Hopes Alive in Change Management

Through our strategy workshops we try to unite people in action (build social capital).  We are able to do that, but we find it difficult to sustain the initiatives undertaken as part of the program (especially the customer visits and new market identification). People have

a tendency to relapse into their individualistic approach to jobs, and they remain operations focused than business focused.  We are very much aware that a poorly led change initiative can inflict disorder on a business unit or the entire company. Sluggish initiatives can breed sarcasm and damage the top management’s and our credibility, and can jeopardize future change initiatives. We are very concerned in preventing change failures. 

Failed initiatives have happened in some of our facilitation midway. As we are a research based consulting, we delved deep into the issues related to initiatives and improved our delivery systems to overcome the inertia of change. In the process of analyzing the cause for change-initiative failures, we also recognized that the business leader’s courage matters most in making the change successful.  There is no substitute for this ingredient, and we have to depend on the leadership level of the client company. Places where we have strong leadership at the top, our strategy facilitation is smoother.   Resilience, patience and trying out until the goal is reached, are the three attributes we expect or want from the top team to implement changes in business strategy.  We are constantly working on developing and nurturing these characteristics in our client’s team.  Even a small breakthrough in change management can give tremendous outcomes.  . We recognize that  leading initiatives is not easy,  but we have identified a few effective principles, that change initiatives stand to  survive the most common vulnerabilities. That is emerging as our strength. 

Contributed by Sasikanth R Prabhu, Marg Atreya

Benefits and advantages of Chai Board

Chai Board is the tool we use in facilitating DNA crafting (strategy Development). Flip charts and the marker pens are the usual tools that we use in the facilitation process. We have observed that this simple process brings certain significant and important value to the key players who are participating in the Chai Boards (DNA sessions).  

Some of the conspicuous ones are….

It brings Focus: Because everyone is looking at one display: the flip charts, the key players do not have many different versions inside their own imaginations. Slowly shared awareness and understanding is built. This shared understanding forms the basis for future social capital needed for the business growth.

It promotes camaraderie: The participants begin to feel they are part of one team. The provocative, interactive, engaging qualities of working with flipcharts and dialoging are found to be more effective at supporting relationship building, trust, and participation than pushy PPT presentations and lectures.

It prevents fragmentation: Fragmentation suggests a condition in which the people involved see themselves as more separate than united, and in which direction and focus are scattered. It is a phenomenon that pulls apart business that is whole. We have found that fragmentation is hidden, intangible and people in the organization do not even realize that there are incompatible tacit assumptions about the business and each key person believes that his or her understanding is complete and is shared by all.  Our flip chart display is a direct support to common findings, and allows the key players to aggregate and analyze the issues on a common platform. Most of the outputs that the key players are making in understanding the dynamics of their business are from displaying on flipcharts and dialoguing on the issue. This process prevents fragmentation but enhances shared understanding. This is key to business growth, without this it is less probable.

It allows easy follow-through: Connecting everyone’s activity over time is essential to producing anything. The difference between relying on everyone’s individual perception and having a shared schedule and road map everyone buys-in is night and day. The output flipcharts allow the key players to brief themselves, remind, repeat the matters of business, support after-action reviews, and document key outputs for broadcasting to others in the organization.

Contributed by Sasikanth Prabhu

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.

What is Chai Board?

Many people ask about Chai Board; how it came into existence, what is done in chai board, how it is conducted, how long it takes, what is its benefit etc. 

'Chai Board is a service developed by Marg Atreya Consulting, way back in 2007 to help the business organisations to make the 'business' meetings effective. It was designed after years of experience and research.

Before jotting the attributes of chai board, let us scan the  environment prevalent in many of the organisations. There is a subtle, intangible, but real pain in most of the organisations. One common overheard statement in most of the organisations is " how am I supposed to get my work done with all of these meetings?'  Meetins are hated and tolerated by many and most believe that it is a waste of time. Yes it is ... if not conducted , moderated or facilitated properly.

There is the frustration of calling a meeting to make a decision and watching the meeting spiral into a battle between rival departments, divisions, partners, product lines, business units etc or get lost in confusion over the meaning of a technical term, in proving ones point of view as more superior etc. These meetings first has the frustration of reaching a decision and then having to abandon the decision because there was'nt enough 'buy-in'. This is the pain of fragmented 'social capital'.

Part of the pain is a misunderstanding of the nature of the problems at hand.  The failed meetings are due to a special class of problems called 'wicked problems". Business organisations have them plenty, but they are niether recognised or are attempted to be solved in logical method , with tools / techniques meant to handle well defined problems. Wicked problems are ill-defined ones and a force of fragmentation. Most business organisations, small or big,  today have significant wicked elements. Most of the business owners and managers are not recognising the presence of such phenomenon instead they sub- consciously accept the situation and apply what they know best. In meetings they follow the traditional way of agenda making, following it with tick marks as the ponts are discussed and concluding the meeting as the agenda is completed.

Another source of pain is the social complexity, ie the number and diversity of players who are involved in the business. The more people involved in a business the more social complexity and the more diverse these people are , the more social complexity. Often people who come to the meetings see themmseves as more seperate than united. In many of the organisation the uniting force /system / theme is missing,

Thus presence of wicked problems and social complexity makes the meeting less effective. As a solution to overcome these problems Chai Boad was designed.

Chai Board is an opportunity to share business insights face-to-face


Chai Board is a small informal gathering (3 to 20 people) assembled to engage in 'fertile dialogues' to develop and share insights.

Time suited for Chai Board is mid morning or mid afternoon ar early evening when participants are relaxed and enjoying a cup of tea.

The duration of Chai board may be 90 minutes or more depending on the enthusiasm and energy of people. (usually it takes 120 minutes minimum)

The heart of Chai Board is dialogues.......

For want of honest, direct and open conversations, careers are derailed and

organizations lose money. For lack of truth telling, bad behavior is tolerated and,

 in fact, spreads, infecting others who become cynical or indifferent.

Fertile  dialogues are required to float the realities of business and to grow the business.

Indicators of fertile Dialogues are openness, informality and energy.

Chai Board facilitates fertile dialogues.

Dialogue is the core of business team work and the basic unit of work.

Conversations can be stilted, politicised, a personality biopsy, domineering, fragmented, clouting, masked, adversarial, vengeful etc

or

Conversations can be reality based, asking right questions, listening oriented, empathatic, solution oriented, authentic, debating the issue etc.

Chai board focusses on the latter kind of conversations.

The Chai Board value point : Spending time in dialogues in the prresence of a facilitator creates insights and enhances learning.

Chai Board captures moments of truth.
Chai Board engages people in spontaneous / fertile dialogues
Chai Board triggers alternate thinking routes
Chai Board facilitates insight learning
Chai Board creates genuine bonds

We are proud to overhear that our clients are using the term often ... such as .... 'Lets have a chai board tomorrow...." indicating this is distinct from their other routine meetings.

contributed by Sasikanth Prabhu

 

Entry Barriers

When I was a MDP consultant at IBS Kochi, I had a chance to visit premises of more than 50 small, medium and large businesses. My job was to develop businesses for the intellectual capital of the faculty at IBS. My experiences during the visits to the prospective customers' premises made me feel that intellectual capital is the least wanted capital by them, but mostly needed. We found two situations in the customer’s premises: one is " business is doing well" and the other " business is not doing well". After visiting a score of prospects we found a pattern in their responses, mostly unfavourable ones.

Places where business is doing well the following behavior is found.....

 They....

·   Do not allow the new service providers to access the business leaders

·   Show ‘we-know-it-all’ attitude

·   are busy Expanding the organisation at a faster pace

·   Revenue growth and profit generation is equated with business growth

·   Give high priority to prestigious certifications and image building activities

·   Focus mostly on customers with high purchase power

·   Engage in creating entry barriers to the new comers / competitors

·   Look for business diversifications

·   Command and demand services from the vendors (supply chain)

 Places where business is not doing well the following behavior is found.....

 They....

·         engage in cost cutting measures

      ·         sell the products at thin margins

·         arrange programs to change the peoples’ behavior. The programs will be conducted by in house experts or by an outside agency that quotes the least.

·         take disconcerted marketing initiatives

·         spend more time in urgent and managerial issues

·         Search for certifications that will give them credibility in the market.

·         are hesitant to discontinue the unprofitable / failed product lines

contributed by Sasikanth Prabhu

Visioning

Now we have facilitated visioning exercise of more than 50 small businesses. Recently we did visioning program for a Automotive parts manufacturing Company in Dewas (Madhya Pradesh). This company was introduced by our friend Yogesh Jain who also became an ardent follower of School of Strategy and he runs his organisation Niche Quality Solutions Pvt Ltd (http://nicheqs.com/), which has long experience in providing Six sigma, Quality solutions to organisations in and around Indore. An year's experience in strategy workshops have given him an opportunity to develop an unconventional perspectives on business growth. He says " I have attended many management programs organised by institutions such as IMA.... but the business strategy workshops are different and they really add value to the organisation. There is a sense of fulfillment in taking part in these sessions". It is wonderful to work with him now... ...

During the meetings with business owners the question that comes up a lot in the work we do is the difference between vision and mission. At times we come across companies which do not bother to distinguish them at all: but...They have a separate Values Statement (thank goodness), but if you ask them to tell their Vision, and then their Mission, they’ll give you the same answer for both questions. So what is . difference? Does it matter? Yes it does! we will see visioning here .

• A strategic vision is usually thought to be solely future oriented. A vision provides an organization a forward looking, idealized image of itself.


• Moves outside the usual assumptions.


• Concentrates on the end goal, not the means to reach the goal.


• Followers gain ownership by developing the means (action plan).

Another benefit when done together with the people in the organisation is shared vision, which includes a present component.

• Vision is not a destination, but an intangible structure that surrounds us and guides our daily activities. From this perspective, a shared vision is a form of self-identity.

This definition of vision is a collective belief in what the organization can become. In this way it is similar to a truly desired wish for the future. If the vision is sufficiently broad it is enough for providing a framework for current decisions.

Regularly feedback can be employed for both corrective action and vision revision (interesting combination of words). If the feedback indicates a problem in the implementation and nothing amiss in the expected vision then the strategy and/or tactics can be altered to get back on track toward the vision. And if there is an indication that the vision is no longer realistic there is no problem with a shift in vision to a more workable vision. Normal planning cycles allow for such a step on an annual or half yearly basis.

ImplicationsWhat is unique about the organization's self-concept of itself? Something that would be missed if the organization were not to fulfill this vision.

What issues might arise among different stakeholders as this vision is realized?
Are organizational practices aligned with the vision? Are desired actions reinforced by performance metrics?

Putting an organization’s mission & vision in place requires working at all levels of the organization. Often, the effort is only made at the top of the organization with the expectation that employee commitment will follow. This assumption is far from true. It is recommended that a specific change program be put in place to develop a shared vision and common understanding of the organization’s vision and mission.

Building Social Capital - the collective feeling of 'We'

When we interact with the organisations in the initial phase of our facilitation , it most often becomes evident that people in the organisation build their plans and strategies of business on the assumption that others in their firm are ready and willing to be team players, act collectively to create or achieve something in the future for the organisation.

The observation, however, is that most often the organisation operates in a fragmented way. The technical people are pulling the resources in one direction, the marketing guys demand better attention to their requirements, finance have seemingly lopsided approach to their allocations and HR brings their own issues unconnected to business. The very resources meant for growing the business are pulling it apart.

In spite of these experiences, organisations are in the habit of assuming that once a good strategy is evolved at the top, people in the organisation will readily act, participate and contribute in a focused way according to the new found strategy.

An orchestra that is ready to play the same song does not come into being naturally but have to be worked out. Similarly every organisation has to create a pre-condition of shared understanding and shared commitment as they build the strategy. This is what is building ‘social capital’. This capital is the most prominent for a business organisation in the modern scenario and is even more scarce and important than the financial capital.

It is quirky to identify and create collective feeling of what “we” (i.e., the firm) should do if there is no strong sense of “we” – a mutual commitment and sense of group loyalty and cohesiveness. Similarly, it can be meaningless if the members of the firm are not committed to go on a journey together into the future.

Most organisations are clueless on how to create such feeling of ‘we’ the collective intelligence or the social capital. One attempt by many organisations to build social bonding is to celebrate the birthdays / anniversaries of the employees or having cultural get together etc on occasions of public festivities such as Onam, Christmas, Diwali etc. Secondly, on encountering inter-departmental turmoil, interpersonal conflicts and other employee behavioral issues, mostly companies resort to training programs on team building, leadership, communication skills, interpersonal skills, etc to the employees. Even after several training programs the conditions in the organisations do not improve which leads to cutting training budgets, snipping certain employees (even though they are valuable to the business), restructuring the organisation, abandoning the attempts to improve with ‘we-have-to live – with it’ attitude etc.

Actually there may be nothing wrong with the employees or with strategy or with the intentions of the business owners. The fragmented functioning in the organisation is somehow subtly connected with the view of ‘big picture’, a shared understanding and the commitment of the people in the organisation. These three are essentials for an organisation to work effectively. Training is not the solution, neither impersonal communications aides such as bulletin boards, manuals, sign posts, websites or awareness building programs. Top management fiat also is not effective in this situation.

But it is possible to develop a social architecture suited for each business / organisation. The only way known now is to lubricate the wheels and gears of existing social system. The traditional meetings need to be converted into animated dialogues. A facilitator who has the knowledge and skill of handling the group dynamics may be engaged to bring together the diverse stakeholders and facilitate to bring out the shared understanding and commitment. Engaging a facilitator for organisational planning is quiet unconventional, but it is needed and there is no other way known how to tackle the organisational fragmentation.

contributed by Sasikanth Prabhu

Passion is inevitable

In the last two weeks of February 2011, I met at least 50 new interesting people. Many of them are business owners and leaders. While interacting with them it is reconfirmed or rediscovered that "Passion" has a significant place in the success of a business.

It emerges that Passion is a pre-requisite for business. It is one of the primary investments of business owners . It is an invisible ingredient. It provides a compelling reason to stay on purpose and it ignites the desire to serve a greater cause than profit alone. Passion leads to care for something. If any person fails, it is because they are unable to care. The caring attitude stems from passion.

In an economic context it appears now that passion is important though it is intangible. A passion for business (making profits and gains) and passion for serving a higher purpose ( creating valuable results) is seen among most of the successful business owners.

Jack Kahl the erstwhile Owner of Manco Inc - a successful duct tape company in America (now known as Henkel Manco) used to go for lectures to colleges and other business gatherings. one of his favourite speech was titled as " Don't park your heart at the Curb", which indicates that a great work is accomplished by involving the heart (which is passion).

I have seen many universities mentioning about "passion' as requirement, but did not yet found it as a part of curriculum in any of the Business schools. In the real world of business and leading, passion plays an integral role. Hence it is important to ask the question. Can passion be taught? difficult to answer, but it is transferable and evokable. A business leader has to have passion and then transfer it to others or has to awaken in others for the cause. Great leaders do this.

When a group of people are passionate about a unified cause... social capital builds. Social capital is one of the prime capitals required for business success in the modern times.

How to do this may be saved for another blog... of if you have answers welcome... if you put it in your blog ... please send the link....

have passion... preserve it... nourish it....

contributed by : Sasikanth Prabhu

Training vs Facilitation

In our workshops, we are moving from training orientation to facilitation. There is lots of arguments about the superiority of training on facilitation and vice versa. There are merits and demerits of training - facilitation processes.

The biggest difference between training and facilitating is

the difference in the ratio of learner involvement vs. trainer

involvement. A facilitator's only job is to get the

participants to explore for answers to issues that matters them through fertile dialogues. The facilitator provokes the participants and lead them to find answers to their conflicts. While leading the facilitation process the facilitator stays outside the conflict and do not make any judgements on the opinions floated. The group come to a decision and the facilitator reinforces their learnings

Slowdown in economic growth is only a slowdown of the psyche!

Before discussing the relation between the economic phenomenon and the Psyche, let us just brush some aspects of the economic system in our society. Every society has a system that regulates the economic activities. There are certain major entities that play key roles in the system. In modern times four major entities play a role in regulating the economic system.

 They are …

• The government : The government collect taxes and spends the resources for the welfare of the society
• The financial institutions (Banks, Capital Markets etc): The financial institutions gather the savings of the households and use it for the developmental purposes through loans etc.
• The Producing organizations (Products / services): The producing organizations produce products and services required by the household.
• The households: Households work as a unit contributing to the society and develop their own members.

Each of these components has to play their respective roles to keep the economy alive and vibrant.   If any of these members collectively change their behavior it may result in slowdown of the economy, for example if Government introduces taxes, it will affect the households decisions, If the Producing organizations change their products it will affect the system.

 All of us know that recession has hit all parts of the world.

 Recession means any one of the above mentioned entities has taken steps contrary to the developmental pattern and others are affected by it in some negative way.

Conventionally it is held that recession happens when people lose their ‘purchasing power’.  When household’s ability to buy is lost, it will lead to lack of sales for the producing organizations. The goods produced have to be sold. But how can they be sold when people have lost their purchasing power?

 If manufacturers cannot sell, they cannot generate enough revenue to repay loans and the creditors. The business eventually goes bankrupt and the banks will be full of non-performing assets. In such situations the banks will lend less. This becomes a vicious cycle. Depositors panic because some banks would have collapsed. They withdraw their money, and more banks collapse.

In order survive the recession the Companies will lay off some of its employees and the people who have lost jobs will have lesser money to spend. The people who are have not lost their job will tend to control their expenses and try to save more to survive during the uncertain times. These decisions of the people will result in slower turnover of money and the money supply will get stuck.

However the current is recession is caused by the Financial Institutions in the West, who were exposed to exorbitant risks in the derivatives market.  The banks were burst and millions of people lost their savings and large number people lost their jobs.

But one thing we must understand is that in recession times, we have lost only money (financial capital), but not the ability to make money. The ability to make money is a psychological phenomenon. With proper mindset and psychological capital the lost prosperity can be regained. 

 The people may have lost their purchasing power.  But their needs, dreams, goals are still there. For example a person may not be able to own a car but the need to travel is still there.  The economy drives on the latent desires of the households and the governments.  We become really poor only when we cannot dream, desire or do not take calculated risks.  The existence of dreams, ideas and desires ensures a good business for producing organizations. When the producing organizations are complaining about the lack of sales, it also means that they are not caring much about the customers.  The needs / wants are always present, only that we are not finding ways to satisfy them.

 Also we have to be open to the opportunities around us than to distant places / countries. The near-care focus will yield better results than far-care focus in the long run. Even though we are living in a globalised world we still need to pay attention to the nearest environment we live. 

 In this sense recession is an opportunity to accelerate our psychological slowdown. Recession is the effect of our mental retardation.

 If the organizations and the households, aim for better life standards, the economic prosperity sure to come.

 Some of the solutions to beat recession and make way for prosperity are …

 For Business organization

• Become customer oriented
• Develop innovative products / services
• Help the smaller organizations
• If the service provider / vendor cannot be paid in cash, offer shares in the company
• Do Barter

 For Individuals

Keep the dreams and goals alive | Invest in social capital | Express the needs and seek help | Help others’ profusely | Be a value creator

Economic slowdown is a temperory phenomenon

 This is the summary of the talk given by Sasikanth Prabhu (business consultant)

 At Chintavedi, Thuravoor (31.05.09)