Some funda

I have come across Jim Collins - Good to Great way back in 2003. Since then I had been looking for indicators to identify great organizations.

As a training consultant I had an excellent opportunity to visit more than 100 diverse organizations located in different cities of India. During this time I compared and contrasted different companies and tried to see if there are significant differences.

One clear cut differentiator was - people. At great companies, people were sincere, committed, confident and had a sense of urgency. But there is definitely a causal ambiguity. Did people with above characteristics make the firm great or the firm made the people confident. I tried to relate it to my own experience.

I realized that there were times when I behaved like an average demotivated employee and times when I was radiating confidence and could make significant contributions. When I look back I realized that it was the firm that existed before I entered made an impact on me and my behavior after I joined the firm impacted others.

There are always bright people and then there are always difficult times. Bright people who are not interested in the big picture get quickly demotivated if things are not happening for them. But then 1 in 1000 there would be bright visionary and he is the one who can trigger a reversal in the atmosphere.

I have just finished reading a Mckinsey article titled - The link between profits and organizational performance, and the article also highlights simlar findings. One clear reinforcement this article helped make is that, the firm is a bigger stakeholder and needs to take proactive action.

But in reality I have observed that Managers including HR Managers expect that the employee should take initiative and try to make a contribution. I always argued that the organization should make a stronger effort and should have clear processes to get an employee in to a high performance mode.

I truly believe that every Manager should take responsibility not only to recruit good people but also to see that they move into the high performance mode quickly

Some Management fundae that I came up with before coming to the B-School

My journey in the Corporate world started exactly 13 years ago. I started my career as a Jr. Sales officer despite having studied Electrical Engineering Diploma. THe reason was I needed to get started, immediately after finishing my course.

My first job lasted for 6 months and then I joined Bakelite Hylam in Jan 1994. I had seen a whole cycle of events at Bakelite Hylam. It was a 50 year old company and employed more than 2000 people. It provided me a rich ground to experiment and develop my thinking. The first Management Funda I learnt there was about Productivity and self-led teams. I could get a sense of what might have happened from the time of Industrial revolution till 1994, the changes industrial labor scenario went through and what factors might have to led to the situation existent then.

Next thing I observed was the unhappiness people had. My colleagues - Supervisors were very unhappy. They were sandwitched between the order giving Management and the unionised labor. I too went through many personnel problems. I survived the slowdown thing that is worse than a strike. But the key point I realized was that despite being unhappy the educated supervisors were not ready to move out or change the situation. The proactiveness was missing. Sometime during that time I created a oneliner for my ownself and later shared with many others. It goes like this - If you are unhappy with what you have, either you are in the wrong place or you are not doing the right things, check which one is going wrong and change it immediately". That approach helped me to grow even in the most difficult phase of that organization. Fianlly that place offered me no challenge and I moved on.

The next thing I realized was about the language. I realized that speaking the business language that is in terms of money - Rs. and paise, made lot of sense to people who run the business. I used this strategy and avoided many unnecessary hassles. I worked for exactly 8 hrs everyday but was present whenever I was needed and thus helped my boss to develop trust in me. He was sure that if was present he can be assured that things will be in control. I worked for 7 years at Bakelite and I enjoyed every bit of it. I got an excellent exposure to the cost side of the business.

I had seen the scarcity part of ecoomy and I have experienced the abundance part of it in the last 5 years. I never realized that the questions that occured to me ocured to many others and some great people tried to answer them and did answer them to a great accuracy. With every course the answers are getting unfolded and suddenly sometimes I get that sudden thrill of getting the answer or even knowing that there were others who had similar questions.

I managed to do well in Term 1 and I hope to do so in the next 7 terms. It's not a question of making it to the top but it is just a question of learning, seeking answers for the questions life posed to me.