On 1st April, 1973, the Government of India launched ‘Project Tiger’ for the protection and conservation of the rapidly dwindling tiger population. Kailash Sankhala, the first Director, set forth on the guiding principle for Project Tiger. Do nothing (to the forest) and allow little to be done. On visiting TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) as part of a combined faculty group conducting a career guidance workshop, I remember reading a commemorative plaque there. The words that stayed with me were.. The end of social service is to end social service Dr. William Osler, the father of modern medicine, and a pioneer medical educator, was being counter-intuitive when he said.. One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine. The fields differ, but the approach underlying the words, the awareness they all show is that of intervening in a self-organising system. In order to save tigers, the action-oriented saviour may have adopted a gung-ho approach. A slew of measures and directives. Sankhala knew that intervention was the problem in the first place.…
LeaderPlay – Are we truly developing high-potentials?
From the place I stay, there are two routes to reach a much frequented destination. 1- The Standard route ( shorter distance-wise, longer commuting time-wise) 2 – The Faster route ( longer distance-wise, shorter commuting time-wise) As is expected, the faster route is chosen. The other day, on Google Maps, for some reason, both routes showed the same estimated time. I still chose the so-called faster route. I believe most people would do that. Most Mumbaikars – as Mumbai residents are called – do the same thing when they are travelling by local trains. If the slow train is in front and the fast train is expected much later, they wait for the fast train even if both trains are expected to take the same time, or even if, the slow one is reaching earlier. Why? In their mind, people disregard the train waiting time and get a kick out of seeing the fast train breeze past the stations where it won’t make a halt. We let our minds trick us into feeling good! This got me thinking about 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.…
Peter Drucker – Why does Emergency Room in a hospital exist? Brilliant!
Can anybody tell doctors what a hospital’s emergency room is for? Of course, not. Turns out Peter Drucker did. A legend in his lifetime, Drucker was once consulted by a hospital. They wanted him to help the Emergency Room (ER) of a hospital become more effective. Drucker started where he always does – mission. A mission statement answers the question – Why do we exist? Drucker asked the stakeholders in ER, “What is your mission?” At this point, put yourself in the shoes of the stakeholder. When I do, I answer, “The mission of ER is to save the life of everybody who is brought in” That is why it exists. Isn’t that true? People are wheeled into the place because it is, as the name suggests, an emergency! A life is at stake. We must save the life of this person. For Drucker, my answer won’t cut it. To him, the mission had to be so clear that it spells out in operational terms what to do next to achieve it. And that is his real genius! If we go by…
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…
Values & Culture v/s System & Process : Which one is more important?
As a part of a Whatsapp group, I was privy to this question : What is more important – values and culture or system and process? The drift of the conversation was towards most people feeling that values turned into behaviour that are embedded in a culture is a positive state of affairs than a system and process holding sway in an organization. This set me thinking on how they relate to each other. And here are my thoughts. If you find people in an organization very empathetic/supportive & step out of the organization, you won’t find a concentration of people exhibiting the same behaviours across the street. The dichotomy of values/culture v/s system/process is conceptual, not real. In creating a new set-up, we can make a cognitive beginning with one or the other. In an existing concern, it becomes a chicken & egg story as both values/culture & system/processes end up getting transmuted into each other all the time. The empathetic/supportive behaviour in an established organization is a systemic attribute, not depending on specific individuals. It is a good thing…
Right Recruiting: How it aligns organizational performance
For leaders aiming to make organizations perform better on the whole, an under-appreciated area that holds great promise is recruitment. People generally look to training or performance management. But the right recruiting gives you an opportunity to set everything right. Why? The simple reason is it all begins with recruitment. When you decide to make your recruiting effective, you focus on what are the right things to do (the things that matter) 1) In order to arrive at which people are ‘right’ for your organization, you are compelled to articulate the essence of why you exist & what you have set out to do. You can hope to recruit the right people only if you have clarity of purpose. Knowing what exactly you want in terms of mission & results helps you identify the right actions, the right tasks, the right skillsets & the required people capability. 2) With right recruiting, your training needs will qualitatively change. The more you recruit the right people, the less would there be mass skill-deficiency. Right recruiting can help save your training budget or…
Narendra Modi’s leadership & electoral success: A systemic appreciation for leaders & organizations.
By leading the BJP to a thumping majority in the recent Lok Sabha elections, Narendra Modi & his core team have scripted a success story worth studying. The victory was not unexpected, but its margin invites positive exploration. How did they pull it off? Does this story have something to offer students of leadership & organizations? Let us dive in leaving aside both political affiliations & political grandstanding. People all over the country were deeply discontent with the Congress. But that does not mean electoral victory was a cakewalk. The political scene has too many players of various hues & colours, each owing its emergence to a cause or a support base that lends itself to mobilising power. How could Narendra Modi & his team break through the clutter in such a fractured polity? Four key actions stand out. Sustaining & building upon the Core Foundation – What is the one thing that made it possible for Narendra Modi to take charge within the party & establish primary credibility with voters? Take this one thing away & Modi did not…
Infosys: Making sense of leadership & organizational challenges
When the numbers accumulate & a trend is discernible, we can make a conjecture or two. The current CEO of Infosys, S.D Shibulal has said that at 18.7%, the attrition rate has reached uncomfortable levels. He considers this to be more worrisome than the exit of nine senior executives, quite a few among them being C-suite contenders. Both instances are of course, related. No two ways about it. Why is Infosys facing so many challenges? A significant part of the answer lies in the decision to rotate the top-leadership among all company founders. This is the primary conjecture. Let us trace the journey from then to now. Emotions have a big role to play.We are all emotional beings.The story of Infosys is cherished corporate folklore.It has inspired millions of success stories in India. We rightly revere people like Narayan Murthy for their integrity-bound achievements. Founder-owners make tremendous sacrifices in the cause of their enterprise success. It is their baby. The world invariably respects their commitment to safeguard their baby. Keeping the top-position in the company founders circle was a reflection of…
Uncovering Process in Cricket. Uncovering Process in Organizations.
When we witness a cricket match, what is visible to us is the real action. We see batsmen bat, bowlers bowl, and fielders field. In a mammoth run chase featuring a match-winning partnership, batsmen pace their innings, calculate wickets in hand, keep the required run-rate under control, and score big at the right times. In the post-match interview, the winning batting pair reveal how they went about it. The say, “We broke up the 300 run target into multiples of 50. We will score 50 runs six times is what we told each other. We decided to play out the main strike bowler without taking risks. We created these 50 run milestones, quietly celebrated them and refocused ourselves for the next 50. This kept us going and when the win was guaranteed, we got a bit careless and got out. The others came in and finished off the game” What did we see? We saw runs being scored. We saw the powerful hitting, the fours and the sixes. But there is no way we ‘saw’ how they really did it.…