As the US Recession Looms..
Like a dark cloud over our business plans…. it would be well to pause and consider how to make it go away. Wherever I talk to Indian CEOs, I get the impression they are just crossing their fingers and hoping it goes away by itself. Which it won’t. Even if does this time, it will come and hover over us again, sooner or later..Of course, there is a silver lining even in this cloud - the recession will most likely reduce US consumption, close the current account deficit, and stabilize the dollar.. at a cost.
Will the $700 Billion bailout do the trick? Very unlikely..banks are using the money to make acquisitions, pay bonuses, not make loans. Which was completely predictable.
Cutting interest rates isn’t going to help, either. When financial institutions are afraid to lend and people are afraid to borrow, in what Paul Krugman calls a ‘Crisis of Faith’, fiddling with the Federal Funds rate will be about as effective as Nero’s fiddling was. The engine oil has gotten contaminated this time (for that is what the financial markets really are), and only a complete cleaning out of the engine will help. Which will take time.
Europe is not the answer
One common ploy, not even easy to adopt, really, is to shift focus to European markets rather than the US. Which provides zero diversification, since the European economy runs on pretty much the same engine as the US.
So let us dismiss these easy answers and bend our minds to what an Indian company, acting on its own, can do.
Tighten the Belt?
Always a good thing to do, any company can shed 10% of its cost without any real pain, anyway. This is as good an opportunity as any to remind IT’s so-called ‘knowledge workers’ that 20% raises year after year, for doing the exact same work they did last year, is not the natural order of things. But not everyone has been so lucky, especially in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors, so belt tightening can only go so far.
Risk-Sharing
When our US client is nervous and unwilling to invest, and so puts his own expansion plans on hold, the one thing we can do is propose something different than the tried and tested ‘time and materials’ or even ‘price for guaranteed volumes’ proposition. It may not be enough to point out that outsourcing will save him money – when he is contemplating 100% saving by not launching that expansion or change initiative at all!
We must realize that the client is really not sure, either, whether the recession is for real, and, even if it is, whether it will affect his business, or not. Hedging his bets is what he is contemplating. How can we help him move forward?
Can we offer him a business proposition where we share risk - share in the upside (and downside) rather than simply get a fixed revenue and manage costs (which is all most Indian companies do, even the best of them)?. For instance, IT services company need to start offering customers a fee per user (customer’s customer) or royalty models rather than ’60 man-months to build this system’. If the client does well, we do well. Needless to say, it also means we have to
- learn how to assess the client’s prospects in his market
- learn how to actually help him sell better in his markets
Which means we will have to think like venture capitalists and investors rather than suppliers! Quite a change, but well within our capabilities. We just need to use them.
Build Brands
One great business value of brands is that they are relatively immune to economy-wide downturns. The emotional hold they have on customers is such that they can make the customer forget their hard times when they buy them.
Indian companies have stayed away from building brands abroad because it is enormously expensive to do so. But increasingly, it is within the reach of Indian companies today. If Tata can buy Corus for several billion dollars, surely we can invest in some brand building too. Spending a couple of million dollars on a brand building effort was unthinkable ten years ago, today it is not. It does not take months of negotiation with the RBI to get the funds for such an effort, and access to advertising and marketing companies abroad is not even difficult any more. .So what excuse do we have now? Indeed, companies like Suzlon, Infosys and TVS already have good brands in their markets, without really investing millions in marketing efforts.
In a a way, both solutions really rest on the same principle – partners do better in a downturn than mere suppliers do. It is time to pay more than lip-service to the notion of being ‘preferred partner’.. move it from the corporate ppt to reality!
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Developing Arjunas
When a largish IT company in Pune, India, asked me to put together a development program to create the next generation of leaders who would take the company into the next orbit of growth, we made a conscious decision NOT to call it a 'Management Program', for it is doubtful if conventional 'managers' are needed in today's time and age.. neither did we want to call it a 'leadership' program, for that is another over-used term - what use are leaders without followers? And is it not leaders who have brought the world to its current sorry state?
In the Mahabharata, the central figure of Arjuna inspired us. In this epic, Arjuna is portrayed as the confluence of three streams - Karmayoga (the yoga of action), Gnananyoga (the yoga of knowledge/understanding) and Bhaktiyoga (the yoga of devotion).. loosely translated, we thought Arjuna presented the epitome of what an organization needs today: someone who acts, with understanding, and yet knows why he is acting - that is, infused with the right values.
The single biggest problem with management education today (I speak from the experience of having taught for 10 years at IIM Ahmedabad, India's premier management school and in countless executive development programs across the world) is the inability of management education to instill a sense of purpose, ethics and purposeful vision in students.
We followed the following Guiding Principles:
1. select students who have already shown they are capable, in their current jobs
2. drip irrigation is the best irrigation
3. every student learns differently - the program is about helping them learn, not about us teaching
4. we learn best at the periphery of our current experience
5. concepts need to be provided when the student really needs them, not when it suits some logical structure the instructor has dreamed up
6. in every thing the student does, he/she needs to consider the value system he is explicitly or implicitly espousing.
The program ran over a year. Broadly, there were three modules:
1. Building Perspective: understanding self, and understanding the world. Participants read novels, watched movies, visited other organizations, and kept a daily diary. They went through a theatre workshop to learn how to create context and how to communicate in many dimensions, and also to feel comfortable with themselves.
2. Tools for Analysis and Synthesis - we bagan with the big picture and then drilled down - strategy, building business plans, first, then business processes, organization design, marketing, and so on - rather than the other way around.
3. Action projects - participants had to undertake a change project in the company. Inputs on dialogue, negotiation, selling skills, how to run meetings - were provided when the project's success demanded it, rather than in some logical order. Every participant also had to write a story, from his or her experience in the organization, that illustrated the organization's core value system. We believe culture is best built with stories, not a list of corporate values.
We will finally evaluate the program one year later - on a series of measures that test whether participants have really grown into the next big role, faster than they would otherwise have. The usual 'feedback' taken after the program is of no value, we felt, since this is not an entertainment program!
In the Mahabharata, the central figure of Arjuna inspired us. In this epic, Arjuna is portrayed as the confluence of three streams - Karmayoga (the yoga of action), Gnananyoga (the yoga of knowledge/understanding) and Bhaktiyoga (the yoga of devotion).. loosely translated, we thought Arjuna presented the epitome of what an organization needs today: someone who acts, with understanding, and yet knows why he is acting - that is, infused with the right values.
The single biggest problem with management education today (I speak from the experience of having taught for 10 years at IIM Ahmedabad, India's premier management school and in countless executive development programs across the world) is the inability of management education to instill a sense of purpose, ethics and purposeful vision in students.
We followed the following Guiding Principles:
1. select students who have already shown they are capable, in their current jobs
2. drip irrigation is the best irrigation
3. every student learns differently - the program is about helping them learn, not about us teaching
4. we learn best at the periphery of our current experience
5. concepts need to be provided when the student really needs them, not when it suits some logical structure the instructor has dreamed up
6. in every thing the student does, he/she needs to consider the value system he is explicitly or implicitly espousing.
The program ran over a year. Broadly, there were three modules:
1. Building Perspective: understanding self, and understanding the world. Participants read novels, watched movies, visited other organizations, and kept a daily diary. They went through a theatre workshop to learn how to create context and how to communicate in many dimensions, and also to feel comfortable with themselves.
2. Tools for Analysis and Synthesis - we bagan with the big picture and then drilled down - strategy, building business plans, first, then business processes, organization design, marketing, and so on - rather than the other way around.
3. Action projects - participants had to undertake a change project in the company. Inputs on dialogue, negotiation, selling skills, how to run meetings - were provided when the project's success demanded it, rather than in some logical order. Every participant also had to write a story, from his or her experience in the organization, that illustrated the organization's core value system. We believe culture is best built with stories, not a list of corporate values.
We will finally evaluate the program one year later - on a series of measures that test whether participants have really grown into the next big role, faster than they would otherwise have. The usual 'feedback' taken after the program is of no value, we felt, since this is not an entertainment program!
Patterns of growth: Learning from Nature
Patterns of Growth
We all want to grow, grow, grow. But is there only one way to grow? How does an oak tree grow? A honeycomb? Are they all the same? Clearly, Nature has found many different ways, different patterns, of growth.. But we think companies can grow only one way.
Let us look at some (for it is impossible to exhaust them all!) in turn.
The Oak Tree
The oak tree grows by accretion – every year, it adds a ring to its trunk and becomes thicker and thicker, until it becomes a giant.
This is actually the most common way a company grows.. become bigger but essentially along the same lines, always. We add markets, add products, the way an oak tree adds rings, over time, without changing anything in the basic architecture of the organism.
What are the special issues of managing such a growth pattern? What makes an oak tree strong?
- A strong trunk: i.e., a strong sense of ‘core’, great clarity on what is our business and what isn’t
- An equally strong sense of values
- And operating processes
As more and more businesses are added, the older businesses should not require attention.. their environment should be stable and unshakeable.
The Banyan Tree
The Banyan’s pattern of growth is totally different from that of the mighty oak. It creates replicas of itself, increasing its span, until, in the end, you cannot even tell the daughter from the mother tree. Each tree is self-sustaining, yet bound to its mother and its siblings, and ever ready to spread out again.
To follow this model, a company would keep creating self-sustaining businesses over time, and yet retain a strong sense of connectedness. Perhaps a company like Matsushita would answer to this description, with its penchant for spinning off new divisions, each held together only by finance, and a shared value system.
How does one manage such a growth?
- Creation of an infinite pool of entrepreneurs, each of whom can run a business independently
- Who are yet held together by shared values
- A commitment to support each spin-off with nourishment from the center until it stabilizes
When would such a model make sense? Clearly, where the environment creates new opportunities, each of whom are unrelated to each other, yet need to be part of a common ‘umbrella’ brand. Perhaps GE is another example of such a model.
The Beehive
More accurately, the Swarm of Bees. The beehive is created by hundreds of independent workers – no one of them has the knowledge and capability or even intelligence to build a hive, yet, together, they do it effortlessly. Where, in business, do we see this model in action? Perhaps the now-famous dabba wallas of Mumbai. Some religious organizations have this capability, perhaps Al Qaeda does, for all I know!
In a company, the closest I have seen to this model, is Polaris Software’s Lakshya process – a visioning exercise involving every last employee in the firm (all several thousand of them!), which tries to tap the collective consciousness of all of them. The result is not a business plan or even a written document, it is simply a collective consciousness.
Consulting companies like McKinsey may be another example – the collective knowledge and capability of ‘the firm’ is several orders of magnitude greater than that of any one set of consultant.
A ‘knowledge economy’ enterprise should probably look like this. Knowledge management is a very key management process in such companies. Like the Queen Bee of the beehive, whose role is really largely symbolic, the CEO or head of such a company should learn to be a good figurehead, symbol and role model, rather than attempt to direct and govern.
The Tornado (or Cyclone)
A tornado grows by gathering everything in its path, and somehow generating more and more energy as it roars along. A company that grows by furious acquisitions may be patterning itself after a tornado. It must be very uncomfortable to be swept up in a tornado, but it did transport Dorothy to the Land of Oz, remember! A tornado succeeds by its very fury, if it stops, it is lost. A company that grows like this cannot afford to pause and consolidate, it needs to keep moving, and roaring along.
A Virus
Perhaps the most successful creatures on earth are viruses. They grow by multiplying at a dizzying speed – once a single virus gets a host to grow in, it soon takes over the entire organism by producing millions of copies of itself – an illustration of the power of compounding if ever there was one.
What are the secrets to its success? Simplicity of structure is surely one – the simpler the structure, the easier it is to produce a full-blown copy, and faster. Can a business organization ever be simple enough to replicate like this? Perhaps communities of Indians who have settled down in far off shores like Kenya or Latin America have shown the ability to grow like this.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Building Corporate Culture
Building a Corporate Culture
What makes a company great is a great culture. The world changes, strategies change, business models change, ‘theory of business’ changes, but the same company has to deal with all of them, live through them, thrive in all of them. The only way a company, an organization, can survive and even thrive, through all these changes, is if it has a strong culture, a strong sense of what it is, why it is, and what will never change about it.
Tatas and HLL, GE and P&G, IBM and Apple.. great companies have a great culture.
What is culture? How can it be built? Can it be built?
Stories are the fabric of culture
Whenever you ask – ‘what is the Tata culture?’ you will be told a story, a story about how JRD set up the first airline, or how Dr. Irani moved his board to make the changes Tata Steel needed to become the world’s most competitive steel company. It seems we human beings can only understand culture through stories. Perhaps culture is so rich it can only be pointed to, not really explained. Perhaps it is so varied that we can only see a glimpse of it at a time, through one incident, one parable.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan’s fascinating book ‘The case of the Bonsai Manager’ is a fine example of this very effective story-telling.
Ramayana or Mahabharata?
Even more than the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is used again and again in India, to illustrate how a person should behave. The ideal of Sita is held up to all women in India, just as Rama is depicted as the ideal ruler, the ideal son the ideal husband. Nobody talks of ‘Yudhishtira-rajya’, but everyone talks of ‘Ramrajya’. The importance of the Ramayana is surely as a holder of values and culture, through its repository of stories, more than anything else.
Don’t be too subtle
What makes the Ramayana so useful as a conveyor of values, of culture? First of all, it is a simple story, it has none of the nuances the Mahabharata has – was the Pandava’s claim to the throne of the Kurus really legitimate? Was Bhima right to strike Duryodhana ‘below the belt’? – very few of these questions arise in the Ramayana .
The first virtue of a good ‘culture story’ then, is simplicity. It should be a ‘case study’ not a ‘case’! It should bring tears to the eyes, not spark a debate!
Create larger than life characters
Rama himself is ‘larger than life’, we all know we cannot be Rama, yet we think we can be ‘like’ him. Does anyone really aspire to be ‘like Arjuna?” I doubt it.
Of course, the most obvious candidates for protagonist are the company’s founders, and the CEO. It is easy enough to make heroes of them (and to get funding for such projects!). Unfortunately, current CEOs are all too visible, everyone knows their foibles, and if their actual life is quite different than what the story makes it out to be, all you will get is sniggers and rolling eyes if you try to weave stories around them. My experience is that, if you are selecting a CEO to write about, choose one who is a bit removed, preferably retired some time ago! Even today, stories are told at EDS about Ross Perot, though Ross has long left EDS and even founded a rival company! But his very distance helps to create a myth around him.
Make heroes of ordinary people
Ordinary people do heroic deeds every day. Every company has salespeople who enter a completely uncharted territory, service engineers who give their lives for a customer, plant construction teams who cross a flooding river to meet a deadline. I have heard of several such stories, as an outsider, teaching programs at companies like L&T and ABB, for instance, so it cannot be too hard to find such stories.
Building the Repository
Assign someone very well networked in the company, highly respected in the corporate staff, to write the stories. Never try to hire a ‘professional’ writer – it takes years to build the repository and it is very much a ‘hit or miss’ affair. The person you choose should love to write, have a keen ear for a good story, and also have the ability to judge what use a story can be put to. The writer should necessarily have an intuitive understanding of the company culture, else he/she will have no inner compass to judge stories by.
At the end of every off-site management meeting, set aside time for a story-telling session. Stories flow best after a few drinks!
Use ‘employee of the month’ award functions, team excellence award functions as opportunities to collect stories about ordinary people and their daily heroics. Our ‘writer’ should make a point of attending all such functions, and talking to the award winners afterwards, to try to ‘get the story’.
Start writing even if there is nothing to write about. Once two or three stories get written and published, people begin to see the point and start contributing their stories.
Keep all stories short, they should be amenable to being told in two minutes, and occupy no more than half a written page. Complex stories are not only ineffective, they can get changed and lose their punch over time as the story is told and retold.
Don’t start with preconceptions about the ‘point’ of the story, look for good human interest stories – the picture will begin to build all by itself.
Using the Stories
Induction: many years ago, my induction program with EDS in Dallas consisted almost exclusively of stories, all of which I remember to this day.
When a senior ‘lateral’ manager is brought in, the book of stories should be given to him personally by the CEO and he should be invited to comment on them. This is, of course, only a subtle way to communicate the stories to him!
There should be a small number, say 2-3 stories that everyone knows. Over time, the most effective couple of stories will emerge by themselves, but it is necessary to look for the ‘emerging winners’ and enshrine them as ‘the corporate stories’
I know of no other way to build a culture. It is not guaranteed, but it is fun, and it sometimes works! So try it!
What makes a company great is a great culture. The world changes, strategies change, business models change, ‘theory of business’ changes, but the same company has to deal with all of them, live through them, thrive in all of them. The only way a company, an organization, can survive and even thrive, through all these changes, is if it has a strong culture, a strong sense of what it is, why it is, and what will never change about it.
Tatas and HLL, GE and P&G, IBM and Apple.. great companies have a great culture.
What is culture? How can it be built? Can it be built?
Stories are the fabric of culture
Whenever you ask – ‘what is the Tata culture?’ you will be told a story, a story about how JRD set up the first airline, or how Dr. Irani moved his board to make the changes Tata Steel needed to become the world’s most competitive steel company. It seems we human beings can only understand culture through stories. Perhaps culture is so rich it can only be pointed to, not really explained. Perhaps it is so varied that we can only see a glimpse of it at a time, through one incident, one parable.
Mr. Gopalakrishnan’s fascinating book ‘The case of the Bonsai Manager’ is a fine example of this very effective story-telling.
Ramayana or Mahabharata?
Even more than the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is used again and again in India, to illustrate how a person should behave. The ideal of Sita is held up to all women in India, just as Rama is depicted as the ideal ruler, the ideal son the ideal husband. Nobody talks of ‘Yudhishtira-rajya’, but everyone talks of ‘Ramrajya’. The importance of the Ramayana is surely as a holder of values and culture, through its repository of stories, more than anything else.
Don’t be too subtle
What makes the Ramayana so useful as a conveyor of values, of culture? First of all, it is a simple story, it has none of the nuances the Mahabharata has – was the Pandava’s claim to the throne of the Kurus really legitimate? Was Bhima right to strike Duryodhana ‘below the belt’? – very few of these questions arise in the Ramayana .
The first virtue of a good ‘culture story’ then, is simplicity. It should be a ‘case study’ not a ‘case’! It should bring tears to the eyes, not spark a debate!
Create larger than life characters
Rama himself is ‘larger than life’, we all know we cannot be Rama, yet we think we can be ‘like’ him. Does anyone really aspire to be ‘like Arjuna?” I doubt it.
Of course, the most obvious candidates for protagonist are the company’s founders, and the CEO. It is easy enough to make heroes of them (and to get funding for such projects!). Unfortunately, current CEOs are all too visible, everyone knows their foibles, and if their actual life is quite different than what the story makes it out to be, all you will get is sniggers and rolling eyes if you try to weave stories around them. My experience is that, if you are selecting a CEO to write about, choose one who is a bit removed, preferably retired some time ago! Even today, stories are told at EDS about Ross Perot, though Ross has long left EDS and even founded a rival company! But his very distance helps to create a myth around him.
Make heroes of ordinary people
Ordinary people do heroic deeds every day. Every company has salespeople who enter a completely uncharted territory, service engineers who give their lives for a customer, plant construction teams who cross a flooding river to meet a deadline. I have heard of several such stories, as an outsider, teaching programs at companies like L&T and ABB, for instance, so it cannot be too hard to find such stories.
Building the Repository
Assign someone very well networked in the company, highly respected in the corporate staff, to write the stories. Never try to hire a ‘professional’ writer – it takes years to build the repository and it is very much a ‘hit or miss’ affair. The person you choose should love to write, have a keen ear for a good story, and also have the ability to judge what use a story can be put to. The writer should necessarily have an intuitive understanding of the company culture, else he/she will have no inner compass to judge stories by.
At the end of every off-site management meeting, set aside time for a story-telling session. Stories flow best after a few drinks!
Use ‘employee of the month’ award functions, team excellence award functions as opportunities to collect stories about ordinary people and their daily heroics. Our ‘writer’ should make a point of attending all such functions, and talking to the award winners afterwards, to try to ‘get the story’.
Start writing even if there is nothing to write about. Once two or three stories get written and published, people begin to see the point and start contributing their stories.
Keep all stories short, they should be amenable to being told in two minutes, and occupy no more than half a written page. Complex stories are not only ineffective, they can get changed and lose their punch over time as the story is told and retold.
Don’t start with preconceptions about the ‘point’ of the story, look for good human interest stories – the picture will begin to build all by itself.
Using the Stories
Induction: many years ago, my induction program with EDS in Dallas consisted almost exclusively of stories, all of which I remember to this day.
When a senior ‘lateral’ manager is brought in, the book of stories should be given to him personally by the CEO and he should be invited to comment on them. This is, of course, only a subtle way to communicate the stories to him!
There should be a small number, say 2-3 stories that everyone knows. Over time, the most effective couple of stories will emerge by themselves, but it is necessary to look for the ‘emerging winners’ and enshrine them as ‘the corporate stories’
I know of no other way to build a culture. It is not guaranteed, but it is fun, and it sometimes works! So try it!
On Executive Coaching
On Being an Executive Coach
Why coaching?
The CEO’s life is a lonely one. She cannot turn easily to people around her for advice when she feels something is wrong, or at least, not quite right, with her management style, or her way of dealing with problems. People around her may be sharks, waiting to scent blood, in the worst case; in the best case, they may be simply indifferent to her pain. So, whom can a CEO turn to? The same applies to most senior managers - their very seniority becomes a burden when they need help and, perhaps a change in direction. Hence the executive coach, an external advisor who can be your sounding board, and much else besides.
Executive coaches are nothing new, of course. Krishna, the divine charioteer, was executive coach to Arjuna, the great warrior. Machiaveli was executive coach to his Prince, Chanakya to Chandragupta. The Panchatantra is nothing but a chronicle of an executive coach, Visnu Sarma, trying to develop his young wards to be fit rulers.
Yet, even in these examples, we can see the different avatars of executive coaching. Why was Krishna an effective coach to Arjuna? Because, of course, Arjuna had always looked up to him and wanted to emulate him – which is why he wanted him as his charioteer in the first place. Why was Chanakya an effective executive coach to Chandragupta? Here the story is a little different – Chandragupta probably never thought of Chanakya as someone who could do what he, Chandragupta, could do, only better. He knew what Chanakya was good for, and what he was not good for. The young princes who studied under Visnu Sarma were presumably placed under him by their father, the King, and so had little choice in the matter. History does not record, so far as I know, whether they want on to become good Kings or not!
But in each of these stories, there is a common thread: the coach, who is someone wise and experienced, and the coachee, who is a great performer, but who needs grooming to take him to the next level.
In today’s world, do these characterizations make sense?
The Fallacy of the Wise Coach
In today’s world, does the coach have to be ‘wise’?
My experience as an executive coach suggests that it is important for the coach to be seen as someone who knows a thing or two, and has seen, if not actually fought, a few battles in life, but he does not have to be as wise as Viswamitra. Executives are keenly aware that the onus of learning, improving, changing, is on themselves, and external props can only go so far. This makes it possible for anyone who is less than ‘wise’ to be an effective coach, so long as she follows some simple rules (which we will discuss below).
What makes a good coach
The strength is in the process. A coach who follows a good coaching process will be a good coach. It is really as simple as that.
Of course, it takes some doing, some skill, some special personality, to follow the process easily and naturally. But anyone can learn to do it, I believe.
The Process and the Rules
‘Appreciative Inquiry’ is a term that captures much of this, but let us outline some of the key elements.
Rule 1: It is about him/her, not about you.
Actually this is THE rule. No other rules are necessary.
a) The coach does not have to constantly strive to be clever. The coaching experience is not about how clever the coach is. The coachee does not even care how clever the coach is, once the process gets under way in earnest.
What I am, what I have done, what I know, all these should be simply set aside by the coach. The only personal element that should be allowed would be: yes, that is a mistake I made too and this is what I did to overcome it. Sometimes, this helps to reassure the coachee.
b) all good ideas are his/her ideas, not yours’. Only if the coach takes this position steadfastly will the coachee actually take the ideas to heart and run with them. The coach must avoid even the very semblance of taking credit for anything that happens in the coachee’s life.
c) never say ‘I told you so’.
Rule 2: Time the Message
The coachee must be in a receptive frame of mind if he is going to take any input from anybody. Being human, he is not always receptive. If he has just come from a beating from the boss, where he has been chastised for doing something he thought was the right thing to do.. he may not be ready to listen to anything except reassurance that he was on the right track. If he is tired and stressed out after a long hard day and looking forward to going home, a coaching session is probably not what he is looking forward to.
The coach must be extremely sensitive to signals that the coachee is not ready to listen.
In fact, a good rule of thumb is to offer suggestions only when the coachee asks for them himself. Until he asks for help, and is ready to acknowledge that he needs help, there is little point in giving him any!
One implication is that it may not be terribly useful to schedule coaching sessions in a very structured way, 9:30 am to 10:00 am in your office.. the coach’s time is valuable, so it may end up being done that way, but it is probably not the best way to go about it.
Rule 3: Be specific, not general
Coaching sessions must center around specific ways the coachee wants to improve. Both coach and coachee must be very explicit about what the issue is, and how the coachee is going to improve. There is little point, for instance, in saying, ‘I have a short temper’. The discussion must get down to specifics like: what kinds of things make you angry? Why is this? What actions can you take next time someone behaves in a way that really riles you?
Rule 4: Focus on positives, it is not always about negatives
I am sorry to say that 90% of coaching sessions focus on ways the coachee is supposed to improve. Weaknesses are identified, and an action plan outlined to shore up the weakness. Well, Pete Sampras had a lousy backhand – did that prevent him from winning 14 Grand Slam titles? Everyone has weaknesses, the only way to become a champion is to have great, world-beating strengths. I firmly believe 90% of coaching effort should be devoted to identifying strengths and figuring out ways to take the coachee ‘from good to great’.
This approach transforms the coaching process into a search for excellence, and appreciation for the coachee, rather than a debilitating hunt for weaknesses, recognition of which will only make him more weak. To give another tennis example, Chris Evert had a mediocre serve, yet she never acknowledged it. In fact, when questioned on it, she would respond, ‘what’s wrong with it? It is perfectly fine’. And because she never saw it as a problem, it was hard for her opponents to attack it.!
Rule 5: The onus is on the coachee, not on the coach
There are none so blind as those who will not see; you can lead a horse to the water.. all these aphorisms are well known. And perfectly true, as most aphorisms are. It is for the coachee to recognize what he needs to strengthen, it is for the coachee to seek help, it is for the coachee to find the answers! If the coach starts giving answers, well, they will remain the coach’s answers. This is actually the one area where, my personal experience tells me, the coach really has to train himself. A consultant (like me) finds it very easy and natural to give the answers, for that is what consultants do. But it is not the coach’s answers that count, it is the coachee’s. The coach has to learn to restrain himself even when the answer is blindingly obvious to him.
Finally, let us turn to the qualities a coachee must have.
What makes a good coachee?
Very simply, the ability to recognize one’s own shortcomings, or, indeed, one’s own strength which one is not leveraging enough. Next, the ability to be honest about it, the risk-taking ability to talk about it to someone else, namely, the coach, and the self-belief that weaknesses can be corrected and strengths honed to perfection. The desire to learn, to change, can only come from within. The ability to trust someone else, and finally, the ability to try something out seriously and evaluate whether it is working for oneself, this is all it takes. .. all, did I say? It is a lot. But if you have it, if you can bring yourself to the edge, you can take off and fly, and soar to the skies!
Why coaching?
The CEO’s life is a lonely one. She cannot turn easily to people around her for advice when she feels something is wrong, or at least, not quite right, with her management style, or her way of dealing with problems. People around her may be sharks, waiting to scent blood, in the worst case; in the best case, they may be simply indifferent to her pain. So, whom can a CEO turn to? The same applies to most senior managers - their very seniority becomes a burden when they need help and, perhaps a change in direction. Hence the executive coach, an external advisor who can be your sounding board, and much else besides.
Executive coaches are nothing new, of course. Krishna, the divine charioteer, was executive coach to Arjuna, the great warrior. Machiaveli was executive coach to his Prince, Chanakya to Chandragupta. The Panchatantra is nothing but a chronicle of an executive coach, Visnu Sarma, trying to develop his young wards to be fit rulers.
Yet, even in these examples, we can see the different avatars of executive coaching. Why was Krishna an effective coach to Arjuna? Because, of course, Arjuna had always looked up to him and wanted to emulate him – which is why he wanted him as his charioteer in the first place. Why was Chanakya an effective executive coach to Chandragupta? Here the story is a little different – Chandragupta probably never thought of Chanakya as someone who could do what he, Chandragupta, could do, only better. He knew what Chanakya was good for, and what he was not good for. The young princes who studied under Visnu Sarma were presumably placed under him by their father, the King, and so had little choice in the matter. History does not record, so far as I know, whether they want on to become good Kings or not!
But in each of these stories, there is a common thread: the coach, who is someone wise and experienced, and the coachee, who is a great performer, but who needs grooming to take him to the next level.
In today’s world, do these characterizations make sense?
The Fallacy of the Wise Coach
In today’s world, does the coach have to be ‘wise’?
My experience as an executive coach suggests that it is important for the coach to be seen as someone who knows a thing or two, and has seen, if not actually fought, a few battles in life, but he does not have to be as wise as Viswamitra. Executives are keenly aware that the onus of learning, improving, changing, is on themselves, and external props can only go so far. This makes it possible for anyone who is less than ‘wise’ to be an effective coach, so long as she follows some simple rules (which we will discuss below).
What makes a good coach
The strength is in the process. A coach who follows a good coaching process will be a good coach. It is really as simple as that.
Of course, it takes some doing, some skill, some special personality, to follow the process easily and naturally. But anyone can learn to do it, I believe.
The Process and the Rules
‘Appreciative Inquiry’ is a term that captures much of this, but let us outline some of the key elements.
Rule 1: It is about him/her, not about you.
Actually this is THE rule. No other rules are necessary.
a) The coach does not have to constantly strive to be clever. The coaching experience is not about how clever the coach is. The coachee does not even care how clever the coach is, once the process gets under way in earnest.
What I am, what I have done, what I know, all these should be simply set aside by the coach. The only personal element that should be allowed would be: yes, that is a mistake I made too and this is what I did to overcome it. Sometimes, this helps to reassure the coachee.
b) all good ideas are his/her ideas, not yours’. Only if the coach takes this position steadfastly will the coachee actually take the ideas to heart and run with them. The coach must avoid even the very semblance of taking credit for anything that happens in the coachee’s life.
c) never say ‘I told you so’.
Rule 2: Time the Message
The coachee must be in a receptive frame of mind if he is going to take any input from anybody. Being human, he is not always receptive. If he has just come from a beating from the boss, where he has been chastised for doing something he thought was the right thing to do.. he may not be ready to listen to anything except reassurance that he was on the right track. If he is tired and stressed out after a long hard day and looking forward to going home, a coaching session is probably not what he is looking forward to.
The coach must be extremely sensitive to signals that the coachee is not ready to listen.
In fact, a good rule of thumb is to offer suggestions only when the coachee asks for them himself. Until he asks for help, and is ready to acknowledge that he needs help, there is little point in giving him any!
One implication is that it may not be terribly useful to schedule coaching sessions in a very structured way, 9:30 am to 10:00 am in your office.. the coach’s time is valuable, so it may end up being done that way, but it is probably not the best way to go about it.
Rule 3: Be specific, not general
Coaching sessions must center around specific ways the coachee wants to improve. Both coach and coachee must be very explicit about what the issue is, and how the coachee is going to improve. There is little point, for instance, in saying, ‘I have a short temper’. The discussion must get down to specifics like: what kinds of things make you angry? Why is this? What actions can you take next time someone behaves in a way that really riles you?
Rule 4: Focus on positives, it is not always about negatives
I am sorry to say that 90% of coaching sessions focus on ways the coachee is supposed to improve. Weaknesses are identified, and an action plan outlined to shore up the weakness. Well, Pete Sampras had a lousy backhand – did that prevent him from winning 14 Grand Slam titles? Everyone has weaknesses, the only way to become a champion is to have great, world-beating strengths. I firmly believe 90% of coaching effort should be devoted to identifying strengths and figuring out ways to take the coachee ‘from good to great’.
This approach transforms the coaching process into a search for excellence, and appreciation for the coachee, rather than a debilitating hunt for weaknesses, recognition of which will only make him more weak. To give another tennis example, Chris Evert had a mediocre serve, yet she never acknowledged it. In fact, when questioned on it, she would respond, ‘what’s wrong with it? It is perfectly fine’. And because she never saw it as a problem, it was hard for her opponents to attack it.!
Rule 5: The onus is on the coachee, not on the coach
There are none so blind as those who will not see; you can lead a horse to the water.. all these aphorisms are well known. And perfectly true, as most aphorisms are. It is for the coachee to recognize what he needs to strengthen, it is for the coachee to seek help, it is for the coachee to find the answers! If the coach starts giving answers, well, they will remain the coach’s answers. This is actually the one area where, my personal experience tells me, the coach really has to train himself. A consultant (like me) finds it very easy and natural to give the answers, for that is what consultants do. But it is not the coach’s answers that count, it is the coachee’s. The coach has to learn to restrain himself even when the answer is blindingly obvious to him.
Finally, let us turn to the qualities a coachee must have.
What makes a good coachee?
Very simply, the ability to recognize one’s own shortcomings, or, indeed, one’s own strength which one is not leveraging enough. Next, the ability to be honest about it, the risk-taking ability to talk about it to someone else, namely, the coach, and the self-belief that weaknesses can be corrected and strengths honed to perfection. The desire to learn, to change, can only come from within. The ability to trust someone else, and finally, the ability to try something out seriously and evaluate whether it is working for oneself, this is all it takes. .. all, did I say? It is a lot. But if you have it, if you can bring yourself to the edge, you can take off and fly, and soar to the skies!
Thursday, February 14, 2008
The Orbit Changer
What does it take to change orbits? To go from being a ‘monkey’ in the industry to being at least a ‘chimpanzee’?
If you are a 100 crore company dreaming of becoming a 1000 crore company? We all know the usual answers: scaling processes, a big dream, good management. But how to acquire them?
Scaling before the Jump?
Imagine trying to scale your processes, whether it is your product innovation process or your people development process, in advance of their being needed. All the textbooks will say that is how it should be done. But such ‘scaling’ is always painful and always bitterly resisted. After all, you are asking people to stretch, and for what? There is no fire, why should they jump? Desirable as it may seem, I have yet to see a company actually being able to do it in anticipation of the coming growth.
Slow and Struggle?
A growing company can always try to scale its processes and management capabilities, as it grows, sort of inch-by-inch. If the growth is slow enough, it will not be disruptive, like an oak tree growing by adding rings every year. But will it result in the scaling you need? Probably not. The old processes will keep getting stretched and patched up, and they will creak and groan till they break. Then there will be chaos, hustle bustle, an army of consultants will swarm all over the place to ix the broken process, and the company will limp along till the next crisis.
The One Big Win
When EDS, now a global giant, was a much smaller company, in the early 1980s, it went through a life-changing experience. After this event, its share price went to another level, from which it did not fall for decades. The event was the winning of a deal with the US Army – project VIABLE. It was a several hundred million dollar deal – more importantly, it was won against IBM. Nobody, including the team that worked on the bid, really thought they were going to win, they just thought it would be a good learning experience. Until then-President Mort Meyerson paid the team a visit. He went to the board and wrote on it the three criteria the customer was going to use to award the contract: Technical excellence, price, and management. Turning to a bemused group of EDSers Mort told them, we know we are better in each category. The customer doesn’t know it, but that’s a problem we will have to solve. But we are going to win this deal, not narrowly, not by 2 to 1, but in every category! And they did. This is partly a story about leadership, and its ability to make people realize their own potential. But it is more a story of what the team had to do to win – it learned how to subcontract to vendors much larger than itself, it learned how to market to a customer who was bound by strict rules of engagement, it learned how to take risk, it learned how to write a proposal, how to price contracts. After the deal was won, it learned how to execute something far more complex and risky than anything it had ever done before. It learned because it had to it had to because it won that deal. Simple as that. No amount of corporate training, BPR efforts, no army of consultants, could have forced the organization to learn the essentials of playing with the big boys, so quickly and so thoroughly, as that single win did. On future deals, nobody had to create a process – all they had to do is say’ do it like we did at VIABLE’.
There are other examples, closer to home. Polaris Software, another company I know well, learned how to handle large deals by bidding on, and winning, a huge deal with NEC. It was forced to create a new SBU, to learn how to recruit hundreds of people, how to make them productive, how to manage customer communication, how to monitor projects, and a new technology, all at the same time. It learned because it had to. No amount of corporate prodding or task forces or strategic initiatives could have taken the company’s capabilities to the next level, as that single win did.
The point is – people, and organizations, learn when they have to. Make them have to, by going after, and winning, a deal one orbit further than what you are used to. There is no better way to scale. There is no other way to scale
If you are a 100 crore company dreaming of becoming a 1000 crore company? We all know the usual answers: scaling processes, a big dream, good management. But how to acquire them?
Scaling before the Jump?
Imagine trying to scale your processes, whether it is your product innovation process or your people development process, in advance of their being needed. All the textbooks will say that is how it should be done. But such ‘scaling’ is always painful and always bitterly resisted. After all, you are asking people to stretch, and for what? There is no fire, why should they jump? Desirable as it may seem, I have yet to see a company actually being able to do it in anticipation of the coming growth.
Slow and Struggle?
A growing company can always try to scale its processes and management capabilities, as it grows, sort of inch-by-inch. If the growth is slow enough, it will not be disruptive, like an oak tree growing by adding rings every year. But will it result in the scaling you need? Probably not. The old processes will keep getting stretched and patched up, and they will creak and groan till they break. Then there will be chaos, hustle bustle, an army of consultants will swarm all over the place to ix the broken process, and the company will limp along till the next crisis.
The One Big Win
When EDS, now a global giant, was a much smaller company, in the early 1980s, it went through a life-changing experience. After this event, its share price went to another level, from which it did not fall for decades. The event was the winning of a deal with the US Army – project VIABLE. It was a several hundred million dollar deal – more importantly, it was won against IBM. Nobody, including the team that worked on the bid, really thought they were going to win, they just thought it would be a good learning experience. Until then-President Mort Meyerson paid the team a visit. He went to the board and wrote on it the three criteria the customer was going to use to award the contract: Technical excellence, price, and management. Turning to a bemused group of EDSers Mort told them, we know we are better in each category. The customer doesn’t know it, but that’s a problem we will have to solve. But we are going to win this deal, not narrowly, not by 2 to 1, but in every category! And they did. This is partly a story about leadership, and its ability to make people realize their own potential. But it is more a story of what the team had to do to win – it learned how to subcontract to vendors much larger than itself, it learned how to market to a customer who was bound by strict rules of engagement, it learned how to take risk, it learned how to write a proposal, how to price contracts. After the deal was won, it learned how to execute something far more complex and risky than anything it had ever done before. It learned because it had to it had to because it won that deal. Simple as that. No amount of corporate training, BPR efforts, no army of consultants, could have forced the organization to learn the essentials of playing with the big boys, so quickly and so thoroughly, as that single win did. On future deals, nobody had to create a process – all they had to do is say’ do it like we did at VIABLE’.
There are other examples, closer to home. Polaris Software, another company I know well, learned how to handle large deals by bidding on, and winning, a huge deal with NEC. It was forced to create a new SBU, to learn how to recruit hundreds of people, how to make them productive, how to manage customer communication, how to monitor projects, and a new technology, all at the same time. It learned because it had to. No amount of corporate prodding or task forces or strategic initiatives could have taken the company’s capabilities to the next level, as that single win did.
The point is – people, and organizations, learn when they have to. Make them have to, by going after, and winning, a deal one orbit further than what you are used to. There is no better way to scale. There is no other way to scale
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