Post on 08-Apr-2018
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Vol. 36, No 2 July - September, 2008
Journal of the
Management
Training Institute,
SAIL, Ranchi
An ISO 9001 : 2000 Institute
ContentsFEW THOUGHTS
FEATURE ARTICLES
Competitive Advantage Through Human Capital - The PSU Imperative
If Self-Actualisation is your goal, begin with Role Crystallisation
Milestone Events Towards Better Resource Planning and
A Pragmatic Organisational Approach in Implementing ERP
Attrition - A Bigger Challenge for HR in Steel Industries for the Coming Years
Training for Business Excellence
READERS FORUM
Mentoring : An Effective Tool for Organizational Excellence
CASE STUDY
Training Climate Survey : A Study on Public Sector Organizations in West Bengal
ARTICLE DIGEST
Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership
BOOK REVIEW
Confronting Reality : Doing What Matters to Get Things Right
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vfHkuo dk;Z i)fr;ksa ds ek/;e ls vfHkizsj.kk
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cost Management : A Select Bibliography
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Chief Editor
Shri S. P. PatnaikExecutive Director (HRD)
Associate Chief EditorShri M.R. PandaDy General Manager (Acad) & Sr FM
Editorial Board
Dr. Hari HaranDy General Manager (Acad) & Sr FM
Dr. S.K. BhattacharyaDy General Manager (Acad) & Sr FM
Dr. P.K. BanerjeeDy General Manager (P & A)
Dr. T. GhoshalAsstt General Manager (Acad) & Sr FM
For internal circulation only
The views expressed by the authors are
their own and do not reflect those of themanagement
Vol. 36, No 2 July - September, 2008
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CONTENTS
Few Thoughts S. P. Patnaik
Feature Article
Competitive Advantage Through Human Dr Pramod Pathak 1
Capital - The PSU Imperative Dr Saumya Singh
IfSelf-Actualisation is your goal, begin Madhurendra K. Varma 6
with Role Crystallisation
Milestone Events Towards Better Resource Dr. Onkar Nath Dutta 17
Planning and A Pragmatic Organisational
Approach in Implementing ERP
Attrition - A Bigger Challenge for HR in Steel S. K. Panda 21
Industries for the Coming Years
Training for Business Excellence Dr. T. Ghoshal 30
Readers Forum
Mentoring: An Effective Tool for Dr. Binod Kumar Singh 35
Organizational Excellence
Case Study
Training Climate Survey: A Study on Rita Basu 39
Public Sector Organizations in West Bengal
Article Digest
Social Intelligence and the Biology of Daniel Goleman 52
Leadership Richard Boyatzis
Book ReviewConfronting Reality: Doing What Matters to Larry Bossidy 55
Get Things Right Ram Charan
U
fl f U . U 58
Bibliography
Cost Management: A Select Bibliography Dr. P. K. Banerjee 63
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F ew T h o u g h t s
S
teel Industry has been blessed with prosperity and optimism with the dawn of the 21stcentury. SAIL plants recorded all time best production and operational effi ciencies by
better input and logistics management. However, the sudden global meltdown caused bythe recent mortgage crisis in the US has reversed the fortunes of steel industry and thesector is reeling under pressure to cut prices and production due to lack of demand andstock pile up. As a result of the market collapse banks have stopped lending which hasresulted in blocking project work at almost every corner of the world and demand forsteel has gone down drastically resulting into an unsold stock of 2.5 million tonnes by theend of October, 2008.
Economics as we understand is a scientific discipline. It uses a number of tools, and likeany tool it can be used to create or destroy. e problem is that the damage we are facingnow is different from anything we have known. e global meltdown - as it is poeticallyreferred to - has not been caused by a breakdown in production, by inflation, by socialupheaval, or even by war. ose are the usual suspects when our economy is real - thatis , when our economy is measured in goods and services. But when an economy isrunning another program side by side, a program that has nothing to do with productionbut runs on speculation, we are in trouble. Moralists are blaming the mans greed anddishonesty for the disaster. And nobody could foresee the fundamental contradictions ofa virtual economy. However, few economists in the past have warned that these hedgefund managers and investment brokers were just playing monopoly on a huge scale.
In more ways than one, recession time is similar to war time where people are underconstant stress and fear. e need for a tough mind and courageous decisions is commonto both recessions and wars. In both, strong leadership practices are critical if teams haveto remain motivated and aligned despite setbacks. Recession time indeed calls for leaders
with special skills. Great Depression of 1929 is replete with the stories of those individualwho succeeded against the downturn because they were able to synergise their team withcreative involvement and collective vision. During recession, companies with vision couldsee an unparalleled opportunity to transform their areas of operation.
Steel industry is a real economy driven by the macro-economic goals of a country.To combat the meltdown and recessionary trends, SAIL has a leading will of iron.In this trying time, it is essential to take small, tiny acts of controlling operating costand managing precious resources as a matter of personal discipline in every activity weundertake. Routinely performed and implemented in our operations and projects, theselittle acts and steps will pile up one on top of another to eventually produce tremendousresults overcoting any obstacle on the way.
I am sure that the HR professionals, line managers and the project leaders would joinhands together and exhibit exemplary courage and spirit to go forward in the task ofnation building in this critical hour.
Perhaps the old African proverb says it best : When spider webs unite, they tie up alion.
(Satyaprakash Patnaik)
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1GROWTH Vol. 36 No. 2 July-September 2008
Competitive Advantage Through Human Capital
- The PSU Imperative
Dr Pramod Pathak*
Dr Saumya Singh**
ABSTRACT
As India gained independence the powers that be embarked upon a roadmap for
industrial development of the country. The role was assigned to Public Sector
Undertakings (PSU) and the responsibilities were industrial development, self
reliance, capital formation, import substitution, employment generation and
economic growth. Some sixty years down the line we seem to have achieved these
objectives in some measure but are still far behind the developed countries many of
which started their journey as an independent entity somewhere around the same
period as India. Our performance in the international arena is not what it needs to
be - be it sports, technology or trade. Yes, Reliance, TATA and Birla are some names
that have brought respectability to Indian industry but there is still long way to go.
And the journey on this path can only be successfully undertaken if we increase our
competitiveness. Particularly, in case of our PSUs. Technology is not the issue, it can
be purchased. The issue is our human resources which can give us the competitive
advantage by increasing the productivity of both the human as well as the
technological capital. Our competitive advantage today has to be attained only
through the human capital. This article discusses the issues and implications related
to human capital formation with special reference to the public sector undertakings.
Prologue
Liberalisation, globalization and privatization are too hackneyed expressions tofind place in management literature today. Yet, they have made such an impactthat the very grammar of business has changed. It is against this backdrop that the
present Indian business scene has to be visualized particularly with respect to the
Public Sector Undertaking. There was a time when Indian industrialization was
synonymous with PSU, whose role was largely confined to self reliance, capital
formation, import substitution and technological development. Private sector was
there but barring the notable exceptions of the TATA and the Birla groups the restwere simply doing business without making much of a difference to the national
economy. Compare the scenario today - TATA, Birla, Reliance are all world class
Indian groups, both admired and feared globally. Indian companies find place in
top companies list, Indian business tycoons are present in the world s richest
persons list - India has gone global. But, there is still a long way to go, specially our
PSUs who have not made a mark globally. In the World trade we are still no where
near the US, China, Japan or even South Korea. Our performance in world trade
can be compared to our position in the world Olympics, exceptions notwithstanding.
*Associate Professor, Deptt. of Management Studies, ISMU, Dhanbad
** Asstt. Professor, Deptt. of Management Studies, ISMU, Dhanbad
Feature Article
HR may notHR may notHR may notHR may notHR may not
directly producedirectly producedirectly producedirectly producedirectly produce
revenue or gorevenue or gorevenue or gorevenue or gorevenue or go
out and find newout and find newout and find newout and find newout and find new
business or openbusiness or openbusiness or openbusiness or openbusiness or open
new markets butnew markets butnew markets butnew markets butnew markets but
it certainlyit certainlyit certainlyit certainlyit certainly
improves theimproves theimproves theimproves theimproves the
effectiveness ofeffectiveness ofeffectiveness ofeffectiveness ofeffectiveness of
the organizationthe organizationthe organizationthe organizationthe organization
that can help thethat can help thethat can help thethat can help thethat can help the
company findcompany findcompany findcompany findcompany find
new business ornew business ornew business ornew business ornew business or
markets.markets.markets.markets.markets.
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2Competitive Advantage Through Human Capital - The PSU Imperative
A lot, therefore, needs to be done. Our productivity is
still much lower, our quality still much inferior, our
market share still much smaller at the international
level. The scenario can be neatly summed up in one
sentence - our competitiveness needs to drastically
improve. Not only the large economies like the US and
China but even the smaller ones like Singapore andSouth Korea are much ahead. How to develop the
ability to compete and gain the competitive advantage
globally? This all important question must be
answered.
This review article is an attempt to find out how we
can make our PSUs gain the competitive advantage
and make their presence felt globally. Though, there
may be many factors that can help a company acquire
competitive advantage, the critical factor as it is now
realized is the Human Capital.
Why Human Capital ?
Classical psychologists believe that a human being uses
around 10% of his latent intellectual abilities, the
remaining being not used for a variety of reasons. Our
concern today is to gain sustainable competitive
advantage for the organisation. The greatest scope thus
lies with the human resources where theoretically
atleast the scope of improvement is around 90%. This
realization has, therefore, made organizations give a
relook at a policy on human resources, making them
turn their attention towards the human capital which
holds tremendous promise and has tremendous
potential. And we have witnessed what the human
capital is capable of doing. Let us take the example of
the game of cricket. There was a time when only test
matches were played. Scoring 250 runs in a day was
rated as a decent job, then came the one dayers 220 -
230 runs per side were reasonable and 250 very
competitive. Gradually, the benchmarks changed with
improvisations continuously taking place. Today, even
400 is not winnable. And in the 20-20 cricket the teams
run amok hitting some 220 runs in just 20 overs. This
is how the human element has developed and
changed. The analogy tells a lot about the potential of
the human element and the promise it holds.
As ignorance gives way to enlightenment, organizations
are turning their attention towards human resources
as the most valuable of the resources. There was a time
when human resource was regarded as one of the many
resources that could lead to profitability of the
organization. But with more and more information and
insight into the competence and capability of the
human resource being gained, there are more and more
people who would now like to vouch that man is centralto organizations. Perhaps we are now inching closer to
the answer to the long standing question - what makes
enterprises tick, raised by Sir Thomas More in early
fifteenth century. Though for Thomas More reason why
enterprises failed to operate efficiently was poor
management, the phrase poor management in itself
has proved a complex concept to define.
Organizations are people centric entities and their
competitiveness depends on people, technology
notwithstanding. We may take a cue from what Sam
Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart had told Fred
Luthans once when asked what was the answer to
successful organizations. For Walton People are the
key. The technology can be purchased and copied. It
levels the playing field. The people on the other hand
cannot be copied. Their ideas, personalities,
motivation and organizational cultural values cannot
be copied. Recognized as human capital the human
resources of an organization, their competence and
the way they are managed, represent the competitive
advantage of the modern days organizations. It all
started with Taylor - the economic rationality of
human being. Taylor was right. But, this was not the
whole truth. Mayo too was right. And we get the
economic emotional man - the human capital that is
capable of doing wonders.
In fact, technology was never as subservient to people
as it is today given the nuances of the knowledge
economy that we are into. Little wonder, the
Government of India has taken steps to set up the
national knowledge commission to enable the country
to sharpen its knowledge edge. In a world where
technology and money is available copiously, it is the
human capital that is going to give the cutting edge.
Rightly then does Bill Gates proclaim that the
inventory, the value of his companywalks out the door
every evening. Nothing more impacts the bottom line
than the people.
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3GROWTH Vol. 36 No. 2 July-September 2008
The HR imperative
Human Resource Management has been uniquely
placed today in terms of helping organizations achieve
bottom line results. Why this shift? There was a time
when HR was supposed to be staff function having no
strategic role to play. This idea now has been made to
turn on its head. In fact, effective HR is the strategy.The simple reason why this has happened is that there
is now proof available to show that investment in
human resource does pay off and the people who used
to debunk HR efforts as gimmick are now paying
serious attention to it. The study that postulates HRs
impact on profits was carried out at the center for
effective organizations at the University of Southern
California sometime back. Ed Lawler and Susan
Mohrman completed an intensive study of
management practices in Fortune 100 companies thatdemonstrated that employee involvement practices
such as information sharing, skills training, rewards
programs, and empowerment efforts-all of which fall
squarely into HRs domain - show a significant
bottom-line return. The study, then, in no uncertain
terms suggests that the kinds of practices that HR
develops and supports impinge upon the bottom-line.
According to Lawler, HR may not directly produce
revenue or go out and find new business or open new
markets but it certainly improves the effectiveness ofthe organization that can help the company find new
business or markets. HR, thus, is crucial in
determining profitability and growth of a company.
Thus for countries and companies alike human capital
is the key to competitiveness.
Knowledge as the Critical Factor
Classical economic theory distinguished between two
factors of production-capital and labour. Alfred
Marshall added management as the factor. Gary Backen
drew a distinction between unskilled and specialized
labour to create human capital. Against this backdrop,
managers see the emergence of a knowledge-based
capitalism. As this capitalism is developing today, brain
has become the critical means of production. Human
Resource Management today is largely managing
brains. Companies will increasingly be measured by
their knowledge rather than their physical assets. It is
this knowledge that is responsible in helping companies
acquire competitiveness; it is this that leads to human
capital formation. It will not be out of place to
distinguish among different levels of knowledge. First,
there is knowledge as raw material- facts, information
and data. Such knowledge contains the ingredients of
information clutter and overload. The second type of
knowledge is insight. Insight connotes seeing into asituation leading to connections defined by inner
perception, or representation of knowledge- the Aha!
experience. Then we have ideas which are
interconnected insights that we can run with. Finally,
we have knowledge as perceived value to customer or
other stakeholders.
However, the knowledge in itself may not be of value
unless it is customized to suit customers needs. With
due apologies to Francis Bacon, relevant knowledge,
not mere knowledge, is power. It depends on the
managers how they use knowledge and create human
capital. Years ago when Henry Ford decided to make
glass for his cars in his own glass plant, he asked the
experts on glass making to design a factory that would
roll out plate glass in a continuous process. The experts
told him that it could not be done because glass had
always been made in batches. Ford insisted that only
production in the manner he visualized would be
sufficiently economic to satisfy the needs of the
customers. He advertised for engineers who had never
made glass before. Thus, he assembles a team that did
not know that what he wanted had never been done.
And in time they made glass in a continuous process
as had been demanded. To do so they had to disregard
the traditional know how and question all
assumptions that previously had prevented such a
great improvement in glass making. The manager had
set a goal. He had a questioning mind; he needed help
from men who all were willing to question the old
assumptions. Human capital, we thus see can work
wonder if utilized properly.
Sometimes transformation of knowledge from one to
another is required. And this transformation is a
product of creativity, which gives the cutting edge.
Creativity enables the transformation of one form of
knowledge to the next. For example, the nonlinear,
discontinuous processing of data leads to the
perception of the relationships and connections, to
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4Competitive Advantage Through Human Capital - The PSU Imperative
insight. The act of perceiving relationships and ideas,
and the creativity with which we pursue ideas
engenders value. In each case, creativity comes with
quantum leaps in insights and understanding that lead
to value. Creativity is a process with a grammar. When
we add information technology to the mix of creativity
and knowledge, we get a particularly potentcombination: capabilities to represent deploy, and
track knowledge coupled with technologies to
promote collaboration across divergent disciplines
and perspectives.
Creating the human capital
Human Capital theory scores over the assumption of
the labour as homogenous factor. Labour is
heterogeneous and firms are now investing in training
specialized labour to gain competitive advantage.Training is no longer a cost. It is an investment that
enhances the worth of human resources. It is the
training that leads to human capital formation by
value addition.
The OECD defines human capital as the knowledge,
skills, and competencies and other attributes
embodied in the individuals that are relevant to
economic activity. The problem with this definition
is that measuring these attributes is difficult. Further,
the contribution of human capital can only bemeasured in objective terms by profits or
productivity which depends on several other
antecedent variables. Thus correlating human capital
with economic growth is not very easy. The state of
Kerela is an example which is high in some of the
attributes of human capital like education and health
but still lags behind in economic growth in
comparison to many other states of India which are
low in several human capital indices. In fact the
contemporary view is that more than economicdevelopment in terms of per capita income, it is the
human development index that is a measure of
prosperity. This may hold good for organizations in
even greater measure. In a knowledge driven
economy, competition of a firm will definitely be
determined by competitiveness of the human
resources. It is an axiomatic truth that the human
element is the key moderator in transformation of
material and natural resources into wealth.
Human capital focuses on the economic behavior of
individuals, especially on the way their accumulation
of knowledge and skills enables them to increase their
productivity and their earnings, and also helps in
increasing the productivity and wealth of the society
at large. The most commonly raised question of course
is how to generate knowledge in an organization. Thatan organization has to learn and create new knowledge
as a source of competitive advantage is a well accepted
fact. However, what eludes many is the right approach
to creating an organization that is truly capable of
harnessing its total learning potential and translating
it into business competitiveness. The focus of effort
has been pitched largely on creating the right climate
and culture conducive to learning in an organization.
What needs to be understood here is that the structure
of the organization plays an equally important role.
The learning individual
The structure together with the climate and the culture
holds the key to the transformation process-
transformation of the people so that their capabilities
are enhanced. While the structure provides for smooth
flow of knowledge that transforms people, the climate
and the culture facilitate growth of knowledge. The key
to growth of knowledge is individual attitude to
knowledge rather than knowledge per se. That is, lettingthe knowledge pass through the creative throughput
of the brain of the individual who is ready to receive,
assimilate and apply- the learning individual. Unless
this is allowed, knowledge is not subject to application
that gives value. Thus, there is need for creating the
learning individual.
Knowledge, attitude and practice are the three
essentials of the learning individual. Knowledge must
be backed by an attitude that for putting knowledge to
practice. Unless this happens knowledge remainsuseless. The Indian folktale paraphrased here sums this
up very well. The tale The fowler and the pigeons is
about a fowler who made his living by catching pigeons
and selling them. Perturbed by their dwindling
numbers, the chief of the pigeon tribe went to a sanyasin
seeking help. The sanyasin gave a mantra that the
pigeons were to chant aloud while venturing out. The
mantra was the fowler will come, lay his net and throw
the grains. Do not be allured and get trapped.
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5GROWTH Vol. 36 No. 2 July-September 2008
The pigeon chief made his tribe members to learn this
mantra by heart and recite loudly. When the fowler
came next day he found the pigeons reciting the
mantra. Baffled and dejected, he went back. The same
thing happened the following day. The fowler was
highly disappointed as his livelihood was threatened.
Seeing the fowler return forlorn and empty handed ontwo consecutive days his wife enquired what was
wrong. On knowing the whole story his wife insisted
to lay the net next day. Though the fowler had his
doubts yet he gave his wifes advice a try. To his dismay
the fowler found that the pigeons one by one got
trapped even as they were chanting the mantra. They
had failed to apply the knowledge, which was given to
them. The issue was not knowledge; it was the
application that was critical.
How to make this happen is the important question.
The central features of an organization competing in
the knowledge economy are creativity and innovation.
The intangibles occupy an increasingly important role
in value creation. Organizations must, then, focus on
individuals whose limits of insights and capability
needs to be expanded. One thing that must be borne
in mind here is that it is the individual who plays the
pivotal role in organizational learning. Companies,
then have to reorient their HR practices in order to
achieve this. For this HRD has to be integrated in thesystem rather than being an intervention made on
piece meal basis. The approach of organizational
development has to be followed.
Conclusion
For an organization to survive it has to learn. But
organizational learning cannot be separated from
individual learning. Organizational learning is culture
while individual learning is an attitude. The two need
to go together. Organizational learning can be said tooccur when individuals within an organization
encounter a problematic situation and gear themselves
up to face it on the organizations behalf. The first
imperative then is that organizational learning requires
individuals to be the learning agents who experience
problems and issues on behalf of the organization and
represent its concerns. Organizational learning is, to a
large extent an individual centric mode of reason, which
leads to Human Capital Formation. Individuals learn
and act on behalf of the organization and it is the
individuals experiences, which is contextualized by
objectives and images of the organization. Thus,
organizational structures that encourage the
individuals wish and ability to learn need to be put in
place.It is certainly no surprise that many forward thinking
organizations have embarked on the arduous task of
reinventing the human resource function as well as the
organization as a whole. A lot of Indian corporations
today are taking keen interest in internal corporate
development programs because they believe that these
can help broaden the mental horizons of the executives
and help them create a smarter workforce. In fact,
corporate are investing in training of workers also
because they believe that the value addition can leadto human capital formation. There is need to plan
intense employee development programs at greater
frequency rather than long duration and less frequent
ones in order to effectively create the human capital.
One important aspect that needs to be realized is that
rather than focusing on high performers only, the
managements must give attention to development of
the lesser mortals of the organizational universe. There
is enough proof to vindicate the idea that human capital
formation is the road to competitive advantage. PSUsthat wish to take the challenge of global competition
head on must focus on human capital formation.
References
1. Employment News, Vol.XXX No. 20 August 13-19, 2005, New
Delhi
2. Luthans Fred, Organisational Behaviour, Mc Graw Hill
Irwin, 9th Edition, 2002
3. Horst Albach, Managing Brains, Global Business Review,
Vol.2, No. 1, Jan-Jun 2001
4. Rao, Hemant H, Burning Issues of Learning, The Economic
Times, June 1998
5. Ahead in Kerala, Frontline, September 22, 1995
6. Cutterbuck David & Stuart Crainer, Makers of Management,
Rupa and Co., N. Delhi, 1992
7. Edward E. Lawler III, Susan Albers Mohrman and Gerald E.
Ledford, Jr. Strategies for High Performance Organizations:
The CEO Report San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998
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6
* MD, Aakankshaa Management Consultants, Pune
If Self-Actualisation is your goal,
begin with Role Crystallisation
Madhurendra K. Varma*
ABSTRACT
It was sometime in the 1940s that Nehru said: Even if you wish to keep standing
where you are, you must keep running! This was already true in those bygone days;
but to-day it is pertinent and imperative just for our very existence!
Therefore, just dont expect or wait for the Organization or your boss to hand out
what you are required to do. You better pro-act about what you believe you would or
should wish to do in terms of your present capabilities and the potential for
acquiring better capabilities that you can develop, mostly on your own and somewhat
on the help your organizational structure can provide.
In this age of vast changes, jobs too have been changing both in their context and
contents. It is time that you take ownership of your own career. Besides, for all such
people who are keen on self-actualisation, mere role-clarity will not do. Both for
ownership of your career and for self-actualisation, role-crystallisation is essential
which, in effect, goes beyond someone else doling out to you as to what you should,
and should not, do.
It calls for honest self-introspection with a view to identifying your inclinations,
strengths and potentials, and then going ahead with self-development. It also requires
that you develop your subordinates too. When you are satisfied that you have done
the developments on yourself and your subordinates, you are ready to speak out to
your management with courage of conviction that you are ready and willing to
offer wider and richer services. That, in a nutshell, is role-crystallisation.
And for acting on such role-crystallisation, it is not only you but your organisation as
well which shall come out the richer for it!
Introduction
For enabling a manager to perform consistently with optimum utilisation of his
potential, a professionally-awake organisation may do its best in arenas that lie
very much under its domain by remaining agile in anticipating and managing
change, its strategic planning, its encouragement for creativity, its adherence to ethics,
and its readiness for technological advancements. It may also try its best to stay
adequately active on human resource development by providing to its employees
timely and right inputs of training, and customer-market reflexes in keeping with
the demands of the fast-changing times in which we live today. Assume too that the
HRD system also provides role-clarity to all the key-players, if not to all employees.
Feature Article
It will not doIt will not doIt will not doIt will not doIt will not dofor a manager tofor a manager tofor a manager tofor a manager tofor a manager to
passively acceptpassively acceptpassively acceptpassively acceptpassively accept
the rolethe rolethe rolethe rolethe role
assigned andassigned andassigned andassigned andassigned and
clarified (if atclarified (if atclarified (if atclarified (if atclarified (if at
all) to him byall) to him byall) to him byall) to him byall) to him by
others; he has toothers; he has toothers; he has toothers; he has toothers; he has totake ownershiptake ownershiptake ownershiptake ownershiptake ownership
of his ownof his ownof his ownof his ownof his own
functionsfunctionsfunctionsfunctionsfunctions.....
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7GROWTH Vol. 36 No. 2 July-September 2008
Although all these inputs on the manager are
required and welcome, let us take due note of the fact
that these are inputs from sources external to the
manager; he is only a recipient of what others have
concocted for him. Personally, he has made no
contribution of his own to give shape to himself!
In the current situation when changes at fast pace and
on mind-boggling scale have been taking place, we
already see that the context as well as the contents of
many jobs is disappearing due to technological
changes and fast obsolescence of products, work
methods, and services. Employees at almost every
level are having to unlearn much of what they were
experts in, and come up with newer combinations of
knowledge and skill if they wish to stay on or grow
in their career.
Yet another factor that has been compelling the
changes in the context and contents of jobs is the
ongoing movement for replacing the pyramid
organisation with flatter structure. As organisation
structures are flattened, decentralised, and turned
upside down, managers often have to rethink in
fundamental ways as to what they themselves and
their roles are going to be, or should be.
This can be an extremely challenging task: How can
you learn to see yourselves a new? How can you find
fresh ways of thinking, behaving, and communicating
with those you work with?
These require managers at all levels to embrace much
wider span of duties with greater degree of
responsibility and authority. Under these
circumstances, it will not do for a manager to passively
accept the role assigned and clarified (if at all) to him
by others; he has to take ownership of his own
functions. This means his taking the initiative to givesuch shape to his own role that will enable him to
perform to his full potential, in his own unrelenting
judgement. This is the initiative, which introduces the
phenomenon of role-crystallisation -- taking it beyond
mere role-clarity!
In a sense, the element of role-crystallisation has
always been present -- even during the days when
technological changes on the current scale and pace,
and their implied compulsions, had not appeared on
the scene. The reason was the existence of that handful
of managers, who were particularly imbued with the
inner urge for self-actualisation. Such managers have
always required whether they are aware of it or not
- inputs from themselves in order to reach the stage of
self-actualisation. And that input, again, is role-crystallisation, as distinct from and beyond - mere
role-clarity.
We shall delve deeper into this here. First, let us
understand the connotations of role clarity, as
distinct from role crystallisation.
Role : Its implications
The Dilemma: Whenever a manager moves up the
ladder of his career, he is torn between:
a) His realisation and desire, on the one hand, to
function in a more significant and different
manner than he has done so far, so that his
contributions may be seen to be commensurate
with the higher position he now occupies; and
b) His failure many times at least initially to come
up with bright enough and easily practicable
ideas as to what really he could do about it.
The result: Usually, he is left to his own devices; and
he sinks even deeper into doing those very things,
which he believes himself to be an expert on. Being
unable to rise above, he continues to do what he had
been doing so far. Thus, a feature that gets added to
his style is that he now becomes even more fanatic
about perfection in what he does. In effect, he fails to
bring about real up-gradation in himself; he bids good-
bye to delegation to his subordinates, and thus puts
everything and everybody into disarray. He digs
deeper into his narrow, unidimensional role, and fails
to rise to the new and higher managerial role expected
of him.
Role-Clarity
This is essential for every performer not only for
those who have moved up the ladder but also for those
who are active about accomplishing their assigned
tasks. It must provide advice or information as to [i]
what one is expected to do or achieve [ii] under what
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limitations or with what facilities, and [iii] what are
the standards of his/her current performance.
What should be your efforts ?
Even for doing the above-stated, you the performer
need a broader view of the jobs surrounding yours.
And irrespective of whether you are on a senior positionor not, you should keep trying to get out of the tunnel;
you should take a seat on the helicopter and get a
perspective view of your job in relation to the total
organisational objectives, and to other related jobs.
You must always try to step back from the humdrum
of the day-to-day chores. And you should develop the
insight to think through your job in order to get to the
purpose behind what you are doing, and what you may
do to make it more purposeful so that it establishes
you in your organisation as an undeniably usefulperformer and adds to your go-getting self-esteem,
among other things.
Where does it ultimately take you ?
In the ultimate analysis, the recommendations made
above can take you to a state where your efforts are
not confined only to finding out what your role is, but
are extended togiving shapeto the role you ought to
play at the work place!
However, there are certain inherent situations in most
organisations that act as impediments to your
attaining such a position. They are:
even at the overall organisational level (i.e. in
regard to the broad sectors into which the
organisation is divided), very few roles are clearly
defined; and
even if somewhere, some time, they had been
defined, very few are truly valid today, and lived
up to in practice.Such impediments lead to the following conditions
that are fairly rampant in most organisations:
The corridors of organisations keep resounding
with the spoken or unspoken statements to the
effect: This is not my job! or Is this also my
job?
Where pains were taken to define the roles, lot of
distortions might have crept in by now either
because of practical difficulties or ego problems
at inter-personal levels [which, incidentally, are
at the root of inter-departmental conflicts too].
Primary Functions, Key-result areas and targets
We are not talking about job-descriptions here. They
become out-dated even the day after they are written-up! Besides, they (i) create problems of restrictive
rigidities and (ii) harbour possibilities of one party
taking undue advantages of the other.
What we are talking about is identifying the primary
functions, the key-result areas and the targets
inherent in each job. Key-result areas and targets
are essentially related to a task or a cluster of tasks;
they assume newer dimensions and urgencies in
relation to the situation surrounding the task or tasks.
But the primary functions are related to a job, whose
primary function hardly undergoes much change with
passage of time or in relation to the tasks assigned
under the job. For example, the primary function of
a Finance Manager will almost always be to take
timely measures and care to ensure the financial
health of an organisation by ensuring that the right
amount of money, at the right cost, is available for
funding the necessary activities of the organisation.
The life cycle of primary function may well be ten
years or so. On the other hand, the key-result area,
under the Finance Managers job, may well change
every two-to-three years, depending on what the
current situational urgencies are. For example, for the
first two or three years, raising fund may be the key-
result area, for the next few years, greater control on
expenditure or on leakage/pilferage of funds, and
during the next few years, collection of dues from
customers may assume greater importance. Targets,
on the other hand, have a much shorter cycle of a year
or so during which certain stipulated, pre-agreed
results are required to be achieved.
These are the issues that role is concerned with. What
you should seek to know with clarity is your role on a
given job, or in a given situation. In particular, you
must insist on obtaining the primary functions of
your job since that determines the contribution you
can and are expected to make by managing in
your own ways the activities contained in your job.
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Clarity of role is very crucial for nurturing your {i} self-
confidence, {ii} performance, and {iii} progress in the
organisation.
It is also crucial for giving shape to your attitude
towards your superiors and subordinates; it
determines whether your inter-personal relationships
would become positive or negative. In the absence of
role-clarity, even persons with brilliant past records
of performance have been known to degenerate into
rendering them as mediocre members of the team or,
in some cases, to end up as disgruntled and bitter.
They become cynical, they are devoid of self-
confidence, and they begin to act as dead weights in
the organisation.
1. Role-crystallisation
Role-clarity vs. Role-crystallisation
So far we have described and analysed what role and
role-clarity mean. We have also considered the
implications of what can happen when roles are not
clarified. It is worth noting that what we have
concentrated on so far are the passive aspects of what
others do, or dont do, about your role; we have not
yet discussed what you can, and ought to, do to give
substance and shape to your own role.
What you can do to give shape to the role you should
like to play is a far more important and promising
realm, from the point of view of both your professional
satisfaction and the organisations benefits. In other
words, the issue before you is: What can I do to
crystallise my role?
Let me shake you up - tickle you with the following
questions:
Why should you depend on others to dole out your
roles to you? And why should you remain shackled by
the boundaries set by others in regard to your roles?
Why shouldnt you break through such arbitrary
boundaries, and establish your own roles in terms of
the expertise, temperament, enthusiasm, sense of
values, priorities and leadership qualities that you
possess or wish to develop?In short, why shouldnt you
have the freedom to express yourself through, and
on, your own job?
A pertinent counter-question at this point from you
might be: Why go into all this rigmarole? Why not stick
to: Chalta Hai {Let things be} culture?
There are two compelling answers one very down-
to earth, the other related to your self-esteem:
The down-to-earth answer: Who knows whatyour job will look like after cataclysmic changes
sweep through your organisation or industry,
and they engulf the very company you work for?
Who knows whether your job will even exist, and,
frankly, who cares other than you? The reality
in todays, and tomorrows, ambience is that
nobody owes you a career; your career is literally
your business. You are in competition with
millions of employees like you; and you need to
build up and take ownership of your career,
your skills and the timings of your moves.
It is your responsibility to protect this personal
business of yours from harm and to position it to
benefit from the changes in the environment. Nobody
else can do that for you.
The self-esteem answer: Perhaps this is even
more compelling, with a stamp of permanency
about it. All said and done, deep down, we do
crave for a calling in our job; we are not just
after a bundle of tasks, the performance of which
neither adds to our self-esteem nor to the esteem
in which others hold us. Usually, we are stuck
with jobs, which are too small for our spirit. We
do want - actually, we do need to express
ourselves in terms of satisfying
accomplishments, our style of performance, the
expertise we bring to the ways in which we do
our jobs. We do wish to leave behind an imprint
of our personality on the jobs we handle.
It is for these reasons we have to give serious thought
to how we can crystallise our role unless we are
made of a stuff which keeps us content to remain
insensitive to the imperatives described above.
How do you go about crystallising your role ?
Introspection: What do you do to re-orient yourself ?
When it comes to role-crystallisation, the ball moves
right into your court, as already implied in the
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foregoing observations. Since it is you who have to give
shape to your role, you have got to take a closer look
inside yourself. You have to find out not only what
features of management you are made of or are good
at, but what more you have to do to orient your
managerial style in order to upgrade your capability
for giving shape to your own role.
The areas in your inner self that require a closer look
are:
The factors which motivate you;
Your style of decision-making;
Are you assertive enough and in the right
manner?
Your planning orientation.
The factors which motivate youWhat usually motivate you might comprise the factors
that are: result-oriented, job-satisfaction-oriented,
career-advancement-oriented, or a mix of these. Do
not import any value judgement here as to whether it
is right or wrong to have such orientations; just try to
obtain an objective picture as to what really motivates
you. Only if you find that the combination of factors
that motivate you is heavily parasitical { what the
organisation can do for me} in nature, you may have
to do some adjustment in yourself. If your motivation
weighs heavily toward extracting merely one-way
gains for yourself without a reasonable balance
between what you give to the job and what you take
out of the job, then there is and should be much
for you to worry about. You must snap out of this
fixation, otherwise, you will be in no position to give a
reasonable or workable shape to your role to
crystallise your role.
Once you resolve this matter, go ahead and nurture
the factors that motivate you. But remember: the
important criterion, in the context of role-
crystallisation, is not what the job can do for you but
what you can do, or impart, to the job!
Your style of decision-making
You have also to examine critically the style of your
decision-making in the light of certain home truths.
They comprise a highly participative process:
i) For quite some decades, it was believed that top-
down control was good for effective
management. Managers were fed on the belief
that they were in charge, and they acted
accordingly. Gone are those days. The
supervised personnel are mostly knowledge-
workers, and in their own areas of operations,they are likely to have far more knowledge and
expertise than their bosses can manage to have.
Bosses have got to recognise that their old
formal role is now an anachronism; they have
to present themselves to their staff as
resources, as trouble-shooters and
facilitators who will have to tackle specific
problems, with maximum participation from
their staffand
ii) While subordinates, peers and superiors do look
up to you for exercising your authority
[otherwise they may laugh at you], they do not
accept your authority without subjecting your
decisions to their critical examination. All your
decisions are judged by others especially in the
light of the outcome of your decisions, and
eventually you earn their acceptance only if {a}
your decisions are found to be based on sound
judgements and {b} they [the decisions] turn out
to be successful most of the times.
True, none of us can claim to possess, or display, good
judgement all the time; and not displaying good
judgement at times should not discourage you. There
is a very wise and pertinent saying:
Good judgement comes from experience; and
experience comes from bad judgement!
What decisions are you after? The best, the
perfect, decisions ?i) No, what really works is the best-suited decision;
best-suited to the situation surrounding the
issues, to the temperament and level of
enthusiasm of the implementers, to the
emotional or vested-interest-profile of the people
who are going to be affected by your decision.
And this can be taken care of only when you
combine in yourself the reflexes and habit of
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doing wide-spread consultations at the initial
stage, and of the courageous one-man decision-
taking that you have to do at the subsequent stage.
ii) While it is essential that intense and wide-spread
consultations take place at the initial decision-
making stage, every body wishes that,finally, it
is you, their leader, who must make upyourmind
and take your own decision. You have to live up
to that.
iii) The crucial requirement is that a leader must
takedecision, and take it himself at his own
risk and responsibility. Dilly-dallying or seeking
a compromise or a consensus decision does
not work.
Are you assertive enough and in the Right
manner ?
Why is it Necessary ?
In a nutshell, it is essential for your self-respect for
ensuring that you continue to have a healthy and
positive approach toward your work, your colleagues
and your workplace. In specific terms, it helps you to:
avoid the possibility of your being exploited by
others;
protect yourself from feeling let down;
face life with confidence;
get what is legitimately yours, and
give to others what they deserve.
You must remember that the people you deal with
generally fall into two categories: {i} the people with
difficulties, and {ii} the people who are difficult. Those
with difficulties deserve your constructive help,
leading them to self-dependence; and those who are
difficult need to be made to reckon with yourassertiveness!
Assertiveness is not just getting your own way and
always winning. It must not be confused with
aggressiveness or arrogance, nor is it just crude
boldness, nor manipulation of others for bringing
them round to what you want.
Assertiveness means being confident, and positive
about yourself while respecting others. It means
remaining cool and composed, having the ability to
prevent yourself being exploited by others, and it
requires your developingthe art of saying No without
being rude.
Suggested steps for Developing Assertiveness
1. Listen actively;2. Give due consideration to what is being said to
or asked of you, with empathy with a view
to agreeing if at all possible;
3. But dont agree simply because it is polite or
more tactful to do so. Your agreement must be
based on merits;
4. In case you find you cannot agree, be very critical
on yourself to demand from you a truly
convincingreason as to why you do not
cannot agree;
5. Put yourself in a position of the other person, and
see whether you can sayNo not only on the
basis of aggressiveness, but on reason and
reasonability;
6. The acid test of assertiveness: Even the person to
whom you sayNo should finally appreciate
(though he may not agree) why you had to say
No!
{Note: In the light of the advice offered above, just recall
to your mind the ongoing war of nerves going on now
[August-September 2008] between the West Bengal
Government and Trinamool Congress over the allotment
of land for Tata Motors Nano Project in Singur}. This
is a typical and eye-opening example in which the
Government took what it considered to be the the Best
Decision not the Best-Suited Decision. The havoc
created by this unintentional neglect of the crucial
element in decision-making explained above is there for
everybody to see! While the Government has lost its facein a very frustrating manner, industries in general have
started suffering from a creeping loss of trust as to
whether they should return to or go to West Bengal for
their very promising proposed projects. And above all,
grave embarrassment has been caused to the
Honourable Governor of West Bengal for all his
painstaking, genuine efforts to mediate in the matter!
All this because, in all honesty, the best - not the best-
suited decision was taken.}
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Your Planning Orientation
The better you plan, the more crystallised your role
becomes. Some of the questions you must keep asking,
in order to prevent yourself from becoming
complacent, are:
Are you aware of the latest knowledge/
technology relevant to your activities? When is
thatflash pointlikely to arrive beyond which you
cannot go on with your outdated existing
knowledge/technology?
What should be your plans for [a] disposal of the
existing equipment or methods, and [b]
training/retraining of your people to prepare
them for the new technology?
Are your subordinates suffering from monotony,
boredom, job irritation or mis-information?
What should you do now onwards to take care
of these?
Do you relate yourself to the kinds of people who
work with you?
How much tension are you subjecting yourself
to? Why? What can you do to reshape your role
in order to minimize these tensions?
If you habituate yourself to asking these questions
constantly, your own fund of experience will produce
honest, workable answers. And it is these answers that
will provide a rich guidance about the lines on which
you ought to crystallise your role.
Extroversion: What do you do for Others ?
We have so far discussed the necessity and benefits of
introspection in the context of your role-
crystallisation. But you play your roles essentially by
interacting with others, dont you? Therefore, your role
crystallisation must include extroversionyourefforts to relate yourself to others by reorienting your
relationships with them. And your relationships with
others must be shaped in terms of your work-
relationships not merely on your personal rapport,
since most of your interactions are around the work
you and they do.
Some important aspects that need special attention
and efforts from you are:
Enriching first the repertoire of your own
knowledgeand skills
Clarifying roles to your subordinates
Enriching their jobs
Delegation and
Asking for roles commensurate with what you
finally crystallise
Enriching first the repertoire of your own
knowledge and skills
Role-crystallisation does not mean your coming
up one fine morning to your boss and saying:
These are the functions I have decided I shall
perform from now on!
Role-crystallisation does entail some
preparatory work on yourself. First, determine
what combination of functions you believe you
can best handle taking into account your
current skills, inclinations and efforts you make,
or are willing to put in. This combination of
functions could well be within the logical ambit
of your current job.
But look beyond:
i. Take note of the emerging jobs that your
organisation and you will soon have to take up;
ii. Also, take note of what you have to learn and
unlearn;
iii. And for such new jobs do identify and try to
master the combination of functions that you
may be required to perform.
However, before you do so, you have to be
honestly satisfied that you do have the requisite
knowledge, skill and capability for performing
the new combination of functions. What efforts
have you been making for acquiring the new
skill? Have you done enough, or do you still have
some milestones to cross? If yes, work diligently
to acquire adequate expertise till you are
satisfied.
Once you are satisfied, you have to make known
to your boss and others concerned as to what
functions you would like to perform. This has
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become all the more relevant today in the light of
the changes in jobs, job contents, changes even in
the production profile of your company itself
brought about by technological advancements
and market-driven changes in products, work
methods, and services.
As mentioned earlier, the time has come when
you have to take ownership of your own career.
Some Interesting Cases:
Here are a couple of cases I was personally involved
with in a multinational organisation:
Case I: The Case of a brilliant engineer
This young man who had brilliant academic records
at an IIT was recruited as a Management Trainee and
assigned to the Production Department in a largefactory. During the first two years, his annual
performance reports were excellent, and his boss used
to talk about the employee in raptures. But come the
end of the third year, the same boss saw me (I was the
Personnel Director) specifically with the request that
the said employee be removed from his department.
His reasons: the employee had turned totally
indifferent to his job; he had become a dead-weight
and a bad example in the department. When I asked
the employee why his performance had declined sosteeply, he said that right from the beginning he was
assigned duties he had no interest in. He reminded
me that, during the final interviews for selection, he
had clearly stated that he would prefer to do techno-
marketing jobs. But the management placed him in a
factory, instead; and he was now unable to maintain
any interest in the tasks assigned to him. The interview
records substantiated his assertion. He went on to say
that he had already done a correspondence course in
marketing on his own time and at his own expense;
and he was, in fact, considering taking up an
interesting job offer from some other company.
I got in touch with our Marketing Department and
offered this young mans services for a trial period of
three months during which the payroll cost of this
employee would be borne by the Personnel
Department. Within a month, glowing reports began
coming in from the employees new boss; and at the
end of two months, the Marketing Department eagerly
absorbed the employee on a permanent post.
After some ten years of his success-records, that
employee was elevated to the Board of Directors in
Marketing!
Case II: The Case of a much-harassed typistThere was a typist in one of the sections of the Finance
Department at the Head Office. Separated from her
husband, she depended on her job to support herself and
her two children. She tried her best to prove a good typist
in order to retain her job. But her boss, a rigid stickler for
thoroughness and a hard task-master, always found
some fault or another in her work; and he would often
become nasty to her. She told her boss that she was fed
up with the routine chores, and wanted more challenging
tasks. She had told him she had passed stenography andsecretarial examinations at her own expense and she was
even willing to do his secretarial job without any
corresponding increase in her salary. But her boss had
laughed her off. I later came to know that she had started
seeing a psychiatrist because of the stress and agony
caused to her by her boss.
The interesting development that amused me was that
both the boss and the typist saw me separately within
two days each asking to be relieved of the other!
During my investigative chat with the typist, I learnt not
only about her consultations with a psychiatrist but also
about her great desire to use her secretarial expertise.
She admitted that she often failed to do the follow-up
jobs of her boss; but added that these failures were due
to her constant state of anxiety and stress, and the
monotony generated by the mere typing work she had
to do. She urged upon me that she be given a wider-
spectrum job on a trial basis involving planning,
organising, co-ordinating in addition to typing [even
stenography] functions. I was not so sure but the
enthusiasm coupled with self-confidence on her part
encouraged me to take a risk with her.
Just at that time our company was getting ready to host
a very important seminar with participants numbering
twenty or more coming from foreign countries. I
arranged for her to be included, on a trial basis, in the
team of lady secretaries. Within two days of the
commencement of the seminar, I started receiving
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unsolicited praise for this lady for her enthusiasm,
competence, amiability, faultless co-ordination of
secretarial, and travel needs, etc. And at the seminar
dinner on the final day, the participants made a special
mention of this ladys performance, and they even gave
her a gift! Later on, she rose to become the personal
secretary of one the Directors of the Company.
In both the cases, the following inherent lessons are
worth noting:
The persons concerned were misfits in their
assigned jobs, despite their roles being fairly-well
clarified;
Both of them had clear vision of what they were
more suited to do, and would like to do;
Having known this, they had not sat idle despite
the agony and stress they suffered by continuingto do jobs they knew they were not cut out for.
They had gone ahead and equipped themselves
with the required knowledge and expertise. Now
they were just rearing to go making their own
efforts to createthe chance to practise and thus
refine their skills;
When the time of reckoning came, they spoke
out with assertiveness and with confidence
despite the risk involved, and asked for a chance
to prove themselves. In other words, they took
ownership of their career and they crystallised
their roleat their own initiative. They were no
longer passive recipients of roles others would
dole out to them.
It is very important that the top management remains
receptive to such signals from employees who are
seeking to crystallise their roles, and who have the
courage of conviction to take up the matter with their
seniors. Any attempt to ignore, downplay, or browbeatsuch attempts by the employees can prove to be
demoralising for larger number of employees, besides
depriving the organisation of excellent opportunities.
Clarifying Roles to Your Subordinates
Having done your home work on yourself, you now
come to the stage of what you should do to your
subordinates as a preparation for crystallising your
roles. Before you can clarify your roles, you must realise
that your subordinates need to be clear about the roles
you expect them to play.
This you can achieve by means of a simple but
unconventional exercise. May be, once a year, you
could invite your subordinates, once at a time, and ask
each of them to place himself mentally in your
position, and then describe to you what he perceives
to be:
his bosssrole, in terms of his priorities, authority
and constraints
your role, in terms of your bosss priorities,
authority and constraints
your bosss expectations from you, in terms of his
priorities, authority and constraints.
Ask your subordinate to describe the above in thesequence given above, and do your best to put him at
ease, because he will most likely be very reluctant to
offer such descriptions before you. But once he opens
up and offers his perceptions on the above-mentioned
roles, you will discover surprising gaps between his
perceptions and the realities. This gives you a never-
before opportunity to clarify the position and to clear
your subordinates misunderstandings. And this
action on your part will almost automatically clarify
the roles not only your subordinates but yours aswell, in concrete and actionable terms!
A very useful by-product of this exercise is that setting
targets with mutual agreementwill emerge as a natural
corollary.
Enriching their jobs
Enrichment of your subordinates jobs leads to
reinforcing team spirit as well as to crystallisation of
your role. It is very important that your people are
protected from boredom, monotony and a grudging
feeling that their talents are not being fully utilised. As
mentioned earlier, every one craves to feel that his job
is not just a bundle of tasks but it is a calling. This
spirit ofcalling is sustained as long as the job presents
challenges howsoever small they may be for
creativeness, innovations, overcoming problems on
ones own, and the resultant recognition and career
advancements one may get.
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You may feel exasperated that it is not within your
power to change the nature or structure of your
subordinates jobs; but such exasperation does not
hold much water. In fact, we are not even being
suggesting that you change the nature or structure of
the jobs. What you need and is certainly possible
for you is to add progressively, through delegation,small doses of tasks or methods of performance that
would stretch the existing capabilities or skills of your
subordinates; this itself can go a long way to add zest
to their working. It is undoubtedly in your hands to
offer guidance, skill-support, encouragement and
recognition to your subordinates. It is just this
approach on your part, which will protect your
subordinates from the corroding effects of monotony,
boredom and under-utilisation.
Actually, a little deeper thinking will lead you to the
realisation that finding out new ways to enrich the jobs
of your subordinates is more a challenge to you than to
your subordinates! It dares you to remain innovative
on task assignments on an ongoing basis. By accepting
and acting upon this challenge, you also pave the
way to greater team spirit and effectiveness of your
subordinates on the one hand, and to greater
crystallisation of your own role, on the other.
Delegation
Please try to give honest answers to these questions:
i. Do you delegate?
ii. Do you delegate enough?
iii. What, in the name of delegation, do you pass
on to your subordinates?
Here are some specific criteria for your consideration
while answering these questions:
Do you delegate tasks that are interesting and
important? Or do you appropriate all such tasks
for yourself?
Are the tasks that you delegateuninteresting,
repetitive, risky, unglamorous, which you are
cunning enough to dump on your subordinates?
Do you or are you prepared to invest your
time and efforts on your subordinates to help
them tackle the newer and difficult tasks?
Do you budget for mistakes, which your
subordinates are likely to make while performing
delegated tasks, as a necessary price for their
learning to accomplish newer and more
challenging tasks?
Do you think you have genuine concern for
imparting superior knowledge, skill and self-
confidence to your subordinates?
After you come up with your honest answers to these
questions, you are ready to crystallise your stand on
delegation. The clearer you are about delegation, and
the more prepared you become to delegate tasks in
the right sense, the better shall be the roles of your
subordinates, and healthier shall be your crystallised
role.
2. Conclusion
Even where almost all the basic principles of
management are put into operation, individuals in the
organisation still may lack - and require a clear sense
of direction. It is this sense of direction among the
individuals that ensures that tasks and assignments will
be accomplished properly, within desirable cost, on
time and efforts. Therefore, a clear and easily
understandable structuring of roles is imperative.
Without that, there can be no certainty that your peopleare going to achieve targets or achieve them every time.
In any case, without role-clarity even the high-fliers
flounder and end up as nervous wrecks.
While role-clarity is desirable, it fulfils only a partof the
requirement. Role crystallisation represents the next
milestone beyond the one where someone else tells
you what your role is; and that is where you are ready
to achieve self-actualisation. It is actually the result
the expression of your urge to take ownership of
your job so that you can contribute your best in terms
of your expertise, temperament, enthusiasm, sense of
values, priorities and leadership qualities. You alone
know best what your potentials are.
Many of you may ask why at all we should go out of
our way to contribute beyond what our clarified role
requires. Even a decade ago, the only reason, which
was offered, was that those {few} who have the inner,
compulsive urge for self-actualisation would naturally
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16If Self-Actualisation is your goal,
begin with Role Crystallisation
like not to be shackled by the role assigned to them.
Instead of fitting themselves into their assigned role,
they would like the role to fit into them.
While this reason still holds good, another very real
reason has come into being in todays ambience. Due
to the great changes already here and now in
technology, job profile and even your companys
products profile, there is no guarantee that your current
jobs will exist. Nor is there any guarantee that your
employer will, or can, take care of your career. For this
reason as well, you will have to take charge of your
own career. That means not only taking charge of the
career you have or you wish to have, but togive shape
to the very role you playso that your career is ensured.
These observations apply not only to the seniors; they
apply to all levels of managers. What all managers needis to play a pro-active rolein giving shape to the role
they would like to play in consonance with their
talent, their temperament, and their sense of values.
This is something each manager alone can do on his
own; no one else can design this and tell him to act
upon it. You yourself have to craft the crystallisation
of your role, at your own initiative.
Essentially, role crystallisation is a function of self-
development. Unless you upgrade yourself, how can
you justifiably take a position that your current role is
not big or suitable enough for you? Initially, and in
large measure, it calls for your efforts to refine and
upgrade yourself to your fullest potential for its own
sake. Earning promotions or ensuring career-
positioning will take care of itself, in due course.
What it boils down to is thatyou shall have to begin
with auditing and re-orienting yourself. It is this need
for self-development that gives relevance to the
recommendations that you do introspection to findout how you stand on self-motivation, decision-
making, assertiveness and planning and then re-
orient yourself to rise to your full potentials. Unless
you are sound on these factors, no one will take you
seriously when you try to give shape to your role.
It requires you to willingly embark upon an agni-
parikshaa that takes you through the chemical
process of sublimation of your faculties and qualities.
Such sublimation, after the cooling-off process, leads
to your gettingcrystallised, which ultimately converts
you into a jewel-like substance and imparts to you a
permanent lustre! These shall stand you in good stead
even if/when all kinds of cataclysmic changes
surround you.
However, it is not enough that you do things to yourself
to expand your capabilities; you must also do likewise
to your subordinates for enriching them and their jobs.
Your people too must be built up to their full potential,
and they must be enthusiastic enough to offer youtheir willing support in your efforts to play your role
crystallised by you. It is in this context that we
recommend that you clarify to your people the
interdependence of all roles in your department,
enrich their jobs, and develop them through
delegation.
Only after you have made these developmental
inputs on yourself and on your people, you are in a
position to give a crystallised shape to your own role,
which, automatically, includes the role of your team.
Having done so, you must speak out, and ask for a
chance to prove yourself on the new role you wish to
play. And during the trial period, you must do your
best to master the required skill. This is the crux of the
exercise on role-crystallisation.
Role-crystallisation {even role-clarity} is not a process
that others will arrange and offer to you. You have to
reach out, and create the ambience in which your roles
become clear; and, beyond that they are crystallised
in consonance with your personality make-up.
As a result, it is you and your organisation as well that
shall come out the richer for it!
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17GROWTH Vol. 36 No. 2 July-September 2008
Milestone Events Towards Better Resource
Planning and A Pragmatic Organisational
Approach in Implementing ERP
Dr. Onkar Nath Dutta*
ABSTRACT
Computers and Information Technology have contributed lot in improving the
efficiency of different aspects of the organisation. In these efficiency improvement
endeavour there had been few milestone events towards better resource planning and
those have been discussed in this paper. Supply Chain Management (SCM) and
Enterprises Resources Planning (ERP) are the latest techniques in this series have
encompassed almost every aspect of the organisation. ERP has already been
implemented in number of organisations in India, but due to wrong implementation
plan, some organizations could not derive the desired results. Taking the clue from
those failures a logical implementation steps have also been suggested in this paper.
Introduction
In this competitive world, the profit is achieved mostly by cutting cost and not byincreasing price. Accepting a technology, cutting cost is possible only by efficientutilisation of resources which in turn is possible by taking right decision by
processing right information at right time and also taking action on them at right
time. With the advent of computer and Information Technology (IT), there has beena sea change in the data collection and processing techniques. As a result, efficiency
of organisations have improved manyfold. In this journey of efficiency improvement
by proper planning implementing and controlling the resources, the first name that
comes is Material Requirement Planning (MRP) and the latest till date is Enterprises
Resources Planning (ERP). The present paper primarily traces the foot print of the
Journey from MRP to ERP.
Material Requirement Planning
Material requirement planning (MRP) is an inventory control process carried out
with the help of computer to estimate time phased requirements of assembly,subassemblies and components that are used for manufacturing product on
assembly line principles. Primarily IBM developed this in 1960. Japanese were first
to introduce the technique in industry, but its large scale implementation started
around 1970 in USA. MRP technique begins with exploding the end product and
developing the tree of assembly, subassemblies and components, known as Bill of
Material (BOM). The demand of end product obtained from Master Production
Schedule (MPS) when collated with BOM, gives the gross material requirement,
which is converted to net material requirement by deducting the materials already
* Management Consultant and Management Educator, Ranchi
Feature Article
ERPERPERPERPERP
essentiallyessentiallyessentiallyessentiallyessentially
makes sure thatmakes sure thatmakes sure thatmakes sure thatmakes sure that
a firmsa firmsa firmsa firmsa firms
manufacturingmanufacturingmanufacturingmanufacturingmanufacturing
decisions aredecisions aredecisions aredecisions aredecisions are
made taking intomade taking intomade taking intomade taking intomade taking into
account theiraccount theiraccount theiraccount theiraccount their
impact on theimpact on theimpact on theimpact on theimpact on the
supply chain -supply chain -supply chain -supply chain -supply chain -
both upstreamboth upstreamboth upstreamboth upstreamboth upstream
and downand downand downand downand down
streamstreamstreamstreamstream.....
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18Milestone Events Towards Better Resource Planning and
A Pragmatic Organisational Approach in Implementing ERP
in hand and in the pipe line. The purchase orders for
each material are then released as per their lead-time.
This system cuts down the inventory and reduces
delivery period.
Manufacturing Resources Planning
Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRPII) is anextension of MRP to the control area and encompasses
all the resources required for manufacturing. In the
1980s this had been attempted when marketing and
purchase information had been integrated with MRP,
BOM and details were shared with engineering
information, order release and order receipt where
tried to be integrated with billing and accounts
payable. With the increase in computing power,
software capabilities, storage etc. and by providing
numerous feed back loops between different modulesplanning on a piecemeal basis has been reduced.
Supply Chain Management
Global competitiveness and the expectations of
shareholders for high returns have shifted corporate
thinking from physical distribution management to
integrated logistic management and finally to Supply
Chain Management (SCM). SCM encompasses all the
facilities, functions and activities in procuring,
producing and delivering product / Service from
suppliers end to customers end. SCM performs two
distinct functions.
Physical function
The most visible part, which includes procurement
and conversion of raw material into parts,
components and finished goods and transporting all
of them from one point in the supply chain to the next.
Market Mediated Function
Less visible but equally important whose purpose isto ensure that the variety of product reaching the
market place matches with the consumer s
requirements.
Uncertainties
Now uncertainties like wrong forecast, poor quality of
inputs, machine breakdown, late deliveries etc. have
made the supply chain a complex one. Organizations
try to cope with these uncertainties by increasing the
inventory, which means cost. They want that the
suppliers will maintain the inventories and supply the
items as and when required. This means shifting the
inefficiency from one stage to the other. So instead of
stand alone, if the suppliers, manufacturers and
distributors work together by sharing information, the
inherent uncertainties may be reduced considerably.
SCM & ERP
Integration right from suppliers to customers as a part
of Chain and establishing planning and control
system, as an integrated one is a complex process. This
may be achieved by installing Enterprises Resources
Planning (ERP). The term ERP was first coined by
Gartner group of Stanford, Connecticut. It is neither a
conceptual break through, nor trully a new idea. ERP
essentially makes sure that a firms manufacturing
decisions are made taking into account their impact
on the supply chain - both upstream and down stream.
ERP packages aim to provide single integrated
software system handling a host of corporate
functions, including finance, human resources,
materials managements, sales and distribution. Other
tools which are also available with ERP like generating
web interfaces, coding and programme generation for
specialized requirements, report generation, data
import / export and a library of best practices fromwhich the best process for implementation, may be
chosen. The thoroughness of ERP packages is also
revealed by their multilingual capabilities as well as
their ability to work across different time zones and to
cope with multiple currencies. These characteristics
are very much desired by large organizations who want
to expand their activities throughout the world.
SCM Integration Strategies
In traditional management suppliers, manufacturers
and distributors operate independently maintaining
confidentiality of their critical information. But in SCM
they are linked in the form of a chain to develop and
deliver products as a single organization. So, SCM
requires there types of integration :
Information Integration
Decision Integration
Financial Integration
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19GROWTH Vol. 36 No. 2 July-September 2008
Barring the first, the other two are conceptual and will
be dealt towards the end.
Information Integration
The input of ERP is the information gathered through
Electronic Data Interchanges (EDI). The customers
send their orders via EDI directly to order processingcentre, which automaticall