Connecting People

A few years back I was visiting a client’s office for the first time. A middle aged gentleman was at the reception desk in a not so large area on the second floor of an elegant yet modest office building. He greeted me with a warm smile just like someone would welcome a relative or a close friend to his house. Of course, that gentleman was multi tasking- he minds the visitors, attends incoming phone calls, makes outgoing calls based on the request of employees to talk to clients, employees or vendors at different locations.

Contrast this with another large company reception lobby I visited many times. The lobby of about 1000 square feet area, aesthetically designed with water bodies on both sides and a large bronze vessel holding lotus petals welcome you as you enter. There are couple of large TV monitors showing live news from business channels. The walls are adorned with impressive art works. When you walk 50 feet into the lobby you see two young ladies at the reception desk busy handling the telephone console and the computer monitors. They are quite oblivious of the visitors as they are aware that the visitors have been screened through a metal detector, their identities have been verified, face photographed by a web camera and printed on to a guest pass hung around their neck. Besides, there is a low ranking company employee accompanying the guest to the concerned official.

The obvious contrast is that the first one was a mid-size company office with limited guests and the second one, a large company office with hundreds of visitors coming every day. So one can’t find fault with the elaborate and multi-stage procedures for screening, receiving and documenting details of all the visitors. As organizations grow beyond a certain size processes, systems and automation take centre-stage and people tend to be busy controlling or using the systems.

In both places, the front office staffs are ‘connecting’ people. However, the difference is stark. While the gentleman in the first office was connecting the visitor to the official of the organization, he was also connecting with the visitor. In other words, he felt that the visitor is as much his guest as the company’s guest. The ladies at the second office did not feel the same way. They were connecting visitors to the company officials but not connecting with the visitors. Probably it is no fault of theirs. They might have been trained not to engage with the visitors for greater efficiency. And they knew that someone in need would approach them and ask for help. A thousand smiles per day at strangers is no easy task in any case.

From a company point of view both these companies must be thinking that they are doing the right thing. Both may be running successful global businesses and may not feel the need for any change. But the visitor’s point of view could be different. Would one like to go thru X-Ray machines and security procedures and computer guided processes amidst unwelcoming front office staff? Or would one cherish an occasional smiling face?

Does the smile at the front desk have anything to do with the company culture? I guess, yes. The company culture is not reserved for the warehouse or back office it is as much for the front office.

A great edifice impresses. A good smile impacts! 

“We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do”- Mother Teresa

Being Human

Discussions about the Salman Khan verdict and the after effects continued on media, social media, around coffee tables and on the elevators for couple of weeks. Friends and fans of Salman Khan are happy that he has got off the hook for now and hope the higher courts will give him a lesser punishment, if at all they find him having done any serious offence. A large number of sensitive and morally outraged citizens disapprove of the way Salman and his fans have reacted to the verdict and celebrated the victory in the lower court. They think that while Salman has done lot of charity through his ‘Being Human’ Trust, his actions project himself less than human.

There were enough articles, debates and TV Talk shows on the legality and morality of the event and the after-events. I leave the legality and morality to the experts.

Is Salman Khan not ‘being human’?

Let us look at what is really meant by being human. Human beings are inherently imperfect, occasionally rational, mostly self-interested, at times, magnanimous, often biased, influenced by immediate environments, close relatives and friends, and connected more to one’s own tribe, community, religion, profession or club. Most humans are well intentioned but often unable to match intentions with speech, nor speech with actions. In short, human being is a bundle of paradoxes, but not always good or bad but most often somewhere in between and often both.

Salman Khan is no different. He is no angel. He is just being human. And his fans too are just humans. Some of us expect him to suddenly shed his self interest just like he would do with his shirt. There lies the problem! It is more of an expectation issue rather than reality issue.

It is not that human beings started behaving like this after WhatsApp got acquired by Facebook! Ever since human life started on planet earth this is how they behaved. Even in our great epics- religious and others- human characters are depicted mostly selfish, wily, frail, deceitful, remorseful after the event and get back to normal life sooner than later. And to break the monotony of this negative picture, occasionally some ideal men, women or angels were sprinkled among the huge crowd of ordinary human beings. Some with an intention to save the world of all evil and some with the immediate task of destroying a dominant demonic man, woman or creature so that it becomes a lesson for the rest and they behave better. Yet for most humans, lessons in morality are no better than lessons in history and geography. While history repeats geography becomes history.

Some of us still have the faint hope that truth shall win. Let that optimism drive the world.

In modern times we have the government, police and the judiciary- all emerging from the same mass of human beings-to check the excesses of society. How can we expect full justice, fairness and equitable treatment from our representatives when we practise all these according to convenience and personal advantage? Hardly anyone deserves all these in return to one’s own behavior. Yet we all expect the rest of the world to act with moral uprightness, fairness and kindness.

The more socially recognizable a person the greater the expectations on him or her! Celebrities are no greater human beings than any one of us. We made them celebrities, supermen and super-women. Treat them just as any one of us and that is the first level of empathy. We all want to mask our human failings and tend to cling to the heroes and heroines of real life or reel life. Everyone wants a selfie with the great men and women and wants only the bright side of the picture!

‘Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.’ – Albert Camus 

Disclaimer: I am not a fan of Salman Khan. I haven’t seen any of his movies at least in the last 10 years. However, I am being human like him, his victims, his fans and his critics!  

In Search of Happiness

A typical candidate these days looks for ‘challenging’ jobs. When I ask such candidates why they want a challenging job there are differing answers. Some say they get easily bored with ‘routine’ jobs and others would say only a challenging job can do justice to their potential. No one wants to be the average Joe and there seems to be no one below the median line! I explain the job on offer and say that the job is almost the same as what he/she was doing in the previous organization and it can be boring very soon. At this point some candidates deftly switch to other topics. Some would start enquiring about the ‘compensation’ the job brings along. This is a hint that a boring job with high salary ‘compensates’ the absence of challenge or variety. There are interesting contrasts too. We see brilliant professionals who leave their high paying jobs with MNCs, IMF or the UNO to pick up low paying but highly challenging jobs in politics or government bureaucracy.

What do these people seek? Happiness!

‘Can money buy happiness’ is a popular rhetoric question. The politically correct answer generally is that money can’t buy happiness. Some believe that money can buy happiness or at least buy things or services that in turn lead to happiness. But we can’t stretch the argument to the extreme and say that more money can buy more happiness. Infinite amount of money will not give infinite amount of happiness.

Beyond a certain tipping point money leads to unhappiness, frustration and even creates a sense of guilt. This is when the marginal utility of money turns negative, meaning more money leading to more misery. (Well, some of us may prefer such misery to the current level of prosperity! That’s because many of us are utterly ignorant and do not understand the agony of the uber rich.) At this point the rich man starts throwing money just like a frustrated person throws tantrums. Case in point: the neighborhood billionaire suddenly turns philanthropist and pledges half of his fortunes to the greater good of the poorer folks. 

The same way too little money leads to deprivation and unhappiness. Both these extremes have happy exceptions. With lots of wealth Mr. Warren Buffett seems to lead a happy life and with practically no money in hand or in bank many ascetic people seem to lead happy lives too. Unfortunately most of us are neither Warren Buffett nor penniless ascetic folks.

Does this mean that happiness, like virtue stands in the middle? Are the middle class salaried employees the happiest lot? Not many would agree. Ask an employee, ‘are you happy with your pay hike?’ The very question will rub salt on the wound of unhappiness! So what is the solution for the company? I have no answer. My friend gave a suggestion: appoint a CHO- Chief Happiness Officer or if the company cannot afford another CXO position the CEO can double up as a CHO as well. The CHO will measure the ‘as-is’ condition of the company’s total happiness quotient (THQ) and set targets for every year. Two CHOs in the recent past undertook very effective initiatives to improve the THQ of some companies. One such measure was to give iPohone-6+ to key employees and another one was to give Mercedes Benz cars to the top honchos. Both companies reported better THQs and lower attrition in the recent quarter! Who says money can’t buy happiness?

Buddha said: ‘happiness does not depend on what you have or who you are. It solely relies on what you think.’ 

What do you think? Will the next generation be happier?

Action Hero; Decision Zero!

Some time back I was part of a leadership assessment for 20 young professionals of an organisation in the experience range of 8-12 years. They were all accomplished engineers, consistent best performers and were shortlisted from 200 probable candidates. It was like performing a second assessment test on those who already cracked the IIT or IIM entrance exams and won their admission on merits. Common sense logic would suggest that if these are already the chosen few brilliant professionals a further assessment is of little use. Unfortunately life is testing us repeatedly almost every day against new standards.

Coming back to the context of the leadership assessment, one dimension on which majority of these brilliant professionals scored very low was being ‘decisive’. This puzzled me a bit as some of these people I knew for quite some time and they were highly appreciated within the organization and by the clients. Therefore, I did not want to believe the test scores without further validation. I held personal meetings with these professionals and checked if this finding is in fact true in their real professional context. All those who had low scores on being ‘decisive’ agreed that they indeed make few decisions at work. When I checked whether they make decisions in their personal lives all of them said they do make decisions quite frequently and often quickly. That appeared a paradox.

Why do mid level managers in organisations hesitate to take decisions?

a.      In some organizations decisions are taken at significantly higher levels and hence the mid level managers have fewer opportunities to take decision. The authorization protocol would clearly indicate a few senior positions to say YES or NO. The rest of the organisation can make proposals, recommendations or present data.

b.      It could also be that in some organisations the decision support systems and critical data do not flow to the mid and lower levels. A publicly listed company shares a lot of data with the public, some of them before the event and many of them post facto. However, even in such companies most of the mid level managers get to know much of such information along with the public and seldom ahead of them, notwithstanding the grapevine. Unlisted companies may not be any better.

c.       Many companies promote a ‘first time right’ policy which prohibits anyone to attempt a possible decision with some probability of failure. Mid managers dread failure and they delegate all decisions upward. Risk mitigation and compliance orientation drive organisations to restrict decision levels.

d.      Often decision making in companies involve multiple rounds of consultations and the more the number of people involved the longer the decision cycle. Therefore, mid managers who want a quick decision jump the queue and go straight to the top boss or his trusted lieutenant so that he gets a decision fast and he is not accountable for any negative consequences. Cool and nice!

e.      Performance appraisals often tend to showcase ‘what is done’ or an ‘activity list’ rather than how one’s decisions impacted positive outcomes. Outcomes could be intangible and not always instant. Hence, most employees stay in ‘activity-obsession’. People seen as ‘doing things’ and ‘available’ are appreciated better and rated higher.

The paradox vanishes. Decisions in private life often involve fewer people, fewer rules and the reward or punishment accrues to oneself. In movies we like action heroes. In organizations those who take decisions often travel to the top faster. It would be in the interest of the managers to climb the decision tree regardless of the organisational environment. Taking decisions is taking risks and being accountable. Good decisions demand thinking and choosing from competing or even friendly options. Organisations take time to change; individuals can choose a fast track.

         “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”                                                               - Peter F. Drucker                                                  

Beautifully Unequal World

Many customers derive extra satisfaction in discounts and marginal gains from bargains. My friend who worked as a sales person for a clothing company in New Delhi told me this incident happened many years ago. One such customer was looking at a pair of shorts which used to be called ‘half pants’ colloquially. Of course, these were on sale and the price tag was quite attractive with probably about 50% less than the normal sale price. Yet the customer wanted further discounts which my friend politely declined. The customer quickly made a comparison with the price of trousers lying on the adjacent table and found that the price of a trouser made of similar material is hardly 20% higher than the price of the half pants and argued that the price of the shorts should be 50% of the trousers. At this point my friend realized that there was no point arguing with this customer. He told the gentleman, ‘Sir, absolutely no problem, but would you mind picking up the bottom half?’ The customer walked away with a grin.

I am not concerned about the economic behavior behind this true story. Who doesn't want to maximize benefit from an economic transaction? The utopia of equality is a more relevant concept behind human transactions.

‘Two equal halves’ is a pure mathematical concept. In real life there are no equal halves. When we consider two things as equal there is lot of tension, confusion and often conflict. A lot of arguments and conflicts happen over the concept of equality. Many people think that all human beings are equal. Really? Everyone came to the world to be unequal or in other words, unique. Accepting every other person as unique is much better than a lot of slogans for equality. The concept of equality may even arise from selfishness-thinking that there cannot be anyone better than me or there should not be anyone lesser than me! Can there be a more arrogant position than this?

How do you recognize the better half in your choices? Are you ready to pay a premium for the better half? Or do you doggedly fight for equal price for both halves? How does this manifest in the workplace? Will equal opportunity make everyone perform at the same level? Will treating everyone the same way lead to same output from everyone?

   

Respect for every individual is a good principle for nations, societies and organizations. True respect usually doesn't come from treating every one equal. Instead treating every other person as uniquely talented or differently endowed is a more potent reason to respect others. If the other person is exactly equal to me what is the reason for admiration? I admire the other person because he or she is more than equal to me.

Some of us believe in the myth that there was a time in the past when everyone was equal. That is not supported by empirical data. Some others advocate an equal world some time in future. That is a nice and very boring dream. The French Revolution did not make everyone equal; nor will the Aam Aadmi Party make everyone equal. Instead everyone working to achieve one's own potential and everyone supporting everyone else in this pursuit may create a beautifully unequal world for all.  

Aristotle said: ‘The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.’

Knowledge Isn’t Power

The IT industry claims to be a ‘knowledge based’ industry. Is that true? Or if that is true does it mean other industries are not knowledge based? I refrain from answering these questions now.

Every society places a premium on knowledge. Or that is what we were told. In our society lot of us place ‘Saraswati’ (Goddess of knowledge) on a higher pedestal than ‘Lakshmi’ (Goddess of wealth) though much of our adult life is a constant chase for Lakshmi. For long we all believed in the dictum ‘knowledge is power’. That seems to be losing heft.

Bulk of our education was focused on imparting knowledge. Sure, that in itself was a noble thing; and pursuing knowledge was a noble thing too, particularly in an era when the mediums of knowledge were too personal, localized and slow. In ancient India the one who knew Sanskrit was treated as ‘pandit’ and in Europe the one who knew Latin was part of the aristocracy.

Knowing is not same as learning. Few schools taught students how to learn. Learning was optional while knowing got rewarded as examinations aimed at knowledge reproduction on paper. Much of the training too remained knowledge based for long. This is probably one reason why bulk of our Engineering graduates remains unemployable. Bulk of what we consider knowledge today is mere information or data. Long before the ‘Information Age’ Albert Einstein said that ‘information is not knowledge.’

When access to knowledge becomes near universal and almost instant having knowledge is no more power. There is growing realization today on the need to progress from knowledge to learning and from learning to application. Those who are capable of focusing on critical aspects of knowledge, those who learn what is useful and convert that into practical application become successful faster. There is no wonder the ‘app- making’ geek who doesn’t care about English grammar made his millions while his English grammar teacher struggles for livelihood.

This is not to say that knowledge lost all its value. It is probably the opposite. Knowledge needs to be treated much more carefully than casually. Curate knowledge to create value. This is a difficult task in the age of information deluge. When you get 700 WhatsApp messages a day there is no time to think and pick the useful ones. Or when you have 30000 Google links on a subject who will go past the first 20? And what guarantee that the best is among the first 20? One is at the mercy of lady luck. If Ravan had 10 heads, the modern day ‘Saraswati’ has a million heads. Which one to smile at? Herbert Spencer said, ‘When a man’s knowledge is not in order, the more of it he has the greater will be his confusion.’ That appears a reasonable prognosis of the ‘smart world’ we all live in today!

Now, let’s come back to the questions we started with. I would tend to think that most industries are based on application of knowledge and more importantly on the ignorance of potential customers and competition. And, what knowledge to apply depends on experience or imagination and often a combination of both.

What do you think?

‘To Be Honest With You’

A senior corporate leader told me that the values of his company are ‘fundamental’ to their existence and ‘lighthouse’ to their strategic direction. It sounded appealing. After a while doubts started crawling in my head. Are these stated values so fundamental or eternally relevant to these companies? Do they really mean what they say?

If the values were so fundamental then they must stay for long. However, I find that companies keep changing their values. May be values too lose their value in course of time. Companies justify such changes as reflection of the ‘new reality’ brought by a new generation of employees, customers and society. At times it could also be a re-articulation of the old values. In any case values change and at times become loose change!

A company stated ‘Human Values’ as one of its listed values among others including ‘Value for Money’.  In about five years the company found the values losing some shine and again went into social research and test marketing by a reputed branding organization just as it did in the previous round to find a new set of values. ‘Human Values’ and ‘Value for Money’ did not find place in the new list. It is not logical to think that this company has lost its character so much in a span of five years to take a significant deviation from its lighthouse. Quite contrary, it appeared. The company stayed a good corporate citizen, retained its character and thrived in the market.

There was a time when ‘integrity’ was a listed value for many companies much like someone tattooing on his chest ‘I am a saint’. You would have noticed some people starting every second sentence with ‘to be honest with you...’ Be sure, they have something to hide. An honest person need not say ‘I am honest’. For him being honest is more important than saying honest. 

Are there alternatives to this kind of value statements?

Yes. One option is not to do any such listing. Customers don’t care much about your value posters. I go to a footwear showroom, look at the shoes, try couple of them, ask for price and buy what fits my feet and my budget. End of story. During the process I may notice how I was treated by the sales person and the lady at the cash counter. That experience may also influence my next visit to the same shop. How am I concerned about the value statements written on the website or at some corner of the shop? 

A better value statement will be the behavior of the leaders in a company. That is every day noticed. Reward good behavior and discourage or punish unethical and illegal transactions. In my view, business entities need not agonize much about ethics if they follow the laws of the land. Prevailing laws of a nation reflect the ethics of the society. An honest business delivers lots of social good as well. 

Another way of showing value is to add much of the value into your product or service. There are brilliant examples of this, though not seen with majority of products and services. I buy an iPhone not after reading the value statement of Apple Inc. but feeling the value in the iPhone or an iMac. The reliability, aesthetics, simplicity and whatever one can touch and feel.  

There are too many value charades. Organisations need more value behaviors and value demonstrating products and services.