Use 4-step process to solve business 'problems'

Business executives often come to you with a problem in their mind (say team building or communication) and ask you to look for a trainer to help them ‘solve’ the problem.

If you take their ‘problem’ at the face value, you are taking two risks. One, if nothing happens after the ‘solution’ is imparted; your credibility is at stake. You cannot say that ‘you did what was told’. A business executive expects you to be an expert in these maters. Two, you may miss a golden opportunity to solve a ‘deeper problem’ that is hidden behind the ‘superficial problem’. With the business executive’s permission, you could have hit the right button.

In order to act as a HR expert and increase your credibility, you need to follow a four-step process to determine if the problem is to be solved and how.

Business executives, because of their action orientation, often live in the mode of ‘Ready, fire, aim’. When they come to you, they have not only ‘labeled’ a problem, but also found a solution. They come to you with a problem of ‘team building’ and expect you to organize or conduct a program on ‘team building’. As a HR expert, firstly, you are better off if you ask questions about the problem situation at hand, so that you do not miss the ‘leverage’ when you are thinking of a solution. For instance, you may investigate why the problem of ‘team building’ has cropped up now. Is it due to a new project that a company has got? Or is it due to a new recruit in the team?

You may understand the ‘problem symptoms’ through which the business executive has identified the ‘problem’. Are there conflicts on the substantive issues of the project? Or are the team members showing ‘covert’ resistance by not staying behind after office hours? What other symptoms have been linked with ‘team building’ problem? This will help you understand what the ‘true problem’ is.

Secondly, you would also do some analysis to find that you are not hastily linking the ‘problem’ with ‘cause’? For instance, are the problem symptoms surfacing because the boss is trying to suppress ‘overt’ resistance? Or is the problem surfacing because of the hidden competition between two contenders for a possible post? Or is the conflict between two functions a ‘normal’ manifestation of the two ‘purposes’ of the function?

Third question is whether the problem is worth the time and effort required to resolve. To understand this, you may have to understand the performance parameters of the organization/department that get influenced by ‘team building’. The typical performance parameters are quality, cost, productivity and customer service. Depending on what objective is being pursued at that time, you can decide if the problem is worth pursuing. This will determine if the problem is important and/or urgent? And how much time and effort should you spend on solving it?

This will pave way for you to explore the solutions, the fourth step of the process. Training on team building may not be the right solution. It could just be training the boss who does not know how to allow team members to express resistance overtly without toppling the cart. Even if training is a better solution, you will know the major causes of team building that will have to be tackled by the trainer. This will not only ensure that the ‘solution’ will indeed solve the problem at hand.

Summary: Step one is differentiating ‘problem’ and problem symptom to understand the true problem. Step two is analysis to find possible causes, because problem symptoms may reflect deeper causes than are obvious to an inexperienced eye. Step three is linking the ‘problem’ with the critical performance parameters of the organization to find if the ‘problem’ is worth solving. Step 4 is exploring possible solutions and ensuring that the problem is indeed solved effectively and efficiently.

On the website www.seveneighths.in, we help HR executives use this four-step process in diagnosing a problem in their organisation, through Free diagnostics.

Diagnose the weak link in a performance management system

My friend was called by a very big multinational German firm to train their executives and managers in a new PAS ( Performance management system) system. The firm had designed a PAS system with the help of a consulting firm. They installed PAS in SAP. They designed a good training program of a day to train their large work force in the new PAS system. More than 20 odd trainers were brought in to train the workforce all over India. More than few millions were spent on the entire exercise. Do you think that the company achieved its objective of changing their performance system?


The success of a performance appraisal system (PAS) does not depend on the 'brilliance' of the form designed, KRA's designed, goals set or the quality of training. It depends on the 'spirit' in which the performance appraisal is conducted. If the 'spirit' is right, everything works right in a performance appraisal system. Even if the design of performance system is wrong, the people involved in PAS discover problems 'incrementally' and, slowly but surely, reach the final destination. However, if the spirit is not put in place, then no amount of design can correct the flaws.

As a HR professional, your job is to 'ensure' that the right spirit is brought in the performance appraisal (preventive care) and 'sustained' throughout the years (corrective care). Both preventive and corrective strategies have to be designed appropriately to ensure that the right spirit is in place.

For instance, in installing a PAS one needs to take care of how goals are set in an organisation. One of the companies, i knew of, had set the goals based on last year with a 40% increase. With nothing to support such high goals, the goals cannot be met in the first place itself. How can employees achieve such 'ambitious' but unsupported goals? HR executives have to intervene and ensure that the PAS system is objective and not biased towards 'organisational bosses'. If they fail to intervene, either because HR is not taken seriously in an organisation or because HR executives does not have a conviction to stand up to, the PAS system is bound to fail because of this 'weak link'.

Other such 'weak links' in a PAS are inappropriate contextualisation of the KRA's, 'mismatch' of resources provided visavis the KRA's, lack of requisite skills of reviewing the performance of a junior, linkage of PAS with annual increments and so on.

If PAS is linked with annual increments ( as is being done by many companies), the system becomes 'over laden' with emotions due to the dynamics involved. If PAS is linked with annual increments, and because bosses have to choose whom and what to offer, they make these 'choices' first due to the high 'variety' involved. Employees loose faith in PAS because they perceive it as a means to justify lower ‘increments’. Relevance of PAS system has to be ‘reconfigured’.

Skills of managing the performance evaluation review are not innate. Without these skills, bosses find it difficult to 'assert' without pointing 'fingers'. They find it difficult to handle the outburst of emotions that are inherent in such a review. Bosses, unable to manage this high emotional interaction, are often known to avoid such interactions. This can put the entire PAS system at risk.

Corrective strategies to ensure that PAS is working as per the intended design are equally important. For instance, HR executives have to assume that 'junior' is more handicapped than the 'boss' and therefore has to be supported with something 'extra' to negotiate the handicap. Corrective strategies are monitoring strategies. For instance, HR executives may have to install a system of feedback so that every junior's feedback is received and responded.

A PAS system can become a useless 'ritual' or can become a highly active system to spot and nurture performers. Be it PAS or any other HR system, HR executives need to first diagnose the weak link in the system. Without diagnosing the weak link, PAS system can fail to make any impact.

Only after one diagnoses the weak link in one's PAS system, can one devise appropriate preventive and corrective strategies to ensure that the PAS system is self-sustainable and can achieve its desired objective.

HR managers should use non-linear thinking to get more mileage from training

In a conference, HR manager of a pharmaceutical company was explaining his dilemma. Their research department had undertaken a 3-day training program six months back, which was an instant hit. Participants rated the program highly. They were in a 'high' for a long period of a month or so. After that, the initial enthusiasm died down slowly. And now they were looking for another trainer with another training program.

He was asking the audience if 'training should be treated as a tonic'. Tonic acts as an energiser, vitalises people, but slowly looses its effect. Or should training be seen as an intervention that needs to be 'sustained'?

According to non-linear thinking paradigm, a training of a new skill/mindset, to be useful, has to be contextualised in the 'system' of participants. This is the first requirement. Contextualisation does not mean just using the 'jargon and words' of the industry. Contextualisation means understanding the variables affecting the 'problem symptom' in a specific case.

For instance, if team building workshop has to be done for a team, say for pharma research unit, the challenges of functioning as a 'team' has to be understood before a workshop has to be designed to help them. For instance, why do intelligent PHD professionals in pharma research unit do not cooperate? Why don't they see the benefits of cooperating? What policies and factors prevent them for coming together? Which of these variables can be impacted by training? Which of them are beyond the scope of training, and therefore required to be put into place, for sustained 'team building'?

An off-the-shelf program of team building, howsoever brilliant it may be, will not contextualise their issues, the challenges they face. Without appropriate understanding of the 'problem symptom', the program design will not incorporate the real-life questions and the dilemmas the team members face. Due to the brilliance of a trainer, the program may become a hit; but it will fail to produce any visible result.

The second reason, why programs do not sustain the behavioural change, is the effect of threshold limit. Until the team learning the skill, crosses the threshold skill levels, they need support, both emotional and physical. If you remember your driving experience of learning a four-wheeler you will remember the time you took till you reached your threshold limit. Until you reached the threshold limit, you were scared of taking the vehicle for drive. You were worried of the incline that will create a driving problem for you. You were worried about the u-turn that had to be taken, or the difficulty of parking in a lane. Until threshold limit is reached, you avoided the chance of driving.

No sooner you reached the threshold limit, your entire outlook of driving changed. You found situations where you could drive. After threshold was reached, the virtuous cycle helped you become a good driver; but until then, you required support from your friend, spouse and others.

The same threshold effect also works in the case of training. For instance, as soon as a team learns 'team-building', they learn to engage with each other freely. But no sooner they face a complex issue of 'conflict between two functions', the team requires support, hand-holding and even some skills to talk to each other. Once the team crosses a threshold limit, they can tackle even tougher conflicts by themselves. Until they reach threshold level, they need to be consciously supported. In short, HR managers need to tackle these issues, contextualisation and threshold limit, to make training 'effective' for their companies.

Without tackling these two thorns, money spent on training just goes down the drain. On the other hand, after negotiating these two issues, the money spent on training produces positive and sustained results.

Role of a modern HR professional

With an advent of internet and 'blogging' freedom, the relation between an employee and organisation is undergoing a 180 degree shift. An employee, who was earlier dependent on the organization as an intermediary, to sell his/her service has now more ‘channels’ to deploy his skills and resources.

An employee, who was only a resource like material to help an organization to meet its objectives, has now become a driver ‘who’ can determine the very objectives of the organization. With internet as a resource, an employee can create an open source code like ‘Linux’ and compete with a 300 billion Microsoft. With a publicly visible blog on internet, an employee can voice his thoughts and ideas to find like minded ‘community’ and choose his own path.

Such a human being cannot be ‘managed’. More than tools and techniques, companies needs a different mindset and philosophy, not just to ‘bound’ the energy, but instead channelise the boundless energy of an individual. Instead of using ‘systems and procedures’ to ‘limit the freedom’ of an employee, a company has to learn to use it to help an employee gain more options. Instead of worrying about ‘capping’ the freedom of an employee, a company has to utilise the freedom of an employee to design new business models on the new knowledge and trends.

To enable a company move towards to this, a HR executive has to take an initiative. Not only should he lead this initiative, but he should change his ‘support’ role to becoming a ‘lead’ role. This blog will help a HR executive with the tools, mindsets, and insights in undertaking this role.