Prevention is better than cure- do we care!

Every time you came running into the house and looked to grab that icy cold bottle of water from the refrigerator, your mom would yell at you, trying to save you from falling sick with a sore throat and fever...

Your mom telling you not to eat that roadside treat or you may end up with an upset stomach...

Your dad telling you to drive carefully on your return from that late night get together with friends...

        ...these are just some manifestations of the age old adage- “Prevention is better than cure”.

Like all the parental wisdom, you actually realize the truth behind those words only when you have gone through most of your life or when you end up with a not so pleasant experience in life.

Now if we were take this thought- “ Prevention is better than cure” a little further and extend it to an organizational context, I think we would be hitting a sweet spot of “SIMPLE TO UNDERSTAND AND EASY TO IMPLEMENT” advice. Most organizational initiatives or strategies (for lack of a simpler word) fail or do not achieve the desired success because of one simple reason and that is – that they are just too complicated to understand and warrant a whole lot of effort in implementation. Imagine sitting through classes on competency definition and identification for three days and then being faced with a super complicated performance appraisal system which utilizes complicated behavioural algorithms to map individuals competency scores to the skills required. Sure does sound very scary!!

So, the point is, that if you want something to be done make sure you keep it “SIMPLE TO UNDERSTAND AND EASY TO IMPLEMENT”.

 I digress, now coming back to topic at hand...

This simple piece of advice – Prevention is better than cure, if followed by our managers, would go a long way in helping them overcome most of the challenges that they may face in their day to day activities such as attrition, falling productivity, negative talk in the team, failing customer service etc.

If we just take attrition as an example, Google throws up nearly 25, 10,000.00 (25Lac+) search results when you type the phrase-“cost of hiring a new employee”. Similarly, if you type the phrase- “cost of employee attrition” it flashes about 583,000 results (nearly 6.0Lac). There is so much being said about the financial impact of attrition and how it affects the bottom line. If only our managers remembered that- Prevention Is Better than Cure, we would have been looking at a different story. A self aware manager i.e. one who understands his/her managerial style (& pitfalls) and at the same time understands his/her team members better would not need so much research to understand what he/she loses every time a team member walks out of the door. A self aware and sensitive manager can identify the team members’ hot buttons and work towards creating a work environment which challenges and adds value to them every day. Thereby, impacting the employees’ wellbeing at the workplace & beyond and creating a work environment which creates an internal pull and thus prevents an employee from attriting.

Similarly, falling team engagement and/or poor role fitment could be a cause of dropping productivity and poor customer service and hence if our manager is pro active in understanding his/her people, makes sure his people have adequate support to carry out their duties effectively and provides regular positive reinforcements to them, the situation will be very different. These very people could be utilized to their fullest potential in jobs that they love. Once again, creating an environment which prevents negativity and leverages a pro-active approach to team management, which in turn ensures that we have a set of engaged people looking to delight their customers every time they touch them.

These little pro-active and positive strokes which just require some conscious doing on the part of our managers could go a long way in helping us create teams, organizations, communities and subsequently nations of people who follow an approach to life which prevents negativity and creates a positive impact in every life it touches.

So next time your team mate comes back to you and tells you that he could not meet his number for this quarter, just before you decide to wear your ass hole hat, remind yourself- Prevention is better than cure, prevent feeding your negative side and ask him why he could not meet his target and you may actually see a different story in the next quarter.

Advice for life: Prevent negativity and you will cure your life of all ills, till there aren't anymore ills to cure and you have a life full of positive energy.

Asking the right questions to get the right answers: A book of questions!

Consultants, research experts and industry leaders would tell you that if you want right answers, you have to ask the right questions. In this book from the Employee Engagement Network, 96 members of the network come together to share their views on the right questions to get the right answers which can help you create a truly engaged and productive workplace.

Members of the network have contributed to help you find questions that leaders, managers and organizations need to ponder upon to create a work environment which creates a engaging experience for its stakeholders.

Please click here to read the book.

In my contribution to the book, I have posed a question for our managers to think about:

• For the manager: Does everyone in my team have the opportunity to maximize their individual talent? 

Special thanks to the great David Zinger for putting together this network of like minded people and contributing so much to the subject.

I hope this gets you thinking and encourages you to identify and define questions that will get you the RIGHT answers!!

"Execution" advantage for growth

He graduated at the top of his class from Harvard Business School and started his career as a management trainee at Gestner Electronics, one of the world’s leading consumer durables manufacturers with operations spread across five continents. His hard work, dedication and commitment saw him grow to the position of COO of the same company in a short span of ten years. He was recognized as a “hi-po” and a “fast tracker” by all.

With such an impressive track record, Mr. Skinner had all the makings to lead a growing organization into the next era of growth. His experience of handling size, scale & diversity and his ability to overcome cultural barriers was seen as his greatest asset.

The board at Nate Electronics saw him as their first choice to replace their retiring and very successful CEO Mark Weiner. Headquartered in New Jersey, Nate Electronics was a growing consumer durables company. Ranked number three in the pecking order of the best in the world in terms of sales, Nate Electronics was seen as a progressive organization, always at the forefront of bringing game changing products to the marketplace. Mark Weiner was seen as the chief architect of this success story and Skinner was seen as a capable successor to usher in the next phase of growth at Nate and make it number one in the world.

Mr. Skinner took over from Mark and promised to carry forward the legacy of innovation and fast growth.

Before his first meeting with his team, Skinner spent time reviewing the numbers and outlined the targets that he wanted them to chase for the next year. After all, he was a fast tracker and nothing excited him more than to see that sales graph move upwards and it had to move very quickly for him, to showcase to the board that they had made the right choice.

After a round of customary introductions and a brief download on the progress in the various departments, Skinner outlined his vision for the organization for the next year and put forward the figures he had worked out for his team. There was a silent acceptance of what was put forward for them to chase and Skinner felt confident of his ability to achieve the aggressive target he had set for himself and the team.

At the quarterly leadership team meeting the numbers showed a significant drop in sales, the PE ratio also had taken a beating and the customer satisfactions scores were also witnessing a not so healthy movement in the wrong direction. Something was seriously wrong with the way things were looking, Skinner was fairly confident of the numbers and plans he had laid out for his team and he was not sure what was it that was going wrong. Every time a division head got up from his/her seat to share his/her report he/she got crushed for what he/she was putting forth.

What was it that was going wrong with Mr. Skinner’s ambitious and aggressive plans?

He had a successful track record and illustrious educational pedigree to back him. His experience with the best in the world had taught him all the tricks of trade that were to be learnt, his marketing acumen was considered to be the best in the industry. In fact, Times magazine had ranked him as the 5th most promising young CEO in USA in their last edition.

One of the worst quarters in the history of Nate, right at the outset was not a pleasant sign. He had joined Nate amidst much fan fare and he was sure that one more such a quarter and he would be soon packing his bags.

So what was it that had led to this sudden demise of Skinner’s plans?? Is it the market, is it the people in his team or is it his ability to execute.

In my opinion, the program plaguing Nate Electronics is very much similar to what most of our modern day organizations are facing and i.e. lack of effective execution.

Before outlining the numbers and plans for growth of the divisions, Mr. Skinner never took into account the organizational capabilities to achieve those numbers and execute those plans. Organizational capability to produce the required number of products, service the customers, hire the right people and manage their expectations etc. was never considered.

I talked about aligning critical business levers for successfully achieving business results in my last post and that is one critical aspect of execution. Same plan could have been made into a success story with a focus on aligning business levers and achieving effective execution at the outset.

He would have benefited greatly, if he would have spent time with each of his division heads reviewing the ongoing activities and taking their progress and pace of growth into account before devising the organizational roadmap for the next year. This would have also given him a peek into the capabilities of people leading those divisions and thereby enabling him to better plan for effective execution keeping in mind the leaders strengths and areas of improvement.

In addition to defining the outcomes, Skinner should have worked with his team to identify critical in-between milestones and frequencies at which those will be tracked to ensure that the teams were on target to achieve their goals or not. Herein also, fixing accountabilities amongst his team members would have helped him  to pin point responsibilities and track progress to avoid unpleasant surprises at the end of the year.

Furthermore, he would have gained significantly if he was not only tracking the outcomes that his team was achieving (or not) but also by asking “Why” outcomes were not being achieved. This would have gone a long way in ironing out the hurdles that were holding back the progress.

Most CEO’s consider themselves to be responsible for devising strategies, interpreting complicated strategies and planning smart moves. They assume execution to be the job of the next line of leadership. This however, could prove to be a grave misconception as was proved in the case of Mr. Skinner. Hence, if a CEO wants to see results he better brace himself up for bringing execution capabilities to the table because without execution focus and ability to execute a strategy is simply “no good”. 

Learning's  for Mr. Skinner (and for all of us):

1. Take into account the organizational capabilities at every level before devising a strategy
2. Buy-in of the team is critical to ensure successful execution  
3. Have right people in the right roles and fix accountabilities  
4. Define critical milestones on the road to achievement of outcomes to avoid surprises  
5. Why and how of achievement/non-achievement provides critical lessons for improvement

Must Read: 12 Things Good Bosses Believe- By Bob Sutton, Harvard Business Review Blog

Bob Sutton, Harvard Business Review Blog: 12 Things Good Bosses Believe -  I have been a regular follower of Bob's work on his blog Work Matters and this article on HBR Blogs is a surefire thought provoking master piece. Bob puts himself in the shoes of the boss and identifies 12 things good bosses believe.