Rapidinnovation: Managers -- Change or Get Kicked Around!

Right from the start of my career I never wanted to report to a manager who would only be there to keep record of what I was doing and inform me when I slipped on a self imposed deadline or schedule.

I thought that this was really funny. Why should a highly paid person (obviously higher than what I earned) kept, only monitoring me as if I were a circus animal?

I wanted something better. I wanted a boss or a manager who can guide me out of my difficulties (even personal ones), teach me the tricks of the trade and cushion the shocks of my failed experiments in my efforts to change performance and innovate.

Was it something very peculiar to my psyche? To make sure, I asked some of my peer buddies. And surprisingly they all came up with the same need that I was looking for.

If this were so, why companies would waste their valuable money keep supervisors who were just modern day versions of ancient slave drivers? As soon as I thought that I was magically transported to the vivid scenes of Cecil b deMille’s “Ten Commandments” where the Egyptian slave drivers were merrily lashing their whips around controlling thousands of slaves building pyramids and other infrastructure of Egypt.

Things haven’t changed much from those ancient days. Perhaps the form changed. The physical whip has long been replaced through industrial revolution by the ‘verbal whip’ and pens that possibly stings more emotionally than physically, leaving people more unproductive, raw and vulnerable than before – smarting and humiliated.

This triggers another vital question – Who needs whom? Do the employees need the organization? Or does the organization need employees who can think for themselves? The answer is not easy. When viewed from the principle of interdependence (one of the guiding principle of Rapidinnovation) the answer is ‘both’. Employees do need organizations as platforms to use their talents and perform as much as Organizations need employees who are willing to put up a fine performance.

How can this be achieved?

This might only be achieved if we take a ‘Human Centered View’ based on reasoned thinking on emerging situations, spontaneous creativity aided and guided by the focused will of management and managers who would be more willing to act as coaches and mentors for employees rather than take up the sick role of glorified version of slave drivers and ‘kill-joys’.

Without wasting much time I started my humble experiments in this direction (1980) since even as a Graduate Engineer Trainee I was already the boss of the Maintenance department.

So, rather than enjoying the ‘strange’ powers and ethereal joys bestowed upon me by the Top Management to grant leaves, permissions of all sorts and motivating my subordinates through regular enticements of ‘overtime pay’, ‘special increments’, ‘office parties’ I started mentoring them in my own way. It was good in a way since there were no well laid out precedents to follow so as to be trapped by rigid standards of earlier performance.

The focus of all that mentoring was simple indeed. How do we make sense of what is happening in the ‘now’? No big theories to contend with. No vague and remote scientific truths to digest. There was nothing irrelevant to what is happening in the ‘now’. We were jointly trying to make sense with me in the ‘mentor’s’ seat.  

Though I was greeted by derisions from my well healed but old fashioned managers the ridicule and jibes soon turned into amazement, recognition and awe. The result was more than I ever expected. We could complete projects before time (not on time). We cut operating costs by half (not 10% as slated in the annual budget). We increased machinery productive uptime to more than 98% (from a measly figure of 50%)… and more.

Surely, I was then bitten by the bug of coaching and mentoring which I kept repeating with great success and joy in all my subsequent jobs and professional engagements.

Today, after so many years, it is amply clear to me that mentoring and coaching are things that employees respect and live for.

That of course is all bad news to mangers who try to manage their mundane affairs in old fashioned ways of stick, carrot, numbers and prediction models. It seems to me that their time is up and they now stand ‘naked’ and vulnerable in front of their subordinates who certainly expect more mastery from them in the true sense of the word. It is already late. People are now ready to disrespect the last vestiges of the quintessential ‘slave driver’ mentality in traditional managers. How do we know? We know when performance goes much below what is expected.  

Making a successful transition from Managers to “Mentors and Coaches” appears to be the respectable choice offered to present day managers.

Managers – change or get kicked around!

Epidemic of Cultural Blindness

Even very intelligent people sometimes mistakenly take culture of a country to be some sort of yardstick to measure other cultures. By doing so, they get utterly confused since they find most of it out of sync.

Then they commit another terrible mistake. They blame it on the culture for a country's failure to achieve economic progress or to raise their standard of living or something else by 'benchmarking' another country. 

Many organizations also commit the same mistake. They feel if only some cultural changes can be brought about everything would change overnight. And most of their ugly problems would never resurface. They believe that attitude of the people would change which would enable them to think differently, talk differently and work differently. Management of such organizations go about this task of conversion with the zeal of religious evangelists spending huge amounts of time, energy and money only to generate lot of confusion in the end.

Recently found an organization trying to implement Japanese culture in their manufacturing processes. After trying it out for a year they lamented, "We are nowhere near our desired target."

I asked them, "How does manufacturing effectiveness of your organization compare to the manufacturing effectiveness of the best in class, Japanese included."

They replied, "Well it is nearly same. The difference is negligible"

Pushing them further I followed up by asking "Then why do you want to bring about this cultural change?"

Obviously, there wasn't any answer to this.

Similarly, in a joint venture organization the Japanese who were partners blamed the culture of the other partner country for lack of productivity. The real issue lay in the cultural mismatch of the two partners working shoulder to shoulder in the same workspace.

In another newly acquired plant in Chile, the Chairman who was an Indian, during a board meeting lectured the top managers, "I think the process you people are following is absolutely wrong. You must follow the unique process we have developed back in India. Some of you must visit to learn more about that."

The top managers gently reminded him, "But what is wrong in the way we work? There is no quality rejection, no customer complaints, no productivity loss and to say the truth our productivity in this line of activity is best in the world."

Well, you know better. The better way might have been "Let me learn your methods and the ways in which you work to consistently produce high quality stuff and ship goods with the highest productivity"

But we simply can't shrug off this attitude of 'I am holier than Thou so I know better' simply because one has more money or more economic advantage or probably more educational certificates compared to another. 

The same mistake happens in the concepts of globalization and standardization. Ray-ban had to close shop in India. Their frames were simply out of proportion on an Indian face.

Coke came to India secretly nourishing the idea that Indians would soon forget about drinking water. They would drink Coke instead.

Kellogg harbored similar ideas. They would provide more nutrition to wean away Indians from their traditional breakfasts.

Nothing of these ever happened. Indians did not forget to cling to water and anything other than traditional breakfast tasted bland or insipid.

We, more often than we suspect, fall prey to this cultural trap in our personal relationships too.

Are we suffering from this "epidemic of cultural blindness"?

Quantity, Quality, Patterns, Fractals, Transforms

Changes in matter are always qualitative in nature. Such qualitative changes can be best understood by observing patterns like the way we find them in frequency spectrums, wear debris slides and infra red thermal images. Such patterns can also be noticed in organizations and societies.

The existence of qualitative changes in matter exhibited through patterns was known long before human beings began to think more deeply with the help of physical sciences. With the advent of atomic theory we started to appreciate this phenomenon more deeply. In the early days of science we took changes of state from solid to liquid to gas as something that occurred naturally, without exactly knowing why. It is only now that such phenomena are being properly understood.

Chemistry made great strides forward in the 19th century. A large number of elements was discovered. But, rather it looked like the confused situation which exists in particle physics today. Indeterminate Chaos reigned.

Order was established by the great Russian scientist Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev who, in 1869, in collaboration with the German chemist Julius Meyer, worked out the periodic table of the elements, so-called because it showed the periodic recurrence of similar chemical properties.

Note the use of word 'periodic'. This is the building block of pattern making out of which we make sense of the world around us. It is the periodic repetition arranged in a certain manner that forms patterns across different levels. We now have a sophisticated word for that. It is called 'fractals'.  

The existence of atomic weight was discovered in 1862 by Cannizzaro. But Mendeleyev’s genius lay in the fact that he did not approach the elements from a purely quantitative standpoint, that is, he did not see the relation between the different atoms just in terms of weight. Had he done that by mistake, he would never have made the breakthrough he did. From the purely quantitative standpoint, for instance, the element tellurium (atomic weight = 127.61) ought to have come after iodine (atomic weight = 126.91) in the periodic table, yet Mendeleyev placed it before iodine, under selenium, to which it is more similar, and placed iodine under the related element, bromine. Mendeleyev’s method was vindicated in the 20th century, when through the investigation of X-rays his arrangement was proved correct. The new atomic number for tellurium was put at 52, while that of iodine was 53. The breakthrough idea was to look for patterns. 

The whole of Mendeleyev’s periodic table is based on the law of quantity and quality, deducing qualitative differences in the elements from quantitative differences in atomic weights.

This understanding helps us unravel some of nature's mysteries. These are:

a) Quantitative changes leads to qualitative changes

b) Even extremely small quantitative changes often brings about dramatic qualitative changes.

c) All qualitative changes can be understood by patterns.

d) Any qualitative changes that are always exhibited through patterns can't be measured. So, important qualitative transformations can't be understood through measurements of any kind. It can be understood 'wholistically' through patterns only.

e) Patterns or qualitative changes repeat themselves over and over again in a system. Such a phenomenon is called 'fractals'. This happens in a self organizing fashion and the pattern that emerges is the part of the emergent property of the system.

f) Fractals exist at different levels in a system. This indicates that reality of a phenomenon exists at different levels. This is what we call as 'parallel reality'.

g) So by closely studying one fractal we get to understand the nature of all other fractals. That is we start from a part and understand the whole. This allows us to see the part and the whole at the same time.

h) It follows, that change in the pattern at the highest level changes patterns at other levels automatically in a spontaneous manner.

i) However to make an effective change we look for the smallest change to be made with the least effort and time to bring about substantial and sustainable changes in the system.

Posted via email from systemvibes

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

The world has been changing so fast that it scarcely seems to be the same every other day. In 1997, when India was punished for going Nuclear and letting the world knows about its nuclear capability; In Europe, the euro had not been introduced as a common currency; Amitabh Bacchan was still young and Madhuri Dixit was not so plump; Hong Kong had not yet been handed back to China; Google did not exist; the dragon’s  dominance in the world economic map was still a far cry and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were still four years away ---- Deepak was frustrated , why is his father not listening to him.

Deepak wanted to change his father’s old “Ambassador “car (a distant cousiin of 1941 model Austin) for a new Generation X car. The newspapers were full of advertisements. “Exchange your old car for a new one, and pay on easy monthly installments. Deepak was trying desperately to convince his father but he was adamant. What his son is not aware of are the many cherished memories attached to the car. When Deepak was born he was brought from the local hospital in this car. Deepak had grown up with this car.

Deepak graduated and got into a Post Graduate Business Administration course.

He wanted to change the world too soon. He has now acquired a new motorbike with a funky look. He has changed his attire and wardrobe. Everything he has changed with the passage of time but he is still not able to change his father’s outlook, attitude and business policies. His father still goes to the factory in a white sweat shirt and a cotton trouser. He still mingles with the factory workers. Tries to gauge their feelings. Hugs them when he is overjoyed and also hurls choicest abuses when angry.

Now India has opened up. Private bankers have come in. “Gone are the days when a nationalized Bank staff would talk to you rudely”. Smart young people are now manning the private banks with their plastic smile, trying every moment to access a customer in terms of business he would give. But India is different. People can differentiate between the artificial and the natural. The common man can do wonders. He can shun Ray-Ban, Reebok and prefer locally made under garments. He uses Debit Cards instead of Credit Cards. The billions of middle class Indian market use their own thinking based on their sincere feelings for their families.  

Deepak comes to the factory in a Ford but his father still comes in the old car. People love his father more than him. Deepak had tried to implement all his “imported management policies” in the factory. His father had given him the required space. Some were successful while others miserably failed.

Deepak wonders why things don’t work here. He has tried to implement most of the case studies that he has learned. He is impatient. Why India is so averse to change? Is there a physiological factor playing among the Indians? A change is required but why there is so much resistance?

What he fails to notice are the small meaningful energetic changes that keep taking place against seeming changelessness.

He forgets that small changes are much more powerful than big artificial ones. There is actually no resistance. How can one grapple and fight against something that has no resistance at all. So, no big changes can be brought about in India by copying something or somebody else. It is always a state of becoming not being. That is the ethos of the land called India.

Posted via email from dibyendu's posterous