B2B

Its been a long long time since I had a chance to sit down and write on my perspectives. This time around I will write about B2B.

Hasn't there been written enough about B2B? Business-To-Business, yes sure. There is tons and tons of material written on the birth of this concept etc. etc. You can read about all that till you are blue in your face.

What about the other B2B? Do you ever take time to review the other B2B? Refresh your mind? Back-To-Basics. This is the other B2B that I think needs attention.

In every thing that we do at work, we are constantly learning new things, new technologies, new processes, new methods and so on. How many times as executives do we take the time and go back to basics? How many times do we send our teams to go back and learn the basics? Never ever.

Simple elements like treating people with respect. Managing resources to achieve long term efficiencies. Thinking global, acting local.

We tend to get caught in the mundane pieces of executing to plan that we lose focus of the basic fundamentals that have made us what we are. As executives, we tend to push to get our objectives met, goals exceeded and so on. How many times do we sit down, talk to the people without asking for a commitment, without asking for a timeline? Just respecting the individual for what they are and not the hard-work that they have put in.

As we get ready to close this year and begin to put our goals and objectives for the next year, I am going to have one of my goals as respect the individual. Are you? Think about it !

Fast or Far

The other day I was listening to Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and he started of with a quote from Africa - "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, take a few people with you".

How very true. Don't we see that happening every day at work? Someone sitting up there in an ivory tower makes a statement and expects everyone down in the trenches to follow him / her with immediate effect because this new policy / process / system needs to be implemented quickly. Resources are mobilized and we get into the execution phase and find that we are inundated by issues. Why does it happen? Did we not plan correctly? I think what really happens is the real buy-in (taking a few people with us) did not happen.

We have seen this happen time and again, technology or a business process does not cause the bottle-neck. It is the people who cause the bottle-neck and in the same token it is the people who are responsible for the success of an endeavor. How can the same entity be responsible for the success and the failure?

So, the next time you are embarking on a new goal for your organization - are you going to go all alone and run fast towards your far-reaching goal or you are going to spend the time, get all the major stakeholders with you and all of you go towards the far-reaching goal together? Think about it!

A Spanner in the Wheel

I have been preparing for a marathon run for a long long time. Over a year actually. Every thing that could go wrong went wrong. Busted knee. Job change. Timings going wrong etc. etc. Anyway, my half-marathon is on 10/14/07 and I have been ramping-up perfectly well till last night. I have had a bad bad bout of allergies which has got me worried if I can recover in time for the race.

Okay. All of this is good. How does this fit into my blog of business talks?

You plan for a big huge transformation project with teams working over a year across continents. You have checked and cross-checked everything before you begin your home-stretch and then "it" shows its ugly-head. Something out of the blue. Like my allergies. Something totally unplanned for which might derail you. What do you do? How do you recover with less than 96 hours before prime-time?

Is there a clear answer? A magic bullet that will make all your troubles disappear? Never ever. If someone promises you a magic bullet, well then you are in fantasy land.

This is what I think really needs to happen to manage situations that hit you out of the blue just before D-Day: Evaluate, Review, Evaluate, Execute. I see that happening all the time, executives get nervous and start having status meetings multiple times a day to review the situation. I agree you need to do this if you are fighting a war but in the business world, as Jack Welch puts it, go by your gut. Evaluate your various options including aborting the project. There is no harm in reviewing this as an option. Once you have reviewed the impacts of each option, evaluate one more time the final chosen option(s) and execute. I cannot stress any more on why you need to execute perfectly. There is no room for error.

During all these activities never ever lose control. Be calm and be in control.

Anyway, the next time around, you suddenly find a spanner in the wheel, are you going to panic or going to attack the problem or going to live with the problem? Think about it.

Comebacks

This morning while driving to work I heard an interesting piece on the radio. A tree that is over 2600 old and was believed to have been "dead" for over 30 years was sprouting new leaves since the past week. This tree was burnt in a wild-fire, was struck by lightning and was believed to be dead since then.

This got me thinking - as executives do we ever face such scenarios' - companies thought to be bankrupt come back stronger, executives serve a jail sentence and come back stronger. We read about this and leave it there. Have you ever sat and wondered what does it take to stage a come-back? Did Martha Stewart think differently to come-back after her prison term? How did IBM turn-around from the early 1990's? What did Apple Computers do to come where they are today compated to 15 years ago?

We need to think like winners in our mind. The recipe for success is very simple. Think long, think hard and execute flawlessly.

Any shortcuts to this makes it difficult or virtually impossible for you to stage a comeback and put you into various false starts. Once the cycle of false starts begins it takes a super-human effort to break that cycle. I see this everyday even for smaller issue-resolutions. Teams do not think long and hard and try to provide a solution to the customer, which fails, so another band-aid solution is provided which again fails and so on. Eventually, the customer is tired of us and we then begin our plot for the "comeback" or regaining our credibility.

The next time around, your team fails in something and you begin the turn-around, are you just going to put out the fire or are you going to analyze why you failed in the first place? Think about it !

Life-Work Balance

There are tons of published material on Work-Life balance. Tons of printed material and 100's of GB of electronic material. However, I think there is a fundamental issue in the way it is expressed as Work-Life balance because it means that "Work" comes first and then comes your personal "Life".

Have we as executives ever wondered that by improving the "Life-Work" balance we can improve the moral of the team. I was meeting a few friends over the weekend and a couple of them were quite demoralized. As I was talking to them, I gathered that they had challenging work, were leading teams and delivering results however they were always on conference calls while at home and during the weekends. They were hardly spending time with their family and friends. Their "Life" was out-of-balance since their "Work" was made the top priority.

I thought that once if their executives saw this group of demoralized managers who were delivering results today but would not be able to do this for long they would do something about their "Life-Work" balance. As executives, it is our primary responsibility to ensure that the team's support structure ensures success.

So, the next time around, you are faced with a team that is demoralized due to a project / product failure, I am sure you will perform a "Lessons Learned" session with them however will you also look at the "Life-Work" balance support that you had provided which resulted in the result that you got? Think about it !

Process

I was thinking the other day about the need for articulating processes and procedures in a company. Why do we need to do that? Is the company not functioning without the documentation? What is the value-add (or ROI) for investing the time and resources on documenting processes? As an executive have you ever explained this need?

Every organization has their own silos of knowledge. In a typical start-up more of the action is performed at the spur of the moment and as the organization-grow in terms of human-resources than revenues is when you feel the need to have documented processes and procedures.

Now for a very large organization, you again need these sets of processes and procedures documented because there is a human-turnover. If you had a static workforce which never ever left the company, gave them instructions once and let them do their jobs everyday for the rest of their lives then we would not ever need such processes and procedures.

The question however is what is the ROI for a company that has never invested in documenting processes and procedures? How do you calculate the ROI in this case? Remember, there is always an ROI for an investment. The ROI can be tangible or intangible and may be spread over many many years or in some cases over a lifetime (for example the Green Company revolution - more in a later blog). With that being said, break the ROI if it is spread over many years into some form of short-term strategic initiatives and some long-term strategic initiatives and use these as the measure to communicate to the larger audience the need to develop documented processes and procedures.

There is no magic bullet - you need to invest time and document your policies / processes and procedures in order to build a long-term healthy company and update them periodically to be current. Period.

So, the next time around, you find some holes in the processes of your company, instead of letting it go, how are you going to use that to use it to help your company grow? Think about it !

Problem of Plenty

Do ever have such a problem? A problem of plenty? I would be highly surprised if the answer is "NO".

As executives we are always faced with multiple choices. Our days are filled with multiple, concurrent activities and we have a constant stream of choices to make, decisions to make.

But what do you do with the Problem of Plenty?

It would be wrong to say that ignore the other options that come our way and just focus only on one priority or take. We can never be successful when we do this (BTW, as executives whenever we make a statement using "NEVER", we are generalizing which is a wrong thing to do). Anyway, the point is very simple - train our mind to evaluate all the options, tasks and arrive at a decision rapidly. Remember, our mind goes as fast as we want. At the same time, there are moments when we have to put some challenges at the back-burner and reevaluate the current issues at hand and work through them.

I always have thought that it is so wonderful to be a captain of an commercial airplane or a brain surgeon or a heart surgeon - You have hundreds of passengers that have entrusted their lives to you and as a captain you have to coordinate hundreds of activities as the plane lands or takes-off. Same for the surgeons, peoples lives depend on the activities that these folks perform and believe me - these folks have a "problem of plenty" going on in their own minds.

So, the next time around, you are faced with multiple choices to make at the same moment in time, are you going to get overwhelmed or are you going to go with the flow and take a decision and move-on? Think about it !

Excuses

Its been a long absence from the Blog world. Let us see which excuse should I pick - dog ate my blog-notes, busy at work, lazy to post a blog, did not care to post a blog or all of these. Not sure which to pick.

So here is the challenge - you and/or your team has a tight timeline for a work-product delivery. There are regular check-points and everything looks green as an emerald. However, 48 hours before the end of your timeline something blows-up and you know for sure you cannot recover and deliver in the 48 hour window. So, what is the excuse you choose?

I see it at various levels of organizations where workers across the rank and file are searching for excuses. It is very easy to see when a manager or an executive starts of as "We were on target however..." and there comes the excuse. Why do we have to search something else to blame and not ourselves for the poor planning and execution. Such mishaps bring out the real leaders because a real leader, irrespective of their rank in the organization, is resilient and has a clear strategy to accept the mistake and bounce back even if it means looking at a revised timeline.

Back to where I started from, where was I all this while? I was busy at work and too lazy to post a blog.

So, the next time around, you hit a road-block just before your project delivery date - are you going to look for excuses or going to stand-up and admit that you messed-up? Think about it !

Vacation

I was recently reading an article somewhere on how more and more of the work-force carries their cellphone / laptop / blackberry etc. etc with them on their vacation. If that was not enough, a large population actually checks their email while on vacation. To complete the story, quite a few of them actually join conference calls while they are on vacation.

Having said all this, picture the other side. As executives we promote the concept of implementing self-sustaining generic processes which are not "individual dependent" and also implement systems to remove the "human dependency" which basically implies that we implement process where A SPECIFIC person does not need to be involved in completing a process, anyone or someone can fill-in a slot when THE SPECIFIC person in not available.

Something is not correct with this picture - because we contradict ourselves. We try to achieve self-sustaining, scaleable processes and at the same time we are so dependent on specific individuals that a mere mention of a vacation puts us into "who is your back-up mode"? It does not end there - for the folks who go on a vacation supposedly without a Blackberry or a laptop or a cellphone they are always worried - "how is the work going on"? Think of it like this - will the IRS stop functioning if you left planet earth today? What about GE? Will that function if you died today (if you are an employee at GE or IRS? Of course they will continue to exists. So then, why is vacation a big deal for us as managers / executives?

So the next time around, someone on you team is planning a vacation - are you going to ask for their contact information while on vacation or are you going to use this as an opportunity to implement a process that is not person specific? Think about it !

Banana

Ever heard anyone use this metaphor in the business world? Not really. But I think that the shelf-life of a banana is the same to that of technology available today. And that is where business can use this parlance of a banana.

Think of it like this - As executives we spend long hours discussing new business processes and then use technology as a lever to implement and streamline these processes. By the time we implement these technology-enabled processes, well, the core-technology has evolved and we are back to the drawing boards either trying to retrofit the newer technology to existing process. Most of the time, across the world, the major push-back is due to the fact that there are process-changes in companies and quite a few of these changes are driven by the fact that there is new technology available to better perform the work.

Why do companies keep chasing the infinite - implement technology only to yank it out later because it has become out-dated and has a shelf-life of a banana? Here today, gone tomorrow - with that as an open secret, we as executives need to address current problems in efficiencies because if we do not do it, our competitor will. We need to adopt the latest greatest technology and then be prepared to accept and implement the changes that come with any technology.

So, the next time around, you are evaluating a new technology are you going to ask yourself and the technical provider - how new is this technology or how old is this technology? Think about it !

Innovative Company

This is something that the Business Week came out last week with a list of 25 top innovative companies. They list Apple as the number 1 innovative company of the world. As I was reading this article I began to think what really makes a company innovative? What do you define as "Innovation"? (See my previous rambling on innovation)

How in the world can you say that Apple is the most innovative company in the world? It is extremely wrong to say one company is the most innovative company of the world. It is similar to what kids say to each other - My Dad is the strongest dad in the whole world ! How can one compare two distinct companies, for example, one that makes computers, music players, and now cell phones (namely Apple) to another company that saves lives by manufacturing cancer fighting drugs (namely Genentech)? You cannot and should not give the title of the Most Innovative Company of the World to either because each catering to different segments.

One key feature that these yard-stick magazines fail to perform is look at the value add that each employee brings to the company which basically means that if I were to draw a huge value-chain analysis chart for every employee of the company I should be able to see distinct addition as a I perform the analysis. That is when I will really be able to say what is the most innovative way and therefore say if that company is the most innovative company within that product segment.

So the next time around, someone tells you that their company featured on the most innovative companies list - are you going to congratulate them or ask them "which segment are you the most innovative in?". Think about it !

Courage

Courage - Not something that someone usually talks about at work. I have worked with folks from various countries on initiatives however have never ever heard people talk about courage openly. This is something like "the birds and the bees" - it is always there but you never talk about it !

Why don't we talk about courage in the business environment so openly like we talk about ROI, Initiative, Mergers, Acquisition etc. etc. I think it comes down to the fact that people talk about the "Risk" of doing business, the "Risk" of executing a project however are afraid to say that they have the courage to go down a path that they choose based of some data. Why are executives afraid to use the word "courage"? Because, in my opinion, they are afraid of failure. Afraid of being seen by their team that they were not courageous enough to take the more risky path that would have ensured success.

Courage in the business parlance does not really end when something fails. Courage really kicks in when something fails. I see more and more executives having very little courage to stand-up and say that "I am responsible for this failure". It takes a lot of courage to accept failure. I agree someone in your team did not perform his / her role and therefore the team failed. However, more and more executives do not have the courage to say that they were the leaders of the team that failed. Finger-pointing kicks in rather than courage. Enron is a prime example.

So, the next time someone asks you why did you select the a particular option in your business, are you going to say it was the least risky or you are going to say because I am courageous I took the option that will ensure success? Think about it!

Resignation

I am writing after a long time and my experience below will tell you the reason why.

There is plenty and plenty of stuff written all-over on how you should resign from your current job, when you should resign, how you should communicate your resignation etc. etc. However what I have found challenging is how should you communicate to your team that their manager's manager has resigned? What are the implications of this to the division? What is our long-term strategy to fill this slot?

I went through this experience for the first time and had the "privilege" to communicate the news to the people who report into me that their executive was leaving the company. Was the experience good? Yes. Did I learn something out from this experience? Yes.

For the operators who man the help-line phones, for the business-analysts that work with the business users and gather requirements and build IT solutions, the executive is someone who is defining the strategy for their existence - for example to off-shore or not? To Layoff or not? and so on...and to tell them that their executive is leaving and I (their manager) will perform both the roles for the foreseeable future makes these guys nervous because they read between lines. Why did the director quit? Does the executive team know something that we do not?...it is natural for the team down the food-chain to get these thoughts. I did when I was down the food-chain.

So how do you make this transition at a senior-level seamless to the team down there in the trenches?

Announce the resignation to the whole team together. Announce who will take over. The person who is taking over needs to articulate his / her strategy from the get-go even if the strategy is identical to the one in place. Show that you are in control and there is no ambiguity for the rest of the foreseeable future. Communicate frequently with regular updates on the transition. Rapidly build new relations with other executives with whom you will now have to interact. Lastly and most importantly, go after the low-hanging fruit to show quick wins and demonstrate to all and sundry that you are dependable and believe in delivering results. Someone whom I admire for doing this is Mark Hurd of HP. As an executive he has done an outstanding job of taking control and turning things around. His is a classic case of a turn-around success story.

So, the next time around - you have to announce a resignation of an executive remember the team-player down the chain is looking to hear "There are no changes to your job roles and responsibilities". They does not really care what else you say. Or do they? Think about it !

Burn-Out

Burn-Out - The biggest pain of the every manager across the world. As we see more improvements in Information Technology we see the non-existence of a "typical 9-5 workday". I do not want to spend time promoting the thought of having a need for work-life balance however I want to spend time that as managers and executives what can we do to enforce work-life balance.

Every project goes through the cycles of peaks and troughs and then eventually ends. I see quite a few managers across the world that do not recognize the peaks and troughs and therefore expect to see the teams perform at a plateau for extended periods. Further, at the end of the project there is no downtime provided for individuals to recover and ramp-up gradually again.

As executives we need to recognize the peaks and troughs and to do this we need to review project plans in detail with emphasis on milestone dates. I see this as one of the biggest gaps that managers do not want to get into a little more detail. Once we have identified the details align resources which will then give them an opportunity to celebrate their success for smaller wins. Of course this does not solve a typical work-life issue of having to pick-up the kids from school at 5 PM however keeps the teams motivated. As leaders, it is imperative that we recognize that there are no work boundaries - all you need is a phone line and internet access and you off to the races. Use this fact to your advantage by letting teams have flexible schedules as much as possible.

Once a project is done I do not see a real need to burn out resources by having them perform at top-levels once again immediately. There has to be a "down-time" and when I say a "down-time" I mean to let the individuals take some paid time-off in addition to their vacation. Let them spend time with the family, go do something that really interests them than anything else. I have done this many times and I see that it really charges up the team-members for the next assignment.

So, the next time you plan you next big project, are you going to leverage technology to build the team or going to burn them out by letting them work round the clock forever? Think about it !

Flexibility

Picture a scenario of a company that has been around for a century. This company is a leader in its industry and defines the standards for the industry. All is well and the stockholders are happy, employees are happy and the corporation is healthy. One quarter this company's executives find that they are not leaders any more.

We have this happening time and again. There are numerous examples specifically in the high-tech sector. IBM during 1993-1995, Microsoft during 1998-2000 and so on. Why does this happen? Stockholders blame it on the short-sighted executives, the executives blame it on the business conditions and so on however the lack of flexibility is the root cause. And this is why I say this.

Once a company reaches a level of maturity, there are defined processes, products and people in place who firmly believe that they define the rules of the game. The company is not flexible enough to design and market new products, it is not flexible enough to acquire new technologies, not flexible enough to take the risk of manufacturing in low-cost countries and lastly the employees are not flexible enough to embrace new ideas. Period. Where does this in-flexibility lead us? Down from the number #1 of a leader to a follower. I see this happening across the world - "We do it this way because this is the way it is done". This clearly shows in-flexibility to new ideas and suggestions and is the first step in moving down the ladder in all segments.

So, the next time around, someone says that "this is not a possible option", are they being difficult or just plain in-flexible. Think about it !

Responsibility

Responsibility - A very commonly used word in the corporate brochures. A very commonly used term for teams across the world. I have rarely seen teams / individuals / corporations stand-up and set up responsibility standards higher than others. How do you go about inculcating a "sense of responsibility" such that it is not dictated by others rather is a fire-from-within?

When the teams are carved out for a new project - there are roles and responsibilities mentioned for each individual. I have seen this happen across the world - there are always a few set of folks who just meet their responsibility and then there is the other set of folks who work late-nights and crazy hours to exceed their existing responsibility and take on much more.

In an ideal world, these would be our role models, our heroes who we would celebrate for the life of the project. In reality, we send out a thank you note sometimes to these individuals and put out the fire that had made them go the extra mile. I feel that as executives, we need to encourage such behavior of taking more and more responsibility and need to encourage the thought delivering more creatively.

How do you enable individuals to have the courage to take more responsibility? You can either offer that to them which in my opinion is the simplest way however is not the best way. The best way is to pose the challenge to the individual, stand back and see how he / she performs and raises to the challenge. 9 times out of 10, all individuals will perform. The human mind is capable of much more than you can imagine. As the individual starts raising up and performing in the elevated levels of responsibility and gets comfortable, raise the bar once again and so on.

So, the next time around, you are responsible for one more deliverable for your team / department / corporation, will you take this as just another thing or a challenge for you to excel - think about it.

Experienced Resource

A couple of weekends ago I met a old friend of mine. He told me that his company was looking for resources to fill-in open job requestions. However, they did not want to hire experienced resources. This got me thinking that it is not only illegal to make such a statement it is also foolish for the company to take that stand. And here is why I say this.

Any resource experienced or not needs to go through a learning curve during a job change. There is so much to be unlearnt and new things to be learnt. While all of this is happening, there is the previous experience that one builds upon and leverages in the new job. When companies make the statement of not hiring experienced hands they lose out on the rich learning experiences that one gets only on-the-job. There are tons and tons of such experiences that I would not even care to highlight here.

I do not have anything against the new-hire. I was a new-hire once. However, the term new-hire is used very very losely because there is nothing different about an un-experienced hire - most of these individuals have done something different and got that specific experience. I agree that they might not have experince to take a company IPO or to manage a USD $90 Billion revenue but they have a different skill-set experience which is what companies should capitalize.

So, the next time around someone tells you they are looking for a new-hire I would recommend that you ask them what they really mean by that? Thank about it.

Marinate

Marinate - Not a very business savvy term. However, this is something that is very essential for any process / resource to operate irrespective of the geography and the industry.

Take a look at almost every project delivered across the world. Is there a perfect deployment without even 0.0001% stability time? The answer is NO ! However, I find leaders across the world that conveniently choose to ignore that they have to give sometime for the new project to stabilize or the new process to be be ingrained into the organization. I see this happening time and again, a new product development / new project / new Endeavour is planned and the ROI is always calculated from the date of go-live and does not usually take into account the overhead associated with the stabilization period that I like to call the time to Marinate.

How do you go about getting a successful marination (if there is ever such a term) done? Always remember as leaders, that change is the most difficult thing and therefore allocate a period of time for the users to marinate and soak in the new processes. Of course, as if you were cooking something, you would want to have period checks to see how the marination process is progressing. Lastly, in order to ensure success, have a line item in the project / product plans for the marination-cost and begin your ROI calculation at the end of this period.

So, the next time around, when you are bringing in new technology, will you remember to marinate before you deploy? Think about it !

Sustaining generic process

The dream of every executive - design and implement a cookie-cutter, sustaining generic process. Teams across the world try and achieve some form of efficiency in their processes and try to leverage this process the next time around in the hope of standardizing.

Can this dream of one process for a specific product development / deployment be achieved? The answer everyone wants to hear is "YES". The answer that is realistic is "MAYBE".

And here is why - when teams are formed to create a standardised process they look at their existing value-chain. They put in the thought of how will a standard process function across this value-chain, look at the various parameters and stakeholders and X-weeks later produce a generic process. This process will continue to function in its self if that was the only process in the world! The fact of the matter is it is not. And therefore the troubles begin because your customer wants you to provide the data in a different format or there is a new law that requires that when you manufacture in China and Ship-To UK you need to have 7.5% VAT etc. etc. This is when you break your Sustaining Generic Process.

So how do you achieve a more sustaining generic process? You step out of your realm and look at the overall process first in your department, then your overall organization and then in the industry segment that you operate in. Visualize and evaluate various options that can impact your processes based on the industry maturity and experience and then design a process. Take the Banking Industry as an example - the processes are standardized, cookie-cutter to a very very large extent irrespective of the bank you are dealing with.

So, the next time around you sit with your team to design a sustaining generic process, look at the complete picture, think out of the box and put something that will catapult your organization to the top in your industry segment. Think about it!

Can't and How

A usual work day across the world, deadlines, issues, concerns etc. etc. We are always battling these with teams, users, customers and so on. What I have seen is whenever there is a paradigm shift that is proposed for issues or for an action plan that calls for extremely tight timelines the usual answer is "It Can't be done".

Whenever I lead a team, I coach them to think a little differently and instead of saying "It Can't Be Done" they should say "How Can It Be Done".

The problem is saying "It Can't Be Done" is more than a statement - it limits one's ability to think beyond. People always forget - the human mind is capable of great things however we end up locking the capabilities by saying "It Can't be done".

As a leader, it is our responsibility to coach the team to think beyond their capability. How do you go about it? There is no cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all methodology however what I have see that works is just pushing the team to think of a a more holistic picture of the problem and how the decision would impact the overall solution. This more-or-less gets the creative juices going because the team is at least made aware that by saying "It Can't Be Done" the impact to the overall solution is more greater than the problem at hand. The team begins to think on how to minimize the impact to the overall project and that is what it takes them to turn round the corner from "It Can't Be Done" to "How Can It Be Done".

So, the next time around, you are hit by an issue, before you accept "It Can't Be Done", ask yourself, how do I explain the bigger picture to the team because the solution is out there. Think about it.

The 3 Ws

Every project or activity at the workplace can be made a relatively easy task if the team is made to understand, articulate and help answer the "3 Ws". The 3 Ws are - "What needs to be done?", "Who will do it?" and "When will it get done?"

Look at a typical work plan either for a project, a release, or even a office move. There are tasks created in order to accomplish a goal. This is the answer to "What needs to be done?". We assign these tasks to someone. This is the answer to "Who will do it?". Then lastly we assign a timeline. This is the answer to "When will it get done"?

I see this happening on so many projects worldwide - these three questions are always looked at however they are not looked at simultaneously, in one meeting or in one workshop. This is what typically happens - a work session is held and the tasks identified (What needs to be done) and sometime later the plan is put together (When will this get done) and then the owners for these tasks are located (Who will do it). During all of this activity, the timeline gets squeezed, therefore the owners are not ready (The Who part is unanswered) and therefore some shortcuts are made (What needs to be done). This results in a perfect spaghetti of mis-matched tasks.

In order to have a perfect execution of a plan - I strongly recommend in looking at all these "W's" together. This not only brings forward all known risks and issues, it also helps get the team a head-start on the end-to-end vision.

The next time around, when you are making a strategic or a tactical plan, would you keep it high-level or go down to the details of the 3 W's because the devil is in the details? Think about it.

How resilient are you?

A typical work day for all of us involves working various issues - business, personnel, technical, financial and so on. We work those issues to the best of our ability and move on. We feel good about those resolved issues at the end of the day.

However, sometimes we hit a bump. One of the issue does not get resolved, gets into a legal mess, the press is involved and life becomes a nightmare.

This is where a true leader stands out and shows the true leadership qualities. How quickly a leader recovers from this mess and goes back to "another work day" mode shows strength in character and spirit. The leader's recover means the recovery of the team he / she is leading.

So how do you as a executive leader reach that point where you hit a huge-huge-huge issue and recover very quickly? I see that leaders usually are in a pattern of "Tell me what to do" or "Tell me what are my options" which basically puts them into a analysis-paralysis mode. Leaders, in my opinion, have two major knowledge streams - experience and on-the-job-education. They need to rely on both of these, solicit inputs and then go with their gut feel. As Jack Welch said - "Straight from the gut"

Leaders need to show and articulate their recovery plan and start working towards that very very quickly. Of course, there might need to be modifications to the plans as we move on however the plan needs to be published for all to see and comment. Leaders need to show how quickly they can lead their teams and companies to recover. Sometimes, the recover plan calls for hard and painful decisions. Remember what Lou Gerstner did to IBM? Made some hard and tough decisions, published his recover plan and executed to the plan. The result - a new and improved IBM cam out to play in the IT arena.

So, the next time a major issue hits you, are you going to ponder and ponder and think "Why Me?" or are you going to learn something from that and put a recover plan and recover and show how resilient are you. Think about it.

What's in a Name?

I see this happening in work places across the world. People remember names only when there is a designation associated with it. Have you ever wondered - do you name of the janitor who works on your office floor? What about the security card you met the other late evening who escorted you to your car in the parking lot? Do you remember him / her? Now, do you remember the VP you met in the elevator while you were going to your car? You remember his / her name right?

If the answer was YES then you are missing out on a major network that the executive work-force relies on - speaking to the janitors / cleaners / clerks / guards etc. etc.

This is what happens in the corporate world - there is a large web of reference networks that take place where your skills are referred to and you get a job but it is the "other" network that helps you grow in an organization. Think about it like this - if you need some face time with the CEO you better be nice to the Admin assistant sitting outside the CEO's office. She will tell you when the CEO is leaving to get into the car so that you can "accidentally bump into the CEO" in the elevator.

This is the story - the person who stops by your office to pick up the trash also stops by the VP's office to pick the trash. The VP relies on networking with the right folks at the right time. He / She asks the janitor his name and then next time on always speaks to him with his name, asking him how he is doing and so on.

So the story goes that one day the janitor tells the VP that he just picked up trash in your office and you were in a bad mood and yelling on the phone. You just blew that promotion because you, one, did not ever talk to the janitor, and two, you forgot the basic courtesy of greeting the janitor using his name.

So, the next time around, you see the janitor or the cleaner or the guard, take a minute to talk to him / her and help them help you. What's in a name you ask? Plenty I say. Think about it.

What went wrong?

How many times have you sat back and wondered at work - what did the team do wrong? Once you are done with collecting your thoughts you think it is time to get together with the team and have a "Lessons Learned Session". That is when things start to get messy.

So how do you go about telling someone that they made a mistake? There are multiple ways - the obvious ones are to tell the individual / team on their face. But what does that get you? In my opinion, this is the worst way to communicate and highlight a mistake.

I have seen this happening again and again, in various companies across the world - the Lessons Learned sessions are usually held after the project has gone live. The issue does not end there - the lessons are just documented and not learnt or implemented in the next project. But that is another topic all together.

So back to the fundamental question - how do you communicate hard-facts?

I have seen this work - Take the complete team offsite. Before the team lands offsite, set the agenda and the expectations on the objective of the offsite session so that the individuals can be prepared to have constructive discussion and are focused. Also, set the ground-rules that NEVER criticize the individual. Also, NEVER use the word "ALWAYS" !

Once the ground rules are set, lead the team in identifying the project items in 3 categories -
- What went good and should be repeated everytime
- What can be done better
- Never do this ever again

As a leader I see that quite a number of times, team-leads acknowledge the "Never do this ever again" however they do not celebrate the "What went good and should be repeated everytime" part of their deliverable.

Also, I see this happening everywhere - we do not communicate the good and the bad learning's at regular intervals. We usually save this activity to the end of the project. I feel that doing this as a regular activity specifically for long term projects is beneficial because it gives time to the team to learn and act therefore the leader is able to harvest the learning's on the current project itself.

So, the next time around, you tell someone "I always need to massage the data that you give me", are you criticizing the data or the individual - think about it !

Optimize

Another favorite term used very loosely in an organization. "Optimize" the process. "Optimize" the system. "Optimize" the strategy and so on. Everyday we hear this and act upon this.

So when do we say we have "optimized" enough and cannot optimize any further. How do you decide this? Who decides this?

A favorite term that us used to answer this question is - "Industry Benchmarks". You always try and optimize a process / system to line up with the industry benchmarks. But having said that, it does not always articulate into defined deliverables that can line up with the industry benchmark.

I see this happening a number of times - "Let us optimize our process to match that of Motorola" (since they invented the concept of Six-Sigma). Very well said. However, we as strategists need to also understand the pain that underwent in making it happen (see my bog on Simple). They want to go to a place with no pain and frustration however they forget that "Change" is the most painful thing for an organization.

So, we embark on a journey to achieve optimization and the team in the trenches feels the pain - the strategists are oblivious of this in their ivory tower. The optimization process continues at a price of employee morale / job-loss etc. etc.

Then comes the moment of truth - the strategists realizes the pain that the company has already undergone to achieve the most optimized process which by the way is far more elusive than what it was at the start of this project. That is when he / she realizes and say "We have optimized enough"

So, the next time around, one of your employees comes to you with a suggestion for some level of optimization without tearing apart the walls of the organization -please embrace that and support it. Such small optimization activities are are better than some large optimization projects - think about it !

Leadership

There is plenty written about what is leadership and who is a leader. We are not going to go there and reinvent the wheel. Have you ever sat and wondered what does it take to identify a leader? What are the qualities on needs in order to be able to identify a leader?

Take the example of a typical work-place, irrespective of the size of the organization, with a manager and a few teamleads and of course a lot more employees. How does one go about identifying a team-leader - is it just by virtue of the time spent in an organization? Or, is it just by virtue of qualifications / trainings an employee has? Or is it by the respect an individual earns from others?

A logical answer is - the respect an individual earns from others. A realistic answer in almost every organization is typically based on the time spent in an organization or experience..

So how do you go about identifying a leader? What do you look for? Every employee is out to prove his / her worth so they are all performing to their 100% effort. They are all trying to overcome challenges in their respective work areas. They are all delivering on-time, on-budget and in-scope. So what is the differentiator between an employee and a potential leader?

The key differentiator is Proactive Ownership.

A leader always has a keen sense to see the end-to-end picture, foresee problems and takes ownership of issues as they arise. Once they take ownership of issues, which are many times outside their expertise domain, deliver resolution to the satisfaction of the stakeholders. Over a period of time, these individuals are transformed from being a deliverable oriented to initiative oriented, in a way, become the go-to person for all issues. This is what we need to search for when we look for a potential team lead. This is the REAL leader.

There is an unsaid rule - a leader spots a leader. If you spot a great leader a number of times, go with your gut-feeling. You know your traits. I am sure, your traits would equate to something like what I have written above, search for them. You will find that the potential leader matches the way you work and deliver.

So, the next time around, you are looking for a team lead, are you go to butt-heads with HR in appointing a team leader based on the number of years in the company or you will appoint a real team-leader - think about it?

Innovation

What is so special about Innovation?

Everyone "innovates" something or the other every day. Imagine an organization with 100,000 employees. If each of the employees "innovated" (if there was such a word) one thing every day there would be 100,000 innovations per work day. Employees innovate a new shortcut to open a program on their computer, they innovate a new process to pay the vendors on time, innovate a new process to manufacture their products and so on and on. These things happen every working day.

Then what is so special about innovation that companies feel the need to devote special departments to "innovate"?

They want to be able to answer the question - "What Next"? In order to enable the quest for that answer they, go on an innovation spree forgetting that there are simple things that can be leveraged and turned into killer-products or cash-cows. Take Apple Computer (as it was formerly called) - they did not completely innovate the iPOD - they leveraged an existing product and innovated a few changes and turned it into a cash-cow for the company.

The main issue with "Innovation" is that companies usually want to stick to their area of competency and want to be able to successful in their innovations. However, what happens is that over a period of time, every industry reaches a level of maturity and therefore the "killer innovative product" becomes a distant dream.

On the other hand, there are companies like 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing) that have moved from their core competency to "stickies". Nokia is another example of a company that has travelled a long long way from lumber to cellphone leader. How did they do it? The did it because they took small innovations which were outside their core expertise and turned them around into world changing products.

So, would you rather attend a session on "How to Innovate" or use your existing little innovation to change the world...think about it !

Simple is Complex

How many times have you said or heard - "It is so simple". Well, maybe it is !

Have you ever wondered how complex it is to make things simple? When I say complex, I mean the engineering involved in making an entity simple.

Take the example of the iPOD. MP3 players existed before the iPOD. However, they were complex things to use and operate because they did not show the song being played (as an example). What did the engineers at Apple do? They put a highly complex piece of hardware and software which made using a MP3 player simple. Let the team who developed this product tell you - was it complex or simple?

So how does one go about creating something simple?

There is no cookie-cutter template that will help. However a simple set of checks does help the team focus on creating / developing something simple. It is called KISS - Keep It Simple and Stupid

Want to design a new business process? A new piece of software? A new project plan? For every box in the process flow or for every line item on the project plan - ask yourself just two questions
1. Does this add any value to the end product and if the answer is YES ask yourself another question
2. Will you need more than one statement to explain this value add? If the answer is YES then you are not designing anything simple

Think about it !

Coopetition

There has been so much written about "Coopetition".

Coopetition or Co-opetition is a buzzword coined to describe cooperative Competition. There are well-known examples of companies working together in order to limit competition. However, in contrast, co-opetition focuses on cooperation between companies in imperfectly competitive markets. Examples of coopetition include Apple Computer and Microsoft Corp.

What has not been talked about or written about is coopetition between employees on the same team in companies trying to establish themselves.

Think of it like this, you have a set of highly talented individuals with similar job experience / qualification etc. staffed on the same project. Now, both of these individuals want to prove their worth to the management chain. Also, at the same time, they are responsible for the delivery of the project. So what does that result in?

It results in coopetition.

Of course, there are no legal documents signed, no big press releases, no kick-off parties but these two individuals in their own little ways moved forward into a coopetition mode where they are agreeing not to compete beween themselves in order to achieve success for their joint project. Needless to add, when it is time for the project / annual appraisal they will list their own contributions thereby moving away from the coopetition mode into a competition mode.

Is coopetition amongst the team healthy? Definitely yes. If nothing else, it ensures that there is work delivery as per plan.

Should coopetition within the team be encouraged by explicitly stating as much? No. I say this because as a Leader one is expected to lead the team to the same vision and goal - not to have more competition because then the focus of the team would move from the explicit goal to their individual goals.

What is the take away from this article? When you hear coopetition think of coopetition between companies and also between individuals on various teams.