Great Places To Work

I happened to attend a one day conference yesterday hosted by Great Places to Work Institute. It was an interesting experience for me being a line manager. Most of the participants are from HR function and I am probably representing a minority population from ‘business function’. I would like to mention few key takeaways from that conference for me.

1. This one hit me instantly. Most of the time we (leaders or managers) assess people (read it as our direct reports) based on their actions, but we assess ourselves based on our intentions. I feel its true to large extent. When I reflected my behavior and observed few at work, I realized then how important it is for managers to be very explicit about their intentions to their people.

2. The importance of branding can not be undermined at all. I observed many initiatives that Google has are already present in our company in some form or the other. However the way Google presented and the pride that carries in saying that a “Googler does it in Google way” is what is creating the “Wow” factor. Its so important to brand the initiatives so that the perception formed in the minds of internal and external audience remains high and positive.

3. Putting people first. Vineet Nayyar said it, Vijay Thadani did not say it but has been practicing it ever since he founded NIIT. When he started NIIT with his friend Rajendra Pawar, they decided to create an organization where people are respected, treated fair and committed to their success. NIITians say “our [organization’s] growth is a derivative of growth of each one of us”. That’s a powerful collaborative statement.

Golden Issues in Indian Econony

This is one of the 'Did you know' series posts. I had an opportunity to attend Dr. C Rangarajan's speech on 'Indian Economy and the way forward' yesterday. The speech went on for about an hour and half including Q&A from audience. It was a very good refresh of my Macro Economics class I attended 3 years ago. One particular point caught my attention and I felt its my responsibility to create awareness about it.

He mentioned about various challenges that Indian Economy is facing and one of them being Current Account Deficit (CAD). Its basically net of inflows and outflows of foreign currency. We are financing our foreign currency needs (basically arising out of imports) using the capital inflows from foreign countries. This is certainly not sustainable. If there is a fluctuation in foreign capital, we cant service our current account resulting in depreciation of rupee, hurting our exports. One of the prime reasons for wide CAD is import of Gold. I was astonished to know that not an ounce of Gold is produced in India. Every particle of yellow metal we see around us produced outside of India. We imported close to $54 billion worth of Gold in last fiscal year. At the moment we have close to $90 bn CAD. 

Why do we love Gold so much? Gold is generally purchased in two modes, one as Jewellery and other as Asset (in physical form or ETF) for investment. When the inflation is hovering in double digits and India Inc putting pressure on RBI to lower interest rates, Gold appeared like a great investment option for Indian citizen to save money. Gold in the form of asset does not result in any productive form of investment. 

Dr. Rangarajan suggested that as the inflation comes down, hopefully investment in Gold comes down resulting in lesser imports. Guess how much of Gold we imported in last fiscal year? A thousand tonnes !! Woah...