Significance of Learning by Doing

With the explosion of technological possibilities, it appears that 21st century human beings are smarter than the earlier generations. It is not so. They (even the prehistoric tribes) were equally intelligent like us and have faced day today challenges as we do.  The only difference could be that the content of our issues/challenges are different.

We boast of knowledge accumulation in various fields. But, what is that hinders business growth when there is plenty of knowledge and information around? The converging answer is; rarely do people set out for executing an action or applying knowledge. The corollary of the statement is rarely we gather knowledge by doing.

In our business facilitation, we follow the principle of 'being aware before doing before knowing'. We propose to suspend knowledge until you do (while tackling wicked problems). We are struggling to cajole our clients to take action on the insights we generate during our workshops. Everybody agrees about the insights and the desired destiny, but no one takes initiatives, even the simple ones.    

The essence of learning is that those who are aware of the exact here-and-now issues and the farther impact of the action, are likely to take action. Raising such an awareness among the key members of the organisation is not easy. We need to design or perhaps invent methodologies to bring out a collective awareness about the common goal. In the end, we console ourselves that, we are getting better  and moving towards gaining shared understanding and execution among our client's team. Perfection is yet to be reached.  

We constantly take efforts to install a culture in the organization  for taking action on the insights developed, and  create opportunities to reflect  and review on their actions. Doing with awareness and reflecting on the actions, promises an ability to adapt, cope with, manage and prepare for uncertainties and change. Our focus on 'doing before knowing' also ensures that the organisational members complete learning cycles by doing, reflecting, re-framing and applying on the business issues. One of the pioneering practitioner once said " there is no learning without doing and no action without learning". How true it is?

contributed by Sasikanth R Prabhu

Awakening Trumpet

We are deeply moved by watching ordinary people doing extraordinarily in course of our Strategy development workshops. Little achievements of the key members (ordinary people) having profound effect on the business leaves us in disbelief. We are glad to watch the changes in their outlook about the business. But, we are regretting that only a small percentage of business owners / teams dare to leave their accustomed way of thinking and catch the growth mindset. One of the major mindset is to expand the production facility, or increase number of sales outlets, or increase man power, etc. 

Most  organisations operate on the assumption or formula that more resources / facility equals better business. They invest a large financial capital in upgrading, expanding and improving resources. Of course, resources matter to accomplish organisational feat. But the mindset for growth matters more than resources.  When you look around the companies that grow geometrically; in spite of meager resources, they thrive with their outlook. Often mindset trumps the resources bank; it sets businesses apart. It help

s the leaders to navigate the right path, irrespective of the circumstances the organisation is having. Mindset can be acquired with right kind of facilitation. A look back on the clients whom we have served indicate, it is sheer mindset that helped them to reach a growth path. The wake up call to every Small and Medium business is to see the market before they spend or acquire costly resources.  Resources may become obsolete faster than the returns it can provide. Many times simplest of the ideas lead to big breakthroughs, but the ideas stick only if there are right mindsets. 

contributed by Sasikanth R Prabhu

Focus and Strategy

From visits to various organisations, we have observed that many organisations are like alcoholics..... Alcoholics find it difficult to leave their drinking habits. Similarly, organisations too cannot leave their habits of clinging to operational silos. Daily urgencies and crisis are expected, attended and promoted than the important activities of business. Business connection is lost in many the organisations.  Operations are meant to drive business, but operations, in course of time, engulfs business and the very purpose of business is hijacked. We bring this anomaly to the notice of the key players of business. Even being aware of this predicament , the people in the organisation cannot get out of their habit of fighting daily urgencies and crisis.

Many say we need to form business strategy, but there is no time. they often say ... Let us finish this project and then we shall sit for forming business strategy. Most business owners and key players fail to take action on strategy but keep on continuing their operational routines.

Second factor that hinder the wished growth is the lack of clarity about overall strategy We have lost count of cases in which well-intentioned project managers waste their time and energy on initiatives that senior managers felt, this is not our priority, even when the same senior persons have approved the initiatives.

Still another observation is that ,  lot of good companies waste enormous amounts o resources on too many projects that had too little focus.

Our business facilitation workshops attempts to overcome these problems by establishing shared awareness and focus of the business. 

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

Outside support

Entrepeuners succeed with one set of skills and mindset. They are often tempted to think that success can be repeated in the future with the same set of game plan. What we have found is that many successful entrepreuners get stuck at some level of achievement and their business do not grow further. The reason could be when things slip, as it coud be, the temptation to do the same old things hardens aggressively and urgently.

But some companies, very rare ones, even though they are successful in their initial phases, they do differently in their second phase. One of the different things is that these long surviving companies infuse help from outside at an early stage itself by associating with resources such as external board of directors, advisory councils, industry experts, consultants, mentors, facilitators, learning forums etc.  

While the companies that are stuck and have a retarded growth appears to be more insular and are less eager to form partnerships with people outside the firm. Such company owners show so much confidence in themselves that they end up eulogising themselves about how they succeded in tackling challenging situations in the past and how they rely on their own internal abilities. At times, they also, redicule external sources of expertise.

"Help seeking" is a mindset, that need to be inculcated very early in an organisation. But the entrepreuners who start an enterprise tend to be great at figuring things out by themselves and are extremely confident in their ability to find the right answers. Initially this seems to be great , but as the business grows, the leaders must be willing to look for people (outside the four walls of the organisation) with relevant experience, connections and perspectives that are useful to the company.

The power of seeking outside wisdom is immence. The outsiders can play a number of relevant roles. Such as....

1. Usually leaders and managers who take extraordinary initiatives are alone at the top / edge. They can rely on or use outsiders as mentors / counsellors / sounding boards

2. Business is all about perspectives. Outsiders can bring in different perspectives. Many leaders, due to operational urgencies, get bankrupt on ideas. Facilitators can bring new ideas and help key people in the organisation to navigate to the growth path.

3. Sometimes the company may be trying out new ideas or innovation that were tried and perfected by others, elsewhere. If the organisation has a habit of looking for the best from the market, the chances are high that a useful resource be found.

4. Many business tools are developed and tested by varius institutions for the benefit of the business organisations. The outside network of people can get these new tools into the organisation quicker and with ease.

5. Closer contact with external people will enhance the competiveness of the people in the organisation including the top leaders of the organisation.

Getting connected with outside human resources is a channel to grow the company but Douglas Adams says " Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others are also remarkable for this apparent disinclination to do so"...... but do not hesitate to seek help!   

contributed by sasikanth prabhu