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Quarterly Newsletter from Gray Matters Consulting Pvt. Ltd. Volume 2, Issue 2, January, 2010

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Quarterly Newsletter from Gray Matters Consulting Pvt. Ltd. Volume 2, Issue 2, January, 2010

S P E C I A L F E A T U R E SGuest Column G’nome - Child Career Direction Survey8 12

Human Capital is an intriguing subjectand hetherto thought to be highlyintangible. Judhajit Das, who currentlyheads the Human Resource functionat ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, tellsus how Human Resources can bemeasured and made tangible. Heshares this from his own experienceof implementing HR Measurementsat ICICI Prudential Life Insurance.

What is good for a crowd-puller, popular Hindi film may not be all that good for real life. RajkumarHirani’s 3 Idiots sends out a message to all who are joining career race to stop, pause, thinkabout themselves, and, only then, race ahead. At a time when suicide notes from young,brilliant students are piling up on the coroner’s table, and parents are worried about theirchildren’s careers, the film’s release and its subsequent success were foregone conclusions. The quasi-real, cinematic feel good created by the film will do little to erase the furrow linesof worry from the viewers’ forehead. Everyone wants to enjoy life on their own terms, butexisting realities are frequently against that inner drive. Do you dare to hold your own in theface of your life and career circumstances? In many cases, we don’t have a reasonable choiceto be ourselves.

G E N E R A L F E A T U R E S

Free Radical Business Cappuchino19 20Reducing one's life to a handful of wordsis a mighty challenge. Creating a six-wordmemoir, a concept inspired by a projectconducted by Smith College's magazine,can be a useful exercise in self-analysis,particularly if you apply the process toreflecting upon your goals and your results.Did we achieve what we set out toachieve? Did I help them and the team tosucceed? Did our results stand the testof time?

What is the potential for comic books in India? There are many possibleanswers to this question, depending on who’s asking and who’s answering.Let us look first at the positives, ie the reasons why comic books should takeoff in a big way in the next ten years. In fact 2010-2020 could well be thedecade of the comic book in India, provided, of course, that the negatives canbe dealt with. Rimi B. Chatterjee a writer and academician discusses thestrengths and weaknesses in the Indian context.. Her third novel Black Lightwill be out in April 2010. Her first book was Signal Red, and the second(shortlisted for the Vodafone Crossword Book Award) The City of Love. Sheteaches English at Jadavpur University.

R E G U L A R F E A T U R E S

Just Tell4 Tipping Point5 Lifestyle6 Inside Gray Matters24 Leisure25

Happy New Year

Au Revoir

It seemed the message from the Copenhagen Climate Summit has hithome with car manufacturers the world over. If the hybrid and conceptcar launches at Delhi Auto Show are anything to go by then soon theSuzukis and Hondas would be the toast of the green community.

With the economy back on track, albeit a huge fiscal deficit, the carmakers are all sizing up the market with gusto. Car sales have zoomedahead like Michael Schumacher on the F1 circuit and with Dr ManmohanSingh predicting a double-digit growth, car manufacturers are rubbingtheir hands with glee. However, there are some clouds of doubt on theeconomic horizon; the finance secretary is not singing a tune to pleasethe market watchers: he wants the economic stimulus to go.

The industry is caught in a bind, on one hand the economic recoverywas largely stimulus fed so its removal may cause some pain, on theother the deficit can have a cascading effect on the economy and thatmay lead to a long period of economic uncertainty. Interesting are thetimes indeed.

In these times of high hopes and despair, we decided to launch a fewservices and products. These services we believe would help us get abetter grip of business we are in – People Solutions. Accelerated. Rightnow, we are in the process of lining up our Education and KnowledgeManagement Services. Soon we would put them out of our garage forthe world to see.

As our first offering from the Education services we did and all Indiasurvey on ‘Child’s Career Direction’ the detailed report is presented inside.

Hope there would be a longer period of sunshine for the economy. Here’swishing all a very Happy New Year!

Sanjay Roy ChowdhuryManaging DirectorGray Matters Consulting Pvt. Ltd.

From MD’s Desk

“Economy has frequently nothing whatever to do with the amountof money being spent, but with the wisdom used in spending it”

– Henry Ford

GRAY MATTERS QUARTERLY VOLUME 2, ISSUE 24

Last Sunday, my wife, kid and I had to travel to Andheri fromBandra. When I waved at a passing auto rickshaw, little did I expectthat this ride would be any different.

As we set off, my eyes fell on a few magazines (kept in an aircraftstyle pouch) behind the driver’s back rest. I looked in front andthere was a small TV. The driver had put on the Doordarshanchannel. My wife and I looked at each other with disbelief andamusement. In front of me was a small first-aid box with cotton,dettol and some medicines. This was enough for me to realise thatI was in a special vehicle. Then I looked around again, anddiscovered more -there was a radio, fire extinguisher, wall clock,calendar, and pictures and symbols of all faiths – from Islam andChristianity to Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism. There were alsopictures of the heroes of 26/11- Kamte, Salaskar, Karkare andUnnikrishnan. I realised that not only my vehicle, but also my driverwas special.

I started chatting with him and the initial sense of ridicule anddisbelief gradually diminished. I gathered that he had been drivingan auto rickshaw for the past 8-9 years; he had lost his job whenhis employer’s plastic company was shut down. He had two school-going children, and he drove from 8 in the morning till 10 at night.No break unless he was unwell. “Sahab, ghar mein baith ke TVdekh kar kya faida? Do paisa income karega toh future mein kaamaayega.” (Sir, what’s the use of simply sitting at home and watchingTV? If I earn some money, then it will be useful in the future.)

We realised that we had come across a man who representsMumbai – the spirit of work, the spirit of travel and the spirit ofexcelling in life. I asked him whether he does anything else as Ifigured that he did not have too much spare time. He said that hegoes to an old age home for women in Andheri once a week orwhenever he has some extra income, where he donates toothbrushes, toothpastes, soap, hair oil, and other items of daily use.He pointed out to a painted message below the meter that read:“25 per cent discount on metered fare for the handicapped. Freerides for blind passengers up to Rs50?.. He also said that his autowas mentioned on Radio Mirchi twice by the station RJs. TheMarathi press in Mumbai know about him and have written a fewpieces on him and his vehicle.

My wife and I were struck with awe. The man was a HERO! A herowho deserves all our respect. I know that my son, once he growsup, will realise that we have met a genuine hero. He has putquestions to me such as why should we help other people? I willtry to keep this incident alive in his memory.

Our journey came to an end; 45 minutes of a lesson in humility,selflessness and of a hero-worshipping Mumbai – my temporaryhome. We disembarked, and all I could do was to pay him a tipthat would hardly cover a free ride for a blind man.

I hope, one day, you too have a chance to meet Mr SandeepBachhe in his auto rickshaw – MH-02-Z-8508

A friend has shared this inspirational encounter with an autorickshaw driver in Mumbai

Maths tells Risk Players to attack

CHANGING THE WAY‘WORK’ WORKS Tip

Charles Robinove has guts, but chutzpah would get him a betterscore. If only he could count on a fair shake of the Scrabbleletters. But the tile draw in an electronic variant of the game isnot statistically random, his experiments show. After playing hishandheld Scrabble Express game about two dozen times, henoticed he had difficulty making words. He was often missinga most necessary component: vowels. "It just seemed kind ofodd," says Robinove, a retired geologist with the US GeologicalSurvey.

So he compared the first seven letters drawn from the handheldExpress version and his Windows 1997 CD-ROM version, 100times each, and calculated the frequency of drawing each letter.

Scrabble vowel shortage revealed

"In every success story, you findsomeone who has made a

courageous decision"Peter F. Drucker

In games of Risk, aggression pays. So says a US mathematicianin a fresh analysis of the popular board game.

Jason Osborne, of North Carolina State University in Raleigh,calculated the probabilities involved in the game's battles, inwhich players compete for world domination. His conclusionoverturns an earlier one implying that the odds were stackedin favour of defenders.

Risk was devised in 1959. Like most successful games, it usessimple rules but permits a wide range of strategies. It has sincespawned many variants, including Martian Risk, Nuclear Riskand Revolution Risk. Each player has several armies, deployedamong 42 territories on the world map. The aim is to invadeand conquer neighbouring territories.

Dice determine the outcome of an assault. If an aggressorattacks with more than three armies, he or she rolls three dice;with one and two armies, the attacker rolls two dice. The defenderrolls one dice if he or she has just a single army in the invadedterritory, and two dice otherwise.

The dice are then ordered in descending value and paired off- the attacker's highest roll with the defender's, and so on. Theattacker loses an army for every die lower than or equal to thatof the defender; the defender loses an army for every die lowerthan the attacker's. The struggle continues until one force eitheris eliminated or withdraws.

The key question is: when to attack? What is the chanceof an attack succeeding, and how many armies should youexpect to lose in the process? The probabilities are calculablefor various combinations of the sizes of attacking anddefending forces.

In 1997, Turkish mathematician Baris Tan made thesecalculations to help players formulate rules of thumb forhow to deploy their forces. Tan posedthe problem as a Markovchain - a seriesof numbers inwhich eachdepends only onthe precedingone.

Osborne arguesthat Tan's analysis overlooked acrucial point. Tan assumed that eachdie roll is independent. Although generallytrue for successive rolls, this is not true for Riskbecause of the ordering and pairing, says Osborne.

When this is taken into account, a bold strategy is a betterbet. "The chances of winning a battle are considerably morefavourable for the attacker than was originally suspected,"says Osborne.


For example, despite the defender having the advantagewhen pairs of dice are equal, an attacker turns out to havea better-than-evens chance of winning a territory even ifthe initial number of armies on both side is equal - providedthat this initial number is more than four.

ReferencesOsborne, J. A. Markov chains for the RISK board gamerevisited. Mathematics Magazine, 76, 129 - 135 , (2003).

Tan, B.. Markov chains and the RISK board game.Mathematics Magazine, 70, 349 - 357, (1997).

— Philip Ball, Nature News

A potential to become a ‘cult’

Of the 100 letters used in the game, 42 are vowels - givinghim a 42% chance of picking a vowel. The expected norm,given that seven letters are chosen each round, is 2.94vowels per hand. The CD-ROM game varies only slightlyfrom that, with an average of 2.84. The Scrabble Expressgame averages a measly 1.36.

Of the 100 hands, there were 23 in the Scrabble Expressgame that had no vowels at all - the CD-ROM game onlyhad 2 such hands. If similar picks occurred during a traditionalboard game the shaken bag would effectively become a"death rattle" for the serious player, says Robinove.

Scrabble players alternately build words in a crossword-fashion on a board. They obviously need vowels. And, to

make high scoring words, it helps to get some high scoringletters, such as Z, Q and X - those used least frequently inthe English language.

"Anybody who plays Scrabble has one common lamentand that's getting lousy tiles," says Mark Morris, director ofpublic relations for Hasbro Games, which makes Scrabble.

He does not dispute Robinove's findings, but says that therewas no intention to engineer the electronic game that way.He adds that Scrabble Express is no longer manufactured.Like many new games introduced each year,it didn't catch on.

ping Point

— Virginia Gewin, Nature News


Lifestyle

Deadly facts

Not exactly a new year greeting, but theWorld Health Organization has a figure toshare: By next year, 100 million Indianswould be cardiac patients, nearly60% of the global pool.That’s mainly because weare genetically threetimes more vulnerableto cardiac problems ascompared toAmericans orEuropeans, says acecardiologist Dr. DeviShetty. Worse, suchstress related disordersdon’t spare even those intheir early 20s. The usualsuspects are high bloodpressure, diabetes, smoking, highalcohol intake, high stress, obesity, faultyfood habits and lack of physical activity.But even as you change your life style androll out the yoga mat, be on guard and gofor cardiac check ups twice a year.

Are You Stressed Out?Yes, if you have difficulty in makingdecisions; feel constantly drained of energy;sleep more than usual or have difficultygetting sleep.

External CauseMajor life changes, work, relationship

difficulties, financial problems, being toobusy

Internal CauseInability to accept uncertainty,

pessimism, negative self-talk,unrealistic expectations,

perfectionism, lack ofassertiveness.

Strengthen yourrelationshipsWhen you have trustedfriends and familymembers, life’spressures don’t seem as

overwhelming. So spendtime with those you love

and don’t let yourresponsibilities keep you from a

social life.

The Art of Reaching OutHelp someone else byvolunteering.Go for a walk with a workoutbuddy.

Schedule a weekly dinnerdate. Take a class or join aclub.

Warning Signs for StressAccording to the AmericanHeart Association Discomfortin the centre of the chest that

Say NO to StressExecutive stress is here to stay. But there are ways to manage it. Once you makethe resolve, stress will cease to stalk you. It’s the New Year eve & here is how togo about it.

50% ofIndiansWorkMoreThan 48Hours aweek

USis the only

industrializednation that does nothave a mandatoryminimum vacation

time

Canada and Japanscrap the bottom, witha legal minimum ofvacation days.

Americans poll morehrs at work, surpassingeven the Japanese.


Doctor’s TipsIf possible, take small cat naps during the day for 15-20mins. Relax.l Meditation and light exercise of 2-3 mins always help. This rejuvenates the

system, freshens up memory cells, the mind and ensures proper oxygenationof the body.

l Don’t take work home.l Convert weekends into small holidays.l The golden rule of exercise to beat stress is to go for a walk/exercise at least

four times a week for 40 minutes each day.l Change lifestyle, but be on guard. The cumulative benefits of exercise, good

diet and medications are negated with just a couple of cigarettes, giving upsmoking can improve health by nearly 80%.

l Regular check ups.l At least once a year do a comprehensive check up if you are 40 plus. This

threshold is lower for those with a family history of cardiac problems.l Remember, blanket lipid profile and blood sugar test are not just not enough.

This article appeared in The EconomicTimes, 30th December, 2009

lasts more than a few minutes, or thatgoes away and come back. It could feellike uncomfortable pressure, squeezing,fullness or pain. Pain or discomfort inone or both arms, the back, neck, jawor stomach

Breaking out in a cold sweat, nauseaor light-headedness.

“Sleeping is the best remedy forstress. It may be useful once in awhile to catch up on your sleep inthe weekends, but don’t compromiseon your daily sleeping habits”

Srividya Rajram, Clinical Psychologist,Escorts Heart Institute and ResearchCentre, New Delhi

“Families and friends act as a greatcushion for stress. And try tosocialize without office colleagueswhich will help one to get out of theoffice loop”

Jairanjan Ram Leading Psychiatrist,Kolkata

The F&B factorHave small size meals. Skip large servings of fried stuff like Frenchfries. This switch alone can save 300calories.

l It is always better to carry handy food like wholesome fruits,vegetable sandwiches or nutritious salads in office.

l Skip aerated drinks which usually contain more than 10000calories. Remember, there is no substitute for plain water.

l The amount of ‘low risk drinking’ for Indians is up to 14 units perweek for women. Here one unit is equal to: 250ml (about halfa pint) of ordinary strength beer 30 ml (half-a-peg) measure ofwhisky, vodka or rum 100ml of wine.

l Avoid binge drinking. It affects the liver. Regular drinkers shouldstay off drinkers at least two days a week.

With 30paidvacationdays a year,Finland ismostemployee-friendlynation.


One of the more frustrating things I haveencountered in all my interactions withbusiness managers is their demand tounderstand the impact of HR initiatives interms of financials. In many cases, the agendawas simply to nix the proposed initiative andthe tactic was simply a short cut to make onego round in circles. Given the whole confusionthat surrounds the measurement of intangibleassets such as human capital on enterprisevalue creation, it is not very surprising thatin company after company, the Financedepartment is vested with the responsibilityof ensuring that the “ROI templates” are dulyfilled in, scrutinized at multiple levels andthen approved by the powers that be beforethe budgets are released to supportinvestments in human capital. Over time, theinitially naïve & unsuspecting HR managerlearns the art of creatively stating assumptionsthat pass the most rigorous ROI examination.Ironically, in most cases, the templates arerarely, if ever, examined in the future for theROI claims that were originally made.

Why are financial measures so compellingto business managers whilst appearing asperhaps Greek & Latin to most HR managers?I am tempted to say that it’s because of thewidely prevalent illiteracy amongst businessmanagers who fail to understand anythingrelated to business performance unlessdefined in terms of financials and also, of theHR managers who stubbornly refuse to learnthe jargon of bean counters.

Well, it’s certainly not my case to argue thatwe should fritter away hard earned profits oninitiatives that do not contribute to valuecreation. We all understand that financial

GUEST COLUMN

Measuring HR Performancemeasures are expressed in rupees and thatdirectly reflects the bottom line. Also, wecannot forget the adage that a rupee savedis a rupee earned. The challenge as we allknow, is that most of the work we do aroundhuman resources management yields resultsonly over a longish period of time and thatthe impact on value creation depends on awhole host of variables which make any kindof sensible modeling or ROI calculationdifficult.

Again, it’s not as if business managers &leaders do not appreciate the importance ofintangibles in value creation. In the absenceof an overarching measurement system thateffectively explains the cause effectrelationship between strategic HR driversand financial results, business managersstruggle to accept investment in human capitalas an investment and not as an expense, thelitmus test for resource allocation especiallywhen they are struggling to rein in costs andreport profits.

To exaggerate this point, say, if one had todevelop an ROI proposition for launching anew skills development program for front officeoperations staff. The impact of enhanced skillsshould ideally get reflected in lower error ratesor improved process efficiency measures whichshould then ideally translate to superiorcustomer satisfaction leading to higherrevenues for the business. Whilst the causalrelationship between skills training and higherrevenues maybe obvious to most, the difficultylies in quantifying the impact of every rupeespent on skills training in precise revenueterms. Many other factors such as technology,brand image, product design, competitive

Judhajit Das currentlyheads the HumanResources function atICICI Prudential LifeInsurance. He startedhis career with theRPG Group, in theGroup HumanResources functionand then later as Headof HR at Saregama Ltd.Thereafter, he movedto GE Capital as aManager in the HRfunction.

Judhajit graduated inEconomics from JU,Kolkata and is a PG inPM&IR from XLRI,Jamshedpur.

Judhajit Das


actions also impact customer satisfaction andrevenues and in most business situations,the pace of change is fairly rapid and one isnot working in a laboratory context where theimpact of all other causal factors can besuspended to isolate the impact of that onefactor which one wants to measure.

Whilst it’s true that mathematics and statisticshave been able to explain the world of physics,chemistry and engineering in terms of laws,the same level of accuracy is yet to permeateacross the domain of life sciences and socialsciences. Thus, whilst its possible to explainthe importance & causality of HR strategicdrivers on business performance, the task ofquantifying same remains an intractablechallenge and one seriously wonders whetherthe current set of tools and techniques areadequate and hence, it leads one to wonderif the entire effort was futile.

Despite the assertion that ‘people are ourbiggest assets’, the role of human capital invalue creation is perhaps the leastunderstood, least amenable to measurementand hence, least susceptible to management.However, given that there is now greaterappreciation of the importance of intangibles& for our purpose, of that of human capitalin creating sustainable competitive advantageand shareholder value creation, the centralquestion is whether HR managers can andfor that matter, whether they should even tryand evolve a measurement system thatshowcases HR’s impact on businessperformance. However, significant progresshas been made over the last decade toexamine business performance in more

holistic terms and it would be useful to takea quick look at some of the developments inthis space.

With the growth of the services sector andthe knowledge economy, a variety ofprofessionals across academia and businesshave been engaged in trying to evolve aframework that explains the relationship ofHR value drivers to business outcomes interms of financial & operational metrics. Asper the science of the new age performancemanagement, metrics hold divine status andare key to linking strategy to businessoutcomes. The mantra that ‘you measurewhat you want to get done’ has spawnedenormous amount of research in establishingcausal models.

In 1987, H. Thomas Johnson and RobertKaplan published Relevance Lost, a critiqueof how accounting systems weredisconnected from the drivers of performanceand, thus, failed to assist companies in longterm planning and strategy formulation.1Subsequently, concepts such as Activity-Based Costing, which Johnson2 went on tochampion and Economic Value Added(EVATM)3 by Stern, Stewart & Co. becamepopular as companies struggled to understandwhere and how value was being created anddestroyed.

In 1996, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Nortonpublished The Balanced Scorecard:Translating Strategy into Action which becamea seminal model to systematically trackmetrics linked to financials, customers, internalprocesses and the learning and growth ofskills in an organization.4


The “Competency” movement launched byC. K. Prahlad and Gary Hamel in their book,The Core Competence of the Corporationlaid emphasis on seeing internal resourcesas the source of strategy and value creation,adding strength to the focus on identifyingthe value stored in people.5

Research in knowledge management,focused on methods to try and capture valuecreated by ‘knowledge workers’ and therewas renewed interest in the work done byGary Becker on measuring the economicvalue created by education.6 Interestingly,one knows intuitively & perhaps empirically,that at a societal level, investment in educationand healthcare are critical for long termeconomic growth and this constitutes afoundation for making other investments fordriving economic growth. However, to explainwhether higher GDP growth leads to bettereducation and healthcare outcomes or viceversa is a bit like the chicken or egg situation.

Questioning the primacy of intangibles onvalue creation now appears to be a thing ofthe past. Where does it leave measurementof HR performance? Numerous studies haveattempted to move beyond conjecture toestablish direct, causal links between humanresource practices and improvements in

financial performance.However, there has beenfrustratingly little successin proving this connection.This may be because theactual link between humanresource initiatives andbusiness performancemight be the opposite ofwhat most researchersbelieve. Testing for reversecausality, (i.e., theproposition that good firmperformance may lead tobetter human resourcepolicies*) is not such animplausible idea.

leadership & the correctstrategic choices might, forinstance, create strongfinancial performance andthereby the resources for

investment in human capital developmentwhich then adds to the overall performanceof the Company. One of the few studies onreverse causality showed that firmperformance preceded improved humanresources practices. This led the researchersto conclude that “high performingorganizations by their nature possess slackresources…Firms that are profitable mayshare these profits with employees in anumber of ways.** The analysis revealed thatnone of the positive correlations betweenhuman resource actions and futureperformance remained significant once thepropositions were tested for reverse causality.The results maybe concluded to suggest thatany link was at best tentative and should betreated with great caution.

Finding a correlation remains an elusive goal.Despite this high level of interest among bothacademics and practitioners, human capitalmeasurement is still work in progress. Thereis no denying that employee costs whichinclude training and development, contributeto financial performance in ways other thanas a number to be subtracted from revenueon the way to calculating profits.

Recruitment & selection costs, team buildinginitiatives, competency design and otherexpenditures clearly bear resemblances tospending on research and development ormarketing in that they build a reservoir ofvalue for the future. They are, in some sense,assets. But what is their value? And if thatcan’t be determined, how can we understandwhich efforts lead to improvements inproductivity and, ultimately, financialperformance? Intuitively, we know that attritionof good performance leads to drop inproductivity. The task of isolating the cost ofattrition for every employee however is a verydifficult ask. The obvious ones are the costof recruitment and cost of training. One couldalso account for cost of management time.But, how does not one quantify the impacton employer brand, the consequent impacton productivity, customer satisfaction etc. etc.Despite these difficulties, the search forpredictive metrics continues and, as with theearlier quest for improved accountingprocedures, a number of new alternativeshave emerged to meet this demand.


4. Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, TheBalanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy intoAction (Boston: Harvard Business SchoolPress, 1996)

5. This movement was launched by C. K.Prahalad and Gary Hamel in “The CoreCompetence of the Corporation,” HarvardBusiness Review, Volume 68, Number 3,May/June 1990.

6. Gary S. Becker, Human Capital: ATheoretical and Empirical Analysis with SpecialReference to Education, 3rd ed. (Chicago:University of Chicago Press/National Bureauof Economic Research, 1993)

• Patrick M. Wright, Timothy M. Gardener, LisaMoynihan, and Matthew R. Allen, “TheRelationship between HR Practices and FirmPerformance: Examining Causal Order,“Personnel Psychology, Volume 58, Number2, 2005, pp. 409-446

** Wright et al., “The Relationship betweenHR Practices and Firm Performance, “”p. 419

7. Felix Barber, Phil Catchings, and YvesMorieux, “Rule of the Game for PeopleBusinesses: Succeeding in the Economy’sHighest Growth Segment, “Boston ConsultingGroup report, 2005. The report is available atwww.bcg.com

Boston Consulting Group uses a systemit calls “workonomics” to assess valuecreation by employees. “From anemployee-oriented perspective, valuecreation is the number of employeesmultiplied by the difference betweenemployee productivity and cost peremployee.7

The hope persists that an “ideal” list ofhuman capital measures, especiallyprospective human capital measures,could exist and that these measurescould prove how investments in peoplecan deliver bottom-line results forbusiness strategy. Rather than continuethis possibly quixotic search, companiesmight find it more practical to investigatethe role that the human resourcesfunction plays in strategy.

In a survey, conducted by TheConference Board in 2006, only 22percent of respondents claimed thatthe human resources function is a fullpartner in developing and implementingbusiness strategy. More than half of therespondents responded that the functionhad “no role” in strategy or simplyimplemented business strategy “onceit has been developed.” Not only doesthis lack of involvement in formulatingor implementing strategy limit the abilityof human resources to understandmanagers’ business KPIs & concerns,it could also explain why only a fewcompanies create human capital metricsto gauge the organization’s capacity toinnovate or to identify new businessopportunities. Human resourcesdepartments still play a limited role instrategy development. With the humanresources function having limitedparticipation in setting strategy, itbecomes even more difficult to linkhuman capital metrics to strategic goals.

In conclusion, one may say thatmeasurement of HR performance is ajourney and the difficulty of explainingthe impact of each & every HR initiativeon business performance need notdistract HR managers from the primarypurpose of making the people agendaan integral part of the business agenda.To do this effectively, HR managersneed to acquire skills of understandingand interpreting data, provide actionable

insight on people and people relateddecisions based on data and moreimportantly, integrate their findings andknowledge of employee insight intobusiness strategy. As an example,organizations focused on differentiatingthemselves through offering uniqueproducts or services may chooseinnovation metrics; companies primarilyinterested in cost may concentrate onefficiency measures.

While many progressive companiesnowadays use dashboards to reportHR data, the ability to explain causalmodels that show the impact of humanresources on business outcomes in acoherent manner will be a core skillexpected of HR managers. Likewise,business managers need to get familiarwith HR metrics and these metrics needto form a part of their performance KPIsand reward plans to ensure alignmentacross all levels in the organization.Simultaneously, HR metrics need to bevisible to all employees as per therelevant cuts appropriate for them foraction planning.

HR will have to take up the role ofdisseminating information on HRperformance, support line managerswith actionable insights and help themin action planning. If well done, theimpact of HR on business will be felt atall levels and HR will not need tostruggle to explain its importance. Thiswill however, require a new breed ofHR professionals who think and act asbusiness managers and who havemade a choice to be in HR as they lovethe job.

References

1. H. Thomas Johnson and Robert S.Kaplan, Relevance Lost: The Riseand fall of Management Accounting(Boston: Harvard Business SchoolPress, 1987)

2. H. Thomas Johnson, RelevanceRegained: From Top-Down Control toBottom-Up Empowerment (New York:Free Press, 1992)

3. Joel Stern, Bennett Stewart, and DonChew, “The EVATM Financial ManagementSystem, “Journal of Applied CorporateFinance, Volume 8, Number 2, 1995,pp.32-46


G’ NOME


Child’s Career Direction

“Many things can wait; the child cannot. Now is the time his bones are beingformed, his mind is being developed. To him, we cannot say tomorrow, hisname is today”

- Gabriela Mistral

All India Survey Report

YOUR

What is good for a crowd-puller, popular Hindi film may not be all that goodfor real life. Rajkumar Hirani’s 3 Idiots sends out a message to all who arejoining career race to stop, pause, think about themselves, and, only then,race ahead. At a time when suicide notes from young, brilliant students arepiling up on the coroner’s table, and parents are worried about their children’scareers, the film’s release and its subsequent success were foregoneconclusions. The quasi-real, cinematic feel good created by the film will dolittle to erase the furrow lines of worry from the viewers’ forehead. Everyonewants to enjoy life on their own terms, but existing realities are frequentlyagainst that inner drive. Do you dare to hold your own in the face of your lifeand career circumstances? In many cases, we don’t have a reasonablechoice to be ourselves.

On the other hand, we parents love to see our children happy, pursuing theirown career choices; we want them to be wealthier than us; we want themto be well-groomed individuals; the wish list is long and complex. There is,however, one common perception that binds our wishes: we, as parents, arethe best judge of our children’s future growth.

How close is 3 Idiots to life? That is for the film critic to judge; on our partat Gray Matters Consulting we wanted to look for some answers through asurvey that went live last year on Children’s Day. What follows are some realanswers from real people on career direction for their children.

So, what have we come up with?

For a week starting from Children’s Day 2009, 692 professionals in 75organizations across India were surveyed for the factors that had influencedtheir career decision-making, and the kind of support their children were gettingin their (the children’s) career selection process. This short report presents thekey findings of the survey. The report examines the different ways in whichtoday’s professionals define and evaluate their career success.

Our research model contends that environmental, opportunity and self factorsdifferentially influence a person’s choice of career. So, a part of the surveyidentifies key environment, opportunity and self influencers in career decision-making, and discusses the different degrees of future career success associatedwith each. We have also presented different support activities that the childrensurveyed, through their parents, have access to in choosing their careerdirections.

We’ve also made recommendations, based on the survey response, to helpchildren best manage or leverage their career selection influencers in leadingsuccessful future careers. The report reveals specific parental attitudes andpreferences that can have great impact on their child’s career direction setting.The impact of the parent’s age, gender and income on such parental attitudes,and their underlying rationale are explored. Some ideas for future research andimplications for practice are also presented at the end.


Who did we ask?

692 professionals participated in this study, 84 % of whowere male. The sample was roughly normally distributedin age and income. East, North and South India werewell represented in the sample; but we had only 2 % and7 % of participants respectively from Central and WesternIndia.

The participants were selected from a diverse mix ofindustries; however, their largest concentration was inthe IT & ITeS (25 %) and manufacturing (30 %) industries.

Most of these professionals were either graduates (50%) or post graduates (35 %).

Since the participants’ age was quite normally distributed,the age of their children also had a normal range andpattern of spread (from below 12 years to above 21years).

What were we looking for?

When we had first planned this project, we wanted todecode the career decision making process of children.What factors does a child consider in making her careerchoice? Which of them are more or less important vis-à-vis her future career success? What are parents’ mostcommon attitudes and preferences in supporting theirchild’s career decision making? We were inspired bysome of these questions.

We felt that the process of understanding and analysescannot all rest in the future; in order to understand thefactors behind career choice and success, we need tohave given individuals the process time to make thosechoices and experience their success.

So, although we were trying to explain a child’s careerselection process and success potential, we decided tofocus a large part of our analyses on what their parentsdid to choose their careers and how such decision makingaffected their later career success.


In a nutshell, we investigated thefollowing questions:

I - How successful were an individual’scareer choices?

1. What’s the most common definition ofcareer success among today’s middle tosenior professionals?

2. What percentage of these professionalsfeel they have been ‘successful’ in theircareer so far?

II - Which career choice factors led togreater career success?

3. Which of the environment, opportunityand self influencers of career choice haveled to greater future career success?

III - At the start of career decisionmaking, what actions can best leveragesuch career choice influencers?

4. What are the most common supportactivities that the (indirectly) surveyed childpopulation has access to for capitalizingon or managing such career choiceinfluencers?

5. What are the recommended action plansfor the (indirectly) surveyed children to bestleverage their career choice influencers?

IV - What factors influence parentattributes that in turn influence theirchild’s career decision making?

The last part of our survey consideredspecific parental attitudes and preferencesthat can have a great impact on their child’scareer direction setting and success. Inunderstanding such parental attributes, thefollowing research questions were ofinterest to us:

6. What are parents’ predominant attitudesand preferences regarding their child’scareer interests, non traditionalpreferences, and career planning starttimeframe?’

7. How do the parents’ age, gender andincome influence such attributes?

What did we find

In summary:

For most of the surveyed professionals, career success meant‘Professional Growth and Achievement’ or ‘Right person-career fit’.‘Monetary achievement’ or ‘power’ was considered far less important fordetermining career success.

Maybe a lot of the surveyed professionals felt past a certain point inincome and power. For them, factors in job and professional enrichmentare now pivotal descriptors of career success.

Most people felt they were successful in their careers. However, individualswho defined career success in terms of their professional developmentor person-career fit perceived themselves to be more successful, on anaverage, than people who identified career success with high incomeor power.

This might be indicative of a deeper psychological phenomenon: peoplewho set success standards in terms of their job fit and professionalexpertise feel more easily satisfied and fulfilled than those who identifymore with money or stature.

In the domain of one’s environment and surroundings, people whowere most influenced by their ‘parents’ occupations’ experienced thehighest career success, followed successively by groups driven by ‘peercareer interests’, ‘role models’ and ‘local region occupations’. However,differences in future career success were significant only between groupsthat chose ‘parents’ occupations’ and ‘local region occupations’.

Thus, parents have a much larger scope to influence their children’scareer decision making by the nature and success track record of their(parents’) occupations. And, if your child is asked to choose her careerguidepost between the ‘occupational diversity in her local region’ andher ‘deeper understanding of her parents’ professions’, she’s likely toprofit more from the latter.

Estimated Marginal Means of Career Satisfaction Index (Recoded)

3.60

3.55

3.50

3.45

3.40

3.35

3.30

Estim

ated

Mar

gina

l Mea

ns

Money P-J Fit Power ProfessionalDevelopmentCareer Success Criterion


In the domain of the individual’s opportunities,people who were driven most by ‘past or currentwork experience at the time of making theircareer selection’ landed up with the greatestcareer success, followed consecutively bygroups driven by ‘family socio-economic status(SES)’, ‘education/employment opportunitiesin local area’, and ‘gender’. However, thesedifferences are not significant.

If your child has had opportunities in terms ofan enriching past work experience, astereotypical gender vis-a-vis his careerinterests, multiple education and employmentopportunities in his local area, and a high familysocioeconomic status, he’s likely to be servedbest in later career success if he’s mostinfluenced by the work experience. However,since all of these opportunities have animportant role to play in his decision making,our studies did not indicate the associatedcareer success differentials to be significant.

In the self domain, people most driven by their‘motivation for high SES’ during the careerdecision making phase achieved the highestfuture career success, followed successivelyby groups that were most led by their ‘analysisof own capabilities’, ‘self interest awarenessand career planning’, and ‘academic scoresand achievement’. People most influencedby ‘motivation for high SES’ achievedsignificantly higher career success than thosedriven by ‘analysis of own capabilities’; otherdifferences in career success among factorswere not statistically significant.

So, if your child is clear of that his careersuccess motivation lies in high income vs.career fit right at the time of career decision-making, he’s likely to land in a future careerthat he would find the most successful.

When starting out in one’s career, being guidedby one’s degree of motivation for a high SEShas highest returns. If your child is clear ofthat his career success motivation lies in highincome vs. career fit right at the time of careerdecision-making, he’s likely to land in a future

career that he would find the most successful.

To best leverage environment factors influencing a child’s career choice,we have recommended the following action prescription for the surveyedpopulation:

• Maintain discussions of the pros and cons of parents’ occupations

• Maintain opportunities of mentorship by children’s role models or siblings

• Increase mutual peer discussions of career choices and interests

• Decrease explorations of occupations and career choices beyond thoseof local area

The data clearly indicates that proactive discussions in the career decisionmaking phase with people in close access – parents, peers, siblings,and role models – can play a more important role in future career successthan less interactive, research based explorations of alternative, nonlocal occupations.

To make the best use of the opportunity factors influencing the child’scareer selection process, we have the following suggestions for thesampled parent-child groups:

• Decrease activities that make use of joint school-industry initiatives

• Maintain current level of activities involving parents’ exploration offinancial alternatives for supporting their child’s career decisions

• Decrease activities that make use of vocational training and workopportunities

• Increase discussions on non traditional and non mainstream careers

Although practical experiences provide children with some knowledgeof specific professions and their field realities, what is also needed is adeeper discussion of the benefits and challenges of different occupations.Even here, career decision making seems to respond positively to criticaldiscussions and analyses.

To best capitalize on the self factors that influence a child’s careerdirection, we recommend the following for the surveyed children:

• Decrease activities involving choosing career value priorities

• Decrease activities involving analyses of own capabilities

• Increase activities involving career planning and self discovery

• Increase activities involving understanding of the impact (opportunitiesand limitations) of academic scores

The need seems to be to take a more specific approach to career relatedself awareness and get more proactive about planning the child’s stepstowards his career goals.


The parent’s income or gender is unrelated to his or herpreferred start time for the child’s career planning. Theparent’s age, however, has a quasi-significant relationshipwith the desired child career planning start time. Althoughthere’s no relationship between the two variables until theparent’s age of 50, beyond 50, the younger the parent is,the earlier he’s likely to want the child’s career planningprocess to begin.

The parent’s age or gender does not have a significantimpact on his or her preference towards the child’sindependent interests vs. parental perceptions vs. societalexpectations in supporting the child’s career decisionmaking. However, richer people are more likely to bepredisposed towards their child’s interests vis-a-vis societalexpectations in this process.

Younger and richer are likely to be more open towardsnon-traditional (non-mainstream) career choices of theirchildren. The parent’s gender does not have any significantimpact on such openness.

Mothers and fathers are surprisingly alike in some of thekey parental attitudes that can impact the quality of supportthe child has during his career direction setting.

Richer parents might feel more liberated and secure toremain more open to their child’s independent interestsduring this process, even if such interests are non-traditional.

Younger parents seem to do better in providing a moreopen, liberal support to their children in choosing nonmainstream careers.

In Conclusion

There could be a Rancho of 3 Idiots in our families waitingto be discovered, but are we equipped enough as parentsto make that discovery? The survey reveals that there isno shortage of effort to find our own Ranchos and alsomany of us are geared to find out non-mainstream careersfor them. The crucial piece of a child’s career directionpuzzle is her parental support. It seems there are oodlesof it. We could take that vital step, discover our child’spassions and interests and put her on a path of self-discovery.

You would have read our recommendations based on thesurvey responses. These are windows of choice that mayhelp you take certain decision pertaining to your child’scareer plans. If you have any further queries on the surveyelements and recommendations, we would be happy to beof help.

Estimated Marginal Means of Parent’s Openness toNon-Traditional Careers

4.00

3.80

3.60

3.40

3.20

Estim

ated

Mar

gina

l Mea

ns

1L-5L 5L-10L 10L-15L 15L-20L 20L-30L 30L and above

Income Recorded in Rs. lakhs (L)

4.00

3.80

3.60

3.40

3.20

3.00

Below 30 30-35 36-40 41-45 46-50 Above 50

Parent’s Age Recorded

Estim

ated

Mar

gina

l Mea

ns

Estimated Marginal Means of Parent’s Openness toNon-Traditional Careers

Estimated Marginal Means of Child’s Career Planning Start Time

3

2.8

2.6

2.4

2.2

2

Estim

ated

Mar

gina

l Mea

ns

Below 30 30-35 36-40 41-45 46-50 Above 50Parent’s Age Recorded

Covariates appearing in the model are evaluated at the following values : Income Recorded = 2.50


Sample distribution across key environment influencers

Individuals who defined career successin terms of their professional developmentor person-career fit perceived themselvesto be more successful, than people whoidentified career success with high incomeor power.People who were driven most by ‘past orcurrent work experience at the time ofmaking their career selection’ landed upwith the greatest career successProactive discussions in the careerdecision making phase with people inclose access – parents, peers, siblings,and role models – can play an importantrole in future career successThe parent’s income or gender isunrelated to his or her preferred start timefor the child’s career planning.Younger and richer are likely to be moreopen towards non-traditional (non-mainstream) career choices of theirchildren.Richer parents might feel more liberatedand secure to remain more open to theirchild’s independent interests during thisprocess, even if such interests are non-traditional.

Principal Investigators – Ayantika Paul, Senior Consultant,Gray Matters ; Debkumar Mitra, CEO – Education &Knowledge Services, Gray Matters ; Sanjay RoyChowdhury, Managing Director, Gray Matters

Sample distribution across key opportunity influencers

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%Parent’s Occupations Local Occupations Observing Siblings/

Role ModelsPeer Career Choices

Parent’s Environment Influencer

Gender Family SES Practical WorkExperience

Local work oreducation opportunities

Opportunity Influencer

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Self Awareness andCareer Planning

Academic Scores Current Capabilities Motivation for highSES

Self Influencer

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Sample distribution across key self influencers

SURVEY HIGHLIGHTS

© Gray Matters Consulting Pvt. Ltd. No part of thisreport can be published partly or wholly without theprior written permission from the organization.


Sum up your Leadershipin 6 words

Once upon a time Ernest Hemingway waschallenged to write a story using only sixwords. Impossible, some thought. Not forPapa, as Neal Conan explained on NPR'sTalk of the Nation. The next day Hemingwayproduced this: "For sale. Baby shoes. Neverworn."

Clare Booth Luce, according to columnistWall Street Journal columnist PeggyNoonan, once told President John Kennedythat "a great man is one sentence." Noonanwrites that Lincoln's life could be summedup as "He preserved the Union and freedthe slaves." My colleague, Scott Eblin,adapted the concept to summing up one'sleadership legacy. "It takes time and effortto boil down the essence of what you'retrying to do to a short and memorable idea.“

Reducing one's life to a handful of wordsis a mighty challenge. Creating a six-wordmemoir, a concept inspired by a projectconducted by Smith College's magazine,can be a useful exercise in self-analysis,particularly if you apply the process toreflecting upon your goals and your results.

Did we achieve what we set out to achieve?Did I help them and the team to succeed?Did our results stand the test of time?

The million dollar question for any leaderis this: did you leave the organization in abetter place than when you found it? Sadlywe have discovered that the great recessionwe are enduring was in part due to seniorexecutives who did not leave theircompanies better off, even though theythemselves exited with pockets full of cash.

For leaders, this six-word exercise works well as a form ofaspiration, that is, how do I want to be remembered? So ifyou are early or mid career, you have time to make changesso that you can become the leader you are capable ofbecoming. Consider the following three questions to helpyou consider how you would sum up your work life in sixwords or less.

What gets me up in the morning? A very basic question!What do you do and why do you do it? For some, the answeris the opportunity to work with others on a project that hasreal meaning, that is, improves the quality of life for others.If this question throws you, then you need to consider whatyou don't like about what you do. Is it possible to changesomething, or must you change careers?

How can I help? We humans are motivated to work forgoals greater than ourselves. Leaders achieve through theefforts of others. It is imperative that they create conditionsfor others to succeed. They help others achieve intentionsthat enable the team, and by extension the organization, tosucceed.

What is my influence? Line authority over someone onyour team is a point of leverage but its effect may be limited.For organizations, particularly in challenging times withdwindling resources, leaders need to exert their influence.Such influence is built upon good example but transmittedthrough effective persuasion rooted in trust.

You can adapt the six-word memoir exercise to fit otherneeds. For example, how might you describe a challengefacing your team using just six words? "Tough job.

Committed people. Keep working." Or "Need ideas. Soonerthan later. Help." You can even make a game of it at yournext staff meeting. Encourage your people to contribute theirsix words as a means of getting to think about the issues,the challenges, and the opportunities you face.

Summing up your career in six words may not produce aeureka moment of sudden clarity, but the exercise challengesyou to think about what work means to you and how youinfluence the way others work. "Big idea. Profound thoughts.Truthful moment."


BUSINESS CAPPUCHINO

Graphic Novels & Comicscomic books for a pan-Indian market thantext-only books. The iconic Amar ChitraKatha series of the 1950s to the 1990sshowed how this could work, although itseems to have lost steam now, perhapsbecause it looks a little out of date in thepost-liberalization era.

India has very accomplished practicingartists. A search of the web throws uphundreds of accomplished creators of webcomics of Indian origin. Our artists still havea freshness and a reverence for the humanform and for colour and line that has comeunder attack in the past century in the West,such that Western ‘high’ and ‘low’ art havequarrelled over realism and parted ways.The Indian understanding and practice ofart is more congenial to the idea of high artas a storytelling medium. Animation studioshave already made India a destination ofchoice for high quality work, preciselybecause our artists work well with realismor symbolism.

India has great writers. I don’t need tostress this point. Indian literature is takingthe world by storm. If established writers,or new writers with talent, could be attractedto the genre, we would have a winningformula. Many younger writers are alsofans of comics, but are hesitant to enterthe genre because they are unsure how tocollaborate with artists or manage theproject. Here institutional backup and highvisibility is essential.

Narrative power and universal appeal.The comic is a very powerful storytellingmedium. Done well, a comic book providespleasure on many levels. When you turn

What is the potential for comic books inIndia? There are many possible answersto this question, depending on who’s askingand who’s answering. Let us look first atthe positives, ie the reasons why comicbooks should take off in a big way in thenext ten years. In fact 2010-2020 could wellbe the decade of the comic book in India,provided, of course, that the negatives canbe dealt with. First, our strengths:

India’s tradition of visual storytelling.Telling stories in pictures is familiar to theIndian mind. Indian religious sites ofwhatever description usually include afresco or frieze telling the story of asignificant event. Kalighat pata makers inthe nineteenth century copied thetechniques of German oleographs andscurrilous French pictures to give usglimpses of the decadent babu culture ofCalcutta that were all their own. Many folktraditions use a mix of pictures and words.We may no longer be able to read Pali, butwe can scan the Jataka tales on the wallsof the Ajanta caves. When these were stillliving monuments, guides would take visitorsround and tell the stories that went with thepictures, thus becoming the oral ‘letterers’of the comics.

A way of bridging the linguistic divide.Given the linguistic diversity of India, acomic book has an advantage in that it isless dependent on the word, and a pictureneeds no translation. With more than 30major literary languages and a vast illiteratepopulation, India has need of comics as acommunicative device across boundaries.It would be comparatively easier to translate

Rimi B. Chatterjee is awriter and academic.Her third novel BlackLight will be out in April2010. Her first book wasSignal Red, and thesecond (shortlisted forthe VodafoneCrossword BookAward) The City of Love.She teaches English atJadavpur University.She’s working on agraphic novel, Kalpa:Shadowfalls and is onehalf of the team that willlaunch Project C, a newcomics magazine. Shehas also published anaward-winning historyof Oxford UniversityPress in pre-Independence India.

Rimi B. Chatterjee

a page, the double spread of the facing pageshits you first with its beauty. Then you readsequentially and pick up the story, going panelby panel. You appreciate how the panels worktogether. Then you get the tiny thrill, the littlemoment of suspense as you turn the page,and again the moment of holding one’s breathas a new spread appears. This is a verycomplex process, yet it is also simple becauseof the universal appeal of pictures.

A good creator can furthermore use this all-at-once-yet-sequential experience to produceirony and disquiet, to comment on the storyas well as tell it. There can be visual jokes andreferences that are subtle, as well as theobvious gags. Thus readers of different levelsof sophistication can get different levels ofpleasure from the same text. The creators canalso chop time in a way that a film cannot: onesingle moment can fill a whole page, or a yearcan be packed into twelve small panels, or theact of raising a glass to one’s mouth can bedrawn out into an agony of suspense. Wordsand picture can be at odds, so that the voicetells one story while the face denies it. Andone can read at one’s own pace, go back andforth, or follow multiple lines on the pages, ina way that film does not allow. Imagine a bloodydagger drawn as if resting on a page that tellsthe story of a murder. Given a sufficientlypowerful story and a daring artist, such as inDavid B’s Epileptic or Alan Moore and J.H.Williams’s Promethea, this medium can goplaces no other artform can dream of reaching.

Increasing interest in the genre. The Indianmedia has been paying more attention tocomics recently, and there is now a trendtowards studying comics in academia. At

Jadavpur University, comic books/graphicnovels are on the syllabus of the undergraduatecore course, and there is a postgraduateoptional course that studies them in detail.Parallel to this, a creator-owned black andwhite print magazine, Drighanchoo, is nowbeing published by a group of people, not allfrom JU. This is doing very well. There areever more fan groups on Facebook, and eachnew title or project ratchets up the visibility ofIndian comics.

This brings me to the ‘con’s of my analysis.What are the factors preventing comics fromtaking off in India? Here are some points.

The low status of the genre in the West.Comics and cartoons have till now not receivedthe recognition due to them as art forms, andif this is true in the West it is doubly true here,since so far we haven’t come up with our ownidea of what comics is, and are likely to endup passively accepting Western ideas on thegenre. The problem is, the low prestige of themedium tends to drive away established writerswho fear to sully their hard-won reputations.There is also the impression among Indianwriters that scripting graphic novels or comicsis a specialist job. Writers will consider doingfilm scripts (in so far that Bollywood moviesinvest in a script at all) but not comics.

Perception of comics as ‘kid’s stuff’. Thisis a Western hangover; in Japan, for example,manga is read by everyone. The Japanesesystem is probably a better model for Indiathan the Western one. India has had someexposure to these cultures through anime,many of which are based on manga, that airon channels like the Sony-owned Animax.



Japanese manga is nearly always monochrome and artist-authored,and sales are phenomenal. The Japanese market is well developedand differentiated according to age group or content. Japanesemanga are more story-driven than Western comics and show moreexperimentation with ideas. They are also much franker about sexand adult topics. The Japanese experience shows that comics canappeal successfully to any age group and social class.

The dominance of the ‘superhero’ in people’s mindsets. This isboth a hangover from the West and a facet of ‘comics are for kids’.It would be well for us to look beyond the superhero for future stories.Even mythological heroes in India are resolutely human: witnessthe heroes of the Mahabharata, who agonise, do wrong, mess up,make mistakes and regret their actions in a way that Westernaudiences find disconcertingly post modern. Ignoring this narrativetradition runs the risk of giving Indian readers dumbed-down content.

I believe that the question that every Indian comics-reader should ask is: Why can’t I find the stories Iwant to read? This was the question I asked myselfwhich led me to script the first book of my comicsseries, Kalpa. I wanted Kalpa: Shadowfalls to be adifferent kind of story, one that would be anchoredin everyday life but would have enough fantasy in itto be visually rich and emotionally appealing.

Lack of a publishing infrastructure and paradigm.Here in India, there is only one fully functional publisherof comics: Kalyani Navyug which publishes theCampfire imprint for children. There was Virgin ComicsIndia, which lived for a very short while, andPhantomville, which published only two titles beforegoing into hibernation. Virgin was doomed to failbecause of the conservatism and timidity of its stories.‘Bad’ artwork—that is deliberately rough, stylized ordistorted art—can tell a good story in a comic book,but good artwork cannot save a bad tale from beingrejected by the reader. The Virgin serial numberslooked good, but story-wise they were going nowhere.Sarnath Banerjee’s Corridor (New Delhi: Penguin,2005) and The Barn Owl’s Wondrous Capers (NewDelhi: Penguin, 2007), and Amruta Patil’s Kari (NewDelhi: Harper Collins India, 2008) are published bymainstream publishers, namely Penguin and HarperCollins. It is no accident that these books are artist-authored and mostly monochrome, the form of comicsthat is closest to the prose fiction paradigm (ie thetext-only novel we all buy and read). This form is thecheapest to produce and the most easily handled bymainstream houses. A full-colour comic book producedby a scripter, penciller, inker, letterer and colourist islegally and technically a different proposition fromthe monochrome single-author work, and till now theIndian publishing industry has had no models to dealwith it.


Mainstream publishers do not paycreators until a book is published androyalties are coming in. Writers of novelswork for free, but artists of all kinds areusually professionals who get paid perpage. Since publishers in India areunwilling to pay development costs for acomic book, who will pay the artist? Atpresent mostly the writer funds the artistfrom his or her pocket, a very gruelingproposition and impracticable in manycases.

Lack of a magazine culture or serialpublication. In Japan, stories often reacha readership first through magazinessupported by advertising, subscriptionand sponsorship, and in the West,through serial publication also supportedby ads, allowing people to buy and readthem with a small investment. Only themost popular and commercially viablestories then get collected as tradepaperbacks, ie books. Without amagazine culture, publishers end uptaking too much risk publishing graphicnovels without prior market exposure,and since book publishers don’t run adsthe huge developmental costs cannot bemet except from sales, pushing up coverprices. Since magazines get advertisingrevenue, they can help underwrite thehigh development costs of comics,allowing publishers to publish thecollected books (without the ad copy)only by paying printing and distributioncosts in the usual manner. This is whathas led me and Avijit Chatterjee to comeup with the idea for Project C, a new

comics-only magazine that we intend to launchby 2011. It will publish both fiction and nonfictionin comics form, bimonthly, for a general (non-juvenile) audience, and we intend it to functionas a launch pad for comics creators and a get-it-here-first platform for readers.

Lack of a forum for sharing creatorexperiences. Since there is no institutionalsupport available in India, authors who can’t orwon’t draw, and artists who can’t or won’t write,have to find each other and team up on theirown. This is technically demanding and requiresone to learn the skills of collaboration. I am notan artist, I am a writer, and that was my firstproblem with Kalpa. At a very basic level, I hadto find artists and get them involved on a creativelevel.

Giving them the script to read did not work: theywere not used to dealing with large quantitiesof prose. I had to sit them round a table and tellthe story to them in the good old fashioned way.That worked, as did my drawing of numerousstick-figure thumbnails at which they verygenerously forbore to laugh. So we had to learnby trial and error how to do comics. Many othercreators are having to emulate our experience,thus endlessly reinventing the wheel.

Without a comics community, we don’t have away to pass on our hard-won knowledge andto train up newcomers. An interactive magazineculture, supported by comics conventions, fansites, competitions, seminars, letters to theeditor and google groups will help here. It willalso allow for market-testing of new conceptsand help investors to decide on what are goodprospects for development.

ConclusionYou will note that most of thesetbacks or obstacles are ‘lacks’which can be remedied by buildingthe resources needed. What hasreally been lacking till now is thevision and drive to take a fewstartups through to completion andsuccess. We need newentrepreneurs who will capitalizeon our strengths and build bridgesbetween capital and the market,generating first class content for awide readership along the way andbuilding a community of creators,fans, sponsors, publishers andreaders. For this, good businessplans that promote creativity whilemaximizing commercial successare essential. When that happens,the comics giant of India will wakenand take the world by storm. Watchout for the giant in a bookstorenear you!


HR On Site

An IT organization devoted to check internet security systems for organizations,sought Gray Matters’ assistance in examining, re-designing and implementing HRsystems and processes in their organization. It was good to see that those who lookat the durability of other organizations’ systems were equally keen in seeking helpfrom experts in domains which were not their area of expertise – i.e. people processes.Gray Matters ‘HR On-site’ was the product of choice. Here Gray Matters was the‘internal’ HR function for the organization. The work involved examining existing HRsystems, defining and implementing processes and policies and actually acting asthe ‘HR’ interface for all staff matters. The assignment also included facilitatingimplementation of innovative performance improvement initiatives. The situation was‘win-win’ for both the organization and Gray Matters.

Education and Knowledge Management Services

In the New Year, Gray Matters team have added two more items to its basketof products and services – Education and Knowledge Management Services.

With these two services we hope to cover a large section of audiences fromschool children to senior level executives. Currently under development is a new,exciting product for schools and colleges as our first offering from educationservices.

We are also actively engaged in bringing in the best HR practices to the Educationsector. The products and services are aimed at better delivery and managementof human resources in this fast growing industry.

Gray Matters Knowledge Management services helps organizations andeducational institutions in exploring new and creative ideas for their Brandingand Communication needs. We help in idea generation for in-house employeeengagement events or external marketing and branding events.

We are in the process of giving Knowledge Management a new meaning bystretching its definition and pushing the envelope. We are currently activelyengaged in developing focussed content for industry and education; managingexisting knowledge within an organisation and doing surveys.

We are also looking at knowledge events. Gray Matters Knowledge ManagementServices team would help you in creating interesting and extremely innovativeideas for conferences, tradeshows, meetings and other interesting ideas specificallyfor your organization.

Our team is known for its ability to help Institutions bridge the existing structureand systems with the future goals that have been envisioned our impact in thefield of education has been recognized by clients and partners on a nationallevel.

INSIDE GRAY MATTERS


LEISURE PAGENWORDS mindstretchPronounced N-U-O-R-D, nword isa new word or phrase that appearssuddenly in speeches, articles,news reports or literary writings.Nwords that appears in this columnhave a stickiness of at least acouple of years. Here are 8 suchgems.

CHATTY PACKAGING: Faux-friendly marketing blurb that aspiresto a casual, cheeky, and personaltone.

MIS-LIT: Misery Literature,recounting abuse, degradation, orharm.

RETAIL JAILS or TESCO JAILS:‘short-term holding facilities’ inmalls or other areas of ‘high-volume’offending.

PHILANTHROPRENEURS:Sponsors of non-profit ventures;often young tech billionaires. AlsoFILANTHROPISTS. Philanthropistswho finance socially aware films.Also MINIGARCH. Not quite anoligarch (annual income =$50m).

PAY-AS-YOU-THROW: Chargingfor rubbish disposal by quantity.

VULTURE FUNDS: Companiesthat buy cheap the debt of poorcountries, and then sue for the fullsum, plus interest.

PITCH BEST: animals used inadvertising: usually cute, likepenguins.

SANDWICH GENERATION:Those caring for young childrenand elderly parents at the sametime.

Fill up the empty triangles with numbers between 0and 9 so that the sum of all the numbers (includingthose in the white triangles)is equal to 178.

You cannot use the same number in two trianglesthat are touching each other – otherwise you can.

brain strainquizzing your grey cells

1. His famous order ‘a vodka martini – shaken, not stirred’notwithstanding, which beverage did James Bond, quaffedthe most in his films?

2. In a recent Teletext poll on books that readers often leaveunfinished featured only one Indian author, which is thebook?

3. After viewing what do some travelers suffer from StendhalSyndrome?

4. At various places across the city London finds blue plaques;what do these plagues signify?

5. People of which professions are awarded the Pritzker?

6. In ‘Leet Speak’, an internet slang language, what does m3stand for?

7. On Geenpeace’s list of most eco-friendly electronics company,which organization is at the top of the pile?

8. We all know about “Glass Ceiling”, what is “Marble Ceiling”?

9. Royal Mail issues Christmas Stamps in which month of theyear?

10. Four Asian economics are jointly known as Asian Tigers;Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan are three of them, whichis the fourth? Answers

1.Champagne

2.The God of Small Things,Arundhati Roy

3.Art of great beauty.

4.Places where the greathave penned their masterpieces, developed newtechnologies, lived or died.

5.Architects

6.Me

7.Lenovo

8.A barrier to those in politics

9.November.

10.Hong Kong

Solution


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BACKPAGE For more information on GrayMatters offerings, visit our websiteat: www.graymatters.co.in

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Debkumar MitraCEO-Education &Knowledge ServicesGray Matters

Ayantika PaulSenior ConsultantGray Matters

Madhushree BhattacharyyaSenior AnalystGray Matters

Experience: Formerly Talent Consultant with Cambria Corporation, Boston, USA. Have worked with organizationlike AON Corporation, New York, USA, SHL Group, India, Oracle, Vienna, Austria and Arambagh Corporation,India.

Consulting exposure in USA, Austria and India.Consulting areas: Visioning, Organization Design & Structuring, Organizational Effectiveness, PerformanceManagement System, Balanced Scorecard, Competency based solutions, Talent Management, Succession& Workforce Planning, Leadership Development, Job Evaluation, Manpower Rationalization, Policies & Systems

Academic background: MA in Organizational Psychology, New York University, Master of Business Economics,University of Delhi, BSc Economics, Presidency College, Calcutta.

Academic background: MBA in HR from IISWBM, MA in English from Calcutta University

Work exposure: Worked in Spencer’s Retail Ltd.for a Project on Comparative study of the performanceappraisal process of three retail companies Worked in Sagitarius. Inc as Public Relations Executive handlingmedia events for major corporate houses like Tata Metaliks, WBIDC, BSNL, Keventer group among others.

Industries worked with: Service Industry – Information Technology, Education and Hospital

Experience: Formerly Director — Research and Development at Derek O’Brien & Associates, a Kolkata-basedmedia infotainment company; Currently a consultant editor with Penguin India since December 2006. Inventeda mathematical tool — Knowledge Quotient — to measure an individual’s information base vis-à-vis informationbase of her immediate environment; Designed soft skill programme for children — KQ School Advantage;heading a 15-strong research team; Led the team that created the content for Penguin Yearbooks 2005-2009,The Penguin CNBC-TV18 Business Yearbook 2006-2007 and 2008-2009

Previously worked with The Statesman and The Telegraph in the Editorial department. Have been involved inorganising knowledge shows to promote KnowHOW; Authored a recreational mathematics column Brainstorming(that appeared uninterrupted for 14 years in “TheTelegraph”)

Education: Graduation in Mathematics from Jadavpur University. Post Graduation in Applied Mathematics withspecialization in Mathematical Biology from Jadavpur University International Fellowship: Gordon M. FisherFellow at the University of Toronto, Canada, studying ‘Science and Pseudoscience,’ ‘Bioethics,’ and ‘Impactof Digital Media on Culture,’

Visiting programmes: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and Harvard University under USVisitors’ Program; purpose of visit: a better understanding of ‘Affective Computing’; Department of Agriculture,University of Helsinki, purpose of visit: understand crop patterns and ecology of the Arctic, 1999

Publications: Published Mindstretch a book on mathematical puzzles and miscellany, The Mad, Mad worldof Elections with Sudhir Dar, Penguin India Fact File, Business Traveller’s Guide, States of India with PenguinIndia. Published poems in many little and literary magazines Uses postage stamps to popularise science andmathematics for school children.

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GRAY MATTERS CONSULTING PVT. LTD.

Registered Office: - 294, S N Roy Road, Ground Floor, New Alipore, Kolkata – 700038, Ph: 91-33-24987647,Fax: 91-33-24987648E-mail: [email protected], Website: www.graymatters.co.in

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