Daily infusions of Drucker's words

Got this as a gift from Alan. It's exactly what I almost got myself. Pretty excited about reading this book!

Ripped it open and gobbled up the few lessons for this week.
The theme centres around time.
Managing, recording and consolidating time.
Drucker suggests that we record how we use our time to enforce discipline and to better understand how we use this precious resource. Might be a little too extreme for me!

But what I liked was his advice on consolidating time. To be effective, we have to be able to chunk time properly. On paper, a day filled back to back with an assortment of 30 min, 60 min meetings may seem to work. However, for me, there's a lag time in switching from one task to another ... and often the creative juices (the higher value added returns on my time) only comes after 15-20 min when concentrating on a task. Am seriously shortchanging myself if I don't try to chunk!

Will be writing more about the book as the days progress ....

Strategy bites back - Henry Mintzberg

A very short book giving various perspectives on strategy and planning. It is rather hilarious at some parts as i could certainly relate to the issues that I encounter in the workplace.

There are some takeaways from the book about strategy, even as it pokes fun at the subject. Here are the gems:

• Strategy cannot only be the function of a strat planning team, which simply takes information from the ground units and then churn out grand plans which must be followed. It has to be distributed across the organisation.
• Often times. strategy and prediction are "wrong" when applied to reality. However, the true value of strategy in these situations is that it galvanises the imagination and commitment of the people to get them to do something, anything at all. The reassurance of a plan enables people to act.
• However, of course, badly founded statistics, forecasts and plans can also lead people to take disastrous actions.
  
• The current structure of organisations places reason above experience, and hence we often have young officers with little experience leading people with experience on the ground. i.e. separation of strategy from tactics is the norm.
• Many times, strategic planning becomes obsessed with the processes and frameworks, and does not generate new insights at all. (I'm very familiar with this!)
• Even experts cannot agree whether strategy is a top down or bottom up thing. However, some companies have managed to embrace both and make it work ... so maybe that's the soluti0n!
• Culture and strategy may be more similar than one thinks. I'm still trying to digest this point ... so till I manage to, it will remain as a short and abrupt sentence :)
  

The Differentiated Workforce - Becker, Huselid and Beatty

A good friend Alan had introduced me to the first book in the series - the HR scorecard. Which I tried my best to complete, but found great difficulty - which I think owes to the fact that my dearth of HR experience makes it hard for me to relate to the concepts in the book. And also, as he had warned, the book may have been written with a slight academic slant.

After that tough struggle, I made the commitment to go back to that book again someday. As fate (or my winding along the aisles of Times bookstore) would have it, I came across and decided to pick up the third book in the series - the differentiated workforce. It was a very insightful read, and one which will be very beneficial for my upcoming posting. The crux of the book is as follow (mixed in with some of my interpretations):

• Instead of putting people first, organisations should put strategy first, and then recruit / place people according to strategy
• To achieve this, the organisation would need to learn how the different positi0ns map to its final strategic outcomes, and then determine which are the "A" positions that contribute disproportionately.
• The rest of the positions are identified as "B"s - where they perform supporting functions to the "A" positions, in contributing to the strategic outcomes and "C", where the strategic impact is minimal.
  
• The characteristics of "A" positions are employee performances have huge variations, implying that talent can then be fully exploited in such positions.
• An organisation's positions aside, employees can also be grouped according to "A, B,Cs" by their talent and performance.
• Studies show that "A" employees contribute disproportionately and positively to KPIs in his/her role, while "C" employees can sometimes have negative impact.
• The differentiated HR strategy works when "A" employees are placed in "A" positions - and this process must first be led by a firm understanding of what the strategic positions are.
• To achieve this, the responsibility of HR staffing cannot reside only within the H. function. Line managers have to be held accountable for developing the workforce under his charge, giving appropriate assessment and rewards, and designing work to maximise the returns from each position.
• On the compensation framework, pays used to be differentiated on experience and performance solely. Now the authors propose that given the recognition that certain positions are "A" list strategic positions, compensation be differentiated on the basis of positions as well.
  
• Once this architecture is in place, there has to be constant emphasis to the workforce on the organisation's strategic outcomes and how they contribute to it.

There are many other useful information (esp on how to implement this architecture tactically) in the book, but I hope I have brought out the key running theme.

Who's Your City - Richard Florida

Have been doing a quick read of a number of Richard Florida's books lately. His thinking surrounds the creative class - a segment of the population who have the potential and are engaged in jobs that involves the creation of meaningful forms. This would include professions such as scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and architects. people in design, education, arts, music and entertainment, etc.

Florida's arguments are compelling - that the world is not becoming flat. Rather, talent is congregating in ever increasing concentrations in specific places, and this effect feeds upon itself, for talent is naturally attracted to other talents.

Other aspects of a place that attract talent includes cultural and intellectual diversity. Florida attempts to measure the "openness" of a place through proxies such as the Bohemian index (concentration of artistic talent in a place) and the Gay index (concentration of gays in a place).

In this book, Florida introduces the idea that different cities actually have different personalities, attracting people of certain characters and talents to cluster. For an individual, choosing a place to live is as much about finding a place to be at home emotionally as it is for one's full economic potential to be realised. I find this concept behind a place very interesting. Florida further introduced the idea that there are different locations for different stages in an individual's life. Given that talent is going to be increasingly mobile, a different kind of housing model that lies between home ownership and short rentals should be explored. I, for one, am very open to this idea :)