Leadership - Some Thoughts

Leaders provide direction and control to the organisation in different ways.

 Autocratic Leaders impose their will and decision on all the people of the organisation. For them, the rule “The Boss is always Right” is sacrosanct.

 Authoritative/ Bureaucratic Leaders go by the book and apply the rules and procedures strictly in case of all processes. They make no exception and exercise their authority as provided to them in the rules.

 Democratic Leaders go by the majority wishes of the people, expressed explicitly or tacitly.

 People Oriented Leaders try to work out consensus amongst the people and take the extra pains to bring people of different opinions to such a consensus.

 Procrastinating Leaders do not take any decisions quickly and try to maintain status quo and pass time in the hope no troubles develop in the organisation.

 Manipulative Leaders take advantage of different expectations and group politics prevalent in the organisation and manipulate to achieve their objectives.

 An 'ideal leader' has to mix and match the roles of all types depending the situations and the nature of the people in the organisation, if he has to lead the organisation towards its stated objectives.

 Is leadership continuity an issue for the organisation ? I have in one of my favourite quotes had indicated that ‘Change and Continuity’ are two sides of the same coin. While we may wonder that in some of the Indian organisations, the Chief Executive is kept  changed very often, this may not be as unique a situation as we think – I read a recent news that in Japan, the Prime Minister is changing almost every year for the last ten years. 

Leadership Change may be conducive to innovative situations as opposed to continuity – if only the spirit for innovation is deep rooted in the organisation.

 

 

 

 

CKO Conversation Humour Series

First CKO : Our KM efforts through social net-working is not producing any results.

 Second CKO : Why so ?

 First CKO : All the guys are doing only 'net-working' and ‘not-working’ in their jobs.

Forget and Remember

Most of us do not remember the events of the past as the human memory forgets the knowledge that is not in active use. But then such knowledge is not permanently lost. It is possible to recollect the forgotten events through memory flashes, both voluntary and non-voluntary.

 

Both forgetting and remembering are arms of the learning process. In forgetting, we unlearn what is not important and in remembering, we relearn what is required at the instant times.

 

In the KM process, there would be requirements of “Forgetting to Remember” and “Remembering to Forget” situations.

 

For example, one should ‘forget’ to remember the normal organisational tendency to look for magical shortcuts like “Technology Implosion” trying to substitute “Culture of Trust”. And ‘remember’ to forget the tendency to look for magical outcomes like huge profitability before a deep rooted KM culture.

Coopetition - Collaborate with Competition

As I peeked out of my balcony on the lazy Sunday morning into the opposite park, I observed that the crows suddenly started to make peculiar sounds “Caw – Caw”. Joining with them were the mynahs with their typical cooing sound, the sparrows with their shrieking and the squirrels on the trees humming loudly. I was curious to look for the sudden development that made all these creatures to create a joint chorus on a lazy morning. There – a Cat was slowly emerging from a nearby bush and looking for any sleepy prey.

 

While we, the human beings, the learned and the intelligent living species, seem to have forgotten a fundamental strategy, the lesser beings like the birds continue to exercise the collaborative spirits with their competitors against a common enemy.

 

Nature has taught us to compete to remain fit for survival. So we have developed organizations that try to outsmart each other and beat them at the market place. Productivity and KM are some of the tools used by the organizations to grow themselves and beat the competition. Competitiveness has become the catchword in the globalised businosphere.

 

However, the recent global crises like the economic recession, terrorism and environmental disasters, provide us ample warning that all competing organizations also need to cooperate against common dangers or else the productivity of the humanity as a whole would go down to the detriment of the entire human society. 

Freedom to Ban

The “Total Ban on Smoking in all Public Places” would be joining the long list of already existing bans in the country,  child marriage, child labour, littering in public places, consumption of alcohol in some states, photography in restricted(?) places, bandhs, domestic violence, spitting, adulteration, temple entry for some religions and castes, only to name a few. Our parliamentary committee is presently in serious debate for a ban on use of mobile phones in “specific vulnerable” places like educational institutions, religious places, hospitals and crematoriums (?).

 

While it is clear like sunshine on a hot day, that none of the existing bans has been effective due to abysmal enforcements and user ignorance, there are intensive arguments going on in the media for and against the proposed ban on Smoking. Tobacco companies are contesting the ban in the courts citing reasons like “individual freedom” and you guessed it – “loss of productivity to the tobacco farmers”.

 

The conflict between “Freedom” and “Control” is as old as the humanity itself. While “Knowledge” is free and all pervading, it needs to be regulated, controlled and selectively absorbed if we have to make productive gains for the society. However, such “controls” are possible only through the “freedom” to mould the control process suiting to the spirits of the individuals. There is an old Tamil Song which sounds like this - “ Theft can not be eliminated till the time thieves themselves repent and stop stealing”.

 

Let us hope that the bans for the good causes kindles the spirit of freedom in individuals to espouse those causes.

Learning from the Unexpected

It is a paradox that we learn most from the circumstances when we are not expected so.

Remember the times in our schools, we were expected to learn from text books and the lectures of the teachers. But we can recollect that most of our real learnings as students were mainly from our plays and relationships with our friends and the environment. Even if we learnt anything from the teachers, it was more from the visualizations and stories related to the subjects taught in the schools.

Moving from the schools, we learnt and gained knowledge while we were in colleges not from class room lectures but from experimentations and interactions with a host of institutions, may be library, faculty, industry and so on.

Graduating from our degrees, again our learning in work situations was more from informal relations with our colleagues, clients and by doing things rather than trying to follow laid out rules, processes and procedures.

Also in general we know our knowledge is richer from learning from mistakes rather than successes, as the analytical ability works more efficiently while dissecting failures while successes are taken to ego satisfaction, thus masking the analytical abilities.

A similar analogy exists for the concept of “Learning Organisations”. If organizations have to evolve as Learning Organisations, they have to adopt more of paradoxical learning, that is learn from sources which are normally not expected to be the sources of Knowledge. While everyone professes about learning “Knowledge” from their Customers, have you thought about the “Knowledge” residing with “Non-Customers” and “Past- Customers” ? What about “Customers” of totally different sectors ? Has any organization made a deliberate attempt to learn from such uncommon customers ? If they do, they would be totally surprised at the rich content of knowledge that they can get from such sources.

Another paradoxical learning could be to learn from “Informal” sector operations like farms, village arts and crafts even politics as compared to learning from routinised corporate operations. Many of the virtual organizational ideas could possibly emanate from such unexpected learning sources.

Finally, organizations should try to learn from even totally unexpected antisocial institutions and situations, to think of a few – prisons, wars and battles, thieves, terror outfits etc. etc. – Think About This !

CKO Humour Series

(Time for a humour break.)

First CKO : We have no problems in getting fresh recruits to join our company but find it very difficult to retain them. We don't know why !

Second CKO: I can guess the reasons.

First CKO : Tell me Please!

Second CKO : While joining, the new recruits are attracted by the explicit knowledge of your organisation but later they get scared by the tacit knowledge of all of you.

Change Management and Competencies

Change Management is understood in different contexts depending upon the situation. One such context is the requirement for totally different skills and competencies to be acquired within a relatively short time. Many organisations have recently embarked on an ‘Outsourcing’ spree in order to restrict their operations to their ‘Core Competence’. Now doing things yourselves and getting them done through outsourcing require completely different competencies.

 

For example, a teacher in a school is very adept in teaching his favourite subject to the students, and now suddenly he is expected to get the teaching process outsourced to an e-learning service provider. We can visualise the new competencies he has to now develop in order to successfully manage the outsourcing- IT literacy, Content management, online and offline tracking of student performance, Hardware- Softrware Maintenance, Supervision of services, Payments management – only to name a few new competencies he has to acquire for Change Management.

 

Not surprisingly, in many situations, people fail to cope up with daunting tasks of acquiring new competencies resulting in the failure of the initiative. Outsourcing as a component of KM/Productivity initiatives needs to be done on a very careful manner to prevent such burn outs.

Successful Knowledge

“All Knowledgeable people are not successful; and not all successful people are knowledgeable” – so goes a famous old tamil song.

 

Success – the sought after result by everyone, however, is a subjective phenomena; In financial world, the achievement of profit may be considered as 'success', however it is conditioned by the means and methods adopted. In organisations, promotions to next levels of hierarchy may be the 'success', but we also know that some people rise to the highest level of incompetence. In sports, everyone who participates is considered 'successful' as the spirit is respected and not the position achieved. In life, achieving all material benefits may seem to be the 'success', but these ultimately may not allow us to realise our self which is considered to be 'ultimate success'.

 

So the old tamil song may have to be rewritten “ All knowledgeable people are successful; they are successful in knowing what is the real success factor in their knowledge process”

Duninindia - Congrats

It is an encouraging feeling to read this news. Now we can claim that not only Indians are capable of great knowledge management prowess but also adept in making the chips to process the knowledge.

Keep it UP India!

A KM Joke

One more snippet of CKO conversations.

First CKO : We embarked on the process of mapping the knowledge of all our people and processes and produced an extensive "Knowledge Map".

Second CKO: What is the result now?

First CKO : Somehow we lost the map and now no one knows where he is and what he is capable of!

From Farmers to Brokers - The learning

Five years ago, the government was declaring its success with “India Shining” campaign. The inflation was under control and economy was having around 8 % GDP growth. It looked at that time that “Knowledge” oriented service sector productivity which had been the new focus for the country would compensate for any shortcomings of “Material” oriented agriculture and manufacturing sector productivity. The only eyesore was that farmers were committing suicide in scores due to distress as their farm productivity plummeted and they were led to debt traps.

 

Five years down the line, the government is declaring that it is more caring for common human beings. However, while the problems of farmers’ suicide have not totally been solved, we get the news that two brokers have committed suicide due to the recent financial sector crisis. There is also apprehension raised now in many quarters about the impending productivity loss of financial sectors on a global scale to cause heavy distress. There is temporary relief that the Governments have come to the aid of failing institutions all over the world, as it was done earlier for the farmers with Loan Waiver, it is well known that inherent productivity weaknesses cannot be compensated with external makeovers.

 

The moral of the above distressed process from farmers to brokers, is that “Knowledge” and “Productivity” would help to sustain and grow only when our needs and actions are limited within justified and controlled paradigms. If we are to cross that “Lakshman Rekha” to cater to speculative and greedy desires, the same process that provided us with growth and wealth is capable of  destructive and distressful blow to all of us.

Music to Ears for KM

What has always been believed informally has now been accepted as "Scientific" by the Doctors of the Western World. I am referrring to the use of music by the advanced hospitals in US to enhance cure of patients suffering from ill health, including in surgery rooms, as reported in news today. Music has a profound effect to sooth the human nerves and provide relief to body parts, slower the music like Indian classical music, the better the soothing and curing effect.

I also believe that music also enhances learning abilities. Properly selected music can vibrate and resonate the brain cells and enhance their capacity to store information as well as synthesize them to Knowledge. Ancient Indian tradition always taught music along with other arts and science subjects to the students, right from primary education, so that their learning abilities improved. 

Let us try to use properly selected music to enhance the performance of KM teams in organisations.

Innovation - Induce Instability

In the Japanese Manufacturing assembly lines, one of the practices to bring “Kaizen” improvements is to deliberately introduce instabilities. For example, if an assembly process is evaluated through time / method studies to be normally operated by six people, what would be our normal approach ? We would deploy seven people so that one person is available to take care of contingent deployments. But in "Kaizen" approaches, the opposite is done. If an assembly line deploys six people and operates in a normal manner, a deliberate attempt to reduce the number to five is made. What do you think will be the result? Mistakes, overloads and reduction in productivity? No! With a positive mindset, it is possible to induce innovative spirits within the human mind when he is in new paradigms. The "Kaizen" experiments have proved that the careful reduction of people beyond the norms in the assembly lines result in higher productivity rather than reduction.

 

The above example illustrates that for “innovation” to happen, one has to physically move the target innovators to the edge or boundaries of the existing systems. If they can be moved even out of the boundaries, still better.  At the least they should be taken to the boundary levels or to the edge. The shifting to the boundary state creates an unstable paradigm where the conventional rules / standards / processes / procedures etc begin to transform and become interpretable and amenable for innumerable variations. Thus from this transformation arises new innovations that could not have been thought of in the stable atmospheres of the core of the existing systems. 

An example - Mahatma Gandhi was thrown out of the boundaries of normal human behavioral standards in South Africa where he was refused a seat in the First Class of the train; thus began the new innovation of “Satyagraha Struggle” that eventually led to the liberation of India to freedom. 

CKO Coversation - A joke

(Here is one more addition to the CKOs' conversation series)

First CKO: Knowledge Management has certainly helped me; when I was CIO with my company I collected information about the market sales of our company and our competitor and gave extensive anlaysis to the management;

Second CKO : How did it help you ?

First CKO : Well I was then promoted to become the CKO. Then I collected further information about our company's future prospects and our competitor's and got aquired extensive knowledge on the same.

Second CKO : OK! How does this help ?

First CKO : Well I have been now offered the position of Chief Wisdom Officer in the competitor company.!

Search for Knowledge

Knowledge is omni present and is everywhere; then why is it that we don’t get the knowledge we are desperately looking for that easily.

 

Let us look for an analogy in the world. The earth is covered three fourths by water of the oceans. The human body’s most important requirement is water as the major proportion of 80 percent of the human body is comprised made of water. However the transformation of water from the oceans to the human body has to take a very long and arduous route of cleaning, filtration, purification and internalization through a natural process that has been evolved over millions of years.

 

If water which is in material form takes so long an arduous path, imagine the journey the knowledge, which is in energy form, require to get transformed from omnipresence to individual’s repository through the intellect, mind and then the soul. It would be much more time and efforts’ consuming.

 

There is however a difference between the cycles of water and cycles of knowledge; the water does not change its fundamental physical and chemical form of existence in its continuous process cycles and has remained the same for billions of years. However I believe that Knowledge continues to grow and expand with ever increasing entropy, in its process of formation, travel, absorption and transformation over the long periods of times of evolution of this universe. And hence the much more difficulty in getting the right knowledge that we are looking for. 

Operation Bangalore – Ahmedabad – Delhi BAD

Thank you Operation BAD

For it was’nt worse than bad

For reminding we are unprepared

Despite being forewarned

For our culture of easy stride

Blaming always the god

Tired of terrors repeated

There’s however some good

To see us all united

In times when we’re distressed

Hoping to look for future that’s kind

Let’s change terror to concern for the world.

 

CKO's Conversation - Laughter

(The CKO’s conversation series has been a convenient way of conveying humor in my posts. I propose to continue with the same. Here is one more piece.)

 

CKO 1 : We conducted an experiment in our company to transfer the knowledge and skills from the best of our brainy chaps to the dumb guys.

 

CKO 2 : How did  you do it ?

 

CKO 1 : We closeted the brainy chaps and the dumbards in the specially made Knowledge Lab for one month so that the knowledge transformation can take place exclusively.

 

CKO 2 : And then ?

 

CKO 1 : We ended up having a group of Dumbards and another group of Nuts.

Knowledge - Placebo Effect

We are aware of the phenomenon known as “Placebo Effect” in cure of illnesses where the ‘faith’ transforms apparently useless molecules of medicines to be converted into healers and curers. The exact mechanism of this effect is still to be unraveled.

 

I feel there is a similar ‘Placebo Effect’ in Knowledge Sharing where apparently useless information through the process of faith and devotion gets automatically converted into very useful Knowledge. This effect can be illustrated as an example in “Mantra Yoga” where just syllables and semantics when repeated number of times with faith and devotion can lead to emancipation of the practitioner.

BEL KM Programme - Story Telling

I had this opportunity to conduct the KM awareness programme at Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) at Ghaziabad yesterday. Mr.Avadh and Mr.Nikhil were the co-faculty with me.

 

The core learning from the programme was to see that even well developed and advanced organisations like BEL have their employees not yet exposed to topics like Knowledge Economy and KM. Hence what we discussed as KM features were well received with enthusiasm and a sense of expectation to carry forward the technique, in anticipation of the forthcoming KM demonstration project with them.

 

One highlight of the discussions, I felt that the method of “Story Telling” to transfer knowledge, with the example of the story of Dr.Abdul Kalam narrating the story about his superior Satish Dhawan as to the qualities of Leader who supports when the subordinate has hard times and gives credit during successful times, was well received.

 

I feel that Leadership is an important KM factor, and the crux, in the Indian situations to decide the success or failure of KM attempts. Leaders should develop the habit of Story Telling to connect and relate with his people so that they are able to convey the message that can be easily understood by the people below.

Employee - an Intrapreneur

A successful KM effort would be to inculcate intrapreneurial capabilities within the workforce. In traditional bureaucracy based organisations, particularly in the Government Sector, employees are traditionally expected to follow orders, rules and procedures. Anything done outside these are considered to be indiscipline and against the organisations’ interest. The result of such behaviour is that the workforce will be afraid to put in their best.

 

In the ‘learning organisation’ mode, the work force are motivated to bring out and test their innovative ideas, even if that means, a risk taking for the company. In fact the firm is ready to invest substantial amounts as venture capital to experiment with the innovative ideas of the people, only to look towards the promised returns for the new ventures that can be established from these ventures. The organisation is also ready to share the profits out of the ventures substantially by making the concerned employee the incharge for the project.

 

The examples of many Indian organisations who are changing over intrapreneurial methods fostering KM are increasingly getting reported. Slowly this idea may catch up with the Government sectors as well. 

Childrens' Innovation

Children can be the source of most innovative ideas. Whenever you are breaking your head / brain to find a solution to the most difficult and complex problems, try taking the help of a child. I am not joking! The younger the child, the chances of getting a unique and innovative solution is the brightest. Children are blessed with the wisdom which is not masked by the uncommon sense that forms over the thinking of the elders. Listen to the following story for confirmation.

 

"While sailing in a rough sea, the captain of a ship suddenly found a sea mine floating very near to the ship that could explode if it contacts any steel surface. He alerted the crowd on the deck and asked for suggestion to push the mine away from the ship. A child remarked 'Let us all blow from our mouth to push the mine away'. The idea helped the captain to commission the fire hose to blow a strong water jet to push the mine away".

Bihar Flood Disater - Learning Lessons

Productivity looks for an opportunity to do things better even under the most arduous circumstances. Even Disasters are learning lessons if we look at it from Productivity point of view.

 

No doubt that the recent devastating floods in Bihar have wrecked havoc on the lives of millions of poor human beings. From going through the media reporting on the issue, I observed some silver linings in the cloudy situation:

 

1. Though the affected population is very large in terms of lakhs, casualties are very less compared to earlier times, which shows that a good amount of rescue lessons have been learnt from our earlier experiences.
2. The river Kosi changed its direction and flooded large tracts of land of agriculture and human habitation. The flooded river normally carries rich and fertile silt which can be exploited during the next planting season, if proper scientific methods are used in the agriculture in the affected lands.
3. The poor people who lost their habitats can be now provided with better technology housing compared to their earlier poor standard huts.
4. Rehabilitation can impart higher earning skills to the youth affected by the floods.

 

Of course the roles of Government and the Societal organizations in making the above improvements towards productivity for future is very important; let our leaders and opinion makers unite and strive to achieve better future for all of us and avert disasters.

Work Place Politics - KM Curse or Cure ?

If we can visualise the infinite variations in the nature, attitude, culture, habits, language, expectations, values etc etc in humans, it would be obvious to us to understand the existence of work place politics in almost all organisations. Even the best of Knowledge Enterprises cannot escape from the human nature of its workforce to indulge in workplace politics.

 

There are two sides of the workplace politics’ coin. The fair side is that people of the same feather flock together and thus it is natural for them to work together as well. Thus team formation is facilitated and the various teams would be able to contribute in an informal way, but the most effective manner. Such formations may transgress the established hierarchy, but the natural affinity of the people aligning together compensates for the distorted communication flows. A productivity / KM initiative which can take advantage of such cultural alignments through workplace politics will produce good results.

 

However, one has to be careful about the flip of the side of the coin as well. If the groups who are aligned separately try to outsmart each other by indulging in counter destruction, then the cumulative effect would be enormous loss of productivity for the organisation. There are many situations where people and the groups have strong memory imprints of their past and refusing to unlearn, can pose hurdles to any improvement initiative even in an unconscious manner. Any KM / Productivity initiative in such a situation will need a strong aligning force outside of the system to sort out the mindset differences and unify the culture.

National Skill Development Mission

Our Prime Minister has recently annouced a mission for development of Skills in the Country. He has indicated that it would be possible to generate 50 crore skills by the year 2020 and the Government will be investing in a Skill Development Mission to facilitate this. Imagine the size of the Indian economy if it can create 50 crore knowledge and skill workforce !

So far the Governments of the Centre and the States have been predominantly trying to dole out aid in the forms of money and food in its various developmental schemes for the people for short term gains; there are umpteen schemes like Rural Employment Scheme, old age scheme, unemployment allowance scheme etc etc where the beneficiaries are paid money or food grains from the Government funds; Such schemes have broadly led to only pilferage as well as laziness in the habits of the beneficiaries to expect more and more such give aways.

It is not late, however, that the Government has woken up and tried to give facilties to develop the skill and possibly the knowledge and productivity levels of its citizens through this Mission. Let us all support and offer whatever we can to this noble cause.

Copy to Innovate - A Joke

Let us listen to the conversation of two CKOs again.

First CKO: You recently held an intensive training workshop for your team members to develop innovation capabilities; What is the result ?

Second CKO : Yes, though they could not get any innovation capabilites developed, my investment in training did not go waste.

First CKO : How is it ?

Second CKO : They have however learnt the innovative capability to quickly copy others'  innovations.