Fallacy in Service

I caught up with an old friend from college last week. He described it as a ‘super’ meeting. 24 years separated us in time. But the charm and unadulterated camaraderie bridged us in a few moments of recall from years gone by. If at all I felt askance, (and I did for a moment), it was when my visiting card gave away a title he did not know I had earned in the interval. He stopped short of cursing mutual friends who did not connect me to him. He also brewed choicest coffee to spark off the occasion. In about two hours of our meeting, he brought on a herbal infusion from Africa. I knew that by the end of the meeting, he had met his old friend and not the one with the title on the card. Like the blends of forgiving taste from tea-shrubs, flavour and fragrance bond ties of yore.

When you meet with a professional, what binds you in the relationship? Do their titles confound you? Do their qualifications and certifications inspire you? What really does magic in the service experience?

1.       Service is an art form. You will remember the experience for what it did for you when you consumed it. The one who produces the service conjures up a rapport in which such an experience is possible. One caveat however is this – did you enable your provider to serve you with delight?

2.       Service is from the heart. Creative juices, if we might call them that, flow when the emotions are animated in the rapport. The head gets to a sense of flow, when service grows from the heart. Procedure and rules encoded in the head are no guarantee for service. Without emotional presence, service is doomed. Caveat for the customer? How many providers will you discard before you place your trust in one?

3.       Service is for the person in a profession. We often forget that the customer has a professional need that he or she considers practical to a fault. But the customer is also a person, who has a private affair with the profession or practice he or she is in. The delight of being served is in the experience of harmony between the buyer’s personal need and the needs of the organisation he or she represents. Like the need to appear as a pioneer, and the solution that allows that image. Or the need to advance in career, and the sense of organisational control the solution ensures. Caveat here? Do you treat your service provider as a means to an end, or a partner in solutioning?

4.       Remember the caveats, but ignore this fallacy at your peril. The Fallacy of Extension from the Pure Sciences.  Due to the pure sciences, weights, measures, scales and molecular consistency have reference standards. GMT for time. 1 gram (g) = 15.4323583529 grains (gr). All measurements consist of three parts: magnitude, dimensions (units) and uncertainty. 

However, not all that is observed obey laws of the pure sciences. How would you put a tag for example to a nurse that tends to a soldier’s wounds? Or that of a hospice who upholds the sense of dignity for a dying one? Or a developmental coach or Organisation Development consultants who risk their reputation on you? Caveat here? Certifications are alibis. Accreditation too. What reciprocal risk do you offer to engage and learn the essence of a service relationship from another fellow human?

The social sciences are not for the faint at heart. If your service provider draws from such knowledge, do make allowances for surprises, deviations and lack of precision, especially if you find feelings a messy space to be in.  

In the real world, none of us have it all neatly put together, it's a mirage. In the real world, we could listen and be open to change by what we tune in to. In our world, we are in service recovery mode. We're human. 

We can deny our pains and problems, to appear 'neat' and 'tidy'. But would that help us serve the reality we experience? Service is a way to be in touch with reality. It never occurs without oneself. It gets delightful with more than the self in it. 

Whom have you served today?

Excuse, Apology and Job-Market Symptoms

Over the weekend, I had a fair bit of writing and editing to do. When done, I thought of surfing the channels on television. I heard recruitment specialists speak in near unison on a business television channel. Their views however fell between an apology and an excuse. The apology was for the job-seeker, and the excuse on behalf of their corporate customers. The excuse rationalised on behalf of their customers was that they could not find high quality skills anymore in India, where they once sourced hundreds of thousands of people with low-end skills! Media can become a mask for shadow play of the real actors, especially when the lights shine on sensational content.

Bangalore was bashed as the most unfriendly job-market location in India. IT and IT enabled services began to appear a desolate and forlorn sector. Even the financial sector in India seemed like a convenient adjacency to this trend. Retail and FMCG were accorded ‘sunrise’ status. While my words may seem like exaggeration, let us look at some possible explanations.

1.       Risk Classification : India’s IT sector was founded on services after a troubled history with vending home-grown products. Risk reduced, and risk- averse, scale in repeatable services became king to the cash piles. Services were premised on the availability of low-cost human resources. Scale became the enemy of relevant scope. In creeping  stealth, depth and expertise were systematically discouraged. IT and IT enabled services customers now see diminishing returns from such a service provider location."...(Amex), which outsources projects worth nearly $1 billion (around Rs.5,500 crore) a year to India, has stopped giving fresh work to its software vendors in the country, depriving them of millions of dollars in revenue in the December quarter"

2.       Intangible Assets : Awards, mementos and certifications were routine forms of congratulations. Despite professing to be in the knowledge economy, and claiming to be assessed on maturity of business processes, no disclosure of skills or competency based assets are in the public domain!  Specifications of skills and its visibility on ‘bio-data’ were signs of recruitment. And how facile the pattern was, as long as the predictability of demand for mere skills lasted. Capability is an intangible asset and tells on the experience clients have. Paper and screen may be tangible, but like the proverbial book cover, the story beneath could betray the cultivated image. 

3.       Measure is not Purpose : Leaders reigned if they had investment capital. The leaders reduced their purpose to operating margin comparisons in some firms. In other firms, they modified purpose to customer retention, even if it meant keeping below industry norms of profits and margins. Leadership in firms never culminated. Leadership is a capability that requires a distributed capacity to share aspirations and execute to a purpose bigger than themselves. “Often short-term solutions become part of a strategy of consistently avoiding deeper problems” said Peter Senge recently.

4.       Humans as Living Systems : Employees who had depth in skills and capability left home-grown enterprise for firms that valued their intellect. This often meant they opted for offshore units of foreign firms that had business operations in India. They value the ecosystem of their first-world employers more than the salary package."In the West, which is facing the task of reinventing its societies, we can anticipate that a more ecological approach will be needed. Firms and institutions will be increasingly viewed as ecologies, as sustainable complex systems" says David Hurst in his award winning article of 2012. 

5.       Experience, not transaction : Services are competed based on an experiential differentiation. Engagement with customers requires that bids are won not merely on capability. Deciding on how to engage with the client would be strategy. However, annual operating plans are often devoid of strategy, because they are reduced to a shade of the past – operating margins at the cost of capability that targets a market.

Job market trends are symptoms of an economic system, although the job seeker is a system in himself or herself. We need more loops of thinking than the immediate linear ones. Open organisations can integrate economic, ecological and employee goals. The need for the virtuous cycle is not complete if we discourage feedback in loops that affect outcomes. The medium is a vehicle, not the purpose. The television remote is for the viewer, not the producer, the featured or the feature! Which button can rescue you from this loop?

Tips for budding talent

Recently, I was aksed to write something from my personal experience for the young entering worklife. I thought of 6 points as below.

1.       Life is a mix of pressures and pleasures. With responsibility, come turning points in life as we respond to demands others have of us, so many of them without precedent. In early stages of career, explore as much variety as your responsibility will provide. In early stages of career, especially the first 3-5 years, skill acquisition and competence building takes prominence. Much later, towards the latter half of the decade your Purpose in life and sense of Specialization seem to converge better.  A worldly knowing from the depth of concrete experience and a sense of adventure in accomplishing significant contribution takes time. It does not arrive pre-arranged. It is in the ways of the world, that youth are expected to take on more than the rest can!

2.       Soak yourself in what you get to do. Immersive experiences are what gives you advantage in relating to the world around you. Like a child learns, absorb early tasks and make your mark in attitude. While that helps signal confidence in your team and superiors in the short-term; long-term benefits may seem removed in those moments. Later in life, interdisciplinary approaches to complex problems spring from vivid recall of such immersion. In short, value everything, discount nothing when it comes to experience you are offered at your doorstep in early career!

3.       Seek out learning that others go through. Seek association with multiple generations of people, and watch your perspectives evolve. Keep a mix of online virtual networks, and real-time face to face social interactions on your schedule. Develop a set of questions that get others to share from their experience. Acknowledge learning from others so that they reciprocate their own. Blog or note such without compromising the dignity of people who share their learning with you. Recognize that human beings act in their own interest, and that even in the most stressful times, they have a positive intent beneath their behaviors. Uncover that intent with questions to know more about what makes people who they are. Strike rapport with them that makes them respond without fear of being judged or evaluated. Without pretence or resentment, consider yourself enough to deal with others and get through life, even if you may not get what you want early on in life.

4.       Respond to requests for help and seek help when required. Let yourself be seen for your vulnerable areas too. Let not knowing prevent you from knowing what you may not have known before. A supple mind is a mark of resilience. When you are perceived as an ‘open’ person, it adds to your credibility. As social beings, we become more accessible and grow through learning when we spend time listening to the needs of others. You will find yourself sensing subtle signs in others that respond to your offer for time, perspective and assistance. Enjoy contributing when you are seen for who you are. However, watch yourself from being overbearing or prescriptive. They say a customer sold against his will – will be of the same opinion still!

5.       Learn one more language in your twenties than you already know. A global world requires that you comprehend the fluid mix of meaning, culture and philosophy.  Maybe Russian, Mandarin, Swahili or Afrikaans emerge as languages that give you a complementary edge in employability and worldly understanding. Maybe, Tamil, Bengali or Telugu are languages you can learn more easily. Explore the one language you will learn through various dimensions – dialects, poetry, film, literature, theater and news channels. The real benefit comes in alternate worldviews to your own. At the very least we broaden our minds and become tolerant of the world and human beings around us. 

6.       If you’ve not thought of a Career in a Profession, it may not be a spot of bother for many in this information intensive world. However, if you have not thought of a Purpose for your life, it is time to start thinking about it . Responsibility comes with a job, a role or a calling. Purpose sets you up for life in meaningful ways. It lets you know what your career is meant for. Purpose is about who you become in life, and what is the calling within that will most satisfy you. It is what you bring to your situation from your learning. Purpose is closely linked to your identity, and reflects your innermost values and the image in which others respond most to you. It is a period of restlessness that yields in an awakening at times, when your Purpose becomes clearer to you. Genuinely explore uncomfortable questions that relate to your purpose in life. None will own up to such answers but yourself.