HR Confluence: The 4th National HR Conference Business Today, January 18th, 2004 by Suman Bhowmik Do people making history fully realize that while achieving the feat? Not always perhaps! As was evident during the recently held 4th Confluence, a national HR conference organized bi-annually by the Sapphire team of XLRI, Jamshedpur. Started off in 1997, it had ensured that the erstwhile Xavier Labour Relations Institute continued to set the lead in this specific professional field. While the very many bodies of HR professionals now conduct similar conferences, seminars etc. at regular intervals all over the country, as is true in most other areas too, much of it has over the years become staid and unproductive. It was therefore time, as Prof.Madhkar Shukla (OB & Strategic Management) puts it, “to introspect and see what could be improved upon and how”. Analysis indicated that most professionals generally wish to use these opportunities to network with peers to share ideas, problems and plans. The standard format of `paper reading’ by a few chosen `speakers’ is thus often neither relevant to the situations of many `listeners’ in the audiences nor is the process flexible or participative enough to accommodate and discuss specific nuances, thereby enjoying very little buy-in from the gatherings. Long deliberations later it was decided to innovate on the structure of the conference in manner that would try and reduce those weaknesses as far as possible. The solution generated was use of Open Space Technology – an innovative facilitation methodology for large groups designed by Harrison Owen that enables group participants to create their own agenda and move sharing sessions. The crucial underlying criterion for its working being that there is a real business issue (likely complex) to be solved, there are high levels of diversity (mostly in terms of people) involved, there is no predetermined specific solution, participants are passionate about the topic and decision time was yesterday. In taking the rigidity out of traditional meetings, discarding formalities and incorporating simple methods OST bases itself on the premise that the most fruitful conversations are the casual ones that happen over coffee or a pool table. With none in specific charge to lead, with each group passionate about and focused on the topic chosen and with `Law of Mobility’ – by the rule of two feet any participant neither learning nor contributing to the process in any group should move to one where he does – in force, quicker, cleaner and more innovative resolutions happen. Guided by the principle that whoever comes into the (group) discussion are the right people, advantages      of OST are that it supports action planning at and beyond the meeting, enables participation in designing agenda, ensures full sharing between those with common interest and networking beyond meeting, helps participants focus at all times and records a summary of the sharing for posterity. Yet, all said and done, this had never been tried before with 80 odd industry participants (70 outstation), and almost an equal number of faculty & students – what better way of eliminating gaps between industry and academics – no one knew for sure exactly how it would turn out. Prof. Shukla’s comment on Dec.20th morning that “we shall either create history or become history” was a clear indictor of the nervous tension every scientist suffers before a path-breaking experiment. He need not have bothered. Post a short, sincere, official welcome by Fr.P.D.Thomas, Director XLRI, and with expert facilitation from Dr.Uday Pareek (Chair – Academy of HRD) and Mr.A.S.Vasudevan (CEO – Wisdom Consulting), the participants took to the new style as fish to water. Senior / junior practitioners alike raised diverse issues – from expected ones as Competency Development and Measuring HR to ones as surprising as Eliminating HR. Popular participant choice, sign-ups under displayed topics, decided which ones got taken up for discussion. It is very interesting to note that while suggestions as Outsourcing HR, Self-Accountability, Knowledge Management etc. fell through for lack of enough interest, their various aspects were covered in relevant parts within the ambit of ones chosen. Thus, albeit Social Responsibility not making the grade on the first day, it was demarcated as an invaluable component of Strategic HR as much as it was considered intrinsic to discussions on Role of HR in Nation Building (*see box) or Capturing & Managing Aspirations. This would seem to indicate that while practitioners of the trade realize the importance of matters as Social Responsiveness, both at corporate and individual levels, lack of adequate knowledge and experience about its nuances and possibilities in general, restricts detailed discussions on the same. What Business Managers Expect from HR The idea was to get a view from the other side. Open the forum to business decision makers to gauge just what their expectations were of HR. Panel being suitably weighted with the industry heavies as Managing Directors of TISCO, Tata Cummins and the odds as International Director of an executive search agency and the faculty head of Marketing at XLRI. The panel played its role admirably differently too. For one every speaker remained brief enough to let the interest remain on a high. For two, they raised levels beyond the scope of the field that participants were largely restricting themselves to. That they made the desired impact was evident in that certain topics scrapped earlier for want of participation were popularly discussed the next day. Prof. Sharad `non-HR’ Sarin (XLRI) initiated with his belief HR’s aim should be to make good humans rather than just good managers and as the western clinical (dissection) model fails woefully on this count HR should take the oriental approach to holistic development. Mr.Arvind Agarwal (RPG) felt in a change-overnight world of globalisation, HR must empathise with both business and employees, remain flexible to adoption of new ideas, systems etc. and “must work towards credibility with commitment with firmly rooted values”. Also that at present the country suffers from a dearth of quality HR professionals. Mr.Dileep Mirchandani (Boyden) highlighted HR’s problem of dealing with intangibles of an ambiguous job in management of most vital `human capital’ aspect. He suggested mindset change and role redefining for HR to focus on competencies (generation, measurement, retention etc.) and nurturing of culture while sourcing out `nuts & bolts’ transactions. Mr.Jayswal (Cummins) opined in buyer’s markets where business goals keep changing slow, reactive & possessive HR must shift to being on-line with organizational pulse, develop objective, transparent, fair & consistent systems (eg. for training-needs identification), show high degree of integrity, nurture the right ambience, be ready to unlearn and be balanced between individual and organizational advocacy.  Mr.Muthhuraman (TISCO) preferred to call the spades – that while all people are into HR few practice it properly, that there is no ready solution to creating correct ambience, that we still haven’t a clue on what makes people tick and that the search led by `MBAs’ is too mechanistic / dependent on performance to be of real use. He insisted on HR’s need to look beyond measuring systems to understand and manage human beings. To develop a culture of transparency, options/support for experimentation and motivating people to test capability limits based on a bedrock op openness, trust and innovation. Since performance is not solely dependent on measurable qualities of people and conducive environs can make ordinary people do extraordinary things! The floor matched standards in its questioning. In response to one the panel had to agree that most senior executives still do not know how to take job interviews and the need for liberal education for employees. And Mr.Muthhuraman shared his desire to start an image index for considering promotions!!    That people were enjoying themselves was evident in the unanimous agreement to start working an hour early on a Sunday. That the Law of Two Feet was working admirably was borne out in cross movement evident on the corridors. That participation from industries as different as health, manufacturing, BPOs, consultancy, IT / ITES ensured pooling of quality ideas & rich experiences was obvious in presentations. That this experiment meant much showed in outstation Advisory Council members (Mr.Satish Pradhan – Tata Sons and Mr.R.Vidyasagar – Phillips Software) taking time off on Sunday to be there. And that it had succeeded was clear in that participants felt it had been worth the time and / or the trip! Some general observations that came up in the course of these two days of hectic deliberations included an oft-articulated need to develop models / systems with specific relevance to Asian / Indian conditions, the importance of looking beyond just figures in evaluating people, the erosion of value structure in society in general and its effects on HR and the necessity for HR to move out of the box and evolve with business.   While alternatives as LSIP (large scale interactive process) or Search Conference must surely have been considered before settling on OST as the chosen format this time, XLRI could set the trend by developing one that would be tailor-made for similar gatherings in future. That would surely be something to write home about!!