CREATIVITY MODULE

By Reggie Aggarwal and Mark Esposito:
"Entrepreneurship is a way of life. It is a driving force that compels you to do more, move faster, and go farther than anyone else, even in the face of high risk and uncertain outcomes. Unmistakably, the rewards of entrepreneurship, especially in the technology arena can be great" But it is not an easy road to travel.

One of the major challenges that an entrepreneur has to face is the emergence of the knowledge-based economy. People must continue to innovate, change and upgrade. There is a need to nurture the entrepreneurial spirit and skill development for adopting innovative technologies.

The low-literacy level of population, especially in developing countries, poses an immense challenge to our competitiveness. Yet, it is a fact of life, which we will not overcome, in the short run. It is therefore imperative that we seek intelligent short and medium-term solutions to bridge the literacy gap.

Human Resource Requirements and Organizational Capabilities

Human beings provide the motive force to an enterprise. For this purpose, it is necessary to consider the available talent and skills consonants with the organization structure. An inventory must be made of the skills needed for effective implementation of new venture.

The steps in undertaking the exercise relating to determination of personal requirements and designing the initial organizational structure are described below:
A) Make an activity analysis. At this stage, the total range of activities and level of skills are identified.

B) Grouping the activities into set of tasks that individuals can handle effectively.

C) Categorization of various tasks to form the basis of structure of organization.

D) Determination of interrelationship between different positions and designing of organizational hierarchy.

Talented employees are the key assets of the company. The problem with an entrepreneur is that it cannot afford the luxury of a full time specialist in personnel area. The entrepreneur himself is generally a novice and tends to look after this aspect rather haphazardly. Either the owner personally takes care of the personnel function or delegates it to an employee who performs it along with his main job. The general tendency is to hire the first person who comes the way and accepts the lowest salary.

The pre-requisite for efficient selection for me is the systematic defining of requirements of each task.

The identification process has three phases:

• Conducting job analysis (information about all the tasks to be done)

• Developing job descriptions (written statement of major and minor duties of each job)

and
• Preparing job specifications (salient features of the person expected to fit in the job)

For recruitment, i'll use the following resources, to make sure that the employees i am having in my company are talented enough :

1. References : asking friends and acquaintances to provide a good person

2. Newspaper advertisement : specifying the requirements of the position to attract individual with appropriate qualification

3. Drop-in applicants : individuals who occasionally drop in to inquire if any job is available

4. Technical journals : to look up to candidates with specific technical qualifications and background (as i have a thinking of building a technical firm)

5. Universities, colleges and technical institutes

6. Employment agencies : public and private

To increase the creativity, if i still feel after that much of intensive selection process that there is something lackening in employees, then i'll do process of Training and Developement. Because, after this kind of selection i think that if the selection was good and employees started well in start but in later stages there happened something bad or their efficiency gone down then T&D is the best solution.

In training, the best method is

1. JOB ROTATION which is to help employees combat the problem of monotony and boredom because of varied work experience, or may be at later stage in his/her job, the employer involve in different interest and find his/her more creative in different kind of job.

2. GROUP TRAINING OR CONFERENCE MEETING can also be done as its major advantage is that participant has opportunity to express their viewpoint and share their experiences through a discussion of a common problem (if any)

3. OFF THE COMPANY PREMISES TRAINING, which includes University & Technical College or any correspondence course

or if not all then
4. HEIR APPARENT, which is to identify the person to be trained for management succession and to encourage him/her to learn every facet of company’s functioning and to rotate trough various positions of the company and is gradually given increasing responsibility.

But with this i'll continously keep on analyzing the internal enviornment of the organization and self monitoring as well, to take corrective actions and more importantly the actions on time. For analyzing i shall monitor

1. SELF BEHAVIOR (as a head/CEO):
As a head of the firm it is my own duty to first analyze my own behavior that is it supporting with the employees and as others tend to emulate the actions of the boss so every meeting between head and subordinate presents a teaching learning situation. And if as a head i support them morally then for sure theys tend to become positively inclined to learn. Therefore, as a head the my own behaviour should exhibit a tendency towards learning and training.

2. BEHAVIOR OF INFORMAL GROUP
Informal groups set the behavior norms for its individual members. It may either support or resist the introduction of any change.

3. INFLUENCE OF FORMAL ORGANIZATION
The organizational structure, policies, procedures, objectives etc. reflect and reinforce the behavior which the formal organization prizes. For instance, if the company keeps the top management within the family or has rigid control, would little opportunity for growth. Learning is stimulated when there is openness, lack of constraints and climate of exploring new ideas and the objectives of the organization support training and development.

4. ECONOMICAL & TECHNOLOGICAL INFLUENCE
A rapidly growing company in an expanding field offers more opportunities through training.

and the most important

5.PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL

Will use it for defecting and correcting errors. First to gather information about each employee’s performance, effectiveness and communicates the same to employee. Things to be include in it are
a Standards' establishment
b Performance record
c Reviewing of Performance in accordance with Standards
d Taking Corrective Action