The Game Plan

Before the advent of the Indira Gandhi canal, Nachna in Jaisalmer district (Rajasthan) was considered a very “hard” posting. Nachna, in the middle of the Great Indian Thar Desert was always considered tough as water was scarce and in the summer the temperature often crossed the 50 degree Celsius mark. Food items included only millets and ghee (liquefied butter). Transportation was few and its only connectivity was with the main desert town -- Jaisalmer. There were only ten telephones in the hamlet which most of the time remained inoperative.

Arvind Mathur was in a fix. None of the staff were willing to go to Nachna. The vacancy position showed two vacant posts. How to motivate these staff to go to a “hard” station with no benefits to lure them.

Anil Kumar had been married for the last ten years. He has an eight year old daughter studying in a reputed school at Bangalore. Anil Kumar had recently been transferred to Jodhpur. He had an earlier posting in this set up during his initial career. Anil Kumar had worked in these places and is as comfortable as a local person would be. Anil Kumar voluntarily opted to go to Nachna.

Arvind Mathur heaved a sigh a relief. Anil Kumar is efficient and knows his job. Arvind Mathur gave him the liberty to form his own team members. Anil took charge of the Nachna unit. Two years passed. Everything went on smoothly.

Arvind Mathur wondered why Anil never took a vacation to visit his family stationed at Bangalore. It is purely a personal matter. Why should I worry?  Arvind thought.  One morning Anil turned up at Jodhpur and met Arvind Mathur.

Sir, you post me at Bangalore or else my wife will divorce me. He couldn’t keep the smile off of his face.  Arvind was shocked. Transferring individuals out of the set-up is not within his ambit. He can only recommend for a transfer to a particular place.

Arvind Mathur started to ponder. The conversations he had with Anil began to strike him again and again. How casually Anil told him that his wife would divorce him. Arvind knew Anil has some plans. Arvind set out his trusted staff to find out the actual truth.

Anil Kumar has a paramour in Nachna. He had become friendly during his first posting in the set-up. Due to cultural and caste differences Anil was not allowed to marry the girl of his choice. Anil had to marry as per his father’s choice. Anil’s marriage never took off. His wife remained unhappy.

What was Arvind suppose to do now? Re-unite Anil with his wife by posting him back to Bangalore. This would certainly unite a family and also pre-empt Anil from initiating a divorce from his wife thus making her guilty.  Or don’t post him anywhere and continue with the present situation.

Sitendu De is the author of this post.

Posted via email from Sparkling Insights

Management Upside Down - Sparkling Insights!

Rahul, a young Executive Director of a fast growing multi-national company startled by his nightmare broke into a cold sweat as he woke up.

What would happen to his vibrant flourishing business if the top management team who were ready to fly to Dubai for the annual sales conference in two days time died of a violent air crash? His global business would then come crashing like a pack of cards and there would be none to look after the vast wealth that has been created as he narrated his nightmare to me. 

"Why would that be?" I asked. 

"Isn't that obvious? All knowledge of running this company lies with these few chosen ones. Once they were gone wealth vanishes in no time" he replied emphatically. 

"But don't you think that sooner or later all of them would leave the scene anyway? What do you do then?" I quipped in response.

"Frankly I don't know. That has really kept me thinking. There are no Jack Welch or A M Naik who is determined to make his way up from the ranks. Don't know how to make even one?", Rahul voice trailed off pensively.

This story made me sit up and start thinking. Isn't this the same story for all companies all over the world? Aren't people fighting to find an answer to these deep questions on knowledge, leadership and organizations? What can be a possible solution to this business problem that has spread like an epidemic and refuses to let go of its iron grip on our lives?

Such difficult questions possibly can't be answered through a brilliant stroke of imagination. Many have tried without much success. To find an answer we would have to look at something deeper - the evolution of management from the early uncertain days of the industrial revolution to the present day where all time honored rules of management are headed for a grand collapse (Nature's Model). The clue lies there. 

This is how management always worked with minor and insignificant modifications here and there. 

It always started with a grand plan to make a profit. Don't suspect that I am against 'profit' or like to label it as a dirty word. Far from it! Profits are needed. It is blood of an organization. Anyway, to chalk out the grand plan a few old men (only now it is fashionable to include a few women too) sat together in a room called the board room to come up with a 'how to' list of making money from an idea. We called that strategy.

Once that was framed the next question that plagued these old souls was how the hell do we organize ourselves and operate? They then came up with exotic game plans, choc-a-block with funny rules and regulations, making the entire organization 'rigid' (if not frigid) 'air-tight' and 'water-proof' -- nothing can touch them, no secret can ever dream to escape, no employee can ever think of anything else but work, work and work...etc. They called it a 'system'.

With the system in place these grand old people heaved a sigh of relief. Half the job is done. Now we need some 'dedicated', 'loyal', 'trusted' servants (whoops! employees) to work their grand design called the system to their heart's content to churn out money. The model was no different to the 'factory model'. Pop in something and out pops something else from the other side of the machine.

Same was in business. So they carefully selected the 'servants' to work for them and just like selecting good machines they looked hard for the desired attributes for doing the back breaking jobs -- is he/she strong, healthy, good looking, has the right attitude??? (still couldn't figure out how they measure that), background, education blah blah blah... . They would take all pains just the way they would to pick the best variety of apples from the marketplace. It had to be rigorous since the 'chosen ones' like gladiators, would have to sweat it out for them in the next 2 to 3 decades.

But soon they found out that attributes of people change over time. They were not "behaving" like the machines they thought they got with so much rigor and patience. They started asking for things that weren't promised when they got in. That was something to worry about. What made them most worried was when they started thinking and suggesting and voicing their opinions on how to go about their jobs and perhaps how to do them better.

That wasn't good news to their old hardened ears. They have to stop them thinking. They are to be aligned to the goal of the organization. They are to be kept in line and on their toes. And they are to be occasionally whipped when they break rules or ranks to show who is the master and the lord that provides them their humble bread.

In comes the Human Resource Department, a sobriquet for the old fashioned Time Office and Personnel Department, whose only job was to keep employee behavior in check. Keep them in line. Indoctrinate them. Inject them with the lovely tunes of loyalty, feel good factor with a good day's job. Give them some butter if they do too well..... Spend time to correct the behavior of people not to say that a good amount of time, energy and resources went into managing work that consumed a large extent of people's productive time.

And what might happen when strategy, systems and behavior of people are all lined up? It would create work that produced goods and services of some value to thousands of customers. So a classic division was formed -- a small group of producers and an ever increasing group of consumers. More the consumers merrier the game became. All that  management had to do was to ensnare more and more consumers in their net and keep looking for more. The word was 'marketing'. 

This way of operating could be done for a pretty long time. All that was needed to keep this well structured machinery running was a pot of gold. Deeper the pockets better was the show which people thought would be perpetual in nature. At last management was able to create a perpetual machine that defied all known natural laws.

Did they? No. By 2008 everything that was so sacrosanct and held in high esteem started to disintegrate with the coming of the great recession. Big and seemingly invincible companies folded up. Unemployment kept rising. No new jobs could be created. Businesses faltered. And those that existed counted their days to doom.

The old way of functioning was definitely clumsy, complex, rigid and unmanageable that not only provided very little value to customers but also wasted a lot of energy in managing and keeping the system in order.

What traditional businesses failed to notice were the slow changes happening all around them in other spheres of human activities (Post Offices to #SM). Things were changing. And so did the nature of work. The fundamental change was consumers became producers and were blurring the line between producers and consumers. It happened to Post Offices, Schools, Publishing business, Consulting, Telephones, and was quickly spreading to all human activities in ways people would  have never imagined even a few years back.

The consumers created their own value independently and interacted and shared it with their network to create more value and consume it themselves at a price much less than the prevailing market price. The days of grand old institutions, middle men, dealers, publishers, advertisers were all but over.

In comes a new thinking and a new way to create and manage businesses and a lot of value  -- the answer to Rahul's nightmare.

The earlier model, basically static in nature and greatly determined by financial capital, was Strategy -- Systems -- Behavior -- Work -- Value.

In this model, Strategy informed the nature of work and the value that was created for the customer.

The new model is just the reverse of what we knew for so long. What happens when we reverse it? It becomes Value -- Work -- Behavior -- Systems -- Strategy. 

In this new model, 'Value' and 'Work' inform Strategy not the other way around. Therefore, it is more dependent on people including customers to participate, share and contribute their learning and knowledge in the economic process than being exclusively dependent on the strength of financial capital.

So, what might be the challenges for organizations to embrace the new way of working?

Some of these are:

1. How do we involve and engage customers and employees to participate in the 'value' creation process to create 'multiple values' instead of only focusing on the goal of generating profits (single value)?

2. How do we make 'work' observable and tractable from which everything else emerges?

3. How do we create a platform of emergent learning that spontaneously creates 'leaders' who co-produce wealth not spawn 'servants', 'managers' and 'bosses' who run the systems like mere cogs in the wheel?

Now that we have found the answer to Rahul's nightmare answers to these challenges would help him create simple yet intelligently superior and greatly adaptable organization that creates multiple values for the collective.

For Rahul his ghastly nightmares would be over. But he would now have more things to challenge his mind, which would surely be fun since he may now keep thinking while doing the new thing, learning and improvising as he goes along in his new journey.

He is well on his way creating history.

Wish him well!

But do ask me how history is being created.

 

Posted via email from dibyendu's posterous

The Power of 3 - Changes in Management Thinking.

This great story demonstrates a fundamental emergence in our lives. The old ways of thinking and managing simply wouldn't work any longer.

The 'science' and practice' of management as we know of it today were originally invented to solve two very important problems, which were:

a) How do we get ordinary folks do complicated and repetitive tasks to achieve a standard of efficiency and standardization to optimize profits?

b) How do we make our way through a complex web of processes to deliver goods and services to our clients? The complexity arose from scaling up of operations meant to generate ever increasing volume of goods and services that could provide more profits and subdue competitors.

In order to do that we created lot many logical rules and regulations. The number of rules increased with the degree of operational complexity. Then we trained and made people follow those rules to achieve the magic numbers that could produce more profits that are constantly under squeeze. 

With our present thinking we understand that such management thinking does not work well beyond a certain degree of complexity. Why is that?

So far we focused on objects that played any role within business cycles of production and consumption. Sometimes we focused on machines while at other times we focused on people or customers. And yet on some other occasion we forced our attention onto suppliers and quality or we looked at increasing inventory levels. We never quite saw the whole in one breath. What we clearly missed out was to observe the relationships between objects in a given context. What we chose to do instead was to focus wholeheartedly on objects and their functions and properties without taking into consideration the context in which they operated. We failed to realize the importance of interdependent relationships between all things that simultanteously arise and abate in the system in a "wholistic" manner.

What happens when we fail to see relationships?

Let us take two objects that are related to each other. Then the possible relationships that can exist between them are four [2 to the power 2 gives us 4]. As we keep increasing the number of related objects it keeps following the same power law [2 to the power of n, where n = the number of related objects].

It is then easy to imagine the exponential rise in the number of possible relationships as the system becomes more and more complex. How can such exponential behavior be controlled and regulated by a set of linear rules and regulations? Since that is clearly not possible to do so it exposes the unscientific nature of our so called 'scientific' management thinking.  

This flaw is clearly depicted in the video. As the number of cars increased along with the rise in the number of pedestrians and cyclists the system soon reached a critical point of complexity beyond which it was not possible to regulate the traffic flow, reduce the number of traffic jams and keep accidents in check. Even the logic of operating traffic lights represents a part of the growing rules and regulations to contain the menace of slowing traffic, snarling jams and terrible accidents without much success ofcourse.

So, what did the new management thinking do? They drastically reduced the number of rules and regulations to one simple rule - "give way to pedestrians and cyclists first". The result of such a brilliant move is amply demonstrated in the video.

What lessons management can learn from this? Probably these:

1. As the system becomes more and more complex reduce the complexity of the jobs ordinary folks are called on to do in all possible ways. One of the simplest way to do that is to reduce the number of irrelevant rules and regulations that bind and blind people from performing better. Forcing people to keep their eyes on so many rules is enough to make anyone crazy and make mistakes. For example, by simply enabling drivers not to pay any attention to the traffic signals and policemen but to keep in mind one simple rule greatly simplified their job of driving safely. This then left the drivers free to focus on their goals without getting distracted by a host of unrelated issues. Ease of traffic flow, reduction of jams and elimination of accidents are few of the by-products of making jobs easier and free of unnecessary clutter. 

2. Redesign the system so as to reduce the number of relationships one has to negotiate in order to achieve the desired results. This was done by redesigning the roads at critical traffic intersections.  By reducing the total number of relationships within a system we can easily convert complex processes to much simpler ones. 

3. Managers are then left to keep healthy communications going within the system and focus their attention to fine tune the existing relationships and also think of simplifying the processes further through redesign.

Aren't these three universal management lessons simple enough?

Let me know what you think.

Posted via email from dibyendu's posterous