Aspirational Balance and Competent Diligence: ABCD of an Equilibristic Paradigm for Sustainable Achievement by Individuals and Entities

Aspiration and achievement are the two ends of a journey which need to be bridged consistently for one to feel fulfilled. Aspiration, which is a natural human tendency, has become an organizational characteristic too given that organizations are mere conglomerations of human beings. Aspiration itself varies significantly across human beings as much as it does between organizations too. Broadly however, positive facets such as knowledge, experience, growth, income, sustainability, and responsible citizenship mark the aspiration mix, whether of an individual or an organization. Each of the facets, of course, gets defined by one or more metrics such as educational degrees, career span, professional status, pay, income and savings, social recognition and goodwill in respect of an individual. Corporations also get judged on these facets by intellectual property, longevity, business rank, revenue, profitability and net worth, brand image and corporate citizenship. This simplistic array of metrics should not lull us into thinking that aspiration is a concept that can be easily managed.

At the other end, one has achievement which is reflected only when the set aspiration is achieved. The journey from aspiration to achievement can be casual or confident and fulfilling or disappointing depending on how insightful the goals are set and how surely one traverses the path from aspiration to achievement. The path from aspiration to achievement is rarely linear; external opportunities and challenges as well as internal competencies and deficiencies determine the relative ease and arduousness of the journey. Striking a right balance between staying laser focused on originally set goals and adapting them on a real time basis is the key aspect of achieving one’s full potential without undue stress or inappropriate laxity. There are four fundamental aspects that drive this process, namely, aspiration, balance, competence and diligence. These are factors that are individually relevant but become even more powerful when paired. This blog post develops a paradigm of aspirational balance and competent diligence as a guidepost to sustainable success.

Aspiration, balance, competence, and diligence

Aspiration is a strong desire to achieve something. Aspiration usually has a strong emotive driver, sometimes accompanied by inherent biases. Without aspiration, exceptional progress becomes impossible for individuals, organizations and nations. Rags to riches, Man on Moon, Rover on Mars, India in space club, Polio free world, Vaccine for cancer and Regenerative medicine are some of the aspirations that may have looked impossible at the time of their formulation but eventually became or are becoming realizable. Aspiration needs competence to enable performance. Studious and intellectual individuals as well as knowledge corporations and economies have deliberately focused on competence building as the foundational means to enable performance and fulfill aspirations. Aspiration and competence form a virtuous cycle, with each prompting the other to higher levels. However, the virtuous cycle is reinforced or eroded by the embedded behavioural balance and diligence, respectively.

Balance is the intrinsic quality of an individual or entity to appreciate the own strengths and weaknesses, or own highs and lows, and set himself or herself for success. It is an internal compass that gets fine-tuned continuously with learning and development.   Balance arises from a high level of sensitivity to facts and figures as well as insights and feelings, without any biases. Balance helps one overcome one’s weaknesses and reinforce one’s strengths. Diligence reflects an approach to work that is marked by focus, care and effort. Diligence involves a strong application of knowledge and experience to new problems. Awareness helps one look at possibilities and impossibilities while balance helps one choose the right aspirational goals. Competence provides the capabilities achieve goals but diligence is what makes the seemingly impossible eventually possible. Aspirational balance and committed diligence make the winning pairs for success. At various levels, from micro-local to mega-global, one can cite innumerable examples of aspirational balance and competent diligence leading to exceptional achievements.

Tightrope walker

The interplay of the four factors is best illustrated by tightrope walking.  Aspiration and balance are interlinked and interrelated as goal and moderator but the subtlety of their constitution and the complexity of their interaction are not well understood.  Aspiration is imitable while balance is inimitable. To amplify a little more, the human brain is naturally wired to seek satiation (through aspiration that comes out of social existence) but needs enormous rewiring to exert to achieve it (through balance that is enabled by individual effort). Aspiration is a social influence while balance is individual discrimination. Balance can be misunderstood as a limit to development; on the other hand, in reality it is an enabler to move to higher trajectories. The case of the tightrope walker is a perfect example of balance being an integral part of aspiration, serving as an internal compass and perfecting itself through learning and development.

Tightrope walking is not everyone’s cup of tea; while everyone is a natural walker only very few are natural tightrope walkers. Competence to be a tightrope walker comes with training but stays only with diligence. The tightrope walker cannot afford to miss even a second in applying his or her competence; that is where diligence counts. Competence through education is knowledge while that through practice is skill. Diligence through motivation is a practical phenomenon while that through inspiration is wisdom. Competence is visible and quantifiable while diligence is invisible and embedded. Human faculties respond differently to the tasks of aspiration (tempting to overestimate), balance (risk-averse to be safe), competence (resting on oars too soon) and diligence (failing to nurture oneself). The perfection with which an individual or an entity creates aspirational balance and committed diligence defines sustainable success.

AB, CD grids     

Conceptually, depending on individuals and corporations having low or high aspirations, balance, competence and diligence, we can categorize individuals and organizations into four quadrants on the two factor pairs considered earlier. The four quadrants of the Aspiration-Balance (AB) grid are: low aspiration-low balance (LALB), high aspiration-low balance (HALB), low aspiration-high balance (LAHB) and high aspiration-high balance (HAHB). It is self-evident that LALB individuals and entities would be Losers, baulking at all opportunities while HAHD individuals and entities would be Achievers, setting high competitive barriers for others. HALB individuals and entities would be Daydreamers, failing to walk the talk while LAHB individuals and entities would be Umpires, bringing their judgement to others. These classifications need not necessarily stay constant and consistent throughout lifespans of individuals or entities. Awareness (or lack of it) determines the entry and mobility drivers across the four quadrants. Given that careers and corporate longevity are like marathon races, a high level of awareness on aspiration-balance interplay is required for optimizing the Aspiration-Balance grid. In reality, AB grid is only an external reflection of another grid that may be termed Competence-Diligence (CD) grid.

Conceptually, depending on individuals and corporations having low or high competences and displaying low or high diligence in deploying their competencies, we can categorize individuals and organizations into four quadrants which are quite self-explanatory. The four quadrants of the CD grid are: low competence-low diligence (LCLD), high competence-low diligence (HCLD), low competence-high diligence (LCHD) and high competence-high diligence (HCHD). It is self-evident that individuals and entities who are LCLD would be Laggards unless they make conscious efforts to build competencies and inspire themselves to be diligent. On the other hand, HCHD individuals and entities would be Masters, winning all-round appreciation for their perfect synergy of capability and application. HCLB individuals and entities would be Mavericks, unpredictable in their performance and compliance. LAHD individuals and entities would be Followers, eager and willing to follow a leader.

World is a circus

We have seen tightrope walking as an example of how aspiration, balance, competence and diligence are required to perform and deliver beyond what a human body and mind is biologically and naturally accustomed to. On a broader canvas, the world is so competitive and volatile that one needs to be all what a consummate circus artist needs to be, whether a tightrope walker, trapeze artist, gymnast, acrobat, juggler or even joker. In a circus show the performers are few and applauders are many. In the real world, which is a circus of high performance of multiple talents, everyone is expected to be a performer. Consummate artistry in the chosen dimension of talent is inescapable to stay successful. As with a circus artist, maintaining the equilibrium while defying gravity is an essential requirement for a contemporary individual or entity.

Given that career progression and corporate longevity are like marathon races, a high level of awareness and a high level of focus on the four determinants of success, namely aspiration, balance, competence and diligence constitute the essential foundations of consummate artistry. Whether one would be a loser and laggard or an achiever and master (or any of the other categories of daydreamers and mavericks or umpires and followers) would entirely depend on how one sets about developing one’s own gravity-defying equilibristic capabilities. Successful artistes are those who learnt the ABCD of artistry from the very young age, and sustained it throughout the lifespan. For very fortunate few, world may be a ready-made canvas on which they can paint a picture of choice. For most, however, world is a circus of competitive performing artists where nothing less than consummate artistry gets the applause.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on October 26, 2014

CATCH as a Career Development Acronym: Merging Conceptual, Analytical, Technical, Creative and Holistic Skills

Young people regardless of educational stream are restless to discover the elixir of professional growth. Each educational stream by virtue of the unique nature of its domain imbues in its students certain unique capabilities. Literature, for example, provides its students with an ability to appreciate the dynamics of humans and nature. Commerce makes its students aware of the worth of trade and business. Accounting makes students proficient in deployment and measurement of assets and liabilities. Science makes its students create the bridge between the natural and synthetic; the organic and inorganic. Engineering teaches its students the ability to convert ideas into gadgets; the abstract into real. In a similar manner, each professional course that has a technical characteristic of its own provides unique characteristics to the students.

Doubtless, these professional courses help individuals enter the organizations and functions of their choice and grow in their careers based on further professional specialization or diversification. It is not, however, so well established that educational excellence by itself provides the motive force for managerial and leadership development. A simplistic, and popular, view is that if technical capabilities as embedded through professional courses are reinforced with soft skills such as communication, inter-personal and other behavioral skills, it would help individuals achieve higher goals through superior performance. While a combination of such hard skills and soft skills is undoubtedly very much needed, there is a more fundamental skill-set that enables truly superior competitive performance. This blog post proposes a model, which is described through an acronym called CATCH, that represents a combination of Conceptual, Analytical, Technical, Creative and Holistic capabilities.

Conceptual  

Simplistically, conceptual skills are ideation or imagination skills. In a managerial sense, they represent skills that help an individual crystallize complex and abstract problems in terms of core themes and ideas. One of the fascinating conceptual analyses was displayed by Air Asia. When asked why Air Asia was trying to enter India when there were already so many low cost airliners, mostly suffering losses, pat came reply from the CEO, Mittu Chandilya who questioned if they were low cost airliners or low fare airliners. The conceptual clarity teaches us that fundamentally the firm has to be a low cost operation whereupon it can automatically be a real low fare firm, if it chooses to. Another marvelous conceptualization was telling the IIT professors struggling to dissect the cultural pros and cons of having a management school within IIT that it would be like having a mini-IIM in IIT campus.

Conceptual thinking enables a leader or manager to understand core opportunities and challenges facing a business; it cuts out clutter. It helps managers and leaders avoid distractions. Conceptual thinking is particularly helpful when firms are either in startup or end-state phase of business or when they are faced with strategic crossroads. The uncertainty of future options and unpredictability of data points are managed by conceptual definition of the core problems. A firm which has a product lead time of five years and was paralyzed from investments for five years can be conceptually concluded to have lost a decade of life and several decades of competitive advantage, even without any data analysis. Equally, such a company can be conceptually held to be capable of reentering the competitive game with only a clever acquisition. Conceptual thinking simplifies the otherwise complex business life.  

Analytical

Analytical skills are those that enable an individual use a logical method of thinking about anything in order to understand it, especially by looking at all the constituent parts separately. It typically deploys scientific and research based approaches. The link between conceptual and analytical is simple; the analytical part can take off optimally once the conceptual part is clear. Taking the AirAsia example, once  conceptual clarity is established that low-cost rather than low-fare is the right model, analytics would need  to focus on how the lowest cost of operation could be achieved. This would involve analyzing every component of cost for frugality and every component of customer service for value-optimality. The more comprehensive the analysis is the better would be the operating model. That said, analytics without conceptual crystallization would be a wild goose chase.

Analysis provides choices and generates data points that could help managements make appropriate decisions. Conceptual clarity would continue to help in making analysis better. For example, layering of additional fares on base fare cannot be good analytics; so is the case with the complex dynamic fare model. The model develops in an opaque manner a high average fare for the airliner, leveraging the seductive promotional advance fares and exploitative usurious last day fares but would not be in keeping with the concept of a true low cost airliner which is expected to provide maximal perceived service with minimal absorbed cost. Analytics requires sound business background; analysts should understand the vital-essential-desirable as well as the fundamental-core-peripheral concepts as appropriate to the industry or the business one is in. Analysts should also appreciate where what tools would be relevant; operations research, for example, would be applicable for route planning while game theory could be relevant for competitor analysis and simple arithmetic appropriate for standard costing.             

Technical

Although considered allied to, or reflective of, engineering and technology, technical skills have a broader connotation as well. Any skill required to efficiently and effectively perform a job is a technical skill. Technical skill typically grows out of the knowledge of a subject and is the fundamental core to be in a domain or lead it. Every business requires a number of technical skills; what is core technical for one industry could be enabler for another industry. For example, for an automobile firm, manufacturing technology could be core while finance and IT could be supportive technical ones. For a banking firm, finance and IT could be core while civil engineering could be supportive. Regardless of such differentiation, technically one must be a master of expertise in one’s domain. Companies such as GE and Unilever focus on multi-functional expertise to build themselves into firms with sustainable competitive advantage.

Technical skills are acquired through serious curricular efforts, proactive extracurricular reading and intense on-the-job deployment and learning. Technical skills are reinforced by continuous learning; it is more than a simple learning curve effect. A doctor or surgeon continuously adds to his or her medical skills through each case he or she handles. A maintenance engineer continuously adds to his preventive maintenance capability with every breakdown maintenance case he or she handles. A product designer continuously improves his or her products by observation of customer usage and integration of material and other technologies. An accountant understands the power of numbers and their implications by continuously monitoring global accounting regulations and trends for generally accepted accounting practices of different countries, and related case laws. Being constantly studious is the only way to acquire and enhance technical skills.    

Creative

Creative skill involves the use of skill and the imagination to produce a new work in any domain, be it work of art, science or engineering. Many experts consider that creativity and originality are even more important than technical skill. If an airliner can creatively transport its employees seamlessly across the nation through a hub and spoke strategy it would provide competitive differentiation. If a full fare airliner can provide a mobile online air ticket reservation and purchase facility with anytime access without dynamic fares it could nurture for itself a creative niche. If an airliner can replace its in-flight print magazine by a digital version displayed on individual screens it could not only reduce costs but can also provide a whole archive of magazines to information lovers. If ground handling is improved to reduce vehicle turnaround by 50 percent, an airline could add one additional flight to its daily schedule. By opening its own dedicated takeaway food kiosk in the departure terminal, an airliner can save on crimped up and inadequate service on its flights, more particularly the short haul ones. Creativity differentiates the winners from the losers, more so the sustainable growth firms from the also-rans.

Creativity requires an independent and questioning mind that constantly seeks improvements at one level and out-of-the-box thinking at another level. Creative skill comes with constant observation but each time with a fresh enquiring eye. Creativity also comes with finding new ways of solving difficult problems or fulfilling customer needs in better manner. The process of technological development is based on creativity. Creativity can come from knowledge or from practice. The former should lead one to find better ways from knowledge. The latter should lead to a quest for knowledge that can improve practice. Many times, small but focused experiments become scalable for global impact. A creative payment gateway, for example, can revolutionize global online commerce. A creative patient record management system can revolutionize national healthcare registry, as another example. Successful startups develop from creative operational or business solutions.    

Holistic

Holistic skill is the ability to consider a whole thing or being to be more than a collection of parts.  Holistic life and holistic medicine are examples of common phraseologies of holism. Holism is the philosophical approach that the whole, of anything, must be considered in order to understand its different parts. Holism is one of the most complex capability to possess because it is a multidimensional attribute; covering all direct and indirect influencers and current and future evolutions. Reverting to the AirAsia example, the business plan of AirAsia involving important parameters such as fleet mix, route network, schedule density and several other factors are dependent on the nature of airport infrastructure in various cities and towns. It would be segmented thinking to buy a large capacity aircraft and also hope to connect all the tier 2 and tier 3 cities; it would not work as a holistic strategy because the short runways would not accept such larger aircraft. It would be somewhat like an international airliner like Lufthansa planning to convert its entire fleet to A 380 (the largest plane) even though only few global cities can accommodate such wide-bodied plane.

Holism requires thinking and imagining beyond the obvious, connecting the visible and invisible dots of industry boundary, industry value map and inflection points in regulatory evolution. This is not necessarily the forte of the wise elderly or apex leaders; all individuals who can process multiple sets of data and information and form patterns can develop a holistic approach to what they seek to accomplish. Holism is a temporally integrative capability as well; involving an ability to connect the certain past, volatile present and uncertain future to achieve a holistic solution. It merges emotion with objectivity as well as experience with anticipation to create a new paradigm that others less endowed would find it difficult to mimic. Holism requires that the four skills discussed earlier, namely conceptual, analytical, technical and creative are well developed in an individual. Holism in such individuals acts as a capstan capability.

The catch

If these constitute the five virtuous capabilities for personality, knowledge and leadership development,  it must be intriguing that such programs emphasize only some of the capabilities; analytical and technical ones are the most emphasized. The reason lies in the belief that while analytical and technical skills can be “taught and acquired”, the other three skills are dependent on how the brain is hardwired with respect to conceptualization, creativity and holism. This could be a catch in adopting the CATCH development model on a wider scale; but the catch is more imaginary than real! As with many developmental activities, introspection, on the part of the developer and the developing (the mentor and the mentee, the guru and sishya, the boss and the subordinate, the teacher and the student, the leader and the follower, as the case may be). Fundamentally, the developer should be a CATCH personality to develop the individuals, and needless to add, even the developers would need to develop themselves to make the CATCH development template work.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on June 29 2014.         

Perpetual Loss and Perpetual Gain: A Positive Life Balancing Model

The other day when I was participating in certain birthday celebrations, happiness, bordering on liberation, was strikingly evident on the faces of all the participants. Clearly, people were celebrating their arrival into the world that day several years ago, notwithstanding the stresses and strains as well as trials and tribulations they may have experienced thus far in their lives. Whether it was a momentary celebration before they would return to a life of dreary routine or exciting challenge, as the case may be individually, is also hard to predict. It is also interesting that no one recognized that each one of them has grown one year older, and hopefully thus each one has also grown one year wiser. Quite apart from what the anniversaries signify as a reminder of graceful aging, there is need to evolve a model of life in terms of time and talent.

It is an inexorable fact of life that time is a factor of perpetual loss. Human beings have limited life-spans that are influenced by genetics and lifestyles. Corporations, on the other hand, have the ability to have an indefinite life, threatened only by discontinuities in environment and exacerbation of competition. Time is, therefore, a finite commodity both for people and corporations, which keeps ticking remorselessly. As time flies by, it also fortunately bestows a few gains on the individuals and corporations essentially as the former are genetically wired to learn and the latter are humanly designed to learn. The balance of life is thus one of balance of perpetual loss of time and a perpetual gain of time. This blog post discusses some underlying concepts and provides a potentially relevant construct that could help individuals, entities and societies.

Perpetual loss of time

Managing time is a subject of many prescriptions. From handbooks to productivity courses, there exist multiple tips and methodologies to optimize the use of time. The author in his blog “Strategy Musings” wrote a post titled “Space, Time and Effort Management (STEM): A Paradigm for Resource and Performance Optimization”, (http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2011/11/space-time-and-effort-management-stem.html), that outlined an integrated and holistic paradigm.  The key to following any tip, methodology or paradigm must be an awareness of the inexorable and unstoppable manner in which time ticks away. This recognition must be accompanied by a mature response that balances available time on a host of daily activities classified as essential (for example, quality sleep, preparation and exercise), value adding (for example, learning and working), desirable (for example, socialization) and individual (for example, personal hobbies). In contrast, being paranoid and miserly about time and adopting crash methodologies of conservation of time or frenetic pace of professional and personal life would be counterproductive.

The sense of loss tends to be set appropriately in a perspective of one’s goals in life. As we know, there are actors and musicians who accept movies, sports persons who sign on multiple tournaments and consultants who take on multiple assignments, all as if there would be no tomorrow. There are also actors, musicians, sports persons and consultants who are very selective in what they accept. While at one level that could reflect what each of them sees as their life’s monetization goals, more fundamentally the anxiety for monetization, or lack of it, reflects their perceptions on value of time. It is not for nothing that the adage of time is money has come about. That said, while loss of time makes no distinction between any individual, and is completely out of one’s control except to the extent of individual differences in utilization, individuals and corporations have a lot of leeway in ensuring that they access gains that offset the perpetual loss of time in an equally perpetual manner.

Perpetual gain of knowledge

With the loss of time, individuals and corporations can gain on knowledge. Wise people do not therefore rue over the unrelenting loss of time. Instead they see time as an investment that helps achieve gains in knowledge. However, there is an inadequate appreciation of what knowledge means and how knowledge can be continuously acquired. Many people hold that knowledge can be substituted or supplanted by experience, intuition and instinct. Such hypotheses are erroneous and are based on infirm foundations. Knowledge, holistically, is the understanding, information, skills and capabilities one gains through education or experience. Knowledge is continuously absorbed and stored in the brain and processed and expressed through the mind. Intuition, and to a large extent instinct too, is the inner knowledge that is bestowed on a person through a sharp definition of his or her sensory faculties and a differentiated ability to synthesize perceptions and knowledge.

Clearly, knowledge is the foundation of any gainful achievement in life. Even those who understand this hypothesis often have misconceptions as to how knowledge is acquired. The most common fallacy is that acquisition of knowledge plateaus after the collegiate education and early years of experience. This is based on an erroneous institutional philosophy of learning which does not leverage how human beings are (or can be) inherently wired to acquire knowledge. To be able to understand this, the five ways of acquiring knowledge need to be understood. These are: seeking-responding, awareness-understanding, learning-absorbing, experiencing-integrating, and observing-reinforcing. These five steps, unfortunately, are seen to be sequential or at best sporadically combined. This inadequate manner of acquiring knowledge limits the knowledge an individual can acquire relative to potential.

The knowledge loop

The primal way of generating and spreading knowledge is through seeking and responding. It is commonly assumed that this phase is best seen to be limited to the first baby months of a person. It is not so in reality. Even as one grows older, knowledge gets developed through the seek-respond mechanism. A more evolved level of knowledge development is through the awareness-understanding bridge. This is, again, akin to toddlers and children becoming aware of several matters of life, and understanding them through positive and negative outcomes. This, by no means, is only a child’s way of knowledge gaining. Even mature persons, need to gain awareness and understanding of new situations as they develop. Becoming aware of the new circumstances and developing an understanding helps build foundations of new knowledge even for knowledgeable persons.

Learning-absorbing is the more commonly appreciated method of knowledge acquisition, leading to formal degrees and certifications. Enormous emphasis is placed on this phase of knowledge acquisition as the degrees make a difference to the career entry. Society and organizations provide the ecosystems for people to experience and integrate. The same educational course taught in two countries would, even in these days of globalization, would be interpreted, absorbed and acted upon in two different ways in the two nations. More specifically, in an organizational context, knowledge acquired through learning is upgraded, adapted or honed through experience. And, each organization can develop a unique competence in this regard. Each of the above four steps of knowledge acquisition involve external inputs. The fifth step of knowledge acquisition, observing-reinforcing, is perhaps the only step of knowledge acquisition that is wholly individual driven. This requires a person to be keenly observant and have the willingness to draw the appropriate lessons from observations.

Knowledge, every moment-every way

Faced with perpetual loss of time, competent individuals must strive to enhance knowledge every moment and in every way. The five step knowledge loop discussed above provides a seamless methodology of continuous knowledge development, applicable for individuals as well as entities. The primal way of seeking-responding becomes relevant whenever an individual faces an uncertain ecosystem. Rather than be overawed, the individual must seek attention and demand response. The natural way of awareness-understanding requires a calm and analytical state of mind that absorbs verbal and non-verbal cues and understands the supporting notions. The formal manner of learning-absorbing is often seen as an activity for a formal degree. True knowledge acquisition occurs when the knowledge seeker and knowledge giver focus on “know-why” behind each nugget of knowledge. This approach prepares one to apply or customize the acquired knowledge to multiple industry situations.  

Experiencing-integrating is another aspect of continuous formal learning. While all societies and entities provide scope for experiential learning, certain organizations and societies provide for their members immersive experiences that stick to their minds with deep insights. Organizations which have formal systems of mentoring in organizations and societies which are blessed with model disseminators of knowledge (for example, media) provide beneficial knowledge arising out of day to day developments. Ultimately, it is for individuals and corporations to recognize the importance of observation and reinforcement. The observant individual reinforces knowledge from every activity he or she observes; whether the activity is performed by a superior, peer or subordinate, whether the activity pertains to his or her domain or someone else’s or if the activity is a corporate business activity or civil society activity. As an old saying goes, nothing is trivial in terms of the knowledge such seeming triviality can impart.

Knowledge corporations, societies

Observant corporations, in a similar manner, do not stay still in knowledge; they endeavor to be knowledge corporations. They seek attention and receive knowledge. They provide opportunities for individuals to reflect and develop understanding of people and processes. They emphasize induction of personnel with excellent knowledge credentials and also nurture a pioneering atmosphere of learning in an organization. They institutionalize a culture of generating knowledge through every activity of an organization. Most importantly, they sustain the spirit of inquisitiveness and curiosity in individuals. As an extension of such knowledge-driven mindset, corporations themselves continuously seek attention and responses in the wake of uncertainty, enhance awareness and understanding of emerging environment, learn to develop new products and processes, integrate experiences for greater knowledge and observe other corporations to reinforce their own competitive positions.

Knowledge societies existed from times immemorial. Tides of history swept away some knowledge societies, battered some, reconstructed some and created some others. All through the torments of history, it is amazing how knowledge survived and grew in the overall. Societies which have been both diligent and fortunate to preserve and develop knowledge have prospered or are on their way to prosperity. India needs to consider how the nation can recapture its ancient glory of being a knowledge society; a society which gave the world’s richest religion with multiple scriptures and epics that set forth principles of living relevant even today, a society which computed, without the aid of any computing devices, all the planetary movements that are accurate to the second even in the current days of atomic clock , a society that gave natural healing through Ayurveda and yoga which stay relevant in the face of strides in synthetic medicine, and a society which built cradles of knowledge such as Nalanda and Nagarjuna Sagar centuries ago. As India reinvents itself towards economic supremacy, it is not a race against time but it is the pace of knowledge creation that would determine India’s success.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on July 21, 2013       

 

From Prodigal to Savior: The Evolution of a Trainee as a Leader

In recent business times of India, no event has triggered so much surprise and debate as the return of NR Narayana Murthy from retirement as the Executive Chairman of Infosys, the Indian information technology iconic bellwether struggling to remain on a growth path (please also see: http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2013/06/the-return-of-narayana-murthy-fast.html). There have been positive and negative angles to the news of Murthy’s comeback. On the positive side, many have held that there is nothing wrong, and everything to support, in such a towering personality returning to bring back to health the company he founded and grew with his co-promoters. On the negative side, many also have held the return to be a reflection of the inadequacy of the past leadership development, and hence a prognosis of future insufficiency of leadership development.  After the initial swell of the welcome notes, analysts believe that only future events can judge if the return would be a positive or a negative for the long term future of Infosys and the overall gamut of business leadership development in India, including strengths and weaknesses of a possible dynastic succession.

For the larger body of students of technology and management as well as other professions, aspiring entrants to corporations and budding leaders, the return of Narayana Murthy must signify an entirely different aspect of corporate life and career development. It is not uncommon for scores of employees at all levels of an organization to leave, and for some of them to return to their alma mater. The twist here is that such returns are often seen as the return of the prodigal rather than the return of the savior as is the case with the return of towering leaders such as Murthy. Given that every unit of work in a corporation has its importance, the return of the employees at whatever level should qualify to be deemed as the return of the savior. That, however, hardly is the case except in certain truly high level leadership positions. As youngsters watch the unwinding of the Murthy2.0 story in Infosys3.0 saga, apart from the lessons to learn, a key self-learning objective must be how the young aspirants would be seen as saviors rather than prodigals, should such exit and return episodes occur to them.

Demand-supply perspectives

As with every aspect of human endeavor, factors of demand and supply determine the relative importance of any material or non-material resource. At a gross level, from a human resource perspective, in a company or in an industry there would only be few leaders of a comparable caliber while there could be hundreds of executives and managers at lower levels with comparable caliber. At a gross level, from a business growth perspective, there could be only a few corporations that are willing to introspect and take radical measures to revert to their growth path as Infosys has boldly done. At a gross level, therefore, the demand-supply gap determines whether the return of any individual professional is deemed to be the return of a prodigal or a savior. The phenomenon of surplus-scarcity can, however, be addressed efficiently by individuals and corporations equally by deploying the concept of substitutability appropriately.

The relationship between the organization and its human resources is a paradoxical one. Organizations benefit if the available skill sets are both standardized and unique. Standardized skills enable the companies lower the bargaining power of candidates and reduce the attrition pressure of employees.  At the same time, unique skills enable the companies enhance their competitive advantage in an industry and enhance the ability to reward and retain their employees. For employees, unique skills need not only continuous self-development but also an organizational ecosystem that facilitates development and deployment of unique skills. If an organization’s human resource base comprises only generic and standardized skill sets, it is unlikely that such an organization would become highly competitive. On the other hand, if an organization seeks only highly unique skills, conventional organizational systems would fail to cope with the need for heightened reward systems. The paradox needs resolution.

Prodigal minds and savior skills

Aspirations need to be matched by achievements. What we see in some organizations is a constant unrest in young operators, officers and executives to grow in their careers at a fast clip. Many times such young employees imagine a superior work opportunity and career package in other companies. When employees move far too quickly out of an organization in pursuit of short term career boost, such decisions, more often than not, result in later day distress. The foundations of such fast moving careers, instead of being reinforced by industry or skill distinction, tend to be brittle with disconnected skills and inadequate depth and breadth. At times, the best way to address the gaps is to retrace the steps and return to the base organization as a prodigal. In some cases, organizations also make mistakes in judging employees and release them too soon. Both organizations and employees need to be prodigal in such occasions. While this may cause some emotional distress, correcting the missteps, and more importantly rebuilding the stronger skill base, provides longer term solidity to the employee careers and organizational strength. Eventually, employees and organizations may benefit from the phenomenon of prodigal minds.

Renunciation must take place only after actualization. Leaders too face their share of needlessly fast moves, albeit into sunset. Leaders play a crucial role in not only growing their corporations but also preparing them for sustainability. Actualization for a leader is not complete until he or she is able to execute a business model and build a leadership team that can take the execution forward, until the firm is under a need, or in preparedness, for a new business model with an appropriate leadership model. When Narayana Murthy moved out of Infosys, it was probably actualization that was incomplete and renunciation that came on too soon. In retrospect, it would appear to be more of governance redistribution rather than undertaking the right change at the right time (please also see: http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2011/05/infosys-board-rejig-crowded-at-top.html ).  Saviors possess leadership skills that have built and grown companies with achievements that are industry acclaimed. Saviors typically have stature and charisma that can rebuild confidence in internal and external stakeholders, and turn situations around for stalled corporations.

Prodigals as saviors

It is not that prodigals need to be at the bottom of the organizational pyramid and saviors at the top of the pyramid. Youngsters need to have the skills and the stamina that can make unique contributions in the domains in which they operate in their organizations, however small such domains may be. A product designer, a market researcher, a process engineer, a project executive, a quality officer and a salesperson all have their respective opportunities to be distinctive and become much sought after executives in their domains. The early development of savior skills in a youngster is a good augury for organizational competitiveness. Youngsters need to complement their subject specialization with practical expertise and a breadth of outlook. An automobile component designer, for example, would need to be conscious of the challenges of material technologies on one hand and the complexities of manufacturing on the other. The more end-to-end connected a specialized youngster’s thinking is, and the more broad-spectral his or her aptitude is, the more he or she would be able to add value to his or her functional competencies.  Such talent at the bottom of the pyramid is often hard to find, and that is the reason it is so valuable to build a cadre of saviors at the bottom of the pyramid.

This requires that organizations should focus on all-round skill integration in youngsters. The need for ready to use talent is so high in organizations that fewer organizations are willing to commit the lead time and effort to train youngsters in all the departments of an organization prior to their getting absorbed in their core functions. Early departmental rotation provides a broad perspective of a corporation’s value chain without compromising the core competence. If entrepreneurs such as Murthy emerge as saviors it is not necessarily only because of any superior skills and attributes but also because of their intimate association with the total value chain of the organizations as they establish and build their organizations. Professional organizations which compartmentalize functions as organizational silos in the name of specialization need to consciously adapt policies of all round development of skills in their youngsters. The greater the commitment to graduate and post-graduate rotational training and development programs for youngsters the corporation has, the greater will be the development of savior skills in the organization.

From prodigal to savior

Too much of functional specialization with too much of an emphasis on assigned task delivery but without an understanding of the total value chain contribution on the part of youngsters gives them a needlessly elevated view of their contribution.  Organizations-in-silos which are aware of the gap between the due requirements of organizational competitiveness and undue expectations arising from tiny contributions in narrow niches struggle to explain and retain talent consummately. Organizations that are unbounded in thinking and creative in execution tend to be conscious of the need to leverage young talent as much as possible to develop deep knowledge, broad perspectives and futuristic vision in them. Such organizations do not fight shy of nurturing and rewarding saviors from the early years of their careers. Youngsters who join organizations must understand the responsibilities and nuances of developing savior skills from the early years, and keep reinforcing the savior skills as they move up the managerial and leadership hierarchy. Such leveraged talent provides sustainable competitive advantage to corporations.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on June 9, 2013    

Experiencing, Partitioning, Ideating and Engaging (XPIE): A Philosophical Approach for Effective Time Management

In human life, time is the most important resource that is non-controllable, non-renewable, non-substitutable and non-recoverable. It is also one resource whose march in terms of units of time (say, seconds to days) is pre-determined (and, to that extent predictable) and whose total availability in one’s life (in terms of one’s lifespan) is unknown (except as a trend, expectation or hope). This is probably the reason for the emergence of disparate philosophies as to how one should live one’s life, from completely materialistic and opportunistic to completely philosophical and religious. Most, however, are subject to multiple combinations of approaches that vary with the age and phase of life. Some want to learn more and some others want to earn more, each in the shortest period of time. Most want to save more and a few want to share more, each in the shortest period of time. The underlying principle in any approach to utilizing time should be to make an optimal and effective use of time one is blessed with. Effective management of time is, verily, the only way to a fulfilled life.

 Human ingenuity in technology has enabled the human race dramatically shrink the times taken to perform any task, be it travel, communication or any development activity. Be that may, the paradox of spending each unit of time effectively at an individual or team level continues unresolved. Hours and hours, for example, are spent (wasted, according to elders) by the young generation on the digital social media which connects the world of known and unknown in nanoseconds! Despite real time telecommunication connectivity cross-border agreements take far longer nowadays than they took in the telegram and telefax days, decades ago. Computerized designing and computer simulation of prototypes has not dramatically impacted the way automobiles are refreshed each year. In summary, more iterations are performed and more choices are evaluated in lesser units of time per iteration or evaluation, eventually resulting in the same, if not higher, amount of overall transaction time.

Perceptions on time

Individuals and corporations are faced with the timeless problem of effectively utilizing time. Competing and conflicting social and organizational pressures on time cause individuals to respond reactively rather than be in command of any particular facet. Competitive and volatile economic and business conditions cause companies to race desperately rather than be deliberative before being decisive. Individuals and corporations, however, are less than aligned how they could together utilize time as their synergistic competitive advantage, on an end to end basis. Some corporations and a few individuals understand that personal individual productivity could translate into corporate productivity. Yet, most corporations and most individuals tend to avoid any interlink between time management at work and time utilization outside. The fact, however, is that like safety and quality time management is a fundamental attitude and behavioral predisposition of an individual that could collectively impact a corporation’s own ability to be time-effective.

Like a healthy employee is a productive employee, a time-conscious individual would be a productive employee. In today’s world, in fact, an individual who manages his off-work time effectively would not only be developing varied capabilities and fulfilling multiple responsibilities but also achieving better professional and personal life balance. Typically, the same unit of time could be put by different individuals to different uses, from sports and hobbies to learning and development, and from family responsibilities to social service depending upon each individual’s professional and family ethos and value system. For a passionate sports lover, watching a cricket match over five days would be a fulfillment rather than a waste. For a workaholic, however, any time spent on activities not related either directly or indirectly to work would be a complete waste. Individuals perceive time in terms of their likes and dislikes rather than in terms of how effective or ineffective they are in terms of effectively utilizing it.  

Experiencing versus traversing

There are many books on effective time management, each with different tools and techniques of time management. The really effective management of time is really one of experiencing time in its entirety and not merely travelling through it. Reverting to the example of the passionate sports lover watching the five day cricket test match, he can spend all the five days only clapping and enjoying  (thus adding no value to himself) or spend the time in addition analyzing the batting, bowling and fielding nuances (thus honing his cricketing skills). Better still, if he is an amateur cricketer model himself after his favorite cricketing hero (and become a cricketing sensation himself!). A foodie may merely eat and enjoy an elaborate time consuming multi-course dinner or also observe the culinary art and science on the table, and add to his or her own culinary repository.  The principle of experiencing through time is focusing all of one’s sensory faculties in living through an activity.

The core of experiencing an activity is concentration on the activity. To be able to concentrate on an activity one must primarily be able to enjoy the activity. But enjoyment by itself does not lead to concentration. Concentration is a faculty that needs to be developed with dedicated effort. Rapid  learners learn fast by concentrating on the subject matter as they read through the matter. Negotiators sharpen their skills by not merely exchanging viewpoints but observing the body language of individual team members and their silent and vocal interactions. Effective speakers make impactful use of their time not merely by delivering a speech or relying on a powerpoint presentation but more by connecting with the audience and creating a communication experience with requisite pauses and triggers and selective amplitude. It is probably not as much important as to what has been the amount of time spent on any activity but how intensively one lives through it.

PIE as a mind option

Management of time is a matter of mind; that too, a trained mind. In times one is not into specific activities of life, should one relax without any activities or invite new activities that add joy into one’s life?  Whatever be the options available in today’s event and activity hyped world, emptiness is not an option. At one level, one could implement several options to be efficient and effective in whatever one is engaged in, including establishing an optimal work life-personal life balance. Effective time management would be a matter of competencies that ensure productivity and attitudes that abhor waste of time. A more practical approach would be to partition time on a daily, recurrent basis. One may consider the 24 hour day having non-exclusive and exclusive zones. The non-exclusive time zone is the larger part of the 24 hour daily life, say 22 or 23 hours per day, which is devoted to all the socially, economically and naturally required daily activities. The exclusive time zone comprises the balance 1 or 2 hours which one may use exclusively for avocations that are strictly personal and fulfilling. These could be exercising, painting, gardening, meditating, networking, social service or whatever. The idea of partitioning the day into two parts; the larger non-exclusive part known and dedicated for others, and the smaller exclusive part known and dedicated only for self-development and self-fulfillment is an approach that could lead to a significant uplift to one’s life.

There can, indeed, be no time in one’s life when one can simply do nothing valuable. From ideating to meditating, it is possible and necessary to engage a wandering mind into creating value. Apart from partitioning, and in the partitioned parts of the day, one can do two important activities of the mind that can be productive; one is ideating, and the other is engaging. Converting myriad thoughts into ideas, preferably focused ideas, would be the greatest help one can render to oneself for having been blessed with a thinking brain. A brain that is wired to be creative and innovative could be a genetic predisposition of really a blessed few but a brain that is disciplined to be thoughtful and ideating is within everyone’s capability. However, just being thoughtful, reflective and ideating is not enough. One needs to be engaged with oneself and one’s ideas. Being engaged means developing and sustaining interest in matters that are of relevance, and taking them to fruition over time, creating value for oneself, one’s family, one’s organization and the broader society.

XPIE, an integrated approach

The author’s XPIE model of Experiencing, Partitioning, Ideating and Engaging provides individuals with a superior ability to effectively manage time. Experiencing time, not merely wading through it, is the first requirement of any effective time management. Genuine and authentic experiencing creates value by itself from the each unit of time one spends. Partitioning of time into excusive and non-exclusive zones, being particularly thoughtful, reflective and ideating, and finally staying engaged would serve as an effective time management paradigm. The ability to absorb each activity as a value-added experience and stay thoughtful and engaged on ideas that appeal to one’s life system is crucial to achieving the ultimate effectiveness of time in one’s life. 

Posted by Dr CB Rao on February 24, 2013             

Business Model Optimization and Transformation: Balancing Change with Continuity

Business Model is one framework that drives an organization towards growth and profitability. Business models in startups are developed by building and integrating models (or platforms) of technology, organization and resources. Technology determines the specifications of products and services, and how they are developed, manufactured and delivered to meet consumer requirements. Organization determines how roles and responsibilities are specified and talent assembled. Resources represent financial and material resources that constitute the infrastructure. The way the three models of technology, organization and resources are built up and are integrated determines how effective the business model is in terms of growth and development.  While this broad prescription is common for any firm, startup or established, in any industry, the relative balance of growth and profitability depends on a host of external and internal factors.

Interestingly, while the business model requires and determines how the platforms of technology, organization and resources are developed and utilized, once an organization is established, they tend to act as both enablers for and as constraints on how the further business models are developed. At first look, given that startups get developed with little of technology, organization and resources, established organizations should find it easy to have a multiplier effect from those established platforms. The reality in certain cases is that technology, organization and resources act as constraints than multiplicative enablers when established corporations try to develop themselves further. Again, a host of internal and external factors determine how the three models interact and influence business model development, from time to time.  Different academicians and practitioners have different opinions about the need for, and methodology of, transforming a business model, from time to time.

Static or dynamic

Industrial history has examples of firms being successful on product or service specialization not only over years but even over decades. Business model, however, is broader than just product or service definition. A business model has several components. Firms in the same industry may have business models that are entirely different. In some cases, transformations in technology have fundamental impact on business models. Very recently, HMV, once a global leader in the music industry and a global iconic brand in itself, called for administrator intervention to handle bankruptcy after nine decades of growth and turbulence. The music industry all these decades grew by leaps and bounds but HMV could not optimize its business model, including the technology, organization and resource components, to meet the transformational wave of music digitization.

HMV’s classic business model has, over the decades, been one of contracting music, recording it exclusively on certain media and marketing the media through physical stores. The musicians or the providers of music were paid royalties out of sales. While the company did change its technology platforms of recording from the classic long playing record to cassette tape, audio CD and DVD formats, and also opened marketing through distributed kiosks and the Internet, the company could never change the business model effectively enough to meet the competitive intensity of the new players.  There are several other firms which saw their industries grow but could not keep pace with the growth only because they were either impervious to, or ineffective in, changing their business models. It is no longer a point if business models can stay static at all in the competitive environment; business model optimization versus business model transformation is, on the other hand, is the only question.

Business model optimization

Business management is an essential feature of sustaining and growing business. Normal business management rarely is sufficient to assure success. At the very least business model optimization needs to be resorted to by each and every firm to stay successful. Business model optimization involves more innovative and effective use of the models of technology, organization and resources to keep business moving at least at the industry average rate. Automobile companies expanding portfolios and penetrating new regions based on new technologies, stronger organizations and deeper resources reflect business optimization. Similarly, automobile component makers diversifying their component portfolios are only optimizing their businesses to deepen and broaden their business linkages to automobile makers.

Business model optimization typically grows business and profitability at reasonable rates. It handles normal business and economic vicissitudes and additional competition. It helps companies keep pace with consumer demand, occasionally triggering additional demand. Business model optimization typically works best in a mature industry environment which has distributed competition and continuous technological improvement. Business model optimization is rarely effective for firms which want aggressive growth and profitability or in economic and industrial environments marked by discontinuities. Business model transformation would come in handy to such firms. Business model transformation does not mean either integration or diversification; rather it connotes an entirely different way of furthering its business.  

Business model transformation

Business model transformation involves moving of firms into adjunct areas utilizing new technologies, new organizations and full scale resources. Tata Coffee’s move into coffee shop business in collaboration and joint venture with Starbucks is an example. Microsoft’s move into computers with Surface tablet, Apple’s move into music streaming, Amazon’s move into electronic retailing and into digital publishing are some examples. That said, Google’s entry into mobile phone manufacture through acquisition of Motorola Mobility or Microsoft’s intended acquisition of Dell (to become a full-fledged computer hardware manufacture) may not be termed business transformation models. They are plain classic business diversification models. How then is business transformation characterized?

Business transformation expands the business boundary for a firm, utilizing breakthrough advances in technology, organization or resources. It invariably transforms how a firm conducts its business; for example, from a backend player in coffee growing and distribution to frontend coffee brewing and drinking. This case reflects a transformation of its organizational and resources models. Apollo Hospitals has transformed itself from a general medical and surgical healthcare company into an oncology therapy company additionally, bringing newer technologies such as robotic knife and photon knife for increasingly precise annihilation of cancerous cells. This is a combination of technology, organization and resource models. As may be seen, in business model transformation, the basic market that is served does not change.

Competency transformation

Business model optimization requires incremental improvements in technological, organizational and resource capabilities. On the other hand, business model transformation requires competency transformation of a higher order. In the domains of fine chemicals and pharmaceutical ingredients, conversion of synthetic manufacture into enzymatic manufacture is a transformative technology competence. In the wine industry, retention of pure resveratrol content and elimination of alcoholic tannin and toxin content is a transformative technological competence. In today’s world of outsourced development and manufacture, competency transformation may be seen as one of access and alliances and not one of availability. System integration, however, is a key competency that is required in-house in the accessed transformation.

Transformative technologies are at the core of business transformation models. Integration of state-of-the-art digital technologies and telecommunication platforms has helped a host of companies either reinforce the existing business models or morph into new ones. That said, organizational and resource capabilities are no less important. Steel makers in India, for example, never thought of owning mines abroad; oil refiners never thought of owning shale gas fields abroad. These models of business transformation require newer organizational competencies. Regional knowledge and cultural knowhow become important as Indian companies seek to secure supply sources and market segments in countries as varied as Africa and Middle East on one hand and Australia and America on the other.

Ownership, constraint or enabler?

In the Indian context, ownership becomes a key factor in how business models are operated. Promoter-led enterprises typically have struggled to break free of the startup mold and explore new pastures. Equally, there have been instances of such companies attempting extremely aggressive business transformation models without fine-tuning organizational models, upgrading technology models and, even more importantly, not taking resource models into consideration. The Indian public sector corporations, weighed down by governmental ownership constraints, are unable to leverage the existing technology, organization and resource platforms to achieve newer business platforms, despite the feasibility. Clearly, there is a need to view business models, whether for optimization or transformation, independent of ownership interests. National wealth is maximized only when business models are continuously optimized and/or transformed by firms keeping in view technology, organization and resource dimensions.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on January 27, 2013