doHow

I got a very interesting insight last week as I remembered my German stay for almost 8 years. The majority of the society there demonstrates a self-driven desire to perfect whatever they are doing. In Brazil, where I stayed for 5 years, on the other hand one finds a way out through the “Jeitinho Brasileiro”. In India we talk about the “Jugad”.

In the colloquial day to day English in India, whenever we want to delegate writing a letter, we first ask “Do you know how to write a letter?” and then at times “Can you please write a letter? In Brazil one asks “Vôce sabe como escrever uma carta?” and then ask “Pode escrever uma carta por favor? Whereas in Germany one asks directly „Können sie einen Brief schreiben?” – no one asks „Wissen Sie einen  Brief schreiben?“, which is gramatically inappropriate.

In German the usage of the verb “Know” is grammatically inappropriate when it involves “Doing”!!! Whereas in the colloquial day to day English in India and in Brazil usage of the verb “Know” when “Doing” is involved is quite natural. This is when I realised that in almost all the trainings that we attend in India mainly Knowhow is imparted, in some programs with some simulations and exercises for the “doHow” though. However there is hardly any program where only the “doHow” training is done on the job.

Supporting this grammatical phenomenon, the vocational training in Germany and many European countries is quite matured and the focus is just the “doHow” with Knowhow being an obvious part of the “doHow”. Unfortunately in India even the Diploma institutes and Industrial Training Institutes generate graduates who have good knowhow but lack “doHow” resulting in the competency gap that one keeps discussing and debating in all forums.

 
With this insight when I thought of the way skills were imparted in the good olden days all over the world, it was quite insightful that the main focus was on the “doHow”.

On the other hand, I realised that in today’s world of extreme competition, free access to knowhow through internet and the drive to get quick returns, using mobile technology posing challenging questions that one can answer during the normal working can result in a “doHow” revolution.

Now my challenge is to start the “doHow” revolution and achieve Sustainable Profitable Growth. I will surely share my experience with “doHow”. 

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.

Cascaded Reviews

Imagine how it would have been if our bodies needed our conscious attention for the basic delivery process and now think how much of your conscious attention is being given to the basic delivery process in your organisation. Cascaded reviews when implemented properly can lead to the same situation as in our bodies. However wrongly done leads to Micromanagement this is what that goes on with our bodies in the ICU’s!

In my earlier blog I had explained how the closed loop control can be introduced in the organisations. A key success factor is the intelligence that goes in through the review process. I very briefly want to reiterate what would be reviewed: Target, Accurate and traceable Actual Situation, Current Forecast, Measures for all KPIs/KRAs are what that needs to be reviewed at a frequency appropriate to the clock speed.

In life all of us want to succeed. Success not only meets the targets but also breeds further success. How can success be made systematic in nature? This is when the cascaded review comes into play. When I mean cascaded review, I mean that the lower hierarchy level must have reviewed at least twice before the respective hierarchy level reviews. Again the review is very simply done always for the Target, Accurate and traceable Actual Situation, Current Forecast, Measures for all KPIs/KRAs at an appropriate frequency with all the involved functions, so that upward value added reporting is done and not the upward delegation. Thus I believe this is the starting point to give the higher hierarchy level the confidence and thus refrain from Micromanagement. However I must caution that a certain amount of transformation, especially concerning the true capabilities in people, must take place in the entire organisation before such a cascaded review with reducing frequency can take place. Otherwise the cascaded reviews can become another wording for Micromanagement.

When correctly executed cascaded reviews frees enormous amount of management bandwidth to think and implement strategies for profitable growth, which is the most essential oxygen for any business. This can be achieved, since through the cascaded reviews the entire organisation performs delivery of products and services on its own – as if this were sub-consciously done. This is nothing different from nature where everything is cyclic and rhythmic. The other hidden benefit of cascaded review is the continuous learning in an organisation as well as empowerment with information.

I welcome you to reflect by comparing your organisation to the human body analogically and checking if all the routine tasks are being performed without conscious effort. Should this be the case the entire organisation is truly world class and would certainly boast of sustainable profitable growth over the last few years. Should this not be the case, then working on freeing the bandwidth of the top management for concentrating on strategies to achieve profitable inclusive growth can be the first step. I personally used to get very enthused whenever I reflected thus.

The last success factor is to communicate, communicate and communicate. Communicating the right ant the relevant topics is of course extremely important and should the cascaded reviews take place, the contents of the communication automatically become the most important and relevant. Apart from this just the review itself serves as a good communication medium, especially for the various functions to see the big picture and align their actions to what is important and relevant.

Happy Reflecting!!!