Digital Democracy: Decisive and Doable?

Elections are a costly, gruelling and time consuming process in any country. Yet, India has been ahead of developed and developing nations in holding countless elections nation-wide, and keeping democracy alive and vibrant. The just concluded elections in certain States of India is one more endorsement of this tremendous capability in India. India’s Election Commission, and other constitutional, governmental and political structures and systems deserve a lot of credit for the election engine that the country has fine-tuned. While there are many criticisms that things could be better on key factors such as turnout, manifestoes, practices, candidates and accountability, this blog post is not about either those issues or solutions for them as the author believes that there are more competent experts and agencies to communicate and work on it.  The purpose of this blog post is to consider the concept of elections in a broader perspective and in a digital context.

Election is a mandated right of all citizens in a democracy of expressing, individually and confidentially through a structured process, their considered opinion on performance and potential of a ruling dispensation. It is, in a sense, applicable to every forum, organization or entity where a few leaders govern the rest of the members based on either agendas or promises. Every organization must start appreciating the election process for what it means to people and introspect as to why they do not integrate the good points in their structures and systems. The several theories in management literature on feedback, accountability and leadership styles do not come anywhere near providing a meaningful template for embedding the power and relevance of a formal election process, in a manner contextually relevant for organizations. Despite huge progress on digital technologies and social media, most organizations are yet to work on, let alone realize, this promise.  

Democracy matters?

The fundamental principle of extending an electoral process into an organization is that democratic and inclusive feedback is an important aspect of competent management and leadership processes. There are arguments for and against it, which are based on the perceived behaviour of members.  The author would like to call these Theory X and Theory Y of Organizational Democracy (OD). For ease of reference, we will use the nomenclature XOD and YOD, respectively.

XOD runs on the following behavioural assumptions of members, all of them in negative interpretation of employee mind-sets and capabilities:

• Given a choice, a typical employee prefers to avoid responsibility rather than accept it.
• Not all employees are equally knowledgeable and responsible to opine constructively.
• Averaging equally expressed opinions misguides managers like the average depth of a river does.
• A leader’s job is to govern based on structured plans rather than unstructured feedback.
• Grassroots feedback places undue power in the hands of those whose job is to follow directions.

YOD runs on the following behavioural assumptions of members, all of them positive about the ability of employees to fulfil higher responsibilities:

• Given a choice, a typical employee accepts responsibility rather than avoid it.
• Irrespective of knowledge, employees will be constructive and responsible for progress.
• Collective opinions provide a powerful guidance on organizational health and strength.
• A leader can reinforce his plans, however thought out they are, with employee feedback.
• Grassroots feedback empowers those who execute with participative ownership.

YOD assumptions clearly are more positive and have the potential to energize an organization towards a positive culture.

Digital deficiency

Most organizations are well equipped digitally. They have evolved information technology departments. Every organization has an intranet which is open to its members. People have regular access to computers, tablets and smartphones as well as wifi and cellular data services. People attend meetings with their devices invariably in toe, or mostly utilizing them. The digital infrastructure is designed and operated typically as a one-way path from the management to employees rather than the other way. Required information which makes a member more knowledgeable and competent is provided through the intranet: messages from leaders, codes of conduct, organizational policies, standard operating procedures, training materials, team accomplishments, and so on. It is rare, however, to see the available digital infrastructure being utilized for equitable two way communication.

Intranet invariably identifies responses and feedback with persons. Unless the feedback process is entrusted to a third party surveyor like Survey Monkey, it is quite possible that confidentiality is compromised and people will be reluctant to provide candid feedback. If leaders and managers accept the YOD assumptions, and members have self-worth to be confident and self-disciplined to be constructive, an organization’s digital highways and intranet portals can be effectively utilized to collect analyse feedback on a 360 degree basis. Some of the issues of leadership conduct encountered in certain non-governmental agencies and autonomous entities would have been discovered and evaluated in time with digital democracy in such organizations. As with any transformative exercise, the change for a culture of digital democracy and honest feedback can begin with a few small steps. 

Experimental steps

There could be several small experimental steps to usher in organizational democracy. For example, as one logs into his or her computer system, the administrator could ask a set of five simple questions: what do you set out to do today, how motivated you are to carry out your taks today, how supportive is your leader expected to be, how confident you are with your team today, and how happy you are with your organization in the overall today. These are pretty universally applicable questions that would fit any business or operational context and any level. These can be expressed in the past tense as day-end questions on the computer before one logs out. Participation in the questionnaire could be made mandatory by making login and logout impossible unless these questions are answered.

These five questions help the company answer the following central themes: goal focus, self-motivation, leader support, team alignment and organizational morale. If each organization can find a way to encrypt these responses one would feel more confident to provide candid and authentic feedback. An organization and business savvy data analytics group can pick up important perceptions and suggestions from the feedback. While daily responses may not be conclusive, the management will certainly get to know what is trending. As the organization tastes success and builds confidence, questions can become more specific to issues, businesses, projects and people. Over time, digital democratic highways become great instruments of widespread organizational participation and ownership.

Governance

Digital feedback is especially useful in promoting corporate governance. Monthly executive leadership committees, usually headed by the CEO of the company, and quarterly board of directors meetings, usually headed by the chairman of the company, are the key institutions that facilitate and influence governance. It would be great if at the beginning of the respective meetings, there could be a digital feedback session `which asks certain key questions: how prepared are you in addressing today’s agenda issues, how collaborative the team has been internally to discuss cross-functional issues prior to the meeting, how supportive you expect the CEO to be with respect to your key concerns, how confident you are with your team on execution, and how happy you are with the overall direction of the organization. 

In respect of board meetings the key questions could be: how informative the company has been in preparing the directors for board meeting, how prepared the directors have been for the board meeting, whether sufficient time has been accorded for discussions for all topics, whether all directors have had a chance to express themselves, whether the board committees have fulfilled their roles, whether there is satisfaction on the strategic direction and execution of the company, and how happy one is to serve on the board of the company. At the end of the meeting, the same questions can be asked in the past tense with appropriate changes, for the executive committees as well as the boards. Taken together, the entry and exit polls would enhance the members’ awareness of their and the company’s conduct in furtherance of the company’s and their aspirations.

Leader elections

The higher step in an organizational setting would be to usher in total organizational democracy through the digital means. Every leader may, in such a system, have both the right and responsibility to seek feedback from the members. Would such a radical system wherein leaders are elected by subordinates lead to loss of authority to execute? Would it force leaders to downplay people performance issues and reward members irrespective of performance just for leaders to stay in position? The answers to these questions may depend on the level of maturity in an organization, and the periodicity with which such leadership elections are held. There could also be other less disruptive or threatening options to the classical organizational hierarchy and power system, such as a collegium system of leadership selection. However, as typically, intellectuals are involved in organizations responsive and responsible electoral systems are probably better.

The ultimate step in a virtuous digital democracy is to elect national representatives through digital processes, anytime it is required. Though difficult to imagine now, a few decades down the road, wifi may be so pervasive that instantaneous digital elections through smart devices may indeed be possible. A more practical and intermediate step would be to create a huge national governance portal, in all national languages, wherein citizens can post their likes and dislikes, convey their issues and seek solutions, and provide feedback and ideas. With the biometric based Aadhar gaining ground and newer end-to-end encryption technologies emerging, it should be possible to ensure authenticity in the digital feedback. A huge data analytics infrastructure would, no doubt, be required to support this but it must be viewed in the perspectives of generating its own higher level employment and organizations, society and nation, creating higher value through better leadership and citizenry with mutual accountability.   

Posted by Dr CB Rao on May 17, 2016

Five Sequential Facets of Effective Execution: Integrating Events, Outcomes, Results and Accomplishments, and Actualization

Execution is the key to competitiveness. Even a suboptimal strategy can be made to work with superior execution while even a great strategy can be rendered suboptimal by inferior execution. There is lot of management literature on planning, strategy and the like but very little on execution. Two books  merit mention: the first is “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done” by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan and the second is “The Four Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals” by Sean Covey, Jim Huling and Chris McChinsey. Probably, execution is seen as simple as as following a set of instructions or rules embedded in budgets and plans, developed pursuant to goals. The book by Sean Covey focuses on the behavioural aspects of execution, and brings out Focus, leverage, engagement and accountability are considered the four critical disciplines of execution.

Execution at shop floor level or in construction site is rather easy to monitor. However, execution of a business is more challenging due to the involvement of countless agencies and people, both internally and externally, operating under conditions not fully under ones control. One may draw up an SOP for shop floor activity or a PERT/CPM chart for a construction project but would find the idea rather out of place for a business initiative. Programme management has emerged as a discipline for monitoring execution but it only provides a partial and ineffective answer. The reason is simple. Just as quality has to be embedded in production processes and operators, execution has to also be carried out only by people entrusted with execution. Execution is not a monitor’s job, although monitoring may be part of execution, and if carried out by other agencies helpful to execution. This blog post proposes five facets of effective execution.

Execution chain

Execution is the practice of converting a plan into an action to achieve a goal. Execution, therefore, starts with goal setting itself, as Sean Covey’s book argues. If the logic is so clear, why is it that there tend to be huge differences in the execution effectiveness of different individuals or entities? Some attribute ineffective execution to inadequate goal setting and insufficient planning.  People subscribing to this view believe that as long as goals and actions are articulated clearly execution would happen automatically. Yet, execution tends to be weak in high-planning companies too. Some believe that execution has a significant behavioural content. Sean Covey’s book proposes that the four key elements of focus, leverage, engagement or accountability can be ensured in teams with appropriate behavioural conditioning. It advocates systemic ownership around key goals with execution itself being both an action and reward.

The planning based view is simplistic while the behaviour based view is elaborate. It is important to understand execution from different viewpoints, align them and integrate them under one execution value chain. At the lowest end, execution can be seen as a series of actions or events. An example of this is organizing a leader summit as an event that aligns the leadership team. However, organization of the event is just a start. At the next higher step, organizers tend to look for outcomes. In this case, successful conclusion with 100 percent participation and no dropouts and with at least 50 percent of participants providing active inputs could be outcomes. Even this, however, is not complete execution. At the next higher level, one would look for results, in terms of new collaborative networks being created or platforms created for post-summit follow-up. Most execution experts believe that the execution is completed with good results.

There are, however, two other important milestones towards the higher end of the execution value chain, namely accomplishment and actualization. Results are metricised numbers of performance. Quarter after quarter companies publish their results, and even if they are in line with goals companies may not have a sense of accomplishment. A sense of accomplishment in execution happens when the executing individuals and teams have sense of ownership, right from goal setting to accomplishment of results. A sense of accomplishment is not the final end, however. A feeling of actualization is the ultimate endpoint of execution. Actualization is a challenging concept, and has been dealt with by the author in his blog Strategy Musings on three occasions: “The Journey of Self-Actualization: A Leadership Process of Discovery, Development and Delivery”, August 28, 2012 (http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2012/08/the-journey-of-self-actualization.html), Self-Actualization by One’s Self for Oneself: An Enlightened Process for the Elusive Goal”, April 21, 2013 (http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2013/04/self-actualization-by-ones-self-for.html).

Leader reflections

If one has to travel the full length of execution value chain, the journey would require leader-follower interactions that focus not merely on any of the transition points of the execution chain but instead focus on the actualization end-point. The leader would need to typically evaluate himself or herself first; what would really fulfill himself or herself. A leader who is considering a leadership position in a turnaround setting would need to introspect or reflect which of the following could be the real trigger for his actualization: revenue, stock price, employee security or hall of fame. While one may say that all of the factors would be reflected in company valuation, the sense of fulfillment could come from completely different factors. It could, for example, be from a sense of learning that he has become a master of turnaround, which he may not be expressed or measured at all. For the employees involved, it may come from stepping that extra mile to give novel suggestions and have the fulfillment of accomplishing them.

A sense of actualization occurs by focusing on transformative goals rather than mundane goals, and by focusing on a few prioritized ones among them, rather than on every one of them. The leader should be able to identify the goals which are predominantly individual dependent, team oriented or business leadership specific. Delivering a lecture in the leader summit is an individual accomplishment while organizing the summit is a team accomplishment. Using the summit to transform the business is a business leadership accomplishment. Leaders need platforms and forums to articulate, prioritize, and focus on actions, and monitor outcomes and results on each of the groups. Once the forums are in place, taking them seriously, and staying engaged is an essential mind-set, for both leaders and followers. Continuous engagement helps in mutual reinforcement of leaders and followers towards fulfilment of goals. It also sets up mutual accountability which is a logical culmination of ownership.

Follower reflections

Admittedly, followers are unlikely to have the same uniqueness of perspectives or levels of motivation that leaders would have. Followers are generally a part of larger teams with significant interactive noise. Each team tends to have its own group dynamics in terms of behaviour towards performance. Followers tend to be of two categories; those who are determined to be leaders and those who are content to be followers. It occurs naturally for the first group to be highly execution oriented and for the second group to be passively participative. The relative mix of aspirant leaders and passive followers is not necessarily a driver of relative performance differentials. It does not, for example, follow that if there is a high proportion of aspirant leaders in a group, that group would automatically perform better. On the other hand, such a group could be more fractious and more energy dissipating.

Followers need to reflect on what could make them really a fulfilled part of a group. Some may like their performance to be outshining others in a group while some others may derive happiness from their group being more effective overall. Be that as may, followers usually struggle to arrive at a common understanding of the right dynamics for the group. This is partly due to a lack of understanding as to how group success, rather than individual success, can spell overall business success and partly due to a perception linking individual performance to career growth. Those groups which have a natural performance culture rather than a rewards driven performance culture tends to have more harmonious group dynamics.

Leader responsibilities

Visionary execution is what sets out a leader from others. Execution is a complex value chain starting with goals and ending with fulfilled delivery. Most leaders see a high performance culture in their organizations as an enabler for effective execution. That may be a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. Some others see their own personal productivity as a key driver of effective execution. Again, it may be an inspiring factor but not a sufficient one. Most boards believe that linking rewards to individual, group and company performance would motivate people appreciate the value of performance. This helps but not without some rancour of comparisons. Effective execution, like quality and safety, is a behavioural state.

A leader’s ability to mentor his organization on the various stages of execution is an important condition for setting in place a natural and inclusive performance culture for the company as a whole. From establishing critical, top priority goals in focus to guiding the team on a journey that extrapolates from actions, outcomes to results, accomplishments and finally fulfilments is the essence of effective execution. Even institutions derive actualization through effective execution. See the author’s blog post “Institutional Actualization: The 5A Process of Virtuosity”, Strategy Musings, May 19, 2013 (http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2013/05/institutional-actualization-5-process.html). There is a clear need for more contributions on effective execution practices in management and leadership literature.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on May 04, 2016

Leadership Sensibilities and Sensitivities: A Theory of Statistical Behaviour of Organizations

A modern day leader is no longer like a monarch who commanded everything and everyone he or she saw. Monarchy had a very structured system of regular court and advisors in statecraft and governance (“rajya neethi” and “rajya dharma”). Along with monarchies (some of which misused or disregarded such systems), these systems have also disappeared. Modern day leadership emphasizes performance with accountability. It teaches us that the contemporary leader has to be both sensible in how leads his followers and sensitive to how his followers (as well as other stakeholders) respond to his leadership. This advice is well merited given the premium we place on hiring aggressive leaders who can fulfil ambitious targets and make businesses more competitive than ever. When the leader conforms to this fast-forward template, and more so when he happens to be a newly hired leader, it is quite possible that he would be racing ahead almost like an engine without the carriages!

Governments and agencies concerned with good governance in this context have come up with two ideas to facilitate responsible leadership. The first is an improvement to the longstanding mechanism of board governance, with increased focus on independent directors and criteria of good governance. The second is the definition of Key Managerial Personnel (KMPs) with accountability to the Board and the Regulators, besides of course to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). In addition, the companies also have direct accountability to the investors through annual shareholders’ meetings as well as listing agreements with stock exchanges. The quarterly calls with analysts and the focus of stock markets on material developments add multiple extra layers of watchfulness to keep the CEOs on toes. One may, therefore, conclude that sensibility and sensitivity are both assured in the leadership governance system. The reality, however, is probably otherwise. There can be no better leadership governance than self-governance for which the need is for real time feedback.

Forums, and forums…

Leaders do realize that they need to keep track of, and on a reasonably real time basis, as to how they are doing. Unfortunately, however, a leader is perched lonely at the top of the organizational pyramid. With so much at stake in terms of perceived performance, leaders find it difficult to ease up, or let their colleagues ease up, on how they are performing. All organizational structures are hierarchy driven, more so in India. Even in developed countries, it is observed that while interactions seem to be open, the underlying agenda is often influenced by hierarchy. While an intrinsically astute and sensitive leader may manage to pick up signals from the various meetings and interactions, the odds are that such pickups are not the same as structured conversational feedbacks.

Leadership practice has evolved to put in place certain mechanisms to make leaders sensible and sensitive. From one-on-one conversations with employees to town halls, and from video chats to dipstick surveys, a range of options are available for leaders to ascertain how they are doing. As is true with most things, substance is more important than style and content is more relevant than form. If leaders do not appreciate the importance of the science of statistics and the art of organizational behaviour in structuring interactive sessions and receiving feedback, such interactions cannot be of real help. Statistical science is important to ensure quantitative representativeness of interactions while organizational behaviour is needed to facilitate qualitative integrity of responses.

Barriers to feedback

The barriers to feedback are many in a modern corporation. Each leader, however independent he may seem to be, tends to be a prisoner of his immediate team or a few confidential advisors. Only in certain situations does the leader get to savour the freedom of open interaction with the larger organization. Secondly, there is so much emphasis on execution and accountability that there is little time for bilateral or multilateral discourse. Thirdly, the broader organization does not usually have an ability to communicate appropriately in the forums provided. More importantly, the meetings with leadership tend to be so few and far between that the team prefers to listen than to speak. The challenge of open feedback is compounded exponentially when the leader is authoritarian and egoistic. At least, in such cases, the Boards have a responsibility to mentor and coach such leaders to basic levels of openness to feedback before any of the interactive sessions are planned.

Organizational structuring through conventional departments and established hierarchy is another barrier to feedback. If the feedback pertains to, say, morale, HR would quickly volunteer that they are on top of it. If someone worries about growing capex, Business Planning would say that all of the concerns have been factored in. If technology connectivity and productivity is desired, IT would express concerns of low priority. Or, in contrast, all of the sessions may end up as feel-good interactions, with little surfacing of issues and advocacy of solutions. Behavioural scientists aver that having a right organizational culture is essential for communication sessions to succeed, especially if bottom-up feedback is desired. If the barriers to feedback are to be overcome, the leaders have to meet the right people with the right processes. A combination of statistical science and organizational behaviour termed ‘Statistical Behaviour’ herein is required!

Statistical behaviour

In spite of the foundations of culture, pillars of training and canopy of leadership, the rank and file of leaders tend to behave in random manner when it comes to expressing opinions. Many times, the forums are organized without taking into account the statistical representativeness of the sample to the universe. The participants for the physical sessions, in particular, are selected without statistical rigour, and unfortunately with bias of comfort in selection, either by rank or acceptability.  Even leaders themselves do not seem to appreciate the importance of statistically scientific selection and managerially artful communication to obtain representative feedback. There are two laws which are relevant in this context. The first is the Law of Small Numbers to which most leaders fall a prey to; the law of small numbers triggers leaders to come to hasty generalizations and quick judgements just based on initial interactions and/or incomplete and incoherent data sets. Obviously, it is a logical fallacy to assume that small interactions can reflect collective viewpoints of the larger organization.

The Law of Large Numbers is a statistically supported principle that states that the larger the sample the greater is its representativeness in reflecting the opinion of the universe. Given the randomness that is inherent in organizations, larger numbers are essential to balance extremes and enable inclusivity. As data points from a large sample become available, convergence towards a representative collective viewpoint emerges. Selection of participants by the law of large numbers alone is not sufficient. Leaders must have the discipline to interact in consonance with the composition of the large sample (ie., touch each participant of the sample). In the absence of that, the leaders would be introducing the travesty of small numbers in a sample of large numbers. Statistical behaviour requires a behavioural skill on the part of the leader to bring out the multiple reactions to the leadership style and corporate course of action. Sensibility and sensitivity on the part of the leader as important as statistical behaviour of his broader organization. 

Sensibility, sensitivity 

Often, sensibility and sensitivity are seen to be the same. While there is considerable overlap, there are subtle differences too. Sensibility refers to the quality of having an acute perception or responsiveness as to what an event or statement would mean to the stakeholders, especially in terms of emotions. It is the ability to experience and understand deep feelings. Although sensibility is used in the realms of art and literature, it is quite applicable to business and commercial activities too. A sensible leader makes good judgements based on reason and experience rather than emotion. Sensitivity is the expression of one’s sensibility levels. It is an ability to fathom the depth of emotions and feelings of others. It also is the capability to calibrate one’s statements and actions keeping in view the impact they would have on others. A sensitive leader would be conscious of how his judgements, even if they are sensible, would be perceived and experienced by others.

The interplay of sensibility and sensitivity may be illustrated by a right-sizing decision in an organization. A company may withhold organizational expansion in the context of business downturn, and it may take the decision as the only sensible option, fully cognizant of the emotional impact. The way the decision is communicated, however, requires considerable sensitivity to the emotions it actually stokes when announced and the responses that could arise. The reality is also that it is impossible for a leader to make decisions that are sensible to all. A major investment decision may evoke positive sensibility and sensitivity internally within the organization but external investors, who tend to be perpetually concerned about the return on their investment, could well be uncertain and would, therefore, need to be handled with sensitivity. Being sensible and sensitive need not cramp a leader’s style; it would actually enhance his or her effectiveness. A leader who is seen as sensible and sensitive would have greater acceptance and hence greater effectiveness. The theory of statistical behaviour of organizations, proposed in this blog post, helps leaders in the process of leadership acceptance and effectiveness.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on November 10, 2015      

Leaders and Dealers: Learning to Develop, and Developing to Learn!

In English language, by virtue of use as well as by perceptions of communicators, certain words tend to acquire meanings beyond what they originally were signifying. It would be semantically interesting and intriguing if such words are made up of a common set of letters, formed in different ways. Such triviality apart, the words ‘Leader’ and ‘Dealer’ represent two words that are derived from the same set of letters but become ‘leader’ and ‘dealer’, depending on where the two letters ‘l’ and ‘d’ are placed. More importantly, the word ‘leader’ gets appreciated by most people in a very rarefied meaning signifying high position, high power and high visibility, engaging in transformative endeavours while the word ‘dealer’ gets seen in a transactional sense, signifying an obsequious approach to carry out one’s bidding (real or assumed), often in a surreptitious manner.  

As with several other semantic or communication fallacies, both perceptions represent incorrect pictures and interpretations of the reality. Leaders, in common perception, are vested with the attributes, responsibilities and accountabilities summarised above but not all those who are so vested tend to be leaders, in the real sense of the term. Probably this is one reason why all organizations, businesses and states are not equally successful, and some even end up being adverse for others. Dealers, in common perception, are seen as entities and persons who are not creative beyond acting as agents for someone else, making a livelihood out of others’ need to buy and sell. Typically, corporations designing, manufacturing and marketing products tend to be leaders, and their frontend dealers tend to be followers. While dealers do act as per the manufacturers’ or buyers’ bidding, they actually represent the most important bridge between the supply and demand sides of an industrial economy,

Broad canvas

One may postulate that leaders and dealers would live up to the core distilled meanings of their terms depending on their competencies, skill-sets and resources. More importantly, however, they would achieve their full potential depending on how they see their representativeness with reference to their structural positions. If leaders see their representativeness in a narrow way, they fail to reflect leadership in letter and spirit. In a democracy, for example, leaders represent their people. This does not mean that they can do all the things to all the people. They would, for example, need to (i) generate options, make choices and set priorities, (ii) incentivize as well as regulate the rich to promote growth with equity, and (iii) subsidize as well as mobilize the poor to enable prosperity with sustainability. The same would apply with respect to organizations and businesses. If they see their responsibilities aligned to only one class of stakeholders or only to hierarchy, the true leadership potential would not be felt by the organizations and businesses they run. 

    

The same is the case with dealers. If they see themselves as mere representatives to sell products, providing prescribed floor space and people to help buy-sell transactions, they just become proxies to sellers and buyers. If, on the other hand, they see themselves as an important connect between the product and customer as well as between the customer and manufacturer, they can expand the envelope for all the stakeholders. This is one reason why front-ranking companies would like to operate their own chain of experience stores to impact customer-product-manufacturer triage more insightfully. Even in the very commoditized sense of a dealer doing something at someone else’s bidding (say, as a lobbyist), there could be opportunities to enhance one’s own as well as others’ awareness through a process of expanding the envelope of accountability to the broader cause and the wider society.  There are many cases where what seems to be for sectarian or individual good, in fact, turns out to be a catalyst for more effective public policy.

Short cuts

Although the core theory of excellence, whether for leaders or dealers, is so common and so simple to appreciate, not many would adhere to the theory in full and with passion. The human brain is genetically wired to a reward-effort principle. While individual variations due to education and upbringing do exist, the core human theme is to exert less to profit more. This makes leaders to focus on their most important stakeholder for maximal engagement, with only sporadic engagement with other stakeholders, that too in a manner of alignment with the need satisfaction of the primary stakeholder.  Leaders in large manufacturing organizations may, for example, personally engage with large investors continuously for support through business cycles while asking other lower level executives to ‘deal’ with other ‘less important’ stakeholders, including small investors. Leaders heading E Commerce forms may engage feverishly with markets and customers, almost to the point of self-aggrandisement through counts of clicks while ‘dealing’ only sporadically and opportunistically with other classes, including investors.

Dealers may see themselves as sellers of goods to, and collectors of cash from, customers, in which case they focus heavily on the company and the product. The huge advertisements by (or for) the dealers of high-end smart phones or luxury cars are examples of capturing customers at any cost, literally and figuratively. Similarly, if the dealers are viewed as buffers to hold inventories and smoothen sales cycles, they may never raise to the full potential of discovering and conveying visible and invisible signals from the marketplace to the manufacturers. On the other hand, if dealers find themselves accountable to a wider spectrum of market-product-corporate connectivity, the principles of engagement would be entirely different. The dealerships would then be as intellectually endowed and as structurally elegant as large organizations tend to be, making market research organizations in corporations or through outsourcing redundant. A firm is what it sees itself in terms of its boundaries; so would be a leader or dealer, in terms of the boundaries and limits set for oneself.

L D  

This blog post observed in the beginning that the difference between a leader and a dealer pertains to how the letters ‘l’ and ‘d’ are placed. We have reviewed above that a leader can bring oneself down to the level of a dealer (as colloquially understood) and a dealer can elevate himself to the level of a leader (as intellectually appreciated). By a coincidence, the letters ‘l’ and ‘d’ do matter in the journey of elevation; ‘l’ signifying learning and ‘d’ denoting development. Learning and development constitute a virtuous interlocked circle. That learning is required to develop oneself is rather easily understood. However, that one has to develop oneself to be in a frame of mind to continuously learn at all stages of life is less easily understood. Learning is the process of acquiring knowledge and absorbing it. Development is the process of applying knowledge into sustainable positive behaviours and practices. Learning makes the individual knowledgeable but development makes one impactful for his or her ecosystem. Learning requires a focused and targeted mind-set that is milestone driven but development demands a broader personality outlook that applies individual learning to team or social betterment.

It is quite possible, therefore, that people may be eager to learn but quite diffident to develop. An individual or entity, learning to develop as well as developing to learn has the greatest potential to develop a leadership bench that is both large and deep. It is immaterial whether one is a leader or dealer to benefit from this approach. The key metric for learning and development should be in terms of the development impact that the learning processes provide and the incremental learnings that are motivated by the developmental approach. More than learning, development needs continuous reinforcement from one’s own inner self as well as from peers and the broader organization. As one ages biologically, development requires less of knowledge acquisition and more of wisdom and statesmanship. In a simple, but not necessarily universal, algorithmic approach, learning peaks through the teens till the early career while development peaks through the mid-career till the end of the active career. The greater the biological overlap between learning and development, the greater would be the natural progression of leadership.

Big data

A revolution has already begun to sweep the industrial system, with technology recording in real time, through sophisticated sensors, the performance of various industrial systems. Giant corporations such as GE are gearing up to the critical importance of data capture and analytics, for the next wave of digital industrialization. It is evident that in a similar fashion, human interactions lend themselves to countless signal interfaces which provide valuable inputs to the participants in their self-active and interactive processes. Unfortunately, however, humans seem to be becoming more robotic than robots themselves even as technology, invented by humans, is enabling robots capable of signal recognising and signal processing. The emphasis in human interactions tends to be more in terms of conveying the message rather than absorbing the response at every relevant stage.

True learning and development occurs when human minds are receptive and perceptive enough to apply the principles of big data analytics to human interactions. Big data as a concept is relevant for leaders or dealers equally. There are very interesting cases in certain industries (for example, automobiles, food chains and white goods) where dealers have been very progressive and could share industry leadership with the end-product manufacturers. There are also industries in which progressive dealers (for example, electronics, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals) went on to evolve into end-product manufacture itself. Essentially, it is not a question of where one originally chose or was ordained to start the journey but is a matter of how they all through their journey learnt to develop and developed to learn, in terms of themselves and others!

Posted by Dr CB Rao on October 21, 2015

    

Management & Leadership (M&L) at the Cost of Science & Technology (S&T): Time for the Former to Cease Piggybacking and Commence Standing Alone

From being a staid domain a few decades ago to becoming a fancied domain, management & leadership (M&L) have emerged as gateways to career progress and organizational ascendancy, even to scientists and technologists. Despite any number of achievements in science & technology (S&T), such as the successful launch of indigenous cryogenic space rocket by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the national pride and international recognition such scientific and technological achievements bring to India, there is no let up in the preference for management and leadership courses, both in pre-career and in in-career stages. While the educational and course preferences tend to be a matter of supply and demand as well as job potential, an emerging economy such as India cannot afford to leave the knowledge dynamics entirely to market fancies. A nation will have a true meritocracy when domains are geared to continuously develop new knowledge, and to continuously expand the body of the overall knowledge base, in the process integrating the new knowledge and making the existing knowledge contemporaneously relevant.

 The craze of sorts for M&L, which essentially meant students and professionals moving away from further specialization in S&T courses (at post-graduate or research levels) to M&L courses (at post-graduate or fellow levels), has made advanced countries lose their some of the competitive edge.  It has prompted some of such countries to welcome overseas students and professionals from S&T streams into their nations. Emerging countries such as India and China benefitted from the importance given to S&T in their curricula. Amongst all the Asian countries, including China, Japan and Korea, only India has favored the growth of M&L streams to a great extent, essentially as an offshoot of adopting the Western education model. While this need not be disparaged, movement of top-flight talent from S&T to M&L needs to be discouraged. S&T, rightly so, have higher entry barriers for learning and mastery, compared to M&L. Lower entry barriers to learning coupled with higher job opportunities could lead to distortions in India’s talent pool and industrial endeavors, particularly at a time India requires the ultimate push to become an economic superpower.  To restore S&T to pride of place, the proud facets of being an S&T professional need to be understood by students and educational institutions, and recognized and rewarded by industrial organizations.

Touchstone of solidity

Any knowledge domain that raises expectations has to eventually live up to the expectations of contributions to society in terms of the domain knowledge and its technological applicability.  S&T undoubtedly qualifies as a critical knowledge domain under this criterion. The body of knowledge under S&T continually grows, oftentimes in exponential spurts, transforming society and quality of life. The S&T knowledge is an eclectic combination of principles, laws, logic and mathematics, leading to quantification of physical, chemical and biological models.  There is a true and sustainable correlation between publications, patents, theory and practice in S&T, making them truly holistic knowledge domains. Science creates theory out of experiments and uses experiments to validate theory. Technology applies science to design, manufacture and deliver products or services.  In contrast, the body of knowledge under M&L seems to increase at best once in a decade, and the total body of knowledge of the last several decades of organized M&L can be summarized under a handful of concepts. The M&L knowledge is predominantly based on behaviors and couched in linguistic expressions. The real expansion of knowledge in M&L, which is very low relative to S&T, is magnified by rather creative expressions and sporadic case analyses; very little is based on statistically representative research. Management creates repetitive theories on age old principles like planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordination, controlling and budgeting. Leadership looks at personalities to weave modeling theories around stylistic syndromes.

S&T requires M&L for optimized commercialization but not necessarily always. Without S&T, however, M&L is completely superfluous; in fact, M&L is purposeless without S&T. Whether companies that wade through financial management or countries that are resurrected after economic collapse, they are dependent on science and technology. If New Delhi’s T3 airport of yesterday or Mumbai’s T2 airport of today received rave reviews, despite managerial delays, the technological concept and execution grandeur are responsible in no small measure. It is somewhat of a misrepresentation that S&T and M&L are distinct, and it is an even more of misrepresentation that S&T requires M&L to optimize itself. S&T approach which is based on review of current knowledge, logic of new hypothesis and validation through experiments has the basic managerial principles integral to the approach. S&T, once established, accepts no ambiguity. The basic principles of S&T whether it is the Periodic Table of Elements, the Boyle’s Law or the Iron-Carbon Diagram, do not change over time. S&T is absolute in a universal sense. A deep sense of review and a tremendous level of experimentation make the principles rock-solid. In contrast, all M&L principles are contextually flexible and iteratively reversible and merely firm-specific or person-influenced (for example, integration is good for some, integration is bad for some; conglomeration is good in the 1950s, bad in the 1980s, again great in 2010s, and so on).

Linear versus circular

Science and technology have a linear (and exponential) development track. Each S&T development builds on the past for a new future, rather than revert to the past. Management and leadership, in contrast, are steeped in rediscovery.  From time to time, old M&L concepts are simply refurbished and repositioned, from time to time. The flight of talent to such refurbishment and repositioning of management and leadership instead of staying with science and technology is a matter of concern. Having attracted such S&T talent, the inability of the M&L domains to become linear and exponential in genuine knowledge accretion is a matter of greater concern. The question that dispassionate analysts face is whether M&L streams contribute materially relevant value or just add some transient flamboyance to basic S&T. The first two decades of independent India had no institutes of management or even business management courses, yet the country saw significant industrialization. The best of India’s talent went into the graduate engineer schemes of technological giants. The strength of these industrial undertakings today is based on these talented scientific and engineering corps which grew the companies and grew with the companies. Officers of the Indian Administrative Services were some of the best managers and leaders then. One would like to see better value addition from the proliferation of M&L streams.

This phenomenon of early stage fundamental development on the base of science and technology is common to technology leaders of America, Inc as also to several Asian countries, such as Japan, Korea and China. From the early Toyota Production System that originated on the automobile shop floor to the Minimalist Design Philosophy that emerged from classy electronic devices, it is science and technology of design, manufacture and delivery that has been presumptively positioned as management and leadership models. From time to time, newer phraseology such as lean, six-sigma is used to reposition the philosophy of ‘minimal input-maximal value’ that is inherent at each level of S&T through the ages. Even the interpersonal facets of M&L are just simple principles of balanced living that are ingrained in the spiritual and philosophical treatises of various religions from times immemorial. The relative paucity of new M&L thoughts is due to the limited nature of enquiry, which is confined to the four types of human-machine interfaces; human-machine, machine-machine, human-machine and human-human. S&T, on the other hand, is in an endless pursuit of seemingly inexplicable and indeterminate natural phenomena, in terms of physical, chemical and biological models of the universe. The greater the talent concentration on S&T, as opposed to M&L, the greater could be the value generation and wealth creation in a nation through the unraveling of the natural mysteries and discovery, and subsequent perfection of solutions for them.

Rediscovering M&L  

To be fundamentally value-accretive and practically effective, M&L have to be considered as subservient adjuncts to S&T domains rather than as substitute or revisionist superior domains. The key M&L learning factors need to be integrated into S&T curricula. As part of several decades of practical experience, the author of the blog post has had the occasion to interact with hundreds of management graduates, managers and leaders employed in industry or services sectors; not one has admitted to have implemented the courses taught in the two year management programs, be it, for example, advanced statistics, operations research, portfolio theory, signaling theory, reliability models, and the like. Given that the engineering degree program in India is of four years durations, it makes little sense to unlearn the core S&T and spend another two years in learning fancied M&L, most of which it is never applied in any case. Given that good management and leadership is an integral part of science and technology, it would make better sense to integrate certain core management and leadership subjects, not exceeding eight in number (one in each of the eight semesters), as part of S&T domain learning. These could be statistics, economics, accounting and finance as the four core subjects, and operations, marketing, strategy   and responsibility as the four application subjects.    

Those who are committed to M&L as their life’s passion must be prepared to go through the full five year professional certification programs in management and leadership, as economists, mathematicians and accountants go through. Only then, the exponents of management and leadership, whether in academics or industry, will be challenged to develop and grow as a self-sustaining discipline rather than as a discipline that piggybacks on other disciplines, and unwittingly makes the core disciplines ignored. M&L as a stand-alone discipline will have its own research and self-development paradigms, to be relevant to the nation as a separate knowledge continuum. This, coupled with the earlier proposed strategy of graduate and post-graduate S&T programs being self-sufficient with their basic M&L knowledge, would ensure that the investments made in S&T are preserved and flight of talent from S&T is avoided. Many institutes and universities making hay on capstan management programs will be disappointed with this approach but India, as an emerging nation, will immensely benefit from S&T investments, in both education and industry, fulfilling their potential. Probably, the famed IIMs can take the lead by stopping piggybacking on the IITs for the core talent with their two year MBA programs, and start standing alone in the fields of management and leadership through new five year integrated MBA programs.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on January 12, 2014

      

 

            

Indian Bollywood Blockbuster Movie Magic: Ten Management and Leadership Lessons

The last four months have seen the successful launch of four Hindi multi-starrer blockbuster movies from Bollywood, each featuring different pairs of actors, and each with a significantly different theme. These, as the avid Indian movie audience would acknowledge, are Chennai Express, Krrish3, Ram-Leela and Dhoom 3. Chennai Express has Shahrukh Khan in the lead, Krrish 3 Hrithik Roshan, Ram-Leela Ranveer Singh and the latest Dhoom 3 Aamir Khan and Abhishek Bachhan. Deepika Padukone is the heroine in two of the blockbusters while Priyanka Chopra and Katrina Kaif are the heroines in two others. All the lead actors of the four blockbusters are top stars of Bollywood. The four films are lavishly mounted with high production values and deployment of graphics and special effects rarely seen on the Indian screen. All of these movies conform to the proven Bollywood formula of music, dance and heroics. And, all of these have proved to be international successes and national blockbusters.

Thematically, each film has amazingly different takes. Two of the movies belong to family drama genre and two to action genre. Chennai Express is a typical Indian lighthearted movie of fun and frolic, with a heady concoction of next door South Indian ambience and theatrical heroics. Krrish 3 is a scientific fantasy on the lines of Superman and Spiderman, with good triumphing over evil, but in a delectably Indian fashion. Ram-Leela is an intoxicating fusion of Shakespearean tale and Indian family rivalries, in a riot of color and beauty.  Dhoom 3, just released, is a tantalizing international escapade of a lovable soft heroic villain, as the lead of an antagonist pair. Two of the movies, as the suffixes indicate, are sequels. All the movies gained from superstar power and added power to stars as well. Each took several months to take, certain dance and chase sequences required days of practice and Crores of Rupees of spend. Uniformly, all the movies benefitted from snappy taking, notwithstanding the typical Indian proneness to lengthy introductions, inescapable song and dance sequences and the inevitable 150 minutes plus of movie length.

High style, some substance

Somewhat cynically, it may be observed that the history of successive blockbusters of either Hollywood or Bollywood demonstrates the power of high technology overwhelming the weakness of low rationality. Whether it is Harry Potter, Avatar or Batman, Spiderman and Superman movies, the intent is clearly to transport the audience to newer thematic universes through a slew of special effects covering up slender storylines. The four Bollywood movies probably have uneven storylines, but have immensely benefitted from deployment of high cinematic technology. The important factor in all the four movies has been that none of the movies was un-Indian, in fact all of them, and certainly three of them, emphasize the indigenous and ethnic elements pretty strongly. This trend is also borne out in other blockbuster hits in other Indian languages, be it Telugu or Tamil. The plausible lesson is that an Indian blockbuster needs to disown nothing of its theatrical tradition but needs to layer it with dollops of technology.

The concept of ‘transportation’ of audience has significant differences between Hollywood and Bollywood. Having experienced to advanced living, the Western audience needed to be transported to sci-fi worlds of outer universe, repeatedly. Probably, the only successful Hollywood franchise that stayed on in physical locations for audience transportation was the highly successful James Bond series.  For Hollywood, it is the virtual virtuosity of science and technology creating new universes. For Bollywood, however, it is more of transportation to more exotic physical locations of India and the advanced countries, including for the latest Dhoom 3 shot extensively in Chicago. Interestingly, Indian movies, more particularly the Telugu ones, have a historical tradition of transporting audience to mythological and folklore realms.  Be that as it may, the essence of successful movie making is transportation of audience to a world that is fantastic and fantasizing, not reachable except in the confines of the movie theatre. That said, the Bollywood blockbuster saga has many lessons for management and leadership, ten key ones being discussed below. 

1.      Integrated imagination is foundation

The greatest feature of moviemaking is imagination. Every department involved in moviemaking, be it story writing, screenplay writing, music creation, cinematography, choreography, art and set making or editing has the common characteristic of imagination, besides each department’s core competence. While moviemaking in general may have such departmental imagination, blockbuster movies are notable for the way individual departmental imaginations are aligned and integrated. The higher the level of integrated imagination the greater would be the blockbuster status. In contrast, business enterprises tend to be conformist and devolve the responsibility of imagination only on planning departments, and a few leaders. Even the few existent imaginative initiatives are not perfectly integrated. Ability to imagine departmentally and functionally, with alignment and integration, is a key aspect of successful organizations.

2.      Direction is execution

Business management theorizes and practices that the chief executive of an organization assisted by a team of functional leaders manages an entity and delivers success. In a typical business or industrial organization, the chief executive leads and directs but rarely executes by himself or herself. In contrast, the director of a movie dons multiple hats.  A great director not only imagines the entire movie but also drives and integrates imaginations of different departments. He not only plans and resources, but also actually executes his directorial responsibilities on a daily basis, covering all actors, and all departments of moviemaking, until the final product of a fully edited movie is censored and released. The chief executive of a movie thus overturns the conventional wisdom that leaders need to lead while executives need to execute. While establishing and running an enterprise is quite distinct from movie making, the lesson from movie making of the leader taking complete ownership and being associated with execution should not be lost sight of. Business leaders may derive greater success by emulating the concept to execution ownership of movie directors. 

3.      Sensory experience drives success

Each of the four Bollywood blockbusters mentioned earlier, or for that matter any blockbuster movie of any ethnicity or language, demonstrates that heightened sensory experience transports the audience to a world of acceptance and appreciation. While products and services of enterprises are not two-hour capsules like movies and are longer lasting, such a feature underscores even more the need for a higher sensory experience for users to be attracted and attached to a product or service.  This principle is relevant for leadership and managerial initiatives too. The success of the blockbuster movies indicates that the incorporation of varied emotions is an essential component of success in Indian ethnicity. The success of several market-facing multinational corporations in India, from Unilever to P&G, is based on their sales and marketing strategies that are ethnically emotive. Internal organizational processes that make and sell products as well as products and services that cater to users equally require ethnic sensitivity, albeit in different shades and emphases. 

4.      Creativity adds spark to success

Over the last 100 years of the Indian cinema, several thousands of movies in various Indian languages have been produced on the basic Indian formula of family dynamics and dance and song mechanics. The freshness the Indian movie technicians have been bringing to the celluloid screen with newer lyrics and tunes as well as energetic choreographic movements (notwithstanding the value erosion in some cases), integrating in the process modern technologies and global trends is truly amazing. Indian moviemaking demonstrates that even an age-old formula can be rendered fresh with a dash of creativity. Managers and leaders, who are often faced, with highly repetitive processes and are often expected to deliver the beaten messages, must take a leaf out of the Indian movie makers to add a dash of creativity to make the processes, procedures and deliveries fresh and appealing. Charismatic leaders and managers differentiate themselves from the pedestrian ones on the basis of creativity.       

5.      Age or culture no bar

Moviemaking is a universal art with no barriers of age, language, region or religion. This is one enterprise, in which the youngest technician can make the best of movies on a shoestring budget, and budding actors, musicians and lyricists can turn stars overnight. It is also an industry which can see the most seasoned and aged directors mount pictures of contemporary standards. Indian Bollywood, in particular, has been home for multi-religious prosperity. For the predominantly Hindu movie audience, the three superstars are Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan. Corporations need to look beyond the demographic profiles and focus on talent and performance as the primer drivers of acceptance, independent of preconceived perceptions on backgrounds or regions and religions. Corporations also must be willing to provide integrated project opportunities for youngsters to deliver and for seniors to reinvent themselves.

6.      Exceptional people, exceptional success

A review of the blockbuster movies reveals that they are made by teams of exceptional people in all departments, including the director himself or herself. While a few exceptional technicians tend to take other average talent in stride to make good movies, blockbuster movies that are differentiated in all respects tend to have exceptional professionals leading all the departments. This has an important lesson for those corporations which seem to treat performance appraisals as distribution of annual increments. The concept of normal distribution of ratings and increments is, in most cases, is justifiably reflective of the talent and profiles that calibrate themselves in a natural manner. However, like blockbuster movies, trendsetting organizations encourage and institutionalize top-ranking talent across the organization. This approach reflects a penchant and passion to accept nothing less than exceptional talent and hold back nothing in rewarding such talent exceptionally (even if it covers the total organization) for exceptional performance.

7.      Job clarity delivers clear results

The art of moviemaking, often considered unregulated and self-taught, is quite scientific, and reflects the highest principles of organizational design and organizational behavior that are not seen commonly even in evolved business organizations. Moviemakers provide the greatest respect to departmental structuring. Each department, be it production, art, photography, music, lyrics, dialogues, dress, lighting, logistics or editing, has its core competence and core delivery clearly defined. Each department knows how it can add value to the other departments and the overall movie but is resolutely focused on its core delivery. Unlike the complex organizational structures where accountability is often confused with collaboration, and functional delivery is obfuscated with value chain management, moviemaking has clear departmentation. Blockbuster movies get recognized for superior departmental delivery as much as other movies are noted for any slippages that could have led to less than optimal performance. For corporations as much as for celluloid, job clarity produces clear results.

8.      Nativity is not naivety

Despite the sweep of modernity in the Indian society and the overwhelming influence of Hollywood on the movie scene, the Indian movies continue to retain their nativity. In fact, reflection of native values and practices is an integral element of successful Indian movies. This is not surprising as the centuries old hoary traditions of India have not only withstood the ravages of multiple foreign invasions and occupations but have consolidated themselves, globalizing with integration of modern trends. Some corporations tend to think that they must bring in change for change sake, often viewed in terms of Western practice and wisdom. On the other hand, more successful organizations respect and cater to nativity, leveraging nativity for acceptance of modern requirements. As the resurgence of practices of Yoga and Ayurveda across the World demonstrates, nativity is not naivety but is representative of authenticity.   

9.      Global quality, Indian costs

The newer Bollywood blockbuster movies represent a step-function jump in quality, almost to the best global standards, and have called for significantly higher production budgets hitherto unseen in India. Even so, the production budgets of the four movies cited were around USD 12 million each for the family drama genre and around USD 20 million each for action genre with special effects (even including shooting in overseas locations). This contrasts extremely favorably with the very high production costs that were upwards of USD 280 million for the likes of Titanic, Spiderman 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean. Clearly, Indian movie magic can extend to achieving global quality with local costs. Of late, there have been doubts whether India would consolidate its advantage as global manufacturing hub. The Bollywood movie magic demonstrates that India still enables a unique paradigm of global quality with local costs. The Indian movie industry and the Governments must seize the opportunity by setting up the likes of Universal and Disney studios in India.  

10.  One for all, all for one

The most interesting aspect of blockbuster moviemaking is the interest the director takes in all the departments for functional perfection and the interest all the departments take in matching up to the director’s vision. From listening to and improving upon the storyline through music sittings to determining shooting angles and playacting for the actors in each day’s shooting, to quote a few, the director participates in every function, and collaborates with each departmental head. The situation that obtains in business or other enterprises is starkly different. From the Chief Executive down to the Functional Heads, the practice is to let the others perform to their goals, with the heads and chiefs limiting themselves to reviews, assessments and management of performance and consequence of their reporting executives.  The assessed individuals also strangely disregard any partaking of functional interests by their superiors, criticizing it as micromanagement. Managers and leaders should emulate the way a blockbuster movie director and his team members work on a ‘one for all, all for one’ principle to realize the director’s vision of a blockbuster movie in the making.

Movie magic, leadership logic

Movies are often seen as nothing more than 150 minutes of entertainment. Indian movies, anchored in their templates of emotions, songs and dances, are seen as even more escapist entertainment. Worse still, most professionals and leaders have a marked disdain for moviemaking as a poor cousin of any organized enterprise. However, behind these 150 minutes of celluloid experience lie important lessons of management and leadership which can be imbued in the day to day as well as strategic business and corporate management practices. There is, in fact, no project like making of an intended blockbuster movie, translating a directorial concept into a magnum opus, working in the process with hundreds of talented leaders and individuals on a daily basis. There is no power like the power of a blockbuster movie in riveting the attention and collecting the adulation of the society. Successful moviemaking is dexterous management of total uncertainty and creation of a creative extravanganza from the simplest of ideas, based on talent, imagination, creativity, passion, dedication and team work.

The history of Indian film making has several chapters scripted by movie moguls and actor stalwarts through their cinematic contributions. In several cases, from the popular Raj Kapoor to the legendary NT Rama Rao, hugely successful moviemakers demonstrated synergistic core competencies in a number of domains such as acting, screenplay, scripting and direction, to name a few. People who are familiar with the Telugu film industry aver the kind of deep research and strict discipline that NTR brought to his inimitable mythological roles. Aamir Khan reportedly practiced for over 45 days to get his tap dance in Dhoom 3 to perfection.  Successful movie stalwarts never stopped learning; they continued to learn and demonstrate personal leadership in multiple domains, spurring imagination and creativity, and seamlessly merging with every element of the movie making system from light boys to musical geniuses. The ten principles of successful movie making identified in this blog post have relevance and applicability in the broader realms of management and leadership for all enterprises and for all organizational endeavors.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on December 22, 2013