He was nominated as a Young Global Leader 2010 by the World Economic Forum, Davos and was honoured as the first Asian Youth Ambassador by the government of Libya.

Recruitment
Unearthing the Employer Brand
Matt Lowney via ERE.net
Until recently I was not a huge believer in putting a lot of effort, money, or time into driving company employment branding initiatives. It felt a little fluffy to me, and, honestly, I thought recruiting was a hands-on discipline (cold calling, relationship building, networking, etc.) measured in end results like time to fill, cost per hire, time to source, etc. I didn’t understand the place employer branding held in an overall corporate recruiting strategy. Frankly I was not that engaged in the branding efforts either. My gut tells me there are a lot of recruiters out there that feel the same way.
I would also add that employment advertising started to all sound and look the same. I think “employer of choice” or “competitive salary and benefits” are phrases that have lost any real meaning. And in healthcare (my background), all ads seemed to look the same — smiling multi-cultural clinicians in scrub standing in front of a nurse’s station (if you haven’t noticed … it’s true — check it out).

5 Tips to Recruit a Star Candidate
Keith Cline via Inc.com
It might take extra time and patience to find her, but your ideal hire does exist. Here's five strategies you shouldn't miss. You know the scenario: You have a mission-critical position open at your company, and the right candidate has been impossible to find. You might be looking for the head of product with specific industry experience, the sales person who blows out her numbers ever year, the engineer who knows how to properly scale large web apps, or the user experience lead whose design is so smooth that it makes butter melt. You know this is one of the most crucial hires for your team. Ultimately, if you bring on the right all-star A-player, the impact will be substantial to the overall success of your business. Read the entire article here on Inc.com.

Is it Right to Ditch a New Job for One that Pays More?
Kamya Jaiswal via The Economic Times
If you can think of your current new job as a paid holiday, your trainer as an incorrigible idiot to have wasted time on you, your HR manager as a myopic buffoon and the company as a trampoline to jump higher, go ahead. You've got what you wanted: a bigger hike on the basis of your latest salary or the security of a job while waiting for a dream offer to come through. Of course the current employers will feel bad, but that's mere collateral damage. Problem is that the damage is just one of the many reasons that make your super career move unethical. Read the entire article here on The Economic Times.

At the Work Place
Are Fast Walking People More Productive at Work?
Ian Welsh via Toolbox for HR
fast. Is it logical that each person has a natural speed and that affects all activity including work? Do people from big cities walk faster than folk from small towns? Does that mean that it is better to hire candidates from a city, or, if your business is in a small town, would the city person slow down to the local pace? In that case, it would make sense for all businesses to be in cities. Maybe the fact that most of them are, has actually created the cities. Is that logical? Read the whole post here on Toolbox for HR.

Discovered the Trick to Career Success? | The Magic’s Up Your Sleeve
Dawn Lennon via Business Fitness
Career success seems so elusive as we face constant changes in the work environment and economy. Here’s a post I wrote in 2010 to help sort things out and form the basis of a plan. Success is out there—somewhere. We watch others achieve it, but why not us? They don’t seem any smarter than we are. So what’s the trick? We assume the answer’s in all those how-to books, so we read them. We go to presentations by celebrated experts, follow bloggers, and invest in webinars. These are all good things to do, but... Read the full post here on Business Fitness.

Why Working More Than 40 Hours a Week is Useless
Jessica Stillman via Inc.com
Research shows that consistently working more than 40 hours a week is simply unproductive. For many in the entrepreneurship game, long hours are a badge of honor. Starting a business is tough, so all those late nights show how determined, hard working and serious about making your business work you are, right? Wrong. According to a handful of studies, consistently clocking over 40 hours a week just makes you unproductive (and very, very tired).
That's bad news for most workers, who typically put in at least 55 hours a week recently wrote Sara Robinson at Salon. Robinson's lengthy, but fascinating, article traces the origins of the idea of the 40-hour week and it's downfall and is well worth a read in full. But the essential nugget of wisdom from her article is that working long hours for long periods is not only useless – it's actually harmful. Read the rest of the article here on Inc.com.

HR Trends
The War for Talent Is Returning; Don’t Get Caught Unprepared
Dr John Sullivan via ERE.net
Here is a heads-up alert for you: be prepared because not only will the infamous “War For Talent” be returning to impact your firm, but it is already underway in its full intensity here in the Silicon Valley. Begin planning for this next round of talent wars, because once the intense competition begins, there simply won’t be time to catch up with, no less get ahead of your talent competition. If you’re not familiar with the “war for talent” phenomena, it involves a prolonged period of intense competition where top applicants are both scarce and arrogant, employees leave by the droves, firms regularly raid each other for talent, and bidding for top talent is commonplace. Read the rest of the article here on ERE.net

Email Is Crushing Us, Can Activity Streams Free Us?
David Lavenda via FastCompany
Activity streams promise to alleviate the email overload we've all come to know and dread. But we've got a ways to go before they can truly replace email as our main mode of electronic communication. If you're struggling to keep your email box from overflowing, you are not alone--this morning, my inbox summary told me I had 616 new messages awaiting my attention. Now, that's a daunting way to start the day. Email overload is a well-documented phenomenon that has been linked to reduced productivity, inability to focus on important tasks, and even physical and emotional stress. So it is no wonder that alternative forms of communication are being actively pursued to reduce overload, both at home and at the office. One method that is gaining popularity is the activity stream. Read the full article here on FastCompany.

Asian Firms Hiring Foreign Execs More Than Ever
via Singapore Business Review
In Singapore and the rest of the region, businesses are increasingly headhunting non-locals due to two reasons. First, the employment slowdown in the West is driving foreign talent there to the region. Second, Asian companies looking to expand internationally need specific expertise that foreign hires, especially those in senior management positions, hold in spades. Asian companies now hire about one out of every three senior executives recruited by headhunters in the region, estimates CTPartners, a premier executive search firm listed on the NYSE Alternext US LLC. with Asia Pacific offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore. Read the complete article on Singapore Business Review.

HR EVENTS
Smartsizing as a Cost Effective Alternative to Layoffs
Subject Matter Expert: Sarabjeet Kaur
Venue: Your Computer
Date: Friday 30 March, 2012
Time: 03:00 PM to 04:00 PM IST
To register click here: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/931255310
In this webinar we will be discussing that how we can use smartsizing to handle layoffs for cost optimization. We will be discussing the various practices of smartsizing. We will also be discussing that how smartsizing is replacing downsizing.
HR in the Corner Office
This hour long discussion will be hosted by Sumeet Kapur, Founder and CEO of Global Groupware Solutions Limited. The talk show aims to discuss CEOs’ perspective of talent management with HR professionals. The focus is to start a dialogue highlighting challenges that organisations, as well as CEOs, and HR professionals face in their respective functions. Our aim is to understand each perspective on talent management practices in an effort to get HR a seat at the table. In the long run we hope that these sessions will help CEOs and HR professional alike to get HR into the best strategic positions possible.
The best part about show is that you can join in and voice your opinion as long as you have a computer, an Internet connection, and a headset with microphone. Any professional is free to participate especially if you're in management and HR.
Venue: Your Computer
Date: Thursday 5 April, 2012
Time: 03:00 PM to 04:00 PM IST
To register click here: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/708923926