Serendipity and Learning

I have always been uncomfortable with the descriptor of a "family" when it comes to work. A few years ago, we were at an offsite and the guest speaker, who shall go unnamed said, "It feels so good to be here. Feels like a family." Really?  "Feels like a family" is the most vacuous word you can use, especially when you are meeting 400 people for the first (and likely last) time in your life.  Ever since then I have heard this being said by many people in many organizations. And guess doesnt actually say it, yes, The family.  A family is a collection of individuals related by blood or genetics or legal association (to begin with) and a strong emotional bonding or attachment. Yes, there are people who may not be related by blood or genetics or legal association and you may yet share a deep emotional bonding. And there will be people in that family you absolutely hate - and they are family as well.  What is the difference between a family and an organization? ...

I read this piece with some amusement. That Infosys is de-layering itself . The interesting part for me in that article was this: As India's largest software firms have added tens of thousands of employees over the past decade, many layers of middle management have in the process also been under-utilised since they are not billable employees anymore as they are not directly involved in day-to-day software coding.  "We've seen that people who are not getting billed, they also tend to get a ittle bit away from technology and so on. The best way to address that is o make them more active in project execution - that's  ..  In a way this is the hands-on crisis in the Indian IT industry. Few years on, people lose their ability to work hands on - and that usually translates into lesser billing for the company. Unless of course, they have taken their abilities and become consultants - which can then be billed by the company.  The fact is that unless you keep at ...

I read a fascinating article in Swarajya magazine the other day by Sanjoy Mukherjee (the content is behind a paywall), on Prashnopanishad and on questioning. Apparently the story goes that the students asked 6 questions, one after another and after one question was answered, they asked the second one and so on. Each question took them to a higher level of consciousness and so on from which they never turned back. That got me curious about the Prashnopanishad. ( From the wiki page ) The opening verses of Prashna Upanishad describe students who arrive at a school seeking knowledge about  Brahman  (Ultimate Reality, Universal Soul). [13]  They ask sage Pippalada to explain this knowledge. He does not start providing answers for their education, but demands that they live with him ethically first, as follows, [13] तन् ह स ऋषिरुवच भूय एव तपसा ब्रह्मचर्येण श्रद्धया संवत्सरं संवत्स्यथ यथाकामं प्रश्नान् पृच्छत यदि विज्ञास्यामः सर्वं ह वो वक्ष्याम इति || To them then...

Story is the new black. Everybody wants to tell stories. Every marketeer, every technologist, every HR person - everyone. (However when the finance guy tells you stories, you know something wrong is happening - but leave that.) Is there is a danger with stories. Like everything overdoing stories may not help. But my theory (trademark alert) is about two things. One, a story being used as part of an initiative at work - cannot just be a story - it must leave the listener with a 'how to'. Otherwise, it is just a story. And the second danger with that is that if it is a story about person x in an organization by person y who the audience knows about - the audience, most likely, knows the story and the story behind the story and every member in the audience already has their perspective of your story. So let us say, you shared the story of a great project that was led from the front by person x. And this is told by person y. But I already know what person x did in that pro...

I have written about this before , but, if you want to build change in the organization, would you not use your managers to drive it? I mean, engage an external consultant by all means, but your managers have to lead the charge and your leaders have to be viscerally engaged in the change process. That means it is not enough if your managers and leaders are certified in a (any) methodology and they regurgitate it. ( See here  on why that might not be enough.) But it is an interesting question. On how does one build change? Change culture? The answer is in the sustenance of the change. What happens at a session is an event. But culture change is not an event. It is a process. A long drawn out process. And it is necessarily led by the leaders. And their reportees. And their reportees. And so on. A friend was talking about an Indian services company to me. This company sponsors major running events today (yes, go take a guess). In this company, from the top down, the company i...

Many moons ago, an organization faced a problem. They had rolled out a survey and the survey showed a drop in some points on some parameter (I can tell you, but I would have to kill you). And then, with remarkable, alacrity, along came a program that was touted as the solution to all ills related to survey points dropping down. Consultants were engaged. A master program was created. Supporting technology was conceptualized and all budgets for the project were green lighted. The portal was built. Calendars were cleared out. Sessions were organized. Master trainers were trained and created. These master trainers then spread the message among the minions. They did it. But then real work caught up with them. So, the boxes were ticked. And they went back to work. And the survey happened again. And they waited. With bated breath. For the next survey result. Which came. And the scores stayed there and in some cases, dropped down. And then the sessions and the trainers were remembered a...

Years ago, I was at a training class. This training was on martial arts. There was one person who taught us a bunch of things each class and then moved on to a different set of things each class and thus it went. Class after class, we were taught a set of things - seemingly connected - but for us, it did not make sense. We learnt technique after technique and promptly forgot technique after technique - because there was nothing to keep those techniques internlinked - no framework - nothing. No way to recap. Nothing to take away. No multiple repetition. No structure. And then I had the opportunity to be coached by a different person. Now this person was an expert -  actually there were two of them. They taught from the start. Basics. Repeat. Steps. And then week by week they increased the complexity till we got one step right.  And as we progressed, we also learnt techniques. Which one do you think is more amenable to be learnt by students? The latter, quite obviously. A p...

I stumbled upon this recently - on the Time Span of Discretion - a theory propounded by the Late Elliott Jaques . Jaques also noted that effective organizations were comprised of workers of differing time spans of discretion, each working at a level of natural comfort. If a worker's job was beyond their natural time span of discretion, they would fail. If it was less, they would be insufficiently challenged, and thus unhappy. Time span of discretion is about achieving intents that have explicit time frames. And in Jaques model, one can rank discretionary capacity in a tiered system. Level 1 encompasses jobs such as sales associates or line workers handling routine tasks with a time horizon of up to three months. Levels 2 to 4 encompass various managerial positions with time horizons between one to five years. Level 5 crosses over to five to 10 years and is the domain of small company CEOs and large company executive vice presidents. Beyond Level 5, one enters th...

As a support team, we are often faced with this dilemma. What are we? What is our identity? What is our role? And this question applies across the spectrum regardless of which type of role you play - Human Resources, Innovation, Risk or anything else. Some roles are created by authority - as per mandate - this type of work needs approval from so and so. This is reminiscent of the old command and control structure where, someone is the gatekeeper. Like the gatekeeper at any place, their role is to restrict the entry of people or things. Some roles are created by influence - like the sherpas of Nepal/Tibet - this type of work needs no approval and they are highly sought after - based on their expertise and knowledge of the mountains. You may argue that each of them is different, but there is no reason that someone in the role of a gatekeeper can grow as an enabler. A lot of time it is how you see the role. Being a gatekeeper is very easy. I have to do this, because someone has m...

I was talking to my uncle recently and we happened to talk about organizations. He runs practically a lean single person operation and hence his constant focus is to prioritize and do only the things that are the most important for his customers. Anything else is de-prioritized. Unfortunately, as organizations grow larger, this focus is lost and there is a lot of pride in 'activity'. As they say in spirituality, mistaking 'activity' for 'action' is very common. 'Activity' and 'Action' are one and the same. A lot of 'activity' does not contribute anything for the 'economy'. Like NREGA. One of the major criticisms levied against NREGA is that it is a ditch digging and filling exercise and does not result in asset creation or in contribution to the economy. It is very tempting to create work where none exists - what we miss out that is all that 'work creation' if it does not result in meaningful contribution to what th...

Some years back, we were waiting at a train station in Singapore. And all of a sudden, the station erupts in a very catchy announcement tone "Train is coming, train is coming, train is coming..." The kids ears perked up - and it is such an easy to remember tune and wording that they remembered it. And the best part is that this was a safety message - for people to move away from the platform and also to let people know that the train is coming. And then my mind went to our announcements - Platform number chaar ki gaadi etc. etc. Similarly, our flight safety procedures - are said at jet speed with a series of actions - surely there are better ways of doing it. One airline for instance, has a video. And I read somewhere that there are others who do a really cool job of it. So, here is a question. How does one get cab drivers to wear seat belts? Fine or persuasion? Push or pull? They know it is good for them, but they dont wear it. Or how does one get an entire organiz...

Many things around us, as adults, we often take for granted. Which is why questions like the one above from children, often leave us stumped for answers.  A bus steering is bigger than a car steering, and that is quite obvious. Why does it have to be so, nobody ever asked. And thankfully, on the internet, there are answers to such questions as well and we did get the answer. Do google the question and see what the answer is - the answer in itself is quite interesting. Which brings me to the point that as adults, we often take many things around us for granted. And since we take a lot of things for granted, there is no enquiry in that direction and thus no learning happens in that space.Where there is no enquiry, there can be no learning.  How does one keep oneself curious and asking questions and enquiring and learning, in an organization? And if you run training, how do you do that?