Introduction to doHow™

In today’s world of internet, information being readily available, consistently catalysing just the “Doing” without much additional “Knowing” was the main approach in all our Consultancoaching assignments; even the Business Health Checks pointed to the gap between “Knowing” and “Doing” as the main cause, which undoubtedly is the most significant barrier to success.

Examining the possible reasons for this gap, books, journals, magazines, google, notes, etc. serve as the reference in education for imparting knowledge by Professors, emphasising mostly on theory and the practical understanding of diverse topics – CONSCIOUS LEARNING. Whereas policies, guidelines, processes, intranet, abilities, etc. serve as the reference in professional life for developing both motor and cognitive skills, emphasising mostly on practicing few repetitive tasks – SUBCONSCIOUS LEARNING. Therefore, could it be possible that our conscious mind wanting to be in control is preventing us from subconscious learning?

The fact that consciously carrying out a task is prone to mistakes whereas sub-conscious driven tasks are almost defect/mistake free is important in bridging this gap. Skill is this ability to carry out a task sub-consciously with no conscious effort. Nevertheless, it is first necessary to consciously learn to practice a task and then develop the skill by regular practice, overcoming the conscious mind – a Herculean effort though. Thus Reference or a Standard, Trigger to review the Skill level, Recap and Revision, Checklist to ensure the correct practice, Scorecard to check effectiveness, Assessment to identify gaps are all necessary for SKILL DEVELOPMENT. Over and above this regular self-practice, monitoring the development of effectiveness and coaching catalyses SKILL DEVELOPMENT. Once the skill levels are higher, higher standards are naturally (sub-consciously) demanded, which then improves the overall quality of life and society progresses to the next level.

The doHow™ APP bridges the gap between the “Knowing” and “Doing” by systematically addressing all the success factors for effective SKILL DEVELOPMENT.

The Reference, Trigger, Recap, Checklist, Scorecard, Assessment, etc. for SKILL DEVELOPMENT have already been developed for some Professional and Personal practices like Managing Business, Generating Sales Orders, Managing Machining Shop Floor, Controlling Budgets, Developing Basic Success Skills, Listening Actively, etc. The same can be fully customised for any topic.

Typically, the doHow™ APP can be used to drive practicing conversion of any “Knowing” to “Doing” for SKILL DEVELOPMENT.

I would thus like to provide the masses with access to good practices as well as a systematic tool for skill development. Please get back with your comments,

Scarce Resources for Sustainable Profitable Growth

Scarce Resources in general is a result of demand exceeding supply. It was quite enlightening to me, as I recently read a book on economics, that this condition is the source of any business activity. Scarcity breeds businesses and drives progress of our civilisation.

What about competing businesses? The ONLY differentiator between competing businesses is the efficiency of the usage of these scarce resources.

1.        Relevant products and services (including the raw materials)

2.        Leadership bandwidth

3.        Right employees

4.        Willing customers/clients

5.        Knowhow both tacit and explicit

6.        Time to implement an idea

7.        Investors for finance

8.        Partnering vendors

9.        Office and production facilities

10.    Cooperative society

I have further explained each of these scarce resources and identified the key question as well as a rhythm to ask this question.

1. Relevant products and services (including the raw materials)

The most important scarce resource for a business is the availability of appropriate and relevant products and services to meet or fulfil a need, both explicitly stated and implicitly prevalent.

Key Question: Value Innovation?

Rhythm: Once in 3Y

2. Leadership bandwidth

The leadership bandwidth is a very common scarce resource for a business, especially due to us human beings commonly not being able to generate time for the important but generally not urgent tasks.

Key Question: Focus Areas – Maximum 5?

Rhythm: Annual

3. Right employees

I’m sure getting the right employees on board is a humongous challenge for any business due to the gap between what the organisation can offer and what the employee expects and inversely what the organisation expects and the employee can offer.

Key Question: Passionate and Enthused?

Rhythm: Quarterly

4. Willing customers/clients

It is quite obvious that willing customers and clients who are ready to use the products and services is always a major scarce resource irrespective of the life-cycle of an organisation, be it a start-up or a fully matured organisation in its milking stage.

Key Question: Value Perception?
Rhythm: Monthly

5. Knowhow both tacit and explicit

Knowhow of products, services, processes and practices is one of the key scarce resources which many a times is not very explicit, especially because of the gap between knowing and doing – we quite regularly believe knowing without doing and thus base our decision or inaccurate knowledge.

Key Question: Repeat Failures?

Rhythm: Monthly

6. Time to implement an idea

Time necessary to implement any new idea or change of course is a very scarce resource, especially to stay ahead of the competition.

Key Question: Waiting Time?

Rhythm: Monthly

7. Investors for finance

As we all know if we pull up all the available finance in our society, finance should not really be a scarce resource at all. However finance becomes a perennial scarce resource, since finding those investors who are interested in the respective business and are prepared to lend at affordable interest rates is quite a challenge.

Key Question: ROI?

Rhythm: Monthly

8. Partnering vendors

One generally feels that buying something what we need either as direct materials, indirect raw materials or knowhow is not very difficult as long as we have the necessary finance. Feeling and reality being different, it is really quite a challenge to find abundance of vendors who are proactively interested in partnering for a long-term win-win relationship.

Key Question: Reliability and Dependability?

Rhythm: Monthly

9. Office and production facilities

Finding an appropriate and affordable space for office and production facility is equally a challenge and therefore is also a scarce resource for business.

Key Question: Utilisation?

Rhythm: Monthly

10. Cooperative society

Finally, when one wants to achieve sustainable profitable growth it is primordial that inclusive growth becomes the DNA of the business and this can only be achieved with the cooperative society that on the one hand can understand the risks associated with the business and can on the other hand equally appreciate the progress that can be achieved through the respective business.

Key Question: Media Noise?

Rhythm: Monthly

In conclusion I realised that our thinking and actions will become totally different the moment we perceive these 10 business requirements as scarce resources and closely monitor the efficiency of their usage, both objectively and subjectively, and gradually improve to achieve Sustainable Profitable Growth and contribute to the progress of our society.

Standards for Sustainable Profitable Growth

I have been going to various companies from various industries like, manufacturing, construction, hospitality, commodities, etc. in the last the one and a half years and I see that one of the common areas of concern, mainly with the bigger companies, is that the freshers are not industry ready. On the other hand for the smaller companies the challenge is to get everyone across the hierarchy to perform as the owner or promoter intents, thus providing consistent quality and on-time delivery products and services to the customers. The challenge in the case of the smaller companies becomes extremely intense, especially when the next generation of the founder needs to take over.

In this regard I had some thoughts. I see across all companies that neither valid up-to-date standards pertaining to every role, product and service nor appropriate self-learning materials are available. Additionally the handful of “Experts” in every company are always very busy with no quality time to empower others to perform equally well. Therefore the only possibility of self-learning is generally through trial and error, which is a costly one – high rejects, low productivity, increased throughput!

I would now like to go to a totally different aspect regarding the freshers. Even when I graduated almost three decades back, the biggest ability that one would have acquired through formal “spoon fed Guides/Notes” education would be to reproduce the learning with precision, of course with some analysis and judgement, since the popular way of testing is largely during the examinations lasting a couple of hours. This ability surprisingly matches the need to reproduce consistently in almost all the roles in any industry.

Now putting these two together on the one hand most of the roles in a company need just consistent reproduction for developing, planning and delivering on-time quality products and services and to do this the freshers have the right qualification and mindset but on the other hand the companies don’t have valid and up-to-date “Guides/Notes for spoon feeding” and expect the freshers to learn by observing, questioning and practicing – “Trial/Error”. Will just creating Guides/Notes for spoon feeding every role, product/service specialties, etc. solve the dilemma???

I believe making the education system more industry specific first of all may not really be necessary and secondly may NOT BE POSSIBLE since every industry has its own specialties and every company have their core competencies, which cannot be and will not be imparted to public at large. This is what made me take a different approach to a win-win solution for this dilemma.

In my leadership roles in various countries, I have noted that the employees from countries with well-structured and disciplined societies are generally very good in performing few tasks with almost perfection and feel quite insecure to do others they believe they are not good at. In India and to some extent in Brazil, it is different though. The employees from these not so well-structured and disciplined societies are intrinsically self-confident in performing any kind of role after overcoming many obstacles in life, provided the racial discrimination deterrent to free expression is absent. Not only are they self-confident but can improvise a lot to succeed which results in lesser persistence and superficial expertise.

Therefore in societies not so well-structured and disciplined the need for Guides/Notes for spoon feeding every role, product/service specialties, etc. is extremely important for the employees not to learn based only on the Trial/Error strategy, which one would be intrinsically motivated to do! Additionally, since they are self-confident they will be more open to self-learning through Guides/Notes and then to experiment – possibly the most desirable condition in a learning organisation.

I want to thus conclude by encouraging every company to solve this huge competency gap by proactively creating valid standards and appropriate self-learning Audio-Visual Guides/Notes for performing every role and creating every product/service. This approach not only will resolve the dilemma that I had mentioned earlier, but also ensure sustainable, profitable growth through continuous learning.

Organisational Health Check

We normally think of money and head count as the necessary resources to do a business. I am of the opinion that much more resources are needed either to perform a simple task or run a big business. I call these resources as CAPABILITIES (PLEFIMS: People, Leadership, Expertise, Finance, Infrastructure, Management, Speed). Here I am listing these CAPABILITIES to build a base for the concept of organizational health check, that is very simple. Once we assess the AVAILABILITY on a scale of 1 to 5 (Adequate, Satisfactory, Good, Very Good and Excellent) of these CAPABILITIES we can very fast define the most important focus areas for improvement in the organizational health.

CAPABILITIES

1. People:
People are the most important for any job we do. Under people not only the employees but also customers, vendors and business partners are considered. The main question is how good is the networking and how right are the people we know. In school we used to say that the wave length matched between the thick pals. Though in business this is not always possible, it is imperative that we consider the character when we count our people.
2.Leadership:
We can only achieve outstanding consistent performance if and only if true passion can be ignited in the people that we spoke of under 1. True passion comes only if the purpose is noble and this is what leadership is all about. Creating a vision, mission, values, business ethics, strategy and approach with a learning environment and open culture to a secure future with a noble cause.
3. Expertise:
In today's world just having a noble cause with passionate people can only be used for monetary benefits, provided know-how of the product/service in question as well of the direct processes needed to produce is available. Product/service core competencies, the related IP rights, perceivable USP's are all accessible and known either through available documentation or through the people considered under 1.
4. Finance:
Needless to say money is always needed to perform a task or run a business. Market capitalization, asset base, profitability, cash reserves, outstanding receipts as well as payments need to be thoroughly analyzed. When checking an internal performance the consistency in adhering to defined budgets and the ability to make correct expense forecasts can be used as a capability for assessing the organizational health.
5. Infrastructure:
Buildings, machinery, equipment, hardware, software, etc, would all fall into the infrastructure category. It is mandatory not just to check the availability, but also check the usability and the condition of the infrastructure. It is very common in business to exploit (over use without proper maintenance) the infrastructure at the cost of getting fast results. This common phenomenon not only erodes the infrastructure but also demoralizes the people using this infrastructure.
6. Management:
One time success can be got easily without management, since management in my perception is the art of consistently doing the job in a most optimum and efficient manner. Therefore policies, guidelines, systems, processes and procedures come under management. It is imperative that cascaded (across hierarchy levels) targets are deployed from the business plan, a meaningful MIS along with cascaded reviews/feedback for all key performance indicators/results as well as absolute clarity of roles/responsibilities exist. Both the target deployment (top-down) and reporting (bottom-up) through hierarchy must be having the same unique path.
7. Speed:
Last but not the least important is time as a resource. In order to have the speed in whatever we do, it is essential that a SDCA/PDCA (Standardize/Plan, Do, Check and Act) mindset is evident and constantly a formal learning system exists to reflect and learn from both good and bad experiences. Speed also comes with a clear delegation accompanied by total clarity on who is accountable in organizations for various tasks. The biggest deterrent to speed is the micro-management culture and lack of confidence and trust across hierarchy as well as peers.

AVAILABILITY

A. Adequate:
A capability can be assessed as adequate in case of anxiety concerning a capability.
B. Satisfactory:
Provided the routine is being done normally then a capability falls into this category.
C. Good:
Being proud of a capability can be a good reason to assess in this category.
D. Very Good:
You are not only proud, but also feel comfortable to talk about relevant capability openly.
E. Excellent:
You would have received recognition for the relevant capability from outsiders.

It is quite obvious that these capabilities will lead to key results specific to the organization that meets all the stakeholder needs as well as perception and performance indicators concerning each of the stakeholders. I am listing all the stakeholders once again. Shareholders, Customers, Employees, Business Partners and Society are the 5 main stakeholders for any organization.

The CAPABILITIES are also the basis for preparing a SWOT. However, before preparing a SWOT it is essential that the goals or what we want to achieve (our dream) must be the starting point. As far as strengths and weaknesses are concerned the AVAILABILITY assessment will automatically show the areas to further check. For the opportunities and threats the questions must be "Which of the PLEFIMS is available with others that can benefit me?" and "Which of my PLEFIMS may get siphoned out by others?".