Craft, Craftsmanship, Creativity and Co-creativity: The Perfect Four for Virtuous Competitiveness

Over time, either by education or experience, or a combination of both, everyone becomes good at something or the other. In a very broad generic sense, one becomes good at a craft. He or she becomes known by the craft he or she is good at. Again, at a very broad generic level, people get referred to as academicians, businessmen, scientists, engineers, accountants or moviemakers, for example. Needless to say, each generic craft is a combination of several specific crafts. Corporate leadership requires the craft of weaving together a tapestry of multiple crafts to create a business canvas one desires. There is an element of individuality as much as an element of collectivism in the craft. In some cases, it is sequential, like several baton passing individuals participating in a marathon. In most other cases, it is like a musical ensemble with a whole set of musicians working together, each excelling on his or her instrument. From a social activity, craft has moved to industrial enterprise, over time.     

The continuous optimization of value chain is the core of serving the customers continuously better. While an industrial value chain has several components, design (in the laboratory), manufacture (in the factory) and delivery (to the customer) of a product constitute the three essential components. These, as well as other components and sub-components of the value chain are typically carried out by people who are educated and trained to do so. The skill or the competency with which these activities are performed determines the overall capability of the value chain and, as a consequence, the competitive advantage of a firm. Two aspects are important from a generic point of view: the perfection with which the activity is performed and the creativity with which it is performed. This blog post proposes that the industrial value chain concept as above is just a part or reflection of how people can conduct their activities, individually or collectively, in day to day life.

Craft and creativity

Craft, by definition, is an activity involving a special skill at making things with one’s hands. Working with hands implies, without doubt, working with one’s mind also focused on the activity along with hands. Craft is never a singular skill; it covers all the skills needed for a particular activity. A potter, for example, is engaged in the craft of making pottery. His or her craft is not merely shaping the clay into the desired shape with his or her hands. His craft also includes conceptualizing the artifact he needs to shape, the type of clay that would be optimum, the selection of the right potter’s wheel, an understanding of the right oven and baking methodology and finally a capability to inspect and pass the final product (through sensory inspection!). This analogy is true of every domain or activity. An aircraft pilot needs to be adept not only at piloting and aircraft instrumentation but also appreciative of the overall integrity of an aircraft and its accessories and inputs; he needs to understand not only his route map but also several alternate routes. To summarize, every craft is verily a set of multiple skills, related and unrelated.

Craft is closely allied with creativity. A craft may seem to be ordinary and repetitive but each craft requires creativity perpetually. A potter may use the same clay, the same wheel and his own hands always. Whether the pottery is the same or different, the shaping of the artifact from the raw clay with his hands, mixed with requisite liquid content and rotated with appropriate speed and shaped with customized handling, requires perpetual creativity. The functional leader may face the same set of internal and external factors each day but the fact that there would always be surprise additions or deletions besides changes in amplitude of each factor requires him to create a customized solution each day. On a higher plane, however, most crafts are non-repetitive contextually, and require a different solution. Sports and arts, for example, represent the quentessial crafts that abound in creativity every moment. Industrial leaders and organizational professionals need to view their respective crafts as creative outcomes from trained hands and minds responding to unpredictable events.

Craftsmanship and co-creativity

A craftsman is a person who is not merely versed in his craft but is so well versed in his craft that he consistently creates a product that is invariably perfect and beautiful. An accomplished singer such as SP Balu or KJ Jesudas, a dexterous sand sculptor such as Sudarsan Pattnaik come to mind immediately when one thinks of craftsmanship. The craftsmanship of a craftsman is reflected by the quality of design and work of a product or service. The difference between a Japanese automobile and an indigenous automobile is, for example, one of the former displaying the highest levels of craftsmanship. Craftsmanship requires dedication and passion of the highest order to the craft, and perfect synchronization and synergy between the body and the mind. True craftsmanship, however, goes one step further, it fuses the body, mind, heart and soul in the work one does. Organizations must look at craftsmanship as opposed to craft as the essence of talent building.

We have considered earlier that every craft typically comprises several skills. More often than not, a broader craft like corporate management or moviemaking requires working together of many crafts and craftsmen. We have also considered that a craftsman needs to be creative. In an organizational setting, it would not be sufficient for individuals to be creative by themselves; they would need to be co-creative as a team. Let us take the example of a communications executive interviewing the chief executive for an interview for the company’s house magazine. The communications expert may come up with a creative questionnaire and the chief executive may come up with equally creative answers. If, however, both of them design and execute the entire activity with each other’s creative inputs working synergistically the impact would be profound. At a product level, automobile design and manufacture emerge as perfect examples of co-creativity. Also, called concurrent engineering, co-creativity helps the engineers develop vehicles that are lighter yet stronger, minimalist externally and maximal internally, more powered but higher in fuel efficiency, and so on.

The Perfect Four

Ideal organization design should be based on a clear delineation of all the requisite crafts. Just as a bill of material drills down the product through a hierarchy to the smallest individual components, organizational design requires a comprehensive and detailed bill of crafts. The next objective must be to develop each person to reach the highest levels of creativity and craftsmanship in the craft. Organizations which reflect craftsmanship stand differentiated from those which are mere assemblages of crafts. To be able to do that, organizations must abdicate the convenient paradigm of forced ranking and instead put in place the challenging paradigm of universal excellence. Allied with this is the need to facilitate and encourage creativity at individual level and co-creativity in team and at collective levels.

Co-creativity does not mean working together only within an organization or between organizations. Co-creativity also involves organizations working with markets, leaders working with governments, engineers working with customers, and so on. Co-creativity is boosted when each member of the team is able to perceive craftsmanship on the part of team members; it results in healthy respect for each other and a drive for collaborative competition. The beneficial results of the Perfect Four for the industry and society are self-evident. Quality in products or services would be synergistic with customer fulfillment and demand generation. Organizations would simultaneously be able to achieve mastery over time and cost as well. India has some examples of the Perfect Four of craft, craftsmanship, creativity and co-creativity producing some amazing results; such examples need to motivate a larger commitment to Perfect Four across the nation.

The cost of setting up an automobile facility in India, for example, is estimated to be one-third that of a comparable overseas automobile plant (even with certain imported equipment) and the time for setting it up (even on a ‘learn and execute’ basis) is estimated to be half that of an overseas plant build in advanced countries. This has been attributed to the Perfect Four working together in such cases.  India’s space program is an outstanding example of the Perfect Four. The latest launch of India’s Polar Launch Satellite Vehicle incorporating five satellites from different countries, including India, is an example of craftsmanship combining with co-creativity. The successful launch inspired Shri Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister tweet that the cost of India’s PLSV launch has been less than the cost of production of the Hollywood film Gravity! He has also held it to be a perfect example of his mantra of skill, scale and speed (source: PMO India on twitter). There is so much more to be achieved in India by Indian firms and Indian talent. It is time that organizations and individuals recall their historical capabilities in crafts, craftsmanship, creativity and co-creativity and lead on a new trajectory of global resurgence based on deployment of the Perfect Four.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on July 13, 2014                   

 

 

Management and Leadership: More Than a Semantic Difference!

It is very often asked: “what is the difference between management and leadership?” One established concept has been that managers are found up to certain midrange hierarchy levels and leaders are found at the levels of heading functions, locations, businesses and organizations. This question has become even more confounding with a liberal use of the term leadership in organizations. Many times such organizations use the terms manager and leader interchangeably. The concept of grassroots leadership which implies that leadership can be found even amongst the frontline employees or public at large adds an intellectual red herring in the debate. On the other hand, the law usually considers officers, managers and directors as legally and operationally relevant terms. Leader is not a legally or administratively practical term.

For all the extensive, often liberal use of leadership as a term, even corporate organizations do not accord a formal recognition to leadership as a title. Organizational nomenclature includes titles such as executive, manager, president and director (with all the prefixes such as junior, senior, general, vice and a few others as applicable) but never a title that has the term leader in it. Even the acknowledged leader of a corporation is called the chief executive officer, managing director or chairman but not the chief leader, so to speak! Does that mean that leadership is a qualitative and ubiquitous concept that cannot be formally assigned? Or, does it mean that leadership has such deep undertones and person-to-person variations that the concept cannot be adequately framed in a formal title? If so, why does so much rhetorical debate exist around the terms management and leadership and why does the term leadership get used (or misused so much)?

Semantics of differences

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, management is the act of running and controlling a business or similar organization, and a manager is a person who is in charge of running a business or a similar organization, or a part of one. The dictionary also defines a leader as a person who leads a group of people, especially the head of a country or an organization, and leadership as the state or position of being a leader. The definitions are semantically similar in terms of the domain of operation, that is, a business, organization or a part of it. The fundamental difference is that a manager is expected to “run and control” while a leader is expected to “lead”. The former gives a profile of acting within a boundary while the latter provides a flavor of defining a boundary. In a simple but elegant manner, the behavior with reference to a boundary sets the tone for the qualitative difference between a manager and a leader.

Much has been said by management experts to delineate the differences. In his 1989 book “On Becoming a Leader,” Warren Bennis composed a list of the differences. Some of these are: the manager administers while the leader innovates; the manager maintains while the leader develops; the manager focuses on systems and structure while the leader focuses on people; the manager relies on control while the leader inspires trust; the manager has a short-range view while the leader has a long-range perspective; the manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line while the leader’s eye is on the horizon; the manager accepts the status quo while the leader challenges it; the manager is the classic good soldier while the leader is his or her own person; and the manager does things right while the leader does the right thing. Other viewpoints are that management is all about efficiency while leadership is all about effectiveness, and management is about planning, executing and controlling activities while leadership is about inspiring, motivating and leading people.

Beyond semantics

Leadership and management must go hand in hand. While they are not the same thing, they are necessarily linked, and complementary. Not all efficient managers can be effective leaders while a leader cannot be effective unless he is an efficient manager too. Clearly, leadership has a wider canvas than management. Every manager has the opportunity and challenge to demonstrate leadership while every leader has the responsibility not to disown his or her managerial legacy. While the concept of “born leader” reflects a hypothesis that leadership characteristics tend to be intrinsic to an individual, an overwhelming proportion of leaders would perforce have to take the managerial route to becoming a leader. This is true to the core with professional leaders. On the other hand, entrepreneurial leaders who forget their managerial basics create a shaky short term that fails to support the distant long term vision, however appropriate it is.

Leadership and management are not necessarily hierarchical even though the way businesses and organizations are run allows for only a few leaders while it requires scores of managers. This is also the reason why corporations and groups which design their strategies and structures to facilitate many leaders are visibly more expansive and successful than those which have unitary and constraining organizational strategies and structures. A leader’s role is primarily transformative in that he or she constantly makes change happen; discovering and actualizing new boundaries is a critical aspect of leadership. A manager’s role is primarily focuses on execution in that he or she constantly converts plans into reality; that said, planning and controlling are a critical aspect of management. An effective manager demonstrates a potential for leadership every time he or she encounters a challenge or an opportunity. An efficient leader demonstrates a flair for management every time he or she seeks to convert his vision into strategy, and then to execution.

Measure and listen

It is often stated that what is not measured cannot be managed. It is not surprising, therefore, that managerial performance is often linked to measurement. Whether it is physical or financial performance, metrics are the key to management. Meaningful metrics which are benchmarked with internal and external best practices help demystify performance. At the same time, metrics that are not perceptive and are not benchmarked provide an illusory feel of management, in terms of planning, execution and controlling. An ability to understand the lead and lag effects of a metric is an essential component of managerial competence. A diligence to recognize the story behind the behavior of a metric is, however, reflective of managerial maturity. An organization which has a managerial bench that appreciates and implements a forward looking metrics based paradigm is likely to be efficient and effective, relative to its peers in the industry.

If metrics are the bedrock of management, listening is the hallmark of leadership. A leader’s communication skills help the leader to present his vision to the people he or she leads, inspiring them to execution. A leader’s real communication skills are, however, rooted in the complementary arm of communication, namely listening. A true leader listens as much as he or she is listened to. There have been exceptional leaders who listened to their inner voice and developed industry leading products, be it Henry Ford in the case of automobiles or Steve Jobs in the case of consumer electronics. Most successful leaders stay tuned to developments in the marketplace, customer feedback, employee expressions and stakeholder expectations to work proactively on industry leading concepts. The successful leader, therefore, creates an organizational ecosystem by which not only the leader but also employees stay connected to the external environment and with internal customers for transformative performance.

Development options

Given the importance of efficient (and effective) management as well as effective (and efficient) leadership, the development of a robust managerial and leadership talent pool with the right attributes is a key talent task. Education and experience need to be synergized to achieve expertise that can lead to superior managerial efficiency and effectiveness. Connectivity and communication need to be institutionalized to achieve an ambience that can lead to superior leadership effectiveness and efficiency. Each organization would need to develop its own talent models that would meet the twin objectives. Leadership is a qualitative and ambient motivational drive of an organization while management is a tangible and visible dimension of performance of an organization. In virtuous organizations both leadership and management work as institutionalized concepts enabling the organizations to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on August 12, 2012

The Making (and Unmaking) of Future Leaders: The Natural Leadership Development (NLD) Model

Leaders have a great role in the making and unmaking of future leaders. Leaders, almost by definition, are those who look for a future of the organization they lead that is far beyond their own tenure, or even their own professional lifespan. Availability and development of a capable pool of future leaders has to be an essential objective of a leader. It is, therefore, paradoxical that several organizational contexts and leadership settings involve unmaking as much as making of future leaders. While great organizations have several structured programs of leadership development, synthetic leadership development (by sporadic programs by internal or external faculty, however capable they may be) is hardly comparable to natural leadership development (through continuous experience and observation of masterly leaders). This blog post seeks to propose a model of natural leadership development which is decidedly preferable and executable. It also offers clear insights into the factors that reinforce or impede natural leadership development.

Natural leadership development

Leadership development occurs naturally, spontaneously and continuously when potential leaders are associated with proven leaders from the inception of their career. There are several interesting pathways by which natural leadership development (NLD) occurs. The fundamental prerequisite, of course, is the presence of capable leaders as the heads of functions, locations or businesses and an iconic leader at the helm of the organization as the chief executive officer (CEO). Under such a virtuous scenario, leadership development occurs on a two track basis. Even as functional or unit leaders get developed by their CEO, they in turn develop the young executives into future leaders. While this process is largely hierarchical, at times potential exists for young leaders to directly interact with the CEO and for young entrants to directly work with unit or business leaders. This leadership development process occurs as a continuous process all through the careers of leaders as well as aspirants.

The lateral entry of leaders from other organizations occasionally is indicative of deficiencies in the NLD process of an organization but does not necessarily constitute the derailment of the NLD process. In many cases, entry of such leadership talent provides new opportunities for reinforcing the NLD process in the organization. A reality check as to whether the current leadership is adequate in the face of competitive environment often provides an answer as to whether or not lateral leadership entry is appropriate or not. That said, however, each organization must always be aware of the potential factors of reinforcement and derailment (reinforcers and derailers respectively). The two important reinforcers are the competitive drive and leadership harmony of an organization. The two important derailers are the environmental unpredictability and leadership trivia of an organization. Clearly, leveraging the reinforcers and eliminating the derailers provides the best assurance of NLD in an organization.

Competitive drive

The fundamental prerequisite for successful NLD is the alignment of leadership not only to the current competitive imperatives but also to the future corporate development perspectives. A holistic organizational development blueprint provides the basis for developing natural leaders from within, and also as a pool of leaders which is constantly recharged with fresh leadership assignments across the hierarchy. The competitive drive of an organization and its leadership has the most significant influence on the NLD processes in an organization. Though there is a debate whether the leadership talent in an organization is a trigger or an outcome of the strategic vision and roadmap of an organization, for the purposes of NLD it is the competitive ecosystem of the firm that influences the NLD processes. Regardless of whether the firm is in a growth mode or turnaround mode, if the leadership challenges are harnessed and percolated down in the organization, the NLD processes will bloom well.

The competitive drive for leadership in a growth mode largely requires leaders to seek new opportunities, design new products, explore new markets, pioneer new technologies and sometimes become adventurous and risk-prone to enter sunrise sectors. This gives tremendous opportunity for the CEO to script a new strategic vision, for his deputies (the other CXOs) to pilot and lead new businesses, and for several young leaders to participate in the growth processes in various product-market segments and leverage their fresh ideas and youthful enthusiasm. The competitive drive for leadership in a turnaround mode largely requires leaders to seek operational excellence and cost efficiencies, improve capacity utilization, enhance market penetration, extend product life cycles and optimize risks. This requires the CEO, the CXOS and other leaders to benchmark the firm in term of the best practices and restore the competitive edge. Typically, the competitive drive in an organization entails both growth and turnaround providing ample opportunities for NLD.

Leadership harmony

Leadership harmony at the CXO level is a key determinant of the NLD processes in an organization. Leadership harmony occurs when the vision and strategy are developed and executed with shared ownership between the CXOs and the CEO. Leadership harmony requires that the organizational ecosystem treats all the business verticals or units equitably in terms of budgets and metrics. It also requires that line and staff leaders work collaboratively without perceptions of superiority. Though there is a debate if organizational structures and processes enable leadership harmony or if leadership harmony optimizes structures and processes, for the purposes of NLD it is the maturity level of the leaders that determines the positivity of the NLD processes. Whether or not the top management meetings are visible and transparent (to the organization) in terms of structures and processes, leadership harmony has a way of breathing life and energy into the organization.

Young leaders, and the CXOs themselves, are greatly benefitted in an environment of collaborative leadership. In such an internal environment, the leaders tend to engage amongst themselves openly and synergistically providing the needed impetus for collaborative cascades horizontally and vertically at all levels of the organization. For organizations in growth mode, leadership harmony provides mutual reinforcement and risk optimization. Multiple skills become available to debate and diagnose the unknowns of growth. For organizations in turnaround mode, leadership harmony eases the pain of restructuring, enables harmonious redeployments and leads the company to successful turnaround faster. Leadership harmony provides higher levels of empowerment across the organization enabling speedier and focused decision making and execution. Needless to add, the factors of reinforcement, competitive drive and leadership harmony need to coexist for each to be successful. Without leadership harmony, competitive drive gets blunted while without competitive drive, leadership harmony leads to corporate smugness, both situations leading to eventual stagnation.

Environmental unpredictability

Economic cycles have long been a fascinating aspect of economic analysis with leaders of the governments and businesses always trying to bring some predictability of economic environment to decision making. The task, however, has become increasingly challenging as economic environment has become more unpredictable and volatile with several countries staying in deep recession for years on. The price movements in oil, commodities, industrial metals, and precious metals have become unpredictable while currency exchange rates have become major distorters of orderly globalization. Global investment flows have become equally unpredictable while the global banking institutions have become fragile. Massive investments in infrastructure and sector-specific stimulus programs have supported global recovery but have not resulted in global growth. Economic and financial instability in the Euro Zone has been threatening the fragile global recovery. Even economies such as India and China that were expected to sustain world leading economic growth rates based on strong domestic demand have begun to falter.

The industry and business are dependent on a positive investment environment for funding the growth or turnaround plans as the case may be. The funding environment being uncertain, neither the growth plans nor the turnaround plans can be implemented decisively. Various companies, from Apple and Microsoft in the US to Infosys and Reliance in India, have been sitting on cash piles rather than aggressively investing for growth. Even if reinforcers such as competitive drive and leadership harmony exist, economic unpredictability tends to derail even the best laid plans, growth or turnaround, and most harmonious organizational structures and processes. In addition, forces of environmental and social activism as well as governmental and legal review processes tend to block or reopen the apparently settled projects. Organizations are often forced to tailor leadership aspirations and expectations to what geo-economic and geo-political considerations allow.

Leadership trivia

Not all derailers for the NLD processes come from external environment. Some emerge from certain leadership trivia, which often erode leadership effectiveness and impact. Two of the important trivia are bipolar leadership and anchored leadership. Bipolar leadership connotes a leadership behavior that swings rapidly and unpredictably between two extremes in either environmental sensitivity or interpersonal relationship. The extremes of bipolar leadership behavior covers the extremes of optimism and pessimism (in assessing business situations), collaboration and confrontation (in people management), decisiveness and procrastination (in decision making), sparkling intuition and paralytic analysis (in strategic management), extroversion and introversion (in communication), permissiveness and authoritarianism (in empowerment), forgiveness and vindictiveness (in performance management), transparency and opaqueness (in visibility) and so on. Such widely contrasting behavior patterns are occasionally adopted by certain maverick leaders to remain inscrutable but ultimately result in only unmaking of current and future leaders rather than in natural leadership development.

The other leadership aberration is one of anchored leadership. True leadership is equidistant from, and equipotent with, all functions, units, locations and businesses of the corporation, and its specific leaders. At times, leaders tend to be anchored around one platform or one leader to the detriment of other equally important platforms and prospective leaders because such platforms provide immediate growth or essential turnaround possibilities, or for the sheer comfort of dependence on known platforms and leaders. Such excessive dependence induces real or perceived bias in leadership behavior, transcending into bias in decision making, execution, and performance management. Factors of reinforcement, namely corporate drive and leadership harmony, are maximized when leadership is not only actually and but also perceptually, seen to be accessible, unbiased and objective towards all of its businesses and entities. Leadership trivia point out how important it is for leadership to be personable in relationships but impersonal in terms of reflecting the relationships in execution.

Life’s experience

Natural leadership development is akin to gaining life’s experience, molded by caring and disciplined parents, and diligent and committed teachers. In the challenging world of competitive career development leaders constitute the beacon and inspiration for young executives and leaders. Learning experientially with leaders committed to leadership development is fruitful and long lasting for aspirants. Competitive drive and leadership harmony in an appropriate organizational ecosystem enable and reinforce natural leadership development in organizations. The making of leadership thus happens by design and organizations that facilitate natural leadership development are bound to be successful in creating a vast pool of leadership talent for sustainable competitive advantage.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on June 9, 2012