My Thoughts

SME (Subject Matter Expert)

2008-12-11T12:14:00.000-08:00

We were at a friend's house the last weekend and there was a discussion on Knowledge. What is knowledge and when does on get "enough knowledge"?

Interesting thoughts. When you apply this philosophical discussion to real life business you have the same questions. When do you classify someone from your work-team as a Subject Matter Expert (SME)? I see this happening all across the world - corporations looking to hire SME's, grooming someone to become a SME and lastly having an official designation as SME !! Sure we have people who have "enough knowledge" to be an "authority in their own field" however what makes a "commoner" a SME?

Here is something to consider - Can you do something repeatedly, over and over again in order to gain mastery? Yes, you will gain mastery over that task however will you be a SME over that task or will you be a Master over that task. There is this fine line that people often overlook and state that because I have done a task repeatedly I am a SME where as if you were to perform a analysis of the tasks then you would find that there are a lot of masters.

So, the next time around, you meet someone in your business world and they say that he / she is a SME then you might consider asking them what are they the master's of. Can you guess what would be their answer? Think about it?

Its good to be back

2008-12-01T16:12:00.001-08:00

Its been a very very long time since I wrote. Plenty in the world has changed since then. The worldwide financial collapse, the new president-elect in US, the terror attacks in Mumbai-India and so on.

While all this was on, I was at the Harvard Business School (HBS), learning new skills, broadening and deepening my knowledge on how companies across the world function. It was an interesting place to be while the financial collapse occurred. With that being said, the professors at HBS are outstanding. Each and everyone one of them. I read their books / case study (HBS uses the Case Study Method to teach) and always wondered how it would be to meet them in person and believe me, all of them are down to earth and really humans !!

I had a very very diverse set of classmates at HBS. Each of them accomplished in their field and open to new ideas and suggestions as we learnt new skills together and being awarded the Harvard Business School alumni status.

I was telling quite a few folks that while it was a great experience to have studied at HBS, it would really not have been possible without the support of the woman in my life.

This has not been a regular "business" blog however I thought I should let everyone know what I have been up to in the recent past.

Also, I would really appreciate if everyone took a moment and prayed for the innocent people who lost their lives in Mumbai. Does this meaningless killing accomplish anything? Think about it !

Core Competency

2008-08-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

Here is something I wrote for another publication
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Every era is marked by a fundamental shift - In power, In Economy, In technology. This new era is exactly what you say about it being a global, borderless community. We need to take a step back and analyze that why there has been a shift in the "power-bases" as have rightly pointed. It is the burning desire (if I may) about the "have-nots" to succeed. This is not just relevant in the global IT ecosystem. It is across countries, cultures, industries and economies.

Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing? I believe that it is good (a challenge is always good) because when we feel that we are not in the driver's seat anymore we tend to re-focus on our core competencies. We tend to look at what can we do better (see the theme of the burning desire to succeed) and therefore we innovate. Yes, the transition is difficult to deliver results almost immediately however during the transition we need to ignore the noise (outsource / job-loss etc.) and focus on what we can do the best - become the center of global IT. That should be the goal. There can we a number of various strategies to achieve this goal however I feel the primary strategy should be coopetition.
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Goals

2008-08-15T16:18:00.001-07:00

I had an interesting presentation this morning to my team. I was articulating our YTD results based on the goals that we had agreed upon at the start of the year. We met almost all the goals and I presented a "improved challenge" (management speak) to the team which they gladly accepted (more on MOTIVATION in another blog)

Once we were done, I was thinking about "RESULTS". We always want "good" results. We never want "bad" results. So then why do we even want to call them results and not call them as goals. Maybe it is just semantics but think about it: You have a problem, you have a solution. You have an issue, you have a resolution. You have a risk, you have a mitigation. However, in case of a GOAL - you have a RESULT.

Next time around, I believe that we need to set-up an objective (of meeting a target) and then measure the result rather than use GOAL as the objective of achieving something because you can achieve quantify an objective but can you quantify a goal? Think about it!

Shift

2008-08-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

Every era is marked by a fundamental shift - In power, In Economy, In technology. This new era is exactly what you say about it being a global, borderless community. We need to take a step back and analyze that why there has been a shift in the "power-bases" as have rightly pointed. It is the burning desire (if I may) about the "have-nots" to succeed. This is not just relevant in the global IT ecosystem. It is across countries, cultures, industries and economies.

Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing? I believe that it is good (a challenge is always good) because when we feel that we are not in the driver's seat anymore we tend to re-focus on our core competencies. We tend to look at what can we do better (see the theme of the burning desire to succeed) and therefore we innovate. Yes, the transition is difficult to deliver results almost immediately however during the transition we need to ignore the noise (outsource / job-loss etc.) and focus on what we can do the best - become the center of global IT. That should be the goal.

There can we a number of various strategies to achieve this goal however I feel the primary strategy should be coopetition. Think about it !

Round and Round

2008-05-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

I was in a meeting the other day with a few executives deciding on a strategy to implement a new tool. My role was to advise on what were the potential pit-falls of choosing one over the other.

Anyway, the meeting was scheduled for one hour and I observed that after the first 15 minutes, we were going round and round in circles repeating the same thing again and again, however using different words which basically meant the same. I am sure all of us have seen this happen - more so when there are peers at a leadership level without one trying to pull-rank over the other. I told the folks in the meeting that I needed to step out and could be called once they got their act together.

Here is something to think about - why do we go round in circles trying to decide? Is it because we are not strong enough to decide? Or is it because we want everyone to win and not have a heart-burn? Or is it because there is lack of leadership in a meeting? I would want to say that lack of leadership which translates to decision making capability is usually the reason that no one makes the "executive decision" and move on.

So, the next time you find that your team / peers are going round in circles, will you step up to the plate and make the decision or you will let someone else make the decision for you? Think about it!

Pressures

2008-05-12T21:01:00.001-07:00

I've been away for a long long time - going through a transformation, re-focus and re-calibration of sorts for myself. Anyway, last week I was meeting a friend of mine and he was telling me on how his executives sign-up for timelines and then later give him a 24 hour window to turn around his deliverables !

This got me thinking, as executives what are our major roles? We need to be able to perform more with less (and therefore the 24 hour window for deliverables) but more importantly, we should be able to motivate our teams.

What is the point of training someone to run lean-and-mean and then giving them 24 hours to deliver just so that we as executives can take the credit on "how difficult it was to deliver but we still made it"

As executives, we need to manage expectations both ways - above and below. In one of the companies that I am associated with, we deal a lot with the government agencies worldwide and believe me, there is no one better than those government officials who manage expectations by giving enough headway and articulating, sometimes one too many, on what is needed.

How does all this fit into the Pressures topic? It is simple, as executives we think that we can pressurize someone to deliver faster, deliver better however we ignore one of the basic laws of physics - there is always a breakpoint which means that our resources will take the pressure only up to a point and then quit. So, did you gain or lose by this pressure tactic? Think about it !

Where is the future?

2008-01-07T13:51:00.001-08:00

The latest CES show in Vegas promises more integration between devices in your hand, home, stores, cars, hotels etc. etc. which makes me think - Wasn't the basic promise from the IT land to have "ease of information" and NOT "overflow of information"

I see this happening not only at CES but all over the world. We want more information in order to have a better control. As executives, we push the need to have more information readily available in order to not have a reactive action but a proactive action. Guess what, and I am sure you all have felt it - whatever business processes (and associated IT systems) you designed and implemented for a proactive mode was outdated by the time it was installed.

So how do you design something for the future? If there was a simple answer then we would never have a "reactive" mode for anything. I read in some book a while ago - our ancient ancestors planned their meals by putting their ear on the ground and trying to hear the animals coming their way. This enabled them to be prepared to hunt the the animals down. It was true then, it is true today. Don't sit in your ivory towers. Meet the people on the ground and in the fields. They know your business. Your customers and yes your competitors. The folks in the trenches will help you plan for the future and yes you might live through the information overload.

So the next time around there is a new speech by Mr.. Gates talking about integration between your cell phone and the cars of the future, are you going to go look at that or you are going to look in the rear-view mirror since the future happened yesterday? Think about it !

B2B

2007-12-11T15:00:00.000-08:00

Its been a long long time since I had a chance to sit down and write on my perspectives. This time around I will write about B2B.

Hasn't there been written enough about B2B? Business-To-Business, yes sure. There is tons and tons of material written on the birth of this concept etc. etc. You can read about all that till you are blue in your face.

What about the other B2B? Do you ever take time to review the other B2B? Refresh your mind? Back-To-Basics. This is the other B2B that I think needs attention.

In every thing that we do at work, we are constantly learning new things, new technologies, new processes, new methods and so on. How many times as executives do we take the time and go back to basics? How many times do we send our teams to go back and learn the basics? Never ever.

Simple elements like treating people with respect. Managing resources to achieve long term efficiencies. Thinking global, acting local.

We tend to get caught in the mundane pieces of executing to plan that we lose focus of the basic fundamentals that have made us what we are. As executives, we tend to push to get our objectives met, goals exceeded and so on. How many times do we sit down, talk to the people without asking for a commitment, without asking for a timeline? Just respecting the individual for what they are and not the hard-work that they have put in.

As we get ready to close this year and begin to put our goals and objectives for the next year, I am going to have one of my goals as respect the individual. Are you? Think about it !

Fast or Far

2007-10-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

The other day I was listening to Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and he started of with a quote from Africa - "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, take a few people with you".

How very true. Don't we see that happening every day at work? Someone sitting up there in an ivory tower makes a statement and expects everyone down in the trenches to follow him / her with immediate effect because this new policy / process / system needs to be implemented quickly. Resources are mobilized and we get into the execution phase and find that we are inundated by issues. Why does it happen? Did we not plan correctly? I think what really happens is the real buy-in (taking a few people with us) did not happen.

We have seen this happen time and again, technology or a business process does not cause the bottle-neck. It is the people who cause the bottle-neck and in the same token it is the people who are responsible for the success of an endeavor. How can the same entity be responsible for the success and the failure?

So, the next time you are embarking on a new goal for your organization - are you going to go all alone and run fast towards your far-reaching goal or you are going to spend the time, get all the major stakeholders with you and all of you go towards the far-reaching goal together? Think about it!

A Spanner in the Wheel

2007-10-09T08:34:00.000-07:00

I have been preparing for a marathon run for a long long time. Over a year actually. Every thing that could go wrong went wrong. Busted knee. Job change. Timings going wrong etc. etc. Anyway, my half-marathon is on 10/14/07 and I have been ramping-up perfectly well till last night. I have had a bad bad bout of allergies which has got me worried if I can recover in time for the race.

Okay. All of this is good. How does this fit into my blog of business talks?

You plan for a big huge transformation project with teams working over a year across continents. You have checked and cross-checked everything before you begin your home-stretch and then "it" shows its ugly-head. Something out of the blue. Like my allergies. Something totally unplanned for which might derail you. What do you do? How do you recover with less than 96 hours before prime-time?

Is there a clear answer? A magic bullet that will make all your troubles disappear? Never ever. If someone promises you a magic bullet, well then you are in fantasy land.

This is what I think really needs to happen to manage situations that hit you out of the blue just before D-Day: Evaluate, Review, Evaluate, Execute. I see that happening all the time, executives get nervous and start having status meetings multiple times a day to review the situation. I agree you need to do this if you are fighting a war but in the business world, as Jack Welch puts it, go by your gut. Evaluate your various options including aborting the project. There is no harm in reviewing this as an option. Once you have reviewed the impacts of each option, evaluate one more time the final chosen option(s) and execute. I cannot stress any more on why you need to execute perfectly. There is no room for error.

During all these activities never ever lose control. Be calm and be in control.

Anyway, the next time around, you suddenly find a spanner in the wheel, are you going to panic or going to attack the problem or going to live with the problem? Think about it.

Comebacks

2007-09-26T22:13:00.001-07:00

This morning while driving to work I heard an interesting piece on the radio. A tree that is over 2600 old and was believed to have been "dead" for over 30 years was sprouting new leaves since the past week. This tree was burnt in a wild-fire, was struck by lightning and was believed to be dead since then.

This got me thinking - as executives do we ever face such scenarios' - companies thought to be bankrupt come back stronger, executives serve a jail sentence and come back stronger. We read about this and leave it there. Have you ever sat and wondered what does it take to stage a come-back? Did Martha Stewart think differently to come-back after her prison term? How did IBM turn-around from the early 1990's? What did Apple Computers do to come where they are today compated to 15 years ago?

We need to think like winners in our mind. The recipe for success is very simple. Think long, think hard and execute flawlessly.

Any shortcuts to this makes it difficult or virtually impossible for you to stage a comeback and put you into various false starts. Once the cycle of false starts begins it takes a super-human effort to break that cycle. I see this everyday even for smaller issue-resolutions. Teams do not think long and hard and try to provide a solution to the customer, which fails, so another band-aid solution is provided which again fails and so on. Eventually, the customer is tired of us and we then begin our plot for the "comeback" or regaining our credibility.

The next time around, your team fails in something and you begin the turn-around, are you just going to put out the fire or are you going to analyze why you failed in the first place? Think about it !

Life-Work Balance

2007-08-27T09:39:00.001-07:00

There are tons of published material on Work-Life balance. Tons of printed material and 100's of GB of electronic material. However, I think there is a fundamental issue in the way it is expressed as Work-Life balance because it means that "Work" comes first and then comes your personal "Life".

Have we as executives ever wondered that by improving the "Life-Work" balance we can improve the moral of the team. I was meeting a few friends over the weekend and a couple of them were quite demoralized. As I was talking to them, I gathered that they had challenging work, were leading teams and delivering results however they were always on conference calls while at home and during the weekends. They were hardly spending time with their family and friends. Their "Life" was out-of-balance since their "Work" was made the top priority.

I thought that once if their executives saw this group of demoralized managers who were delivering results today but would not be able to do this for long they would do something about their "Life-Work" balance. As executives, it is our primary responsibility to ensure that the team's support structure ensures success.

So, the next time around, you are faced with a team that is demoralized due to a project / product failure, I am sure you will perform a "Lessons Learned" session with them however will you also look at the "Life-Work" balance support that you had provided which resulted in the result that you got? Think about it !

Process

2007-08-24T12:06:00.001-07:00

I was thinking the other day about the need for articulating processes and procedures in a company. Why do we need to do that? Is the company not functioning without the documentation? What is the value-add (or ROI) for investing the time and resources on documenting processes? As an executive have you ever explained this need?

Every organization has their own silos of knowledge. In a typical start-up more of the action is performed at the spur of the moment and as the organization-grow in terms of human-resources than revenues is when you feel the need to have documented processes and procedures.

Now for a very large organization, you again need these sets of processes and procedures documented because there is a human-turnover. If you had a static workforce which never ever left the company, gave them instructions once and let them do their jobs everyday for the rest of their lives then we would not ever need such processes and procedures.

The question however is what is the ROI for a company that has never invested in documenting processes and procedures? How do you calculate the ROI in this case? Remember, there is always an ROI for an investment. The ROI can be tangible or intangible and may be spread over many many years or in some cases over a lifetime (for example the Green Company revolution - more in a later blog). With that being said, break the ROI if it is spread over many years into some form of short-term strategic initiatives and some long-term strategic initiatives and use these as the measure to communicate to the larger audience the need to develop documented processes and procedures.

There is no magic bullet - you need to invest time and document your policies / processes and procedures in order to build a long-term healthy company and update them periodically to be current. Period.

So, the next time around, you find some holes in the processes of your company, instead of letting it go, how are you going to use that to use it to help your company grow? Think about it !

Problem of Plenty

2007-08-09T15:32:00.001-07:00

Do ever have such a problem? A problem of plenty? I would be highly surprised if the answer is "NO".

As executives we are always faced with multiple choices. Our days are filled with multiple, concurrent activities and we have a constant stream of choices to make, decisions to make.

But what do you do with the Problem of Plenty?

It would be wrong to say that ignore the other options that come our way and just focus only on one priority or take. We can never be successful when we do this (BTW, as executives whenever we make a statement using "NEVER", we are generalizing which is a wrong thing to do). Anyway, the point is very simple - train our mind to evaluate all the options, tasks and arrive at a decision rapidly. Remember, our mind goes as fast as we want. At the same time, there are moments when we have to put some challenges at the back-burner and reevaluate the current issues at hand and work through them.

I always have thought that it is so wonderful to be a captain of an commercial airplane or a brain surgeon or a heart surgeon - You have hundreds of passengers that have entrusted their lives to you and as a captain you have to coordinate hundreds of activities as the plane lands or takes-off. Same for the surgeons, peoples lives depend on the activities that these folks perform and believe me - these folks have a "problem of plenty" going on in their own minds.

So, the next time around, you are faced with multiple choices to make at the same moment in time, are you going to get overwhelmed or are you going to go with the flow and take a decision and move-on? Think about it !

Excuses

2007-07-30T14:28:00.000-07:00

Its been a long absence from the Blog world. Let us see which excuse should I pick - dog ate my blog-notes, busy at work, lazy to post a blog, did not care to post a blog or all of these. Not sure which to pick.

So here is the challenge - you and/or your team has a tight timeline for a work-product delivery. There are regular check-points and everything looks green as an emerald. However, 48 hours before the end of your timeline something blows-up and you know for sure you cannot recover and deliver in the 48 hour window. So, what is the excuse you choose?

I see it at various levels of organizations where workers across the rank and file are searching for excuses. It is very easy to see when a manager or an executive starts of as "We were on target however..." and there comes the excuse. Why do we have to search something else to blame and not ourselves for the poor planning and execution. Such mishaps bring out the real leaders because a real leader, irrespective of their rank in the organization, is resilient and has a clear strategy to accept the mistake and bounce back even if it means looking at a revised timeline.

Back to where I started from, where was I all this while? I was busy at work and too lazy to post a blog.

So, the next time around, you hit a road-block just before your project delivery date - are you going to look for excuses or going to stand-up and admit that you messed-up? Think about it !

Vacation

2007-06-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

I was recently reading an article somewhere on how more and more of the work-force carries their cellphone / laptop / blackberry etc. etc with them on their vacation. If that was not enough, a large population actually checks their email while on vacation. To complete the story, quite a few of them actually join conference calls while they are on vacation.

Having said all this, picture the other side. As executives we promote the concept of implementing self-sustaining generic processes which are not "individual dependent" and also implement systems to remove the "human dependency" which basically implies that we implement process where A SPECIFIC person does not need to be involved in completing a process, anyone or someone can fill-in a slot when THE SPECIFIC person in not available.

Something is not correct with this picture - because we contradict ourselves. We try to achieve self-sustaining, scaleable processes and at the same time we are so dependent on specific individuals that a mere mention of a vacation puts us into "who is your back-up mode"? It does not end there - for the folks who go on a vacation supposedly without a Blackberry or a laptop or a cellphone they are always worried - "how is the work going on"? Think of it like this - will the IRS stop functioning if you left planet earth today? What about GE? Will that function if you died today (if you are an employee at GE or IRS? Of course they will continue to exists. So then, why is vacation a big deal for us as managers / executives?

So the next time around, someone on you team is planning a vacation - are you going to ask for their contact information while on vacation or are you going to use this as an opportunity to implement a process that is not person specific? Think about it !

Banana

2007-05-31T10:25:00.001-07:00

Ever heard anyone use this metaphor in the business world? Not really. But I think that the shelf-life of a banana is the same to that of technology available today. And that is where business can use this parlance of a banana.

Think of it like this - As executives we spend long hours discussing new business processes and then use technology as a lever to implement and streamline these processes. By the time we implement these technology-enabled processes, well, the core-technology has evolved and we are back to the drawing boards either trying to retrofit the newer technology to existing process. Most of the time, across the world, the major push-back is due to the fact that there are process-changes in companies and quite a few of these changes are driven by the fact that there is new technology available to better perform the work.

Why do companies keep chasing the infinite - implement technology only to yank it out later because it has become out-dated and has a shelf-life of a banana? Here today, gone tomorrow - with that as an open secret, we as executives need to address current problems in efficiencies because if we do not do it, our competitor will. We need to adopt the latest greatest technology and then be prepared to accept and implement the changes that come with any technology.

So, the next time around, you are evaluating a new technology are you going to ask yourself and the technical provider - how new is this technology or how old is this technology? Think about it !

Innovative Company

2007-05-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

This is something that the Business Week came out last week with a list of 25 top innovative companies. They list Apple as the number 1 innovative company of the world. As I was reading this article I began to think what really makes a company innovative? What do you define as "Innovation"? (See my previous rambling on innovation)

How in the world can you say that Apple is the most innovative company in the world? It is extremely wrong to say one company is the most innovative company of the world. It is similar to what kids say to each other - My Dad is the strongest dad in the whole world ! How can one compare two distinct companies, for example, one that makes computers, music players, and now cell phones (namely Apple) to another company that saves lives by manufacturing cancer fighting drugs (namely Genentech)? You cannot and should not give the title of the Most Innovative Company of the World to either because each catering to different segments.

One key feature that these yard-stick magazines fail to perform is look at the value add that each employee brings to the company which basically means that if I were to draw a huge value-chain analysis chart for every employee of the company I should be able to see distinct addition as a I perform the analysis. That is when I will really be able to say what is the most innovative way and therefore say if that company is the most innovative company within that product segment.

So the next time around, someone tells you that their company featured on the most innovative companies list - are you going to congratulate them or ask them "which segment are you the most innovative in?". Think about it !

Courage

2007-05-18T16:16:00.001-07:00

Courage - Not something that someone usually talks about at work. I have worked with folks from various countries on initiatives however have never ever heard people talk about courage openly. This is something like "the birds and the bees" - it is always there but you never talk about it !

Why don't we talk about courage in the business environment so openly like we talk about ROI, Initiative, Mergers, Acquisition etc. etc. I think it comes down to the fact that people talk about the "Risk" of doing business, the "Risk" of executing a project however are afraid to say that they have the courage to go down a path that they choose based of some data. Why are executives afraid to use the word "courage"? Because, in my opinion, they are afraid of failure. Afraid of being seen by their team that they were not courageous enough to take the more risky path that would have ensured success.

Courage in the business parlance does not really end when something fails. Courage really kicks in when something fails. I see more and more executives having very little courage to stand-up and say that "I am responsible for this failure". It takes a lot of courage to accept failure. I agree someone in your team did not perform his / her role and therefore the team failed. However, more and more executives do not have the courage to say that they were the leaders of the team that failed. Finger-pointing kicks in rather than courage. Enron is a prime example.

So, the next time someone asks you why did you select the a particular option in your business, are you going to say it was the least risky or you are going to say because I am courageous I took the option that will ensure success? Think about it!

Resignation

2007-05-11T15:23:00.001-07:00

I am writing after a long time and my experience below will tell you the reason why.

There is plenty and plenty of stuff written all-over on how you should resign from your current job, when you should resign, how you should communicate your resignation etc. etc. However what I have found challenging is how should you communicate to your team that their manager's manager has resigned? What are the implications of this to the division? What is our long-term strategy to fill this slot?

I went through this experience for the first time and had the "privilege" to communicate the news to the people who report into me that their executive was leaving the company. Was the experience good? Yes. Did I learn something out from this experience? Yes.

For the operators who man the help-line phones, for the business-analysts that work with the business users and gather requirements and build IT solutions, the executive is someone who is defining the strategy for their existence - for example to off-shore or not? To Layoff or not? and so on...and to tell them that their executive is leaving and I (their manager) will perform both the roles for the foreseeable future makes these guys nervous because they read between lines. Why did the director quit? Does the executive team know something that we do not?...it is natural for the team down the food-chain to get these thoughts. I did when I was down the food-chain.

So how do you make this transition at a senior-level seamless to the team down there in the trenches?

Announce the resignation to the whole team together. Announce who will take over. The person who is taking over needs to articulate his / her strategy from the get-go even if the strategy is identical to the one in place. Show that you are in control and there is no ambiguity for the rest of the foreseeable future. Communicate frequently with regular updates on the transition. Rapidly build new relations with other executives with whom you will now have to interact. Lastly and most importantly, go after the low-hanging fruit to show quick wins and demonstrate to all and sundry that you are dependable and believe in delivering results. Someone whom I admire for doing this is Mark Hurd of HP. As an executive he has done an outstanding job of taking control and turning things around. His is a classic case of a turn-around success story.

So, the next time around - you have to announce a resignation of an executive remember the team-player down the chain is looking to hear "There are no changes to your job roles and responsibilities". They does not really care what else you say. Or do they? Think about it !

Burn-Out

2007-04-18T09:48:00.001-07:00

Burn-Out - The biggest pain of the every manager across the world. As we see more improvements in Information Technology we see the non-existence of a "typical 9-5 workday". I do not want to spend time promoting the thought of having a need for work-life balance however I want to spend time that as managers and executives what can we do to enforce work-life balance.

Every project goes through the cycles of peaks and troughs and then eventually ends. I see quite a few managers across the world that do not recognize the peaks and troughs and therefore expect to see the teams perform at a plateau for extended periods. Further, at the end of the project there is no downtime provided for individuals to recover and ramp-up gradually again.

As executives we need to recognize the peaks and troughs and to do this we need to review project plans in detail with emphasis on milestone dates. I see this as one of the biggest gaps that managers do not want to get into a little more detail. Once we have identified the details align resources which will then give them an opportunity to celebrate their success for smaller wins. Of course this does not solve a typical work-life issue of having to pick-up the kids from school at 5 PM however keeps the teams motivated. As leaders, it is imperative that we recognize that there are no work boundaries - all you need is a phone line and internet access and you off to the races. Use this fact to your advantage by letting teams have flexible schedules as much as possible.

Once a project is done I do not see a real need to burn out resources by having them perform at top-levels once again immediately. There has to be a "down-time" and when I say a "down-time" I mean to let the individuals take some paid time-off in addition to their vacation. Let them spend time with the family, go do something that really interests them than anything else. I have done this many times and I see that it really charges up the team-members for the next assignment.

So, the next time you plan you next big project, are you going to leverage technology to build the team or going to burn them out by letting them work round the clock forever? Think about it !

Flexibility

2007-04-12T22:05:00.001-07:00

Picture a scenario of a company that has been around for a century. This company is a leader in its industry and defines the standards for the industry. All is well and the stockholders are happy, employees are happy and the corporation is healthy. One quarter this company's executives find that they are not leaders any more.

We have this happening time and again. There are numerous examples specifically in the high-tech sector. IBM during 1993-1995, Microsoft during 1998-2000 and so on. Why does this happen? Stockholders blame it on the short-sighted executives, the executives blame it on the business conditions and so on however the lack of flexibility is the root cause. And this is why I say this.

Once a company reaches a level of maturity, there are defined processes, products and people in place who firmly believe that they define the rules of the game. The company is not flexible enough to design and market new products, it is not flexible enough to acquire new technologies, not flexible enough to take the risk of manufacturing in low-cost countries and lastly the employees are not flexible enough to embrace new ideas. Period. Where does this in-flexibility lead us? Down from the number #1 of a leader to a follower. I see this happening across the world - "We do it this way because this is the way it is done". This clearly shows in-flexibility to new ideas and suggestions and is the first step in moving down the ladder in all segments.

So, the next time around, someone says that "this is not a possible option", are they being difficult or just plain in-flexible. Think about it !

Responsibility

2007-04-03T12:36:00.000-07:00

Responsibility - A very commonly used word in the corporate brochures. A very commonly used term for teams across the world. I have rarely seen teams / individuals / corporations stand-up and set up responsibility standards higher than others. How do you go about inculcating a "sense of responsibility" such that it is not dictated by others rather is a fire-from-within?

When the teams are carved out for a new project - there are roles and responsibilities mentioned for each individual. I have seen this happen across the world - there are always a few set of folks who just meet their responsibility and then there is the other set of folks who work late-nights and crazy hours to exceed their existing responsibility and take on much more.

In an ideal world, these would be our role models, our heroes who we would celebrate for the life of the project. In reality, we send out a thank you note sometimes to these individuals and put out the fire that had made them go the extra mile. I feel that as executives, we need to encourage such behavior of taking more and more responsibility and need to encourage the thought delivering more creatively.

How do you enable individuals to have the courage to take more responsibility? You can either offer that to them which in my opinion is the simplest way however is not the best way. The best way is to pose the challenge to the individual, stand back and see how he / she performs and raises to the challenge. 9 times out of 10, all individuals will perform. The human mind is capable of much more than you can imagine. As the individual starts raising up and performing in the elevated levels of responsibility and gets comfortable, raise the bar once again and so on.

So, the next time around, you are responsible for one more deliverable for your team / department / corporation, will you take this as just another thing or a challenge for you to excel - think about it.

Experienced Resource

2007-03-27T16:31:00.001-07:00

A couple of weekends ago I met a old friend of mine. He told me that his company was looking for resources to fill-in open job requestions. However, they did not want to hire experienced resources. This got me thinking that it is not only illegal to make such a statement it is also foolish for the company to take that stand. And here is why I say this.

Any resource experienced or not needs to go through a learning curve during a job change. There is so much to be unlearnt and new things to be learnt. While all of this is happening, there is the previous experience that one builds upon and leverages in the new job. When companies make the statement of not hiring experienced hands they lose out on the rich learning experiences that one gets only on-the-job. There are tons and tons of such experiences that I would not even care to highlight here.

I do not have anything against the new-hire. I was a new-hire once. However, the term new-hire is used very very losely because there is nothing different about an un-experienced hire - most of these individuals have done something different and got that specific experience. I agree that they might not have experince to take a company IPO or to manage a USD $90 Billion revenue but they have a different skill-set experience which is what companies should capitalize.

So, the next time around someone tells you they are looking for a new-hire I would recommend that you ask them what they really mean by that? Thank about it.