Have you wondered why some people are able to perform significantly above their deemed potential and experience? Or why some people adapt to a new role much better and deliver results much faster than others? Contrary to conventional wisdom, the answer may not lie in capabilities or ambition but in something that is often overlooked – an individual’s genuine interest.
While “Interest” as a subject may not garner as much mainstream awareness, it has been a matter of research since the early twentieth century. Over that period, there has been pioneering work done, especially in the field of education which has resulted in providing critical inputs to students as career counselling gains greater prominence. In fact, the ACT Interest Inventory is taken every year in the US by over 1.3 million high-school graduating students.
Studies carried out by researchers like Rong Su showcase that interest is a great predictor of performance in both work and academic settings and has incremental validity beyond cognitive ability (IQ) and personality (EQ). The link thus established was that Interest influences human behavior and outcomes through motivation as Interest provides direction, vision, and persistence.
Hence, it wouldn’t be a stretch to campaign for the significance of discovering, measuring and nurturing NQ or iNterest Quotient.
While it may seem that an individual’s interest in a subject is inherently natural, it is heartening to note that it can be cultivated and nurtured. Essentially, the journey of cultivating interest starts with a temporary interest in a subject due to a situation or need. When it is sustained over a period of time beyond the immediate need that triggered the interest, it becomes serious. This step is usually followed by a genuine curiosity of an individual to research and explore further. When this exploration takes place over a relatively long period of time, the individual gradually becomes an enthusiast or an expert. This journey can broadly be bucketed into the phases of – Situational Interest, Maintained Situational Interest, Emerging Individual Interest, Well -developed Interest.
General Interests that people have can be distilled into Basic Interests like Teaching, Selling, Building, Writing etc. and would typically be associated with a particular object (e.g. Math, Physical Sciences, Medicine etc). And finally, this translates into an Occupational Interest like being a psychologist, a doctor or engineer.
Applying iNterest Quotient (NQ) in a Professional Setting
I believe there is tremendous opportunity to extend the research on Interest into the corporate world and devise new methodologies and tools. Quite often, an individual can have dual or even multiple interests that may result in more than one Occupational Interest which could manifest itself as a hobby or an additional job.
In 1980, Richard Hackman and Greg Oldham developed the Job Characteristics Model, a theory relevant to the nature of work that many employers accept and implement today. These researchers found five elements that are important to the nature of work because they can affect a professional’s satisfaction and performance.
These characteristics are:
- Skill variety: Skills variety is the number of skills professionals may use to perform their duties. Jobs can have repetitive duties that require many of the same skills or dynamic tasks that allow professionals to practise and expand on many skills.
- Task identity: The identity of the task is the level to which it requires professionals to work through a complete process to finish it, from a defined beginning to a defined end. Some tasks have a defined identity, while others are less structured.
- Task significance: The significance of a task is its importance to the professional, organisation or society. This can contribute to a professional’s perception of whether the work is meaningful.
- Autonomy: Autonomy is the ability of a professional to work independently. Some types of work involve a high level of supervision, while professionals in other roles may work with minimal oversight.
- Feedback: Feedback is the information a professional receives from colleagues and management teams about their performance. The quality of feedback a person receives may correlate with the quality of their work.
The tasks performed by an individual assume significance based on three important variables – Context, Nature of Change and Alignment of Interest with Choice. However, an individual doesn’t always have the liberty to choose the context, especially at all context-levels, unlike Warren Buffet who wrote in his 2012 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, “No CEO has it better; I truly do feel like tap dancing to work every day.”
How can organizations leverage the concept of Interest?
The first step to bring about a change is to know the gap we are trying to address. An understanding of how an individual’s interest level aligns with the organizational context is important and to redo this assessment whenever any of the context changes.
The second step is to review the organization response options. At this point, it is important to remember the four phases of Interest that were mentioned before: (1) Situational Interest (2) Maintained Situational Interest (3) Emerging Individual Interest (4) Well-developed Individual Interest.
Let us understand this better with the help of a few examples –
CONTEXT |
ALIGNMENT |
ORGANIZATION RESPONSE |
| Company, Corporation, NGO, Govt. etc | NO |
Depending on the tenure of the individual with the organization, a re-immersion about the entity’s history, MVV (Mission Value Mission) etc., might re-ignite the Interest that drew the individual to it. It could still happen that the Individual’s General and Basic interest are not aligned. For example, an individual might want to be a Brain Surgeon but not necessarily in the Military though they would be happy playing the role in a public hospital. Stakeholder Responsible: Top Leadership |
| Business Unit, Division, or Product Unit | NO |
When the individual didn’t get a choice to pick the subunit they want to be associated with, it can result in misalignment with their Interest. For example, a cloth designer might be interested in the athletic wear department but is assigned to formal wear. If a subunit movement is feasible, it would help address the issue. Otherwise, the subunit’s leadership / HR team can look at ways to ignite interest for their department. Stakeholder Responsible: BU/Division/Unit Leadership |
| Job Role | NO |
This is the most difficult one to handle as this relates to an individual’s Occupational Interest. And if the individual has a well-developed interest in their chosen Occupational Interest – E.g. Designing Computer Games, they will resent being given the role of being in Quality Assurance or Testing. Stakeholder Responsible: Department Head/Function Head |
| Tasks | NO |
This is probably the most ignored and yet the most easily addressable misalignment, and something that can be done at the supervisor or team-unit level. Before a task is assigned to an individual, a plan to expose them to the new subject or content should be developed, almost like a playbook. This can include a common workshop or session, posting of regular updates, design of workplace (color, posters, symbols etc.) Stakeholder Responsible: Supervisor, Project Manager |
Ultimately, the key idea here is that individuals can indeed be exposed to new content or subjects and progressed through the 4 phases of interest we talked about. This journey must be enabled till the Interest is developed substantially so the individual identifies with it and is able to self-regulate. The role of external stakeholders during this journey is paramount and regular intervention is required to sustain the interest during the initial three phases.
When evaluating any new approach, we are constantly occupied in thinking about the Return on Investment but in all likelihood, optimizing NQ to help people maximize their potential at work is quite simply the best Return on Interest.
is Senior Vice President and Global Sales Head for Product Engineering Services. In addition, he heads US Sales for Digital Business Services and is part of the core leadership team of both the business units.
Rohit has over 23 years of experience running his own startups as well as working with enterprises, product companies and digital engineering services firms. At Happiest Minds, Rohit has been instrumental in orchestrating key strategic initiatives like kick-starting Microsoft relationship with first sales in the US of their public-preview version of Azure IoT, launching of IoT consulting services, securing key wins in the Industrial, Hi-Tech, CPG, EduTech, and Media segment with Fortune 500 companies, and helping drive GTM for investments in new technologies like Metaverse, Low-Code No-Code, Cyber Security, Computer Vision, RPA, Data & AI etc.
Prior to Happiest Minds, Rohit was with L&T Technology Services and Mindtree where he was responsible for sales and account management of key accounts in the Hi-Tech industry vertical and cross-selling of services from across the organization. In his entrepreneurial stint, Rohit was the Co-Founder & CEO of seed-funded companies YAssume which focused on enterprise social sales software and MakeMyDabba.com which was an online marketplace for home-cooked food. In the early days of his professional career, he worked with Citibank, Sasken, and C-DoT with summer internships at Wipro, Microland, and HCL.
In the spirit of community service, Rohit served as Executive Director of TiE Seattle (a global non-profit focused on serving entrepreneurs) reviving the Seattle chapter on the verge of closure into a healthy and vibrant one with a reenergized team of volunteers that conceptualized new event formats, focused on select industry verticals, and forged partnerships with other local groups.
Rohit holds an MBA from IIM Bangalore and is a Gold Medalist in Electronics & Electrical Communication Engineering from Punjab Engineering College (PEC). He is also the 2022 Chairman’s Award winner at Happiest Minds.
