Lasting change through crisis

Prevention of crisis is much advised and of course we must do everything to prevent it. But if it occurs, we need preparation to gain from it. Many families, young couples, close friends, colleagues etc have reported  that their past crisis, very deep ones, have helped then to form deeper bonds with each other  Attempting to contain or overcome a crisis brings people together. That is one of the positive value of crisis.

This phenomenon is equally good for business teams too.  The teams that have found ways to overcome crisis and worked together to get over it have found to be having better working relationships and bonding. Crisis gives an opportunity to know each other at deeper levels and to lean to adjust with each other.

Crisis also gives us an opportunity to break from the outdated habits, renew our perspectives and learn new courses of actions.

We facilitate to create conflicts and crisis in our business facilitation services that the team of key players emerge strong and are clear about the strategy. Though we provoke to create conflicts , we are competent to avoid unhealthy interpersonal rub offs and lead to healthy and long lasting outputs.

Experiencing conflicts and resolving it is the stepping stones to growth.


contributed by Sasikanth Prabhu

Closing the perceptual gap in the organisation

As part of the struggle to communicate, what benefits a company will get if they engage us, we offer a
sample session. The hazard of this session – Business Facilitation- is in the initial phases of our engagement. The people in the organization tend to scrutinize / evaluate us to death. After every sessions of two hours the client has a sub-conscious tendency to look for’ what did we gain today?’ Or ‘did we get what we have paid for?’ ‘Did we get anything new?’ Etc.etc.

What we have observed is that always people crave for new knowledge, new ideas, new paradigms, new models. And the attempts for these cognitive acquisitions actually neither solve the issues at hand nor place the company in a better business position. If the participants do not get something new, they get disappointed and the halo about our services also gets affected. Actually our programs are not meant to teach or enlighten about new knowledge but to bring perceptual changes and shared understanding, which unfortunately is not observable, articulable but have significant effect on the collective efforts of the company.

Different groups within an organization can have sharply contrasting perceptions of organizational aspects. For example, while senior executives are twice as likely as any other group to view their company as “resilient,” nearly 60% of line managers, mid-level managers, and business-unit staff describe the same organization as unhealthy in some respect. And though senior managers tend to feel positive about their involvement in operating decisions, many junior managers in the same company feel that senior managers “micromanage” or “domineer.”

Such perception gaps pose a serious organizational climate. Yes, we all want confident, optimistic organizational citizens. But if people within a company can’t agree on the state of its affairs, they can’t accurately diagnose problems or design and execute solutions for them. In our initial phase of our engagement, we dig out the dirt in the organization and try to close the perception gap.

 We make them acknowledge that different people have different perspectives on the organization’s matters. We allow the participants from different groups / departments to share their views—and the reasoning behind them. Sharing their views with others, backing them up with the data they have used to form those conclusions etc.. Our goal is….to compile a more complete picture of the organization. Also encourage honesty and acceptance in the group. We help them describe what’s actually happening in their organization. This process brings into light the real naked issues of the organization. This makes them realize the wrong ride they are taking. We are sure that mere awareness about the prevalent conditions can help managers and staff form a more objective impression of the organization’s health and help them build readiness for change. This feeling is the most important to bring about changes in strategy and organizational development. But alas! The immediate effortless change in perception is not considered to be a gain and the human mind craves for more knowledge…

Contributed by Sasikanth Prabhu

Characteristics of Strategy meetings with the key people of an organisation (Part 1)

By now I have facilitated more than 100 sessions on development of Business strategy and I see some common occurings / patterns in most of the sessions. The observations and experiences are given below.......

• The development of suitable / appropriate strategic options often require novel perspective. Catching the novel perspective sometimes is the most difficult and time consuming part in strategy devlopment


• Many in the organisation view strategy and execution are two different and sometimes even go to the extent that they cannot co-exist.


• Real strategy making requires inputs and contributions from various members of the team. But the top management has the tendency to act as an apex body and take a stand point 'do as I/we say ". This disconnects many employees from the business.


• Strategic information is often forgotten amidst new information pertaining to daily operations. This makes people to be fire fighting than doing the important.


• Many times it requires the key people to make difficult decisions, which they postpone thinking better decision can come as time passes by.


• Many important key points need to be taken into account from the business perspective. But many key people think only in specific functions such as finance, production, accounts, sales , HR etc. They think of doing the job well and not winning the business.


• There is gross disagreement exists among key players on basic assumptions regarding the future of their business.


• The strategy need to be communicated to the employees convincingly, but little time and effort is spent on making the strategy simple to communicate.


• Difference of opinion among the key players regarding the strategy escalates into personal conflicts at a later stage.


• The key players fail to help the employees feel that strategy is something worthwhile to pursue, to identify and to feel proud of.

contributed by : Sasikanth Prabhu