Macro salary of a Microfinance CEO!

I have been following very closely the controversy and the tussle between the CEO, Founder and the Board these last few days.I was quite startled when I read that the CEO of this micro finance company was being paid a salary of Rs 2 crores plus and this set me thinking.
Firstly, here's a company that's doing great work at the bottom of the pyramid and I am quite certain that all the employees of this company are working very hard at every level to ensure that the company, its employees and customers succeed. What will the employee down the line feel when he/she sees their CEO earn a 100 times, 200 times more than what they take home? When the company talks of team work and team spirit, how can one man be paid so disproportionately as compared to everyone else? Is he the only person who is contributing to the success of the company? If I was working for this organization, I would feel highly demotivated to know that my CEO earns in a month what would take me years?
What was happening in Wall Street is now coming to India - where organizations are rewarding a few people for short term quarterly results, instead of rewarding teams who focus on creating long term sustainable enterprises.And we know what happened!
Mr Narayanmurthy said it wisely when he stated that the highest level salary must be no more than 20 times that of the lowest paid employee in the organization.
I am proud that this is the equation in our company!

Unfair and Ugly!

In this year's Brand Equity Top 10 brands survey I was shocked to find Fair&Lovely ranked as the the 9th or 10th brand!Here's a product that should be banned but instead we are celebrating it? Kudos to Hindustan lever, Cavin Kare, Dabur, etc who are all raking in big bucks by promoting apartheid.Fair and Lovely, Fair and Handsome (now for men too!), fairever, is this fair? Thanks (actually no thanks)to the battery of advertising by all these illustrious companies, women/men with dark complexions live their lives lamenting their fate and of course desperately buying these predatory products in a bid to "survive". I wonder if the people who create these products and their great friends in advertising who create the "fair is beautiful" messages so convincingly ever pause to wonder the damage on the pysche of people who can never turn fair even if they bathed in these products all their lives? Isnt this irresponsible? (although I was part of this industry for almost 15 long years)Increasingly I am beginning to detest advertising for its misleading and exaggerated messages.
This message of "fair is beautiful" gets into every sphere of life - of course we are all familiar of the "wanted tall, fair, beautiful" matrimonial ads. But what worries me is the concern that the same standards may get applied in interviews, promotions and even friendships? The conditioning of our society on the "white man's" skin legacy continues.
Thank you Hindustan Lever, Cavin Kare, Dabur and your competitors for ensuring this!

The Great Delegator (or the great dictator?)

Whenever I run a session on Delegation, there are great discussions that take place. Lots of questions, points of view and many concerns! One thing is for sure - this topic always generates a lot of interest and this to me is very encouraging because it tells me that today's Managers want to delegate and delegate effectively - only they would like to know how to go about delegating.
Firstly, many of them have been victims of poor delegation and hence either repeat the mistakes or completely avoid delegating assuming that to be the right thing to do!
Effective delegation starts with operating in the right paradigm - the key building block is about realising that delegating is not about getting the job done (although this is a by product)but all about growing the person through the opportunity of delegation! If the short term focus is only about getting the job done, we've missed the bus completely!Great Managers see delegation as a golden opportunity to grow their people and built into this opportunity is the mentoring that comes with it.
I was fortunate to have a boss early in life who was a great delegator with an eye for handpicking assignments and delegating them to specific people who needed to grow in their capabilities. I also noticed the way he used to team people up to complement each other's strengths!
Contrast this to a poor delegator who's only intent is to show how indispensable he is!Barks instructions, catches people making mistakes,snoops around all the time, picks the wrong person for the wrong job and finally exposes people so that he/she can parade their greatness in taking over and getting the job done!
A successful delegator is also one who is secure with himself/herself - an insecure Manager clings to their jobs and their specialisation. What happens if a subordinate learns to do a job better than them? Will they still be around? These fears cripple their delegation style and this is the "Bonsai Manager" Mr Gopalakrishnan talks about who creates bonsai employees and the organization remains stunted in every way!
The great delegator works on a simple set of principles - he/she must make themselves redundant in their current roles, their only job is to nurture talent and when they are no longer required they move on to a new team, a new challenge which needs their thoughtful attention! The poor delegator counts the seeds inside an apple, the great Delegator sees an apple orchard in every seed!
Delegation is the No 1 tool in the Manager's Tool Kit!

Role Models for our students?

Increasingly I find Schools and Colleges inviting politicians as the Chief Guests for Convocations! I find this trend disturbing because what is the message we are giving our children? The convocation ceremony is a once-in-a-lifetime moment for these students and it is a great moment to "inspire" them at such a sacred event.
For the life of me how can any current politician inspire our students? With so much rampant corruption and power grabbing and plain downright unruly and selfish behaviors what are we telling our students when we invite such politicians to give away their prized Degree Certificates? Are we telling them that power and position at all costs is what matters in today's society? The end justifies the means?
I was delighted to see Dr Abdul kalam as the Chief Guest at my daughter's convocation at her college - what an inspiration! what a role model of humility, accessibility, and simplicity! what lofty thoughts he shared!A moment that every student in the hall treasured and I am sure embedded in their psyche for life as they move on!
And I was dismayed to see a popular politician - as the Chief Guest at my other daughter's convocation!
Is it because College establishments, out of their own compulsions and selfishness for grants, omissions and commissions, "bribe" the establishment through such blatant psychophancy by inviting these politicians - so that they can go back to them for favors later?
The much larger question is - is there a dearth of role models for our children or are we changing our role models?

Precaution is better than cure that goes for everything

I am appalled by the sight of little school kids stuffed in autos perilously perched in the morning and evening rush hour!In my corporate training sessions, we talk about how many of us become spectators in our lives and watch things happen. I decided that I will at least write about this hideous practice. Not just stuffed autos, but over loaded school bags that our little angels have to lug to school.

How can parents expose their children to such a grave risk? How can school authorities turn a blind eye? I am not sure if I can ask the auto driver or the traffic constable if they have a conscience - it may be too much of an ask - so I wont.But coming back to Parents - if this all you care about your own children, I dread to think of the care and concern these folks display in other areas of their lives - to their colleagues, to their customers, neighbours....

And every now and then, we wait for tragedy to strike and for the media to make a spectacle of it to get eyeballs and after a commercial break things get back to the way they used to be!

Here's someone who decided enough is enough...


JALANDHAR NEWS: 4 Schoolkids An Auto From March 20
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The traffi c s taffs are i n to uc h wi th s c ho o l m anagem ents and p arents , newly ap p o i nted As s i s tant Com m i s s i oner of Pol i ce (Tra f f i c) Di l ji n der Si n gh Dhi l l on sa i d on Sa tu rda y .
An aw areness camp aign h as b een lau nch ed in th e ru n-u p to th e March 20 deadline, af ter w h ich vio lato rs w ill f ace ch allans, h e said.
Smo k ing, u se o f mo b ile p h o nes du ring driving, ju mp ing red ligh ts, u se o f red b eaco ns w ith o u t p¬ermissio n w ill invite actio n.
Tw o -w h eeler riders h ave b een ask ed to u se h elmets carrying an ISI trademark , a no rm th at w ill also invite a ch allan if vio lated.


Can we have more such leaders like Dijinder Singh in our midst?

One would imagine that at least when it comes to our children, they would tug at our hearts to bring out the best in us....but when I look at the next over stuffed, dangerously moving auto I am not so sure....we have become hardened, indifferent money making machines.

Quality - preaching versus practice

I chanced upon this banner and couldnt resist snapping the picture! So often a number of flashy initiatives are launched in organizations and they fizzle out because employees dont see the Management or the initiators of the idea walking their talk - like in the picture. Shouldn't the banner reflect the message that is printed on the it?
Likewise, when it comes to training and development. Management and Leaders talk about the need for Learning but are never seen in the classrooms either as learners or trainers. Reportedly, Jack Welch, when he was Chairman at GE, invested 30-40% of his time at Crotonville, GE's famed MDC. Here, I find senior managers are either too busy or are above training! Whats the message we are sending to our people when we launch big fanfare learning initiatives, just turn up for the kick off session, never to be seen again? When I invite Senior managers to follow through on their participants' training assignments, again, very little response.
Learning, Quality, Excellence, Change, everything starts first with us - like a wise person said "What you are doing is so LOUD, I cant here what you are saying" or cant read what all the wonderful posters or banners are telling us!

Mentor or Tormentor?

The whole of May we have been exploring the topic Mentoring and it was interesting to see a lot of questions/discussions/doubts/differences around this topic. What was gratifying for me was the feeling that I got uniformly from all sessions about the importance of the mentoring process, along with the dismay that there simply not enough mentoring and not enough volunteers to mentor!
It is important here to differentiate between coaching and mentoring although there's a school of thought that will disagree and disapprove of my distinction between the two. To me coaching is all about a specific skill - where there's a skill gap or knowledge gap, a coach comes in to fill this gap with his/her expertise in this area. For eg a cricket coach, a tuition master ( I have lots of whining to do about this later in this blog)CAT/IIT coaching centres, etc.An IPL coach now coaches his batsmen on how to sledge the ball over the fence - thats the new cricket as we now see it!
Mentoring is a lot deeper and has got to do with "teaching a man how to fish" versus coaching which is giving a man fish to eat!
Mentoring is all about influencing the "Being" of the person, while "Coaching" is all about the "Doing" of the person.
Coaching can be forced - mentoring cannot. A mentee must "want" to be mentored and a mentor must earn the trust and respect of the mentee without which it just does not work.
While Parenting should ideally be all about mentoring, parents have become coaches of their children with a vengeance! An anxious mother called me the other day and wanted me to suggest some class for her 14 year old who has a little gap in his week which she would like to fill up! Chemistry/Physics/Maths tuition, tennis coaching, karate classes, keyboard classes not to mention early CAT/IIT coaching. Mentoring has been delegated to the "idiot box"!
In this fast paced, quadrant 1 kind of lifestyle, Q2 focus areas like mentoring are disappearing and at this rate we will only groom more and more transactional managers who are "tormentors" of short term results rather than long term people leaders!
Anybody ready to volunteer as mentors? I have enough mentees crying for this kind of guidance!