The Funny side to the Satyam saga!

As the Satyam saga unflods, as the other IT majors declare Satyam employees untouchables, and as the Government of India steps in to rescue the company, many people have already started seeing the funny, satirical side to the Satyam truth story. I came across this rather interesting (for the lack of a better word) article, which proudly declares that the Government is converting Satyam into a bank. Hilarious read!

http://www.fakingnews.com/2009/01/government-buys-out-satyam-to-convert.html

I couldn't resist making this remark to a friend in the outsourcing industry. "America does not need to pull off another ENRON or WorldCom, now, they can just outsource their scams to India"

As you'd expect, in good banter, my friends and colleagues from across the seas have written in with wide ranging jokes.

Sample the following:

- Maybe Satyam could rescue Citi Group

- American bankrupt companies are now not the only one's responsible for recession!

- The name SATYAM means TRUTH; if this is the truth, God bless

- What Raju has done was creating money out of thin air; that's the latest invention at Satyam!

However, the icing on the cake for me was this particular image on the careers page of Satyam. No, I did not make this page! The careers page at Satyam says "THINK LIKE A CEO" . I am guessing that if you do think like Mr. Raju, the Satyam HR managers are on the lookout for you!

Leave a comment if you have something funny to add on! Cheers!

Motivating employees during recession

In today’s tough corporate times, one of the biggest challenges faced by the top management corporates is that of handling a competent yet shrunk workforce whilst delivering the utmost quality of work. Attracting and retaining quality talent is the key to build a top workforce; this is challenged during recessionary times when the focus shifts slightly to motivating the existing force to perform and meet ends, rather than have progress at the heart of things. During an economic slowdown, employees have many fears bottled up and growing inside them. To enlist a few:

1. Survivor’s guilt: Recent psycho-analytic reports have revealed that those who have survived the chopper often feel guilty about it. The need re-instilling faith in their own abilities that the quality and value of their work is top notch and deserves recognition. Also, one has to make them feel secure in spite of them seeing their friends & colleagues being given the pink slip.


2. Apprehensions of external factors: Many employees fear that the external facets such as company closure, re-haul of complete workforce, economic crisis affecting payments amongst others would lead to them getting their monthly pay cheques.

3. Floating rumours, more piling up work, less motivation: Most employees are reviewing as to how their bosses are handling the situation and the additional work. They need to be pepped up because their rampant fears are bringing them down. Moreover, there are creepy elements in every organization who float rumours at other’s emotional deprivation, leading to wide-spread anguish and guessing game of “who is going next”

4. Marketing and sales not in-sync with times: No matter what, the company had to put up a brave face in front of clients, customers, contractors and investors that their roots are strong enough to weather the storm. If the management does not explain this to the employees top down, the perception would be quite wrong.

The idea is not to simply give an inspirational lecture, or take the team out for a champagne and beer lunch. The idea is to address their fears and make them competitive again for company’s sakes and in their own sphere for the marketplace. How long would the twenty pitchers of good German beer drown the sorrows of cash crunch and failing to meet rent? An evening of movies and bowling might look good on the agenda and everyone might pretend to lap it up, but the emotional state of affairs would really let the worker be at ease doing this.

I have found the following measures to be highly effective.

1. Guilt, fear, paranoia is comprehensible and give it time: Most people would be going through these feelings right now, and performance under such severe stress levels is difficult. Give this time, be empathetic and create flexible boundaries where such sentiments could be shared. Device a strategy to overpower these emotions and work with (and not against each other) to see the testing times through.

2. Be understanding, but don’t be an agony aunt: Most employees run to their bosses every ten minutes these days and continue with the “oh, isn’t it awful that the markets crashed” and “oh my God, the price of potatoes has gone up ten fold”. Well, the boss probably has more money invested thus suffered a bigger loss due to the market crash, and chances are that potatoes are similarly priced in the supermarket where the boss shops. So, bring a halt to that and invest time wisely into getting the work done. If in spite of all efforts an employee can’t be motivated to concentrate on work and talks about the bad times too much, in all probability he is too focussed on things around than the work he is being paid for.

3. Lead by setting an example: Remember the case study discussions during your B-school lectures when you would spring your point forth with excessive passion on how you want to make a difference to the global economic scenario? Or remember watching TV on how some distinguished faces talk about changing the world and international peace & harmony? Somewhere, whilst satisfying a job description, this fervour died down. Well, now is the time to actually put it in action. Forget what your job specification says; forget how you are to review your subordinates and co-workers; simply, be pro-active & for the first time (B-school promises not withstanding) think outside the box.

4. Set targets, let the employees know their distinctive roles: Yes, the tough times have made you pull the plug on many; those remaining are your crème de-la-crème. Make sure THEY know this fact. Make them feel important and special. And ensure this aspect does not go cause inflated egos; set fair targets for the turbulent times and account each worker for it.

5. Don’t excuse poor performance due to lacking effort: You wouldn’t do that in an ideal scenario, would you? Good times or bad, there is no excuse for lacking effort. And that should be the norm even if the worker in question has been your top dog

6. Good service, good relations, good strategy: One has often heard the best time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining bright- you’d need it when the rains come pouring. So, in tough times, as a collective unit, encourage your team to keep chin up and weather the tough times. Provide top quality customer services; the intra company relations should be top notch, and this is the time to lay the platform for future course of action. Remember, what comes down will go up. So pick up the sticks and be prepared, for the good times maybe a fair way off, they are still foreseeable.

Lastly, whatever you do, please don’t panic. You may take a hit, but you have to learn to survive. Look forward, and make your employees do the same. Keeping the morale high is one of the toughest jobs a manager would ever face. Given that the current crop of high flying managers have encountered easy profits primarily, this would be tougher. Learn to operate as collective unit- togetherness would help face monstrosities better than solitude!

Employees during recession and a sports team losing

Think of any sports team training. The coach spends a LOT of time developing strategies, improving skills and motivating the players, building up for that moment on the field when they could put it all together and achieve victory. The coach is hailed as a visionary, the players as heroes and the hurrahs go around for a long time.

 

Now, what if the best laid plans go horribly wrong, and the team loses? There are two scenarios. If the team puts a solid fist in the fight, then there’s praise on the effort and the ‘we’ll get them the next time’ jargon. Yes, the coach and non performers could face a lot of grief and spared no slack, to the extent of being given the pink slip. However, if the team gets a pasting, the situation changes. there would be talks of lack of spirit, lacking motivation, wrong strategies, new methodology in training, finding inspirational leadership and so on and so forth. This would lead to sacking of the coach, new captain, and re-shuffling of the squad. The non performers could kiss their careers goodbye. 

 

End of the day, if the going is bad, the blame game in bad times pretty much drowns everyone with it. What if the conditions work in favour of the opposition? What if the main player gets injured? What if the opponents are much better trained and “pumped-up” for the fight? Do we remember the fact that the team trained hard for years and the coach kept them motivated for all the time? Probably not.

 

Most of us wouldn’t care, because even in our everyday lives, we crouch down and praise all the successes, but our rewards our subject to the end results, the goals, the pre-set targets and expectations; there is are performance appraisals based on efforts and in tough situations, it causes more angst than one can envisage.

 

Like for a sports team, the work force never lost the apparent talents they had; hence the most motivation required is when the going gets tough. This is where a good coach and a bad coach differ. A bad coach would try work on the lacking skills of his player or look for some other player making up for those skills. A good coach would target the cause of the problem, and ensure that not only would he remove the fear and anxiety from his troubled players’ hearts but imbibe a spirit of confidence as well as work on the lacking skills. Similarly, good managers and leaders nurture their employees during a downturn.

 

Make your quarter-back realize his importance; let the pitcher know that its his job to achieve the strike-outs; the best batsman does not simply give an account of runs scored on a dead pitch in a dead-rubber; the pouring down rain and puddles wont make the best strikers run back to defence; if the majority workforce played the baseline in the sun, maybe its time to run up and volley when it gets cloudy.

 In short, believe in your team, and believe in yourself. Don’t bring in too many changes if this was the unit that brought in the championships in the previous years; a couple of bad series’ wont alter the course of great players. Winning is a habit- in life as in sport. Form of a player would come and go; however, if the ability, fitness and desire to win goes a-lacking, maybe its time to bet on a new horse. 

The downturn won't affect you? THINK AGAIN!

Three of the most amusing and tongue-in-cheek remarks I have heard ever since the cotton selling Brothers-turned-Investment bankers (Lehmann, duh!) have been:

a. Two guys bump into each other when one asks “Sooo your bank still in action or has it gone bust yet..? No? Great". takes out his blackberry and sends across a resume.
b. Overheard at a Manhattan bar, a very pretty girl asking an “investment banker” in a dapper suit “hey baby, how is your portfolio?!” and the guy skulls down his drink and walks out saying "what PORTFOLIO?"c. At the some bar, another guy makes a move for this girl and says “Baby, I pay all my bills in cash! Don’t worry about the credit crunch!”

The point of the anecdotes? No, I am not giving you pick up lines for the downturn, silly. This is just to hint out to some geniuses that we are facing tough times, accept it.

The God-forbidden “R” word is making headlines everywhere, but there are many SME managers who are still in denial. Sample statements from two of my clients below:

“What recession? It’s the big boys who are facing the slow down”

“By God’s grace, I have enough goodwill in the market to survive this”

So, all who think that this is some Wizard of Oz trick being performed by Paul Greengrass & Co to knick the pennies off our back pockets: wake up and smell the coffee! We have been drawn against recessionary times, so recognize it and take measures accordingly.

During the tough times, more than ever, the role of HR in an organization becomes imperative to the survival of the establishment. We are all great planners and implementers, but we often overlook the vital difference the human factor can make. If you are not worried about this, maybe you should be.

Yes, there are $700 billion bailouts, and lots of Harvard and Stanford grads are working on the issues, but its up to you to cut costs, operate smartly. Those who have taken the view that “oh, its not going to affect me” well, its about time that you got the thinking caps on. The coming eighteen months are going to be tough. Pull your socks up!