Dabbawallas to Teach Six Sigma Precision

From a report in the TOI:
Gangaram Talekar and Raghunath Medge - two dabbawllas from Mumbai conducted a three day course in February for 500 executives and 1500 non-executives of Bhilai steel plant. The dabbawallas, who have earned the internationally acclaimed Six Sigma rating from Forbes magazine - making just one error in every 16 million transaction, taught the steel plant workers "accuracy, precision and delivering near perfect services and products".

The workshop, according to a steel plant official was an attempt to teach workers how the dabbawalla system worked and how their experiences could be utilised to reorient the steel plant's organisational hierarchy.

I was actually pleasantly surprised to learn that the two Mumbai dabbawallas have been delivering lectures at premier institutes like the IIMs, CII conferences, Symbiosis institutes, WTC, for the last six years!

Building Profits by Putting People First

“All workplace practices should be evaluated by a simple criterion: Do they convey and create trust, or do they signify distrust and destroy trust and respect among people?”
— Jeffrey Pfeffer, in his book,
The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First

If you used this simple test for trust in your own organization, how well would you fare?

Making Sales Reporting Rewarding for Field Staff

Non-compliance of field reporting norms by the field staff stems, I believe, from the management’s inability to secure their buy in. Reason - the disconnect between stated strategy and the activity indicators used in the formats. One of the functions of a reporting system is to drive desired behaviors and outcomes. If the reporting formats contain badly thought out indicators, salespersons become cynical ( if not confused!) and the system is likely to be manipulated.

Read more....

Of Breaking Rules and Broken Windows

Rudolf Giulani delivered the Sir Dorab Tata Memorial Lecture in Mumbai recently and taught the city a thing or two about leadership. Giulani's claim to fame (and rightly so!) is that as the mayor of New York, he got the city back on its feet after 9/11. Some of his thoughts:

Leadership can be at all levels - not necessarily at the top
It is not essentially the leader who always exhibits leadership says Giulani - it is a virtue that common men too exhibit when the situation calls. When the planes hit the Twin Towers in the morning, Steven Sillar, a fireman was off-duty, yet, he ran three miles against the fleeing crowds and traffic towards the inferno. He rescued many who were trapped in the burning buildings - but in the process lost his.

Think innovatively
Giulani was six miles away when the planes hit. He broke all rules of convential thinking to rush to the spot of the inferno, taking with him all the crucial heads of departments that ran New York. What followed was crisis management that swiftly united various wings of the city - an enduring method of facing an unexpected situation.

Prepare relentlessly for eventualities
Giulani was the butt of unkind American jokes when he initiated crisis management drills. Firemen, paramedics, police and others would periodically enact disaster management rehersals that critics interpreted as paranoia. On September 11, despite the scale of the tragedy, the drills may have contained the damage. "It is just a process of relentless preparation," says Giulani "the unanticipated will still spring up, but at least you will make fewer mistakes."

Fix the small things and the big things will take care of themselves
His Broken Windows Theory was one of his most aggressive ideas that met with wide resentment. Giulani beleves that controlling small signs of neglect (broken windows) and low level offensives will result in restricting the growth of more serious crimes. He went after the pettiest of criminals , made an example of them, and in the bargain reduced crime rates in New York by as much as 70%!