Round and Round

I was in a meeting the other day with a few executives deciding on a strategy to implement a new tool. My role was to advise on what were the potential pit-falls of choosing one over the other.

Anyway, the meeting was scheduled for one hour and I observed that after the first 15 minutes, we were going round and round in circles repeating the same thing again and again, however using different words which basically meant the same. I am sure all of us have seen this happen - more so when there are peers at a leadership level without one trying to pull-rank over the other. I told the folks in the meeting that I needed to step out and could be called once they got their act together.

Here is something to think about - why do we go round in circles trying to decide? Is it because we are not strong enough to decide? Or is it because we want everyone to win and not have a heart-burn? Or is it because there is lack of leadership in a meeting? I would want to say that lack of leadership which translates to decision making capability is usually the reason that no one makes the "executive decision" and move on.

So, the next time you find that your team / peers are going round in circles, will you step up to the plate and make the decision or you will let someone else make the decision for you? Think about it!

Pressures

I've been away for a long long time - going through a transformation, re-focus and re-calibration of sorts for myself. Anyway, last week I was meeting a friend of mine and he was telling me on how his executives sign-up for timelines and then later give him a 24 hour window to turn around his deliverables !

This got me thinking, as executives what are our major roles? We need to be able to perform more with less (and therefore the 24 hour window for deliverables) but more importantly, we should be able to motivate our teams.

What is the point of training someone to run lean-and-mean and then giving them 24 hours to deliver just so that we as executives can take the credit on "how difficult it was to deliver but we still made it"

As executives, we need to manage expectations both ways - above and below. In one of the companies that I am associated with, we deal a lot with the government agencies worldwide and believe me, there is no one better than those government officials who manage expectations by giving enough headway and articulating, sometimes one too many, on what is needed.

How does all this fit into the Pressures topic? It is simple, as executives we think that we can pressurize someone to deliver faster, deliver better however we ignore one of the basic laws of physics - there is always a breakpoint which means that our resources will take the pressure only up to a point and then quit. So, did you gain or lose by this pressure tactic? Think about it !

Where is the future?

The latest CES show in Vegas promises more integration between devices in your hand, home, stores, cars, hotels etc. etc. which makes me think - Wasn't the basic promise from the IT land to have "ease of information" and NOT "overflow of information"

I see this happening not only at CES but all over the world. We want more information in order to have a better control. As executives, we push the need to have more information readily available in order to not have a reactive action but a proactive action. Guess what, and I am sure you all have felt it - whatever business processes (and associated IT systems) you designed and implemented for a proactive mode was outdated by the time it was installed.

So how do you design something for the future? If there was a simple answer then we would never have a "reactive" mode for anything. I read in some book a while ago - our ancient ancestors planned their meals by putting their ear on the ground and trying to hear the animals coming their way. This enabled them to be prepared to hunt the the animals down. It was true then, it is true today. Don't sit in your ivory towers. Meet the people on the ground and in the fields. They know your business. Your customers and yes your competitors. The folks in the trenches will help you plan for the future and yes you might live through the information overload.

So the next time around there is a new speech by Mr.. Gates talking about integration between your cell phone and the cars of the future, are you going to go look at that or you are going to look in the rear-view mirror since the future happened yesterday? Think about it !

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 !