Traffic congestion is assuming nightmarish proportions in all big cities. And yet, how many organizations believe it is a crucial part of the ecosystem in which they function? And how many reconfigure how they work in response? Adaptive companies see an opportunity to redesign work – flow, demonstrate faith in the work force by creatively exploring flexible work-practices. Staggered work timings, Work-from-home, Virtual collaboration are just a few. The shift occurs when you look at the challenge in terms of effectiveness rather than mere efficiency. When you are effective, you ask, ‘ What are the right things to do in the face of such traffic woes that dent employee energies by the time they reach the workplace?’ Efficient ones will ask, How can we do the usual right? ‘ The usual means – getting employees to be on time at the designated work hour. What holds leaders & decision-makers back? Familiar reasons – Loss of control & predictability. The Routine is so comforting! And yet, so much is possible if only we are willing to cast aside the routine. It…
Stranded in a sector?
Quite a few people experience being stuck in their jobs, especially their sectors. Dissatisfied at work, they bide their time for years. They shun jobs within the sector, as they want to make the switch. As time goes by, they are frustrated waiting for that one elusive call from a recruiter looking to place them in a different sector. And when that call comes, it admittedly looks a little too average, too common-place. It is an unexceptional job on all counts. The only thing it has going for it is your sector-switch. Let us say, you are marooned on an island for years. You are self-sufficient on the island replete with all the resources a human needs to survive. But you pine for human company, to rejoin civilization. You never sight any ship after countless hours of keeping watch. You languish on this island for years. Survival on the island is not at all a challenge, getting out is. One day, a small, worn-out but sea-worthy boat miraculously kisses the shore of your island. An uncouth fisherman is barely civil…
Why communication skills training is so much more than just working with individuals?
What is effortless for us to initiate takes concerted effort to do well. Take breathing & sitting. We breathe on autopilot. Hardly think about it. It barely registers how we sit. We slump into perceived comfort which is anything but that. We all know that there is a mindful breathing practise that makes us breathe better among other things. We all know our spinal health depends on a healthy sitting posture. We never get down to doing both unless we suffer some pain. Is communicating any different? We all can talk & hear wilfully; to fill the silence. And lo & behold, we are all communicators; so we think! The results do not deliver what we communicated for. This is especially true in organizations. Information is the currency of organizational transactions. Is there any other? When people envision & share, plan & co-ordinate, market & sell, organize & implement; they are always communicating information in some form or the other. Due to its all-pervasive nature, organizations rarely disown communication skills as a learning need. They attribute most problems to lack…
What is a juggler doing?
When people reach out for a metaphor to explain how they are multi-tasking, the one that most easily springs to mind is a juggler continuously catching & tossing multiple objects in the air. The juggler is juggling. No doubt about it. Is the juggler multi-tasking? If the multiple objects vary, does it become a multi-task? If the objects differ in shape, size or colour; do they create multiple tasks; a discrete activity in a class of its own ? A task so considered requires its own deliberate attention & specific action. If the juggler is cycling & juggling at the same time, it is definitely multitasking. If the juggler is running & juggling at the same time, it is definitely multitasking. When a juggler juggles multiple objects, it is not multi-tasking. The task is singular.
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.…
The size of a newspaper reveals news like no other!
Do you ever wonder how the standard newspaper size came to be? Freek Vermeulen, author of “Business Exposed:The naked truth about what really goes on in the world of business”,asked this question at Guardian, UK’s premier newspaper company. Curiously enough, nobody seemed to know. He continued to ask anybody and everybody in the newsprint industry and nobody had a clue! Britain has a well-preserved history.Freek dug into archives at public libraries. After combing through the pages of history, he came up with a stunning answer! In 1712,a taxation law was introduced to tax newspapers based on the number of pages they carried.Newspaper wanted to pack more info in less pages.And thus the standard newspaper size was born! This tax law was abolished in 1855. And yet, for more than 300 years now, the standard newspaper size has remained the same! Customers did like a smaller format: more convenient to hold and carry.Rarely have they been asked & though there have been instances of newpapers trying out smaller formats, the standard size rules! This size is also more expensive to produce…
What Google’s doodles teach us?
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. In the main, Google commemorates landmark events, festivals, achievements,icons in the form of doodles on its home page. Thoughfully suited to region and country sometimes. What is significant is that Google makes it a point to feature doodles on achievements and achievers that are relatively obscure or distant for a world used to consume todays information yesterday. Scientists, astronomers, artists are prominent in the selection. And more often than not, the ones featured are those whose pioneering contributions of great historical, scientific, and cultural importance have led to the breakthroughs we may know of. These people are the giants on whose shoulders the famous and well-known achievers have stood. In doing this, Google does not just organize the world’s information, but digs up gems long buried under the sands of time. This is thinking beyond eyeballs and click-throughs. This is putting your hand-up, and taking a stand saying , ” We believe this is significant, worth-knowing, and appreciating. This has enriched our world in ways…
A superb critique of the case-study method by Russell Ackoff
In an interview, Russell Ackoff was asked about the case-study method of teaching. I present the question & Ackoff’s response Detrick – Business schools like to talk about the usefulness of cases as a teaching pedagogy. What do you think about using cases as a teaching vehicle? Ackoff – “A case is a terrible distortion of reality. It is like learning how to box with one hand tied behind you, then you are suddenly thrown into the ring with somebody who has two hands free. You don’t know what to do. You couldn’t box against a two handed person with one hand, but that’s what cases do to/for you. A problem is an abstraction. It’s extracted out of reality by analysis. Reality consists of complex sets of interacting problems, not isolated problems. So when we deal with a problem we’re already dealing with an abstraction — and now somebody comes along and deprives you of the information needed to formulate the problem. This converts the problem into an exercise. An exercise is a problem for which the person given the problem to…
Suicide Helpline Counsellors, the Army & Formula One: Helping L&D & other professionals learn by seeing with new eyes.
It is very difficult for those inside a box to think outside of it – Russell Ackoff When we want people in our organization to ‘expand’ their learning horizon, we face a standard challenge. Get people from our own industry to train and those with experience believe there is nothing new to learn. They are too familiar with their own industry and organizational challenges. Get people from outside the industry and people ask, “What do they know of our industry? How will they relate to our company challenges?” As a learning & development (L&D) practitioner, I believe the greatest contribution L&D professionals can make is in equipping people to learn how to learn. When they learn how to learn it is equivalent to learning how to catch fish & feed themselves. To help people how to learn, we have to start with ourselves. How do we respond to the standard challenge I referred to earlier? Have we ourselves learnt how to learn about expanding people’s horizon? What experiences can trigger that kind of learning? What beliefs and assumptions hold us…
Stakeholder Centered Coaching : An activity-based overview of the coaching process
SCC involves three sets of activities. 1) Selecting growth areas that are important to the leader and the organization 2) Involving stakeholders while implementing change actions 3) Measuring leadership growth as perceived by stakeholders. The coach & the leader collaborate in the implementation. The coach facilitates the entire coaching process. The coach is committed to unlimited coaching hours to guarantee measurable leadership growth. Selecting Leadership Growth Area The coach and the leader identify respondents best placed to give relevant feedback on what the leader can improve upon. The coach gets this feedback from structural assessments and behavioural interviews. The coach and the leader then assess the collated feedback and identify the 1-2 leadership growth areas that the leader can work upon. These areas need to be important not only to the leader but to the organization as well. The required buy-in from the leader’s boss ensures that the organization backs the coaching agenda. This set of activities is completed by the end of two months. To explain the process better, let us say, that the leadership growth area for the…