Productivity and The Golden Goose

As I watched a TV program on livelihood of people in the mangrove areas of the Sundarbans in the Eastern Region of India, it made me realise how close they live with nature and how much they respect nature.  This is quite unlike in many other parts of the world where we do not respect nature.

The episode telecast was on a group of people who make a living by harvesting honey from large honeycombs in the area.  I was pleasantly surprised when they showed how these people pick up dead foliage, make few bundles of these dry foliage and then light up each one of them. They, then,  drive away the bees from the bee hive with the help of the smoke.  Then one person takes over the bee hive and cuts of portions that has most of the honey. He is always careful to leave behind a portion of the hive (typically close to 40%-50% of the hive) where there is lesser honey.  This is done so that the bees come back and can start re-building their hive instead of having to go elsewhere.  Once the person cuts part of the hive, the team offers a prayer thanking God and the Bees for the honey harvest which is providing them with a livelihood.  They then chant a prayer to the Bees to come back to their hive i.e. the part of the hive that has been left intact.

I have seen similar behaviour with the Indian fishermen in all the coastal regions. They go in small boats, fish using nets and then as they draw in their nets, they put the tiny and small fish back in to the sea/oceans.  When asked why, they say that the ocean is like the Golden Goose. "If we take out every tiny and small fish, it is like killing the goose.  We will be the losers in the long run."  They also offer prayers to the Goddess of the Oceans.

Compare this to the latest trawlers that companies use to fish. Yes, the catch per expedition is much more than what these fishermen get.  Yes, the yield per person is much more than what the fishermen get.  However, it is leaving the oceans barren.  The productivity is higher but the golden goose is getting killed.  These companies and businesses must pause and ensure that they make a living from nature but do not destroy it.

Coming closer to productivity from man, Fredrick Winslow Taylor did experiments in Industrial Engineering by trying to create the optimal shovel. He studied as to what should be the optimum size of a shovel so that we get the best productivity from a human shovelling coal.  In this study, he was clear to point out that beyond a certain size, it is always counterproductive.  I guess this principle applies to everything in life.  Beyond a particular point, economies of scale or productivity works counter productive.

Over the years, I have found that productivity in the back office business process industry is more about taking work out of the process and reducing headcount rather than just asking people to work harder.  Even here, beyond a certain point, if we do not re-engineer the process, take waste out and automate, we will not end up with productivity that is sustainable.

As the world goes through difficult times, leaders will be asked to give more productivity.  This is not only in companies but also in countries.  Leadership must pause and ensure that policies and decisions that are taken need to be done keeping in mind the long term sustenance of these decisions.  If they are driven by the quarterly results or the elections round the corner, there will be trade offs between the short term and the long term and this could end up with the killing of the Golden Goose.

Living down mistakes

I saw one of the headlines on a leading Indian TV News Channel - it stated that a politician's new home address was a cell (room) number in a jail as she was sentenced to jail in a corruption case.  As a society, we take people who have done acts that impact our society adversely and depending on the severity of impact, the punishment varies.  A jail sentence is less of a punishment but more of time given to the offender to reflect, reform and then come back to mainstream society.

What I have noticed is that we are not great at forgiving someone who has committed a crime and gone to jail.  In India (and I am not sure as to what the situation is in other parts of the world), a jail bird finds it very difficult to get a job if he says he has served a jail sentence. We, somehow, do not believe that the person has reflected or reformed. We do not believe that the person has lived down his/her mistake.

My manager once told me that leaders who show that they are people with no vices, infallible and nothing can be wrong about them are generally leaders with whom no one can relate to.  He said that leaders are only humans.  Every human is flawed and we try our best to hide these flaws.  The more we hide, the farther away we go from our teams.  I have observed and tested this for few years now and find this to be very true.

Everyone of us has done something that we would not like to share with anyone else.  By carrying such secrets, we are serving out jail sentences beyond what we would have got from our society.  It impacts us in ways that we do not know and hence, we tend to live with these secrets.

I would like to share a story of the impact of carrying secrets in our heads.  A professor was talking to his student.  He asked him to imagine that he has a glass of wine in his hand and that he has to hold up the hand for a minute. Nothing would happen if it is for a minute.  He said that if it was for 15 minutes, then the hand starts paining.  And, if it is for few hours, the hand would definitely freeze over.  He then said that we carry our thoughts and secrets for years.  What should be happening to the brain? Frightening to even imagine.

Why do we struggle to forgive?  We tend to judge ourselves by our intent and others by their deeds and words.  So, while we would like others to let us live down our mistakes, we are not all that forgiving.  Someone, once told me, "To err is human and to forgive is raising to the level of God."  I believe that to err and to forgive is human.  If we honestly internalize that we are all flawed, we will automatically forgive too.

Money and Career Decisions

I have seen many societies in the world that talk of money not being important in many of the decisions they make in life.  Yet, most of the decisions taken revolve around money in most societies.  Till the turn of the 20th Century, money was seen as a need but values such as honesty, integrity, generosity, etc. took precedence.  Not that we do not have these values now but we need to recognize that society has changed. What were luxuries are now necessities.  And to ensure that these necessities can be afforded, one needs money.

I see many people struggling when they talk of making job changes where compensation is their driver for a change in career.  This is more in the Baby Boomers Generation and to a large extent in Gen X.  Gen Y and the latest Web 2.0 generation also struggle but to a much lesser extent. 

I see leaders struggle because they have been talking of making career decisions based on role and not on money.  To me, it is a combination of factors.  Career decisions get taken mainly on the circumstances of one's personal life and many factors go in to this decision.  Factors could include a poor role, lack of clarity in the role, poor manager or leader, family circumstances not conducive, need for more money, etc.  Usually, these career decisions are not taken because of only one factor. There will be many and if you draw a common thread, money will figure in almost all of them.

I have seen staff working with me struggle to explain to me the money factor.  To make things easy, I normally get the money factor in to the conversation and tell them how important compensation is while making a decision and that people should not feel ashamed if that is the driving reason.  Once I make this premise clear, I have seen many people change their discussion and tell me how much their personal circumstances have changed and how the extra money is essential given their new and changed circumstances.  They are more willing to share as to how this new role in another company is able to meet their role aspirations and the increased monetary needs.

Why do I do this?  The mental stress that one goes through while planning to leave a job is enormous.  It is  not understood well at all.  This stress causes health issues, results in loss of focus at work, causes break down in communication and brings with it irritability and anger.  You always get the best out of a person when he/she is relaxed.  I bring in the money factor early in to the conversation so that the person does not have to struggle while talking to me. 

I would like to share an example of a very senior person who decided to move out of my team.  He had an excellent offer and had been making few trips out of town to finalise the offer.  He had been lying to me for weeks as to why he was applying for leave few times in short succession.  He hated himself for lying to me.  He was under stress. When I met him one day, I saw that his face was drawn, he was not looking me in the eye and he seemed very pre-occupied.  I walked up to him and asked him what happened. He told me how his personal circumstances at home were not great and he was under stress.  After few days he walked up to me and said that he wanted to resign. That he had a nice job.  He even pulled out his offer letter and showed it to me.  He explained at length as to how the role was just amazing and that he could not hope to get such a role if he stayed with me.  I quickly interjected and told him that the compensation was also great and that I could never match that.  When he started telling me it was not the driver, I told him that it is very important in the course of decision making. That there is nothing to feel ashamed about it.  Immediately, things changed. The pressure on his face just disappeared.  He talked at length and was much more relaxed.  We decided that it was best to part ways and happily so.

To me money is a commodity that is necessary to live today.  All questions such as "Does money buy happiness?", etc. while being relevant, need to be weighed carefully in the world that we live in today.  Money is a necessity and it is good to ensure that we earn enough of it so that we can meet our daily needs as well as save something for the rainy days and retirement.  Let us not treat it with disrespect or feel ashamed to talk of the need for money in our lives.  Again, our forefathers were smart in this. They created Goddess Lakshmi - The Goddess of Wealth. I believe that Goddess Lakshmi was created so that people respect wealth.  Let us treat money with respect.  If we can do this Goddess Lakshmi will visit us and stay with us at home. 

Leadership - Making a Positive Difference

There are many leaders who think they are different and indeed they are. Many of them do things differently.  Some of them do different things.  A true leader tries his best to make a positive difference in the lives of people who are around him/her and to those in his/her teams. There will be success sometimes and at times things will not work out exactly the way he/she wanted.  But, definitely, he/she would have tried his/her best.

I remember a story of a farmer who had bought a large corn field measuring hundreds of acres.  He had a problem. His field was filled with insects and so the yield was low.  He was rich and so he got in an aircraft to spray the field.  He quickly realised that while he could get rid of insects in his field, more insects were coming in from the neighbouring fields.  His neighbours were poor and could not afford this aerial spraying. So, they were struggling.  He quickly assessed the situation and decided to spray their fields too.  He did this for 3 years and during the 4th year, his neighbours came up to him and said that they he did not have to spray their fields as they could afford to do it themselves.  The farmer had made a huge difference to his neighbours. By helping them out of poverty, he had improved the yield in his fields significantly.

Every time we make a difference to some one in our lives, we end up enriching ourselves through the experience.  These experiences make us a true leader and these are the experiences that I call as "life experiences".

The recent uprising against corruption in India is an excellent example.  A leader, Anna Hazare, was supported by millions of people across India and because of that he forced the Government of the day to accept his demand to pass an Anti-Corruption Bill in the Parliament this year.  He started a fast unto death and little would he have realised that the support would be so overwhelming.  When it came, it consumed the country, the media and everything around it.  People realised that Anna Hazare was trying to make a positive difference for them and their future generations.  The support was immediate and immense.

The positive difference that a leader tries to bring about is something that the people he leads should not only see but also experience.  Unless they feel the difference, they will not accept the person as a leader.  I remember a very old Tamil Song in which the great leader MG Ramachandran sings (and I am translating this in to English), "The path that you visioned will vapourise as dreams, the words that you said will be forgotten.  Only the truth that people see and experience about you will live forever...."  So true.

Can you and I be an Anna Hazare and make a difference to millions?  It is necessary to make a true difference to just one more person in your lives.  If each of us can do that, we are leaders.  Try it, experience it and you will definitely understand what it is to make that difference to someone in their lives.  You will also see that Leadership has as much, if not more, of the heart than of the brain.

As I watched the two bees happily buzz by in my garden from one flower to another, I smiled and thought, "I am making a difference to these bees by having a lovely garden at home with so many flowers.  Does this too count in making that difference?"  The only answer that came to me was a resounding YES!!! 

Lessons from the Cricket World Cup Finals

It was great to see India win the Cricket World Cup 2011...after 28 years!!!  I really liked the match as it was very keenly competed and the game was played in its spirit.  Sri Lanka lost the match but the Sri Lankans won the hearts of millions because of their never say die attitude.

Personally, after watching the match and also hearing the comments from the young players, I culled out few lessons that will suit the Corporate World.  The comments I heard from Yuvraj Singh and Virat Kohli, "We played this match for Sachin and the Country", was an amazing learning.  Once there was an objective to win this game for the country and for someone who has played for this country for 21 years and was playing what could probably be his last World Cup Tournament, the whole team rallied around this objective.  So, a clear objective and one that is well articulated and understood can get a team to focus and go beyond the calling.  However, an objective alone is not enough. There must be a reason for each player to rally around that objective. There was pride here.  There was love for a team mate and the country.  All these made a huge difference.

The Captain, MS Dhoni, led from the front.  He played an innings that will be remembered in history as one of the best because it was under the most trying of circumstances.  With the top two batsmen gone when the score was 31, he watched two young players stabilise the innings. When one of them got out, he promoted himself in the batting order to come to the field. This would have been one of the most complex calls to take as the stakes were very high.  There were at least 2 other better batsmen but he decided that it was best that he walk out to steady the innings further and score at a brisk pace.  He spoke to the coach and to the team and walked out.  Clearly shows that he was leading from the front. He was not afraid to push for a change in the plan when the situation on the ground had changed.  He showed he was constantly reading the situation, looking for best alternatives and discussing with his team and the coach on the alternatives before changing course.  A leader needs to do this continuously.  Change, as everyone says, is the only constant.  A leader will not be able to anticipate all changes. He/she must continuously monitor changes and be fearless in taking suitable actions and decisions.  In this he must be collaborative enough to involve others in the decision but take accountability for the decisions.

Dhoni said something else during his interview which I thought was really interesting.  He said that since the team had won this match, many things get overlooked.  There were questions relating to why he played few players in the side and rested some.  All these would have been points for discussion, post mortem and criticism if India had lost the game.  As in this game, a leader takes decisions in the best interest of the company. He/she may not have all the data when he/she takes this decision.  Many of these will work and some will fail.  The leader must be willing to stand up and face the consequences of his wrong decisions.  He must have the courage to accept that some of his decisions went wrong.  Most importantly, those reviewing these decisions should look at the circumstance under which these decisions were taken before making their call/statements about the leader.  It must be understood by all that it is human to err and the leader is also only a human.  Only the person occupying the seat really understands the "heat" in that seat.

I saw something else that was pleasantly surprising. Usually, we see players wilting under pressure, losing their cool, not playing to the game plan and playing the game in their normal style without considering the situation they have walked in to.  This Indian side did not do that.  I saw youngsters keep their cool, not losing heart when two veterans fell cheaply in the game, change their game plan effectively when circumstances changed, played to the situation on the ground and won the game.  I also saw some phenomenal flexibility in the coach to help the captain take decisions based on the reading of the situation.  This team work was amazing to see and the team got the results that it sought.

Lastly, I must mention how graceful the losing Sri Lankan captain Sangakarra was.  He was proud of his teams' efforts and praised them for an amazing match. He said how well fought the match was.  He said he was disappointed with the result because his team lost but he praised India as the better team that day.  He was honest, open, showed his vulnerability and did not let his team down.  The mark of a true sportsman, captain and Leader!!!

The Human Vulture - The Impatient Bird

At 2.46 pm on 11th March, mother earth stretched out lazily, triggering off the worst deep sea earth quake that Japan has experienced in the last 100 years.  Measuring 8.9 on the Richter Scale she triggered off a tsunami with waves measuring 33 feet in height and traveling at a speed of 500 miles per hour.  She smashed in to the port city Sendai and shut down Japan's largest nuclear power stations' cooling systems.  This forced Japan to shut down 7 nuclear power reactors and release nuclear vapour in to the atmosphere. These vapours are causing radiation levels to be 1000 times the normal levels.   US Jets are bringing in chemicals to Japan to handle the heightened radiation levels. People living within a radius of 10 kilometers of the Fukushima Nuclear Plant are being evacuated.  Japan's Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, was pleading to his people to calm down and was personally visiting the Fukushima Nuclear Plant. Thousands of houses have collapsed, cars, boats and farm equipment have been thrown miles away by these giant waves.  Hundreds of fires have been set off.  Thousands are dead and 80,000 people are missing. The whole country is in a state of emergency.  Clearly, the scale of the disaster was sinking in and only a massive international effort can help Japan now. 

Amidst all this chaos, a business television news channel was interviewing a trader as to why the Japanese Yen had gained against the dollar. Clearly, there is a disaster in Japan and its currency is gaining strength instead of weakening.  This was not making sense. The trader said that Japanese Insurance Companies were unwinding their assets in the US and purchasing yen so that they could keep money ready to handle the claims that will hit them.  A tsunami was being set off in the financial markets of the world. 

The trader then said something that made me feel absolutely sick in the stomach (despite being a seasoned banker myself).  He said that this strengthening of the yen was a temporary phenomenon and that in the short and medium terms, the yen would weaken dramatically.  So, he was going to "short the yen" i.e. short sell the yen.  As the trader spoke of shorting the yen, the visuals that were being shown were those of the giant waves swallowing up the port city of Sendai, thousands of cars and boats being tossed around, firemen fighting the fires, chaos all around... lives being lost...and all that this trader could think off was how he could make money out of this disaster.

James Hadley Chase wrote a lovely book called "The Vulture is a Patient Bird".  The duty of the vulture is to help clean up the earth off carrion.  It is a very patient bird.  It preys on the dead.  Here, I was watching this trader prey on a country that was reeling under one of the worst natural disasters.  And worse, he had a smile..and as they continued to speak, I couldn't help but think, this human vulture preys on the living. It is not patient. To it, the lives of these millions of people on the other side of the earth did not mean anything so long as it got what it wanted.  Degeneration of the worst kind?

Gautam Buddha called this Greed. He said greed is one of the reasons for unhappiness in our world.  He said this almost 3000 years ago and his words hold true till date.  Greed for power, greed for wealth, greed for position, greed for dominance has today resulted in unhappiness right across the world. Look at what is happening in the middle east, in Europe, in many parts of Asia and the US.  People are unable to manage their wants and needs. This has triggered off different issues across the world causing untold misery.

I read an interesting article on the 2008 Global Financial Crisis being triggered off because of greed.  We don't seem to learn. Somehow this comes through as "who cares?".

Naoto san and the millions of Japanese impacted by this disaster are not worried as to where the Japanese Yen is in the currency market today.  As the hearts of millions of others across the world reach out to the families that are in the midst of this disaster, the human vultures continue to prey.  I only hope the television channels decide to report from the "heart" rather than from the "head".

Time out

In most of the games that we play, we have a concept of time out.  This is a time that is called out by the coach or the captain and the team takes few minutes out of the game they are playing, re-assesses the situation, thinks through what is happening to them at that point in time and decides what is their next course of action.  Have you been timed out in your work life? If you are beyond 35 years of age, most likely you would have been.  Most of us go through life without recognizing this and the question, "What am I doing with my life?" keeps coming up and we struggle to find answers.

While most of us get timed out in life, few of us understand it as such.  This is more prevalent when you are a high performer.  Till you are 35, you are managing smaller teams or an individual contributor. Your performance is driven purely by your actions. You either make it or don't.  And if you are a high performer, then, you have made it.  The organization is happy, your manager is very happy and so are you.  You are a manager or a senior manager and aspiring to become that executive - what they call as Director or Vice President.  A year goes by and your manager tells you that you need to wait a bit longer before you can become an executive like him/her.  Another year goes by and nothing happens and you are wondering, what this is all about.  Your manager is giving you the same excuse on having to wait.  Suddenly, you are wondering...is this all about merit or do they just want grey hair to appear all of a sudden.  Few more years go by and nothing really happens. You are frustrated, you have changed jobs few times, your salary has increased but that elusive Executive position just isn't turning up.  Life has timed you out!!!

The move up from being an individual contributor to a first time manager is probably one of the most complex and, most of the time, the most under-estimated step up.  From just managing your own outcomes, you are now managing the outcomes of few others.  If you are leading a team of 20, you are managing 20 different mindsets.  You must first assess if you have life experiences to manage different mindsets.  It has been one of the most difficult challenges for leaders to understand the readiness of such first time managers and set them up for success.

The move up from being a manager to an executive or a leader is again one of the most difficult jumps to make.  All of a sudden you are managing senior managers like yourself and so, while all the technical skill sets are needed, the ability to manage senior people needs a completely different mindset and a lot of maturity that comes with age and the life experiences.  Further, if you are working for a global organization, the complexity goes up multi fold because you are dealing with global teams, different points of views coming in from different countries and cultures, having to run at different speeds, having to operate at the 40,000 feet in one moment and come down to Ground Zero the next, having to accommodate the conflicting priorities of different teams and people, ability to manage effectively upwards, downwards and sidewards.  And the list goes on...

The organization, in all its wisdom, looks at a high performer like you and decides whether you have stepped up to become that executive or not and in majority of the cases, this step up happens only after you cross the magical age of 40 unless you are in a specialist function.  So, what do you do then? If life has timed you out, how should you react?

Organizations expect that people should have worked across regions, owned a P&L, done roles in functions like Finance/Risk/Operations/HR, led large cross-functional teams, worked in global teams,  worked across different customer segments and across different industries before considering the person for very senior general management roles or executive roles.  All this takes time and effort and each one of us should be willing to put in that effort over a sustained period of time.  Life experiences are so complicated that there will never be enough of them.  Every one of them is a learning experience and so senior leaders, being humans that they are, will make those mistakes even after years of experience.  However, the chances of these mistakes being really very expensive are lower than if they were asked to take these decisions when they were much younger.

Ask yourself the question - Do you deal with a given situation different now than how you would have dealt with it 5 or 10 years before?  In most cases, the answer will be yes.  The decision may be the same but the way we dealt with the situation will be different in most cases.  This is what life experience is and is probably the best teacher.

So, the next time you are feeling frustrated that you have stagnated, understand that this could be a timeout situation.  Pull yourself together, talk to your mentor and others in your organization, sketch out a plan for yourself, rotate around in different roles within the organization, be ready to travel and work in other regions, be ready to move out of your comfort zone and work in other functions - be that sales or a support function like Finance or HR.  Keep on re-skilling yourself.  Organizations are looking for well-rounded leaders - not in shape, but in mindset!!!