Mind Matters

The young lady was asked to wait after she met the Chairman with HR Chief and a Business Head. The HR Chief was quite positive and enthusiastic having found the right candidate.

Interestingly, the Chairman and the Business Head were also impressed with the candidate. The young lady was working in an organization known for its World - Class HR practices and wanted a change for personal reasons. However, the Business Head had a point. He commented that though the lady could be an asset, the organization was not mature enough to try out HR interventions of that level. The HR Chief argued that in that case, it was all the more necessary to have people who could put the organization on the track, which leads to that level. He insisted that right people cannot be hired only after reaching a level. Rather, it is necessary to have people who could make a winning team and take organization there...

Have you come across such arguments? Is it not something like saying that one should not touch water before becoming an expert in swimming? Or we shall find a better navigator once we reach our shore? Sounds funny? Indeed it is...; but this funny mindset is a commonplace. It is seen that companies do build in great vision; but forget to get in right navigators to sail in that direction. Instead unknowingly or unintentionally they hire people with wrong mindsets and then waste time and money trying to build, coach, mentor and retain them...

The mindset affects personal character, and personal character is an amorphous quality that exerts a powerful influence on every thing we do. We learn, deduce, envision, engage, benchmark with the best and dream of becoming BIG! So far so good. But mere dreaming, mere wanting is not enough. Converting all this to reality requires change in mindset and when it comes to it, we fail miserably and therefore fail in reaching our goals and realizing our dreams!

There is a tremendous dilemma embedded in this discussion: how can we transform organizations if we are not yet capable of transforming our own mindset? Clearly, we cannot.

Mindset sets the overall tone for culture prevalent in the company and associated performance. The mindset differentiates between managing todays' and working to build foundations for strong tomorrows. No doubt, todays' have to be managed. At the same time it is imperative to spend our time and efforts in right direction for building tomorrows..

However, this is not a chicken and egg issue. Ways of thinking, behaving and working often change along with the vision and strategy. You can not produce an item and add quality later, you can not graduate and improve your grades later, you can not build factories and add culture later. It is not something to do with size. You can not fool yourself by saying that you will build culture after becoming a 100 million company or 1,000 people strong entity or having ten manufacturing locations. And when the senior people in an organization do not understand this, it is very clear that the right culture is missing.

It is possible to change a company culture-or at least to prod it a bit in one direction or another and that is best achieved by continually hiring people who represent the direction in which you are headed. It was not for nothing that Henry Ford said that you can take all my buildings, offices and infrastructure away. Leave my PEOPLE with me and I will build it all once again!

The right culture produces winning team. Right people in the organization as a part of a winning team contribute to produce results, applying thrust in right direction when they see the wheel moving. They push together and that's how change really happens. They help build the organization and the spiral gets accelerated.

There is no substitute to experiencing the thrill of riding this spiral. With no short cuts available, you only got to get there to experience the joy... And for all this to happen, one has to have the right mindset.