True Dialogue (Part 1 : a proposal)

In 2011 February we did a public program named “Mind your Business – Mend your Business” in Indore with support of Shri Yogesh Jain of Niche Quality Solutions. Around 15 participants from various business concerns were there and Mr. Akshayakumar Mankad , former head of operations of TATA Motors was there as an observer. The idea behind the program was to highlight that the leaders in the organizations need to be Business focused than organization / product focused and to show that Business acumen is an elusive issue. Fairly the point has been driven into the minds of the participants.



As a sequel to the program we had to visit one of the participants’ Shri Sameer Golwalekar, a multidimensional personality having interests in multitude of subjects. Our discussions wandered into many topics such as world history, Indian culture, Current business scenario, European psychology, J Krishnamurthi etc. At the end of the discussion he presented us with a book titled “On Dialogue” written by David Bohm, Professor of Theoretical physics. The specific choice of the gift was not random, it was after understanding the methodology, intention and service that we provide to the Business fraternity, that he suggested that we must go through this tome.

The book had about forty pages but each sentence was rich with meanings and insights that are unusual to find. I finished reading the book on the flight back to Kochi. The amazement was a Phycisist writing a book on tackling the social issues and an instigation of pride that we hold similar lines of thought. The book definitely enriched our Business Strategy workshops and (We both Yogeshji and me ) thank profusely Shri Sameer for this invaluable gift.

The summary and highlights of the book as I understand is provided in this series of blog. His own words are provided in most of the occasions and I have tried my best not to give my own interpretations. Wish you all an enjoyable read.

David Bohm, while researching the lives of Einstein, Heisenberg, Pauli and Bohr, made a remarkable observation. He noticed that their incredible breakthroughs took place through simple, open and honest conversations. He observed, for instance, that Einstein and his colleagues spent years freely meeting and conversing with each other. During these interactions, they exchanged and dialogued about ideas which later became the foundations of modern physics. They exchanged ideas without trying to change the other's mind and without bitter argument. They felt free to propose whatever was on their mind. They always paid attention to each other's views and established an extraordinary professional fellowship. This freedom to discuss without risk of interpersonal damage led to the breakthroughs that leaders of all sort today take for granted.

Dialogue - A proposal

For David Bohm the word "dialogue” gives an image of a river of meaning flowing around and through the participants. Any number of people can engage in Dialogue - one can even have a Dialogue with oneself - but the sort of Dialogue that Bohm is suggesting involves a group between twenty and forty people seated in a circle talking together.

According to Bohm , Dialogue is a way of exploring the roots of the many crises that face humanity today. It enables inquiry into, and understanding of, the sorts of processes that fragment and interfere with real communication between individuals, nations and even different parts of the same organization. In our modern culture people are not able to talk together about subjects that matter deeply to them. Solution to the fragmented communication, Dialogue is what Bohm proposes.

In Dialogue, a group of people can explore the individual and collective presuppositions, ideas, beliefs, and feelings that subtly control their interactions. It provides an opportunity to participate in a process that displays communication successes and failures. It can reveal the often puzzling patterns of incoherence that lead the group to avoid certain issues or, on the other hand, to insist, against all reason, on standing and defending opinions about particular issues.

Dialogue is also a way of observing, collectively, how hidden values and intentions can control our behavior, and how unnoticed cultural differences can clash without our realizing what is occurring. It can therefore be seen as an arena in which collective learning takes place and out of which a sense of increased harmony, fellowship and creativity can arise.

Because the nature of Dialogue is exploratory, its meaning and its methods continue to unfold. No firm rules can be laid down for conducting a Dialogue because its essence is learning - not as the result of consuming a body of information or doctrine imparted by an authority, nor as a means of examining or criticizing a particular theory or program, but rather as part of an unfolding process of creative participation between peers.

A Dialogue is not concerned with deliberately trying neither to alter nor change behavior or to get the participants to move toward a predetermined goal. Any such attempt would distort and obscure the processes that the Dialogue has set out to explore. Nevertheless, changes do occur because observed thought behaves differently from unobserved thought. Dialogue can thus become an opportunity for thought and feeling to play freely in a continuously of deeper or more general meaning. Any subject can be included and no content is excluded. According to Bohm Such an activity is very rare in our society.

Profit and Profitability

Many incidences we have faced in our strategy workshops, where we have to explain the difference between profit and profitability. Yogesh Jain of Niche Quality Systems Pvt Ltd, who is partnering for the DNA development service in Indore region has witnessed most of the confrontations related to profitability.

The question, what is the aim of doing business? Elicits an immediate and instinctive answer… ‘to make profits’ from most of our workshop participants.  Anything other than profit seems to be unthinkable for both business owners and managers.  This is the point where we struggle most to make the key players of the business think beyond profit.  One aspect that we push them to go beyond profit is ‘profitability’.

When we say that ‘profitability is healthier measure of business than profit’ is not welcome by most of the business owners, partially because they do not understand the difference between these two and due to the sentimental attachment they have towards the term ‘profit’.  

Why this strong sentiment?  We feel …….because everyone in the company pays attention to profits. Most of the key business teams have a revenue / budget / profit plan, each department / functional head owns an important element of that plan and progress is watched closely by them in the review meetings.  All managers work strenuously to meet these targets. Yet, even if each manager meets the budget targets, the company seems to be a lot less profitable.   

I remember sitting in a review meeting of a distribution company several years ago. The business owner of the company sat at the head of the table and looked at the four to five managers sitting on both sides of the table. Each manager, in turns began..’ here are my numbers’……. After presentation, they had discussions on implications of the numbers presented and finally all adjusted their numbers and a consensus was reached. This was the half yearly plan.   

In the following quarter the Sales manager grew the top line and met his quota. An additional sale came from new customers who ordered frequently in small amounts. The gross margin on these orders did not cover the distribution cost. Other customer ordered products that were out of stock locally and had to be couriered from other regions.

Two things were noticed in this situation. First both the Sales manager and the Logistic manager were on target; the sales manager grew revenues and the Logistics manager met his target because his budget was based on an average cost that allowed these inefficiencies with a hope on future business. Even though these managers met their numbers they failed in managing the profitability.

Second, these uncommon sales and orders could have been made much more profitable through some very simple business oriented twists, which would have benefited the customers as well as the company. These twists require only a business acumen and execution - not extra financial capital. Our strategy workshop highlights this point to a large extent.

As a discipline, we need to see Profit and Money as two different things. It is certainly possible for a firm to make a huge profit and have no money. It is equally possible that company is flush with funds but is suffering from losses.  What happens when an organization shows a profit?  There will be a line of people standing in a queue waiting for a share of profit.  Some organizations get into trouble because they don’t make profit. And others get into trouble because they make profit.

But successful businesses stand on two pillars. One: the ability to generate profit. Two: the ability to manage cash flow. Managing cash flow is very much related profitability. But this is missing in most of the companies… profitability is unseen and unmanaged!

 Contributed by Sasikanth Prabhu

Killing Business Innovation

Innovation happens in most organisations on daily basis, but most of it is revolving around cost reduction or pricing tactics. Very very rarely do Business Innovation happens.

Business Innovation isn’t just a strategy – it’s a mind-set founded on the belief that a win for customers and employees is a win for the company. Unfortunately, most companies are unwilling to make the transformation from being product, geography, or function centric to becoming truly Business centric. With a decade of experience with many businesses, we have found six mind-sets that block business innovation.

1. Spends without focus. Firms pour money into traditional pockets.... training, sales promotions, advertisements, product / service development, but research shows that the market refuses to give them credit for this. Business owners make all kinds of excuses for this state of affairs –“We’re in a tough industry” or “All the Street cares about is short-term results”– but customers just aren’t buying it.

2. Makes budgets an entitlement. Senior managers who negotiate for funding typically make their decisions on the basis of the prior year’s budget or the company’s general cost concerns. At the same time, department staff view the budget funds as an entitlement (we ought to get this... attitude) rather than as a investment focused on the business. The result?  Business as usual, and the same (boring / off the shelf ) customer offerings.

3. Assumes people in the field know nothing. Most firms treat departments as seperate entities /functions run by people with respective special backgrounds. A typical business owner / CEO thinks, “Our technical people are in charge of product development – they have to develop and educate the sales people about the new product. Sales persons will never understand the complexities of engineering.” This mindset almost guarantees that products and services don’t properly connect within the organisation.

4. Puts Marketing, Finance, Administration etc. in different cubicles. These distinctly different functions are more or less autonomous. They rarely communicate, except to consider cutting budgets when overall business performance lags. Such disunity ensures that no one pays attention to business of what the customer needs and wants from the company as a whole.

5. Detaches Marketing from the customers. Marketing people can’t do much for customers beyond feeding them propaganda. For eaxample when premium resort customers often lack a decent meal or even a pillow, the poor folks in Marketing can only report on customer rage.

6. Don’t rock the boat ..attitude. Harmony is given priority than doing more business. Business leaders / top management shy away from organizing their businesses around customers' needs , arguing that doing so is “too complicated” or “too disruptive” for them. But for the organic growth of the business, shaking up is needed. Only then the sustainable benefits will flow to the customers, employees, shareholders and the economy as a whole.

We are exposed this kind of mindsets in our retainer engagements (DNA Crafting) and it frequently challenges us in various forms. With a balance of approaches we have begun to grapple with the situations. But we hold on to our methodology of 'Merciless provocation" though it is interpersonally risky, yet the only known effective method. Changing mindsets emerging to be our specialisation.

contributed by Sasikanth prabhu

Mind Your Business

In the month of February 2011, we (my friend Yogesh and me) organised an evening program for the CEOs and The Business owners in Indore. The title of the program was " Mind Your Business - Mend Your business". The purpose was to connect / reconnect / reawaken the participants to their own business. We received a very good response from the market... of course with lots of effort from Yogesh. And the program went on with ardent participation with learning points and turning points.

..... but people ask me what is is connecting / reconnecting with business. My attempts to answer the question has been futile. I find it very difficult to put it across... because whatever be my explanation it has potential for argument. We are not here to argue and prove the point academically. What we are trying to transmit is not for talking too much, but to grasp it and do something about it. Some grasp our point with glitter in their eyes while some do not even agree on the relevance of the topic.

We certainly / strongly feel that there is place / scope for our efforts in this direction and also we feel that this as an essential service needed to the business owners.

The following story (adapted) might be useful in enlightening on the plight of the Businesses / SMEs. This is from a collection "The Islanders" by Idries Shah ( Sayed Idries el-Hashimi ).

The story goes.....

Due to dire conditions a tribe "Enterpee" were forced to leave their beloved homeland and find refuge in an island far off in the sea. They had excellent skill of swimming and shipbuilding that is their source of confidence. The Enterpees thought that once the conditions in their homeland improves they will go back their using their skills of swimming and ship building.

But over the years, they got adjusted to the circumstances of the new found island....and slowly the memory of their original home was dulled. The people began to question the need for learning archaic and apparently useless skills of swimming and ship building. The island was cozy and all the needs of the tribe were satisfied, though sometimes struggle was there.

There was a warning, somehow received, that the island might be destroyed in a tsunami or cyclone, before which they have to get evacuated to another land. There was a small select group of wise-men, known as 'Walas' who taught the arts of swimming and shipbuilding secretly to those who paid the required fees. Generally Enterpees did not patronized the walas, as they thought that swimming and shipbuilding has no practical use and also there are pseudo-experts who appear to be Walas.

In the dictionaries of Enterpees the Swimming is defined as ... unpleasant, mental abberation... supposedly a method of propelling the body through water without drowning. But swimming and shipbuilding is taught in the Island university as it was a required qualification for all the jobs in the island. Anybody who passes the written exam were qualified to receive the coveted certificate of Swimming.

In the island there lived a young man named Dav, who decided to learn swimming despite having the certificate of swimming from Island University. He set out in search of Instructor... but he is aware that there exists genuine as well as psuedo- teachers for swimming. The swimming teachers are known as " "

We keep on meeting To emphasise the condition underwhich

Interest: the key to job involvement

When I make presentations about our Business strategy workshops and the Organisational renewal workshops to the business owners, we ask: what is your major challenge in your organisation? Four out of five owners say that, their people do not take ownership of what they do – they do not take the company as their own. In spite of the reward offers and exposure to opportunities, the people do not give their best. They do not have positive attitude towards the company.

Of course there are many reasons for such lack of involvement of people in business. One of them is lack of interest in the job, the function, the process etc. Usually the hiring managers in business give more importance to the knowledge, skills and abilities of a job candidate than to the interest part. There are intelligent and academically brilliant candidates who can overwhelm the hirers by their sheer scholasticism and articulation. But when it comes to completing the jobs with heart’s touch such candidates may take a back seat. It is because the job holder get things done by their smartness and not by their interest in it.

The term interest is used to indicate a mental disposition towards something real or abstract. The way of interest is the way of the heart. The people hirers must give priority to interest patterns of the candidate than to the skills, abilities and the experience. If the interest is their, the other things can be acquired than vice versa. Interest is a natural energiser and when it is connected to business, there is overall goodness - the ownership blossoms.