Are you encouraging innovation in your company?

Yesterday my friend Shiva texted me the following joke:

Teacher: What is half of 8?

Student: Depends sir, if  cut horizontally into half, then its '0' and if vertically it is '8'!

The teacher fainted.

Researchers at the Wolverhampton University looking for the world's oldest jokes have found that jokes ancient and modern shared “a willingness to deal with taboos and a degree of rebellion.” Much the way the student did - no wonder the teacher fainted! 

Innovation like jokes, also requires a willingness to deal with taboos (out-of-the-box thinking) and a streak of rebellion (an ability to take risk). However, no innovation can be called an innovation unless its implemented because, as the graphic below shows, Implementation = Profits and Profits fuel Innovation. An unimplemented innovation remains a mere idea generating zero profit, instead it reduces the time spent on generating and vetting it as cost to the company.

Source: http://www.jpb.com/innovation/index.php

Recently, I happened to facilitate a team of key managers from an engineering company which was one of the oldest in its line of business, but getting battered by the competition. The MD wanted me to help them change their way of doing things. At one of the sessions the MD observed that one of the reasons the company was lagging behind was that few, if any, innovations were happening in the company. Based on this observation, we decided to form a cross-functional team that would work exclusively on innovation projects. However, a few months into the project, the MD suddenly decided that  as it was nearing the end of the sales year, all innovation projects were to be shelved and everyone was to focus only on completing the target. The Innovation projects went out of the window, and the last I knew, they have not been revived either.

The MD may have had his reasons for doing what he did, but imagine the consequences of his decision on his team. If  innovation was be a priority for the company, then the leader should have been communicating this message to his team in all possible ways. In this case, by taking a so called break on the innovation projects, he had sent a message to his team that the projects weren't important enough, generating sales was.

Change management requires several tasks to be done simultaneously. It is therefore very important that leaders drill into their managers that all change management tasks need to be done in addition to their day-to-day tasks. Not in exclusion, or one instead of another.

As the graphic above shows, successful implementation of innovation projects need to be powered by management. By taking his eyes off the "innovation ball", the MD had sent a silent message to his team about where his priorities lay.

PS If you are interested in creativity and innovation, you will find Jeffrey Baumgartner's website http://www.jpb.com//index.php very useful:

The checklist for change

Every evening for going to the gym, I fill my gym bag with two towels, a change of clothes, shoes, socks, and a bottle of drinking water. Every so often, I forget one or the other and have to either do a sweaty  workout (forgotten towel), or miss out on the steam and bath (forgotten bath towel). Now, to save me from the miseries,  I have put up a sticky note on the cupboard door with a checklist of all the things to be carried in the gym bag.

I am not particularly fond of checklists and tend to rely excessively on my memory - unreliable though it is. But reading Atul Gawande's book, The Checklist Manifesto, has been the trigger for change. The book’s main point is simple: no matter how expert you may be, well-designed check lists can improve outcomes. Checklists help foster communication, which in turn lead to teamwork. In a world of complex surgeries, there are so many details to focus on, it’s easy for errors to happen. Often  surgeons have to focus on their own responsibilities and trust that their colleagues are taking care of theirs. The checklist brings them all back to the same page; if nobody can proceed until it’s confirmed that a particular task has been performed, they’re forced to check in with each other. A BBC programme the other day had a doctor from a hospital in the UK recounting his experience of using the checklist. There were times, he said, when a surgeon forgot a swab inside a patient and risking his life considerably. Now, taking a count of the number of surgical swabs prior to, and post the operation, such mishaps have been completely eliminated. In the process, saving many a life - if not a malpractice suit! Even a simple thing like each person on the surgical team introducing himself/herself  to the others, has saved precious moments of time when a patient's life hung by a slender thread!

Personally, I have found the checklist a great tool in my change management projects. Such projects tend to be complex because you are not sure where and how exactly to begin the process. The checklist brings in the much required structure and rigor, providing clarity and saving me much time in laying out the road map for the project.

I have found the resources at ProSci BPR Online Learning Centre  particularly useful. Registering on the site makes you eligible for free tutorials and there are also several change management checklist you can download and use. Steve Banhegyi also has a very useful set of Leadership Checklists you can make use of.

Importance of values in our personal and professional lives

Becoming a leader, says Warren Bennis the leadership guru, is if not identical, similar to becoming a fully integrated human being. Leadership, says Bennis is about self awareness, as well as being aware of the effect of others. I have experienced the truth of Bennis' observation in my coaching practice where I adopt the 'whole person' approach.

A man they say is the sum of his parts and in the whole person model, we call these parts

1. The domain of self management
2. The domain of people management and
3. The domain of organization management

In my experience,  the best outcomes happen when we focus on the first, i.e. the domain of self management. This domain deals with values, attitudes, beliefs and emotional intelligence - the building blocks of self awareness. Once self awareness happens, it becomes much easier to deal with one's relationships and environment (aka organization). Of all the elements in the self management domain, I find working on  values  to be the most useful in getting a handle on one self. Unfortunately however, I find that values in the minds of most business leaders are something which are either too abstract, or thought to be  irrelevant. Why are values so important? 

Jack Welch's definition of values brings out their importance in the organizational context, as well as describes them best.  Values according to Welch, are just behaviors – specific, nitty-gritty, and so descriptive they leave little to the imagination. People must be able to use them as marching orders because they are the how of the mission, the means to the end -- winning. In other words, values are an organization's formula for winning in business. In fact, Welch thought values to be so important, that he developed a matrix of 4 types of managers -  those who lived by their values and those who didn't. Those who lived by them, could continue in his organization and those who did not, were summarily fired!

Thus managers falling in the Q2 and Q3 category, were to be fired, those in Q4 were to be coached and the ones in Q1 were considered invaluable. So invaluable,  that they were to be "handcuffed, making sure they did not leave the company for the next five years!"

Given this understanding and critical importance of values, it is not hard to understand the importance of their role in our personal lives too. Values are our personal formula to winning in life, and inventorying of our values gives us a deep insight into the moorings of our aspirations, and help us immensely in carving a solid goal plan to achieve them.

Here is what Mr A, the MD of a large chain of hospitals, wrote to me after  doing one such exercise,

" ...the coaching process that I went through with you was extremely useful in helping me to understand myself. It helped me to focus myself for the first time of the direction that I always wanted to take and it helped me to make a commitment to myself.  I am now very aware when I take any action as I go along and do question whether the action and outcomes are in sync with the goals that I set for myself."

On Humility

Recently at meeting with an HR head, the conversation veered to the subject of leadership and Jim Collins' take on it - specifically about his concept of  the Level 5 hierarchy of Leadership.

According to Collins,  Level 5 leadership is about humility and fierce resolve. These leaders manifest humility by routinely crediting others, the external factors and good luck with their companies success.But when results are poor they blame themselves.

However, the HR head thought differently. He believed there was no way that humility could be an essential ingredient to success as a leader. Though he did not say so explicitly, he probably meant that success as a leader breeds more arrogance than humility and is not necessarily a deterrent. So firm was in this belief, that he said he intended to do a PhD on the subject and prove Collins wrong! I daresay this observation and conviction left me bemused.

Soon after the meeting with the HR head, I came across an interesting insight on humility by Clayton M. Christiansen, the professor of Business Admin at Harvard University in the July-August issue of the HBR.. The professor had been invited to speak to the Class of 2010, because the financial meltdown had forced the students to recalibrate their careers in view of the changed business world they would be entering. In his talk, Professor Christiansen's  touched upon the importance of humility in the life of a successful leader. 

The professor began by asking all the students to describe the most humble person they knew. One characteristic of these humble people stood out: They had a high level of self-esteem. They knew who they were. The students also decided that humility was defined not by self deprecating behaviour or attitudes but by the self-esteem with which you regard others. "Good behaviour flows naturally from that kind of humility....Generally, you can be humble only if you feel good about yourself - and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves too."

The HR head's take on humility had left me bemused  and wondering about the importance of humility in the success of a leader. The article helped me to place humility in context and realize the importance of  Jim Collins' findings of the attributes of a successful leader.

The theoretical aspects to Manmohan Singh's gut feel

At a recent lecture, to a question whether he was guided by theoretical reasoning as against gut feel, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh responded, " I have no definitive answer to your question whether I am guided by theoretical reasoning as against gut instinct"

He went on to qualify his statement by saying "Everybody who is in politics and seeks to influence economic policy and history has some notion about what is workable and feasible. He must have some theoretical perspective while formulating views. Whether it is good or bad, " said the good doctor, "will be judged by history."

A definitive theoretical reasoning, and the answer to Dr Singh's uncertainty lies in the Kolbs Learning Model. According to Kolb "learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping experience and transforming it." Let us look at some of the characteristics of experiential learning and see how they apply to the PM: 

• Learning is a continuous process grounded in experience.The Economic Times headlined the story with "Singh gets politician's tone" So the PM (in the eyes of the all-powerful media) has certainly learned well from his experiences!
• Learning requires the resolution of conflicts between dialectically opposed modes of adaptation to the world (learning is by its very nature full of tension). Dr Singh, who attained renown as an academician and a man most comfortable in the rarefied world of economic theories, was suddenly thrown into the hurly-burly of Indian politics. His growth as a politician called for his balancing what his heart and mind told him was good for the country, with the steep political cost it would entail. Dr Singh appears to have managed the tensions well - witness the passing of the nuclear deal in Parliament which meant his party had to make deals with unsavory political parties and elements. 
• Learning is a holistic process of adaptation to the world. From his comments and recent actions, the process of the PMs adaptation to the world of politics may not be complete, but he has adapted - and he has adapted well. (see above).

Based on the above characteristics, Kolb proposed a four stage learning cycle, which looks like this:

 This cycle gives rise to two continuum;

• The Processing Continuum: Our approach to a task, such as preferring to learn by doing or watching (the Active experimentation-Reflective observation axis)
• The Perception Continuum: Our emotional response, such as preferring to learn by thinking or feeling (the Abstract conceptualization-Concrete experience axis(

The PM's comment that one must have a "theoretical perspective while formulating views" clearly indicates his tilt toward the Perception continuum. As a man of compassion and learning coupled with his concrete experiences as the PM of a chaotic developing nation, does his statement at the lecture in Malaysia, indicate his coming of age as a politcian?

Time will tell.

The importance of social media to organizations

Yesterday was at a seminar hosted by SHRM on Social Networking is changing the way people manage their careers and organizations. The panelists; Mahesh Murty of Pinstorm, and Rajeev Dingra of WatConsult, expressed balanced views on both the upside and downside of the use, as well as the non-use, of social networking within organizations.

Mahesh described his company's use of two metrics, the Desirability Index (DI) and the Engagement Matrix. The first metric, the DI, was directly proportional to the number of times the company's name appeared in search results, and therefore indicated a prospective employee's interest in it. By inference, it served as a barometer to the company's popularity as an employer. An event like the publishing of a book Employees First Customers Second by Vineet Nayar, the CEO of HCL, propelled the DI of the company northwards, indicating its rise in rankings as an employer of choice.

On the other hand, the second metric, the EI, tracked and analyzed what people were talking about the company on various social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Social media have the power to transmit any view, either good or bad, extremely fast across the globe and therefore a company needs to be highly alert to what kind of conversations are going on about it. Prompt action in such matters as adverse reports about the company's products or services can help avert disastrous consequences. Obviously, both these metrics are critical in a company's recruitment efforts as well as, sales growth, and need to be monitred closely.

Rajiv on the other hand made the important point about how employers need to track what their employees are talking about the company on the social media networks.  Most importantly, Rajiv explained, used the right way, these networks can serve to alert employers about the gripes and complaints their employees are making on various company related matters. Employers responding promptly and sensitively to such feedback would be seen as caring employers, making social media powerful culture building tools..

A lively interaction with the audience by both panelists followed, which made the event even more interesting.

The Buddha's Eight Fold Path to Personal Success

The power of coaching lies in its individualization to the client needs.The coach needs to understand the coachee; his personality, his needs as well as his expectations. Having understood this, the coach then proceeds to create a customized approach to help the client move from where he is, to where he wants to be.

This will become clear from my experience with a client of mine. After having successfully managed the international interests of his family, he had handed over the reins to his brothers, and had taken to concentrating on investments and charity. He ran a well-managed charitable hospital for the poor in India, and also did a lot of good work in an African country  - his way of giving back to a country which was the source of all his wealth. 

For our first meeting, he invited me to London, where we had week-long coaching sessions. In his well-appointed office (he had the queen as neighbor!), hung a large portrait of Shiva and he always attributed everything that happened in his life to "the good Lord's wishes". Having observed this side of him, I began to think of ways to use this spiritual trait to hasten him towards the achievement of  the goals he had set for himself. The result was a worksheet - The Eightfold Path to Personal Success.

 Using the Buddha's Eightfold Noble Path as a template, I modified his eight original Right Paths

Source: http://brian.hoffert.faculty.noctrl.edu/HST330/13.IndianBuddhism.html

to Appropriate Paths to render them more practical to practice to make them look like this;

1. Appropriate Understanding
2. Appropriate Speech
3. Appropriate Livelihood 
4. Appropriate Concentration 
5. Appropriate Mindfulness 
6. Appropriate Effort  
7. Appropriate Action and 
8.  Appropriate Intention

I presented the worksheet to the client at our next session, telling him to read, contemplate and interpret the eight paths in his own life situations and implement them. The client was greatly impressed, and kept asking me where I got it from.

"From the Buddha," I replied. And I wasn't far from the truth. With the Buddha's blessings, the client benefited significantly from the contemporary rendering of his Eight Fold Path.

If you too wish to use the worksheet to help you carve your path to personal success, write to me and I'll send you a copy.

Why is the practice of leadership difficult?

More than 2,500 years ago, Sun Tsu, in his The Art of War, advised military leaders to "Know the enemy." In WW II, the German general Erwin Rommel did it so well, that he came within an inch of hammering the Allied British forces. On the other side of the enemy lines, the commander of the gun battery on the Dover cliffs knew his enemy too! Every night, during the war, a German boat from the other side of the channel would travel up the straits on a reconnaissance mission. The commander, knowing the Germanic trait of being methodical and disciplined, watched for a pattern to emerge. He soon realized that the boat would come around exactly at 10p.m. He would therefore set up his guns and be ready and waiting, and when it hove  into view - he would just blast it away!

So then, can the knowledge of military history and strategies, along with the study of Sun Tsu's Art of War and other writings on leadership, lead one to becoming a successful leader? Well yes, but only partly. 

The reason? Leadership is  a complex phenomenon.

Being a leader requires heavy lifting!

 But just how complex? Atul Gawande in his book, The Checklist Manifesto, describes 3 levels of complexity;

• At Level 1 are simple problems like baking a cake, you master the recipe, and you are ensured success.
• At Level 2 are complicated problems like sending a rocket to the moon. The special expertise, once learned, becomes replicable.
• At Level 3 are complex problems such as raising a child. Since every child is unique, outcomes are uncertain.

Leadership shares it complexity with parenting. Just as every child is unique, every leadership situation too is unique. And therefore, even though reams and reams have been written, researched and studied about the subject of leadership, its practice continues to create uneven outcomes.

Given the complexities of leading a business , business leaders have found a CEO coach to be a useful help in becoming better leaders. A coach can help leaders unravel the complexities, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and make the knowledge work to their advantage. As one of the business leaders I was coaching remarked," Uday,  after I have started  practicing my coaching commitments, I find my employees have a greater respect for me."

A respect born purely out of understanding and successfully working on his leadership potential.

Indian firms losing leaders!

There is worrying report in yesterday's Hindustan Times, a B-school study shows that there is a serious downfall of leadership in Indian companies.

The findings of the study, conducted by Pune's Symbiosis indicate that in the past two years, a lot of people in leadership roles at all levels, have either switched jobs or been laid off. When such roles are offered to existing employees, they find excuses to reject the offer. The reason? Lack of investment  by Indian companies in grooming them to become leaders and bringing in people from outside to fill leadership roles.As a direct result of their neglect of developing and investing in the potential of their own employee, they find themselves low on confidence in taking on leadership roles.

According to Mr K.S. Subramanian, the director of Symbiosis, neglecting to groom employees to become leaders results in them display  'stopping behaviour' where their mindset stops growth. "The self awareness to rise up the ranks is missing," says the director.

As an Executive/CEO coach, I have noticed this neglect of grooming employees for leadership roles at first hand. A few companies who do invest, do so on the conduct of training programs, the objectives and design of which are little related to leadership grooming.

As an Executive/CEO coach, my prime objective is to build my client's self awareness by offering a mirror to himself . I do this by initiating the coaching process with a focus on Leading the Self. Only after this do I move on to the other two leadership domains - Leading the People and Leading the Organization. This inside-out approach proves extremely valuable in enlarging the self-awareness of clients, and helps them engage better with their external world .

One of my clients after a coaching session, said to me, "Uday I realize now that I have been spending only 0.5% of my time on my most important priority - communicating my vision to my team!" 

Imagine what that one single insight can do to a leaders effectiveness!

How good are you at reading the pulse of your employees?

In his book, author Alfie Kohn, relates an interesting tale of an elderly man who had endured the insults of a crowd of 10-year-olds every day as they passed his house on the way home from school.One afternoon, after listening to another round of jeers about how ugly and bald he was, the man came up with a plan. He met the children on his lawn the following Monday and announced that anyone who came back the following day and shouted rude comments about him would receive a dollar. Amazed and excited, they showed up even earlier on Tuesday, hollering epithets for all they were worth.

How to create a great workplace

Building a great workplace is both a strategic decision and a moral one. But, a great workplace is not born out of an accidental confluence of motivated workers, bountiful benefits, and dogs in the office. They are created by purposeful leaders. Inc. magazine in a recent issue interviewed two such leaders, Ken Lehman and Yvonne Chouinard to get their views on how they made their organizations great places to work. 

Lehman's views are particularly interesting, as he explains how he sees Maslow's hierarchy as a cake at the bottom and frosting at the top - an ascending order of employee needs. According to Lehman, the bottom level which is fulfilling Physiological Needs,  is just to do with the paycheque. The next, the level of Safety Needs or security and protection, can be fulfilled by providing an emotionally safe environment. Lehman cites the example of his company which provided physical safety measures since it had a lot of heavy equipment and emotional safety by keeping the place free of bullying and harassment. The next level of Social Needs - or the need for a sense of belonging is creating the feeling that the workplace is like a family. The top level - Self Actualization is offered by providing employees opportunities to be creative and solve problems.

I thought this was a pretty innovative way of using the Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a template for creating employee initiatives and rewards.

From managing to leading

There are three types of work* that get done in an organization:


1. Transactional work such as administrative and order taking, which benefits individuals


2. Tactical work which is solution focused and benefits employee workgroups


3. Strategic work which is long-term in nature and is


       a. Linked to one or more business goals


       b. Solution-neutral in initial stages


       c. Requires multiple solutions or tactics to be implemented


       d. Benefits  business units and perhaps the entire enterprise

 The emphasis on each type of work shifts as executives rise to become managers and then leaders. While executives are focused on the Transactional, the emphasis of activities shift to more of the Tactical when he becomes a manager. And finally, when he rises to the leadership position, his focus move strategic activities which are long-term in nature.

The activities also define the evolution of  an executive to a leader. However in reality, and more so with entrepreneurs, the nature of activities are more often than not, restricted to the first two - the Transactional and the Tactical. Why is this so? In my experience with my clients, it is because the entrepreneur/leader does not want to move away  from the activities which he likes to do, or else finds himself comfortable doing. There is the risk of failure lurking somewhere in his mind.

Leaders could take a lesson from the leadership style of Kumaramangalam Birla. He leaves all day-to-day operations to his professional managers and focuses only on Strategic thinking and activities.Except when the occasion demands - which is when he has to prove a point, or show his people that something they believe cannot be done, can be done. As happened when Birla overruled his managers  and took the risky decision to buy Novelis for $6billion. Since the decision was his, he took it upon himself to prove to his managers that it was right. 

The Economic Times has a very interesting  account of the turnaround story

*Source: Robinson, D. G., & Robinson, J. C. (2005). Strategic business partner: Aligning people strategies with business goals. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Do we really need managers?

Umpteen books have been published on management, a whole bunch of management gurus and management consultants have held forth on it, and management schools have built courses around it. But the question remains in peoples' minds - what do managers really do, and a more important question, do we really need them?

Well here is the answer in defense of middle  management . Also check out the link in the article which will lead you to a very interesting new World Bank-Stanford study.

After you have downloaded it, don't forget to check out the Appendix. Apart from Table 2 (page 44) which provides a list of 38 management practices it also has other resources you may find useful.

The evolution of a leader

There are three types of work which get done in an organization:

1. Transactional work such as; Administrative and Order taking, and which benefits individuals.
2. Tactical work which is  Solution focused and benefits employee work groups.
3. Strategic, or long term work which is:
• Linked to one or more business goals
• Solution-neutral in early stages
• Requires multiple solutions or tactics to be implemented
• benefits business units or perhaps the entire enterprise

The emphasis of an individual on each type of work shifts as he rises from an executive position to a managers position and finally becomes a leader. While executives are focused on the Transactional, the emphasis of activities shift to more of the Tactical when he becomes a manager. And finally, when he rises to the leadership position, his focus moves to strategic activities which are long-term in nature.

The activities define the evolution of  an executive to a leader. However what happens, and this is more so with entrepreneurs, the nature of activities are more often than not, restricted to the first two - the Transactional and the Tactical. Why is this so? In my experience with my clients, it is because the entrepreneur/leader does not want to move away  from the activities which he likes to do, or else finds himself comfortable doing. There is the risk of failure lurking somewhere in his mind.

Leaders could take a lesson from the leadership style of Kumaramangalam Birla. He leaves all day-to-day operations to his professional managers and focuses only on Strategic thinking and activities. Except when the occasion demands - which is when he has to prove a point, or show his people that something they believe cannot be done, can be done. As happened when Birla overruled his managers  and took the risky decision to buy Novelis for $6billion. Since the decision was his, he took it upon himself to prove to his managers that it was right. 

The Economic Times has a very interesting  account of the turnaround story

The Thief of Time

The recent crisis of the euro was exacerbated by the German government's dithering, and the decline of the American industry exemplified by the bankruptcy of GM, was due in part to executives' penchant for delaying decisions. Closer home, I used to coach a client who had a yen for delaying decisions - postponing important decisions on one pretext or another. The perplexing thing about procrastination is that although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn't make people happy. And that made me wonder what caused people (including me) sit on important - and not so important, decisions.

Until recently that is, when I chanced on this review of the book "The Thief of Time" edited by Chrisoula Andreou and Mark D.White in the New Yorker.

Many explanations have been offered as to why we willingly defer something even though we expect the delay to make us worse off. The one with which most contributors to the book agree is to do with our relationship with time. Procrastinators are able to make rational choices when they are thinking of the future, but, as the present gets closer, short-term considerations overwhelm their long-term goals.

Another is ignorance - a case of "the planning fallacy". Procrastinators fail to take into account the time it has taken them to complete similar projects in the past and partly because they rely on everything going smoothly without any accidents or problems.

Both the above cannot be the whole story and a fuller explanation offered by the essayists is to do with our attitudes. General McClellan, a Union army general during the American Civil War and 'one of the greatest procrastinators of all time(!)", is a perfect example of this. Union General-in-Chief Henry Halleck writing about him said, "there is an immobility here that exceeds all that any man can conceive of. It requires the lever of Archimedes to move this inert mass." McClellan's "immobility" highlights several classic reasons we procrastinate. The general seemed to have been unsure he could do anything and was always cribbing to Lincoln about the lack of resources - whether troops or arms. Procrastinators, create conditions that make success impossible, a reflex that creates a vicious cycle and often succumb to perfectionism.

So how do we overcome ourselves of procrastination? The book suggests the use of External Aids (perhaps a coach who holds you accountable?) and the use of Reframing - dividing projects into smaller, more defined tasks.

Or perhaps you could do a variation on the the even more radical method employed by Victor Hugo. He would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he'd be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing!