Seven Obstacles in Talent Management

There is a global war for talent and companies are facing a demographic landscape dominated by looming retirement of baby boomers in the developed world. Thus, talent creation, nurture and management has emerged the single most discriminator for corporations not only for growth but very survival as well. McKinsey highlights the following seven main obstacles in talent management (Business Today, 23rd March 2008):

1. Senior managers don’t spend enough-quality time on talent management.
2. Organization is ‘siloed’ and does not encourage constructive collaboration and sharing of knowledge resources.
3. Line managers are not sufficiently committed to development of people’s capabilities and careers.
4. Line managers are unwilling to differentiate their people as top-, average- and under- performers.
5. Line managers do not address under-performance effectively, even when chronic.
6. Senior leaders don’t align talent management strategy with business strategy.
7. CEOs, senior leaders are not sufficiently involved in shaping talent-management strategy.

Significance of Modal Income

This interesting article (with minor editing) was published in Business Line, Hindu Group of Papers (India), on Jun 11, 2002 by G. Ramachandran

MEAN income is a popular statistical measure used by experts and common folk to measure and to describe the prosperity of nations. Per capita incomes and mean household incomes are widely used by economists and policy-makers in government and by analysts and marketers to make important inferences and decisions. The widespread acceptance of mean is due to the simplicity with which it can be calculated. It is used widely as a result of the ease with which it can be visualised by those interested in measurement and comparison. Mean is the expected value of a random variable. But it has important limitations in its ability to convey critical and defining characteristics vis-à-vis the other statistical measure, MODE.

A neighbourhood where nine households earn $1,000 each and one household earns $6,000 has the same mean household income as another where nine households earn $500 each and one household earns $10,500. Their mean household income is $1,500. However, the modal, or most frequently observed, income of the first neighbourhood is $1,000 while it is only $500 in the second. The limitation of averages has a larger and deeper impact on economic and business policies that are derived from mean incomes. The neighbourhood with the lower modal income is unlikely to be a promising market for some goods that have a high sticker price. The neighbourhood with the higher modal income is unlikely to be interested in some goods that have a low sticker price. If both neighbourhoods are in the same economy and if households compete for jobs, it is very likely that wage competition would be intense in the neighbourhood with a modal income of $500.

It is easy to see why and how modal income influences wage aspirations and the willingness of households to invest in new skills. It is also easy to see how modal income influences the supply of human resources, and thereby aggregate demand and the size of markets. From such a perspective, the neighbourhood with the modal income of $500 might respond more vigorously to stimulus aimed at growth. When households break out of the lower modal income, they would push the mean household income beyond $1,500. It is easy to see why and how modal incomes and the principal factors that give rise to modal incomes are more important than mean incomes.

The Indian economy resembles the second neighbourhood. The per capita annual income is about $460, higher than that of 41 countries. But there are more poor households in India than in all of Africa, Asia and Central America. Why? The modal or most frequently observed income is less than $100, which makes most Indian households poorer than those in Angola, Burundi and Congo. Therefore, the analysis of modal incomes in the Indian economy could provide a new thrust to the generation of new income-producing opportunities in India and to aggregate growth.

Income Analysis:
Income analysis has an overwhelming influence over the inferences and recommendations of development institutions such as the World Bank. Their methodologies have influenced the formulation of poverty-alleviation policies by many governments. Comparative analyses of mean incomes are an important component of these methodologies. Time-series analysis involves comparisons of mean incomes of the same country or region but at different times. Cross-sectional analysis involves comparisons of mean incomes at a point in time of two or more countries or regions.

The purpose of cross-sectional analysis is to enable the formulation and implementation of policies that could lead to better incomes. But if the analysis is confined to mean incomes, there may be little to learn and emulate. Dr Branko Milanovic, a leading economist and researcher, has found that inequality in world income is very high more because of differences between mean country incomes than because of inequality within countries. Development economists may infer that domestic inequality in mean incomes is not as critical an issue as global inequality in mean incomes. They may argue for a better and more equitable world order, but this article would disappoint them by arguing for a better and more proactive domestic economy.

Neighbourhood Effect:
The rich seek privileges, while the poor are concerned about inequality. Privileges too are the outcomes of inequality. However, inequality is more poignant to the poor than to the rich. Hence, inequality is starker when 20 per cent of a population is poor and 80 per cent is rich than when 20 per cent is rich and 80 per cent is poor. Income inequality is a critical social issue in the OECD economies rather than in India. When many households in a locale have meagre incomes, only a few households feel poor. Remember Winston Churchill’s famous saying “beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars”. When neighbourhoods operate in isolation, there is relative satiation that modifies the effort expended by households towards earning higher incomes. This explains why households around the world tend to choose `comfortable neighbourhoods' in their domestic economies where they do not feel too unequal, but have better bargaining power than their neighbours.

However, in the long run, the neighbourhood modifies the effort expended by all households towards earning higher incomes. Dr Milanovic's research results are not surprising. Poor countries continue to remain poor for many reasons, but their low modal incomes and their neighbourhoods that operate in isolation are perhaps the most fundamental reasons. India should, therefore, focus on the modal incomes of households in every neighbourhood and on the mobility of human resources.

Income Expectations:
Households are exposed primarily to the incomes and purchasing power of other households in their immediate neighbourhood. Their exposure to the incomes and purchasing power of households in a distant neighbourhood is secondary. Hence, local incomes and purchasing power are the fundamental determinants of local prosperity. It is unlikely that a skin specialist would choose to practise in a locale where the modal income is low. Low modal income would adversely affect the specialist's income. The specialist's decision to ignore a neighbourhood would, in turn, adversely affect its mean income.

Every neighbourhood is a unique ecosystem with particular marginal costs and revenues, and particular opportunity costs and revenues. The costs and income expectations are driven by the neighbourhood's modal income. This is particularly important when services are produced by human effort but cannot be stored or transported. Such services constitute more than 30 per cent of India's economy. E-enabled services and remote servicing of customers could favourably alter the determinants of prosperity someday. But it could take long. In the meanwhile, smart governments could work on costs and income expectations by improving the terms of trade in their locales. The income of a skin specialist is determined by the number of customers and their individual capability to spend than by the mean income of customers. If households from several neighbourhoods could access the skin specialist, the specialist may choose to practise in a neighbourhood though its modal income is low. The mode of access -say, a system of roads - would make up for the low modal income. Roads and reliable transport overcome the inherent limitations of low modal incomes of neighbourhoods.

Empirical Evidence:
Many analysts assume that prosperity in the US is driven by urban, non-agrarian activities in the metropolises. Empirical evidence shows that 52 of the 250 richest counties are not metropolitan counties. The 52 counties derive their incomes from an interesting mix of income-producing activities, though they are agrarian at the core. They have generated new income-producing opportunities as a response to local modal incomes and local demand. Political will and administrative conscientiousness have made a difference to states such as Iowa. Linn and Polk counties in Iowa are in the midst of agrarian activities related to corn, soybean and hogs. Are they non-metropolitan? They are among the 198 richest metropolitan counties in the US. They have overcome the inherent limitations of low modal incomes imposed by agrarian activities.

By contrast, counties that have not overcome the inherent limitations of low modal incomes imposed by agrarian activities have lagged; 240 of the 250 poorest counties are not metropolitan counties. They are driven by agrarian activities. Kings County in California is among the 250 poorest counties, though California has a much higher mean income than Iowa. However, no county from Iowa is among the 250 poorest. Agriculture is not a hurdle to prosperity. Wichita and Haskell counties in Kansas continue to be agrarian and non-metropolitan but are among the 250 richest counties because they have found complementary sources of income. Empirical analysis of the 3,110 counties in the US shows that political will, administrative conscientiousness and the effectiveness of local governance make a vital difference to the domestic economy. These could be emulated in India.

States that are committed to improving the incomes of households could focus on the factors that affect modal incomes. An objective analysis of income-producing opportunities would show that most people earn their livelihoods in their neighbourhoods because of the purchasing power of their neighbours. That is the mode! The same analysis would show that most people who earn meagre incomes have failed to connect adequately with the purchasing power of their neighbours. Governments could, therefore, ask how they could make more people connect with more purchasing power in a bigger neighbourhood. Efforts in this direction would lead to the generation of new income-producing opportunities and to higher modal incomes and higher mean incomes.

It’s Often Smart to Make the First Move in a Negotiation

When it comes to negotiation strategies, it is not always wise to wait for the other side to make the first offer, to suppress emotions during bargaining, or to reveal too much too early, says Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Margaret Neale.

“Most of us think we should let the other side make the first offer”, but “You should make the first offer because of the power of anchoring” says Neale.

In making the first offer, you gain an advantage by defining the starting point to which the other side must respond. The only times when it makes sense to wait for the other side to make an offer, she added, is when you have information that gives you significant advantage in the bargaining or “when you honestly believe that the other side dramatically values the object of the exchange at a much higher rate than you do.”

How “extreme” should a first offer be? “Just this side of crazy,” Neale said, explaining how you must be as aggressive as possible without crossing a line that would prompt the other side to shut down negotiations and walk away.

And if you can’t risk an impasse or “the benefit you might receive is not worth the time it takes to negotiate,” a first offer should be on the low side, she added. This is also true if you want to start an auction with lower barriers to entry.

Negotiations are “a mixed-motive interaction” in which a party must manage both “the competitive and the cooperative components of interaction,” she said, adding negotiations should not be viewed as a zero-sum game.

Nor is transparency necessarily the best policy in negotiations, Neale said. You must never reveal your bottom line, for it increases the likelihood of an impasse, she added.

She also disputed the belief that a poker face is a key to success in negotiations, and that the rational negotiator is always the unemotional negotiator. “People don’t usually think we use emotions strategically,” she said, adding emotions can be powerful pieces of information. She cited a study that showed that, in some cases, negotiators who displayed anger during the process created more value than those who were unemotional.

Neale said negotiators must also always be aware of their greatest weapon: The ability to walk away. “If you are facing a bad deal,” she said, “you have a choice.”For the complete article, click the link below:
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/2007nealefirstmove.html

Extreme Jobs

The December 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review published an interesting article entitled “Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Work Week” written by by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce from the Center for Work-Life Policy (http://www.worklifepolicy.org/). The study showed that 45% of managerial workers in large corporations have “extreme jobs” - they work an average 73 hours a week and deal with additional performance pressures that range from 24/7 client demands to grueling travel schedules. Workloads are not only heavy - they’re unrelenting. Vacation has become stigmatized - in many corporations contenders for the big bucks or the corner office don’t feel they can take time off. The survey data show that almost half of all extreme workers take fewer than ten days vacation a year. Nearly 60% don’t take what they are entitled to.

Despite these stresses and strains, jobs at the cutting edge of today’s knowledge economy are powerfully alluring. In the words of one BP executive: “I love my job. Riding this wave of expansion in Asia - being part of the reason a country takes off - is enormously exciting.” A Deutsche Bank executive is even more graphic “My work gives me this adrenalin rush. Like a drug, it’s irresistible and addictive”. The data show that fully 76% of extreme workers love their jobs. Very few feel exploited or put upon by a big boss. Rather, a majority (67%) see the pressures of their jobs as “self-inflicted.” Freely chosen or not, these pressures exert a heavy toll - wreaking havoc in lives and undermining health and well-being of both the organisation and the individual.

Close to 50% of extreme workers are so depleted and drained that when they get home at night they’re speechless - incapable of conversation. Besides relationship the impact on health is serious. The research details links between extreme jobs and chronic insomnia, weight gain, infertility, and heart problems. The connection between vacation (or lack thereof) and heart attacks is particularly eye-catching. Researchers at SUNY Oswego and the University of Pittsburgh have found that among male employees, taking an annual vacation cuts the risk of a fatal heart attack by 32%. Among female employees this figure rises to 50%. Taking time out isn’t just a piece of self-indulgence. It’s a life saver. Moreover, the workplace is becoming the centre of many people’s social life, at the expense of the home. With the rise of knowledge-based work, people increasingly like their jobs and their colleagues’ company.

What is the definition of “extreme jobs”? According to the study, a job is considered to be “extreme” when it takes 60 or more hours per week, is highly paid and entails at least five of the following characteristics:

1. Unpredictable flow of work
2. Fast-paced work under tight deadlines
3. Inordinate scope of responsibility that amounts to more than one job
4. Work-related events outside regular work hours
5. 24/7 availability to clients
6. Responsibility for profit and loss
7. Responsibility for mentoring and recruiting
8. Large amount of travel
9. Large number of direct reports
10. Physical presence at workplace at least ten hours a day.

The surge of extreme jobs is explained by three major factors. First, competition has become more intense. The immense wave of mergers, the flattening of hierarchies and the fear of losing jobs due to outsourcing greatly contributed to this phenomenon. The enormous amount of money earned by top professionals and managers these days is obviously a powerful incentive to work more than the rivals. This could rapidly turn into a vicious circle because numbers show that the higher the pay and position, the bigger the workload. Second, technological developments seem to have liberated and shackled professionals at the same time. 72% of the Americans who answered a survey declared technology helps them do their jobs well but 59% said it lengthens their working day, while 64% think it invades their family life. Finally, cultural shifts are also responsible for the spread of extreme jobs. Extreme efforts are well appreciated in our society. In extreme sports, the more demanding and daring athlete gets more public’s admiration. Intense jobs, like extreme sports, are seen as desirable and not exploitative at all.

But extreme jobs also imply cost increases. It may be that companies can take advantage of extreme workers in the short term. But in the long run, burn-outs, promotion refusals and health costs might prove expensive for firms. 69% of the study’s respondents believe they would be healthier if they worked less and 65% would refuse a promotion if it meant more workload. Bad relationships with spouse and children, an unsatisfied sex life and incapacity to properly maintain their homes are other problems encountered by extreme workers. Recruiting and retaining women talent seem to be most affected in “extreme jobs” condition.

Corporations, worried about “burnout” and high turnover rates, are getting into the business of taming extreme jobs. The new programs range from nap breaks (Nike), to creating half a day a week that’s “communication free” (Intel), to an internal consulting pool that offers valued employees a reduced hour schedule for a period of two years (Amex). The logic behind these new initiatives is two-fold. Providing respite from hellish hours reduces “flight risk” among key talent, while reducing information and work overload promotes creativity and innovation.

Can Financial Incentives Create Bad Employee Behavior?

Offering financial incentives to motivate employees and executives has been a common management practice for decades. Car salesmen get higher commissions for selling more automobiles. Teachers get bonuses when their students score higher on standardized tests. Executives get generous stock options for boosting the company’s stock price.

Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer of the Stanford Graduate School of Business warns that using monetary incentives can backfire, especially if they are offered mainly to influence behavior. “Incentives should be used not to drive behavior but instead to provide recognition and to share the company’s success with its employees,” he writes. “There are, unfortunately, few shortcuts in leadership—and using financial incentives to fix companies isn’t one of them.” The article is based on a chapter in Pfeffer’s latest book, What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom about Management, Harvard Business School Press, 2007.

Pfeffer, who is a professor of organizational behavior, writes that increasingly companies and organizations have been using individual incentive pay—including sales commissions—to inspire employees to be more productive or efficient. He cites a report by Hewitt Associates, the compensation and human resources consultancy, which said the percentage of companies participating in its salary survey that offered at least one plan that tied pay to performance jumped from 51 percent in 1991 to 77 percent in 2003.Pfeffer said organizations use incentive pay based on the belief “that if employees were just compensated appropriately, virtually every organizational and management problem could be solved.” However, that view can be misguided, he adds.

Pfeffer cites his own experience in buying a car on the San Francisco Peninsula. When he and his wife told a salesman that they were not planning to make a purchase that afternoon, the representative—who was paid by commission—began ignoring them. Pfeffer and his wife ended up buying a car from another dealership where more attentive salespeople “tried to build a customer-service culture and encourage dealer loyalty.”

Pfeffer also cited the experience of the city of Albuquerque where officials, hoping to slash overtime costs in garbage collection, began paying truck crews for eight hours of work no matter how long it took them to complete their routes. The city hoped the new policy would encourage the workers to finish the job quickly. Instead, some crews cut corners—missing pick-ups; speeding, which caused accidents; or driving to the dump with overloaded trucks, which led to fines.

The controversial practice of awarding stock option grants to top executives has also been problematic, Pfeffer writes. “There is evidence that the higher the option grants to senior executives, the more likely it is that their companies will have to subsequently restate their financial statements.”

Corporations and organizations should not assume that their employees and members are motivated primarily by money, he writes. Financial incentives can play a role, but the key is still to build a supportive culture in an organization. “You want rewards to be large enough to be noticed, and you want to use them to provide an occasion for celebration and recognition, to let the group come together and share successes and enjoy each other’s companionship,” Pfeffer writes. “But you certainly don’t want to make the incentives so large that they begin to drive, and thereby distort, behavior.” However, Pfeffer laments that many corporations and organizations have come to rely too heavily on financial rewards.

“One can change a pay system or a set of financial rewards fairly quickly and easily,” he writes. “It is much harder to change organizational culture, people’s mindsets and beliefs, their knowledge and skills, and how effectively they work and communicate with each other. Thus, financial incentives offer the mirage of a quick fix—and contemporary management seems to be enamored of that idea.”

TQ – IQ – EQ – SQ

Universally the state of economy/society is bringing a high degree of pressure on individuals to handle difficult, adverse conditions and hardships. To the list of desirable qualities, a new measurement has been added: the tribulation quotient, which measures the ability of people to handle the hardships, the difficulties and the adversities of work and life.

A high TQ indicates the ability of a person to handle problems with speed and efficiency, minimizing damage and showing a high aptitude in disaster management. TQ shows how an individual looks at and handles challenging situations and his ability to think his way out of the stickiest corners. Typically, high TQ scores reveal the readiness by people to take charge and handle responsibility. People with such scores will rarely blame others for delays and glitches. Those with low scores will generally find themselves defeated, distressed and disoriented when faced with similar problems in similar circumstances. They give up and are content (though resentful) to let others do what they can not.

Solving logical or strategic problems involves the use of rational intelligence. Psychologists who devised tests to measure rational intelligence termed their measurement as “Intelligence Quotient (IQ)”, their hypothesis being that higher the IQ more is rational intelligence. Initially the IQ included only verbal and mathematical-logical capabilities. However, Gardner’s 1983 book “Frames of Mind” refuted the narrow IQ view and extended the concept to include spatial capacity, physical fluidity, musical capability, inter-personal intelligence, intra-personal intelligence etc. According to Gardner, intelligence has 8 dimensions: Factual, Arithmetic, Analytic, Linguistic, Athletic, Artistic, Intuitive & Emotional.
The operative word in his view of intelligence was multiple. While the utility of IQ in identifying potential performers is not disputed, according to psychologists IQ contributes only about 20% to the factors that determine life’s success, which leaves 80% to other forces. As Gardner observes “One’s ultimate niche in society is determined largely by non-IQ factors, ranging from social class to luck”.

In the mid-1990s, Daniel Goleman popularized the Emotional Quotient (EQ) – a degree of emotional intelligence, awareness of one’s own and other people’s feelings such as empathy, compassion, motivation and the ability to respond to pain or pleasure appropriately. His basic hypothesis was that for an effective use of IQ, EQ is a necessity. He writes: “In a sense we have two brains, two minds – and two different kind of intelligence, rational and emotional. How we do in life is determined by both, not just IQ. Emotional Intelligence is about recognizing what makes people more effective. It is about positive relationship. According to Hay Research, nearly 30% of a company’s bottom line is locked in discretionary efforts (EI stuff).

The millennium contribution in the area of intelligence was from Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall who coined the term “SQ” for “Spiritual Intelligence”. They argue that SQ is the basic foundation for an effective use of EQ and IQ. They also refer to it as the soul’s intelligence. While rational, logical thinking gives one’s IQ, and the associated habit-bound, pattern recognizing emotive thinking gives one the EQ, the creative, insightful, rule-making, rule-breaking thinking with which we reframe and transform our previous thinking gives one the SQ. Just as whole can be greater than the sum of its parts, SQ allows one to add a larger, deeper and richer context to the present. Zohar explains “It is our ultimate intelligence. IQ and EQ, cleverness and empathy, are not enough. Otherwise, why would so many clever, empathetic people feel there is emptiness at the centre of their lives?”

Although being spiritually intelligent is not the same as being religious. “Many actively and vociferously religious people have a very low SQ,” says Zohar. Neurologists have identified a “God Spot” in our brain that triggers our need to search for meaning in life. And, with the decline of conventional religion, Zohar says we are seeking this meaning in our working lives instead - no surprise really, when most of us spend more than 40 hours a week there.

Zohar believes that people with spiritual intelligence have the ability to assess whether one course of action or life path is more meaningful than another, and plan their future and solve problems in a way that adds value to their lives. But if one doesn’t have it already, how does he develop it? If you are suffering from American Beauty syndrome: Stuck in a job you hate, wondering why you drag yourself there for five days a week? It’s unlikely you will find the answer by having an affair with someone half your age or giving up your career to work in a fast food joint as Kevin Spacey did in the film.

Zohar says it all comes down to developing a set of principles that you believe in and that you can apply to all areas of your life. Different personality types will have different principles, she says. If you are artistic, a writer or interior decorator, then your deepest principle might be the joy in creation or achievement. If you are an “investigative” type person, such as an academic or doctor, then your principles will center on finding the solutions to the problems. If you are enterprising, such as a business executive, you will be motivated by loyalty and assuming leadership. And if you are Zohar describes as “conventional”, such as computer operator or accountant, your principles will center on building “kinship within the group”.

The challenge is how to identify, measure and improve our SQ, and thereby effectively use our EQ and IQ? The British work guru Nick Williams’s book The Work We Were Born to Do could be a self-help companion to Zohar’s Spiritual Intelligence: The Ultimate Intelligence. “As a society, we have valued the logic of the head over that of the heart for a couple of hundred years and people feel confused because they have everything that’s supposed to make them happy and they aren’t happy. He and Zohar agree there is a work we were all born to do. But it should have two qualities: we should enjoy it and it should help others.

The Triple Bottom Line

The Triple Bottom Line (TBL or 3BL or People, Planet, Profit) captures an expanded spectrum of values and criteria for measuring organizational (and societal) performance in economic, environmental and social sectors. The triple bottom line accounting means expanding the traditional reporting framework to take into account environmental and social performance - in addition to financial performance. The notion of Triple Bottom Line accounting has become increasingly important in management, consulting, investing, and NGO circles over the last few years. The phrase was coined by John Elkington in 1994. It was later expanded and articulated in his 1998 book “Cannibals with Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business”.

The concept of TBL demands that a company is responsible to 'stakeholders' rather than shareholders. In this case, 'stakeholders' refers to anyone who is influenced, either directly or indirectly, by the actions of the firm. According to the stakeholder theory, the business entity should be used as a vehicle for coordinating stakeholder interests, instead of maximising shareholder(owner) profit. "People, Planet and Profit" are used to succinctly describe the triple bottom lines and the goal of sustainability.

The idea behind the 3BL paradigm is that a corporation’s ultimate success or health can and should be measured not just by the traditional financial bottom line, but also by its social/ethical and environmental performance. Of course, it has long been accepted by most people in and out of the corporate world that firms have a variety of obligations to stakeholders to behave responsibly. It is also almost a truism that firms cannot be successful in the long run if they consistently disregard the interests of key stakeholders. The apparent novelty of 3BL lies in its supporters’ contention that the overall fulfillment of obligations to communities, employees, customers, and suppliers (to name but four stakeholders) should be measured, calculated, audited and reported - just as the financial performance of public companies has been for more than a century. This is an exciting promise. One of the more enduring clichés of modern management is that “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. If we believe that ethical business practices and social responsibility are important functions of corporate governance and management, then we should attempt to develop tools that make more transparent to managers, shareholders and other stakeholders just how well a firm is doing in this regard.

The People:
People (Human Capital) pertains to fair and beneficial business practices toward labor and the community and region in which a corporation conducts its business. A TBL company conceives a reciprocal social structure in which the well being of corporate, labor and other stakeholder interests are interdependent. A triple bottom line enterprise seeks to benefit many constituencies, not exploit or endanger any group of them. The "upstreaming" of a portion of profit from the marketing of finished goods back to the original producer of raw materials, i.e., a farmer in fair trade agricultural practice, is a not unusual feature. In concrete terms, a TBL business would not knowingly use child labor, would pay fair salaries to its workers, would maintain a safe work environment and tolerable working hours, and would not otherwise exploit a community or its labor force. A TBL business also typically seeks to "give back" by contributing to the strength and growth of its community with such things as health care and education. Quantifying this bottom line is relatively new, problematic and often subjective. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has developed guidelines to enable corporations to comparably report on the social impact of a business.

The Planet:
Planet (Natural Capital) refers to sustainable environmental practices. A TBL company endeavors to benefit the natural order as much as possible or at the least do no harm and curtail environmental impact. A TBL endeavor reduces its ecological footprint by, among other things, carefully managing its consumption of energy and non-renewables and reducing manufacturing waste as well as rendering waste less toxic before disposing of it in a safe and legal manner. In TBL thinking, an enterprise which produces and markets a product which will create a waste problem should not be given a free ride by society. It would be more equitable for the business which manufactures and sells a problematic product to bear part of the cost of its ultimate disposal. Ecologically destructive practices, such as overfishing or other endangering depletions of resources are avoided by TBL companies. Often environmental sustainablity is the more profitable course for a business in the long run. Arguments that it costs more to be environmentally sound are often specious when the course of the business is analyzed over a period of time. Generally, sustainability reporting metrics are better quantified and standardized for environmental issues than for social ones. A number of respected reporting institutes and registries exist including the Global Reporting Initiave, CERES, Institute 4 Sustainability and others.

The Profit:
Profit is the bottom line shared by all commerce, conscientious or not. In the original concept, within a sustainability framework, the "profit" aspect needs to be seen as the economic benefit enjoyed by the host society. It is the lasting economic impact the organisation has on its economic environment. This is often confused to be limited to the internal profit made by a company or organisation. Therefore, a TBL approach can be interpreted as traditional corporate accounting plus social and environmental impact.

Why Crocodiles survived Dinosaurs by 65 million years?

• Crocodiles learn very quickly and adapt to changes in their environment. In particular, they quickly learn to avoid dangerous situations. In fact, it is tough to catch a crocodile twice using the same trick.
• Crocodiles learn by observing behavior. They recognize a pattern when animals come to the river to drink at the same time each day.
• Crocodiles cooperate in food gathering by forming their bodies into a dam to catch fish. They take turns with larger prey – one holds while the other eats.
• Crocodiles have community nurseries in which one mother watches over the hatchlings of many. They live and work as members of a group.
  
  The message is very clear to their recent (the last 100,000 years or 0.1 million year) fellow species, Homo sapiens, if they hope to survive at least few million years, if not 65.

Change vs. Transformation

Most organizations (and of course individuals) today seek a Transformation in their business, yet most of them think of and talk about managing Change. The implications of this conflict will not be fully appreciated, until we learn to distinguish between Change and Transformation.

Change is characterized by ‘reactivity’. Most of us live in the domain of Change both as individuals and as organizations. Contrast this with the characteristics of Transformation. When a young, Cambridge-educated lawyer was pushed out of a train in South Africa because of his color even though he had a proper ticket, his first thoughts were in the domain of Change. “How could they? How dare they? And so on”. Yet he transcended the negativity of the moment because he was called forth by loftier aspirations to redress similar wrongs suffered by others.

Mahatma Gandhi in “The Story of my Experiments with Truth” narrates the shift from Change to Transformation so movingly. “I began to think of my duty. The hardship to which I was subjected was only a symptom of the deep disease of color prejudice. I should try to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process”. Thus, we see that he first moved through the familiar signposts that signify Change. Suddenly when he discovered a higher sense of purpose, he began to discover the powerful ingredients of Transformation.

The characteristics of Transformation are positive and actually creative. They stem from a new found sense of purposefulness, once a higher purpose is discovered.

Clearly we all aspire to live in the domain of Transformation even if we presently are in the domain of Change. We now examine what is central to Transformation. Upon deeper probing, we discover that this sense of purposefulness has its source in what is called a Vision. Bernard Shaw once said, “You see things and you say “why?”, but I dream of things that never were and say “why not?”.

Thus, Vision becomes the highest sense of purpose. The infinite power inherent in Vision helps transcend from the domain of Change to Transformation.

Marketing the "YOU" Brand

1. Is your Packaging Appropriate?
   Positioning is less about the product and more about how the consumer perceives the product.
2. Have you found your Niche (Core Competency)?
   Products that claim to be all things to all people never succeed. They are always vulnerable to competitive products that do less, but do better or cheaper. It is same with people. The salesman who can sell anything is not in demand as much as the man who can sell one thing well.
3. Are you making the Right Mistakes?
   People are known as much by the quality of teir failures as by the quantity of their success. So, if you are going to make mistakes, make sure they are smart rather than dumb.
4. Do you have Name Recognition?
   The best way to avoid anonymity is to do such good jobs that people want to talk about you. Word-of-mouth is, in fact, the best brand marketing.
5. Are you riding the Right Horse?
   Jockeys are always quick to say that winning is 90 percent horse and 10 percent rider. In business career, the horse can be the right company, the right boss or coming-up with a unique idea.
   
   Of all the positioning tools at your disposal, probably the best is having a great idea that people associate with you. This requires creativity and execution. Your idea will not remain yours unless you bring it to fruition despite all the obstacles in your way.