Toilets and Training

A recent news item in the Economic Times reveal that of the 10 Million new toilets built under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in the last one year since the program was launched only less than 50% is used for the purpose for which these were built. Not that this is happening only in the rural areas, even in the urban areas the trend is no better.

We know that in India government spending on social welfare often misses the target. However, unlike the Public Distribution System for food grains, sugar or kerosene, toilets cannot be sold in black market. So why is it that even in such a non-tradable product only half the users benefit from the initiative? It is not that the other half families are not using these toilets. Many of them use these new structures for storing food grains and other agricultural items. They think a nicely built enclosure is not to be desecrated by the daily dose of excreta when there are enough greener, bushy and airy open spaces available for the job. Sound logic it may sound!

Probably there was some defect in the problem definition. The problem got stuck with the toilet. The problem was seen as a large number of Indian families not having ‘pucca’ toilets. Therefore, the solution was straight forward. Set a target to build a certain number of toilets within a specified time. Budgets allocated, contractors identified and the job done! This is not to show the initiative in poor light. The initiative is very laudable and the 50% success made a big difference to five million families. The initiative involved acknowledging an acute basic need, financial planning and physical implementation.

When we broaden the problem to define the need as health, hygiene and safety of the citizens the solution will not stop at the toilet door. The solution should result in using toilets for the intended purpose. That would need a change in the behaviour and eventually developing new habits in life. Behaviour modification often needs much more than physical infrastructure and budgets.  

Psychologists and training managers know this. Behaviour modification is no easy task for any one, leave alone the government agencies. Corporate companies with defined KRA’s (key result areas) and incentives find it difficult to change the behaviour of people. Everyone is comfortable the way one has always been.  

Over two millennia ago Plato found that ‘human behaviour flows from three main sources: desire, emotion and knowledge.’ Notice that even the great philosopher places knowledge at third place when it comes to human behaviour. Repeated communication and demonstration of benefits, along with adequate incentives would be required to break the gravitational orbit of entrenched habits. That would probably kindle the desire for a new behaviour and eventually lock in the new habit with some emotional glue.

Let’s come back to the toilet revolution. Changing a daily habit is surely not a day’s task. It needs many attempts and continuous motivation. Trained and motivated village level officials or volunteers working with the beneficiaries could have achieved higher usage of the newly built toilets. Motivating the motivators is the bigger challenge in the government bureaucracy as well as in the corporate hierarchy. Training without motivation results in wasted resources.

Exit Polls and Exit Interviews

For the two days preceding the Bihar election results on 8^th November 2015, most TV channels indulged in serious as well as trivial debates based on exit polls sponsored or partnered by the respective broadcast companies. If we take the average of nine different exit polls that got published NDA was to win 119 seats and the Grand Alliance to win 117 seats. In other words, all the pollsters predicted a narrow victory to one of the two formations. Obviously, the real outcome on the 8^th of November was miles away from the predictions by the exit pollsters.

It was intriguing to most rational Indians as to why is it that a country that launched an unmanned spacecraft to the Mars can’t do an approximately accurate post poll survey.

Well, not completely true. There was one exit poll agency (Axis) which predicted between 169 and 183 seats for the Grand Alliance and 58 to 70 seats to the NDA. They were the most accurate going by the final outcomes. But unfortunately the channel that sponsored this agency refused to air their findings for some unknown reasons.

We knew that millions of citizens cast their votes in Bihar. We also knew that within 48 hours of closing of the last phase of voting the actual votes will be counted and results published by reliable government machinery. Then, what value is added by two days of discussions around highly unreliable and speculative predictions of those exit polls?

The answer probably is: pure entertainment. The dance of democracy is the new Bharatanatyam! The voter fooled the pollster, the pollster fooled the media company and the media company fooled the public! These exit polls didn’t serve any other useful purpose.

You would tend to think that such purposeless things happen in media and politics, but not in private companies. Wait a minute.  Corporate companies conduct exit interviews when employees quit, just as the exit pollsters conduct interview with the voters after they have voted. Fortunately they don’t figure as much in the TV debates and media and hence the public is spared. Exit interview results are meant for private circulation. Many companies do this as a mandatory agenda of the employee separation process. The hope is that employees give honest feedback when they are leaving the company and the objective is to use the feedback for improving the way employees’ careers are shaped or facilities provided to potentially reduce the rate of employee attrition.

Very noble intention, indeed! But does it happen? No is the frequent answer. Why?

In many large organizations, often an HR representative or a third person conducts the exit interview. When the employee is loosely engaged with the organization she does not have much motivation to give an ‘honest’ feedback. Even if she wants to give an honest feedback she will think it unwise to make any sharp (read truthful) comments. Instead she will make some generally accepted positives and a few improvement areas to get out of this one item from a long exit checklist. She knows that there may be some reference check in future or for a safe return to the same company it is better to play safe now.

The person administering the exit interview too is doing this last ritual with a sense of detachment and a sense of duty rather with a sense of purpose. Someone with a sense of purpose will probably go beyond the format and seek genuine feedback. This too is an ideal situation rarely happening in most organizations.

Now, assuming there is indeed some genuine and useful input coming from the exit interview reports, few in the management hierarchy has time and mind share to delve into the underlying messages of the exit interview feedback. In best organizations this can be the last agenda in an otherwise packed business review. In other organizations, the exit interviews are done, circulated among some managers, quarterly summary made, quickly glanced and forgotten.

      So what needs to be done with exit interviews? Here are some suggestions.      

1. Make the exit interview voluntary. Let the employee decide if she wants to share any feedback at the time of leaving. Probably a few voluntary responses are better than a lot of mandatory interrogations. 
2. Provide multiple ways for an employee to provide exit feedback. (a) employee post on a specified site either under signature or anonymously; (b) send feedback in mail to the manager, manager’s manager or to HR representative; (c) talk to a company person in confidence, without any recording.
3. Pick one important or recurring feedback every quarter, act on it and broadcast to employees about what is done.
4. Complement the exit interview feedback with regular stay interviews (check what makes the employee stay with the company, and what will make the stay more meaningful and enjoyable) with random employees or on the basis of some stratified sample.
5.  Enhance engagement with employees- by managers, leadership and HR on a planned manner to make the exit interview eventually redundant.

Why do companies conduct interviews at the time of recruitment? Because, they are strangers and there is a need to know them before taking a hiring decision. Why do companies conduct exit interviews? May be because employees are still strangers in some way!

Chicken Soup for the Surviving Souls

While the hype around start-ups continues we start hearing about some start-ups laying off their employees. Layoffs are surely a matter of pain for those laid off with or without golden handshakes. This piece is not for those unfortunate souls. This is for the remaining unfortunate and unlaid-off employees.

How does one shield oneself against a possible layoff? Here is my ‘Ducking Layoff- 101’.

If you are yet not laid off, constantly keep in mind that you are in the queue. This is not negative thinking but proactive thinking. If you are reasonably sure that you stand a fair chance (you sure, are working in an organization that is fair. Hence you always stand a fair chance) of being laid off, probably you would build exit barriers for yourself and entry barriers for others (to get into your office chair). Fear could be a good motivator to run in a dangerous situation. Imagine a hungry tiger is chasing you. If you run instantly and at Usain Bolt’s speed chances are that you reach a safe place and the tiger spots something better on the way. If you don’t run you become instant breakfast.

I am told companies lay off the least suited guys first and not always go by the LIFO (last in first out) method. So your seniority need not be a guarantee against lay off. But who decides your suitability? When you joined the company you were told the company hires only the brightest talent! But that was then; no harm re-checking now. What you can do is to check with your boss, boss’s boss and 10 friends closer to boss and boss’ boss whether you are suitable. And do this every day. Every day is a new day. Why take a risk? I am reminded of a story about the Roman soldiers whose first job in the morning was to check and report if their heads are on their shoulders! Of course, they were not worried about being laid off but there was always the Damocles’ sword hanging over their neck!

The feedback mechanism as discussed above need not work well all the time in all organizations. Only a few people around you want to tell the truth. Those who want to tell the truth do not want to give a bad news. Those who want to give a bad news do not know how to break the bad news. Not all are trained counselors. Therefore, with all good intentions and regular feedback, you could still be in the dark valley of misinformation. So what to do? When others do not do it for you, the best way is to do it yourself. What would you do if on one fine morning your driver did not turn up? You drive the car yourself. So, walk around every day and tell your boss, your boss’ boss and 10 friends who are close to the boss and boss’ boss, that you are the last person the company can afford to lose. Do it everyday. People will start believing you. Repetition builds reputation. My friend told me that an ounce of reputation is worth more than a ton of hard work.

OK, I know you are not confident of always coming up winner in this game of image building. So you can do some crowd sourcing for this exercise. To start with, make 10 other people (if you can manage the same old 10 guys who are close to the boss and boss’ boss, nothing like that) talk about you and testify that you are the most wanted guy in the organization. You know the power of word of mouth publicity. But there is a catch to it. What is the big motivation for your 10 trusted friends to talk great about you? It could be that by doing so, they are reaching the end of the queue faster than you! There is a way. Get into a mutual agreement. You talk great about them and they reciprocate. It is the same old principle of you scratching my back and I yours. This might work. ‘Scratch and win a prize’ is a proven technique in sales!

But will it work always? There is no one trick that works always. You know that. So what is the solution? When one trick does not work, you need more tricks. Have you heard of in-basket exercises or assessment centers? The principle is same. Use a battery of tricks to get the best results. But even then these tricks may not work. Your boss need not be as dumb as you think. And it is possible that the boss himself could be trying the same tricks. After all he too has a fair chance in the organization!

Now you have two options. Invent more tricks and continue the trial and error method till you are on the payroll. Second, turn real and sincerely do your job well and leave everything else to your karma!

Managing Smart People

Most people do not like to be ‘managed’ and bosses are often the subject of unsavory comments around the water coolers and at coffee corners in the offices. That being the normal case it could really be a tough act to manage smart people. And what if many people in the team are smarter than the manager himself? This is a challenge many managers face at the work places of modern organizations. Invariably the newest crop of employees are the smartest ones just as new generations know many tricks that the older did not know. This challenge has been on the rise in the last two decades as the technology and information explosion depleted the monopoly powers of those in positions of authority.

From my own experience I learned a few lessons in managing smart people.

The first thumb rule is not to manage smart people wherever practical and in extreme situations manage them the least. Smart people are capable of conducting and managing their tasks themselves or finding a way on their own. Most often they find managing by the boss as a hindrance to their autonomy, creativity and productivity. They expect less supervision and hate micro management. They have a different set of expectation from the manager. They need the manager to clear the obstacles on their way to complete the assigned tasks- be it the over indulgence from the second level manager, or frequent demands from the functional teams etc., They expect the manager to create a conducive work environment devoid of petty office politics and provide for basic amenities, facilities and technical support to do the job. They expect the manager to be available in crisis situations and guide them when they need help. They expect the manager to appreciate good work and fairly reward the team commensurate with the tasks and achievements. And they expect the manager to be open and accept when he makes a mistake. No one expect anyone to be right all the time. But no one likes dishonesty.

The second thumb rule is to identify and leverage on the smart skills of your team. It would be smart on the part of the manager to acknowledge those skills his team has and the complementary skills he himself has. Typically a professional joins an organization with a hope that his skills, at least some of them, can be utilized on the job. It would be a winning strategy for the manager to encourage and find opportunities for his team to employ some or most of their special or new skills into the job. While the value systems and the culture of an organization are to be shared by all in the company regardless of one being new or old in the system, skills and aspirations are fast changing and the work environment needs to adapt accordingly.

The third thumb rule is to balance the scale of special initiatives among different team members. It may so happen that many members in the team may have similar skills and similar aspirations while the team at any point of time has limited special initiatives to run. The best scenario for the manager is the availability of enough initiatives matching the aspirations and skills of all his team members. This may not be the case always. The manager could ask for volunteers for the initiatives to avoid any perception of favoring any given person in the team with more visible initiatives. The other way to give opportunities to many people is to nominate different team members to lead a cyclical event by rotation. Smart people are very watchful of such dynamics and they would like to see that fair opportunity is given to all.

The fourth thumb rule is to balance competition and collaboration among smart team members. No easy task! Smart people at work often tend to be competitive and some would definitely want to outsmart others in the team. Beyond a subtle point it would be futile to lecture them on the benefits of cooperation and mutual help. They have all not come from the same family and not with the same motivation to work and life. Therefore, it would make sense to create tasks and task teams in such a way that the basic requirement of success is a certain level of collaboration and mutual sharing. If the atmosphere is one of high competition such tasks would require periodic review, sharing of best practices and private counseling of those who dominate excessively and those who are too indifferent to the goings on.

In the year 2000 I was moving out of my role as the Head of Compensation and Benefits at the Corporate office of Wipro. My new role was to head HR for couple of Divisions in the IT Business Unit serving India and Middle East. I was to manage the human resources activities for a large number of employees worked in offices all over the country, customer sites and at our computer factory. We did not have enough people in the HR department to reach out to all employees in reasonable frequency. However, by then e-mail has become quite popular and every employee had e-mail ids. Therefore, we decided to reach out to employees through regular communication mailers and a weekly magazine. While I had a brief background in journalism and functional knowledge in computer I did not know how to make smart looking communication with graphics and pictures. Two young employees in my team were smart to do these things. We used to discuss the content and layout and I used to write the editorial. The execution responsibility was completely with my colleagues who took pride in releasing the magazine every Friday without fail for over one year. They enjoyed autonomy in what they did and consulted me whenever they wanted help. Between the two of them they used to alternate the ground work for upcoming issues of the weekly magazine while the logistics of releasing remained with one of them. Of course, they had their regular day job to do. But this extra job added greater element of creativity and excitement to their regular tasks.

My team did not feel the weight of management above their shoulders nor did I have to worry about ‘managing’ my team!

‘I will find a lazy person to do a difficult job. He will find an easy way to do it.’ – Bill Gates

Return on Education

Increasingly people start asking, ‘what is the return on education’? Some ask this question aloud while others quietly in their minds. This question arises more definitely in the case of higher education and professional courses. This might not have been the case 50 years ago or even 30 years ago. 

So what has really changed? That question leads to another question: is education an economic good or social good?

To get into this debate let’s have some basic definitions in place. An ‘economic good’ is a product or service which can command a price when sold. Pretty much anything we buy from a shop or online is an economic good.  A ‘social good’ or ‘common good’ is a good or service that is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community. Examples of social good would be clean air, clean water, literacy or public services like healthcare, law and order.

At the macro level we understand that higher education or scientific research benefits the community, society or even humanity. But the perception changes drastically at micro level. A parent who spends money on her child’s education is often guided by the ‘return on investment’ principle. The average parent asks: ‘What job or a career will my child get into after the education and how rewarding that could be in terms of economic benefits besides the social influence that the degree can command’? The gravity of this concern increases as the cost of education increases.     

Recently when I told that my son joined an MBA program in a university the immediate question my colleague asked was: ‘so what companies is he targeting to join after the course’? My mind was not prepared for an answer to this question. My friend, like many other intelligent parents, assumed that my son is doing an MBA to join a company and therefore, must be targeting the best paying or most well known companies. I didn’t have any such idea, nor does my son have such an idea. For me, education is still by and large a social good. That everyone has to earn a livelihood is incidental to education.

Having been to these economic concepts I went to Google to find what is meant by education. Here is what came up on top of the page. Education is the process of facilitating learning. Knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits of a group of people are transferred to other people through storytelling, discussion, teaching, training or research. This definition is not particularly attributed to anyone and this may not be the best definition. But for me it suffices.

This, of course, is not to indicate that all education is for charity. Education is one of the most effective drivers of economic progress both at the individual level as well as at the community or society level. The suggestion is to reduce the excessive focus on the immediate economic outcomes of education. This will open up new and multiple opportunities to the student and probably to other people around. Some of the best educational institutions in the world are not placement focused. In fact, they don’t have job placement cells. Jobs do come to the best students if they so wish. Well, the brightest don’t seek jobs; they create jobs or focus on making life better for others. In that process some of them may become millionaires or make millions happier, healthier and safer.

Much like in many other important things in life, it is difficult to make clear cut boundaries for education or for that matter the objectives of education. It is perfectly all right for each one to have his or her objectives. However, education need not be reduced only as a means of employment.

So, what is the return on education? Return on education is immeasurable. Let that remain so! Even mathematicians admit that everything cannot be measured limited quantities. So they invented a symbol for infinity.

‘The true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.’ –William Deresiewicz