We talked about WHAT in earlier post Challenges in Retaining Leadership. Having discussed Why and What, logical next step is to talk about HOW?
Let’s take a moment and look at logic of focusing on “Bouquet of Values and skills”. Given our Big Y (goal), the Critical Xs (key drivers) naturally are behaviour and processes impacting values and skill.
“Eighty-five percent of the reasons for failure to meet customer expectations are related to efficiencies in systems and process… rather than the employee. The role of management is to change the process rather than badgering individuals to do better.” – W. Edwards Deming
Answer to How is HOW!! Humane approach to being Objectively Worldly-wise.
Humane Approach
Embracing your organization’s humanity
will move your company from the mindless management of numbers to the creation
of customer and employee value, which ultimately will make your shareholders —
the real ones who care about long-term performance — happy, as well. Companies
can achieve this by accomplishing three things: First, they should spend more
time, energy, and resources to find out what their customers really want.
Second, they need to do a better job of treating their employees as people who
need to be nurtured, not costs that need to be kept in check. Third, they need
a motivating purpose besides the achievement of financial goals. SOURCE: Resolve to Make Your Business Human
Again by Scott Anthony
Critical component to Humane Approach
is an organizational culture supportive of owning
mistakes, not merely tolerant of mistakes. We consistently hear “To err is
human and to forgive is divine”. We forget to share, let’s start by being
human, own up mistake and earn forgiveness, before we expect others to be
divine. Leaders own up mistakes, they say “buck stops here”. They neither
believe in entitlement nor finding someone to blame.
Competition
as Inspiration,
once we start seeing competitors as inspiration instead of enemies. Our
communication, expected behaviors, rewards and recognition strategy undergoes a
complete change for positive. The rhetorical statements, over zealousness and
unnecessary aggression give way to desire for continuous improvement, sense of
fulfillment and enjoyment. We spend so much time and resources in improving
processes to remove non value added activities but we spend so little on
improving human processes and take out non value adding emotions from people’
life.
Bring simplicity back to business. Everyone talks about importance of
values. We love to quote great leaders, saints and sports personalities. But if
you turned the argument around, say take example of biggest don/gang leader, do
they expect anything other than loyalty, honesty, smart work, delivering the
task assigned etc? So, even if most crooked people expect these values, why do
we want to hide behind street smart, practically honest, this is how system
works, life isn’t fair etc.; to be less than honest with colleagues and customers? Simply put - mean
what you say, say what you mean and do what you say.
No Stubbornness,
sabotage and politicking. Managements
(leaders, HR etc) tend to encourage these highly dysfunctional behaviors in name of being in touch with employees. Leaders are liberators and facilitator.
Once we have trusted someone with a responsibility to lead or deliver an
assignment, we can’t promote a culture where people use their access with
management to constantly question decisions & provide information
informally to meet their own agenda. This is easy to fix, my simple solution
has always been to ask how are you contributing to the Solution? Or bring all
stakeholders face to face. Yes, it may lead to less people coming to you with
information, but it significantly cuts the biggest non value adding activity of
organizational, gossip and politicking.
Adult to
Adult relationship
“Be the change you want to see in the world”- Mahatma Gandhi. Treat people as
adults. Business is serious affair. Business needs grown up and skilled people,
to deliver value proposition to customers. Accepting people as adults means
paying attention to their ideas, thoughts and inputs. It means trusting them to
be able handle good with bad, success with failure and so on.
Objectively
Focus on
reason d’être for existence of the Business i.e., Customer - This is not optional.
Everything else is. Providing Value for money is best social service any
business enterprise can do. If we think at deeper level, this applies to all
human endeavors. Similarly, if we start seeing management as service to people
instead of power over people, we can bring same focus while leading them.
Differentiation
is constant – Straight
out of Jack Welch’s philosophy. It has become fashionable currently to denounce
bell curve and forced ranking. So many qualified and experienced experts are
spending enormous time and energy trying to prove that Bell curve/forced
ranking is not the way forward. However, completely side stepping real point – differentiation. Differentiation
is a key leadership skill and responsibility. Doesn’t matter what tool is used
in carrying out this responsibility. So, be sure that as Leadership Team and HR,
you don’t allow the debate over a tool to take away focus from real issue.
Problem
Solving vs. Innovation – Leaders stay ahead of curve
and are able to find innovative solutions. Sounds right? True, however it is
important to understand that single minded focus on providing best in class
product and services, provides natural environment to encourage innovation.
Same can’t be said for reverse. Institutionalize value, practices and skills
with laser sharp focus on problem solving. This will help unleash innovation and
creativity all around. To quote
Indira Nooyi, Chairperson PEPSICO, We look for people who are able to
understand and work around geo political environment quickly and surround
themselves with great talent. Who are agile, can work with scarcity of
commodities (read resources) and make something out of nothing.”
Worldly-Wise
– Wisdom
is nothing but learning while applying the Knowledge.
Adaptability
& Flexibility – The
famous words repeated over and over again, “It’s not survival of the fittest
but most adaptable”. This phrase also happens to be most inappropriately used.
Mostly people using these words, take submission for adaptability or
flexibility. True adaptability and flexibility comes from position of
strength, courage and conviction. It’s not absence of strong opinion and ideas.
We are adaptable and flexible, when we chose
to accept someone else’s point of view. As Leaders, you are flexible when you support
a solution or idea while convinced of you own solution not when you didn’t have
any. Same time team members are flexible & adaptable when they rally behind
agreed solution, while having stronger ideas or solutions.
When in doubt
check,
There are no perfect employees, perfect employer, perfect career, perfect
organization or perfect managers. It’s only what is perfect for you, what makes
you click and what makes your customers successful. Simple check is to
use your values and goals to validate, if what you are doing is what you should
be doing. (Click slides)
Peanuts attract
monkeys, if
you are in business, appreciate people are joining you for commercial reasons.
Class has its prize, if you want to attract and retain good talent you have to
pay them well and provide them with better eco-system compared to others.
Recently, I saw an update on LinkedIn,
saying “B2B, B2C is out, Human to Human is in”. Let’s bring humane back to
business. The difference between Steve Jobs’ two stints at Apple was, first
time he engineered exceptional products with high cost and asked why people
will not buy? He failed. Second time, he engineered exceptional products which
people will like and believed they will pay premium. He ended up creating most
valuable company in the World.
Warm Regards,
Pankaj
