Sunday, December 26, 2010

Technology Cell!

The rate of Technological obsolesces is so fast that unless one is updating himself continuously , the organization will be only as good or as bad as the knowledge resource of its people.

Unfortunately the updating of technology is still left to the employees, who largely fancy that, if they have the latest hand phones, or an apple computer ,then they are already technology compliant.

Technology is changing each and every area of our work environment and is changing very very fast. Unfortunately, there is still not a proper mechanism within an organization to keep itself abreast of the latest developments in the area of their business. They would await for someone to either come and educate them or till the technology has scaled to the level that they can adapt it without any risk.

It is about time, where each organization starts with a Technology cell, which continuously monitors the updates on technology in each area of manufacturing or service. This technology cell then periodically ensures that all its managers , supervisors are mapping the inputs to their job functions and the efficiency is clearly showing out in terms of cost reduction, quality improvements or better way of working etc etc. Budgets have to already incorporate upgrades in unforeseen technology and conducive environment has to be designed for easy adaption and exit of old technologies. Incentives have to be designed for any group, which embraces technology which would increase the thru put of the company or cuts a process down or infringes on manual or a mechanical system.

Eg: Each machine could now easily have a energy panel and all panels could easily link to give a consolidated report via wireless to the manager. Monitoring will ensure that the energy consumptions are linear through out the operations and will also show, which machines on account of poor maintenance or belt slippage or poor lubrication etc were consuming average more energy then other machines.

Many many such opportunities exist today to get the system into a technological loop. However, it needs first the right information, then correct mapping to your industry, finally exploiting to get the revenue advantages.

Technology monitoring is a full time job and needs inputs from the global feeds of products, services, developments, researches, etc etc. Smarter companies themselves will post their requirements on their technology needs and find quick solutions.

Textiles does not believe in technology. Machines are loaded with technology and only and only if the machine maker offers something unique, the user having confirmed multiple times will try it out. No one is aggressive enough to themselves design a machine.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Fate Sanctity And Managerial Performance.

Fate is such a powerful tool that no one person can override the embedded code of destiny. One so often comes across people who are less then average, but are in very key positions, very powerful, and draw fancy salaries. On the other side, there are brilliant managers, top school graduates, hands on experience and way ahead of others, but struggling with their jobs.

When I first started my business, I migrated from being a service professional to a business professional. The migration was painful. But one thing which constantly bugged me was about the survival of business itself, forget the growth . I would all the time think, if I had some sure model, which would predict with reasonable accuracy the risk adventure results.

Well, I did not miss out taking astrologers consultation and all the jokers predicted wrongly about my business. Infact , some of them were of global fame and I wrote to them many years later, that they better stop fooling others.

However, from my own childhood, I had an interest in " Palmistry" and I would read the hands of people. With time, I found that I was quite accurate with my readings. It is only, when defying all the astrologers advise and going by my ownhand, I migrated to business, that I started counselling people for Fate Compliance.

Today, I offer " Fate Compliance " service to the corporate sectors, where in I advise the firm that the CEO of the company or any executive is actually fate compliant to run the company successfully. A non compliant CEO will doom the shareholders wealth. I will not name the companies that are my global clients, but my clients have expressed satisfaction with the results so far. Browse my site . www.paybackpalmistry.com


There are also many cases of executives, who were non fate compliant and had to struggle both with the job and the personal lives.

Moreover, the typical hand structure would define the type of job which the person would be most successful. The time, when his fate would retard him and when his fate will accelerate him.

Many Top End Executives hands which I have seen were all qualified as Fate Accelerators. Wherein their fate was taking them to where they were. As person they were actually very average, but their Fate had moved them to a position of envy.

It does not hurt sometime to get yourself Fate Approved for a New Job.

EQ + IQ = MQ

EQ is the Emotional Quotient of the Manager.
IQ is the Intelligence Quotient of the Manager.

When EQ is added to IQ, the result is MQ = Managerial Quotient .

IQ is pumped via the schools and the general intelligence of the person. But when it comes to EQ, there has never been a serious effort on the part of the society to factor it as a part of schooling and personality development.

In my other blog, " Life is Beautiful" I had once written about " Optimum- The child Development Code " and now I would add EQ balance as another primary input for a rational society to develop.

One of the most important missing element in the Managerial Quality has been the EQ. The emotional self of the managers are generally biased as per the environment in which they grew up. If it was urban or rural or violent or peaceful or fast or slow or rich or poor etc etc.

This EQ quotient then defines the management style of the person. Considering that the the IQ of most managers is at the same level, the management style gets reflected by the EQ, which at the moment has no real measure .

A low risk taker manager will postpone key growth investment decisions and will find enough escuses to delay jobs.

A high risk taker will jump, without much analysis and the middle ground managers are anyway most dangerous. They are called the 50:50 Managers. Neither here, nor there.
They are just talkers and will keep blaming one or the other thing for poor growth.

Coming back to EQ: Till we choose to define an optimum manager , the EQ is only a relative term. EQ will factor the behavior, risk abilities, foresight, extreme conditions tolerance, human capital development, innovation, ability to find clarity in clutter , technology savvy etc etc. The list can be improvized and plotted to scale a " Good For Time " manager.

MQ will then be a least score, which one has to qualify to be able to supervize a team with targets and resources.

EQ has to start from the primary classes, where behaviroal sciences have to be given the top score and even with mediocre IQ students ,the EQ will still go and make a very fine society/ organization. EQ would teach the students the diversity of nature and its significance and the respect which each element of nature deserves to develop a true harmonous society. Currently, this is being left to the discipline in the class and the religious beliefs of the people.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Y2K Bugged Managers

We all recall, the Y2K bug , which was to end the whole computing systems, crash planes, run machines amuk and abruptly shoot out missiles. Thankfully , nothing happened and we all transcended to the safe havens of year 2000.

But there was one thing , which actually changed the world since the advent of year 2000. This was, the " Arrival Of A New World"

The pace of change of technology since year 2000 is like one year growth is = 10 years of growth before year 2000. This itself was a big crash for those who refused to change their ways of life, thinking and adaption to the new world.

So, for me there are managers , who are profiled before the year 2000 and there are managers , who are profiled after the year 2000. The one who are profiled after 2000 are technology savvy, connected to the new world with all the modern technologies and are quickly putting these technologies into their work place and making the system more efficient . Each process, system, technology, machine after the year 2000 has become so much different from the ones before the year 2000.

So, the first thing, I check on any company, is the machines running in that company are made after the year 2000 or before the year 2000. If before, then it is way too antiquated. Because even after 2000, we are one decade afar and which is equal to 100 years away from the current technologies.

More is complex about the generation of managers, who now lead the organization, but were profiled to built companies on the last century. For them, most of the developments are way so fast that it is beyond their understanding.

These are the Y2K Bugged Managers.

leadership

The more you read about leadership, the more puzzling it is. Every Manager latently believes that he is the best leader, the team ever had. Or is He ?

Leadership has to be captured out of Politicians, State Heads, History , Sports and Science.

History is the open secret and the first source of information as to what kind of people finally became leaders. The more you dig , the more you find that most leaders were those who had a large following. And most of these of these followings was that of actually foolish, ( Better term would be Blind ) but goal driven and motivated to fall behind their leader , no matter, how much wrong or right that person may have been.

The key elements of all the leaders were.

Exceptionally Good Orator
Selling Dreams, ( which of course will never come out true)
Wielding Power with Iron Hand.
Keeping the people in a stage of Idealism. ( Idealism as per the ideas of the leader)

In Management, the situation is actually not any different. Depending upon, how well you can exercise the above four variables to your advantage, the better leader you would be in the long run.

Rest you should be able to speak tons and tons of words , which no one can understand, but sound very impressive on initiatives, economy, markets, policies, government, technology, IT etc etc.

In a world, where One Up Manship is the rule, then exception the leader has to find his position out of strength. And remind himself consistently on Darwin's Corporate Theory on " Survival of the Meanest"

If I was to design a leader, I would still count on the following variables.

1. Knowledgeable : Meaning well educated and with hands on experience.
2. Kind : Meaning shows sensitively to the needs of his team, not necessarily meaning extra incentives or bonuses or rewards , but providing the required resource for a fair growth opportunity.
3. Powerful : Covers risk adequately and takes quick action against any human, capital or plan failure.

By default, if you are leading a team without the knowledge and the resource , then the only variable, which works is the " Power " There are situations, wherein a person is advised to take up a job, where he has zero knowledge and is given low resources. In such an event "Power " is a very good tool to keep the place going.

Leaders are Borne, not Made. Give Birth to your leadership now.

The best leaders, which History remembers are still those, who have their profile cut out on Oration , Power, Idealism and Dreams. Rest is all ideology and self satisfaction. For a commercial enterprise, the value of a person is only till he is contributing to the shareholders wealth. His value to the society is when he has contributed to the uplifting of the society at large.

It is somewhat strange that people from middle class rarely become leaders. Either in corporate sector or social life. Middle class continuously pushes a person towards follower ship and idealism. Rarely ever breeds Frontal Lead Players who can take risk and reap the rewards. Middle class is totally risk averse simply for the reason that they can never afford to loose the little that they have to keep up a social well being face before the Consumer world. And leadership is about loosing a ton, before rising to take over the world. The lower class has nothing more to loose and the Higher class don't care much, if some gets lost. Therefore, technically ,these are two basic classes which come out with the Best Leaders. Whether it is Obama to be cited or Lincoln or Bush.

Middle class leaders like Mr Man Mohan Singh ( PM of India ) can be best seen as Line Man in Leadership. If only Lalu Yadav was made the PM against him, he would have still taken many drastic decisions, whether good or bad. But Mr Man Mohan Singh, a professor of economics himself and in the highest position of the country, yet could not dismantle the bureaucracy and corruption. Simply because Middle class is not just risk averse, but within its own heart a very coward species . And leadership demands Leading From The Front with Valor and Strength.

Hence, first step to leadership is to Break Off from the Middle Class Thinking.

Empathy - A Trap

Human Resource Understanding is by far the most complex senstivity, which a Manager needs to develop. The more adept he is in mapping the conduct and capability of a person and maximizes his output to the benefit of the organization, the more successful team he builds.

One of the biggest traps,which we all fall into is the " Empathy " . The social, moral and political values of ours continously drag us to point towards being sensitive to the issues of a person. Sometimes these issues are realistic , but most of the times, these are only the economic and social weaknesses, which the manager tries to cover with his flexible oversight of work quality , expenses or behavior .

I recall , all my executives over inflated their travel expense statements. I still signed it and allowed the little extras to be taken by them, though I knew, it was an unfair reward. However, since the salaries of these executives was quite low, I would still ignore the inflated expenses. In the long run, the executives started disproportionately charging the expenses and it became a virus difficult to control. Second, having tasted blood, most of these exeutives later were finding it difficult to manage with the real situation. This was the cost of " Empathy "

But Empathy is most complicated with the Labour Force. Every single day, all of us try to give a little more to our workers. More out of sensitivity to his condition and less on account of his productivity and behavior. But the same worker, then stands up against us and fights that the little extra, which we gave as our generosity is now his right and infact, he actually deserves to get the same as the MD of the company. Here Empathy is the biggest Trap. Even the smallest gesture of goodwill extended to a worker can then become a major cause of conflict.

Somedays back, I was watching a movie on HBO. I dont really recall the name. Wherein a US Millionaire lady steps out to the Latin America to see the sufferring of the people outside US. Within the first month of watching and listening stories of rape, crime, drugs, cheating, corruption she is a pshyic case. But the most interesting line in the movie was. " Poverty is less of a curse to a person who was experiencing it, but more of a curse to those who see it around them "

In my own personal experience, my biggest waterloo in my management style was my spirtualism. What I considered as my spirtual duty to service people around me of higher order then maximizing the profit of the share holders. Later turned out that the very same set of people considered me a weak manager and started exploiting the generosities that I was extending to these low performing executives. Finally, ofcourse all of them paid a heavy price for their misdeamenour.

The reason, I am sharing this is to keep all the readers enriched with this experience, that " Empathy" is a Trap and do not allow it to overtake your professional decisions, no matter, how compelling the situation.

Do not try to be a social reformer or play Godfather in Business. Motivation of a team does not need empathy. It needs success as the driver of any job.