Obituary – A Life Less Known !

My father Chandrakant Kolgaonkar, a soft-spoken, humble, jovial, retired gazetted State Govt Officer; often transferred for his honesty, and integrity, died peacefully in our home on 13th Dec 2019. A flame that burned brightly for 87 years has flickered of late and now died.

‘Chandu’ or ‘Nana’ as he was affectionately called in the family was born on Aug 10,1932 in Karachi. The Great Partition lead the family to migrate and settle down in Bombay. Charles Dickens famous lines, “ It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.. we had everything before us, we had nothing before us..” veritably described his migration experience. My father carried the scars of migration but never allowed the trauma of his personal loss, violence and tragedy to affect his progressive, democratic, secular thinking, nor did it ever affect our upbringing.

Dad completed his post- graduation in Arts from famous Ruia College Mumbai. He was fond of books and an avidly read in English, Marathi, Sanskrit & Hindi. He enjoyed reading plays of Shakespeare, Harold Pinter, Arthur Miller, & Vijay Tendulkar. The other authors he relished were Dickens, Tolstoy, Shaw, Twain, Jane Austen, Nehru, PG Wodehouse in English & Karandikar, Khandekar, Acharya Atre, P.L.Deshpande & C.V. Joshi in Marathi.

Dad was a teetotaler, had no vices & lived a good life despite his frail health. Dad was religious, believed in fasting and never missed his daily pooja. Dad was not a foody but would prefer different vegetables for lunch and dinner. He enjoyed fish, vegetables & curd rice. As his asthma became severe, he completely abstained from eating some of his favourite foods and dairy products but religiously treated us with ice-creams on Sundays. After trying all forms of medicines, he found success and solace in homeopathy to curb his asthma. He enjoyed reading books on Homeopathy and Astrology. Over the period, he developed remarkable mastery about these subjects that he would make his own medicine and even recommend  his friends the appropriate medicine for different ailments.

Dad never associated with any political party but would avidly discuss and debate with friends & neighbours on politics, civics, current affairs. He was fond of various leaders like Tilak, Nehru, Patel, Lincoln, Thatcher, Kamraj, JP Narayan, Shastri, Vajpayee, Madhu Dandavate, Mrinal Gore & even current PM- Narendra Modi.

When we were in school, he would tell us wonderful bed time stories. Often we would urge him for more stories and despite being tired from work, he would never let us down. It is quite intriguing that he never repeated the same stories and always surprised us with new stories from his incredible memory. Dad enjoyed songs by Geeta Dutt, Lata Mangeshkar, Sudhir Phadke & Hemant Kumar. There used to be utter silence in the house whenever he switched on the popular radio programmes viz; Cricket with Vijay Merchant, Bournvita Quiz Contest, and Cibaca (Binaca) Geet Mala. He wasn’t a movie buff but liked Dilip Kumar, Meenakumari, Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn & Lucille Ball. He was fond of Marathi theater and immensely enjoyed British comedy serials. For him the serials were educative, informative, entertaining as it included intellectual jokes often aimed at the absurdity of everyday life. His favourite serials were ‘Yes Minister’, ‘Yes Prime Minister’ and the American serial, “Here’s Lucy”!

Dad wasn’t athletic but enjoyed Cricket, Tennis and Hockey. He enjoyed the epic battles between Borg & McEnroe, Chris Evert & Navratilova and later with Steffi Graf. He would rarely miss a cricket match, and often carried me in his arms to Wankhede stadium. His childhood hero was the impeccable Aussie batsman Neil Harvey. While Tendulkar and G.R. Vishwanath were his all-time favourite, he equally enjoyed watching Gavaskar, Chandra, Hanif Mohammed, Durrani, Kapil, Botham, Viv Richards, Miandad, and Dravid albeit not necessarily in that order. I distinctly remember how he had become teary eyed when Tendulkar made his debut in Karachi in 1989, especially when the broadcaster showed the glimpses of his childhood city.

C.R. Kolgaonkar was a loving father, husband , brother, uncle & grandfather. He has been good to us all: always by our side, a constant source of wisdom and encouragement. He was very friendly and kind to all his relatives, in-laws, nephews & nieces. He has always been very calm, caring , loving husband to my mom. In an era when women seldom stepped out of their homes for work, dad encouraged mom to continue employment as a school teacher. He willingly helped her with any household chores, even babysitting us, learnt cooking and often surprised us with some wonderful non veg recipes. Like any other marriage, their married life was equally filled with joy, romance, emotions, disagreements and quarrels. “What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.” – Leo Tolstoy . Both of them liked Tolstoy and guess this made it easier for them to celebrate their 53^rd wedding anniversary this year.

Dad was a straightforward man who demanded little from those around him, and like every parent, expected only the best for his children. Provided he heard regularly from us all – and saw us whenever possible – he was content. Dad had never been strict, nor very authoritarian and seldom would get angry. He encouraged us to follow our own dreams, be adventurous, and discouraged us from blaming destiny or fate. His only expectations from us was to earn a honest livelihood and become a humble ethical citizen. To me, Dad’s finest quality was his patience and ability to remain calm: an inherent ability to listen, to absorb and to offer a point of view based on quiet, measured wisdom.

In the last few months Dad developed chronic cardiac failure as a result of old age coupled with multiple illness ; Asthma, BP & Vertigo. Every time we would take him to hospital, he would come back fit, to joyfully live another day - browsing newspapers, solving puzzles, or watching Kohli score a brilliant century and later vividly describing me those lovely cover drives !

In the first week of December, he had triumphantly come back from the hospital but his exuberance was gradually waning. We knew deep down he had to pass, there's no way he could have survived for long. We stayed home by his bedside caring, with my mom and sister around him for every moment with or without sleep. They held his hand and walked with him to the end, making sure he was comfortable and knew how deeply we loved and cared for him. I know this will make him proud and that there is nothing we as a family could have done more. My mom and sister were so brave.

I was in Chennai and sadly couldn't be around at his final moment however I am glad that my Mom and sister were around him. My sister tried to administer CPR however he simply smiled at her and passed away peacefully.

My Dad is my parent but also one of my best friends. It is very painful and hurts even more to be not around him at his last moment. He often said that Partition is the greatest tragedy much more than any job loss and guess another one would be to not see his only son around on his last day! 

My father often quoted , “While there is life there is happiness”, we all make mistakes and struggle with certain life questions, but the trick is to accept that there isn’t always an answer and to move on. While there is suddenly a huge vacuum in our lives, deep down I know that my father would expect us to move on.

Dad, your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain forever. Rest in Peace Dad ! 

Making Talent Management an Integral Core Business Strategy !

Talent Management is no longer a buzz word nor a fad and yet during my recent conversation with few business leaders, I learnt that their chief concerns continues to remain the same- finding and retaining skilled talent and developing capabilities to deliver on strategies.

As business environment continues to get more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, competition for talent will get more intensified and fierce. Across every industry, executives worry about finding the talent and critical skills to deliver on their organizational strategies. Organizations around the world are experiencing disruptive change in the demand for critical skills. No wonder then the ability to hire, develop, engage and retain the right people and at the same time nurture a vibrant, transparent, high performance culture has become crucial for leaders and managers across any organisations.

Today, business leaders are not just monitoring business profitability but constantly reviewing the three key aspects required for any successful business - 1) Continuously redefining strategy, 2) Creating a vibrant, transparent, agile, innovative and high performance culture to execute strategy, and 3) having the right people to execute strategies. This means HR has to play a critical role especially when they are being responsible for one-third of the business success.

Today with shrinking margins there is enormous pressures on business leaders to manage cost, be innovative and address changing customer demands. This means business Leaders and HR will have to find solutions to attract, develop, engage and retain right people without significantly increasing cost, ensuring lesser attrition, with highest engagement levels and delivering the best possible performance. To address these challenges many organisations have designed and implemented talent management strategies and programmes.

While some of the leaders did mention that they have implemented talent management practices but few of them expressed their concerns about its success and the way talent management strategy is executed. While some of the organizations extensively use various tools and methods to identify and develop talent there are others who only identify talent and do very less about their engagement and development.

There are companies who instead of developing talent internally prefer to poach talent aggressively from competition with more attractive pay and benefit packages which if not done properly could lead to internal disparity. This is rather a reactionary, short-term and piecemeal approach which often leaves organisations at the mercy of external forces.

Sourcing external talent is necessary for critical and niche roles, geographical expansion and for some leadership roles. Often the pace of change coupled with demand and supply gaps for critical skills compels organizations to source talent from outside than develop internally. It is important that Talent Management strategy is able to articulate a clear long term talent acquisition strategy based on changing business strategy and workforce planning.

Talent Management should endeavour to be expansive, promote diversity and inclusion. It is necessary to consider sourcing talent not just from regular campuses but even from different Tier Institutes and different educational backgrounds. At the same time, organisations must be open to hire laterally from different industries to gain competitive advantage. While roles in support function are generally industry agnostics, often companies are skeptical in hiring candidates from different industries. Candidates having good learning agility and attitude with proper training can pick up skills and adapt to different industries.

But Talent Management shouldn’t just be restricted to sourcing. Talent Management should have greater focus on development, engagement and retention. To do that, Talent Management has to become an integral part and even core to business strategy. Leadership team has to ensure that Talent management does not end up becoming another HR programme but an essential and strategic component of their business strategy and is reviewed every quarter. In more progressive organisations, talent and especially succession management are even reviewed by board. Its time Talent Management gets aligned with enterprise risk management strategy.

There are various framework available including the most popular, the nine box model which essentially identifies talent based on the two parameters - performance and potential. As performance management systems are undergoing transformation, there is a new school of thought emerging that suggests discarding the nine box model. Regardless of this thought, the nine box model does help organisations to lay the preliminary foundation for talent management.

When it comes to identifying talent several organisations are widely using various tools and even getting external agencies to conduct psychometric tests, assessment and development centers, and introducing talent analytics that provides data pertaining to employee competencies, performance, potential and other relevant information to identify talent. Few of the leaders have even started having formal and informal talent conversation to gauge employee Passion, Attitude, Mindset & Behaviours which are equally paramount when it comes to identifying talent.

With increasing attrition and given the competitive challenges of finding talent, business leaders are soon realizing that Talent development can become a good retention strategy. Succession management process has to go beyond key leadership and managerial positions and should be expanded to include other critical & niche roles as well. It is therefore necessary to identify critical, niche and core roles and then focus on succession planning.

Successful Talent development can only take place if organisation understands the current and future organisational capabilities required to deliver its strategy and understand how to develop and fill those gaps. Development of talent has to be considered as a strategic investment. Mere nomination for internal or external Managerial or Executive Development programmes, conferences, other classroom and online trainings wouldn’t suffice. The advent of social media, digital and mobile learning can help organisations to create more integrated development strategies that include regular formal and informal training, expertise sharing, mentoring, coaching, on the job training and gamification for employees to learn as per their convenience.

People identified in talent pool must be given stretched assignments, exciting action learning projects, job rotation, cross functional training, lateral career movement, promotion and opportunity to shadow managerial and leadership roles which will help in their development and retention. What is more critical is to allow high potential employees a chance to perform and even fail. In addition leaders have to play a crucial role in rewarding and recognizing key talent. Their every interaction must inspire, lead and nurture talent and give people compelling reasons to develop and stay.

Apparently there are different approaches to talent management. There is no single ‘blueprint’ for effective talent management that can be applied to all organisational contexts. It will vary depending upon each organisation’s mission, competencies, their requirements for current and future talent pipeline based on changing business strategies and environment.

While we may debate about it, organisations should have a clearly defined framework to identify, engage, develop and retain talent. The ability to get and keep the right talent is all about focus, execution and follow-through. Successful talent management requires a sustained, four-pronged effort to recruit, engage, develop and retain the best talent available. To succeed, a company needs strong, supportive leaders and a caring, innovative culture. It also needs HR and business to think talent management as business strategy and holistically develop programs that work together and support a cohesive talent strategy aligned with organisations strategic goals.