On a more philosophical note, I read the book "One More Day" by Mitch Albom. For those of you who have not read him, his earlier book "Tuesdays with Morrie" is a classic. One More Day postulates that if you could spend another day with someone who was no more (the protagonist's mother, in this case), what would you do? Speak? Hear? Learn? The book is a page-turner while it takes the reader through a terrific roller coaster of emotions. BTW it is not a very long book, just about takes 90 minutes to run through.

The way to establish a link between the book and the HR function is of course to understand that the book emphasises the value of doing in the present what we need to do, rather than living in the past or future. Part of HR is emphasising the Here and Now of what we do. Of course at one level this translates into superlative execution of what we take on as deliverables. At another level, it also implies that the more we focus on our relationships and empathise with others, the richer our lives become. Being less obsessed with ourselves is unhealthy. I know what you are thinking :I'm not neurotic, maybe Sameer is for suggesting something like this, is he externalising his problem" ... No not at all. I am aware that in fact most people are sensible and sane. The challenge comes in dealing with strong personalities who excite strong emotions and hence can cloud judgment occasionally.

Making the big leap in understanding group processes continues to be a challenge for a lot of HR professionals, especially those who are very action-oriented. Need not be so!! In fact in every interaction - even a simple greetings transaction - there can be multiple processes, and what behavioural specialists choose to focus on is one or two out of these several processes that exist. The process specialist then chooses to focus on these processes and tries to extract meaning from them, with the active support and participation of the group. In fact depending on the style of the facilitator the argument could even be that the specialistt does not derive meaning himself or herself, instead only helping the group arrive at some learnings. There are also underlying processes that come to light, for example the relationship of individuals and groups to the specialist, defense mechanisms, power and political relationships within the group and with the specialist, etc.

A good way of observing these processes is T groups. T groups are experiential learning processes where members share information and data on how they experience each other in the here and now. The fact that team members do not know each other from before - typically strangers at the start of the process - adds credibility to the feedback and the process. As the group evolves, the processes become more transparent and insights begin to emerge.

In India some agencies that offer T group training are ISABS (the Indian Society for Applied Behavioural Sciences) and Sumedha.

Creativity Enablers

While there's enough literature available on creativity enablers at the individual level, I wonder why there is a shortage of literature about creativity enablers in organisations. There are countless examples of organisations that are creative - such as 3M, Toyota, Microsoft, - but the insights you get, by and large, are anecdotal. For example, that 3M mandates a certain percentage of revenue to come from new products every year, or Toyota's institutionalisation of group behaviour. However that gives only half the story.

The other equally interesting half is that organisations initially become creative through the styles of an influential person, who may or may not be the founder CEO. This person's style - more typically expressed in the following situations, intially embeds the creativity seed in the organisation:
1. the push for creative solutions and products
2. the desire to seek alternative solutions even when the evident solution seems acceptable
3. responses to failure
4. ability to see connections between vague ideas, or even concrete ideas and a business outcome.

And when the founder CEO initially creates this culture, s/he also smartly embeds it through the use of artifacts in the workplace - the use of posters, mailers, reminders, colour, materials, the "feel" of the workplace, clothing, etc. - to drive the message consistently and clearly. It is this process that embeds creativity and I am looking for insights/ studies on how CEOs have done it in the past. ...

HI everybody!! I've just created this blog to record my thoughts on hr. Will start posting soon.

Regards

Sameer