Are we (CRMIT) not having fewer problems when compared to so many big names in the world?

Today is my class in IIM – B and I may be the only one from a company of employee size less than 100 as most others are from organizations with employee strengths of few thousands to few hundred thousands

Today’s class is taken by Professor NM Agrawal (http://www.iimb.ernet.in/user/85/n-m-agrawal) and the interesting assignment he gave to all of us is below …

(1)   What are the top 3 issues in your Organization that you would like to eliminate?

(2)   What are the reasons you believe that the Organization is not able to eliminate those problems?

(3)   What kind of learning does your Organization requires eliminating those issues?

(4)   What kind of leaning do you require to address the same?

Definitely a thought provoking exercise to have on day one

I know the problems that we face in CRMIT are trivial when compared to the problems that big organization faces and hence I am very keen to know what others share.

Yes, as I expected they are very interesting. I noted most of them as I felt may be one day we may have to face the same challenges and it is better be prepared than being late. They are here.

(1)   Many people feel the companies are not employee friendly and Organizations are more inclined towards the benefits of investors and customers and little they bother about employees

(2)   An interesting feedback from a person in a well known brand in India is, he feels his company is not doing a right job in talent acquisition and hence he is not able to improve the revenue per employee and not able to move up the value chain. When it can’t attract talents how can CRMIT? J. I hope euro crisis will help us

(3)   Many feels most of issues are due to immature handling of the operational issues my middle managers

(4)   Some feel their Organization are not focusing on customer satisfaction and most of their customers feedback are passive (No opinion) and not supportive

(5)   Some have their grudge against the way customers manage the projects on their side leading to too much exploitation of poor vendors who don’t have any other options

(6)   One of the key issues that many in the Service Organizations feel is they are not able to differentiate themselves from other vendors (USP is missing)

(7)   Few raised the most common issue of poor quality estimation

(8)   Some complained on deep Organization hierarchies that are formed by Products Regions, Domains etc resulting in too much politics

(9)   Lot have complaints on the way the onshore – offshore model works

1. Many feel the Organization gives importance only to onshore people
2. They feel offshore people are more of commodities and replaceable any time
3. Onshore staff not sharing their deep domain expertise to offshore team

(10) Not that quality work shared / passed on to offshore though they feel they are capable

(11) As you grow in an Organization many feel, more number of people working under you means more power hence people are reluctant to release their resources to other areas where the resources can effectively contribute and of interest to people too

(12) Missing employer – employee commitment. Employer sees employees as commodity and employees ready to switch the job even if gets a 10% extra

(13) Product companies have their own issues. They feel many times there are changes to Product Strategies but the impact of Organization Structure due to that changes are not well analyzed and handled leading to lot of issues

(14) Preferential treatment to certain divisions / people

(15) Basic issues of role clarity at individual and team level

(16) Issues related to cross cultural environment. Parent company of one country trying to impose their way of doing things in their centers at other regions

Later I felt may be every company when they are smaller they would have done great but as they moved up they lost their focus in making everyone from top to bottom most level recognizing / understand the “Shared Value” of being together and achieving together. People should always experience a sense of personal growth and development to retain them for longer period.

I hope this blog article would be of use to the HR managers and senior managers in the big companies