You can over­come fear and anx­i­ety

You can’t over­come any­thing un­til you ac­tu­ally look at what it is. You can’t over­come your fear un­til you know what it is you’re afraid of, or why you’re afraid. What most of us are scared of, at the deep­est level, is death, ex­tinc­tion. This is pure Dar­win­ism. Our core in­stinct is to sur­vive. This is true for a mos­quito, an earth­worm, a hu­man be­ing. With most things we are afraid of, let us pic­ture them tak­ing place and ask our­selves, ‘Then what?’ In­vari­ably, our an­swer is, ‘I will die.’

It may not al­ways be about death of the phys­i­cal body. We’re also afraid of things such as hu­mil­i­a­tion. If we in­tro­spect about why we are so afraid of be­ing em­bar­rassed, we learn that be­ing deeply hu­mil­i­ated ac­tu­ally feels like we have ceased to ex­ist. Not on a phys­i­cal level, of course, but on a deep, emo­tional level.

On a psy­cho­log­i­cal, spir­i­tual level, we are con­stantly judg­ing our­selves based on how peo­ple re­spond. We are con­stantly read­just­ing our sense of self based on how peo­ple look at us. Slowly, you re­alise that the ul­ti­mate even­tu­al­ity we are afraid of, through fear of fail­ure or hu­mil­i­a­tion, is: ‘I will dis­solve.’ On a very deep level we be­lieve that if peo­ple don’t love us and ac­knowl­edge us, we don’t ex­ist.

Think about the new-age ‘self­ie’ ob­ses­sion. Psy­cho­log­i­cally, it is fas­ci­nat­ing. We don’t just take pic­tures and keep them. No. We go ahead and post them on so­cial me­dia. If no­body likes or com­ments on the pic­ture, in our heart of hearts, we feel we don’t ex­ist. We keep post­ing to re­mind peo­ple, ‘Hey, i ex­ist.’ The more re­sponses i get, the more i ex­ist; the fewer i get, the less i ex­ist.

This is the root of a lot that ails us. When we talk about over­com­ing fear, we have to first break this myth. Mak­ing a fool of our­selves does not oblit­er­ate our ex­is­tence. We have to de­velop courage to take risks, be­cause our aware­ness of our ex­is­tence is no longer de­pen­dent on how peo­ple look at us or re­spond to us. I have to ground my aware­ness in my Self. I have to know who i am, so that re­gard­less of whether you think i’m the biggest fool who has ever walked the face of the earth or whether you think i’m the great­est per­son you have ever met, it does­n’t change how i feel about my­self. That’s the only way to over­come the fear.

The other side to it is to recog­nise that the great­est tragedy is not fail­ing, but never step­ping up to grab the op­por­tu­ni­ties in your life. The great­est tragedy is look­ing back on your life and know­ing you were afraid you were go­ing to fail and peo­ple would laugh at you. That’s the tragedy, that’s some­thing to be afraid of. We have this in­cred­i­ble gift, this in­cred­i­ble life, all these mo­ments brim­ming with po­ten­tial, and it is tragic if we don’t use them.

A beau­ti­ful line in the prayers that we chant here every morn­ing at Par­marth Nike­tan says, ‘Tu akele nahin pyare, Ram tere sath mein’ – You’re not alone, dear one, God is with you. If we can live know­ing that we’re re­ally in the Moth­er’s arms, that we’re be­ing car­ried by God, if we can al­low that faith to take over, it will re­place the fear in our life.

Source: TOI: The Speaking Tree 30 Nov 2019 

How to design an effective campus hiring strategy

Here are some major ways in which HR leaders can design an effective and scalable campus hiring strategy within their respective organizations.

An effective and scalable campus strategy is at the heart of hiring new and talented candidates who possess new-age skills. According to research conducted by Mercer-Mettl, about 74 percent organizations today reported that talent acquisition is still a challenge for them. In 2019, 67 percent organizations said campus hiring is the best channel to source talent.

But companies face a number of road blocks in the campus hiring process. There is a three-part challenge that companies have to navigate – each visit to a campus for a pre-placement talk or to screen candidates requires aligning leadership schedules, navigating logistics and investing time, one campus at a time. In addition to that, companies spend time conducting structured interview and shortlisting candidates. 

In this age of intense competition for highly-skilled talent, HR and business leaders are grappling with the challenge of creating an effective hiring strategy that would also be suitable for the long-term in a sustainable way. In order to optimize their time and effort, leaders need to know which campuses to target and how.

During a People Matters & Mercer-Mettl Webcast on “Getting the most out of your campus hiring programs: Access candidate fit with technology,” Siddhartha Gupta, Chief Executive Officer, Mercer-Mettl, and Vachaspati Saxena, Head Talent Acquisition, General Electrics discussed the ways in which TA leaders can formulate a campus hiring tactic that would be based on four core pillars that can make or break the campus hiring strategy. 

The first steps

“While hiring laterally can help filling the positions faster, campus is really where the organizations get built,” said Vachaspati Saxena, Head Talent Acquisition, General Electrics Technology Center. Siddhartha Gupta, CEO, Mercer-Mettl kickstarted the discussion by noting that the fundamental question that organizations must answer is whether they need fresh talent and for what purpose. 

Understanding which competencies you are hiring for can then determine as to which campuses you want to go to, Gupta added, addressing the HR leaders. 

The four pillars include: 

Building campus intelligence 

Once HR leaders have identified the job roles they are looking to fill and understood the competencies and skills they are looking for, the next step is to build campus intelligence. 

The four Ws can help HR leaders in understanding whether they are ready to go on a selection campaign to a particular campus. 

The four Ws include: Which institute to shortlist, when to approach, whom to hire, and what  to offer. If either of the four Ws is unclear, then the start of the campus hiring season will be dicey and the goal of filling positions with capable, reliable, and dedicated employees would not be possible to achieve. 

Depending on the competencies a particular TA team is looking for, they can decide which campuses to go to, approach the campuses at the right time and keep in mind the budget set aside for the campus recruits. 

“The more campus participation you go through over the years, you understand what job roles you need to hire for. You also get a good heat map of where the quality candidates are and then understand what you need to do in order to appeal to them,” Gupta said. 

Needs of the modern workforce 

The next step is getting an understanding of what the new generation of employees is expecting out of their first workplace. It goes well beyond just having a great salary. More often than not, the top-quality candidates are attracted towards a company if they believe in the mission and vision of the firm and feel that they are going to be working towards a higher purpose, they are more likely to be more dedicated and invested in the company. 

“The overall proposition in terms of the kind of work that they are doing and how they can contribute to the society and the world at large is crucial,” added Saxena.

Pre-placement engagement 

Going to campuses prior to the placement days can help companies get an understanding about the campus dynamics and even appeal to the potential candidates well before the placement days. That’s when firms have the opportunity to build their employer brand and proposition, Gupta added. 

Having a relationship with the students who are the potential talent pool, prior to entering the campus, and building continuous relationships on campus is the key to keep candidates engaged. 

“Most companies are investing much earlier than the placement week. Asking us to help them tell a story on campus,” Gupta said, adding that designing a dedicated pre-placement week messaging campaign can go a long way in not only hiring the right cultural fit but also help build the employer brand. 

For companies such as GE, leveraging the brand name in the right way becomes crucial. If a startup is targeting the most talented graduates coming out of tech and business college campuses, then they would need to develop an employer brand message that resonates with the millennials well before the placement week begins. 

Screening the candidates with the right Assessment Tools

Knowing which candidates would make it to the next round of interviews is the next most important step. And, that’s where leveraging the right technology and assessment tools comes into the picture. Most organizations today are moving away from the rigorous tests that are designed with the principle of eliminating those candidates who might not be good test-takers and replacing the system with a Selection Strategy which takes into account factors such as hiring for the right culture fit in addition to the technical competencies. 

In addition to the technical know-how, especially for the roles related to AI, data analytics, machine learning, etc, softer skills such as the will to work towards solving a problem and finding the solutions by working collaboratively are also valuable, said Gupta. The right assessment tools help you screen for all such behavioral skills as well. said. 

Remote proctoring tools can drastically reduce the time and effort that companies put into testing candidates. It can not only test the students at a time that they are best prepared, AI-based technology can analyze the face of the person to avoid discrepancy. Companies are also innovating with their assessments from hackathons, case study competitions (Like Amazon Ace Challenge –add link) to engage candidates, and shortlist to shortlist the right candidates who are interested in joining the company.  

Conducting effective interviews 

India Inc. relies on interviews to identify the right candidates. However, there is no clear standardization of interviews even within the same organization. Having a clear and precise process for the way in which interviews are conducted, or rather, the parameters by which TA leaders can assess whether a particular candidate is suitable for a particular job role can help in conducting effective interviews that are transparent in nature and also scalable throughout the organization. 

Final steps

Campuses are a repository of new-age skills and the way to tap into this talent pool is to be honest about the company’s vision, keeping an open-door policy, and inculcating the culture of failing fast and learning faster. 

“Be honest about what you are trying to achieve, give them a platform where they can achieve what they want to achieve,” said Gupta. “You need to be there to tell them that it is okay to fail--fail quickly, recoup, and attempt again.” 

Source: People matters

How the Value of Educational Credentials Is and Isn’t Changing

The first year after the Great Recession, 2010, marked the historical peak of college and university enrollment in the United States. In the decade since, a popular narrative has emerged that the value of a college degree is rapidly declining. As a new wave of well-capitalized educational technology companies arrived on the scene — including massive open online courses (MOOCs) — it became popular to prognosticate about the disruption of American higher education. Badges earned online would challenge and replace traditional diplomas. Renowned business theorist Clayton Christensen forecasted that half of all colleges may be in bankruptcy within 15 years. Others said the degree was “doomed.”

A revolution in credentialing appeared underway, with colleges’ core product — the traditional degree — about to be swept aside by digital substitutes and disruptive start-up companies. Even more recently, this narrative has been amplified by reports that certain blue-chip companies such as IBM, Apple, and a number of others no longer “require” degrees for certain positions.

Yet by many measures, the value of a traditional degree today is as strong as ever in the job market. Innovation in degree delivery is occurring, but it is often being led by traditional, incumbent institutions, often in partnership with technology firms.

In a national survey of employers that we at Northeastern University recently conducted, a strong majority of HR leaders said that the value of educational credentials in hiring has either increased (48%) or held steady (29%) over the last five years. And, despite some high-profile employers relaxing their baseline educational requirements in a historically tight job market, more than half of all job openings nationwide over the last year preferred at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the tens of millions of job postings tracked by labor market data firm Burning Glass Technologies. This share has been consistent over the last five years. Additionally, the substantial wage premium that employers pay college degree holders remains at historically all-time high levels, according to recent Federal Reserve Bank of New York research. Businesses are continuing to value degrees and reward more educated workers.

Much of this is due to the increase in skills demands in the modern knowledge economy. In our survey, 64% of employers agreed that the need for continuous lifelong learning will demand higher levels of education and more credentials. This is spurring a boom in post-baccalaureate learning, in particular. For example, even before they turn 30, nearly 1-in-10 American adults now earn an advanced degree — double the proportion in 1995.

In a market that continues to prioritize formal educational credentials, the once free-of-charge MOOC upstarts have found a business model — and today it is squarely focused on online degrees and other fee-based educational credentials. MOOC platforms such as Coursera and EdX have transitioned to focus on the thriving online degree business, a market also long-served by publicly traded education companies such as Pearson, Wiley, and 2U. The MOOC platforms that birthed new credential products such as the “nanodegree” and the “MicroMasters” (both trademarked terms) are now competing in the established, two-decades-old market for online degrees — one of the only growth segments in American higher education.

More than 3 million students study fully online in the United States — and notably, 29% of all students enrolled in any type of graduate-level program are fully online students. Today, according to our national surveys, a majority (61%) of hiring leaders view credentials earned online as equal to or better than those completed in person. This acceptance of online delivery has been steadily driven by employers’ years of growing direct experience hiring from, participating in, and sending employees into online university programs.

First-movers like the for-profit University of Phoenix may have dominated the online credential market 15 years ago. Today, however, the key players include institutions such as Arizona State University, the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and Johns Hopkins, among others — traditional and increasingly prestigious institutions who have boosted the credibility of online education. The shift toward digital delivery in higher education may be happening at a slower pace than in other sectors of the economy, but it is well-established and accelerating.

Rather than sweeping away degrees, new types of online credentials — various certificates, MicroMasters, badges, and the like — are instead playing a complementary role, creating the building blocks for newer, more affordable degree programs. This represents true innovation in terms of the fundamental cost inputs (including faculty labor), pricing, and service expectations associated with the delivery of degrees. By leveraging algorithms and operating at truly disruptive price points, these programs are less expensive for colleges to operate and market, and less expensive for the student.

The MBA market offers an illustrative example. In 2016, the University of Illinois launched its “iMBA” program in partnership with Coursera, building an online degree program on top of a stack of existing MOOC courses and certificates. This program is priced at just one-third of the traditional on-campus M.B.A. program cost — $22,000 for the entire degree. Just three years later, the program has grown to 2,000 students enrolled — an exponential growth rate that represents a leading share of the annual net growth in the national online M.B.A. market. This spring, the university announced it was discontinuing its traditional residential MBA to focus its resources on the online version. It’s a decision that may increasingly be repeated.

In a similar fashion, Georgia Tech has successfully scaled its innovative MOOC-based master’s degree program in computer science, priced at just $7,000 and now enrolling more than 6,000 students. As part of this program, the university has notably pioneered the use of AI-based teaching assistants. Other colleges offering MOOC-based, AI-driven degrees — many launched in just the last year — include the University of Michigan, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of London, and a number of others.

Continued technological innovation in the delivery of educational credentials is increasing access to and creating a diverse range of new options for talent development and corporate training. And, as a greater share of corporate learning is also delivered online, the boundaries between education that happens in institutional settings and on-the-job is likely to continue to blur.

Business leaders should recognize that the professional education market is in a period of experimentation and proliferating program offerings. Quality online credentials can be now earned online from many of the world’s top universities, but what a given program entails can often vary significantly. Through evaluation and experience, the market will over time coalesce around greater clarity and standards. Ultimately, employers will be among the key arbiters of value.

The growing digitization of credentials also heralds a new era of greater transparency for educational outcomes — providing more and better data on which corporate leaders can make hiring decisions. With learning occurring online and increasingly being represented in digital credentials, employers should ultimately be better positioned to assess candidates’ and workers’ skills and competencies. This can help optimize college recruiting strategies; the setting of hiring qualifications; and investment decisions about learning and development and executive education.

Finally, the new credentialing landscape and its potential deeper integration with talent strategy is also catalyzing the development of new corporate tools, services, and businesses. The educational technology sector continues to experience multi-billion dollar inflows — and the corporate HR technology market is itself catalyzed by approximately $3 billion in annual investment. It is still early in the development of this ecosystem, but the receptivity of business leaders to new educational credential offerings and delivery approaches will be key in defining the future shape of the market.

Source: HBR SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

Why Asking for Advice Is More Effective Than Asking for Feedback

You just gave a great first pitch to a major client and landed an invitation to pitch to their senior leaders. Now you want a second opinion on your presentation to see if there’s anything you can improve. What do you do?

Conventional wisdom says you should ask your colleagues for feedback. However, research suggests that feedback often has no (or even a negative) impact on our performance. This is because the feedback we receive is often too vague — it fails to highlight what we can improve on or how to improve.

Our latest research suggests a better approach. Across four experiments — including a field experiment conducted in an executive education classroom — we found that people received more effective input when they asked for advice rather than feedback.

In one study, we asked 200 people to offer input on a job application letter for a tutoring position, written by one of their peers. Some people were asked to provide this input in the form of “feedback,” while others were asked to provide “advice.” Those who provided feedback tended to give vague, generally praising comments. For example, one reviewer who was asked to give feedback made the following comment: “This person seems to meet quite a few of the requirements. They have experience with kids, and the proper skills to teach someone else. Overall, they seem like a reasonable applicant.”

However, when asked to give advice on the same application letter, people offered more critical and actionable input. One reviewer noted more specific action items: “I would add in your previous experience tutoring or similar interactions with children. Describe your tutoring style and why you chose it. Add what your ultimate end goal would be for an average 7 year old.”

In fact, compared to those asked to give feedback, those asked to provide “advice” suggested 34% more areas of improvement and 56% more ways to improve.

In another study, we asked 194 full-time employees in the U.S. to describe a colleague’s performance on a recent work task. These tasks ranged from “putting labels on items” to “creating new marketing strategies.” Then, we asked employees to give feedback or advice on the work performance they just described. Once again, those who were asked to provide feedback gave less critical and actionable input (e.g. one wrote, “They gave a very good performance without any complaints related to his work”) than those asked to provide advice (e.g. one wrote, “In the future, I suggest checking in with our executive officers more frequently. During the event, please walk around, and be present to make sure people see you”).

We further replicated these findings in a field experiment using instructor evaluations. In an end-of-course evaluation, we asked 70+ executive education students from around the world to provide either feedback or advice to their instructors. Again, advice more frequently contained detailed explanations of what worked and what didn’t, such as: “I loved the cases. But I would have preferred concentrating more time on learning specific tools that would help improve the negotiation skills of the participants.” Feedback, in contrast, often included generalities, such as “This faculty’s content and style of teaching was very good.”

Why is asking for advice more effective than asking for feedback? As it turns out, feedback is often associated with evaluation. At school, we receive feedback with letter grades. When we enter the workforce, we receive feedback with our performance evaluations. Because of this link between feedback and evaluation, when people are asked to provide feedback, they often focus on judging others’ performance; they think more about how others performed in the past. This makes it harder to imagine someone’s future and possibly better performance. As a result, feedback givers end up providing less critical and actionable input.

In contrast, when asked to provide advice, people focus less on evaluation and more on possible future actions. Whereas the past is unchangeable, the future is full of possibilities. So, if you ask someone for advice, they will be more likely to think forward to future opportunities to improve rather than backwards to the things you have done, which you can no longer change.

To document this effect, we ran another study that was very similar to our first. In this experiment, we again asked hundreds of people to provide feedback or advice on a peer’s job application. But this time, we also asked feedback providers to shift their focus toward “developing the writer.” When removed from an evaluation mindset, by focusing more on developing the recipient, feedback providers were just as critical and actionable in their input as advice providers.

Is asking for feedback always a worse strategy than asking for advice? Not necessarily.

Sometimes soliciting feedback may be more beneficial. People who are novices in their field typically find critical and specific input less motivating — in part because they don’t feel like they have the basic skills necessary to improve. So for novices, it might be better to ask for feedback, rather than advice, to receive less demotivating criticism and more high-level encouragement.

Organizations are full of opportunities to learn from peers, colleagues, and clients. Despite its prevalence, asking for feedback is often an ineffective strategy for promoting growth and learning. Our work suggests this is because when givers focus too much on evaluating past actions, they fail to provide tangible recommendations for future ones. How can we overcome this barrier? By asking our peers, clients, colleagues, and bosses for advice instead.

Source: HBR SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

Research: Quantifying the Cost of Brexit Uncertainty

CEOs in the UK have been spending more than an hour and a half a week on Brexit planning, according to a recent study. CFOs have spent more than two hours. Together, UK executives in those two roles are devoting a combined 200 hours a year, on average, to Brexit preparation. For CEOs, that represents about a week and a half of Brexit planning in a year. But it’s still not clear what, exactly, they’re supposed to be planning for.

More than three years after the referendum, businesses still don’t know what the outcome of Brexit negotiations will be – which means they’re bracing for an impossibly wide range of possibilities, on everything from terms of trade with Europe to immigration rules to domestic regulation.

Economic theory predicts that when firms face a highly uncertain future, they have an incentive to delay investment and hiring and put off other decisions. And two new studies suggest that this is exactly what’s been happening in the UK over the past three years, resulting in substantial harm to its economy.

To measure the impact Brexit has had on the UK economy so far, economists from Stanford, the Bank of England, the University of Nottingham, and the London School of Economics asked more than 7,000 UK-based executives how Brexit has affected their companies. The survey included questions about how much time executives were spending preparing for Brexit, generating the estimates above. The researchers also asked executives how much uncertainty the Brexit vote had created for their businesses. They tallied the percentage of respondents that ranked Brexit as one of their top three sources of business uncertainty and used that figure to create a “Brexit uncertainty index.” In a previous analysis, they demonstrated that over the past three years Brexit uncertainty has only increased, not abated.

Their most recent working paper, published in August, links these survey answers to data on companies’ performance. The higher executives ranked Brexit as a source of uncertainty, the less their business had grown since the referendum. By comparing firm growth pre- and post-referendum, the researchers were able to estimate Brexit’s effects on firms, which are sizable, and use them to estimate the total impact the Brexit vote has had on the UK economy.

“Anticipation of Brexit is estimated to have gradually reduced investment by about 11% over the three years following the June 2016 vote,” the researchers write. They also estimate that productivity in the UK has decreased by between 2% and 5%. (They estimate that Brexit has had a negative effect on employment, too, but this effect was not statistically significant.)

These figures align with recent headlines. In late 2018, The Guardian reported that business investment in the UK was at its lowest point since the Great Recession and the economy shrank in the second quarter of 2019, which The Financial Times attributes partly to Brexit and its effect on investment.

Is political uncertainty truly to blame for all this? Or is it that leaving the EU will be so bad for the UK that businesses are pulling back in anticipation of it? Distinguishing between these two ideas is hard, both in theory and in practice. But one interesting attempt to do so comes from a study analyzing earnings call transcripts, which found that uncertainty has played the bigger role.

In forthcoming research, economist Tarek Hassan of Boston University and his colleagues looked at transcripts of 85,000 earnings calls from publicly listed companies between 2015 and 2019, to see how they were talking about Brexit. Mentions of Brexit on the calls were associated with lower sales, investment, employment, and profitability during that year. But this negative effect was particularly strong when mentions of Brexit were accompanied by words synonymous with risk and uncertainty, suggesting that the damage was caused not just by the prospect of less trade but also by the uncertainty itself.

Taken together, these studies show how policy uncertainty can significantly harm companies and economies. That has implications beyond Europe. Policy uncertainty has been rising globally according to the Economic Policy Uncertainty index, which tracks uncertainty using newspaper reports. That increase is driven by several factors, most notably the ongoing U.S.-China trade dispute, which is shaking up trade relationships around the world. In this sense, Brexit is “the canary in the coal mine for anti-trade movements,” says economist Nicholas Bloom, of Stanford University, and co-author on the first study.

It’s an important takeaway for both businesses and politicians. While pulling back from global trade can cause significant economic harm, including lower productivity and less immigration, the way this is carried out matters, too. If anti-trade movements run a chaotic and unpredictable process, the effects will be even worse.

Source: HBR SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

People & culture make the organization successful- Novartis HR Head

Ravneet Bhanot, Head, Human Resource, Novartis GDD India shared her thoughts on the significance of people and culture in an organization. The senior HR industry leader also shared how HR can bring new value to the business in times of disruption. Read the edited excerpts here.

In an exclusive conversation with People Matters, Ravneet Bhanot, Head, Human Resource, Novartis GDD India shared her thoughts on the significance of people and culture in an organization. The senior HR industry leader also shared how HR can bring new value to the business in times of disruption. Read the edited excerpts here.

How do you create a common culture in Novartis, an organization which is spread across the globe? 

The importance of culture can never be undermined especially for a pharma organization like ours that is at the forefront of innovating medicines to meet unmet medical needs of patients worldwide. Drug development takes a collective effort. It is, therefore, imperative that we have a common culture across all our functions, divisions and geographies that binds people together and drives them towards our common objective of developing breakthrough treatments.  Our cultural aspiration for everybody at Novartis is to be Inspired, Curious and Unbossed. 

We follow a three-pronged strategy to bring cultural aspiration to life. The first is shaping the organizational structures for effectiveness, efficiency, and agility and to reduce multiple layers and bring in more simplicity in the processes. Second is to hire, train and retain high quality, diverse talent capabilities that meet the demands of today and future. The third is to align the individual’s objectives with that of the organization’s because we strongly believe that personal transformation alone can lead to organizational transformation. 

What have been your core people strategy drivers?

Our strategy is based on two key pillars. One is People and Culture: Build a single consistent Novartis employee experience. We believe in creating and promoting #OneNovartis culture. We want to have an inclusive culture that leverages the diverse strengths that our associates bring across different teams and geographies. 

The second is more focused on the business - Organization and Talent. The business landscape evolves with the market. As HR, we need to have the foresight to prepare a workforce that is future-ready.  We need to have an organizational structure, operating model and workflow that can adapt to the rapid changes. We have made sure that all our divisions are more integrated and not operating in silos. As the business model evolves - we have to make sure that we are hiring people with the right mindset and capability. 

How can HR bring new value to the business in times of disruption?

The operating models of pharma are constantly evolving. HR has a crucial role to play in these disruptive times. We need to have the right organization model, capabilities and culture that enables science-based innovations and delivers positive outcomes. Creating an organizational structure is essential which is extremely agile. 

In addition, keeping in mind the emerging need for personalized medicine, we need to enable our associates to understand and embrace these disruptive technologies. HR plays an important role in defining the talent strategy to support long-term strategic business objectives based on future organizational talent needs and the dynamics of the external talent market. 

What steps is Novartis taking to build an environment that supports creativity, collaboration, the performance of their associates? 

To build a creative, collaborative and high performing organization, there are a few levers one must keep in mind. One is definitely culture- we want our associates to be inspired, curious and unbossed. And as I had mentioned earlier, in order to encourage continuous learning and enable our associates to stay ahead of the scientific advances being made across various fields, we have invested in platforms like LinkedIn Learning and Coursera so that our people can have all the learning opportunities they want at their fingertips. 

We reimagined our performance management system wherein we said that we do not want our people to focus on individual objectives in silos, but we really want them to move towards a collective objective. We encourage our people to be more collaborative and work together towards our common goal of improving and extending patients’ lives. As HR, we are making sure that the kind of people we are hiring in the organization are more aligned with the new culture that we are trying to inculcate. 

What are your key focus areas for the financial year 2019-20?

Our culture aspiration will also continue to be our focus in 2019-20. We aim to ensure that everybody at Novartis knows, applies, experiences and sustains our culture in their daily activities. 

To ignite this cultural transformation, we have started our efforts with our leaders. There is a strong correlation between the levels of active engagement in culture change by leaders and the willingness of associates to make a personal change. We want to develop leaders who are self-aware and be aligned with our cultural values and principles so that they act as role models for our associates.

Secondly, we want to activate teams and engage associates by creating awareness about our cultural values. Every quarter we are conducting a survey – ‘Our Voice’ to hear from our associates on what is working and what is not. We want to empower them to ‘fix one thing’ that could lead us closer to our cultural evolution.

Thirdly, we want to improve experiences. Our reimagined performance management system is designed to help us move from individual goals to team-based ones, enable spontaneous robust feedback – with the principle from “anyone, any time”, while building a strong coaching culture. We want our associates at all levels to be the catalyst for change in this year and beyond.

Source: People matters 24 Sep, 2019

The Strategy Behind TikTok’s Global Rise

Few tech startups have taken off as quickly as Beijing-based ByteDance, the creator of the highly popular 15-second video app, TikTok. In just two years, TikTok has emerged to rival companies like Netflix, YouTube, Snapchat, and Facebook with more than one billion downloads in 150 markets worldwide and 75 languages. On the app, homemade videos showcase everything from comedy to lip syncs to dog grooming tips that users create and share on their phones. The scrappy, goofy, fast-moving content has hooked young audiences around the world.

Since little translation is required, TikTok reaches well beyond other successful Chinese apps such as Tencent’s messaging app WeChat, which is ubiquitous in China but mostly used elsewhere among Chinese communities keeping in touch with people back home. Chinese entrepreneurs such as ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming are showing that they can succeed in an openly competitive market internationally rather than only in China where the Great Firewall regulates the internet and blocks access to several U.S. social media sites. His strategy of dual versions of Tik Tok – one for China’s internet censored market and another for the rest of the world – could be a new model for other digital content companies aiming for such global reach – including China-based digital startups with new ambitions to venture out beyond the home market. Their story may also hold lessons for American companies who have watched similar ventures into China meet serious constraints.

From the start, Zhang, a former Microsoft engineer and Chinese serial entrepreneur, had the goal of running a borderless company. Zhang, 36, is among a new generation of home-grown Chinese tech leaders with an international vision inspired by the early success of China’s tech pioneers of the late 1990s such as  Robin Li of Baidu, Jack Ma of Alibaba, and Pony Ma of Tencent. ByteDance has a valuation of $78 billion ─ one of China’s 86 “unicorns” in 2018. Its backers span top-notch venture capitalist firm Sequoia Capital China, Japanese tech conglomerate Softbank Group, U.S. private equity investor KKR, Chinese investment firm Hillhouse Capital and corporate venture unit SIG Asia.  As a privately financed digital content startup founded by a tech entrepreneur, ByteDance has a different relationship with the Chinese government and its grip on state-owned conglomerates. But in going global, the China-originated ByteDance could encounter heightened distrust and scrutiny especially as security concerns have enveloped Chinese telecom giant Huawei in readying the launch of its fifth generation, high-speed networks internationally.

In August 2012, five months after founding ByteDance, Zhang launched his first mobile app, Toutiao or Today’s Headlines, an AI-powered daily curated feed of news content personalized to users. In 2016, Zhang added to his product lineup by introducing a video sharing app, Douyin, for the Chinese market. He rolled out an overseas equivalent of the Douyin video app, dubbed TikTok, in 2017. That same year, ByteDance paid an estimated $900 million to acquire Musical.ly, a social video app based in Shanghai with more than 200 million users worldwide and a large following in the U.S. The deal combined TikTok’s AI fed streams and monetization track record with Musical.ly’s product innovation and grasp of users’ needs and tastes in the West.

After ByteDance folded the four-year-old Musical.ly into TikTok, and rebranded it to a single application under the TikTok name in August 2018, the combined app immediately gained some 30 million new users within three months. The app makes money through ads and from the sale of virtual goods such as emojis and stickers to fans.  An easy-to-use interface combining click-baity news and entertainment with powerful AI to precisely match users rather than recommend content based on their viewing habits and “likes” have fueled the app’s success.  The homegrown content has become prevalent, particularly among rural and poorer residents in China, India, and other emerging markets where access to other digital entertainment options has been limited. In China’s smaller cities and the countryside, where state-owned, stodgy media has dominated, the new ByteDance content apps are especially popular.

Zhang has also built upon China’s desire to make AI a priority in the race for global tech dominance. He describes a mission to “combine the power of AI with the growth of mobile internet to revolutionize the way people consume and receive information.”

Venture partner Connie Chan at Andreessen Horowitz in San Francisco wrote in her blog that the AI powered apps at ByteDance go to an extreme not common yet in the West. TikTok uses the app’s algorithms to decide which videos to show users, dictates their feed entirely, and learns their preferences the more one uses it. This is different from Facebook, Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube, which use AI to recommend posts rather than send feeds to users directly, she notes.

The company actively scouts for international content trends from an office in Los Angeles. Over the past few years, ByteDance snapped up Los Angeles–based Flipagram, a video and photo creation app set to music clips, and invested $50 million in Live.me, a livestreaming app in Los Angeles that is majority owned by Chinese mobile app developer Cheetah Mobile. Additionally, ByteDance acquired News Republic, a global mobile news aggregation service based in France, from Cheetah Mobile for $86.6 million. ByteDance attempted to buy a major stake in U.S. social news aggregator Reddit from Si Newhouse’s Advance Publications but lost that deal to Tencent, which swept in with a $300 million co investment in early 2019.

Facebook faces a serious global rival from China in TikTok. In 2018, TikTok ranked fourth worldwide as the top non-game app downloaded, at 663 million behind only Facebook at 711 million and its related apps WhatsApp and Messenger, SensorTower data shows. TikTok’s inroads in India and its young, mobile-savvy population is a big reason it’s soaring. About one-quarter of TikTok’s downloads come from India. TikTok added 188 million downloads in the first quarter of 2019, surpassing Facebook at 176 million, but trailing WhatsApp at 224 million and Messenger at 209 million.

In late 2018, Facebook launched its own short-format video version, Lasso, which is widely considered a knockoff of TikTok. Aimed at teens, Lasso can only be accessed through Facebook or Instagram, and so far is limited to U.S. access. Lasso was downloaded by 70,000 U.S. users within four months of its launch in November compared with nearly 40 million users for TikTok in the same time period, according to app analytics firm SensorTower.

TikTok’s rise has also brought a string of regulatory problems. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission slapped TikTok with a $5.7 million fine for failing to get parental consent before collecting names, email addresses, and personal information about children users under the age of 13.  In India, lawmakers briefly banned the app this past April from being downloaded on Apple and Android, for encouraging “cultural degradation” among youth. The ban was lifted a few weeks later when ByteDance lawyers successfully argued that its system screens offensive content and prevents nude videos to be shown, and is continually being upgraded to identify troublesome videos and develop more personalized content recommendations.

Despite regulatory and other challenges, ByteDance is building an empire of apps for a new generation and challenging the borders drawn around traditional digital content. If ByteDance can continue to fulfill its mission of becoming a borderless company with game changing technology, it may lead to the creation of other borderless companies and will influence other tech innovators from emerging markets to venture out too. Ultimately, this trend will create a fuller range of digital offerings globally for consumers and businesses.

Source: HBR SEPTEMBER 13, 2019

Hire Leaders for What They Can Do, Not What They Have Done

Fifty years have passed since the publication of The Peter Principle, but its rule still applies today. “In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties,” noted Laurence J. Peter, the educator behind this famous work. His theory postulates that most competent people are promoted until they reach a position that is above their skill level, at which point they cease to grow.

Academic studies show that promotions are still largely a reward for past performance, and that organizations continue to assume the attributes that have made someone successful so far will continue to make them successful in the future (even if their responsibilities change). This may explain why there are still a large number of incompetent leaders.

Organizations that wish to select the best people for leadership roles therefore need to change how they evaluate candidates. The next time you are filling a managerial position, ask yourself three questions:

1. Does the candidate have the skills to be a high-performing contributor or the skills to be an effective leader?

The performance level of individual contributors is measured largely through their ability, likability, and drive. Leadership, by contrast, demands a broader range of character traits, including high levels of integrity and low levels of dark-side behaviors born out of negative attributes likes narcissism or psychopathy.

The difference between these two skill sets explains why great athletes often end up being mediocre coaches (and vice versa), and why high performers often fail to succeed in leadership positions.

We all know that the most successful salespeople, software developers, and stockbrokers have exceptional technical skills, domain knowledge, discipline, and abilities to self-manage. But can those same skills be used to get a group of people to ignore their selfish agendas and cooperate effectively as a team? Probably not. Leaders do need to obtain a certain level of technical competence to establish their credibility, but too much expertise in a single area can be a handicap. Experts are often hindered by fixed mindsets and narrow views, which result from their years of experience. Great leaders, however, are able to remain open and to adapt, no matter how experienced they are. They succeed because they are able to continually learn.

This has been proved in many situations, particularly in the area of sales. A recent academic study of over 200 firms found that performance as a salesperson was negatively correlated with performance as a sales manager. If you promote your number one salesperson to management, you create two problems: You lose your top salesperson and you gain a poor manager.

2. Can I really trust this candidate’s individual performance measures?

The most common indicator of someone’s performance is a single subjective rating by a direct line manager. This makes measures of performance vulnerable to bias, politics, and an employee’s ability to manage up. Although peer-based and network-oriented performance management is growing, it is still in its infancy. As a result, performance measures may not be as reliable as you think.

This is likely why women still tend to be promoted less than men, even when their performance is identical. Many organizations promote people into leadership positions because they “create the right impression,” even if their actual contributions are minimal.

If you ask yourself the above question, and the answer is “no,” take some time to think about what good leadership looks like at your company. Are you looking for leaders who can drive great results? Bring people together? Listen and develop others? Or are you looking for leaders who can connect, innovate, and help evolve the business? Every company needs different types of leaders at different times, and someone who performs well in their current role may not be the right person to help you reach your most immediate goals.

3. Am I looking forward or backward?

The secret to selecting great leaders is to predict the future, not to reward the past. Every organization faces the problem of how to identify the people who are most likely to lead your teams through growing complexity, uncertainty, and change. Such individuals may have a very different profile from those who have succeeded in the past, as well as from those who are succeeding in the present.

Avoid promoting entirely based on culture fit. Although you may have good intentions in doing it, it often results in a lack of diversity of thought and outdated leadership models. In today’s ever-changing world, businesses are expected to grow as fast as the technologies surrounding them. Their models must be in constant transformation. What worked in the past and what is working in the present may not work at all in the future. Companies, then, need to get more comfortable thinking outside the box. This means taking “misfits” or “people who think differently” and placing them into leadership roles. Give them support and time to prove themselves. This is just one way to deepen your leadership pipeline.

You should also take an extra look at the people who “may not be ready,” and analyze them on the basis of their ambition, reputation, and passion for your business. Often the youngest, most agile, and most confident people turn into incredible leaders, even though their track record may not be the best. Mark Zuckerberg, one of the most successful CEOs in decades by many measures, had almost no business experience before he started Facebook. Steve Jobs had not run a large company before Apple, yet he had the insights, connections, and drive to make it a household name.

It’s time to rethink the notion of leadership. If you move beyond promoting those with the most competence and start thinking more about those who can get you where you want to go, your company will thrive. In other words, start considering those who have high potential, not just top performers.

Source: HBR 27, 2019

Is Recession coming.... few signals we should know

Everyone is discussing recession, So the question is whether the recession is in sight now. There are a couple of indications of financial downturn that can, when consolidated somehow or another, demonstrate a recession is brewing..

Yield curve inverts

When interest rates on short-term government bonds surpass the interest rates for long-term government bonds, business analysts state that yield curve has inverted. That is an indication of cynicism among financial specialists, and it's a solid expectation of economic downturn. In fact, the last five recessions have been preceded by a yield curve inversion, in spite of the fact that it doesn't imply that recession will happen right away.

Unemployment rate rises

There's a stream down impact that happens in a down economy: People quit spending money, which means organizations don't work out quite as well. Organizations cut a portion of their workers. If a lot of businesses are doing this at the same time, it makes it harder for those laid-off folks to find new employment. In the event that the joblessness rate goes up, it's a sign that things aren't looking incredible.

GDP drops 

Gross domestic product (GDP) is, to put it plainly, the size of the economy. It's regularly determined by seeing purchaser spending, business speculation, and fares.If that combined measure dips significantly, it’s bad news.

Stock market tanks

When the stock market declines quickly—like when you see a headline about the "most terrible day of the year," or something gloom and doom—this is on the grounds that numerous financial specialists aren't sure about the economy and they're auctioning off as much stock as they can. If the stock market dips over and over, on a close regular routine, it's an indication of trouble.

Some recent developments, which we should also know are

Acceleration in US-China levy war 

Eighteen months prior Donald Trump started his "America first" crusade with a battle about steel dumping. The US president forced 25% import duties on steel against China, the EU, India, Canada and Mexico.

Easing back US development 

Trump inherited a buoyant economy and gave it a sugar surge of personal tax reductions and corporate giveaways. Outstanding development a year ago incited the US national bank, the Federal Reserve, to increase interest rates to calm things down.

Long recession in Germany 

Angela Merkel’s finance minister, Olaf Scholz, has raisd desires for a €50bn (£45bn) lift to the German economy to head off an imminent recession. The economy shrunk just barely in the subsequent quarter – 0.1% – yet is hope to endure a second and bigger drop in the second from last quarter.

Chinese debt crisis

China, more than the US, has been the additional gear for the worldwide economy since the 2008 financial crash, but the country is in the throes of a full-blown debt crisis.

Brexit

The uncertainty surrounding Britain’s future and whether it remains inside the world’s largest trading bloc or swims alone has already damaged investment and GDP growth.

Other countries performance 

A string of countries are currently in recession or have recently suffered a contraction. India's Auto sector is going through a great recession which is resulting in massive job losses. Iran faces a blockade by the US and is unable to sell its oil or access the financial markets easily. Argentina is weighed down by enormous debts and Venezuela, despite holding the world’s largest oil reserves, is in political and economic crisis.


The bad news is that recessions are pretty inevitable, meaning sooner or later, one will land. The good news is that the economy eventually recovers. 

Building your Dream Team: Intuition & Data, Leadership & Process

In his keynote session at TechHR 2019, Anil Kumble, the former cricketer and Padma Shri Recipient, shed light on what goes into becoming a great leader and how to overcome the obstacles to becoming a successful leader.

The Crux of Leadership: 

“You are as good as your last performance,'' says Anil Kumble. Leadership is about leading oneself, and building a team to navigate the highs and lows. Kumble owes his best performance (1999), to his courage to be unorthodox and carve his own niche. Leaders are under constant radar, and so was the young version of Kumble. “I was 19 and was doing my engineering- plan A. Cricket was plan B, and when I was out of the team after my first series, it was tough,” says the icon. 

Despite people discrediting his bowling style, he pushed ahead to prove them wrong. A leader has to prove time and again, that he can perform. The SA series was very crucial and with it going well, he got the confidence. 

 Once you know you can do it once, you know you can repeat that

This confidence must be coupled with learning. Kumble met former leg spinner, V V Kumar to learn the orthodox leg spin. He unlearned, relearnt, and changed his action and within five days, applied the technique live in the Bombay versus Rest of India at Wankhede. To sustain the performance for a period of time, evolve, innovative, think and act different. “Keep asking those questions differently,'' says Kumble. How to best camouflage your weaknesses will allow you to bring your strength to the forefront with a calm mind, in the toughest situations. “This is my style, and I will stick to this”, quotes Kumble.  

The Obstacles to Leadership Success

Organizations aspire for diversity. Yet, people who do not fit in often face doubts. Kumble often questioned, “should I change my style?”. The key lies in persisting with who you truly are. Leaders today must train the mind to try. This encompasses getting out of the comfort zone, unlearning and persistently actioning. 

Sticking to your strengths can help own up responsibilities for the team. “I looked at myself as someone who had opportunity to change the course of the game, whether the situation was hopeless or good”, says Kumble. Being a leader entails being a part of the group, at the same time being honest with yourself and also about the team. You cannot change, just because you are captain. Keep open the developmental eye i.e. gear up your people for any eventuality on the field. 

Perhaps the single biggest challenge in successful leadership is being authentic. Kumble seconds this, “with honesty and straightforwardness, upfront, people know who you are and it is easier to handle any situation.” This came handy during the Australia-Sydney incident, when, after the match, Kumble had to handle the team from a different perspective, in the wake of media glare. Every leader faces the dissonance- “Should I stand up and own up, or should I send someone?” For Kumble too, this doubt lingered, and he decided to speak to everyone head-first- a great learning curve indeed! 

Technology versus human touch – Leadership Enablers

Cricket has adopted a lot of technology for key decision-making. Today, cricketers observe recordings and reflect. “I was the first captain to take a laptop into the dressing room and everyone was like, how does that help us?” says Anil Kumble. With so much data, one single delivery can be tackled in multiple ways. Of course, experts like Kumble are still relevant to decide for the data, simplify and help people understand so that the fabric of the game stays intact. No one will enjoy an interaction where the leader is appealing to the computer! 

Thus leadership must merge the best of both worlds- technology and human skills so as to take everyone towards success. 

Source: People Matters 07 Aug, 2019

Gamification : Using games to create immersive learning experiences

In the last few years, recall the top things that made the news?

Demonetization, Brexit, Unemployment, Candy Crush, Pokemon Go, PubG,…

Though games aren’t the new fad but most recently, gaming is taking over the world.  They went from being the preserve of nerds and geeks to being more prominent than films. And now they are making their mark in education and learning segment.

Yes, playing games can now make 21st-century skills!

Researches have shown that our brains are wired for pleasure. The games are an effective way to learn because they simulate thrill and keep our minds engaged and happy. But what exactly do we learn from them? In an era consumed with developing 21st-century soft skills, are games any good at building critical thinking or collaboration skills?

The answer is likely, yes.

Immersive gamification can bring learners of multiple generations to collaborate, motivate each other, and learn from a real-world application. When Rewards are coupled with learning, it creates a sense of excitement to achieving objectives and creates a sense of accomplishment.

Gamification proves to be an effective approach to learning too. As reported by studies, globally, the gamification of education market will explode to $1.2 billion in 2020 from just about $93 million in 2015.

Here is why Gamification can offer your workforce the immersive learning experience they want:

Problem-solving: 

Gamification’s most significant benefit is that it minimizes the traditional, outdated style of learning by challenging the participant at precisely the right level. When learners feel challenged, they are motivated to learn more. 

Recognition Motivates:

When learners are publicly or even privately recognized, they feel more satisfied and accomplished. The gamified platforms these days allow learners to view awards in their learner dashboard and then share those awards with classmates, via social media, or by downloading transcripts and certificates. 

Re-activates curiosity:

Humans have a natural desire to be curious, discover, and to learn, but this is often discouraged with old training methods. Gamification can re-activate this desire to inculcate learning as a part of daily routine.

Gamified learning acts on multiple senses for an immersive experience that increases learners' enjoyment and desire to achieve goals. This response to purely recreational games is now being harnessed and used in the business world. 

One can further enhance the experience of the gamified learning by inculcating following techniques:

Create real life scenarios that challenge the learner. A strong story where the player is a put as a protagonist will get learners to engage and care. This creates stress and tension that propels the learner forward.

Build urgency in the program. By having a threat working against the learner you are increasing the need desire to move faster and do better. The key is having the threat be immediate and real. 

Ultimately, gamification gives us goals and goals give purpose. When used correctly, it uses our natural tendency to be goal-orientated and to set standards we want to achieve in the future.

Source: People Matters, 22 July 2019

Products Spread Differently Than Entirely New Products

Predictions about how products spread are usually based on the assumption that a few early adopters encourage an increasing number of people to start using the product. This assumption has largely been true of new technologies. But our research on phones, cars, and apps shows that when a product is not new but instead updates or replaces an existing product (which we call replacement innovations), the growth curve is very different, and managers making estimates around exponential growth are setting unrealistic expectations.

A better formula for estimating the early growth of replacement innovations follows a power law, with rapid adoption in the beginning followed by much more gradual takeoff as users make individual adoption decisions. This model generates more accurate predictions about adoption and, in turn, more realistic expectations and better understanding of resource needs.

New innovative products or technologies rarely emerge from a vacuum; in many cases they replace old technologies or earlier offerings that served a similar purpose. Consider 4K TV. The recently released technology delivers better image resolution for an enhanced TV-viewing experience. While that’s desirable, most people already have a TV — or three. So in order for them to buy a 4K TV, their calculus isn’t about just the new TV in and of itself; it’s also about whether to discard the old to bring in the new, at a somewhat hefty price tag.

To study the adoption of replacement innovations, we examined four areas: mobile phones (patterns for use of 885 handsets among 3.6 million Northern European customers between 2006 and 2014), cars (sales patterns for 126 automobiles sold in North America between 2010 and 2016), apps (daily downloads for the 2,672 most popular iOS apps from November 2016 to December 2016), and scientists’ research focus (246,630 scientists who published in 6,399 research fields). In each of these areas we documented the early growth of replacement innovations following a power law with non-integer exponents. This means that when the product was introduced, it had a singular growth momentum that was fundamentally different from its growth in the rest of sales periods.

To understand this, consider what happens when Apple releases a new iPhone. There may well be lines of early adopters outside the store for the device’s release, but subsequently, even if positive word-of-mouth spreads, the next waves of adopters will have to decide that they’re ready to replace their current phones with the new one. The slower, more deliberate decisions they make help to explain why replacement innovations grow more slowly.

We identified three mechanisms that are primarily responsible for the observed replacement dynamics: (1) recency, or how recently the new innovation has been introduced; (2) replacement propensity, as some products are more “fit” to replace original versions than others are; and (3) popularity, since more successful, or popular, products, are more likely to attract more new users — success begets success. A model that combines these three mechanisms enables us to explain the growth patterns of replacement products and to identify three parameters associated with this growth. These parameters are: fitness (how fit your product is to replace others), anticipation (initial excitement among potential users), and longevity (how long before the product may become obsolete). To understand intuitively how sales will go, ask yourself about each of these variables. The more recent or popular the innovation, or the better the product-market fit, the higher the sales.

Business leaders are often faced with the challenge of understanding which factors best determine whether and when a new product will succeed in unseating incumbent innovations. Our model offers a new way to start estimating the three adoption parameters once initial sales data becomes available. Decision makers can use these early figures and other related signals to assess whether the product’s fit, initial excitement, and shelf life are meeting expectations, and adjust tactics accordingly. For example, it may be important to focus on fit and improving product shelf life (longevity) during the design phase, with more attention to generating excitement (anticipation) among target users as the product launch nears.

For managers making decisions about when and how to release replacement products and innovations, this finding means that if you’ve been applying the traditional adoption model to what could be considered replacement products, you’re likely underestimating the initial excitement about your new product while overestimating the overall speed and size of adoption. This could mean wasted opportunities at the outset, followed by unrealistic expectations and, potentially, misallocated resources for the expected growth phase. On the other hand, our finding about the adoption of replacement innovations can help to create better prediction models, which may lead to better long-term organizational performance and create a significant advantage that competitors using other models can’t match.

Source: HBR 17 July, 19

8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books This Year

How much do you read?

For most of my adult life I read maybe five books a year — if I was lucky. I’d read a couple on vacation and I’d always have a few slow burners hanging around the bedside table for months.

And then last year I surprised myself by reading 50 books. This year I’m on pace for 100. I’ve never felt more creatively alive in all areas of my life. I feel more interesting, I feel like a better father, and my writing output has dramatically increased. Amplifying my reading rate has been the domino that’s tipped over a slew of others.

I’m disappointed that I didn’t do it sooner.

Why did I wait 20 years?

Well, our world today is designed for shallow skimming rather than deep diving, so it took me some time to identify the specific changes that skyrocketed my reading rate. None of them had to do with how fast I read. I’m actually a pretty slow reader.

Here’s my advice for fitting more reading into your own life, based on the behaviors that I changed:

Centralize reading in your home. Back in 1998, psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues performed their famous “chocolate chip cookie and radish” experiment. They split test subjects into three groups and asked them not to eat anything for three hours before the experiment. Group 1 was given chocolate chip cookies and radishes, and were told they could eat only the radishes. Group 2 was given chocolate chip cookies and radishes, and were told they could eat anything they liked. Group 3 was given no food at all. Afterward, the researchers had all three groups attempt to solve an impossible puzzle, to see how long they would last. It’s not surprising that group 1, those who had spent all their willpower staying away from the cookies, caved the soonest.

What does this have to do with reading? I think of having a TV in your main living area as a plate of chocolate chip cookies. So many delicious TV shows tempt us, reducing our willpower to tackle the books.

Roald Dahl’s poem “Television” says it all: “So please, oh please, we beg, we pray / go throw your TV set away / and in its place, you can install / a lovely bookshelf on the wall.”

Last year my wife and I moved our sole TV into our dark, unfinished basement and got a bookshelf installed on the wall beside our front door. Now we see it, walk by it, and touch it dozens of times a day. And the TV sits dormant unless the Toronto Blue Jays are in the playoffs or Netflix drops a new season of House of Cards.

Make a public commitment. In his seminal book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini shares a psychology study showing that once people place their bets at the racetrack, they are much more confident about their horse’s chances than they were just before laying down the bet. He goes on to explain how commitment is one of the big six weapons of social influence. So why can’t we think of ourselves as the racehorses? Make the bet on reading by opening an account at Goodreads or Reco, friending a few coworkers or friends, and then updating your profile every time you read a book. Or put together an email list to send out short reviews of the books you read. I do exactly that each month, with my Monthly Book Club Email. I stole the idea from bestselling author Ryan Holiday, who has a great reading list.

Find a few trusted, curated lists. Related to the above, the publishing industry puts out more than 50,000 books a year. Do you have time to sift through 1,000 new books a week? Nobody does, so we use proxies like Amazon reviews. But should we get our reading lists from retailers? If you’re like me, and you love the “staff picks” wall in independent bookstores, there’s nothing as nice as getting one person’s favorite books. Finding a few trusted, curated lists can be as simple as the email lists I mentioned, but with a bit of digging you can likely find the one that totally aligns with your tastes. Some of the lists that I personally like are: Bill Gates’s reading list; Derek Sivers’s reading list; and Tim Ferriss’s list, where he has collected the recommendations of many of his podcast guests.

Change your mindset about quitting. It’s one thing to quit reading a book and feel bad about it. It’s another to quit a book and feel proud of it. All you have to do is change your mindset. Just say, “Phew! Now I’ve finally ditched this brick to make room for that gem I’m about to read next.” An article that can help enable this mindset is “The Tail End,” by Tim Urban, which paints a striking picture of how many books you have left to read in your lifetime. Once you fully digest that number, you’ll want to hack the vines away to reveal the oases ahead.

I quit three or four books for every book I read to the end. I do the “first five pages test” before I buy any book (checking for tone, pace, and language) and then let myself off the hook if I need to stop halfway through.

Take a “news fast” and channel your reading dollars. I subscribed to the New York Times and five magazines for years. I rotated subscriptions to keep them fresh, and always loved getting a crisp new issue in the mail. After returning from a long vacation where I finally had some time to lose myself in books, I started realizing that this shorter, choppier nature of reading was preventing me from going deeper. So I canceled all my subscriptions.

Besides freeing up mindshare, what does canceling all news inputs do? For me, it saved more than $500 per year. That can pay for about 50 books per year. What would I rather have 10 or 20 years later — a prized book collection which I’ve read and learned from over the years…or a pile of old newspapers? And let’s not forget your local library. If you download Library Extension for your browser, you can see what books and e-books are available for free right around the corner.

Triple your churn rate. I realized that for years I’d thought of my bookshelf as a fixed and somewhat artistic object: There it is, sitting by the flower vases! Now I think of it as a dynamic organism. Always moving. Always changing. In a given week I probably add about five books to the shelf and get rid of three or four. Books come in through lending libraries in our neighborhood, a fantastic used bookstore, local indie and chain stores, and, of course, online outlets. Books go out when we pass them to friends, sell them to the used bookstore, or drop them off at the lending library. This dynamism means I’m always walking over to the shelf, never just walking by it. As a result, I read more.

Read physical books. You may be wondering why I don’t just read e-books on a mobile device, saving myself all the time and effort required to bring books in and out of the house. In an era when our movie, film, and photography collections are all going digital, there is something grounding about having an organically growing collection of books in the home. If you want to get deep, perhaps it’s a nice physical representation of the evolution and changes in your mind while you’re reading. (Maybe this is why my wife refuses to allow my Far Side collections on her shelf.) And since many of us look at screens all day, it can be a welcome change of pace to hold an actual book in your hands.

Reapply the 10,000 steps rule. A good friend once told me a story that really stuck with me. He said Stephen King had advised people to read something like five hours a day. My friend said, “You know, that’s baloney. Who can do that?” But then, years later, he found himself in Maine on vacation. He was waiting in line outside a movie theater with his girlfriend, and who should be waiting in front of him? Stephen King! His nose was in a book the whole time in line. When they got into the theater, Stephen King was still reading as the lights dimmed. When the lights came up, he pulled his book open right away. He even read as he was leaving. Now, I have not confirmed this story with Stephen King. But I think the message this story imparts is an important one. Basically, you can read a lot more. There are minutes hidden in all the corners of the day, and they add up to a lot of minutes.

In a way, it’s like the 10,000 steps rule. Walk around the grocery store, park at the back of the lot, chase your kids around the house, and bam — 10,000 steps. It’s the same with reading.

When did I read those five books a year for most of my life? On holidays or during long flights. “Oh! A lot of downtime coming,” I’d think. “Better grab a few books.”

When do I read now? All the time. A few pages here. A few pages there. I have a book in my bag at all times. In general I read nonfiction in the mornings, when my mind is in active learning mode, and fiction at night before bed, when my mind needs an escape. Slipping pages into all the corners of the day adds up.

Source: HBR  03 Feb, 2017