Job Fulfilment: Highway Cruise or Oil Exploration?

Job fulfilment is the precursor for job satisfaction. Given that more than 50 percent of a 24 hour day and more than 80 percent of the wakeful part is spent on the job or job related activities, job satisfaction is a must for peace in life. Deriving fulfilment on the job is essential for pace in life, therefore. Job fulfilment cannot be defined in terms of either title or compensation. It is more in terms of doing what one enjoys and what one’s natural aptitudes and talents play for, and finally the impact one makes through one’s job on the people and organization. In some cases, job fulfilment occurs immediately while in some case, it takes years to happen. In most cases, what was fulfilment at the start gets overwhelmed by greater accomplishments later in life but in some cases, the later day’s greater successes trigger greater satisfaction from the initial fulfilments too.    

For a teacher, for example, job fulfilment occurs when he or she is able to coach his class to high scores in examinations. The real job fulfilment, however, comes when the teacher sees his students occupying high positions and becoming successful in life. The teacher, in the process, starts getting more fulfilled from the teaching process, the long term implications of students getting high scores, and their bringing credit to the teacher and the alma mater in the years to come. Today’s competitive landscape pressures executives for immediate performance, much like examination results, and ingrains a mind-set of seeking immediate fulfilment through rewards and recognitions. While there is nothing wrong in this (except for the accumulation of stress), the flip side is that executives, no longer, are able to await and relish the long term results from the seeds they sow.

Jobs make careers

Most advertisements for recruitment no longer emphasize the job; they speak of careers. Most recruiters emphasize how careers can be built up through the position in question. A company that lays attention on talent mapping and succession planning can, indeed, assure a fulfilling career through a series of fulfilling jobs. Such companies are characterized by their frontline executives growing to occupy CXO positions eventually. It is, therefore, unnecessary and even misplaced to distinguish between jobs and careers. If jobs make careers for individuals, and both mean fulfilment for them, it is important to realize that companies also have their own jobs and careers to fulfil for the society. In fact, it is only within the aegis of a company that individuals can find fulfilment.  While individuals can find jobs in any company, successful or not so successful, they can find careers only in successful companies or making not so successful companies successful with their jobs.

Like individuals, companies also have jobs to perform and careers to make. A company has a job to do in terms of delivering the products and services. However, the company also has a career to make (even if it is somewhat inappropriate to describe so) in terms of maintaining a continuity of products and services that are ever more beneficial to the customer. Just as an individual gets to change a job in search of fulfilment or career, companies also get to churn their products and services (and even employees) in their quest for a “career” in the business landscape. While these similarities are easy to appreciate, the interplay between jobs and careers as well as individuals and companies (in permutations and combinations thereof) is not understood by either the individuals or the companies. Perceptive business leaders and human resources leader not only appreciate this interplay but work in partnership to address this complex issue.

Defining fulfilment

Many people see and seek fulfilment in terms of how their talents impact the jobs that they carry out. One is apt to make statements such as “I completed my assigned project which was appreciated by my boss” or “I made a presentation that the audience liked”. Fulfilment through such feelings and perceptions is misplaced. True fulfilment occurs when the job impacts positively and meaningfully others in the organization and one feels invested in the company’s future through the job one is performing. Again, it is not a matter how many people one leads but it does matter how much interaction one is able to have with other relevant internal and external stakeholders. True fulfilment also occurs when one is able to experience, on a first hand basis, the results of one’s work.

Typically jobs (especially in mature established organizations) tend to stay static while talents (as defined by a combination of education and experience) may improve. Fulfilment becomes elusive when jobs trail competencies. There would also be cases when jobs (especially in turnaround situations or sunrise industries) require new skills while talents (as required by new requirements) remain static. In this case also, where skills trail job challenges, fulfilment becomes elusive. Fulfilment, on the whole, is a dynamic concept which can work only when jobs, as they are designed, manned and performed, lead to growth of businesses. This is not merely a human resources responsibility but the responsibility of the entire leadership team of a company at one level. It is also, more importantly, the responsibility of the individuals themselves at another level.  

Economic view

It is impossible to discuss job fulfilment without considering an economic viewpoint. Typically, companies extract consumer surplus when they market their products or services at prices higher than costs. Consumer surplus obviously varies based on the product-market segments. In a similar fashion, companies seek to derive (‘extract’ could be a negative word, here!) employee surplus by deriving higher value from their services than the salaries paid to them. The laws of growth and competition not only legitimize the relevance of consumer surplus and employee surplus but also seek to reduce consumer surplus per product or service. Companies try to counter this by maximizing employee surplus but this may not always be feasible in a skill-scarce and talent-constrained economy. The only way this riddle of economic fulfilment is solved is through sustainable and profitable growth.

The economics of fulfilment for individuals, in their twin roles as customers and employees, and for companies, in their multiple roles as producers and sellers, and as employers and optimizers are important. Growth economics, in fact, is a bubble. Population demographics is a reality. The bubble has to be sustained to meet the reality. Unless economic growth stays continuous and consistent, social fulfilment becomes elusive. When viewed in this perspective, job fulfilment can never be a matter of individual joy or disappointment, and not even of job design and talent deployment. It is a matter of finding business and economic solutions for challenges of growth. Job fulfilment occurs when the role of an individual is appreciated by the role designers and the individual is able to appreciate the role as part of a larger socio-economic paradigm.

Cruise or exploration?

When this socio-economic perspective is understood, frontline executives as well as their employers start assessing objectively whether job fulfilment is a matter of immediacy and surety as a highway cruise is, or is a matter of uncertainty with sporadic abundance as oil exploration is. The answer is rather simple. The concept of a career highway, however desirable it is, is rather a desire than reality in organizations. There are far too many variables in the process of interactions of individual-business-environment that there can never be a pre-set path. It is unclear, for example, if the conventional synthetic medicines will be dominant a decade hence or biologic medicines or genetic engineering would be dominant. Taking the example of automobile industry, the future automobile could be a digital machine. Career highways based on current business models and current skill-sets could be misleading.

On the other hand, job fulfilment is more like oil exploration. Not every field, whether on-shore or offshore, offers potential for oil, and not every field with potential for oil ends up providing an unending gush of oil. Job fulfilment for aspirant executives arises from a process of identifying the right companies and persevering with their job roles and career paths with grit. As with exploration, the operating circumstances tend to be challenging but when the right role is struck, the rewards could be plenty. Like oil exploration, exploration of job fulfilment tends to be a combination of hardware, soft skills and the entire organization working together. While the simile may seem extended, the underlying concept that job fulfilment is a larger enterprise-wide challenge is a reality. Does the individual have an easy path then?

Aligned fulfilment

The solution for job fulfilment lies in aligned fulfilment between the company and the employees. The company must have a larger purpose and mission which must have the buy-in of the employees. The company and the employee must have a clear view of how the dynamics of industrial competition would impact the economics of consumer surplus and economic surplus. Just as the company feels justified in deriving a consumer surplus based on the perceived value of its products and services to the company, the employee must feel a broader purpose in providing the employee surplus to the company. A good job for a competent person pays well. A great job which is derived from a sense of purpose for the company and covers its employees inclusively leads to fulfilment for them as well as the company.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on November 8, 2015  

Global Education for Global Leaders: A New Bilateral Paradigm Towards 2030

Dr Marshall Goldsmith, one of the top CEO coaches of the world and the author of several bestsellers on leadership was in India recently to deliver a speech for the National HRD Network’s silver jubilee. Addressing the CXOs he made a point that despite cultural differences across countries, the CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies have a lot in common. Amongst such common characteristics, he mentioned Western education as an important feature even if they went to school in India. He also said that a future CEO should have five things that were not required in the past: global thinking, cross-cultural appreciation, tech-savvy, building partnerships and shared leadership. Though he was candid about the egoistic and other problems of leaders, his insistence on Western education seemed as his quick aid for global thinking, one of his five leadership ingredients.

To interpret Dr Goldsmith’s comments in a perspective, it could be that he views Western education as a surrogate for some of the important attributes of the Western (the US, for simplicity) educational system. These could relate to a graded educational experience that emphasizes logic, openness, boldness, expressiveness and experimentation, and benefits from superior laboratory and other facilities. These contrast with the Asian (Indian, for simplicity) educational experience that supports tradition, caution, deference and conformity, and suffers from constraints of campus infrastructure. Western educational system focuses on expressive, at times even overwhelming, competitiveness in everyday life as opposed to the Indian educational system that emphasizes competitiveness more in examination routines, and accommodation in day to day routines. Western culture promotes inter-personal independence of the individual with dependence on one’s head while oriental culture promotes interpersonal dependence of the individual with dependence on one’s heart.

Flood and trickle

American education continues to be the first choice for higher education for Indian students and parents, whether they have a strong materialistic mind or a strong nationalistic heart. As a result, the number of Indian students applying for US student visas has been growing exponentially. While 90,000 students went to US in 2012-13, 113,000 students went in 2013-14, registering an increase of 26 percent. In 2014-15, a further 40 percent increase to 158,200 is forecast as per current trends. Only, China sends more students to US. Together, China and India contribute to nearly 50 percent of US student visas. The question, however, is whether the students prefer the US educational system for higher education for the sheer educational experience for global leadership or to pursue an American dream of a career in a superior ecosystem. While both could be viable reasons, probably not many are so futuristic as to pursue American education as a global leadership qualification.

For the few who have become the CEOs or CXOs of multi-billion multinational corporations such as Indira Nooyi (Pepsico), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Harish Manwani (Unilever), Ajay Banga (Mastercard), Anshu Jain (Deutsche Bank), Shantanu Narayen (adobe), Ivan Menezes (Diageo), Rakesh Kapoor (Benckiser), Vikram Pandit (Citi), Sundar Pichai (Google), Nikesh Arora of SoftBank and Ajit Jain (Berkshire Hathaway), the reason  is not necessarily the Western education as several had higher education in India too. Various others have occupied leadership positions in Indian multinationals without any Western degrees.  While Bloomberg commented that Indian cultural ethos of empathy, humility, patience, emotional bonding and passion for growth as a reason for Indians becoming CEOs in global MNCs, it is also clear that out of the flood of Indians seeking US higher education only a trickle makes it to the top. This leads us to wonder on the validity of Dr Goldsmith’s prescription of Western education is an essential prerequisite for future global leaders. In likely fact of the future, there could, on the other hand, be a dramatic shift in favor of Asian education and experience.

Asian resurgence 2030 

According to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) published in July 2014, India will be the third largest economy in the world by 2030. According to rankings of the top economies of the world, India would leap seven steps to become a USD 15 trillion economy by 2030, next only to US at USD 38.5 trillion and China (at the top) at USD 53.8 trillion. In fact, the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) would have an economic scale of over USD 85 trillion by 2030, far exceeding the scale of the five developed economies of USA, Japan, Germany, UK and France together at only USD 66 trillion. Clearly, the emerging economies of today would be the dominant economies of tomorrow in terms of workforce and population, economic scale, diversity of research and manufacturing and market potential.  Today’s drawbacks of the BRICS economies should not be viewed to conclude that the emerging economies would always be dependent economies.

Today’s challenges of the emerging economies in terms of deficient urban and rural infrastructure, underdeveloped transportation services, inadequate power and energy, rather uncontrolled population, poor healthcare and sanitation, and so many other shortfalls would be great opportunities of tomorrow, calling for massive investment in infrastructure development and economic growth. A qualifying requirement for this transformation would be the importance attached to organic technological innovation. India’s Mars mission (Mangalyaan) that has successfully placed India’s satellite in the orbit of Mars in the very first attempt at a cost lower than the cost of a Hollywood blockbuster movie (a point eloquently made by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Madison Square, New York address) illustrates that Indian engineering and scientific talent can achieve technological self-reliance even in the most sophisticated fields, with a structured mission and progressive leadership. Indian Scientific Research Organization (ISRO), a Government of India body has certainly shown the way for a techno-savvy India.

Factors and markets

Eventually, global economic development would seek a global equilibrium, driven by differential factor advantages and differential market sizes.  Like water flows from a higher plane to a lower plane and heat transfers from a higher temperature heat sink to a lower temperature heat sink, technologies and finances would flow to economies where they can be best utilized. Global developmental equilibrium would need to happen, even if it were to take years and decades. In this process, leadership is a critical driver of how to access and deploy resources, be it finance, people and machines, or naturally occurring resources like oil, gas, water, wind, minerals, metals and any other element. Leadership is also a critical ingredient of understanding various local markets, developing customized products and services and integrating with local consumer needs. If these are the imperatives, leadership must understand local factor endowments and local market needs, and explore how multi-national resources can be networked to synergize each local economy.

It goes to the credit of global Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) companies that they ventured into underdeveloped markets decades ago despite several challenges and uncertainties and in the process secured a place in such countries that is on par with indigenous companies. As the underdeveloped economies moved on to become developing economies a few years ago, and now emerging economies with potential to become fully developed over the next two decades, the pioneering FMCG companies have discovered that their venturesome strategies fueled sustainable global growth for them. Companies like Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, Proctor & Gamble, Gillette, GSK Consumer, Microsoft, Pepsi, CocaCola, Henkel and Reckitt Benckiser come to mind. In other fields as well, companies such as Suzuki, GE, Siemens, ABB, Nokia, Philips, Cummins and Alstom have taken early roots. All such successful companies viewed India as an important market and supply source but some like Unilever have seen India as a select leadership talent source for their global needs.

A new bilateral paradigm

As India and China match the five developed economies by value less than 15 years from now, global corporations must develop a significantly different paradigm for nurturing global leaders. The conventional models that local leaders must be Western educated to have global acceptance (typical Goldsmith’s type prescription) or that expat leaders must spend a few years each in several emerging countries (typical  global automobile industry’s practice) would be found wanting when India and China (as well as other emerging market economies) race at full economic throttle. Fundamentally, future global leaders would be developed with specific collaborating countries in mind. Such combinations could be US and India or US and China, Japan and India or Korea and India, UK and India or UK and China, India and China or India and Brazil, and so on. The Western origin person who would have graduate education of the West would be immersed in post-graduate education of the East while the Eastern origin person who would have graduate education of the East would be immersed in post-graduate education of the West.

Put differently, the new global leader would not rest content with viewing education as imparting only professional knowledge or leading to a different employment opportunity. Education would be seen as an immersive cultural experience of a different nation with a style of pedagogy and a community of co-learners and co-executors unique to that national culture. As much as an Indian student with US employment aspiration would like a US higher education so must a US student with the aspiration of becoming an India-centric leader should take to Indian higher education. Ahead of this paradigm being a part of mainstream general education, executive education could be the right vehicle to develop the new generation of focused global leaders. Executives should be encouraged to take up fulltime residential higher education courses in diverse emerging market countries on sabbatical depending on the global growth orientation of the companies. For the new bilateral global bilateral education paradigm to be effective, educational institutions in India and China (and other emerging nations) must elevate their campus ecosystems, learning communities and curricula to integrate the best of locally embedded and intrinsic culture, knowledge and practice with globally applicable professional knowledge, tools and techniques.   

Posted by Dr CB Rao on October 4, 2014

From Unrest to REST (Recruitment Engine and Skill Transmission): An Automotive Inspiration to Human Resources Drive Train

Contemporary organizations are in a state of continuous unrest. Competitive conditions are no longer the only pressure for survival or superiority. Disruptive conditions make even the most recent strategic scripts obsolete. Governments and regulators assume an increasingly activist role in support of their constituencies or in pursuit of their mandates. When Chinese manufacturers offer smartphones, telecommunication gear, bulk drugs, power plants and bullet trains at amazingly lower costs relative to suppliers in the developed and developing world, competitive conditions turn into disruptive conditions for such vendors. Within India, low entry barriers and fragmented industries have been disruptive to orderly development and growth. Organizations, therefore, are in a state of perpetual unrest as they retool their available skills and retool with new skills. That, however, is hardly the answer because the changed competitive conditions tend to become real and ravaging well ahead of anticipated occurrences, and worse still in a completely unanticipated manner. Neither subdued organizational fatalism nor excited organizational unrest is hardly the answer to meet such surprises. ‘Anytime organizational readiness’ as a concept requires the adoption of REST model as it is the only way for organizations to be in a state of perpetual readiness.   

Automotive analogy

It is well known that the drive train that comprises the engine and transmission is the key enabler of automotive efficiency. The nature of the engine, whether it is gasoline or diesel, and the type of the transmission, whether it is manual or automatic, together determine the onroad power, torque, performance and economy of the automobile. The matching of the engine and transmission as an integrated system of drive train on one hand and the matching of the drive train to the driving conditions on the other are essential for optimal performance of an automobile in different countries. The automotive designers, therefore, commit considerable innovation and effort to optimize the drive train to internal and external conditions. While there exist several other design factors that impact automotive performance such as the profile and weight of the automobile, for a given set of non-drive train factors, it is the efficiency and economy of the drive train that determines the internal and external performance efficiency and driving compatibility of an automobile.

This blog post proposes that two essential components of the human resources function in an organization, namely recruitment engine and skill transmission constitute the drive train of an organization and impact the overall performance of an organization in the competitive traffic of business competition. As with organizational design there exist several other factors of organization design that impact organizational performance. These are, for example, the profile and size of the organization (akin to the profile and size of an automobile). Be that as may, the way the recruitment engine and skill transmission in an organization are designed and tuned determines organizational performance, other factors remaining constant. This blog post proposes an optimized model of Recruitment Engine and Skill Development, with the acronym of REST that can provide a meaningful conceptual and analytical framework for driving human resources efficiency and effectiveness in an organization. The drive train needs to be continuously optimized as driving conditions and preferences evolve; so does the organizational drive train need to be continuously optimized as business conditions and strategies evolve.

Recruitment engine

The automotive engine is characterized by three fundamental characteristics, the power, torque and specific fuel consumption (SFC). The power curve provides the ability to accelerate the automobile and carry the load while the torque curve provides the ability to start the vehicle with loads and in upward gradients and the SFC curve reflects the ability to run economically at different power and torque levels. The recruitment engine in an organization provides a similar function set; an ability to take the business challenges against adversity (the torque), an ability to cruise competitively on the business pathway ahead of others (the power) and an ability to use resources judiciously and economically while meeting the other two traction needs (the fuel economy).  Just as these three characteristics are integral and integrated part of an engine design (despite being three separate performance curves), the three characteristics of resilience, competitiveness and economy must be the integrated and integral part of recruitment engine design and delivery.

Different engines are designed for different purposes in classic automotive design. Similarly, different recruitment engines are required for different business purposes. Startup phase requires high resilience of the human resource base (high torque talent). The growth phase requires an ability to accelerate and stay ahead (high power talent). The maturity phase requires the skill to be cost competitive and achieve long term sustenance (high economy talent). Firms that desire to stay in the game as long as possible in the maturity phase or extend the product life cycle through a fresh startup and growth phase require all the three characteristics in varying measures. Just as a unitary engine design is today being re-tuned to meet different characteristics (for example, Tata Revatron engine which is controlled by microprocessor technology to meet three different driving needs of city, sport and economy), the organizational recruitment engine must also be capable being one in constitution but multiple in recruitment characteristics. This requires extreme sensitivity (akin to microprocessors) on the part of the recruitment engine to varying internal and external needs.  

Skill transmission

The automotive gear box plays an extremely important role in enabling the basic performance of the engine to be matched and amplified based on the driving gradients. The gearbox technology has moved from manual four speed gearboxes to automatic and continuously variable transmissions capable of matching the engine performance to road requirements at different engine speeds. In organizational settings too systems of skill transmission can play a great role in ensuring that the available skills brought in by the recruitment engine are amplified and conditioned to meet unanticipated and challenging business requirements. One is habituated to expect skill transformation to accomplish such arduous transportation on business highway to future. Skill transmission, however, is an altogether different concept. It is the ability of the team managers and corporate leaders ensure that the available skills are matched or enhanced to levels that are required. Managers and leaders are habituated to assume themselves to be the steering wheels of an automobile in a classic automobile analogy but they actually need to play a less visible and more appropriate role of a transmission that is consistent with their accumulated knowledge, experience and intuition.

Managers would need move from coordinating and controlling roles to progressive roles that excel in imparting their skills to reshape or augment their team members’ skills and, in some cases, let their own skills work directly with their team members’. Leaders would need to transform themselves from oversight and judgmental roles to judging business gradients and competitive conditions. Over time, the behaviors of managers and leaders tend to be predictable, from their periodic exhortations to quarterly expectations. Over time, in organizations,  innovation and creativity of executives tend to be subservient to the directions and boundaries set by the managers and leaders. As the competitive intensity increases managers and leaders become skill demanders rather than skill enhancers. Their expectations lie around transformation of the skills of their team members (which is a required long term fix) rather than devising ways by which available skills can be redeployed to maximal efficacy. Managers and leaders need to recognize that they are an integrated part of the human resources drive train and the converter between the raw power, torque and economy of their teams and the rough conditions of their businesses.

From unrest to REST

Organizations cannot afford to ever rest in the task of organization building and talent development. New entrants must see their entry as only the first step to develop skills that are industry-specific and application oriented. Managers and leaders cannot afford to consider the journey of competitiveness as a steady state cruise. Disruption, whether by competition, regulation or globalization, is the order of the day. If unrest in organizational performance and infrastructure is a way of life, REST as a model of organizational competencies is the elixir of organizational life. Recruitment engine in a growth oriented high performance organization never gets switched off; it remains in perpetual throttle to balance the skills at a basal level and rev up as required. Skill transmission enjoins the leadership to be in a continuously variable application mode to deliver maximum value by combining the executive, managerial and leadership skills that are already resident in the organization.

Like the best automotive drive train that remains invisible under the hood but purrs to perfect performance, REST, the human drive train, is the invisible force that remains in perpetual throttle with an automatic transmission of combined human capabilities of the organization to meet variable business requirements. This, however, requires a major shift in the mindset of managers and leaders (and organizational expectations) from visible direction-setting and judgmental oversight to invisible skill amplification and augmentation of their teams and organizations. This also requires a shift in the mindset of team and organizational members (and manager, leader expectations) from compliant direction taking and performance excellence to active knowledge seeking and competitive collaboration with their managers and leaders.   

Posted by Dr CB Rao on September 21, 2014  

 

               

Advocacy, Influencing and Directing (AID): A Leadership Aid to Aligned Progress

The human race, by and large, is genetically programmed to keep the interests of self ahead of satisfying the interests of the society. Fortunately, civilization has devised, over the centuries, a number of structures and processes to achieve alignment between social and individual interests. Organization is one of the most important structures that are designed to achieve alignment. Goal setting and goal realization is one of the most important processes that are designed to achieve progress. Progress would be optimal when it is achieved by organizations with alignment of all the members of the organization. Several leadership and managerial processes have been designed and practiced to achieve aligned progress. Yet, a successful model to achieve aligned progress could be surprisingly simple in its components though complex in practice.

Advocacy, influencing and directing are proposed in this blog post as the three core components of the aligned progress model. Interestingly, all the three are facets and forms of communication, each of which requires not only a different skill but even more importantly results from a personality type. The Advocacy-Influencing-Directing (AID) leadership communication model is a three step sequential yet iterative process that enables leaders to accomplish aligned progress of their organizations. Advocacy is the ability to argue a public cause or an individual view that could qualify as a public cause. Influencing is the ability to steer a person or group of persons to a particular view.  Directing is the ability to make people execute as per the agreed thought. Clearly, advocacy is a prerequisite for influencing which is, in turn, a prerequisite for directing. When all the three take effect in a seamless manner, aligned progress tends to be an automatic result. Interestingly, each of the three components has different shades.

Advocacy

Advocacy is the espousal of a public cause for a definitive positive judgment. The courts of law and the judicial system are the primary areas of advocacy. In the context of social or business organizations, however, advocacy works two ways. It requires private acceptance of public causes as well as public acceptance of private causes. A couple of examples illustrate. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as mandated by the new Companies Act 2013 in India, or CSR even otherwise commonly understood, is a positive public cause. However, how the agencies of government interpret CSR and how the business organizations perceive their own responsibility towards CSR require advocacy. This is a classic case of a well accepted public cause requiring private or individual advocacy to gain traction. The ongoing advocacy efforts on establishing the new capital for Andhra Pradesh is another example of advocacy of a public cause from multiple angles. The takeaway is that however well conceived or well merited a public cause is, it triggers and requires advocacy with multiple stakeholders in relevant forms.

The example of a private or individual viewpoint gaining a more public or total public advocacy can be had from business. An entrepreneur who has an innovative technical idea or a viable business idea needs to mount an advocacy campaign at multiple levels; with professionals to build his or her management team, with investors and lenders to attract the resources, with governments to secure the necessary approvals, with vendors and channel partners to become a part of value chain, with customers to establish a value proposition, and even more fundamentally with his or her own family members to become an entrepreneur. The strength of advocacy of an individual viewpoint into wider public consensus is the core of entrepreneurship. Even in established organizations, the ‘command and control’ approach has to be replaced by an ‘advocate and influence’ approach if the plural intellectual views have to be harnessed for the best possible outcomes. With advocacy comes the next step of influencing.  

Influencing

Language being what it is, the word ‘influencing’ evokes both positive and negative connotations, often caused by the interpretative mindsets of the viewer or bystander, and not necessarily of the participants. For the purpose of the AID model, we may assume all influencing to be positive only. Influencing is the way of getting an important constituent to accept the proposed viewpoint. Influencing cannot occur without advocacy. Powerful and cogent adequacy makes the job of influencing easy but not necessarily automatic. To return to our examples, a public cause such as CSR becomes an individual leadership or business cause when the outcomes impact the individual leader or the business in some manner; like, CSR in community education improving the quality of people a firm can hire from the local community. The committee constituted to recommend options on AP capital, Sivaramakrishnan Committee, may advocate decentralized capital(s) model but the AP Government itself may not be influenced by the recommendation. If the Committee also had the powers to allocate financial support to different capital models possibly such advocacy would have led to influence.  

In organizations and businesses too, influence has a capping up role to advocacy. Advocacy, especially for a cause or a change, often challenges established mores and positions. The entrepreneur who advocates his technology solution or business model challenges the status quo and is typically met with skeptical response initially (“if you are novel, what is the guarantee of success”, and “if you are a follower, what is the guarantee of superiority”, for example). When the entrepreneur offers stock options to his or her startup team members sharing his wealth, he or she would be following up the advocacy with positive influencing. In the case of established organizations, the stakes of individuals in established structures and processes tend to be so enormous that they tend to be resistant, if not impervious, to change. A logical extension of ‘advocate and influence’ approach, for example, would be to create organizational or business think-tanks which can serve as forums to pool in diverse thought processes and develop advocacy and influencing choices. These channel the intellectual power of large organizations towards convergence.

Directing

At the end of advocacy and influencing processes, the need for directing inevitably comes. Directing, as a process, involves establishing goals and moving the organization towards accomplishment of the goals. In the standard managerial template, the leader is expected to direct. However, that is not the only option in the emerging managerial context. Self-directed management of organizations is entirely possible, especially if the processes of advocacy and influencing have been gone through. In fact, these processes bring in ownership and accountability that makes self-directed management at least as successful as leader-directed management. Organizations can excel in CSR activities through such self-direction. As we may note, self-help groups have been an important success component of the microfinance movement in India. Building of a new capital could be a self-directed effort if the interests of land owners and the capital builders are aligned through a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for ownership.

In organized businesses, managements and leaderships find it difficult to strike the right balance between decentralization and centralization (self-direction and command-direction, correspondingly). Skeptics may wonder the need for advocacy and influencing (or such other participative concepts) if the final need is to direct. This skepticism arises from the inability to appreciate the power of an aligned individual. Truly entrepreneurial organizations are self-directed organizations that clock rapid growth on a number of fronts. Large organizations and businesses should establish several incubators for business ideas and technology solutions, and follow through the successful ones with business units. Yet, many firms would be reluctant to adopt a diversified federal structure until the whole monolith becomes completely unwieldy and unviable. The AID model of leadership communication would result in aligned progress of societies, organizations and businesses.

Aligned progress

Certain minimal factors support progress of organizations and businesses as well as of societies and economies. The issue is whether the full potential of an organization or a business is reached in such routine ‘lowest common multiple’ manners. Despite the anecdotal evidence of weak strands of thread when intertwined forming a strong rope, the powerful impact aligned progress can have on enterprise activity and outcomes is not fully appreciated. Aligned progress typically gets viewed in a gross manner than in a subtle way; for example, a common slogan that is accepted by all or a common brand that is related to by all is considered good enough reflection of alignment. In a conglomerate setting all constituent companies buying each other’s products may also seem to be aligned development. True aligned progress, however, gets accomplished based on advocacy of the best causes or ideas, influential stakeholder participation and self-directed management of affairs.

The concept is not necessarily an inversion of the classic pyramid of power; nor is it an abandonment of the concept of organizational pyramid either. On the other hand, it is a unique pyramid which has three sides of advocacy, influence and direction converging into pivotal power. Just as there can be no pyramid without three sides aligned progress cannot come about without these three planks. It is a sequential and iterative interaction between the three aspects; the leader at the helm needs to be an advocate, influencer and director – all rolled into one. The issues to advocate, the outcomes to influence and the efforts to direct would constitute a holistic communication competence for the AID leadership communication model. In their heydays several topnotch business leaders of India could achieve unique combinations of advocacy, influence and direction for their enterprises with aligned progress for them. Dr Homi Bhabha for BARC, Dr Abdul Kalam for DRDO, V Krishnamurthy for Maruti Suzuki, N R Narayana Murthy for Infosys, Azim Premji for Wipro, A M Naik for L&T, Dhirubhai Ambani for Reliance and Ratan Tata for Tata Group are just a few examples.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on August 29, 2014

        

 

KBC/MEK Paradigm: A Knowledge Game Show for Prizewinning or a Digital Platform for Social Reengineering?

Most Indians know “Kaun Banega Crorepati?” (“Who Will Become Crorepati?”), or KBC, as the pioneering and highly popular knowledge based reality game show, in Hindi and English, that inspired millions to compete for the hot seat and to aspire to win the Rs 1 crore prize money (initial stake, now getting increased to an astounding Rs 7 crore in the seventh season, and in the forthcoming eighth season)  to fulfill their life dreams. The show got completely identified with Big B, Amitabh Bachchan, despite Shahrukh Khan hosting a midterm series, and despite a four year holiday. Whether KBC transformed the lives of the prizewinners, it sure did transform the image of Amitabh as the master showman as a person of elegant intellect and touching emotion. While the excitement of climbing up the ladder of questions with the three lifelines in tow was exciting, the connectivity and rapport which Amitabh established with the participants and the audience alike was a delight to watch.

The Telugu version titled “Meelo Evaru Koteeswarudu?” (“Who Will Become Crorepati Among You?”) started to be aired from June 9, 2014 as a forty-episode version with Akkineni Nagarjuna donning the role of host that  Amitabh played in KBC. Pre-telecast, there was skepticism about the show’s nativity for the Telugu population and Nagarjuna’s ability to measure up to the historic benchmark set by the mighty Amitabh. However, as the MEK show closed its first season with its fortieth episode on August 7, 2014 it became evident that MEK was no less popular than KBC, and Nagarjuna became no less transformed and transformative than Amitabh was. In addition, its translation into Telugu nativity was perfect and the connectivity with the Telugu audience was instantaneous.  For students of social engineering, however, MEK offers several interesting insights and corresponding hypotheses.  Five of these are discussed below, with some suggestions for making this knowledge based game show an instrument of micro level social entrepreneurship.

Human touch

MEK demonstrated that if the basic DNA of any show is emotional as well as intellectual the show can transcend all barriers of geography. After all, KBC itself was an adaptation, with a significant Indian emotive touch, of the popular UK game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”. The objective of any product or service is to fulfill the human needs. Human needs have two integral parts; one of rational need (influenced by knowledge and logic), and the other of emotional need (influenced by belongingness and empathy). MEK went one step ahead of KBC in unraveling the rational and emotional experiences and goals of the hot seat participants. The MEK show could succeed in bringing out emotional aspects of the show by focusing on humanism without unduly leveraging the materialism of the prize money. This sensitivity brought the show close to an initially skeptical audience. Social engineering through a product, service or a host is possible only when the human touch is understood and embedded in them, and is manifest in features.

Hope and determination  

It is more than a coincidence, in fact a clear pattern, that the story of each participant in the MEK show has been one of hope and determination. Irrespective of the contemporary status of each participant, it was clear that all of them faced some very serious odds in life, and most continued to face more challenges for future; yet, all demonstrated remarkable grit, courage and hope to overcome the difficulties. Some of them had their near and dear in financially, physically or medically challenged state but each was determined to work for their benefit as much as for their own. There were participants who moved up the ladder from humble beginnings to reasonably settled jobs but none lost sight of the difficult past. The common thread is that a combination of hope and determination makes life. Hope without determination is facile while determination without hope is purposeless.

Social entrepreneurship

It is well understood that entrepreneurship holds the key to rapid and sustainable economic growth with social equity in India. It is, however, not so well understood that many Indians, contrary to the perception that they are risk-averse job seekers, have an entrepreneurial spirit, and that a socially inclined one, in them. Some participants in the MEK show were already self-employed while almost everyone desired to set up a socially relevant entrepreneurial venture if they were to win a substantial prize money. It also transpired that those who underwent troubles experienced firsthand an aspiration to create their own little ecosystems that could educate and train people or establish businesses and services. The spirit of social entrepreneurship was palpable here even though the prize money stakes were less than the KBC stakes. This emphasis on social aspiration contrasts with a somewhat excessive emphasis in the KBC show on the size of the prize money.  It was interesting to perceive that a combination of life’s challenges and personal skills provides the right motivation to set up socially responsible entrepreneurial ventures.

Professional rebirth

The adage that nothing succeeds like success is typically validated by great corporate or leadership achievements. This adage is true at a micro level as well. In fact, many participants found a distinctive confidence and a unique motivation as a result of participating in the MEK show successfully. Umakant was a participant who knew all the answers, together with the entire background, even before a question was read, so much so he earned the sobriquet of Acharya Umakant from Nagarjuna. He said that despite his hard work he never got a chance to prove his worth, and finally the MEK show helped him establish his competence; he gratefully said that he was reborn because of the show. Similar has been the experience of another intelligent and sharp participant who lost his confidence due to a head injury; the very fact of his being in the hot seat demonstrated his alertness and acumen, and to boot Nagarjuna could extract a promise to rediscover his confidence. Clearly, certain landmark competitive or successful events can reinforce one’s confidence and propel one to greater heights.

Leadership transformation

Prior to KBC, Amitabh was a national hero within the shade of the past ‘angry young man’ image. The failure of business ventures and an inability to manage the generational transition in the 1990s took some sheen of his image. It is to the credit of Amitabh that he could utilize the KBC game show vehicle that started in 2000 to bring out his histrionics, knowledge, emotions, humility and empathy as a unique personality of intellect and emotion that connected with not only the participants but also millions of households. Like Amitabh, Nagarjuna had a distinct screen presence, relative to the Telugu film industry. Nagarjuna, a generation younger than Amitabh, started as an ‘angry young student’ in movies and consolidated as a boisterous mass hero with evergreen characteristics but also blossomed with unexpected histrionics in religious movies. As seamlessly as Amitabh, Nagarjuna could acquire the shades of an emotionally intellectual showman, with a homely television presence that is distinct from his screen image, playful or devout. Leadership, it would seem, is contextual, and adaptive leaders can build on their latent competencies to transform themselves contextually; leadership rebirth seems to be entirely possible and feasible.

Digital social reengineering

A successful TV show is, at best, seen as a string of episodes that momentarily transports audience each specified time of the day to think differently. As the analysis on KBC and MEK in this blog post demonstrates, certain reality shows that combine intellectualism and compassion under a voluntary experiential canopy of social awareness are much more than just successful TV shows; they have the right ingredients for mass social transformation. There are five distinct lessons for social development which must be grasped. Firstly, from governance to business, human touch must prevail in all product, process or service delivery. Secondly, good times, and better times, will come only with hope and determination. Thirdly, most individuals, especially those who came up through troubled times, can evolve, and re-evolve, as natural leaders for social entrepreneurship and social reengineering at micro level. Fourthly, competitive successes are opportunities to rededicate oneself to professional rejuvenation. Fifthly, given the right challenges and opportunities, leaders adapt and transform themselves to be inspired themselves, and inspire others.

Digital communication through media impacts millions of minds on a 24X7 basis. If positive messages are conveyed through entertaining and engaging shows, anchored by inspiring icons, they become integral to life journeys.  If the digital power and imaging is constructively channeled, knowledge and achievement based reality shows can become truly mass movements which can convert a normal society into a knowledge society and create wealth and wellbeing with social entrepreneurship. Siddhartha Basu, the iconic quiz master of India and the force behind the KBC/MEK shows has demonstrated how intellect can lead to engagement and how knowledge with emotion can not only mean good business but also transform lives. A few incentives from the promoters of the shows as well as from the governments could take forward the concepts and unleash creative social energy. Siddhartha Basu, himself, can evolve from being an intellectual authority and a successful businessman to a knowledge developer and social transformer.  

The knowledge game shows can be social game changers with the following few tweaks. Fundamentally, the game shows should be seen as social entrepreneurship ventures which are inspired through individual aspiration for intellectual and material development. The games should have socially inclined sponsors so that the prize corpus is significantly enhanced. The prize money in lower bands of Rs 1000 to Rs 80,000 should be significantly enhanced, and that in the Rs 160,000 to Rs 1 crore band doubled so that more money is deployed in the hands of prizewinners. Rather than scale up the apex prize to astronomical levels, the corpus must be deployed to generate as many lakhpatis as possible. The prize money should be exempt from taxation if the money is invested in social entrepreneurship. The KBC/MEK organization must maintain a registry of the winners and their ventures so that more sponsors can support such ventures on an ongoing basis. The show formats can themselves be made in all the Indian languages and in each region anchors like Amitabh, Surya and Nagarjuna should take up this as a developmental mission. KBC/MEK paradigm with its intellectual and emotional engagement, and with social passion and entertainment quotient, can uniquely engage individuals, families and societies in India’s knowledge based social reengineering.   

Posted by Dr CB Rao on August 10, 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.