Knowledge Hoarders

I heard a short story in one of the Tamil speeches by Parveen Sultana. There was an old woman in a village, who knew the remedy for any snake bite…..but she did not have a disciple, who she shared her knowledge with.  One day, one of the snakes who was watching her saving all the victims with her knowledge, decides to bite her and did it successfully. She cried of pain and everyone around her wanted to help her - but even at her death bed the woman decided to keep the remedy a secret and died.  SAD!  What do you call the old lady -   "knowledge hoarder”

There are 2 types of people in any workforce - knowledge hoarder and knowledge Sharer.

Knowledge hoarder:  Person who collects and save information for future subjective use.

Knowledge Sharer: Person who proactively, purposely and pleased to share their learnings / information with others.

Knowledge hoarding is very common in workplaces.

Signs of Information Hoarding in a company

1)    If the same handful  of  people are answering critical  questions always

2)    Whenever we prepare for a presentation - we need to reinvent everything.

3)    Associate make themselves indispensable. Company knowledge is lost, when employees leave.

4)    Answers /Solution to any and every problem lies in an individual’s laptop / emails.  We hear in  the meeting  - ‘I  have the details , I will  mail it you after this’

5)    Transparency is NOT valued as a part of the company culture. The goal of transparency is to share not only the wins but also the failures this becomes a knowledge base to build the future.

 Why would employees deliberately hoard knowledge?

 Power:  People are power hungry. They believe safeguarding information, gives them an upper hand. They call it as a ‘Trade secret’ or want to be called ‘Guru’. They believe that- they are the keeper of the information, they have a complete control.

 Uncertain:  fear of being wrong and are afraid to share information. 

Trust: If the workplace suffers from lack of trust -   information sharing is very LESS. 

Ownership: when they have strong psychological ownership feeling over their knowledge. 

Job Security – be the only person to perform specific function. Make themselves indispensable.  Employees afraid to share their knowledge, as someone will be prepared to do their task and get easily replaced.

Organizational Culture - Some organizations succeed, by encouraging cut throat culture among team members. 

Time:  some feel they have less time to hold Knowledge sharing sessions or sharing their best practices. 

Less important: Some associates consider, conducting this Knowledge sharing session are less important. 

Benefits / No Benefit: They are not recognized by the organization - by the way of promotion / any other benefits.  The main reason people play this hiding game - Although the company pushes ‘Team work make the dream work’ but it rewards individual‘s performance ONLY.

Information are not shared, justifying that they are confidential.  The employee would say they will share the details later - but the ‘later’ never comes.  Sometime they share incorrect or incomplete details.

If the information is not discussed openly in the team 

·        This will hinder ‘creative idea’ coming from the team. 

·        This prevents a good organizational climate 

·        Demotivate the team - lowering the individual’s performance and eventually organization’s performance.

Organization put themselves in a risky situation, by becoming dependent on knowledge hoarders.

 In order to reduce the knowledge hoarders….

1) Have knowledge sharing session after any initiatives. Only organizations should drive the associate to do it.

2) Check with the team the success and failures - how they could mitigate the failures and what additional measures were to be taken, not to repeat failures.

3) Also give opportunities to new set of people and check the outcome, so the juniors can pick up the techniques and seniors can focus on new initiatives.

4) Have a common SharePoint / Repository that anyone and everyone can access the required documents and data and able to share his/her views and findings.

More information shared with the team member make them feel that they have a stronger connection to the organization.

Knowledge sharing helps to improve the company’s productivity and efficiency.

 

Happy to Share - Thank you.

Story Telling For Business

I was watching a recipe on YouTube. I generally follow her for any new recipes.   At the end of her presentation, she started to talk about the new pan she cooked that recipe in.  She said it was presented to her, by one of her students, who took private cooking lessons from her. 

What is the inference from this ‘Pan Story’?

If she would have advertised explicitly that she takes private lessons too, people watching her will end up telling, she is marketing herself.  By telling this ‘PAN Story’ she subtly / delicately shared the same message.  CRAFTY!

What is Story telling?

It is the art of telling an event or a series of events

Communication Choices - We have 3 ways to communicate

1.           Assertion
2.            Facts
3.            Story

Assertion - Opinions and Generalization -  XXXXXX is THE best Company  to  provide solutions for Digital  Transformations.

Facts -   Statistical data -  XXXXXX  is ranked 193 in the 2019 FORTUNE 500 list

Story -  Success Story  -  XXXXXX  has successfully   completed 25  years and going strong  covering various industry  -  Banking & Financial / Health care / INS.   It resolved an issue with one of the INS client‘s claim Procedures. It reduced the time of the process from 10 weeks to 10 days.  It is NOT only solving the problem through technology, but solving human problems.  

I told you 3 points about the company XXXXX - but which one will stay longer in your memory….  NOT the Assertion or the Fact, but the STORY will. That is the power of Story.

As per Steve Jobs - the most powerful person in the world is a story Teller.    The story teller can create a view of the future that no one has.  He himself was one of the best story Tellers.

There are 2 reasons why stories are important 

1.      Scientific Reason - When you listen to stories - we produce 2 hormones Cortisol and Oxytocin. Cortisol advise us -  fight / flight Oxytocin love hormone - they help us stating that ‘this is interesting, pay attention….’ 

2.      Human Reason - We created it - we make use of some characters and build it. When we hear it, we know it is reasonable - it is NOT superficial / phony.

Story Sticks - you remember stories better. A small exercise. Below are 3 sentences. 

1)     John walked on the roof 

2)      Eddie  wrote the Play

3)      Bill picked up the eggs.

 

Who walked on the roof? Who wrote the play?

 

Now let us try this. 

1)      Santa  walked on the roof 

2)      Shakespeare  wrote the Play 

3)      Easter Bunny picked up the eggs.

 

Now - Who walked on the roof?  Who wrote the play?  You are able to answer them, bcos you connect these sentences with a story and able to remember them better.

In today’s world, attention is currency.  When we post something, we are all curious to know, how many people viewed or how many people reacted to it.  There is so much clutters out there, Stories prove to be the powerful way to get and keep attention.

In Business Story, it is important that - you need to take care of

·         What  happened 

·         Why  do  I  care

You address only the relevant details. They are just anecdotal only.

4 Patterns of storytelling.

Connection Story Pattern: Personal stories from your life - which you use to connect with people or coach them.

Clarity Pattern:  In the Past / Something Happened /So now / in the Future.  It answers ‘Why’ you are doing something and it is contextual.

Success Story: It is a snapshot - Explain how you helped another client to solve a problem.

Anti-story - Influence Story.  You cannot beat a story with a Fact. You can beat it with better story.

4 Principles of your story

1)      Story speak to your emotion.  We all know that there are 2 sides of our brain. 

Emotion

Practical

It is found that we take predominantly decisions based on emotions and back it with rational.  So emotions get more attention.

 

2)      Establish a connection with your audience - build a common ground, which is very important.

For eg.  When associates come to  me  to  get  a next /new assignment , they start  talking  in my  Mother tongue and try  to establish a relation, through  the language….  

 

3)      Power of Contrast: Bring in a twist / climax in your story. Else it will be a monotone and become boring and seek less attention.

 

4)      Truth Well Told:  I know everyone will agree to it. If your story is false, its shelf life will be short. Also presenting the truth matters, it must be narrated with proper articulation.  Yes, the ‘WHAT’ is important in your story but the ‘HOW’ is even more important.

So create your stories which are powerful and make an impact.  

The world is full of Data and noise.  You can reduce the noise and make your data heard only with the help of your stories.

                                                                 

What is Data

What is Data?

Data is an information or fact collected because of experience, observation or experiment.

It is stored in or used in Computers. 

It could be measurement, observation of description of things.  It is statistics collected during the operation of business.  Data is everywhere.

Data can be measured, collected, reported and analyzed - into visualization tools graphs / images.

Samples of Data - Employee data, Sales inventory.  

There are two types of Data

Qualitative and Quantitative

Quantitative Data: Can be measured or countable.

Answers - What, who, when, how many and where

Qualitative Data:  Acquired through listening to people - observing situation / recording perception.

On seeing a cup of Coffee - 

  Qualitative details                                                        Quantitative Details

1)      Robust Aroma                                                 12 oz

2)      Strong                                                             120 degree Fahrenheit

3)      Frothy                                                             $3:5

4)      In a White cup

 

How is data Collected – there are two sources of Data, Primary and Secondary.  For eg if I need to run a initiative of hiring junior level associates for the company, I need data to determine the count to be hired

Primary Source: Current demand   open for Jr level

Secondary Source:  Past what was their absorption and how many they hired for Jr level in the last quarters/months.

The sources varies for various set of data.

Data are 4 types -  NOIR

Nominal – Data can be organized into categories, neither a number nor Quantity- Gender / Status / Level

Ordinal – Refer to data that can be put in an order or rank -   In a running race, we can rank people ignoring the speed and time.

Interval – Data comprised of consistent interval, here zero exists. Like temperature, pH value

Ratio – Same as Interval, but if Zero does NOT exist…. Eg Age, Sales .

Why is data important

1)      Educate: It helps you to study and understand the current picture of anything.

2)      Prioritize: Based on this, you  will have insights to  improve  the  process

3)      Evaluate Progress: Which  will reduce Wastage – Money , Time and man power

 

Data is more valuable based on

1)      Source of data 

2)      Clean / Rightness

3)      Size

4)      Age / Timeliness

5)      Understanding

6)      Actionable

 

Due to the existence of data - we have various branches of study diverging

 

Data Analytics – Process of analyzing raw data, in order to make conclusion about the information.

 

Data Mining - Process of discovering Pattern in large set of data.

 

Data Science - process of identifying actionable insights from raw data.

 

Data Visualization - process of converting the data into graphical representation

 

Machine learning / Cognitive Computing Development – focuses on development of computer program that can access data and use it to learn for themselves.  EG. Siri uses Advanced Machine learning technologies to function.

 

Data Governance – ensures that the data is consistent and trustworthy and does not get misused.

           

Data is getting collected constantly through different sensors.  Laptop, smart phone, IPad. 

 

Data is transformed into AI, generating various Apps - resulting in more innovation and better user experience.

Multitasking

What is Multitasking?  Dealing with more than one task at any point in time.

Multitasking is term coined and introduced in 1960, to describe computers performance.  People assume Multitasking is way to get more done in a short span of time, Is it true?

In Multitasking - Actually you are switching from one task to another, making you feel you are multitasking.

It is a myth or fairy tale…. People think  they can also  multitask like computers and  try  to  do  more of it  and they believe ,  there are  special  training/classes  provided to  do  this.

The truth is – Multitasking is Not Efficient and Not Effective too.  

Our brains are designed not to do Multitasking - It is like a spot light where it can be focused in one direction in any given time. 

Like to introduce to three different term with respect to multitasking.

Attention Residue -  Assume you are doing Task A and you are distracted and start doing Task B.  Attention Residue refers to thoughts / perceptions of Task A persist even though one has stopped working on task A, transitioned to Task B and working on task B.  Carryover of thoughts from one task to another is call ‘Attention Residue’

Attentional blindness – It is the failure to notice a fully visible unexpected object, because the attention was fully engaged on another task or object or event.

Liminal Moments - Getting distracted when you are switch between tasks.  For example you  have back to  back  calls,  one of your  calls ends 10 mins earlier  and you  decide to  check  your  emails.  However, you continue to check emails and forget to login into the next call.   Yes, we need to mindful / cognizant of these small intervals of time.

Tips would be

• Do not stop or begin something else, until you are completely done with the task on hand.

•  Focus on single intense task for a long period to reach the peak of productivity.  Your output is cleaner, stronger and far better with no distraction. 

 Lot of Questions on Multitasking

1)    Is it possible to multitask?

Multiple studies have proved doing multiple task at the same time is a myth.  People think that they can split their attention and multitask, but they are not able to achieve more.  Our brains are designed to switch from task to another at extremely fast rate but with a cost of switching time or de-tagging and tagging time. Studies show that multitasking reduces our productivity by 40%. Scientist had proved that our brain struggles to do many thing at the same time. 

2)    What are example of multitasking?

Multitasking is a person can handle more than one task at any point in time.

1)    Chewing gum while walking

2)    Driving and taking a phone call.

3)    Cooking a couple of dishes at the same point of time.

First, is OK.

Second, you are dividing your focused attention on 2 activities.  I do not do this….   If you ask anyone who does this, I bet he/she must missed exits on his/her freeway or turns while driving.

Third cooking is OK, you can get comfortable to do multitasking, on the dishes you already know.  If you want to try some new recipe, you plan to have undivided attention, so you can focus and get a better output….

3)    How do  I  stop  / limit  multitasking @ work ?

 1)    Eliminate Distraction 

   External Trigger

                                          i.    Turn off the notifications on your phone  

                                        ii.    Clean up your work space / desk.

   Internal Triggers

                                                  i.    Feel Lonely – check messages / Facebook -  Social media

                                                ii.    Uncertain  -  We Google

                                               iii.    Bored - Check news / stock prices.

 

2)    Block your time for  certain  activity  in  your calendar -   clearing emails ,  preparing reports , Analyzing data to  take some action -  I  follow this more diligently  and  helps  to  complete my  task, well before  blocked time.  Plan your day, else some else will plan it for you.

 

3)    Make a to  do  List

 

4)    Check social media and personal emails/Text only at a predefined time.

 

5)    Practice Mindfulness -  meditation

 

4)    Effects Multitasking

1)    Increases anxiety - as the brain is juggling too many thing at once.

2)    Increases the stress hormone Cortisol

3)    In turn, increase the heart rate and blood pressure - which cause serious health issues down the line.

Conclusion:  In today’s time crunched world, Multitasking is not a solution for increasing productivity.

Redeployment of Bench associates.

With  advent of COVID-19 , we had plenty  of  releases from  billable assignment to  bench  or  practice deploy-able  pool PDP.  We need to redeploy them.

Definition on Redeployment - solution that facilitates the organized movement of talent from one role or business area to a different, suitable position within the organization

What is Bench / Redeployment Pool?  Bench period is the time between the assignments. The policy   various from company to company.

In IT sector, whenever there is demand or a new requirement open, we check for internal pool / bench and then only take the lateral hiring route. 

There are 2 perspective of the Bench / Redeployment Pool:- 

·         Company

·         Associate

Company -  they  are under pressure to  control  the cost of the bench  of  these  associates and also place them  in  billable  opportunities ASAP -  reap  the revenue and profit.

It needs to retain skill / knowledge /talent. It is very vital and critical too.

Should arrange for internal job fair, get self-proposals from the associates and take it forward for internal and then client evaluation.

Right Associate Right Assignment Right time - Need to customize the demands and the associate. But we need to  prep  the associate to  fit  the position and any  give  or take  need to  convince the client to  make  it happen.

Networking Opportunity - Make associate available not only for our practice. Make them visible across the organization; it is a Win-win situation.  Associate gets an assignment, Company he / she is billed, Practice - Less Bench Cost.

Tweaking the Process -   When PDP is high, make the associate available on 'First Cum First Serve' basis, instead of soft lock.  This not only hastens the process, but also helps the associate in trying multiple options. We might end up having double booking - but it is good problem to have.

Person to be in close connect with the employees than any app/ system.  We maintain a one on one relationship on slow moving cases either 

o   They are new to the Bench process.

o   They have other difficulties, which they are not willing to share. -  cannot  relocate  own a house / kids going to  high school , spouse working , prefers warmer climate.

o   Working offline with hiring managers - which we are not aware.

Associate

They want to grow, learn and advance in their career.

Anxious about their next assignment - this level of anxiety varies with Skillset and Seniority.  Junior level associate, redeployment is easier and faster. For senior level associate, especially with Niche Skilled associates, we need have matching demands at that point in time.

Location Preference /Constraint.

Need to work closely, to make them understand their value, skills and available options.

FAQ

#	Question	Answer
1	Who  are eligible for Redeployment	Both the full time employees and our Sub contractors with good feedback.
2	Redeployment with / without department transfer?	Will  try  within the department , to  retain his  expertise else we can let go  for  other departments in the organization
3	How does redeployment work – duration / soft lock / relocation?	Redeployment as per the company’s bench policy
4	During the redeployment period, what support is given?	Hiring manager preps  and take you  forward Coordinate with Academy /Training for  additional training
5	Can an associate turn down a redeployment option.	Redeployment as per the company’s bench policy. Max of 2 rejection is OK, more ends up in termination.
6	What happens at the end of redeployment - without an assignment?	As per the company’s bench policy, termination will be processed

 

Advantages

·         High performing talent to stick with the company and make use of their expertise.

·         Redeployment is a solution to reduce the attrition in the company.

·         Lowers the Employee churn and enhance the Employer Brand, in the time of uncertainty.

·         Help the associate to avoid job hunt – take care of his/her career forward through upward trajectory, based on his/her personal goals.

·         Reduces cost - recruiting, hiring, on boarding new hires.

·         Up-skilling and redeploying the associates, with our company DNA, adds more value.

·         Increases the employee’s satisfaction and morale with the business that employs them. Also, boost their commitment.

The company that properly adjust reorganize its own associates rapidly makes more revenue and Profit.  Yes, it consider its employees as one of powerful resource and hence becoming an asset.

Note: Took care of redeployment of our Bench during this COVID, because of remote working option, we had 75% increase in redeployment. Refer  my  blog on https://suchiguna.blogspot.com/2020/02/remote-working.html One of the Leaders mentioned 'You and your  team are our front line' 🙋