HR of Yesterday to HR of the Future - Myths & Realities

Dave Ulrich outlines old myths and new realities of HR as following:



I- Old Myths:


1. People go into HR because they like people.



2. Anyone can do HR.


3. HR deals with the soft side of a business and is therefore not
accountable.


4. HR focuses on costs, which must be controlled.


5. HR's job is to be policy police and the health-and-happiness
patrol.


6. HR is full of fads.


7. HR is staffed by nice people.


8. HR is HR's job.



II- New Realities:



1. HR departments are not designed to provide corporate therapy or
as social or health-and-happiness retreats. HR professionals must
create the practices that make employees more competitive, not more
comfortable.



2. HR activities are based on theory and research. HR professionals
must master both theory and practice.



3. The impact of HR practices on business results can and must be
measured. HR professionals must learn how to translate their work
into financial performance.



4. HR practices must create value by increasing the intellectual
capital within the firm. HR professionals must add value, not reduce
costs.


5. The HR function does not own compliance-managers do. HR practices
do not exist to make employees happy but to help them become
committed. HR professionals must help managers commit employees and
administer policies.



6. HR practices have evolved over time. HR professionals must see
their current work as part of an evolutionary chain and explain
their work with less jargon and more authority.



7. At times, HR practices should force vigorous debates. HR
professionals should be confrontative and challenging as well as
supportive.



8. HR work is as important to line managers as are finance,
strategy, and other business domains. HR professionals should join
with managers in championing HR issues.



Finally, he writes that "the HR function traditionally has spent
more time professing than being professional. The HR function has
been plauged by myths that keep it from being professional.
Regardless of whether these myths originate with HR people or with
line managers, it is time they were overcome.

It is time to talk less and do more; time to add value, not write value statements;
time to build competitive, not comfortable, organizations; time to
be proactive, not reactive. It is time to perform, not preach."

Oligarchies ..the Bane Lynches us badly !

You can't miss them. They occupy prime time news space. The datelines range from Osmania University in Hyderabad to Lal Chowk in Srinagar and West Midnapur in West Bengal to Mumbai in Maharashtra. Or Noida near Delhi where burglars drive away with ATMs. Like pock marks they threaten to mar the glow of the India Story. It would be easy to mistake them as stray incidents.

They are not. The rise of language chauvinism in Mumbai and the reaction triggered in Patna symbolise the cause and the consequence of a State frequently absent. Worse, of a State unable to translate words into action and outlays into outcome, where development is not the goal but an accidental byproduct. Why is it so tough for a nuclear power to hunt Naxals like Kishenji? Why do the poorest states boast of the worst record in implementing the country's biggest poverty alleviation programme, NREGA?Very simply, for decades the political class has buried the crisis of governance under the rhetoric on non-issues.


Discontent is a natural corollary of democracy and extremism the outcome of denied empowerment. India is often described as a democracy of the poor. It is a truism. What is not so evident is that the poor people elect governments that seem to work only for a curious oligarchy of a myopic elite. Resources become available for the Commonwealth Games but not for Bharat stuck in a rut. That Palakkad became the first district to be fully electrified-- after six decades of Independence--is a telling factoid.

The crux of the problem is an embedded and historical bias in favour of the entrenched. This is most visible in the syntax of development discourse. Last year, the total revenue foregone in exemptions to industry was over Rs 4,20,000 crore, or 70 per cent of collectible revenue. But the debate is about subsidies, which incidentally were barely a fourth of exemptions. Witness the rush to decontrol petroleum prices, apparently to save PSUs while there is no attempt to free them from political bondage. Public-private partnerships are manipulated to nationalise costs and privatise profits. Banks are happy to clear inter-city high-value cheques in a day but make small depositors wait a week.

There is a plethora of new regulations and regulators, but be it telecom number portability or home loan rates, consumers are not the focus of policy. Food price inflation is a tax on the poor but there is no attempt to fix the problem of a corroded public distribution system.

The inequity in the system is fuelling the implosion and it cannot be redressed by the practice of voodoo economics. Peace is a desirable goal. Peace can be negotiated at home and abroad but sustaining it calls for good governance and the restoration of equity. Not by perpetuating oligarchies

General to Ladies Compartment

Folks , This week this year saw some unprecedented changes being engineered by some determined citizens ( read as Leaders ) of the nations who were keen on changing the destiny of the nation and move a few steps closer to creating equality for both men and women of this proud nation. Else where in the field of business , a few outstanding women towered head over shoulders of corporate titans by scaling the ladders, over coming issues, social resistances and other social barriers.

NOT only in India but across the globe..Indian Women are up there with the very best ..The list includes some luminaries like Indira Nooyie, Padmashre Warrior and many others

In sports too the dynamic hyderabadi trio Sania and Saina along with the other Koneru Hampi ...and Karnam Malleshwari kept the flames of inspiration alive ever since the legendary like of PT Usha and Shiny Abraham left hot track for other ladies to follow..

The field of IT has also flattened the walls of differences as it is a norm to see as many women at work as you see boys at the sprawling glassy green campuses of IT Majors.

Like the bit from Sararika dwells in " Ascendancy after the martyrdom of their better known relatives " Indira G, Sonia G , Maneka G , Jayalalitha there are a few sparse exemplars like Mayawati,Mamatha Banerjee,Sushma Swaraj,Vasundara Raje,Shiela Dixit ,Uma Bharati etc who made the select band of fire brand politicians by winning popular vote from the masses by contesting in general category general elections against men.

Tower they all did in creating avenues of inspiration and trail blazing blazing to the erstwhile weaker sex ..but


But then to envision 33 % of the Indian Parliament with the colors of Indian women from across the different states who will I am sure a variety of emotions like empathy , sensibility, apathy , to key matters like Child Development,Equality of Women in all spheres of the society, Education, Healthcare, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Cottage Industries , Science and Technology etc etc viable with committed governance is a sure sign of progress inclusive of our best half..the Ladies of this Great Nation.

Kudos to Sonia, Brinda, Sushma and the other many stalwart who conceived this possibility and those that will see this becoming a reality after it eventually gets debated in parliament and pass in lok sabha.

While I was researching the web to frame my thoughts and firm up my perceptions and notions , I did not have to read reams before I came across a fine piece of print pens by one of my favorites and an uber articulate urban womans voice. Sagarika Ghose. Appended below is a her thoughts and sharp writing for my readers ..read on and think hard ..but then when it comes to voting ..vote with a clear head as next time "It would be the best woman who may end up winning more than men"...


High gender justice rhetoric followed by anti-climactic bathos. That seems to be the story of the Women’s Reservation Bill that was passed in the Rajya Sabha yesterday. It’s the longest running saas-bahu soap opera in Indian politics. Thrice introduced, thrice aborted for the last 14 years, governments have tried to move the Bill. Every time the Bill has been moved, it has been vociferously opposed by the ‘social justice’ lobby of Lalu Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav and, with monotonous regularity sent back to cold storage.

The Bill, reserving one-third seats in Lok Sabha and assemblies, strikes at the heart of gender relations in India. Patriarchal societies cosset and oppress their women in equal measure. In the violent high stakes game of Indian politics, women are tolerable as supportive wives and daughters who step out shyly to become a substitute for dead husbands or brothers, but intolerable when they stake a claim to robustly represent their own constituency. In fact, all over South Asia, there exists the syndrome that social scientist Ali Mazrui calls, ‘female accession to male martyrdom’, or the ‘Indira, Benazir, Sheikh Hasina’ syndrome by which females hold office not as female individuals, but as proxies of the powerful departed male. If, on the other hand, women rise on their own, or creditably claw their way up from the grassroots like Mamata, Uma and Maya, they must cultivate a certain strategic and spectacular insanity that strikes terror and fear in their supporters, a terror that silences all prejudice against femininity. The devi/demoness stereotype, sadly, bedevils most women in Indian public life.

Thus there is every reason to support a legislation that promises special measures to bring women into public life. The odds are so high and the political culture so hostile that if women are to participate meaningfully — and in large numbers — in politics, then certainly some legislative shock treatment is needed. The question is if this Bill — Constitution (108th Amendment) Bill, 2008 — is the right legislation to secure meaningful participation of women in large numbers in our present day politics. The jury is still out on that one.

The cacophony in Parliament, the shrill polarised exchange of charges of ‘elite women’ and ‘par kati women’ on the one side and ‘anti-women Yadavs’ and ‘regressive Hindi belt netas’ on the other throughout the life of this Bill have meant that the opportunity for real debate on the Bill has been lost and the public has not had the opportunity to understand and engage with the Bill. No government since the inception of the Bill has made any serious attempt to create a wide-ranging debate or to assess public responses to a legislation that has the potential to transform Indian politics and create tectonic shifts in society.

While we may ridicule Lalu and Mulayam’s objections to the Bill, yet their demand for ‘quota within quota’ may simply be a demand to force the government to spell out exactly what it will achieve through this Bill and what kind of arguments the government is able to bring in favour of the Bill.

As analysts have pointed out, the Bill contains many structural flaws. First, there will be compulsory unseating of two-third of the members every election. Second, there will be no incentive for MPs to nurse constituencies. Third, there is the undeniable fact that family politics will be further enhanced as a male who suddenly loses his seat to a reserved constituency will be tempted to simply put up a female relative as a proxy. Thus the floodgates of bahu-betis may open.
Women who contest from reserved seats will also not be able to nurture their constituencies as they will lose them in the next election and be forever seen as non-serious and ornamental figures who have been foisted on the people. Fifth, women will be consigned to the ‘ladies compartment’ of politics, busily fighting each other in their own female ghetto without getting the opportunity to test their skills against mainstream politicians. Women, the world over, hanker for equality of opportunity, not certainty of success. If the opportunity to fight is equal then let the best woman or man win. But if the reward is a given, then is the battle worth it?

Gender is the focus of elaborate hypocrisy in our country. On the one hand, we worship at the politically correct altar of gender justice. On the other hand, equality of women and acceptance of female individuality is frowned on and subverted at every stage. Gender is the subject of endless elite seminars, yet the fact is among the competing inequalities of India, the infirmities of caste and class bear down much more brutally on women than their gender.

Upper class privileged women seeking victimhood on the basis of gender is perhaps an injustice to the millions of men who suffer far worse privations because they are lower caste and poor. Thus the idea that women are a monolithic victimised caste that need special protection through quotas is totally immature and misguided. Reading through this version of the women’s quota Bill, it doesn’t seem as if it will succeed in its mission of empowering women.
Sagarika Ghose is Senior Editor, CNN-IBN
Sagarika Ghose
March 09, 2010

AfterWord

I believe that the Womens Bill Reservations is much like our Railways Status of Reservation against Cancellation or Waiting List. To me the tatkal passport to equality and dominance would be the sustained catalyst of educations and eradication of inhuman banes like of female foeticide ! Jai Hoi !

The Legacy of Y S Rajasekha Reddy!

In an era of fractal politics in the macro context in India & the rock solid oligarch at the Congress High Command,YSR's rise to the top was unprecedented in the recent decades of Indian politics. But the even after 60 plus years after Independence we still get overawed by the populist planks.

In a nation elevating politicians to demi god status after a few soul stirring speeches and generous splurging of tax payers money in the form of free ( Today all most every thing from TV,Rice to even Cash) is seen as a major contribution , YSR does stand tall. But how much of the pre election sops reach the masses. What go done in his 5 year 110 day tenure , is it enough for us to anoint his stature as a great politician and statesman of our Great Indian Nation.

Consider this only a day before Dr.YSR left on his ill fated chopper journey the suburbs where he erected a swank home office was flooded with rain water and homes sunk in knee deep water.


Generous praise has been a part of most eulogies but certain fact remain indelible. Many forget that his assent to power in 2005 was largely due to the dissonance of the rural masses after three successive seasons of worst drought and the fact that Chandrababu was fighting the anti incumbency wave.

The scale of scams and corruption charges during is 5 year rule is unprecedented and unrivaled. The famed NREGA , Rajiv Arogya Shree schemes which wooed the vote banks were vehicles of siphoning government funds by few select corporate hospitals and district mandal in charges. The conceiving of populist schemes is one thing but administering the same to help it reach the last needy hand is quite another.

Measure should be from here on about our politicians success of not how many votes he garnered or the many populist schemes his government launched or if he stood tall as a regional leader in a Oligarchic National party but on the end results produced.

From where he took up office from Chandrababus Government, very little seems to have been achieved. In fact the price rise is unabated, job losses mount , farm suicides higher than the previous government tenure and very little in terms of vision for the future. Even the 2020 Vision document purported by the previous government was shelved as was several e Governance projects.

Policy and nation building policies must be seasonal as they are today by a few individual rain makers like Dr.YSR. But rather the political machinery function independent of the hallowed individual bias and influence. Progress then we will as a nation.

Little do people realize & recall about the bloodied faction rife past of Dr.Reddy and the way he single handedly struck down the party organisation leaving behind lilliputians as remains.

That he has cleverly wooed vote banks and grew his stature and kick started a few generous programs on development for the downtrodden is the legacy he leaves behind.

There is no denial that a few lakhs benefited from his good work and a few made lakhs . But is this enough. 60 years after Independence dont we voters think that what was delivered is expected by default in any case...?

The image on top should rather read as "Congress is coming to govern" rather and take the seat of power.

If vote banks and seat of power is a sole measure then West Bengal ruled by the Left Government for more than half of India's post Independence Years should be the most prosperous or Dr.Karunanidhi's 50 year political career brought at the least drinking water to Chennai instead of tax payer bought Color TVs..

Lets Imagine an India beyond our nascent 60 plus years of Post Independence and levitate the benchmark of greatness of the Indian Political leader. After all we had such Gaints as leaders who won us our treasured Independence.

Need to move from A 2 A to next A to B

Ambani & Ambani need to look next to Ambani & Customers & Shareholder minus government. Here is a reflection of one of Indias sharpest yet reasonable media minds. Ladies & Gentlemen what follow are thoughts from Vir Sanghvi - Read On .these make sense..only that I altered the heading to a plan Ambanis instead of Anil.

Why is Ambanis headline news day after day, week after week? (NEW)

Posted By: Vir Sanghvi | Posted On: 15 Aug 2009 12:12 PM | Views: 25766

Whenever people tell me that India has changed after the liberalization of the 1990s, that business is now independent of government and that India’s industrialists now get on with the job quietly, I always say, ”Well, up to a point…”

Older readers may remember a business-politics battle that dominated the second half of the 1980s. Dhirubhai Ambani was emerging as one of India’s top industrialists. While many people reckoned that he had bent the rules and paid off politicians to get there, only one industrialist really took him on.

That was Nusli Wadia of Bombay Dyeing. Because Wadia had close links with politicians in all parties (he knew BJP leaders well, he had friends in the Congress, etc.) and in the media (he was something of a godson to Ramnath Goenka) he was able to put Dhirubhai on the defensive.

The Ambanis retaliated with a counter-attack that rocked the foundations of India’s government. By forging letters which Amitabh Bachchan delivered to his friend Rajiv Gandhi, they were able to convince the government that Wadia and finance minister V.P. Singh were really targeting Rajiv. The government went after Nusli Wadia in response. Wadia joined up with V.P. Singh to defeat the government.

Eventually, Rajiv Gandhi did lose the election, largely because of a coalition created by anti-Reliance forces and Nusli Wadia made it his mission to destroy Reliance.

You might think that 20 years later, everything has changed. And certainly, Nusli Wadia seems to have buried the hatchet with the Ambanis and gone on to find success in other fields (biscuits, property, etc.).

But looking at the way the Ambani battle has raged over the last couple of months, I am beginning to wonder if India has really changed that much. In this version of the story, Mukesh Ambani, with his Congress links, is playing the Dhirubhai Ambani role. Anil Ambani is playing the Nusli Wadia part. Like Wadia, he has friends in the BJP (he thinks Narendra Modi should be Prime Minister), in UP politics (just as V.P. Singh backed Wadia so Mulayam Singh is backing Anil) and the Congress.

Just as Wadia was consumed by his mission to destroy Dhirubhai, Anil seems consumed by a desire to destroy Mukesh. Wadia was constantly launching salvos against Reliance just as Anil does these days. Wadia would attack Congress ministers for their closeness to Reliance; Anil is doing the same. Wadia would hire such lawyers as Ram Jethmalani to fight Reliance in the courts; Anil has done the same thing.

And the impact on India in the 21st century is not that dissimilar from the impact on India in the 1980s. Already, the papers are obsessed with this battle – it gets far more coverage than it deserves. Already, we are looking at ministers in the government and deciding who is on which side. (“Shinde is in Anil’s pocket, Mukesh knows Pranab well,” etc.)

Anil has done what no industrialist since Nusli Wadia has dared to do: he has openly taken on the government of India and he has made no secret of his links with the Opposition, allowing Mulayam Singh to disrupt Parliament on his behalf.

All this is ostensibly a battle over rates charged for gas. I don’t know who is in the right in this case: Mukesh or Anil. My friend Tony Jesudasan who represents Anil took me out to lunch and made out a case for Anil. I was totally convinced till my friend Niira Radia, who represents Mukesh, gave me the other side, which frankly, seemed just as convincing to my inexpert ears.

The truth is that the vast majority of Indians are not qualified to judge the rights and wrongs of this very complicated issue. It’s a matter that judges and top lawyers should settle away from the glare of publicity.

So here’s my point: why should the people of India be expected to judge who is right or wrong? We are rarely asked for our opinions on corporate battles. And when other companies have a problem with a ministry, this rarely merits much attention.

"When a corporate war begins to emerge as the biggest news story in a country that faces so many problems, then you know that something has gone badly wrong."
Why then is Anil Ambani headline news day after day, week after week? Why is Parliament disrupted because of the battle? Why is the government of India being forced to defend itself at public fora?

Who are these people, anyway? And why do the Ambanis think that all of us should take sides in their battle? Or that we should care what happens to them?

Our problem, I fear, is that we have forgotten the lessons of the 1980s. In that decade, we allowed Nusli Wadia and Dhirubhai to turn their corporate war into a national issue. We allowed corporate greed and financial manipulation to threaten the very foundations of the Indian government.

Nothing good came out of that experience. When the dust cleared, the corporate situation was exactly what it had been before the fight began. Dhirubhai continued to rise. And Wadia continued to be edged out of the textile business.

But the rest of us all lost out. Rajiv Gandhi’s mandate was frittered away because his ministers took sides in a corporate battle. The Indian middle class was conned into backing V.P. Singh, who gave us a few disastrous months of governance, leaving us with a Mandal legacy. The bureaucracy was corrupted and spoilt. The media were forced to take partisan stands.

My worry is that history is repeating itself. When a corporate war begins to emerge as the biggest news story in a country that faces so many problems, then you know that something has gone badly wrong.

Worse still, the rest of the world has begun to question the India story. Last week, the Financial Times (London) featured the Ambani dispute and wrote that if oligarchs could create so much havoc in India, then there was something wrong with our system. It made the familiar point about how India’s natural resources were being hijacked by oligarchs.

So, here’s my advice to the Ambanis: I like you guys. I’ve known you for a long time. But please fight your battles elsewhere. They have nothing to do with us. And you are damaging India with your media campaigns and with your political friends who disrupt Parliament on your behalf.

And here’s my advice to the politicians: Don’t make the same mistakes all over again. Are you Samajwadis or Ambaniwadis? For India’s sake, let the Ambanis solve their problems on their own.

Just do the jobs we elected you to do. Because your loyalty should be to the people of India not to Mukesh, Anil, or any other industrialist.


It is us you represent.

_______________


source : http://www.virsanghvi.com

Line of Control -Seal it once and for all.

I simply loved the way this man thinks on this subject and made it a point to feature this for my friends

The secret life of foreign secretaries
28 Jun 2009, 0024 hrs IST, M J Akbar

Secret extra-terrestrial sources, with reliable knowledge of the future, have revealed the full text of the dialogue between the Indian Foreign

Secretary (IFS) and the Pakistan Foreign Secretary (PFS) on the sidelines of the next non-aligned summit. We offer this exclusive to our readers:

IFS: Hi! All well, my friend?

PFS: (Shrugs) Is sarcasm your normal opening gambit, or do you reserve it for the Indo-Pak dialogue?

IFS: We don’t do sarcasm in Delhi, not with a monsoon lost in transit.

PFS: You could have fooled me. As for all being well vis-a-vis the Taliban, read the papers. Your chaps getting on well with that little war against the Naxalites?

IFS: Well, at least our intelligence agencies didn’t fund the Naxalites to kill innocents and blow up hotels in Pakistan.

PFS: Actually, we are quite good at that ourselves; don’t need foreign expertise. Frankly, the Taliban were a terrible investment. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you...

IFS: The bite hasn’t got septic, has it?

PFS: Well... shall I be honest?

IFS: That would be such a pleasant change.

PFS: Very droll... You do seem to have acquired a splendid sense of humour since we last met. Very nice. Not in the manual for foreign secretaries, is it?

IFS: Ha ha. I take your point, however. Every country in our heavenly subcontinent is trapped in a desperate civil war — apart maybe from dear little Bhutan. Time for a little cooperation, then?

PFS: Precisely what I was thinking! We always have been the biggest poverty pit in the world — that’s where the Naxalites come from, isn’t it? Now we are also the bloodiest.

IFS: Not to mention the blood of innocents. Your only consistent export to India is terrorists. You ramp up the supply or scale it down depending on your political GDP requirements. You got a bit defensive after Mumbai, but you’ve put them back in business, haven’t you?

PFS: You give us too much credit. These militias have their own agenda. And unless you settle the root cause, Kashmir...

IFS: It seems to have escaped your notice that for the world — including your ally America — that this ‘‘root cause’’ argument has long crossed its sell-by date. You want to get stuck on this, we might as well use the rest of our time discussing which movie you last saw.

PFS: Saw a sexy picture of Angelina Jolie the other day in one of your newspapers! Wow! Our newspapers are so vegetarian compared to yours. It’s those mullahs, I’m afraid. Will neither have fun themselves nor let us have a bit on the side.

IFS: Oh, we’re getting some moral police as well, but our elections sort them out, so that’s a relief. You are good at changing the subject, my friend, but won’t work. Why do you get collective amnesia when it comes to Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Prof Hafeez Mohammad Saeed and his associate Colonel Nazir Ahmed? They were released because you ‘‘forgot’’ to include al-Qaida in your list of terrorist organizations! The lawyer you deputed for Sarbjit Singh ‘‘forgot’’ to appear in court. Forgot! Do lawyers get paid extra for forgetting?

PFS: Ah, the familiar blame game. Why don’t we move on? We are ready for demilitarized zones on both sides of the border — say five miles on either side. That would send such a massive signal of peace, and take your Army off the backs of the Kashmiri people as well. You don’t want me to dwell on that bit, do you, after Shopian? DMZs could enable Kashmiris to share electricity, get on with trade and increase travel on basis of special travel permits.

IFS: All so convenient: our Army moves away so that your surrogate militias and self-styled jihadis can breathe more easily. Simultaneously, you want us to dilute symbols of Indian sovereignty wherever possible. But you will not compromise on your absolutist stand. Why don’t we declare the Line of Control the border and really get on with life? That would close the chapter, and bring peace.

PFS: Peace! What a brilliant thought! But we can’t accept the LoC as the border. It would only mean that for 60 years we have fought for nothing.

IFS: I know it, and you know it, that the LoC is the only answer. The rest is keeping the ball in play to fool the world if not to fool ourselves.

PFS: (Gently) That’s not our decision, is it?

IFS: True.

PFS: (Smiles) Tell me, how long will it take if our political masters really want peace?

IFS: About six minutes.

PFS: And how long if we keep talking the way we did?

IFS: Another 60 years.

PFS: Touche! See you at the next meeting

Catalysing India from Point A to Point B