If we are social beings, then why...

We have all learned that human beings demonstrate social behaviour; we interact, communicate and unlike our co-inhabitants of the earth, we have the ability not only express immediate hunger, fear or happiness, we can relate abstract thoughts as well. Since the emergence of internet the world has become a small place. While the beginning of our on-line activities was fairly limited, nowadays we have - not surprisingly - social platforms; where we can interact with people we have in reality never met, yet the interaction is direct enough, though virtual.

In school we are being encouraged to give well founded presentations, to give input in order to improve the strength of the group (team) and social networks and blogs have provided a provoking tool to express our thoughts. Seems to be a wonderful world. Until you enter world of professionals...

In many encounters with HR, I have noticed an alarming trend, where companies seem to have lost touch with human beings; respectively their workforce. When I come to a job interview, I must be able to recite correctly answers (many times to predictable standard questions). One flaw, and I will be labelled insecure. When interviewed, I am expected to dress a certain way, sit a certain way, gesture a certain way, answer a certain way, and so on. In short - the candidate must become a uniform mass produced servile product, which easily fits into the categories.

Recently, I have encountered a company, despite the fact that they were desperately in search of a certain candidate, they have rejected half the city population, but not being able to indicate their exact requirements. 95% of the candidates were perfectly fit for the job, yet for misty reasons, the HR person was not capable to make a choice (in the meantime, the vacancy was not filled, and logically this is not advantageous to the operational ability of the company... ). 

One cannot be but profoundly amazed and wonder, what is it that companies are indeed looking for? Merely cheap workforce, without the slightest imagination, submissive enough to be moulded according to the company's mindset? Then where is the potential strength that we are so encouraged during our education years?

Perhaps the market is still bad(ish) but there will come a point, where the companies could suddenly be faced with a crisis of a different kind; flexible and creative thinkers, who can make the vital difference whether the company will survive or not. We are social beings, but in our HR-world the workforce is sadly enough treated as an expense, not as an asset, and all our human treats that are in fact added value are becoming rather liabilities.

About time to take a step backwards and rethink which way we have chosen to go...

Part timers?

A few months ago, I was watching a programme on Dutch television. One of the guests was a sociologist, who made a survey on gender diversity; to be more specific - the state of women in top management positions. She presented her new book and some of the conclusions were discussed. My very own experiences in a Dutch environment has given me some materials for comparison - especially in the setting of Central Europe - but suddenly it made me realise one typically Dutch specific.

Unlike in many other countries, there are relatively more women at management positions. So has Sweden, you could argue. Right, but with a slight difference - which even never occurred to me: Dutch women seemed more content in management positions than their Swedish counterparts and the reason was; Dutch businesses offer the opportunity to work part-time. Not referring to the receptionist, working only in the afternoon. Indeed part-time for management functions. 

I shall not elaborate the gender topic per sé but what I found more striking is the given that the deadly myth, that part-time working kills one's career, seems not to be completely true and perhaps should be reconsidered as a whole. Worthwhile to think, why we have so many cases of burn-out? - managers having worked (more than) full-time seem to have landed at a limit only around their forties - even though they should still be able to perform another twenty more years... 

We focus too much time on short-term profits, which is proving frequently as failure; getting maximum yields, squeezing out all possible resources, but hardly have a feeling for the long-term strategic stability, which is the only assurance for business continuation. A more comfortable work-environment creates an additional loyalty of employees, which is another valuable asset, if not vital.

Part-time work could be rather a healthier concept to a more effective career than we have assumed till now.

Home office

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do" a song by Billy Joel, based on a popular saying. The meaning of the proverb is quite clear, I think. Yet, as having lived in various countries, my activities in the CEE region give me a certain culture shock. Even though, modern technology has brought the whole globe closer together, and business practices either from California, Hong-Kong or Malta are not so distant any longer, some differences in practices are still apparent. 

Commuting to work is a bothersome part of your day. Perhaps in most cases inevitable, yet it depends, whether that is an absolute truth. The Dutch government, for examples, for years faced urgent problems regarding the overly crowded highways, causing every morning hundreds of miles of traffic jams. The problem is not merely an "annoying feeling" of being stuck and coming late to work by a couple of minutes. Economically, it is a drain of several billions of Euros on a yearly basis. Challenges of a crowded country, where space (for infrastructure) is relatively scarce.

One of incentives given to employers by the state was to encourage working from home. Not necessarily full time, but one or two days, would made a considerable difference. Not only diminishing traffic jams - and thus the fluency of the supply chain is less obstructed - but equally the CO2 emissions of exhaust fumes is reduced.

The Dutch have a widely accepted working from home concept. When discussing this in Slovakia e.g., this is still regarded very exceptional - only for the CEO, or suspecting the employee is lazily dodging his job. The contrary is true; in practice, the home-worker will be relieved from wasting his time and gasoline in a traffic jam, feeling less stressed, perhaps be even less disturbed by his colleagues - continuously barging into his office. Less stress and better focused (Sitting in the office a number of hours, is never a proof of being productive all the time).

My own experience with home-working is very positive and I can highly recommend to implement it. But as with everything, it takes time before society accepts a new trend. It certainly improves your work-life balance (another subject to write about).

Networking... or notworking

Business in the old days used to be a bit different - though the principles should have been, generally speaking, similar. Let us imagine an ancient Greek market-place, where local goods were traded (olives, sheep, cloth and the usual stuff). A merchant would sell his products, for which there was a certain demand, and accordingly he expected a price to be paid, such that he could subsist. Even in this most crudest form of business under the warm Mediterranean sun of those days, the main core of doing business was ... mutual trust. A buyer not trusting the quality of the olives would not buy them. Even if the merchant were to fake being trustworthy and the consumer found out later, the reputation of the merchant would put him out of business. Clear enough.

Nowadays, we send mailings, deal with online marketing, including blogging in order to present our merchandise to potential clients. But one of the intriguing tools for doing business are networking platforms like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Xing and the like. On a daily basis, I do wonder, what in fact people expect from them. I shall briefly describe my feelings regarding LinkedIn:

One can find one's potential contact either by group membership (e.g. belonging to European IT Consultants, of UK HR Professionals) or by regional searches (all CFOs within 15 miles of your residence). Up to the user... so it seems. 

While I have miraculously found ex-colleagues, whom I worked with ages ago, and it was nice to re-connect, I have gained some very interesting contacts of people, who have an added value either because they give essential contribution to discussions, some provide a lead. In some cases, I wonder, what the objective is.

Unfortunately, there is a whole host of users, who simply seem to acquire as many contacts as possible (prestige i.e. status?), but when sending a short message to actively communicate, there is no response. Most annoying are people, who 'portray' themselves as being open to business contacts, then suddenly turn your application down with "I don't know the person", giving the applicant a bad reputation of being a kind of a spammer.

This comes back then to the Greek market place. Perhaps as if because of all these hi-tech gadgets and tools, business (people) seem to have forgotten about the "trust-aspect". If users on social networks behave in such a way, which does hardly do any good to mutual trust, it gives not only a clear signal what kind of business people they are, it also pollutes the place. Communication is the only tool to create that trust. Without it I don't know what you want, they do not know what I want, so what's the use of linking? But are they really lacking true interest, or is the quantity of contacts simply an overkill of information, which they're no longer able to handle?

In my case, from time to time I filter my contacts - those who seem only link-collectors with no demonstrated interest for communication shall be eliminated. Simple as that. Never mind the 500+, 1000+, or more champions.
Meanwhile, when writing this article, I got a craving for Greek olives. Cheers!

Business in the old days used to be a bit different - though the principles should have been, generally speaking, similar. Let us imagine an ancient Greek market-place, where local goods were traded (olives, sheep, cloth and the usual stuff). A merchant would sell his products, for which there was a certain demand, and accordingly he expected a price to be paid, such that he could subsist. Even in this most crudest form of business under the warm Mediterranean sun of those days, the main core of doing business was ... mutual trust. A buyer not trusting the quality of the olives would not buy them. Even if the merchant were to fake being trustworthy and the consumer found out later, the reputation of the merchant would put him out of business. Clear enough. Nowadays, we send mailings, deal with online marketing, including blogging in order to present our merchandise to potential clients. But one of the intriguing tools for doing business are networking platforms like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Xing and the like. On a daily basis, I do wonder, what in fact people expect from them. I shall briefly describe my feelings regarding LinkedIn: One can find one's potential contact either by group membership (e.g. belonging to European IT Consultants, of UK HR Professionals) or by regional searches (all CFOs within 15 miles of your residence). Up to the user... so it seems. While I have miraculously found ex-colleagues, whom I worked with ages ago, and it was nice to re-connect, I have gained some very interesting contacts of people, who have an added value either because they give essential contribution to discussions, some provide a lead. In some cases, I wonder, what the objective is. Unfortunately, there is a whole host of users, who simply seem to acquire as many contacts as possible (prestige i.e. status?), but when sending a short message to actively communicate, there is no response. Most annoying are people, who 'portray' themselves as being open to business contacts, then suddenly turn your application down with "I don't know the person", giving the applicant a bad reputation of being a kind of a spammer. This comes back then to the Greek market place. If users on social networks behave in such a way, which does hardly do any good to mutual trust, it gives a clear signal what kind of business people they are. But are they really lacking true interest, or is the quantity of contacts simply an overkill of information, which they're no longer able to handle. In my case, from time to time I filter my contacts - those who seem only link-collectors with no demonstrated interest for communication shall be eliminated. Simple as that. Never mind the 500+, 1000+, or more champions.

Business in the old days used to be a bit different - though the principles should have been, generally speaking, similar. Let us imagine an ancient Greek market-place, where local goods were traded (olives, sheep, cloth and the usual stuff). A merchant would sell his products, for which there was a certain demand, and accordingly he expected a price to be paid, such that he could subsist. Even in this most crudest form of business under the warm Mediterranean sun of those days, the main core of doing business was ... mutual trust. A buyer not trusting the quality of the olives would not buy them. Even if the merchant were to fake being trustworthy and the consumer found out later, the reputation of the merchant would put him out of business. Clear enough. Nowadays, we send mailings, deal with online marketing, including blogging in order to present our merchandise to potential clients. But one of the intriguing tools for doing business are networking platforms like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Xing and the like. On a daily basis, I do wonder, what in fact people expect from them. I shall briefly describe my feelings regarding LinkedIn: One can find one's potential contact either by group membership (e.g. belonging to European IT Consultants, of UK HR Professionals) or by regional searches (all CFOs within 15 miles of your residence). Up to the user... so it seems. While I have miraculously found ex-colleagues, whom I worked with ages ago, and it was nice to re-connect, I have gained some very interesting contacts of people, who have an added value either because they give essential contribution to discussions, some provide a lead. In some cases, I wonder, what the objective is. Unfortunately, there is a whole host of users, who simply seem to acquire as many contacts as possible (prestige i.e. status?), but when sending a short message to actively communicate, there is no response. Most annoying are people, who 'portray' themselves as being open to business contacts, then suddenly turn your application down with "I don't know the person", giving the applicant a bad reputation of being a kind of a spammer. This comes back then to the Greek market place. If users on social networks behave in such a way, which does hardly do any good to mutual trust, it gives a clear signal what kind of business people they are. But are they really lacking true interest, or is the quantity of contacts simply an overkill of information, which they're no longer able to handle. In my case, from time to time I filter my contacts - those who seem only link-collectors with no demonstrated interest for communication shall be eliminated. Simple as that. Never mind the 500+, 1000+, or more champions.

Understanding reports

Reports are a daily occurrence. A handy tool to keep track. That is... provided you understand what is behind the statistical figures. Simply a table with numbers may look very impressive, and many like to add a few colours and 3D-effects as well. Yet it might surprise you, how superficial they are being dealt with. Despite being too busy, this is absolutely no excuse, because a wrongly interpreted report can lead to fatal decisions.

In a real-life situation, a colleague came to me, complaining about a slow team member and hinting, to get rid of this employee. As it was my 3rd day on the new assignment, I promised to have a closer look. For the meantime, I didn't see any point in taking too drastic measures, especially since we didn't have an alternative person with similar skills. I sat down and both with what I received as feedback from the team-member and my own previous background, I started to design a report in order to measure what was really going on.

The first step - obviously - was a huge table of data, which needed some sorting. Thanks to the advanced possibility of xls-sheets, this was accomplished within a few mouse-clicks. It depends however, what you are looking for to finally come to the final report-output. Now comes the skill of give the appropriate interpretation of these figures to the reality; to erase any possible wrong assumptions or prejudices. The conclusion was a bit different from the conclusion of both the client and my colleague.

About a year ago, I was having a casual chat with a business analyst. We talked about various things and I cannot exactly recall how we ended up with this, but I started to elicit one of the assumptions about life in the Middle Ages. I like the example, since it nicely illustrates our remote knowledge of it, and underlines how preconceptions create a totally false image therefore. Beginning with the fact, that "mediaeval man had an average age of 35", makes us assume (in fact believe) that people of around 70 were practically non-existent. The numbers are a bit oversimplified, but they act only as an example. But the opposite is true. Despite dangerous or poor conditions, old people did exist. It was rather the high infant mortality rate (fatality at childbirth or hardly reaching the age of 3), which caused the average age to dramatically drop. His surprise to this revelation was in fact my surprise of why he doesn't know these pitfalls of statistics.

When using reporting data, it should be natural, that a manager takes time to know the context of the data. Know what you measure, know what lead to the given output and make sure that one does not use incomparable parameters. Equally, there is also - sometimes - the possibility to deliberately misinterpret the data. 

But at the end of the day, correct understanding - i.e. interpretation - is vital for your business (and your own professionalism). Thus, it needs more than just staring at colourful numbers.

Managing Projects - be practical

Some years ago I entered a project, which was already half-way. I travelled to my foreign assignment, expecting the promised briefing, and would proceed from there on. Seemed normal to me. But what I witnessed then, made my jawbone drop.

Instead of a briefing (although promised) - in fact just a 15 minutes chat - I immediately ended up in entering a video-conference with the highest chiefs and a medicine man, where the project leader delivered an assuring monologue to the headquarters. Not only was my proposed-by-them calendar of my trips around Europe a complete mess, some alarm-bells started to ring in my mind. This was my first day on my new assignment, so I didn't want to be a spoiler. Fully trying to be open minded, I felt increasingly getting uncomfortable. My intuition however proved right after all.

Ever had such kind of feeling? One might be surprised, how often similar scenarios might occur. And most surprising is, it is caused by people, who seem to have a long record of prestigious projects, yet the deliverables are dramatically below level. In order to be well prepared, regardless of your previous achievements, top-notch courses, or whatever; here are more or less six basics of Project Management.

1. Do your research thoroughly: No matter how successful your previous job turned out, the new project is always a new planet. You're in a new environment (organisation), other colleagues, other customers, other hard- or software. Take it as a blank page. Find new materials - even by merely googling or dedicated websites you can obtain plenty of info on anything, and make sure your data is fairly up-to-date.
2. Find pitfalls from other projects and try to understand them: Mistakes occurred in the past, and by analysing them can make you anticipate possible dangers ahead, saving you from a lot of unnecessary headaches
3. Design a road map - Planning: Believe it or not, I did witness projects which came from down the sleeve. By designing a plan, you identify your goals and can systematically fill in the steps in between. Be aware, that many organisations often enough do not have sufficient documentation to support you. It is you, who must be prepared for that.
4. Adequately communicate with all involved: It cannot be overstated, but good communication will contribute to proper co-ordination. Understand the customer's expectations, liaise with your team(s) to align all chores and be updated on milestones. Ignoring these, you might find yourself suddenly being far off road, with considerable damages to the stakeholders (and yourself).
5. Plan your milestones realistically: creating estimates for certain steps in the process is not merely applying a mathematical addition, multiplication and division. Two people do not necessarily half your project time, and it is best to allow more time to avoid missing sufficient testing or other necessary requirements. It's better to work extra time and deliver quality rather than impress with speed and fail in the end.
6. Test: Whatever you design, you need to test it - and not just once - in order be assured of its quality. Be thorough and any change, no matter how minute, needs repetitive exposure to pass the check.

Like a good wine, a project needs full attention and time to mature. In all, whichever assignment you take, these practical rules should not be overseen; so just be practical, and it will make you and your customer happier, when you sign off the job after implementation.

Interim Management - a new chance

Despite a few decades of globalisation, still a regional diversity can always be found. While on the one hand, Interim Management may be fully known to some people, it was quite surprising, that when arriving in Central Europe (including Austria) it was far from common. Companies needing urgent advise would address perhaps external consultancy giants. The advice was perhaps not only costly, whether it would be correctly and adequately implemented was still to be seen. And as experienced, a certain level of conservatism in many companies is quite rampant, sometimes even leading to reversal of advice.

Interim Management adds a certain dimension, when the concerned professional is not merely an external advisor, bringing in just extra expertise (whichever field that may be), (s)he is part of the decision-making hierarchy in an organisation - albeit for only a definite period of time, yet perhaps long enough to make a difference.

And it is perhaps because of this far reaching impact, that could be interesting to companies, especially in times of crisis. The crisis brought us the necessary confrontation, whether our management-styles, or business in general was efficient enough, and perhaps we realised having ignored or ousted (cost-saving?) certain too essential areas.

Interim Management offers many benefits as the scope and duration can be absolutely tailor-made and without the constraints of a traditional employment of senior positions, and therefore in this region is having a potential of becoming a boom shortly.