Business Organisations love predictability and control. The COVID-19 pandemic has left them without both. After gaining a modicum of breathing space, they are mulling over their options. What do we do next? After a disruptive & disorienting shock, a natural comfort move is for organisations to fall back into familiar routine and feel in control. If resilience is defined as the ability to bounce back to the normal state, the going back to routine does seem like going back to normal. However, being insistent on routines may be a less than optimal response. When we have no faith in the future we incline to arrange our lives so that we can predict the future. We either make of our existence a rigid routine or pile up all manner of defences to make it secure. The craving for security stems from a need for predicatibility, and its intensity is in inverse proportion to our faith in the future. -Eric Hoffer The strategies and plans these organisations had made before COVID-19 and the systems and processes that have been instituted for execution,…
Can Leaders be made to feel the pinch?
When business leaders prepare the world for tough decisions, their language says a lot. The choice of words, the metaphors they use, the imagery they put forth – everything seems carefully deliberated upon. So, you get a sense of the general consequence. It is left to each individual to infer what specifically the words of the leader could mean for her or him. Todays ET carries toughspeak by Cognizant CEO, Brian Humpries. Before I proceed, let me emphasise I am using the Cognizant CEO’s remarks as a reference point for my argument with neither indictment nor appreciation for Cognizant flowing out of my reflection. I fully respect that businesses have to remain viable to ensure livelihoods. Referring to the possibility of job cuts at Cognizant in the near future, Brian Humpries said, “I do not believe in death by a thousand cuts, I would rather pull the Band-Aid off and get it behind us and set the context as to why this is critical and fast-forward to the future.” Humpries painted a rich metapor on the organizational inflection point. His…
Indian Cricket – Asking the Wrong Question. Not Dhon(i)
As we head into the Cricket World Cup next year, the public discussion centres around one question – Should Mahendra Singh Dhoni be in the team? And that does not bode well for Indian cricket. The critical question is – What will it take for the Indian Cricket Team to win the World Cup? The critical question comes first and dictates all efforts. Every other question and answer has to be subordinated to the critical question. This requires disciplined effort. It is much easier to focus on individuals, their performances and their claim for a place on the team. Far tougher is the effort to begin with the task and its requirements; that then lead to the identification of skills and capabilities, which in turn, throws up the team configuration and the performance-based names of individual players. We, on the other hand, are busy talking up or playing down the merits of Dhoni. It is good to ask a pointed question – Will Dhoni’s absence from the World Cup team cost India the 2019 World Cup? Shane Warne was the…
Agility – Why is it elusive in organisations
Agility is the ability to move quickly and easily in any direction. An agile organisation anticipates, senses and responds to its external environment in ways that create a competitive advantage. Organisational leaders often feel dragged down by the weight of an organisation’s structure and the rigidity of its processes. Being in vantage points, they can see or perceive the workflow and blockages. These leaders are best positioned to appreciate the value of agility in making an organisation nimble enough to seize fleeting opportunities and make quick comebacks. If that is the case, why are they not able to bring themselves to change and be more agile? And what can be done about it? There are a few aspects of how leaders function in organisations that can explain why it is hard to embrace agility in organisations. Addressing these aspects with a systems perspective can point the way forward. Sticking to Current Competence – An organisation is a system. How a system performs is a result of the interaction of its parts, not a consequence of how the parts function separately.…
Indigo Fracas – Flawed Disciplinary Action
Indigo Airlines flew directly into a storm kicked up on the ground! Two Indigo staffers were caught on video trying to pin down an abrasive passenger. This was a fight more common among kids at school. Not at an airport. The incident happened in mid-October. The video, shot by an Indigo cargo handler, came out in November. Curiously enough, the cargo handler was removed from the job. As per Indigo’s public statement, he had instigated the other crew and was directly responsible for things coming to a head. Still, no matter what the cargo handler did, there is no way the people who actually got physical can be let off the hook. This is where Indigo seems to have gone completely off the radar. Let us accept for now that the cargo handler was the instigator. Even if that was the case,were the two other staffers such mindless automatons that they would just follow someone’s bidding, even if that be of their own supposedly senior colleague. Indigo claims the staffers used force to rein in an out of bounds passenger as a matter of…
The Elphinstone Stampede – Getting back on our feet
On 29th September 2017, an overcrowded foot over bridge at Elphinstone railway station, Mumbai witnessed a horrific stampede. 23 people died. What can we, as a society of organizations, do in the aftermath of the Elphinstone stampede? Let us explore the way forward using systems thinking. It might be a good idea to start with a description of the mental model we carry in our collective consciousness. Mental models are the very foundation, the source of how we create our own social reality. Mental Models Here is an articulation of the current mental models as I perceive them. ” Mumbai is the city of dreams. The financial capital. The corporate hub. Everything worth striving for is in Mumbai. We must go to work where the offices and establishments are. The best way to travel? The Mumbai locals – hands down. Cheaper & faster than anything else. Sure, it’s risky. Rush-hour.Packed trains, people falling off, getting run over. Part of the deal. We have made peace with it. Brave everything you encounter because there is a job to be done and food to…
Why clarifying stakeholder expectations matters to HR
Every organization talks about people being its most important asset. If they walk their talk, the HR ( Human Resources) function would also be the most important function. Why? because everybody assumes, HR -as the name suggests – is all about people. The reality is that HR is nowhere secure about it’s presence in the scheme of things. Clarifying stakeholder expectations is a good way to plot HR on the map. Here is a Q&A format exploration of the same. Have taken HR in the public sector as an example – with three primary stakeholders – employees, officers and unions. HR in A Public Sector Undertaking What is the Fundamental expectation of all stakeholders? Answer: Make it easy for us to perform our core task & validate the very reason why we exist. Why do the stakeholders expect this from HR? Answer: Human beings are the life-giving element of any enterprise. All capital,equipment & resources are deadwood unless human beings engineer sparks of performance by working together. HR as a function begins its work on this premise. This helps HR…
Why Feedback falters
“So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.” – Peter Drucker As a trainer, as you grow older, you may not become wiser. But you begin to think and wonder if you ever thought about things before! What was I thinking of when I asked people to use ‘sandwich technique’ for feedback years ago?! Praise first, Criticise again, End with Praise. Who was I kidding when I asked people to not focus on the person, but focus on the behaviour. That keeps it specific and makes a person less defensive, I said. Both are specific suggestions, much lauded. Both reduce things to a formula. And formulas and human interaction; never have the twain met! What is wrong with the ‘sandwich technique’? As a feedback recipient, do you consider yourself a thinking person, someone who observes, learns and predicts? If you do, you know soon enough that here is a practiced technique on its way. Mechanical, contrived, and utterly predictable. And once you know what’s coming, you stop listening. I can very well…
The Number One Reason a Successful Founder-Leader does not Invest in Learning & Development
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few – Shunryu Suzuki If a successful founder-leader is not willing to invest in learning & development (L&D) even after the organization has a settled look, this unwillingness can be traced to one’s own life-experience. These leaders successfully built an organization from the bottom-up and a full-fledged L&D set-up had nothing to do with it. As a result, the leaders reason thus : “If I could learn by doing, isn’t that the best way to learn. The results are there for all to see. What is the need for L&D” Such founder-leaders miss two important points. First. As business founders, they were explorers in virgin territory that held all…
A green office lawn gives me the blues
“Whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.” – Jonathan Swift, Gullivers travels As I walked past the lush green office lawn, I felt nothing. Here was this pristine, manicured and lush carpet of grass. So well maintained. Why did I not delight in the beauty of the whole thing? I soon realized. The sameness of it all put me off. All offices that have the luxury of surrounding space have a green lawn. A majority keep it completely off limits to maintain the picturepostcard look. What does it convey? What does it instill? Just across the lawn behind the glass facade are people being asked to deliver on disruptive innovation. As they sit across their desks or move towards the window, they see a patch of green being kept the same. It is a hallowed piece of turf – sacred, not to be trampled…