Fiction from Fact - the spewing and spawning of Management terms

It has been a week since I attended CII's Annual Innovation Summit in Bangalore. While the impression I got there was of India asserting its identity as a nation where start-ups may thrive, a flash of fads, fleeting interests and uncritical explorations rushed my mind. I’ve known a few terms that a set of intersections between communities have developed over the years. Practitioners, Academicians and Consultants of management have conceived of, discovered and disused terms that language has registered through journals, reviews and news media. The salient among these for me are the following.

1.       BPR – Business Process Re-engineering. It took a long time for people to realise that reduction of process views to values of efficiency did not account for human elements. If the process was reducible, the incidence of human beings attached to the extant process were just that – extant. Scholars with a humane disposition have impressed upon me the roots of this ‘expert’ led philosophy to the detached traditions of related statistical procedures that predated the BPR fad by decades, perhaps even earlier than WW-I.

2.       Theory ‘Z’ – When William Ouchi traced manufacturing shopfloor routines and factory layout enablement in American and Japanese auto majors, he probably realised, that neither American practice nor pure Japanese collectivism by themselves held promise. Yet, he selectively established the significance of the human element in the perpetuation of the firm. It makes me wonder, why there is no such reference of Chinese and Korean models of management to extend any promise of effectiveness into the future. While, the Nano may have been the car for India’s masses, the universalism of western thinking has us believe, that the Tatas went into uncontested market as in a Blue Ocean. Yes, no Indian ‘archetype’ beyond the vernacular ‘jugaad’ labelled the phenomenon on the ground.  Ranjan Acharya would probably be heartily chuckling in the heavens at how after qualifying as India’s earliest Lead assessors for PCMM, the systemic nature of continuous improvements in the knowledge economy has been jettisoned with the convenience that only short-horizon mercantilism can institutionalize in their industries. The leaders of firms with People Capability Model credentials, wear the title like a badge, not knowing the difference between terms such as ‘assessment’ and ‘certification’; validity and reliability, behavior modification and behavior modelling.

3.       TQM – Total Quality Management is probably one of the more enduring management practices, more comprehensive in its embrace of organisational life, and tenure. Again, while the Tatas adopted the Business Excellence mould to adapt the Malcolm Baldridge award criteria to its companies, the idea of the long-term is competitively pitted against the mean aspects of Lean, where the negotiation of results at the bottom-line could take away from the perpetuation of the institution. The proverbial tension between the short-term and the long-term is heightened by the voracious appetite of stock-markets.  Repeatedly finding errors and fixing them (quality control) can result in a high quality product, but it is a very inefficient process. The best approach is to build a quality product the first time. In general, your team can’t build a quality product the first time without quality work processes (quality assurance). Quality Management is a mind-set profession. So is Human Resource Management. Private wealth makers have sided with mammon for short-term security too often, only to be deceived in the long-run to hit the melting icebergs of our planet and the oxygen baths of their megalopolises.

4.       Restructuring is a term that spells the end of corporate careers for seasoned professionals, and spoils the broth being cooked from the effervescence of human ideas. When people play God at the decision-table, their assumption that their idea is right is falsely attributed, in service of the mammon, whose might prevents the heroism that leaders could aspire for. Population ecologists may argue that imitative effects shape the structure of an industry or the internal procedures of organisations in an industrial sector. Yet, the sentience of social systems, and the altruism of the human race stands exposed in brutal irreverence in recent times. Social Enterprise forms seem embarrassing apologies for the compassion of the social sector and the efficiency touting of the corporate creed. Restructuring events are applauded in most economic theory, while their social impact, includes the adverse effects and implications of social disruptions caused by downsizing and other organizational and corporate changes. 

A lack of critical thinking skills among employees compounds the verification and classification of institutional knowledge held by employees at their workplace.

What would you say separates fact from fiction in the work experience you have?

For what reasons would you deploy a survey in Indian organisations?

In many cities in India, the governance may sport a rur-urban, near agrarian era mindset, evenas the citizens yearn for a first world living. The disconnect here is to do with lags in social consciousness and avenues for participation in governance.

In formal Indian organisations, top managements fantasize the benefits of their first-world counterparts, while their employees prefer the security of their third-world relationships. Responses to a survey presupposes that both top management and employees respect openness.

How would you know if the top management only uses the survey tool to perpetuate their control, by getting sneak previews to their status and privileges? Would that be openness? Or would that be nosy neighborliness, where 'gossip' can meander into a new form while the real motive is surreptitious surveillance? Oftentimes, the after-taste is one of conditional curiosity or self-fulfilling angst. Anonymity at least protects privacy of the provider of feedback if demographic detail are tended to with thought and care.

YES, surveys may invoke THREAT response in hierarchical India, whereas a REWARD response is the aim of survey based democratic information. Institution building is a multi-year process, and surveys are milestone interventions. If that is not the IDEAL, what satisficing does the survey serve?

Surveys are often spoken with the same breath as we speak about face validity and content validity. Perhaps, on the face of it, survey items capture data that gives prima facie evidence. However, perceptions may belie the underlying truth. Most surveys I have seen being implemented in India lack content validity.

In fact, if the survey sponsor asks for a reliability score - that organisation can be deemed blessed. A measure of internal consistency of the survey is at least a start-point indicator that science is at the service of organisational democracy.

If an organisation is about people, WHAT are you enabling in them, via a survey implementation? Will you be happy with saving face? Or would you like to strive towards cause-effect loops for making an impact on mind-sets of excellence at work?

July Monsoon Musings

Attachment is the root of sorrow. Ambition that reeks of unfulfilled desire may be a symptom of attachment, the shadow side of ambition or the unresolved self.

Detachment is the beginning of equanimity. Neither attachment nor detachment can be known without knowing the other. The joy from detachment is not a pursuit to be enslaved to - nor the sorrow from attachment a burden to despise.

Love transcends both these as the decision of giving all of oneself in service. As Mother Teresa once said "When we judge we have no time to love".  Love is the decision that liberates us from trapped potential.

Love that is effective is a result of calibrating for rapport - a state in which nether party in the relationship judges each other. Loving the self is also a calibration of mind, body and emotion. That is why even if it is logically possible to love another, it is psychologically impossible to do so without loving one's own self.

Compassion is empathetic acceptance rooted in trust of the unknowable. It is a product of vulnerability and vulnerability is an act of conscious will.

Happiness is the uncaused ecstasy of traversing in surrender to mystic depths.

Awareness is communion with the unconscious, united through mind, body and emotion.

Paradigms I've experienced over the last decade

No major paragraphs. Just a few reflections from my experience in India as someone at the world of work.

THEN around 2000-2002	NOW around 2011-2013
1.       Does this belong to our industry? If yes, your opinion is of value to me.	Does this apply only to our industry? If no, good. The more beyond our industry that much more value.
2.       Is he joining a good Company?	Is he working with good People?
3.       Does he know problems of the Third-World?	Does he know what is an emerging economy?
4.       Do they have capability to change?	Do they have capability to learn?
5.       Is the person eligible to apply for the job?	Is the person suitable for the role?
6.       Is the professional inter-personally effective?	Is the person socially active?
7.       Is the person God-fearing?	Is the person spiritually inclined?
8.       Can the candidate write well?	What does the candidate read?
9.       Does the candidate come from a good family?	Does the candidate have positive peer references?
10.   What successes does the candidate possess?	What learning does the candidate have from failure?

Does this read like a familiar set of perceptions for you too? What implications does this set of differences have for you?

Between Neutral Anxiety and Positive Anxiety? How do you Innovate for Awesomeness?

When it comes to Innovation, would you be cautiously optimistic for fear of slipping into academic fundamentalism? Did you not pay homage to the fundamentals during your education years?

I was on this cusp of reflecting the Monday 8 July, 2013 meeting of the CII Innovation forum. That is when a lucid, evocative and utilitarian perspective came in from Intuit’s Vijay Anand. Embedding emotional appeal within Lean process improvements has largely eluded the Indian IT services businesses, despite the rich opportunity potential to fill that experience economy market. Is it because Intuit is a product company that it has been relentlessly innovative for almost 30 years?

Well, this is not an advertorial for Intuit, but a stimulus from which I hold out a premise that may appear as symptoms of competitive myopia in service businesses. The Tofflerian Third Wave was to be about service economy proliferation or penetration with knowledge flows and momentous delights. What could be the deterrents that prevent providing customers with positive emotional experiences throughout the customer relationship journey?

Intuit’s example provides simple check-points, like the following:

1.       Do you deliver customer benefit?

2.       Do customers use your product / service for the benefit you claim to provide?

3.       Do customers recommend your brand proactively?

Delightful service or awesome client experiences could materialise if

1.       The customer experiences benefits that he or she ‘cares’ about

2.       The customer accomplishes his organisational or personal need with ease or reduced effort. Your offering will work with other stuff your client lives with.

3.       The customer demonstrates positivity through prompt use, showing or telling others of your offering or actually buying more of your capacity.

4.       The customer is able to justify his or her delight in your offering in advocating your capability, not just his or her intelligent investment in you

Sounds simple, and even reads ordinarily possible. However, the capacity to identify the benefit your customer cares about begins with your own emotional bandwidth. What latent need of the customer would you have discovered during the prospecting phase? How do you nudge your client to value your offering without breaking rapport?

Tough one, admittedly for engineers from India to design to a vision that provide you the Love Marks of the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Visualising the Customer’s benefit is also about addressing the riskiest assumption of your capability to serve your client. Innovation is the process where your leap of faith on this assumption will be the one on which you are willing to stretch your known capability. That is where you get leads into what the client is also willing to risk on in terms of behavior to meet your value in discovery mode.

A critical fallacy in this paradigm could be equating customer ‘advocacy’ with a commodity that has a shelf-life in terms of inventory and scale.  

Advocacy that arises from authentic customer delight is a value realization episode. The value is however impermanent.

In itself, the sentiment of advocacy has potential of perennial nature. Suspending the accretion of value could however, cast shadow over perceptions of your service capability. We all know how emotionally draining a service recovery could become. We also know, how desirous feelings of delight are.

In closing, as adult learner, I tie my observations with a knot to an idiom the illustrious Shombit Sengutpta led his firm with - Emotionality trumps Functionality, perhaps even Rationality! So, how would we render Authenticity? If you do not experience authenticity in the bonds between your own team workers, what chance does your customer stand of experiencing awesome service? Let me know. 

Questions of Leadership - not the trivial kind

“India does not innovate, but Indians do” was the graphic distillation of a good friend, I Vijay Kumar. My trust is in his meticulous inferences derived from systematic note-taking over decades of work in India’s telecom and Information technology sectors. Part lament, part positive affirmation, I have yet to come across a more fitting statement that epitomizes the individualistic bias to achievement in India.

The subjugation of collective will to the adulated hero is an unquestioned norm, until it is chaotically opposed by a rupture from routine. E.g. Coordination that a natural disaster precipitates or in a pastime that is remote from formal accountability such as cricket or television dance choreography.

In the early 1990s, I was in Delhi for AIMA’s annual conference, where in the wake of liberalisation, speakers were invited from as far as Philippines to propound the LPG theme of the decade – Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalization.  The Yamuna was flooded then too. Arriving drenched at the Indian Air-Force Subroto Park Auditorium myself, I entered the hall as lone nominee from my then employer SPACO Carburettors India Ltd. The media sponsor The Hindustan Times had placed partially wet copies of its edition that had a catchy photograph of the rain situation and an accompanying story of a 14 year old saviour of small children. The first speaker of the day, the irrepressible Late Rajinder Singh was delayed, and he explained his absence thus:

“You will appreciate my delay only if you hear my explanation. That story of the 14 year old – well, I read it too, and went to track that boy down before coming here. I wanted to know what it was in him, that he took the plunge when several able bodied adults around him did not.” He had the ears of the 600 strong audience already. “Well, after much persistence, the young boy broke his silence. “Why ask me? Ask the one who pushed me from behind, into the swollen Yamuna!” Imagine the energy in the room and the connect made with the audience!

My senior and hostel-mate from TISS Mohammed Abid, currently Secretary Cum Development Commissioner for the Trans-Yamuna Board, may not want such bravado for the same reasons of flooding today.  Yet, as of the early 1990s, the AIMA speaker – the then Chairman of NTPC regaled his audience with his version of Leaders needing the Push based on real-life cases within NTPC.

It is hardly controversial to observe that leadership-as-a-good-thing is deeply entrenched in our common culture. Much is expected of leaders and leadership when economic, managerial or other crises have to be met. The solutions to restructuring for purposes of greater efficiency and effectiveness, whether in private or public sector organizations such as district administrations, for example, are widely sought in better leadership or ‘strong leaders’ who are believed capable of steering the organization in desired directions.

However, in recent insights about such phenomena, I have come to recognise the importance of the following questions.

1.       Like the above account of ‘even leaders need a push’, what makes for individualist achievement when leader-follower or leader-member exchange in Indian context is not accounted for in theories of leadership?

2.       If there is a Zone of Proximal Development, in which even leaders learn to develop their exemplar qualities, is leadership more reduced to the administrative practice that occurs in modules of impact rather than extending ‘systemic’ effect on an organisation?

3.       What accounts for a theory perspective in leader behavior, when context and practice in context cannot be removed from the phenomenon?

4.       Is not learning in groups more connected to the administrative efficacy of a work unit than the convenient fantasy of the singular apogee of virtue and potency?

5.       What is the connect between functionality in leadership and the effect it has on practice of leadership, if context and learning in context matters to the existence of leadership, per se?

6.       Is the chorus for a resignation of a leader in the aftermath of a crisis an outcome of folk psychology than a moral creed under whose garb order and norm is mediated?

7.       Have we seen more of methods of observation in existing leadership theory than empirical data per se that explains cause and effect?

8.       When social media pervades the work-screens of almost any employee a company wishes to control through information technology (IT), what yoke fixes the social-media heterarchy with the corporate-governance hierarchy? What wedge of performance apart from control-intensive IT will cohere with these inherently diverse, if not contradictory eras of organisation? Is it merely financial capital, social power and legal sanction?

9.       If the structure of motivation of the emerging knowledge economy is Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, what accelerates the dereliction of leadership?

10.   If a relatively self-disciplined westerner experiences formal interactions with Indian or Asian workforces, does the word ‘global’ replace interaction expectations merely because of a dateline intervention? Has folk psychology like the proverbial smoke-screen denuded the cause-effect relationship in leadership theory?

This is why I am falling back on primal learning energy by turning to a savant, whose interests transcended our planet. Carl Sagan the cosmologist, said, “At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense”.  I thank Gabrielle Lakomski for stoking me to such fundamental issues in 2006, a cause at which she has relentlessly labored since then.

Many implications extend from these questions. E.g. why in work that involves complexity, innovation in India is more difficult to orchestrate than in other national or societal contexts? There is no dearth of issues that require us to work meaningfully in groups that fetch enduring satisfaction and pride for its members. Do we build to change or to defend status quo, for example?

Do you not feel a dearth of sturdy, robust inter-disciplinary inquiry in leadership and organisational learning? For what reason does the last word on leadership theory elude us?

Died on TV

In Tiananmen Square, a young girl died and became the affixation that television screens carried to global audiences in 1989. After more than 2 decades, that upsurge of anger is still running its course. Turkey rises today, in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring; and the scene of action has shifted to social media screens. Not in the distant past, a lady called Nirbhaya (fearless) got people protesting across India, especially in Delhi. Comfortably, numb, social media enables the gush of dissent and the clean swipe of memory loss follows effortlessly, navigating our neural pathways with an accurate mirror effect of our take on life. This conceptually new phenomenon of the aborted superstar cannot as easily be messaged on the medium that constructs the identity.

Too many lives end on TV. It is in similar vein, that leadership, management, and corporate development efforts rise and fall to the laws of the market of ‘eyeballs’. Actions precede embodied thought, and the waste of human energy a curse that passes unseen from the conscience that we admittedly summon in times of crises. In such a phenomenon, the language of ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’ seem framed in a truncated premise, that evades the real issues of the organisation as an open system.

I was recently sent a business quotation request, from one the world’s forerunners in automation, to bid for a process for a multi-year business plan ‘training’ opportunity. It was presumably for their captive Information Technology Systems teams. Automated all right, but, where’s the mind of the worker, I thought? Business plan and training?

In school, a transferred epithet, was a figure of speech. Today, the object of transfer is information of fleeting value. With mindless anxiety reduction, the narrative of the economic system is of market capital and the epithet is power through material acquisition. The workplace that keeps the worker awake for most hours in a day / night, no longer holds the perimeter of conscious living. Heartless procurement officers deal with nuts, bolts, paper, human resource and marketing agencies with the same temperament, to ‘standardise’ business process. 

In another business interaction, the business leader wanted a leverage, that was too easy to imitate according to him. He showed the Board how he cut costs in several areas, including in HR processes like dealing with manpower suppliers. When it came to courage to take on development of his business teams’ ideas to a credible implementation, he tried a repeat of 'cost' reduction. Neither would the service provider (read consultant) relent for having facilitated the new insights for the business, nor would the business leader be able to proceed with the plans his teams creatively brought up. That plan died  too. No shoe fits all feet, especially the one on our own feet. 

Here are some tell-tale signs of the system being out of synch with the genuine potential of the people who reside in it.

1.       At water-cooler or coffee-table conversations, co-workers talk more of the latest film, music or sports event. At times, it is about the gadgets that fit in palms. In seasons of corporate mood, it is about a new CEO, a new leader appointed or the gossip around an unexpected employee resignation. A new business idea or improvement on existing process will conveniently elude the aroma at the table.

2.       At business meetings, employees rationalize to the extent that previous meetings plans seemed archaic enough to justify new ones garnished by the latest social gossip or online access. Omission steals into routine as a commission of default natural consequence.

3.       Delays in decisions are propounded in the name of requisite (democratic) consultation. The decision itself is based on an idea that never came up as insight from the employees’ own efforts, but from the analysis or inference of an external consultant. Personal turf finds new encroachments if the threat of invasion is already not perceived. Neither clarity of the premises of the decision, nor of the reason to commit to the implications of the insight find room in the long-drawn consultation process.

4.       Famous eating and beverage hang-outs attract colleagues and ex-colleagues to new possibilities across the city. Not having found their Alma-mater cosy enough to nudge expression, they ask for double-shots in the caffeine as they conjure up pages of the Dumbledore in them.

5.       Bookstores across the city reorient their shelves, if not pull down their shutters altogether, for want of discerning clientele. Reading in long-form is considered a luxury. Linguistically decrepit emails, lifeless spread-sheets of data, and  E-learning via SMS replace the papyrus in the name of the environment.

Well, I could perhaps go on, to describe, the decadence of thought and the intellect in our civilisation. The ascent of colour and sound via the internet is not the object of my critique though. It is the pathos of the worker escaping the richness and wealth of his/her inner resourcefulness that makes the above a commentary of our times. The desultory rant of a moral brigade sounds strikingly similar to the pleas for innocence from the accused.

The defenceless and powerless gait of the disempowered and confused is not an accident in the corporation’s evolution. It is the cop-out of our times, that gets socialised ad nauseam, thanks to the information blitzkrieg on contemporary media. So what if an old leader returns. So what if a new leader arrives. The concept of the ‘leader’ as we knew it is also dead. Going undercover with television cameras to play the ‘hero’ leader is also passé. As Peter Senge puts it “Realizing desired results in a global society requires both learning and leadership, but above all it involves collective creating”. 

Leadership is a new sport. It is a capacity distributed inimitably and to be understood differently in the effective enterprise. And old media has yet to learn the skills to ‘cover it’. For the current debate is as Gabriele Lakomski states it : Functionally adequate but causally idle: w(h)ither distributed leadership?