About Bhavin Gandhi
With MBA and Masters in Computer Science, Bhavin Gandhi has over 18+ years of business experience in various aspects of Leadership and Management roles in private and public organizations. Through his blog, Bhavin tries to help people to better manage, lead and organize their businesses and lives, in the 21st century.
Recently, I have opened up a new position in my team for Internship. And when I was going through the hiring process, I realized that there are many new managers who would make hiring mistakes unknowingly. Through this blog, I want to provide some guidelines for hiring a new person in your team, so that you can avoid those common mistakes.
Ask your Manager for help: If you are a new manager, and if you haven’t hired anyone before, then you might want to start the hiring process by asking your Manager instead of going with the HR training guidelines. I am not saying that HR Training for new manager is not useful, but sometimes those kind of trainings are very general. Those training might provide you required information, but they wouldn’t tell you specifics about processes followed in your department. If you ask your manager for help then he will be able to guide you in the right direction. And by asking your manager’s help, you are making sure that he is involved in your first hiring decision.
Involve your team: I have seen many managers, who hires independently of their team member’s decision. I would definitely advice against that practice. As a manager, you should always involve your team members in your hiring decision. This will serve many purposes. For example: This will not only tell your employees that you care about their opinion but also it will internally motivate them. This hiring practice will make sure that your employees don’t have any issues later on, when the new hire comes onboard. And you will have few more people to support your hiring decision.
Create a skill-set table: If you are hiring someone for the first time, then I would recommend you to create a skill-set table. This table doesn’t need to be a fancy and descriptive table, it can be a simple Excel Sheet of all the required skills for this position. For example: C, C++, SQL, Self-starter, Critical thinker, etc. Once you have this table ready, make sure to carry this table in all of the interviews that you take. Make sure to distribute this list to all the interviewers, so that they can grade that candidate on these skills. This table will not only work for you as a record of candidate’s capabilities, but it will also give you the opportunity to compare every candidate equally.
I hope these tips will help you to hire a new person in your team without any major mistakes. Let me know, if you have any other ideas through which you can improve your hiring process for a first time manager. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi
Tags: 21st century, Hire someone, Hiring Manager, Leaders of Tomorrow, Leadership, Manage Change, Management, Manager, Manager Training, Manager's Note, New hire
Have you ever been in a situation, where you had to revisit your estimations and adjust them accordingly? I have. Few months ago, I have created a roadmap for some of my projects. However, I didn’t have the time to perform a detailed effort/cost analysis for those projects. Thus, I estimated those projects at very high level, and thought of validating those estimates once the actual project starts. Yesterday, I ended up creating a WBS (work break down structure) for one of the projects, and I found that it might go 60% over our allocated budget. That type of increase will either not be funded at all, or the additional funding will probably require another approved project to be cancelled. Thus, I reassessed my estimations. With this blog, I would like to share my experience through which you can reassess your estimations.
Verify your estimates: Before digging up deep and cutting unnecessary costs, you should verify your estimates. I mostly use Microsoft Project or Microsoft Excel for estimating my projects. If you are using these tools, then I would recommend you to recheck all of your formulae. You should also keep an eye on your resource rates and non-labor costs. Make sure, they are reasonably accurate. If you are convinced that your math is accurate, then you might want to apply another estimating technique to see if you can get down the project cost without making any major changes to the project.
Find other alternatives: Once you are done verifying your estimates, you should then find other less expensive alternatives for all of your resources. For example: if you are counting on contract labor resources, you should see whether they could be replaced with company’s employees. Or if you are proposing new software/hardware as a part of your project, you should see whether your company already has something that will work for you. Or find out opportunities of automation, so that you can reduce the overall cost of the project without compromising on functionalities. And yeah! Make sure to take help from other experienced people in the company. Sometimes, they might come up with the solutions that you might not have thought about.
Negotiate scope of the project: Let’s say, you have tried your best to eliminate any unnecessary costs, but your project is still going over budget. What would you do then? Don’t panic. You can negotiate the scope of your project with your stakeholders. You can talk with your stakeholders, and find out activities/tasks that you can eliminate without majorly affecting project’s deliverables. I would recommend you to start this process by looking at the priority list first. If you recommend to eliminate lower priority items from the project, then your stakeholders are more likely to be in favor of your decision. You might want to defer some low priority tasks/activities, before you can get more funding. This will ensure that you can deliver similar level of functionality without compromising on quality.
I hope these tips will help you to adjust your project estimates properly. Let me know, if you have any other ideas through which you can better adjust your estimates in the project. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi
Tags: Challenges, Change Management, contract labor, Cost Estimation, estimations, Expectations Management, labor resources, Leadership, Manage Change, Management, microsoft project, Process improvments, Processes, Project Estimations, Project Management, unnecessary costs, work break down structure
Have you ever felt that your Manager doesn’t know your value in the team? Have you ever been in a situation, where you think that you are exceeding your goals, while your performance review says something else? If you ask me, these are very common situations in professional world. I only manage 10-12 people at this time, but it becomes harder to provide personal attention to everyone in the team. So, imagine if you were to manager more than 20 people. It becomes next to impossible to provide personal attention to everyone.
I guess, my colleague (let’s call her Mrs. X) encountered a similar situation. Mrs. X came to me the other day, and told me that her new manager rated her performance really badly. I saw her past performance reviews, and they were all saying that she was above average employee in all of them. So, what happened so suddenly? Well, in her case…..she got a new Manager just few months back. And he might not have knew her potential yet.
If you were Mrs. X, what would you have done? Before I hear your answers, I would like to share my advice that I have given to her.
Meet with your Manager: If I were Mrs. X, I would have met with my Manager immediately and I would have discussed my performance review with him directly. If possible, ask your Manager if your Ex-Manager can be in this meeting too. If he allows your Ex-Manager to be in the meeting, then you can strengthen your case by getting his feedback to make your case even stronger. Make sure to give some background to your Ex-Manager before he comes to this meeting, so that he can come prepared.
Prepare your case before the meeting: Please don’t show up in that meeting without any preparation. This will look really bad on your side. So, please do a favor to yourself and prepare your case.
- Make a list of all the accomplishments that you have done this year.
- Highlight some of the biggest achievements that you have accomplished during the year.
- Make sure to take your older performance reviews from HR and bring it to the meeting.
- Jot down few points explaining why you think that you are above average employee.
Suggest some possible solutions: You can’t be right all the time. Let’s say, there is a huge conflict between your perception and his perception of your work. In this situation, rather than getting mad at your Boss, you should try to suggest some solutions. This will demonstrate to your Manager that he can trust you on taking initiative and understanding his point of view. You can start your conversation by saying “What I can do is…….we can work together to create some SMART goals for me, and let’s monitor my performance through that. In that way, we will both have shared accountability, and I will have some measurable outcome against which I can measure my performance. Also, we can arrange one-on-one periodically to go over my performance, so that we can track my progress in a better way.”
I hope these tips will help you to prove yourself in front of your new Manager. Let me know, if you have any other ideas through which you can demonstrate your value to your new Manager. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi
Tags: 21st century, Challenges, Change Management, Empowerment, Leaders of Tomorrow, Leadership, Manage Change, Management, Manager, Performance Management, Performance Review, personal brand, Personal Development, Self awareness
If you have ever used craigslist for buying or selling your items, then you know what I mean. Now, let’s assume…. if you want to sell your 1 year old car on craigslist.org. What would you do in that situation? You might go to a local dealer or kbb.com, and try to find out reasonable price for which you can sell your car. You might want to sell your car for a premium price, if you have detailed records of all the older services and maintenance.
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Put snapshot of some artifacts: Most of the times, people put pictures to sell their items on craigslist, in order for a buyer to believe in their product. In similar way, as a small business owner, you need to put some kind of a snapshot of the company in your business plan, when you try to sell your business. Make sure to include graphical representation of company’s financial health, company’s culture, major achievements, etc. One can also use pictures of big dealings and snapshots of company’s events as a showcase for their achievements.
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Be ready to bargain: 9/10 times, people expect to bargain on any given offer on craigslist. If you have ever sold anything on craigslist then you know that people will call you up and they want to meet you before buying the item. And when they meet, they basically bargain for the product. It even comes to the point where they barter. So, if you were not ready with your bargain offer and your priorities, you might lose the trade. Thus, as a small business owner, when you want to sell your business….please be ready to bargain. If possible, be ready with few scenarios of offers and counter offers.
Craigslist ad expires after certain time: In the similar manner, you should have a date on your offer. Everyone knows that you want to sell your company, and that’s why you are out in the market. But if your offer doesn’t have an expiry date then it might create issues if your business appreciates over time.
I hope these tips will help you to sell your business for a competitive price. Let me know, if you have any other ideas to sell your business effectively. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi
Tags: 21st century, Craigslist, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Presentation, Sales, Sell your company
In my last blog, I have given you some general ideas on how to introduce yourself to your team during your first meeting, and how to use pictorial presentation in knowing your people better. In this blog, I will talk about few basic tools that you should acquire during your first few week as a Manager to make your task easier.
Get business cards: This is one of the important thing to do before you meet with anyone. In your first few weeks as a Manager, you will meet various people with whom you might be working in the future. Thus, it is very crucial for you to provide them with your contact information. If your business cards are not ready by the time you meet them, then take their e-mail ids instead. In this way, you can provide them with your contact information using an outlook contact card for temporary purposes. And provide them with actual business cards, once they become available.
Get equipped: First thing that you should do on your first day is to introduce yourself to the administrative assistant. Make sure to ask him/her about what equipments you might need for your job. For example: it might be crucial for your job to be accessible 24×7. In that case, you need to make sure that you order your Smart Phone or Blackberry. In the meanwhile, make sure to provide your personal cell phone number to your manager, so that he can reach you in case of emergency.
Get your notebook: During your first few weeks, you will get more information than you consume. You will get contact information of the people that you will be working with, you will get list of projects that your team is supposed to work on, and their current status. Thus, it would be a nice idea to make a note of all these things. I personally prefer a note taking software like OneNote, but if you don’t have access to a laptop then a normal notebook should work too.
I hope these tips will prove to be helpful in your first couple of weeks as a Manager. If you are aware of any other tools that might prove helpful for a newly hired manager, then please feel free to comment here. I am always looking for people’s feedback to improve my knowledge. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi
Tags: 21st century, Business Cards, Change Management, First time manager, Leaders of Tomorrow, Leadership, Manage Change, Management, Manager, Manager Training, Manager's Guide, Manager's Note
In my last blog, I have given you some general idea about how meeting with your employees and your Manager on one-on-one basis will help you to understand the priorities of that team, and building a trust relationship between you and them. In this blog, I will talk about few presentations that might help you during your first few days as a Manager.
Presentation about yourself: I would recommend every manager to prepare a small presentation about themselves before they meet their team for the first time. The presentation should contain few basic information such as – basics about yourself, your management style, and your background. Keep this presentation pictorial only, i.e. presentation with only pictures, so that you can speak to your presentation instead of involving people in reading your presentation. This presentation will serve dual purpose, it will give you the opportunity to connect with your people personally and set up your priorities straight.
Presentation about your people: After you have presented your presentation during your first meeting with your team, you should arrange a team meeting with your employees, where they are supposed to do the same. Tell your employees to create a presentation about themselves with few pictures, where they can express their background, education, interests, family, etc. These presentations will give you the opportunity to know something about your employees that you might not have known otherwise. Also, this presentations might help you to find their interests and motivation criterias.
I hope these tips will prove to be helpful in your first couple of weeks as a Manager. If you know any other ways to build know your employees and introduce yourself to your new team, then please feel free to comment here. I am always looking for people’s feedback to improve my knowledge. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi
Tags: 21st century, First time manager, Leaders of Tomorrow, Leadership, Manage Change, Management, Manager, Manager Training, Manager's Guide, Presentation
Recently, one of my friend got promoted to a management position for the first time. And when I talked to him over the weekend, he asked my advice on providing him a game plan. Thus, I came up with the idea of this blog series, where I will provide few practical tips for first time managers. In this particular blog post, I will provide you with few tips through which you can clarify success criteria for your new manager’s position.
One-on-one with your Manager: I have seen various managers coming to their new position and hit the ground running. They meet their internal/external stakeholders and team members, but they forget to meet with their Manager in the process. One should always remember that your Manager is the one, who will judge your performance at the end of the fiscal year and he might have a better idea about the business than your other stake holders. Thus, I would recommend you to meet with your Manager one-on-one every week, until you get up to speed with what are his priorities and why did he hire you for this position. This meeting will also give you the opportunity to show your work to him during the first 90 days, so that you can get his trust.
One-on-one with your Employees: Another common mistake made by the first time manager is – they concentrate too much on team development but not on personal development aspect of the team. I have seen many managers holding a team building exercise in the first two week’s of their employment, but they forget to connect with each employees on one-on-one basis. No matter how big is your team, it would be best if you can get some time to meet with your team on one-on-one basis (at least for first few weeks). This will not only provide you the information about existing processes, priorities and projects; but also help you in knowing your people and building a trust relationship between you and them. Thus, make sure to meet with each individual in your team on one-on-one basis for at least first one month.
I hope these tips will prove to be helpful in your first couple of weeks as a Manager. If you know any other ways to build a trust relationship with your employees and your Manager within first few weeks, then please feel free to comment here. I am always looking for people’s feedback to improve my knowledge. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi
Tags: 21st century, Change Management, First time manager, Leaders of Tomorrow, Leadership, Management, Manager, Manager's Guide, one-on-one meeting, Tips
I used to be a perfectionist. I always used to think that….. if I do certain things by myself, then it would be much better than others. As I matured in my career and took on more responsibilities, it was becoming difficult. There was one time, when I found myself working over 12 hours a day, and still not be able to finish all the work I had. At that time, I was managing a team of 4-6 people, and still I was unable to delegate my work effectively. It was a complete mess and I thought to myself…….I need some help. Thus, I took few leadership classes and attended few seminars, and implemented few strategies to make my life easier. It had been few years now, and I am again on top of my game. Hence, I would like to share my experience with you through these series of blog posts. I hope it helps you to become better at delegation.
Start trusting your employees…….. I know it sounds silly when I say that. But this is the key part in delegating tasks/work. If you are a ‘Type A’ personality like me, then you would rather do everything by yourself. And by doing so, you are not only overworking yourself but you are not allowing your employee’s to grow. You can implement following strategies to establish that trust relationship between you and your employees, before you can actually start delegating major tasks to them.
- One-on-one lunch: Take them out for lunch and talk about their personal lives, their interests and personal establishments. If you take interest in their lives, they would definitely return the favor by helping you out in your work problems.
- Meet for Golf: Try to find few hobbies which are common between you and your employees. It will help you to socialize with your employees more often, and it will put your employees in a state where they will feel comfortable in coming to you if there is any problem.
- Provide training: If you don’t trust your employee’s technical abilities to do something, then provide them the needed training. But your task doesn’t end there. In order for you to be comfortable with their technical capabilities, you should develop a system where you can review their work/training on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. This mechanism will give you confidence on your employee’s technical capabilities, so that you can start delegating few challenging tasks to them.
- Morning rounds: I don’t want you to micro manage your employees, but I want you to go to them every morning and ask…how they are doing. This will serve two purposes. It will convey a message to them that you are there, if they need you. And second……it will give you more face time with them, which will help you strengthen your working relationship.
I hope these tips will prove to be helpful in trusting your employees and becoming better at delegating tasks. If you know any other ways to become better at delegation, then please feel free to comment here. I am always looking for people’s feedback to improve my knowledge. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi
Tags: 21st century, Building Trust, Delegating, Delegation, Leadership, Manage Change, Management, Manager, Project Management, Self awareness
As a human being, we are not rational creatures. We assume that beautiful people are smarter and kinder than other people, just based on their looks. Thus, if we can understand these irrational biases then we can sometimes take advantage of these influences in order to improve our leadership style. With my experience, I have created few golden rules, which will help you to take advantage of these biases to become a better leader.
Make friends at work: I have seen many people, who believe that making friends at work is not a good idea. But I think, they are missing out on a big picture. Do you really want to work 40 hours/week at a place where you can’t even have a normal conversation with your coworkers? Making friends at work will make your work life enjoyable. Also, research shows that we are more likely to say yes to people we know and like. Thus, if you can get your coworkers to like you then they are more likely to follow your lead and direction.
Convince others with social examples: Generally, people want to feel that their thoughts and actions are compatible with others and are compliant to social norms. Thus, they normally look for social proof about any concept or a project. As a leader, you can take advantage of this bias by pointing out examples of successful projects that are similar to the project/proposal that you are proposing. Once you get few people leaning towards your direction, it’s difficult for other people to oppose that direction because of the power of social proof.
Ask for help instead of money: Normally, people are conditioned to reciprocate gifts, favors, and considerations. If they don’t reciprocate, they risk being disliked by others, so reciprocation is related to social proof. It also works other way around. If you ask someone for a favor, and if they grant it, they will feel kindlier toward you and will be more likely to say yes to you in the future. Thus, always present your ideas as – ‘idea under construction’ in front of your superiors or stakeholders, and then ask them for help to make it a solid idea. I bet you that people will see the same idea differently, if you went to them asking ‘help’ instead of ‘funding’.
I hope these tips will prove to be helpful in making the best use of human psychology to become a better leader. If you know any other ways to take advantage of human psychology to become a vibrant leader then please feel free to share it with me. I am always looking for people’s feedback to improve my knowledge. Thanks. – Bhavin Gandhi
Tags: 21st century, Human Psychology, Leaders of Tomorrow, Leadership, Management
From past few days, I am closely following Anna Hazare’s movement against corruption. And if you are connected to as many Indian friends as I am, then you don’t have any other option. Almost ‘7 out of 10’ Indian friends of mine will update their Facebook status on daily basis in support of this movement. They will write various status messages either in support of Anna or against Congress.
While I don’t have any problem with them supporting Anna, I want them to do it for the right reasons. In order to find out what Anna stands for, I did a little experiment. I emailed few of my friends on Facebook, who stands for Anna, to find out what exactly does ‘Lokpal Bill’ mean? What exactly does Anna stand for? And results were shocking. Almost 60% of my friends didn’t have any answers to my questions. But almost all of them had a perception that he stands against corruption, and if he becomes successful in his journey then we will have a new India, the Nation without corruption.
But then I got thinking……. aren’t we all responsible for the existing corruption in India? I agree that corruption must stop, but aren’t we all part of it? Being in India, we all must have encountered a situation where we must have supported corruption in one way or another. But once the corruption reaches out of our limits, we start blaming the system. Is that fair? For example: most of you won’t hesitate to bribe a policeman with Rs. 200-300 for any traffic violation because you want to save yourself out of the fine. But, when it comes to giving Rs. 15 lakh to a medical college for a medical seat, then you start blaming the corrupt system, because it is out of your reach.
We are all humans, and we have a tendency to become a part of something. And I don’t have any problem with that mentality. But if you are becoming a part of something, then please make sure to get your facts straight. Following someone without reasoning is one kind of slavery. So, don’t be a slave. Ask questions. Find out more information about what Anna Hazare stands for. And if you agree with his methodology of solving corruption in India, then go ahead and support him. But please stop following someone blindly.
Please understand that my intention is not to hurt someone’s feelings. But I want to make sure that if you are fighting for a revolution then make sure that you have the right reasons for it. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi
Tags: 21st century, Anna Hazare, Anti-corruption, Congress, Corruption, India, Indian Government, Leadership, Lokpal Bill, Politicians, Public information, Revolution, Self awareness
Ask your Manager for help: If you are a new manager, and if you haven’t hired anyone before, then you might want to start the hiring process by asking your Manager instead of going with the HR training guidelines. I am not saying that HR Training for new manager is not useful, but sometimes those kind of trainings are very general. Those training might provide you required information, but they wouldn’t tell you specifics about processes followed in your department. If you ask your manager for help then he will be able to guide you in the right direction. And by asking your manager’s help, you are making sure that he is involved in your first hiring decision.
Involve your team: I have seen many managers, who hires independently of their team member’s decision. I would definitely advice against that practice. As a manager, you should always involve your team members in your hiring decision. This will serve many purposes. For example: This will not only tell your employees that you care about their opinion but also it will internally motivate them. This hiring practice will make sure that your employees don’t have any issues later on, when the new hire comes onboard. And you will have few more people to support your hiring decision.
Create a skill-set table: If you are hiring someone for the first time, then I would recommend you to create a skill-set table. This table doesn’t need to be a fancy and descriptive table, it can be a simple Excel Sheet of all the required skills for this position. For example: C, C++, SQL, Self-starter, Critical thinker, etc. Once you have this table ready, make sure to carry this table in all of the interviews that you take. Make sure to distribute this list to all the interviewers, so that they can grade that candidate on these skills. This table will not only work for you as a record of candidate’s capabilities, but it will also give you the opportunity to compare every candidate equally.
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