Leadership Management – Understanding right signals & responding accordingly !

On June 29, 2010, in Business thoughts, Strategy thoughts, by Swapnil
2

Continuing from my posts about the Leadership management, here, in this article, I would like to touch base upon one interesting game that we played. The game was all about understanding how one should understand the situation when he / she gets into a new situation / team or a company.

The game, as it progresses, uncovers how the mental situation of a person is in, when he is thrown into a new situation.

Lets understand the characters and rules of the game as follows,

Leader – the person who is newly put in the situation or given a charge of a completely new team

Team – the group of people who got a new leader and they are supposed to assist him settle down

Manager – the person who has hired the leader and has promised guidance in settling the team

Now, I would go about mentioning the situation and the specific rules and objectives as follows.

 

Situation 1 & Rules

All the team members are sitting in a room. The managers comes and introduces the Leader to the team and asks the team to help.  The task that is assigned to the Leader is to identify an object in the room. In this situation an office bag of one of colleague  and the team is supposed to help him, without speaking a word.

leader-arrowThe rules of the game were simple and as follows,

  1. The manager will explain the ‘goal’ to the leader and asks the leader to take help of the team to move ahead in his goal
  2. The team was asked to observe the movement of the leader in the room and clap if the leader is moving towards the intended object and remain silent if he is moving away from the object.
  3. Most important rule was that the team members were not allowed to speak or answer any questions of the leader.  If the leader speaks and asks, they were only supposed to smile and follow rule 2.
  4. The leader does NOT know, the rule 2 & 3.

 

Very interesting scenario ! 

I would now try to write the exact discussion that happened between the leader and the team members as follows. 

 

Leader enters the room and to everyone : Hello everyone.  My name is ___ and I have been appointed as your leader here.  I just had a discussion with my manager and he has asked me to come and talk to you all. He mentioned to me that there is some object that I need to find here.  Does anyone know what is it or where is it?  Would anyone like to help me?

As per rule, all the team members look at him, keep silent and smile !  The Leader is slightly confused and goes to Team members and asks them directly.

Leader to Team member 1: Hi, what is happening? Please can you help me here. My manager has asked me to look for some object but I am unable to find. Please can you help me?

Team member 1, smiles !

Leader to Team member 2: Hi, your other colleague is not helping me. Would you be able to help me?

Team member 2, smiles !

Leader to Team member 3 & 4: Guys, you have to help me here. I am not able to understand what the other guys are trying to say. They are just smiling looking at me and its not being helpful. Can you help me here?

Team member 3 & 4 smile ! The leader then goes to the Manager.

Leader to Manager: Hi boss, I think the team is not helping me. I am asking them questions but they are unable to help or answer to me at all. This is just being plain uncooperative.  Do you have any suggestions for this?

Manager to Leader: I think there is some miscommunication. I had asked the team to help you in their own capacity so they must be trying to help you. Why don’t you go and observe for some time what they are trying to tell you.

Leader goes back to the team and asks again, whether anyone knows what he was supposed to find. However, finds no luck so goes back to manager.

Leader to Manager: Boss, I am getting frustrated here. The team does not cooperate me and I am not able to achieve my goal here. The things are so frustrating to me. You need to come and help me here.

Manager to Leader: Try to understand and observe the pattern. Find out what signals they are giving you. I am sure they are responding to you in some way so I suggest you go back and observe more.

Leader, this time goes back and listen to the sound the team is making when he is moving in some direction. Remember, the team was told to clap if the leader is moving in right direction and be silent if he is moving in some other direction.

After a while of observation, the leader goes back to the Manager.

Leader to Manager: I see some kind of pattern in their clapping. If I move to north, they keep on clapping and if I move to south, they stop clapping. What kind of trend is this? Am I missing something?

Manager to Leader: Yeah, probably you need to figure that out yourself.

So, the leader goes back to the team floor and does some more observation and this time he understands the fact that the team is clapping when is nearing to the desired object (read goal) and keeping silent when he is moving away. 

Eventually, within minutes he finds out the exact object and everyone claps !

 

Now, lets take a pause and analyze what the mental state of the Leader would have been while the entire above process.

  • The leader expected the team to cooperate with him, in the language that he understands.
  • When the leader did not understand what the team was saying (i.e., clapping, being silent, not responding), he felt a bit irritated and went to on to talk to team members directly.
  • When that too did not work out, the leader’s frustration grew and probably went to the point of breaking.
  • However, with a little bit help from Manager, when he started to understand the language of the team members, he could find his goal easily.
  • In the end, he understood that the team was actually co-operating with him every time, however he was unable to understand them. It was not other way round.
  • Leader went through a very interesting and beautiful mind transition from frustration to success !

 

Situation 2 & Rules

leader-team Situation 2 is very similar to the Situation 1, however only one key rule was changed. The managers comes and introduces the Leader to the team and asks the team to help.  The task that is assigned to the Leader is to identify an object in the room. In this situation a mobile phone kept in the corner of the room and the team is supposed to help him.

The rules of the game were simple and as follows,

  1. The manager will explain the ‘goal’ to the leader and asks the leader to take help of the team to move ahead in his goal
  2. The team was asked to observe the movement of the leader in the room and Be Silent if the leader is moving towards the intended object and clap if he is moving away from the object. Exactly opposite of Situation 1.
  3. This time, if the leader asks the question. The team members were allowed to answer directly.
  4. The leader does NOT know, the rule 2 & 3.

Now, this time the situation gets even more interesting. Keeping in mind the earlier situation that the Leader had gone through.  The story goes as follows.

The Leader enters the room and tries to understand how the team is responding to his behaviour. He first tries to follow the claps but soon understands that the claps are not taking him to any specific direction, however the silence is.  So he follows the silence and nears the object and picks up in a quick time.

While it took almost 20 mins for the first situation to be resolved i.e., the leader finding the intended object, it took the same person about 5-7 minutes to find the object second time.  Even though it was smaller and was at a relatively remote place.

So lets look at few observations in Situation 2.

  • The leader did NOT ask any team members directly. He assumed that they will not help if he asks the question verbally.
  • He tried to understand the pattern and quickly understood that the pattern is different than the first situation.
  • He was able to grab the object in a quicker time than the Situation 1.

 

Essentially, the morale of the situations are,

  • When you enter new situations. Its good to carry your experience and ideologies, but its sometimes wrong to expect others to fall in line as you need.
  • It is essential to understand how the system works before applying your working techniques or forcing anything on the team.
  • Once you understand the system, you can always get into it and achieve your goal.
  • Most importantly, people do change so never carry perceptions (especially –ve) with you for long.
  • Remember ! Behaviour could be misleading but intent is never wrong, so get to the intent and do not make judgements based on behaviour.

 

So if we consider the situations in retrospect and find out how we can relate to our real life examples of events such as moving to a new team, taking the charge of a new project, joining a new organization etc., I am sure you would be able to find few similarities.

Would you mind sharing few of them with me here?

 

Image 1 credit | Image 2 credit

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Leadership Management – Identifying true self & false persona !

On June 18, 2010, in Business thoughts, Strategy thoughts, by Swapnil
2

In my last post about the leadership management, I wrote about the negotiating skills and how we, as humans, try to play for the win/lose situations when we are negotiating for our goals. It was interesting to reflect back on us again, as humans, on what makes us perform this kind of behaviour.

This interesting aspect takes us to inspect ourselves and differentiate between what we really are and what others think of us as i.e., what we project to be.  Essentially, what we project to others is our ‘persona’, and believe me, we show plenty of them within us !

More or less, we in our professional or in the personal life, we portray various kind of personas depending on situations and we do so mostly to get our work done.  Have a look at the following personas and the kind of behaviour that is displayed by the person wearing the persona, it might help you relate back to your own behaviours.

 

Persona
Behaviour seen / bumper sticker !
typical observations
Conscientious Do the right thing … In high risk environments
Supercompetent Here, let me do it … Less risky or wants to show off
Devoted I will always be here for you … Care taker, family man / woman
Drama queen/king You would not believe the day I had … Super excitement in all things that are done
Performer The show must go on … Calling themselves practical thinkers, do not think of effects
Victim Why me ? Passive thinking, resistive nature
Critic I will tell you what is wrong … Wants to do, but points negative things first
Loner By myself … Super performer, normally thinks others do not align with me
Space out Huh… what ? Attitude !
Mr Nice Guy Sure ! Yes ! Wants to be in the right side of things always
Stoic I can take it … Tries to put a brave face but have fear inside
Hostile Out of my way … Puts too much pressure even for simple things
Self-righteous I will never … Man of principles, apparently
Rebel Not me, man ! Will do things in my own way ..
Shy I will wait for my turn … Why should I speak now, I will tell only if asked, even if its important
Chameleon Whatever you say … Flatterer, always says things, but does little

 

facemasksWhile wearing the personas itself is not a bad thing as such and we may need to wear them as the situation demands. However, what we should avoid is to have the persona overtake our actual self and make us believe in what we are not !

In case you are unable to find out what personas you have wore in the past then the following questions, given to us as a part of exercise, may help.

 

– What about specific people make you not connect with them ?

- Kind of people that you easily connect with ?

- What are some of the things that you resist in others?

- What are these things that I resist in myself ?

- Identify 5 examples of where you have demonstrated the same behaviour / action that you resist in others ?

- What are the 3/4 personas I use to,

             a) To be accepted / loved

             b) To get the job done

- When did you make your 1st appearance ?

- What are you most proud of ?

- What are you most afraid of ?

- What do you think will happen to <your name> if you are not in charge ?

- Whenever you take over, what are you always sure of getting from the environment ?

 

Think of the answers for the above questions and hopefully they will help you realize more about yourself.

As I mentioned in my last post about leadership, one of the most important aspect of leadership is to realize yourself and know more about your own behaviours, personas and intents about your own working style. Knowing about the personas help you understand what state of mind you are in and are you your real self or not, thus helps you take proper decisions in every step that may benefit you in the end.

So, try out the answers for the questions above and see what you realize about yourself !

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Leadership management – Are you negotiating to win .. at what cost ?

On May 31, 2010, in Business thoughts, Strategy thoughts, by Swapnil
10

In my last blog post where I wrote about the Leadership workshop I attended, I mentioned about two games that we played, one in group and other in pairs which effectively explains how the people perceive leadership as ‘GTD’ (get things done) only and the various styles the people apply for the same.

I promised in my last post that I will be writing more on the games and in this, I would attempt to do the same.

 

So before I start mentioning about the game, let me mention the characters in the game as follows,

Project Manager (PM) – Raj played the role of project manager

Team 1 – Myself along with 4 others

Team 2 – Rest of the 5 team members

 

negotiation1 The PM kept the team 2 inside the training room and gave few instructions to them and a goal to achieve. He also took team 1 outside the room and had a discussion and gave us a  goal to achieve as well.

The goal of the team 1 was as follows,

‘Team 1 needs to make the members of Team 2, stand up and walk 3 steps, without writing anything on paper i.e., name or signature’.

The goal of the team 2, that we were NOT made aware, was as follows,

‘Team 2 needs to get signatures of all Team 1 members without walking or standing up from their chairs’.

He gave both the teams time to think out our strategies on how to achieve ‘our’ goals whilst we were unaware of what the other party has to achieve.  We were asked to have 3 plans ready in case the first or second plan to achieve ‘our’ goal does not work out.

 

The plan we made was as follows,

1. We will request the other team to stand up and walk with us

2. We will make the other team to help us in achieving ‘our’ goal

3. We will sing national anthem so people will automatically stand up, at least if not walk towards the pseudo flag.

Obviously the other team would also have made up the plan and we assumed that they will not respond to what we request them.

So, the way the game unfolded was as follows.  We all, part of team 1, went inside the room deciding to execute the plan and saw all the team 2 members sitting on chairs in a U shape, as if waiting for us to attack. All of them had a notebook and a pen in their hands.  It was obvious that they too had made their strategy to achieve their goal.

So, as the time went on, we tried our plan 1, 2 & 3 but nothing worked. Out of the group of 5 each, few of us could take a mid way such as they stand up and walk with us while we sign for them on the paper. So both our goals could be achieved. However, few people from each team stood up to the end to ensure that they achieve their goal without compromise.

The catch of the system was no team will win unless all the members of the other do as per their goal.  Since about 2 people from each team did not manage to achieve the goal, both the teams lost eventually. Thus, none of the team ended up winning.

Now look at few facts that happened through the game that was played.

  • When the goals were explained, they were explained in such a way that the respective teams were told only ‘what’ they need to achieve, not how
  • The teams were given complete freedom of deciding the plans on how to achieve the goals
  • We were given freedom to make our own assumptions to think on how we believe the other team will react
  • Both the teams went on defensive when the first strategy did not work out and started to pull alternative plans to ensure they win
  • Finally it ended in a conflict and none of the teams won

 

negotiationsLets now look at few assumptions and what happened through the minds of teams during the game, as an honest reflection,

  • We, the team 1, when told our goal, assumed that the goal of the other team will definitely be NOT to co-operate
  • We assumed that they will never do what we will ask of them and eventually ended up making plans that hided our intention of goal behind the back of our behaviour (request, national anthem etc.)
  • We did not want to tell them our goal and understand what their goal is. Rather, we were never interested in knowing what their goal was
  • Finally, as a truth, we all believed that the only way for us to win is to ensure the other person loses !

 

So, in a nutshell, the entire negotiating strategy was based on WIN – LOSE pattern.  We made our own assumptions, without making any attempt to understand what could be our common goal be and find out a WIN – WIN formula.  In this case, could have been the fact that team 1 will sign the paper while walking along with team 2 members.

 

Interesting ?

So what are few key learning out of this game ?

What I understood was as follows,

  • Its very easy to make a WIN – LOSE negotiation strategy. You do not need to make any effort to create one !
  • NEVER ever make any assumptions that the other party will NOT co-operate with you
  • Even if you assume (some think of it as being practical, rational), do not make your strategy assuming you win at someone else’s cost
  • Be open to understand the intent and find out what the other party really wants from you
  • Also, be clear on what you can offer to the other party
  • Once understood the core intents, find a midway to ensure that both he teams WIN by co-operating each other, not trying to supersede each other

 

I am sure if you are still reading this by now, you would also have learnt few things out of this.  As usual, I am keen to learn from you so please let me know your views.

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Have breakfast … or … be breakfast!

On February 12, 2010, in Strategy thoughts, by Swapnil
0

BY Y. L. R. MOORTHI
[Management Views from IIMB is an exclusive column written every two weeks by faculty members of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore]

[This very good article was forwarded to me by one of my friends and original article is found on http://www.iimb.ernet.in/node/1820]

Who sells the largest number of cameras in India?

Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones.

Reason being cameras bundled with cellphones are outselling standalone cameras. Now, what prevents the cellphone from replacing the camera outright? Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note.

Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours).

Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India. That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel’s parent) are breathing easy you can’t be farther from truth.

"What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak, explain?" Sony defined its market as audio (music from the walkman). They never expected an IT company like Apple to encroach into their audio domain. Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer maker has both audio and video capabilities. So what made Sony think he won’t compete on pure audio? So also Kodak defined its business as film cameras, Sony defines its businesses as "digital."

In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had to. It did not ask the question "who is my competitor for tomorrow?" The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared "internet is a fad!" and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape. The point is not who is today’s competitor. Today’s competitor is obvious. Tomorrow’s is not.

Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question – "who is my competitor?"

In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India? Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget

So much so, that the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008. (India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if there is one place where Newton’s law of gravity is applicable besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its original level in India. PC’s price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are making money. Then it will surely be RIP!

India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie. Cricket became film’s competitor. On the eve of IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what in India are called 3 hour "tamasha" (entertainment). Cricket season might push films out of the market.

Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years.When did you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is "I don’t remember!" For some time there was a mild substitute for the typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be seen.

One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms." What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!

Future is scary! The boss of an IT company once said something interesting about the animal called competition. He said "Have breakfast …or…. be breakfast"! That sums it up rather neatly.

Success is not something to wait for; it’s something to work for…

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Be LEAN .. this year !

On January 24, 2010, in Business thoughts, Strategy thoughts, Tech thoughts, by Swapnil
0

 

In last few days I have been fortunate enough to participate in the workshop for LEAN service framework. And thus, I am trying to share my experiences and learning on LEAN here.

The LEAN framework originates from the manufacturing system developed by Toyota called Toyota Production System [TPS] that pursues the principle of optimum streamlining throughout the entire system through the thorough elimination of waste and aims to build quality in at the manufacturing process while recognizing the principle of [ongoing] cost reduction. It also includes all the accompanying technology & tools necessary to accomplish those aims.  [Reference .. here]

The process that Toyota developed for Just-in-time production was called TPS until 1990. MIT researchers tossed the term LEAN in their 1990 book called “The Machine that Changed the World” to describe the principles of Toyota Production System. Thereafter, of course, the process was known to the world as LEAN Service Framework.

In a nutshell,

LEAN is an integrated system of principles, work practices & processes that empowers the operational users to drive the relentless pursuit of perfect customer value creation. 

Although LEAN was innovated and started in the manufacturing industry and especially at Toyota, it, over the years grown out of the manufacturing industry and into other verticals, not to mention the IT/BPO industry.

LEAN underpins 5 principles in the framework as follows,

 

Lean Principles

 

 

 

  • Eliminate Waste – As per the LEAN principles, the waste could be due to the idle time spent by the employees waiting for work, or spending extra hours to exceed customer expectations (without customer asking for it), excessive testing etc., activities and all such activities that do not add add direct value to the customers.
  • Eliminate Variability – This talks more about complexity of the work within the team. LEAN suggests eliminating the variability of work done by the employees so that activities & individual performances are streamlined to carry out typical activities. This also talks about the external work that comes within such as ticket trend, business requirements etc., and suggests to streamline.
  • Eliminate Inflexibility – This suggest more about the resources capacity and the work segmentation and align the efforts and create skill pools so as to better utilize the knowledge, performance & work practices against repetitive / common tasks.
  • Performance Management – LEAN suggests to compute the performance of the individuals as well as the team and making the results publish to the individuals / teams and discuss with them on a regular basis. LEAN recommends that regular performance discussions enhances the team morale, gives them goal to enhance performances etc.,
  • Involvement of workers – LEAN, more than a process is more of a philosophy and change in the thinking of the workforce and suggest to have the workforce participate and understand these principles so they themselves are aware of the waste being created around they can eliminate themselves.

 

Many IT companies have implemented LEAN successfully. IBM has been doing the LEAN implementation for the customers since last 3+ years. Over the years, being LEAN organization has been a selling point for the IT vendors and equally the customers have been demanding. 

The benefits of LEAN include reduce waste, reduction of inventory costs, cross trained employees, reduced cycle time & obsolescence, high quality & reliability and may more.

 

This, of course was a drop in the ocean of the knowledge of the LEAN framework, even for me. If you are interested in knowing more and reading more, suggesting the following reading

Principles of LEAN Thinking

Lean Manufacturing  &  Lean Software Development

What is LEAN?

Benefits of LEAN

LEAN – The Machine that changed the world !

Bye the way, if you have read the above carefully, the following video might tell you something.  Have a look (with audio ON) and let me know what you think ?

 

Caltex – going extra mile !
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