Got Kucha? I Pecha do!
Yes, I do believe you’ve got Kucha. In fact, not only do I know you’ve got it, I know that you’ll bring it if you want to join the Temasek Root Access team.
But what exactly is Kucha? If you Googled it, you’re fast, but no — it’s not an ancient Buddhist kingdom.
It’s an abbreviation of a creative and viral phenomenon called PechaKucha — an event where people gather to see presenters go through 20 images, spending no more than 20 seconds per image about a topic.
TL:DR — Temasek Root Access uses PechaKuchas in our interview process thanks to our idiosyncrasy credits.
So what does this have to do with anything? Well, we have to go all the way back to 1482. Stay with me here, I promise that I won’t waste the next 5 minutes of your life.
The résumé — a 500 year old relic
Ever wonder who had the first documented résumé in mankind?
Leonardo da Vinci, in 1482.
Sure, we can grapple over how truly accurate the apocryphal story goes, but it doesn’t really matter. The résumé is old — like really, really old.
It’s quite amazing if you stop to think about it. In today’s world, for all the advances in technology beyond paper especially in the last few decades, we still find ourselves primarily using résumés and CVs as the initial point of contact between job seekers and hiring teams. Except now, it is generally in some digital format. *slow claps*
This reminds me of the tiller-mobiles. New technology comes around (motors), old thinking persists (steering for horse carriages), years later, we look like fools (try not to smirk at the image below).
Hey buddy, what’s with the steering wheel?
To be fair, there are variants that are being attempted… funky looking résumés are cropping up. Code repos and live coding sessions are being used. LinkedIn even has its own video thingamajig.
But has anything really changed at the end of the day?
The world’s most dangerous phrase
“We’ve always done it that way.”
Grace Hopper, a pioneering computer scientist was quoted in Computerworld in 1976 saying that the above is the most dangerous phrase.
I would take it one step further and propose that when such a mindset becomes subconscious, where you are not even aware that your are thinking in such a manner, the danger elevates to another level.
Seemingly, this is the way many organizations currently operate at an aggregate level. Sure, they are busy “innovating” and trying to “disrupt the disruptors” but when this mindset is subconscious and the entity is not even aware, we end up with… well, things like a 500 year old relic like the résumé still being used.
Enter the PechaKucha
The truth is, PechaKuchas have been around for a while. In fact, over 15 years! It is even used in some interviews, mostly where design professionals leverage the format to showcase their portfolios.
Well, how about using PechaKuchas to showcase who YOU are? We asked that question. Then, we did just that — at one of our monthly off-sites, we had each team member do a PechaKucha to describe her or himself.
The result was quite astonishing. Even though we had been sitting next to each other and had been working together for some time, we didn’t really know about each other until that off-site!
The format of squeezing the essence of ourselves into 20 slides, and having 20 seconds to describe each slide was a perfect recipe to truly get to know each other in a short amount of time.
Here is the last slide from my PechaKucha that day:
Idiosyncrasy Credits
So we had an idea — why not ditch resumes and have candidates come in and bring a PechaKucha about themselves? They can talk about their skills, experiences, and most importantly, about themselves.
We had to make it official with Human Resources as a process change — and we had the idiosyncrasy credits to do so.
What are idiosyncrasy credits? They are the latitude to deviate from a group’s expectations. Idiosyncrasy credits accrue through respect, not rank: they’re based on contributions.
Temasek Root Access has been able to deliver contributions over the past year to boost Temasek’s digital transformation journey. The more contributions we provide, the more latitude we earn.
If you come meet us, you will notice that we think a little differently, speak a little differently, dress a little differently, and yes, even hire a little differently.
This may bomb out
Our experiment may fail. We may find that, over time, this format really doesn’t work with people who we never met before.
Or, it could be wildly successful, and we will spin-off a startup that will build a platform that simplifies the creation of personal PechaKuchas and sell it off to LinkedIn.
You know what? The end result doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we experimented on ourselves and dared to ask.
And we are ok if it bombs.
If that’s a reflection of who you are, then alike we think.
Originally published at medium.com on April 4, 2019.
