PURPOSE & IMPACT
After observing a post on LinkedIn, I thought it would be interesting to experiment with Chatgpt, with my own poster and branding. This was an interesting output from that exercise. It seemed to be based on the interactions and knowledge that Chatgpt gathered from previous discussions as well.
This seems to be a great example of how AI can help individuals by consolidating multiple perspectives and with a great presentation.
I was going through the 2023 Harvard Business Review article by London Business School professor, Herminia Ibarra and thought the following notes are valuable to share. These provide valuable advices and notes for reflection in a fast changing world of work.
* With increasing frequency, we are changing jobs and careers, pursuing opportunities and making time for rest and restoration.
* Need to learn how to make the most of the frequent transitions.
* You’re likely to experience the transition as an emotionally fraught process.
* Change is hard primarily because of the lack of institutional support and loss of professional identity.
* Usually, we fail to change because we don’t know how to go about it.
* Emotionally, career change is a roller coaster ride because it puts you in a “liminal state” – where you must navigate between a past that’s over and a future that’s uncertain.
* You must embrace liminality. You have to be willing to get and stay lost for a while.
* 3 ways to make that process easier – experiment with divergent possibilities while delaying commitment to any one of them, adopt ‘either-or’ thinking (exploring while maintaining something, at least initially), and building new connections and relationships of kindred spirits.
* We all need a secure base from which to explore the unknown and turn painful feelings/experiences into sources of growth.
* Self-reflecting out loud” is important. We need to get comfortable with the “learning plot” – our story of ongoing struggle and adaptation. As constant reinvention becomes the norm, the stories that define us have no start or ending.
* Proficiency in being liminal will increase your capacity to successfully navigate present and future transitions.
Source:
Why Career Transition Is So Hard; Herminia Ibarra; Harvard Business Review; November-December 2023
Many of us tend to be tough on ourselves, probably more than on others. This approach seems to intensify in corporate environments because of constant judgment scenarios. I noticed an interesting Ted talk, that brought out a personal experience journey, along with the related improvements in a light manner. In today’s world, the message seems very relevant to many people, with valuable food for reflection and application. Practicing the “loving-kindness” meditation statement seems valuable to experiment with and apply practically.
Here are some selected valuable notes from the talk.
* “If I wanted to be less of a jerk to other people, I needed to start by being less of a jerk to myself…”
* “All the ways in which I was torturing myself showed up in my relationships with other people. And as those relationships suffered, so did I.”
* Meditation statement while focusing on others – “May you be happy, may you be safe, may you be healthy, may you live with ease.”
* Start consciously counterprogramming against your inner critic.
* Research shows that the process of replacing your sadistic inner tyrant with a supportive inner coach, who has high standards but is not a jerk about it, makes you more likely to reach your goals.
A recent IMD business school article highlights the importance of psychological safety in organizational AI transformation, based on related experiences, from Kameshwari Rao, Global Chief People Officer at international digital consulting firm Publicis Sapient. This also provides useful notes for leaders who are thinking about or working through AI related transformations.
These are selected notes from the article.
* Organizations need a psychologically safe environment for their employees to innovate and experiment.
* Unless employees feel psychologically safe, it is unrealistic to expect them to engage with, let alone embrace, the technology. Inevitably, user hesitation will impede organizational efforts to explore AI.
* Important to remember that “People’s identities are at stake”.
* Human intelligence has been evolving for hundreds of thousands of years, developing characteristics such as empathy, resilience, and judgment to adapt to a changing environment. The role of leaders is to remind people that they possess those irreplaceable human qualities.
* Requires businesses to commit to increased communication and support that considers each employee’s personal reaction to the technology and allows them to adapt at their own pace.
* Publicis Sapient focused on three simultaneous strands of AI change:
1. the shift to a mindset of curiosity rather than anxiety about AI,
2. building confidence, and
3. integrating AI tools into everyday jobs.
* “We wanted to begin the conversation by getting everybody to have a bit of fun with AI. It was about building familiarity.”
* The town hall was followed with a dedicated campaign, AI Habits, where the goal was to pique curiosity, with initiatives based on psychological research into habit formation.
* At the same time, Publicis Sapient prioritized experimentation, getting people to think about the skills and training they might need to make the most of AI. One useful approach here was gamification.
* Note that companies should not see these three AI initiatives as one-and-done exercises: “At any given point, you will have people at different stages in all three areas – everyone’s change cycle is different.”
* Leaders have framed AI as an ongoing learning journey.
* Listening, sharing – a range of listening tools that Publicis Sapient uses to understand whether employees are feeling confident in the workplace. Leaders, starting with the CEO, also serve as role models, share their own anxieties.
* No single initiative will create psychological safety around AI. Rather, it will take a spread of different, ongoing measures.
Source: Publicis Sapient on AI: A three-step guide to psychological safety; IMD; June 8, 2026
I noticed some interesting, practical notes regarding ‘organisational political dynamics’, from the new book, The Age of HR. Since this was relatable from past experiences and valuable to reflect on, I thought of sharing. Have you been able to observe dominant coalitions in your organisations?
These notes are from Chapter 59 – To Be or Not to Be Part of the Dominant Coalition as the CHRO: Understanding the Political Dynamics of Your Organisation and How to Deal with Them, written by Dirk Buyens, Koen Dewettinck, and Silke Van Gansbeke
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* It is helpful to recognise that politics and political behaviour are an inherent part of organisational life.
* In Darwinian terms, ‘survival of the fittest’ in this context often means those who are able to adapt best to the political environment are often the winners.
* In executive committees, we once again observe striking differences in who truly has influence and who does not.
* The dominant coalition can be defined as the group of individuals who, relative to their peers, exert a disproportionate level of influence over organisational decisions. Every company contains employees who, over time, gravitate towards the centre of decision-making in the organisation.
* In practice, dominant coalitions are rarely secretive. Most employees are aware of who belongs to them, and very often it is functionally driven.
* For a CHRO, it is crucial to understand what we refer to as the paradox of the right strategy. The ‘right’ strategy is typically one chosen that delivers quick wins soon. Even if an alternative strategy might have produced superior long-term outcomes, this can never be proven. Challenging the dominant coalition on this basis is therefore futile and politically suicidal.
* The fundamental question CHROs must ask is: “How important is it for me to be part of the dominant coalition, and what price am I willing to pay?”
* Being part of the dominant coalition as a CHRO ensures that HR processes and policies are taken seriously when key decisions are made. The downside is that HR may be perceived as less neutral, undermining the role of the credible activist.
* Remaining outside the dominant coalition enhances perceived neutrality but risks HR initiatives being dismissed as mere exercises that aren’t taken seriously when it truly matters.
* Ultimately, successfully sensing and navigating dominant coalitions requires strong political skills from the CHRO.
* There must be a balance between the degree to which an organisation tolerates political behaviour and one’s own personal tolerance for it.
* Some CHROs are dismissed for being too naïve; others for being overly political. In all cases, dominant coalitions – and how CHROs engage with them – profoundly shape their careers. Purposeful self-management is therefore indispensable.
* Until CHROs navigate the political nature of organisations, they will continue to be limited in their impact.
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Understanding the different dimensions of country cultures could often help clarify behaviours, ways of working, approaches and interactions better. That of course would not answer everything. There are always personality elements, professionalism/maturity levels, individual styles and sub cultures at play, in interactions.
A couple of recent related news items got me thinking about this topic. A journalist from Norway asked a question, which a diplomat from India answered, and both parties did not seem engaged or happy with their style or approaches in interactions. These sort of frustrations in interactions can be seen in the global workplace often. I think that at least a good portion of the frustration stems from the difference in their cultural contexts.
I gathered the following, selected notes from the The Culture Factor Group, Culture Dimensions Country Comparison tool – which compares India and Norway. Having lived and worked in Scandinavia for many years, I can see why it would be easy to misunderstand or ‘not get’ someone on the either side. The Culture Dimensions structure inputs originated from the late Prof. Geert Hofstede’s research. He was one of the most well-known experts in comparative intercultural research. These cross cultural inputs are updated through research notes periodically by the Culture Factor group.
According to inputs from the tool, major culture dimension differences exist between India and Norway in three out of the six dimensions – Power Distance, Individualism and Motivation towards Achievement and Success. Selected notes on these dimensions are included below. Hope this will help in thinking about the topic more deeper.
This is a continuation of valuable notes from the free book, The Age of HR.
This post covers Chapter 14, Workforce Analytics for Strategy Execution: Ten Years Later (2015–2025) by workforce analytics guru, Mark Huselid. He co-authored the well known Harvard Business Review article, titled “A Players” or “A Positions?: The Strategic Logic of Workforce Management”.
There’s lots of valuable guidance and wisdom here, especially for those who have followed the topic of workforce analytics by Prof. Huselid over the years.
Image generated with Chatgpt
* 3 linked moves for leaders (HR & Line managers) who want to improve strategy execution through the workforce:
(1) identify the strategic work necessary to execute strategy;
(2) build differentiated workforce systems that enable that work;
(3) design measurement systems that connect workforce investments to business outcomes and reinforce accountability.
* ..the last decade has clarified a critical distinction: adopting analytics tools is comparatively easy; building an enterprise capability that reliably improves decisions is not.
* Not all jobs are equally strategic. “A” positions matter for strategy execution and exhibit high variability in individual performance, offering the greatest upside from improvement.
* Great firms manage their workforce like a portfolio, investing disproportionately in the highest return strategic work.
* This portfolio logic requires explicit tradeoffs.
* The practical test: Can senior leaders name the five to ten roles that matter most for executing the current strategy, and explain why those roles warrant disproportionate investment?
* Data abundance creates a false sense of progress.
* Enforce a simple rule-no measurement without a prior decision context.
If a metric does not help a specific decision-maker choose between competing alternatives, it should not be produced, regardless of how easy it is to generate.
* Correlation is abundant, causation is rare, and the difference determines whether workforce investments deliver returns or waste resources. Organizations that lack a causal model cannot learn from experience because they cannot distinguish signal from noise.
* In global settings, the strategic importance of jobs may differ by region.
“A positions” should not be treated as a single universal list; rather, the organization needs a consistent logic for identifying them, applied with contextual specificity.
* Identify strategic roles based on their contribution to strategy execution and performance variance, not tradition or hierarchy.
* Strategic jobs that matter today may not be the same five years from now.
* What works in one cultural context may not work in another.
* Advanced analytics raises concerns about privacy, fairness, and transparency. Embed responsible data management, informed consent, and bias checks into every step, treating ethics as integral to trust and long-term viability.
Noticed these valuable notes on Transformational CHROs from the new book, The Age of HR, by Anthony Nyberg, Rebecca Kehoe, Dave Ulrich and Patrick Wright (editors).
These selected notes below are from Chapter 13, Beyond HR: The CHRO as a Catalyst for Enterprise Transformation, written by Melissa Anderson, Eva Rykrsmith, and Lynn A. McFarland.
The 3 Enterprise Roles of the Transformational CHRO
1. Integrator of Vision and Strategy
CHRO interprets signals from across the organization and the marketplace, translating noise into insight, and insight into action. This sensemaking function – converting ambiguity into coordinated action, requires strategic acuity, diagnostic rigor, and an ability to connect patterns that others miss. CHRO sees where energy is building, where resistance is forming, and where leaders may be misreading the moment.
The Integrator grounds the operating system in reality, dismantling outdated accountability models and replacing them with adaptive structures, decision rights, and leadership practices that fit the company’s strategic ambition. By intentionally shaping culture as a designed condition, the CHRO ensures that employee experience reflects strategic intent, providing a shared environment where employees understand purpose, feel protected, and are empowered to perform.
2. Orchestrator of Execution
CHRO ensures that transformation is coherent across functions, geographies, and business units. They align leadership expectations, capability plans, operating models, and cultural interventions into a unified architecture. The Orchestrator meets leaders and teams where they are, using personal credibility and insight to influence adoption, guide alignment, and adapt interventions to context, ensuring that employees experience coherence, clarity, and support.
In practice, orchestration translates coherence into coordinated action. When culture is reinforced through predictable patterns of collaboration, accountability, and leadership behavior, employee experience becomes a visible outcome of alignment. The aligned, mutually reinforcing practices cultivate employee attitudes and discretionary behaviors essential for transformation.
3. Accelerator of Momentum
The CHRO reduces friction and speeds up the organization’s path to outcomes. Acceleration involves more than urgency; it includes clearing structural bottlenecks, developing leadership capacity, prioritizing critical skills, strengthening collaboration, and embedding cultural mechanisms that reinforce desired behaviors.
In practice, the Accelerator ensures new capabilities and ways of working. CHRO shepherds this shift with equal measures of empathy and conviction, helping leaders internalize new expectations and align their teams. The HR team is activated to redesign operating models to reflect strategic intent, modernize workforce structures, develop readiness for future demands, and embed cultural mechanisms to reinforce momentum sustaining behaviors. Culture is reinforced as people experience tangible changes in work.
For unexplainable reasons, an article I had read around couple of decades back came to mind suddenly.
“Leader presumes follower. Follower presumes choice. One who is coerced to the purposes, objectives, or preferences of another is not a follower in any true sense of the word, but an object of manipulation. Nor is the relationship materially altered if both parties voluntarily accept the dominance of one by the other. A true leader cannot be bound to lead. A true follower cannot be bound to follow. The moment they are bound they are no longer leader or follower. If the behavior of either is compelled, whether by force, economic necessity, or contractual arrangement, the relationship is altered to one of superior/subordinate, manager/employee, master/servant, or owner/slave. All such relationships are materially different from leader/follower.
Induced behavior is the essence of leader/follower. Compelled behavior is the essence of all the other relational concepts. Where behavior is compelled, there you will find tyranny, however benign. Where behavior is induced, there you will find leadership, however powerful. Leadership does not necessarily imply constructive, ethical, open conduct. It is entirely possible to induce destructive, malign, devious behavior, and to do so by corrupt means. Therefore, a clear, constructive purpose and compelling ethical principles evoked from and shared by all participants should be the essence of every relationship in every institution.
A vital question is how to insure that those who lead are constructive, ethical, open, and honest. The answer is to follow those who behave in that manner. It comes down to both individual and collective sense of where and how people choose to be led. In a very real sense, followers lead by choosing where to be led. Where an organizational community will be led is inseparable from the shared values and beliefs of its members.
True leaders are those who epitomize the general sense of the community – who symbolize, legitimize and strengthen behavior in accordance with the sense of the community – who enable its shared purpose, values and beliefs to emerge and be transmitted. A true leader’s behavior is induced by the behavior of every individual choosing where to be led.”
Source: Hock, Dee “The Art of Chaordic Leadership” Leader to Leader. 15 (Winter 2000): 20-26.
Data shared in this week’s Business Standard paper, based on the “Women and Men In India 2025 Report” indicates that there is a lot of continued work needed in this area. The data indicates basic incremental progress.
Some key notes:
* Even as women are making inroads into corporate leadership roles, gains remain limited. The change is gradual. Pay gaps continue to persist.
* Women representation in corporate boards inched up from 25.8% in 2017 to 29.1% in 2025 (similar incremental rises across other management roles). However, their share in senior management remains sharply skewed at just over 17%.
* Women’s labour force participation has risen from 23.4% in 2018 to 40% in 2025 but remains far below men at nearly 80%.
Source: Business Standard, May 7, 2026, Datanomics, Women See Limited Gains in Top Jobs, Shikha Chaturvedi.
Leadership Coach, Consultant, HR Leader with diverse, global experiences (U.S.A, Europe, APAC).
Master of Human Resource Management from Rutgers University, New Jersey, U.S.A. Recipient of the U.S. Garden State Council SHRM HR Leadership Scholarship.
Bachelor of Technology in Civil Engineering from College of Engineering, Trivandrum, India.
Certifications: MBTI, Hogan, RBL Leadership Code, SHL 360, Team Management Profile, NeuroLeadership Results & Team Coaching.
Facilitated coaching sessions, workshops and programs with multicultural teams in Helsinki, London, Berlin, New Delhi, Bangalore, Kerala, in addition to multiple Global/Virtual sessions.
Mission: Enable healthy, purposeful, and impactful organizations, through leadership knowledge and wisdom.
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