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Innovation is the latest buzzword everyone seems to be talking about. Various Studies have also show that Leders today are more focused on the essentails of coming up with Innovative solutions and ideas to remain in Business. Daniel Scocco opines that people are using Innovation as a magic word for filling there speech with the term and not concerned at all in understanding the dynamics behind the phenomenon. The first confusion to dismiss is the difference between invention and innovation. The former refers to new concepts or products that derive from individual’s ideas or from scientific research. The latter, on the other hand, represents the commercialization of the invention itself. It is important to have this difference clearly outlined because an invention may have little economic value, if at all. In order to monetize an invention it is necessary to transform it into innovation, and such transformation is possible once we find a target customer, application or market. It’s tru...

EM Sky of Mind Unbound rightly said that it’s the “underlying system of thought on which all business is based”. The fact remains that Human Resource Dept itself stands for the Human element in the murky world of Business. I’ll go to add that HR should rather be the “Humane” face and custodian of Values, ethics and culture of the organization. It may do so in the form of employee engagement, CSR or any other form but it should take the extra strive to give each individual in the organization an identity which is different from one’s employee no. and role. Can’t agree with more on what he said “the reality of human nature and the importance of the Human Touch must be integrated into our understanding of "efficiency." The reality is that efficiency is being associated only with getting things done. Somehow organizations are not prepared to accept the individual nature of each employee into account when it comes to design HR processes. Although being in HR we have little scope...

If you thought that employees will settle only for Pay hikes and nothing else then think again. Consider this “The Hudson Highland Group, a an employee-benefits consulting firm, recently surveyed 10,000 U.S. employees and found that, while three-quarters are satisfied with their current pay, almost half (44%) would change the mix of cash and benefits if given the chance; and of those, the largest group (33%) would opt for more flexible hours.” It’s true that for employees today give great importance to personal space and flexi timing is just one of the big incentives for the employee’s .However the nature of Job here becomes more critical as it may not be possible for every one is the organization to have a flexi timing. Organizations need to accept and adopt flexi timing as one of the best means for attracting, and retaining talent.

Does Executive Intelligence play a critical role in deciding the Organizations performance? In his recent book, Executive Intelligence, Justin Menkes proposes another set of hypotheses, among them that too much emphasis has been given to personality and style and too little to types of intelligence that enhance leadership performance."When it comes to predicting work performance, cognitive-ability tests have been demonstrated to be approximately ten times as powerful as personality assessments. . . . Personality is not a differentiator of star talent. It is an individual's facility for clear thinking or intelligence that largely determines their leadership success." Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton cite studies that maintain that no more than 10 percent of the performance of an organization can be attributed to its leader as opposed to other forces. Menkes claims that executive intelligence, as opposed to knowledge (which is more a matter of experience), can be developed...

Fierce Competition, peer pressure and sometimes individual own proclivity to work for extended hours may lead to the situation of becoming workaholic. According to Juliet B. Schor , an economist at Boston College in Massachusetts and author of the book The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, putting in long hours isn't necessarily problematic. After all, the rewards of hard work-a fatter paycheck, bonus points with the boss, satisfaction from your accomplishments-abound. It's only when the daily grind eclipses other areas of your life that it's time to stop and rethink your schedule. Paying attention to how you're feeling away from work may offer the best insight, says Robinson. On a scale from one to five, with five being most satisfied, rate your satisfaction with your family life, friendships, health and hobbies. If your total is less than 10 points, it might be time to cut back on work.

Some interesting thoughts on what People think about Human Resources. Genuine Curiosity questions “How human is your Human Resource “? The HR folks provided lots of value in hiring and coaching. They also helped talk me through difficult situations. I'm lucky enough to work in a small company now, where I get a lot of this kind of assistance, but in large companies that is harder and harder to come by. In my last "big" company experience, our company grew to the point where HR was one local person who basically dealt with coordinating insurance forms, paperwork associated with hiring and firing, and proofreading personnel reviews. They didn't feel like a partner any more - just an information desk. Mind Unbound has some thoughts too.. “Human resources departments should be engaged in supporting employees in their own humanity. They should be about reinventing corporate culture to fit the whole human being, creating fun environments of creativity, innovation, job sat...

One of the things I have often been discussed on this blog is the impact of New Social Networking tools on Organizations. On the other hand these tools are also having a significant impact on the Recruitment and Staffing functions. This post on has some interesting observation on the latest Buzz in the Virtual world. “Social Networking is the Internet's latest darling. And throughout the last year it has been moving quickly into the professional arena of recruiting and staffing. The loudest of these entrants is LinkedIn and Jobster. Jobster was first and loudest but LinkedIn and others are making noise and you can bet there will be many more coming soon, including existing recruitment software and services powerhouses adding this functionality to their offerings.In many ways what is currently happening with "social networking" and variations of this business model (like Jobster, etc.) reminds me a little of the dot-com days. Lots of hope and excitement, new and inspiring...

Academic qualifications are useful in demonstrating that a person has achieved a high level of knowledge in a particular subject and developed a range of skills, such as analysing or written communication, that can be useful in working environments," "However, they should never be used as the sole means of judging whether a candidate has what it takes to succeed in an organization and any business that relies on qualifications in isolation is just taking a short cut. Well sounds familiar, a typical question which most of us in HR face when we come across CV’s. So what’s more important the qualification, degree or the experience? A study of 375 major European employers by HR consultancy Cubiks found that fewer than one in 10 (eight per cent) believe that academic qualifications are always a reliable indicator of how a candidate will perform in a role. The survey also revealed that lies and exaggerations have become common features of application forms and CVs with almost nine...

Your culture -- and the mission, vision, values and behaviors that produce it -- must be unique to your company. You have to build them into your company and measure them. Senior leadership has to be creatively repetitious in preaching them. You have to talk them up again and again. You have to get them into your company's bloodstream. But once you do, you have the basis for a high-performance organization. William C Finnie says that “Success can begin with explicit statements of mission, vision and values unique to each company but to Change a Culture, Start with Changing Behavior”

As a HR person one interview which you must send to your CEO is the one by Jack Welch, in which he talks about what HR has been doing and what it should do. Amazing insights and one liner which we really make you wonder how interesting it would be to be a part of this man’s HR team. Read this…. At too many companies, unfortunately, the human resources department gets it wrong.Either it operates as a cloak-and-dagger society or a health-and-happiness sideshow. Those are extremes, of course, but if there is anything we have learned over the past five years of travelling, it is that HR rarely functions as HR should. “Look at the companies today where the CFO reigns supreme and HR is relegated to the background. It just doesn't make sense. Sure, the accountant can tell you the financials. But the director of player personnel knows what it takes to win: how good each player is and where to find strong recruits to fill talent gaps. That's what HR should be all about. And, as you poin...

As study by Vodafone's Working Nation report , based on a survey of more than 2,500 workers, employers and entrepreneurs, found that six out of 10 British workers exhibit chameleon tendencies whereby their personality and identity changes when they walk into the office. Some of the other tendencies which the study reported are: · A hardcore of employees (some six per cent of the sample) who felt compelled to change their identity completely to fit in at work. ·The reason for this tension is a major incompatibility between the values of the individual and those of their employer. ·Nearly two thirds say they simply don't believe in what their company stands for and more than half say they have changed something about themselves to adapt to their working environment. · "Identity-stressed" workers are three times more likely to work for companies whose values they felt uncomfortable with and twice as likely to lie to succeed and let colleagues take the blame for their mis...

One my earlier post mentioned about Innovation Footprints . Harm Joose is trying to come with an an assessment tool to measure innovation footprint. He outlines 3 steps to evaluate and measure innovation footprints based on the Innovation Footprint mode. -Leader - Member exchange: trust, mutual liking and respect in a supervisor-subordinate relationship -Role expectations: degree to which a supervisor expects subordinate to be innovative -Support for Innovation: degree of perception of the individual that the organisation is supporting innovation -Intuitive Problem Solving Style: generating solutions by having looking from different perspectives ·Evaluating measurements ·Creating an assessment question list ·Translating the measurement ranking to a figure that can be used for peer-comparisons My thoughts on evaluating measurements. To being with we must define what are going to measure and how we types of innovation footprints we want to capture. A descriptive questionnaire for capturi...

How do you make your exit memorable? Well certainly not the way France's football hero Zinedine Zidane ended his glorious career BBC has an Interesting article which suggest 10 things to do on the last day of your career . · Use your leaving speech to deliver a verbal Zidane-style headbutt. Affairs, expenses scams, inflated bonuses, wigs, how the place has gone to the dogs. · Leave a challenge for your successor. · If David Beckham can cry when he's leaving his job (as England captain) then so can I. Don't. Bad move. · Leaving speech II. Talk at interminable length about your own glittering career - that time you really showed them who was boss over the faulty photocopier - and deliver rambling anecdotes about characters who left years ago. · Hand your identity dog tag to the craziest frother in the shopping centre and tell them where they can get free coffee and meet lots of new and hospitable friends. · That "exit" interview. This will be the first time you'...

Mittal steel made history by finally acquiring Arcelor in tough battle which went well over 5 months before finally the $32.2 billion deal was finalized. Knowledge at Wharton spoke to Aditya Mittal on what was Mittal Steel's strategy in pursuing this acquisition? When the company encountered resistance, how did it frame its negotiation strategy? What will the deal mean for the world steel industry? The most important thing is that this is a merger of equals, and we truly and deeply believe in that. I think a merger of equals can be successful if we have an open, transparent and performance-oriented culture, and that is what we will be instilling. At the end of the day, I do not believe that the cultures of Arcelor and Mittal Steel are that disparate. We obviously come from different backgrounds, but the vision has been the same. In the global steel industry we operate within the same markets. Our market conduct has been the same. Our attitude towards operational excellence has bee...

Yesterdays I’d posted on Accidental innovation and the positive roles which organization can play in fostering a learning culture by helping individuals come with innovative thoughts on different processes and ideas. Another interesting article on Business week has a story on how everyone fears failure, but breakthroughs depend on it. The best companies embrace their mistakes and learn from them. "Getting good" at failure, however, doesn't mean creating anarchy out of organization. It means leaders -- not just on a podium at the annual meeting, but in the trenches, every day -- who create an environment safe for taking risks and who share stories of their own mistakes. It means bringing in outsiders unattached to a project's past. It means carving out time to reflect on failure, not just success. In addition to making sure performance evaluations take a long-term view, managers should also think about celebrating smart failures . (Those who repeat their mistakes, of c...

Is Innovation always planned or is it merely accidental? In their recent working paper "Accident, Innovation, and Expectation in Innovation Process," authors Robert D. Austin and Lee Devin explore the concept of accidental innovation, how it works or doesn't, and how good accidents can be encouraged. Q: How important is the role of accident in the creative process? Does this happen often? Part of the problem is that the word "accident" is rather imprecise; not all accidents are equally accidental. They propose a way of defining the "intensity" of an accident, by which we mean, roughly, how far outside intentions (and expectations) an outcome really is. Q: Is there a way innovators can encourage good accidents? In other words, is there anything we can control to foster this process? A: Artists think they develop a talent for causing good accidents. Equally or perhaps even more important, they believe they cultivate an ability to notice the value in i...

HR experts explore the most often asked question ,which every HR professional, student ponders about at one or other point in his career. What effort does it takes to make organizations take HR roles seriously? Peter Cappelli shares his experience. About 25 percent of those being interviewed reported that their HR groups were marginalized in their organizations. Whether that is a lot or a little depends on your perspective, but it is, if nothing else, interesting that even those inside a function were aware that there were more important tasks that HR should be handling, which means that they could see what those other tasks should be. Not surprisingly, those who were cut out of the action reported it was because they were concentrating on transactional business, the "must do" topics in the function. It’s a common situation being faced by most of us, now the next question is how we do change the scenario and what does HR leaders needs to do to change this perception. #The be...

The “Carbon footprint” concept which tries to answer how much carbon do you consume and release into the atmosphere.Where is that carbon going and what impact does it have on the planet? It has being extended in the context of Innovation by Jeffrey Phillips . If together we can think about pollution and how we, each of us, can contribute to reducing our carbon footprint through simple actions, then certainly each of us can think about our "innovation footprint" at work. What actions or projects are you working on that could have an "innovation footprint"?In the "Carbon footprint" example, there are inherent rewards. Each of us gets to breathe cleaner air or enjoy a more pristine Earth. Participating in the activity brings rewards to yourself, your family and to all mankind. Likewise, an "innovation footprint" program needs to have rewards. How do the people within your organization enjoy the rewards of increased innovation? Increased profit-shar...