Shreya Sarkar-Barney, Ph.D.
Ten years in business is a long time. Only a third of small companies make it this far which makes me feel privileged and fortunate. While I am thankful, I continue to be restless because there is so much more that needs to be done to achieve our mission of spreading evidence-based practice in people management. Many have asked, why I feel so strongly about this cause. I certainly do, and every time our journey gets difficult I find myself becoming even more resolved to push harder.
In this blog, I take the opportunity to explain how I came to have this firm belief. Perhaps, you have had similar experiences and may become equally passionate about evidence-based practice.
In this blog, I take the opportunity to explain how I came to have this firm belief. Perhaps, you have had similar experiences and may become equally passionate about evidence-based practice.
Early experiences: I grew up in a small industrial town in southern India called Shahabad. My dad worked in a mid-management sales role for the only employer in town, ACC Babcook Limited (ABL), an engineering firm that manufactured machinery for cement plants. Although small, the city was unique in many ways. It was a planned community, pristinely clean with manicured gardens and streets canopied with laburnum trees. Most people believed it was a paradise and left only when it was time to retire. It was the only place I had lived since my birth. As a teenager, I nurtured dreams of going away to college but coming back in the summers to be with my family and friends. Sadly, things were not going so well for the company. Employees stopped receiving their salaries. I saw first-hand the impact of poor leadership, lack of accountability and the resulting impact on a small town. With no other options for making a living, people started committing suicide, theft, and crime increased. What was once a paradise was no longer so. While things were falling apart for the average employee, the leaders seemed to be doing fine, still taking foreign trips with their families, presumably on the company’s dime. It just did not seem fair. It was during this time that I learned about the field of Organizational Psychology. In a women’s magazine, I read how the Tata Group used practices such as testing to bring fairness in the hiring process. I learned that a US trained Organizational Psychologist was leading this work. At that moments it hit me that the world would be a better place if there were more fairness and people believed in doing the right thing. At that early age, I had discovered my professional interest.