Alfred Nobel changed the course of his life when he read his own obituary which said: Le marchand de la mort est mort (”The merchant of death is dead”) and went on to say, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.” After this, he left a sizable percentage of his property for establishing “The Nobel Prize”. Realizing what he was known for was a life changing event for him.

Sometimes getting to hear what people say about you when you are not there is great source of both inspiration and learning. I recently came across a post by Lisa Haneberg and decided to share it with our employees and other readers of this blog. Here are some excerpts:

Imagine that you are a fly in the elevator one week after you leave. Two people are talking about you. What is it you want them to say?Do you want to be known as the queen of exciting meetings (that would be my goal)? Or the king of provocative analysis? Do you want to be known for always being organized and prepared? Creative and innovative? Fun? Think about for what you want to be known and the type of reputation you seek to build.

I think she has a put that down very well. You can read her full post here.

What does Jack Welch (The legendary CEO of GE) and McKinsey have in common when it comes to managing talent? Both of them seem to agree on the same thing when it comes to managing talent within an organization. In order to build a great company you need to employ great people.

What actually are A , B and C graders ?
“A” grade employees are people that deliver beyond what they are expected to deliver. Look at your best designer, best programmer, best sales guy, best support technician or, look at the best people with the same level (i.e. having same designation), your best manager, your best project lead. - they are the “A” graders within your company. The people whom you truly consider your assets!

“B” grade employee are people who are consistent performers. They don’t do exceptional things but they are fairly consistent at what they are doing. According to Jack Welch - “They are on the fence”

“C” grade employees are poor performers who either cannot deliver results or require too much pushing.

Why can’t you hire “A” Grader directly?
The problem is that there is no sure shot technique that will guarantee that you will have all the “A” class guys working for you. There are not many of them around! Even if you can come up with an objective shortlisting process that can help identify a super-performer from an average-performer, meeting the numbers will be quite a challenge - specially if your company is growing at 100% every year. If you think that everybody who works for you is an “A” grade gut then you have simply not raised the bar high enough.

The good news is that hiring “B” grade performers is not that difficult and as it turns out, it is a better strategy too. There are following possibilities with a guy who is at “B” grade:

1. He will turn out to be a “A” grader (Tiger within Sheep’s skin!)
2. They will remain “B” graders
3. They will actually turn out to be “C” graders

There is a real competition out there for hiring talent. McKinsey says that this “war for talent” requires a new way of thinking for attracting and retaining quality talent:

So you are in a safe position as long as you have a process to recognize and reward the “A” grade people, attract, train and upgrade the “B” grade people and most importantly, identify and get rid of “C” grade employees.

Why getting rid of “C” grade people is important?
There are a lot of reasons why you should get rid of poor performers:

1. You stand for what you tolerate. If you tolerate incompetence then you and your organization stands for it.

2. There is lot of effort required in converting “C” graders to “B” grade. At the same time remember that your “A” graders and “B” graders are spending their time on “C” graders. It’s like throwing an olympic swimmer into a pool with weights tied to his waist and then expecting him to win the race. I firmly believe that the results will be much better if a “A” grade employee spends time on “B” grade than on “C” grade.

How to avoid hiring “C” graders?

I think “C” graders are terrible at recruiting. If you believe, that a person is below average (either within the organization or amongst peers) then that worst thing that you can do is let them hire other employees. So, you should only allow your best and brightest people to select future employees of the organization. Remember, no one can hire someone better than himself. So, while “A” graders will hire “B” graders, “B” and “C” graders will hire even more “C” graders.

Let’s begin the new year by cleaning up some deadwood. Shall we!?

Creativity - The Holy Grail

All organizations relentlessly pursue creativity. To some its a matter of making minor improvements while for others, it is a matter of survival. Without creative people your organization will rot and die.

When we talk about creativity - we generally tend to refer to thinking, reacting, discussing and solving a problem in imaginative ways.

Creative people are characterized by: 

• Flexibility i.e.  They are quick to see the problems from others perspective 
• Fluidity i.e. They can generate a lot of ideas about a given problem or scenario 
• Positive Orientation i.e. They do not get lost in arguments and focus on problems 
• Risk Taking i.e. They do not mind challenging the status-quo 

Above all, there is one more characteristic which people simply tend to ignore and that is ”Knowledge”

Knowledge over Subject or Topic

People who do not have knowledge over their discipline or area of work are not creative! They are guys who are just guessing the answer and are throwing 100 darts in the dark with a hope that atleast one of them hits the board.

Will you call a child who painted a “green colored sun” as creative? Hardly! I will call it lack of knowledge. Give this child a task to design a space craft and I bet, the results will be very creative!! Similarly, bringing such a child to solve management problems is not promoting creativity but a wastage of time.

Regardless of the popular opinion, creativity has to be knowledge driven. Knowledge that is acquired by years of hard work or education and reading. It’s not possible to have expert knowledge in all areas thus; it is not possible to be creative in all areas.

Creativity is subject or topic focused and not generic in nature! Without knowledge even fools may sounds creative. But, you don’t want fools to work for you now, do you? 

Indus Net Technologies gets approximately 200 resumes per day from prospective employees who want to make a mark in the Internet service industry with us.

We thoroughly appriciate the level of interest shown in our organization. However more than 50% resumes gets rejected even without being reviewed. I thought I will explain the reasons for these rejections for the following reasons:

• To be more transparent
• To get more “valid” applications whom we can take to the “review” phase

So here are some top reasons, which disqualifies your application -

• Spamming
• Sending email to all companies in a blast with name of all companies and recruiters in the CC field of the email instead of the BCC field. We expect at least this much knowledge from a prospective recruit about net etiquites.
• Email without any “Subject”
• Emails “typed” in BLOCK letters!

Here are few things that really put us off, but not so much that we discard the application straight away -

• Attached resumes named as Cv.doc or 1.doc (Hey, whose resume is this?)
• No mention of the position for which the application is being made
• Sending applications with no content and just an attachment!
• Forwarded resumes. If you are forwarding from your “Sent items”, please at least spend some time formatting it.
• Unprofessionally formatted name and email address in the “From” field of the email

• Using “pet names” in the “From” field of the email
• Using “cool” names as email address

A good application will have the following properties:

• A well formatted “From field” which shows your full name that you use in all professional correspondance
• A properly formatted “Subject” which tells us about your core skill and experience in few words
• A short paragraph explaining which makes it evident that you are specifically applying at Indus Net Technologies. Try to explain why you want to join and what can you do for this organization. This will give us better reason to call you for an interview.
• Your full name and contact details in your signature
• Attachment of reasonable size and named properly (preferably your name and if you are smart and know how to market your skills, you will put in your skill area as well within the file name and still keep it a valid file name).

I look forward to receive your applications and see you at Indus Net Technologies.

Take care and all the best!