Decluttering ​:​ WorkPlace of the future!

I have to admit this, I was tempted to begin this write up with dictionary definition of ‘modern workplace’, a cup of tea and a few biscuits later, I did overcome the juvenile urge. And decided to define it the way I understand it. There isn’t a scientific definition to tell the accurate comprehension from otherwise descripts of this subject, so in that sense, it is lucid and open to interpretation. No one definition is absolutely right, so if you happen to disagree with my views on it, I wouldn’t count that against you, nor will you be wrong.



Back to the definition, a modern workplace, in my view is an intelligent, intuitive and integrated ‘set up’, one that lives by the principle of liberalisation, democratisation, collaboration and creative imagination of the future and that of the current time. Let me borrow from a great CEO and modify it by adding a few of my own words (trivia, find out who said this) here to say that, “work is no longer a place that you go to but a thing that you do, at a time, place and platform of your choice”, choice has to accommodate business realities, economic sense, and mandates of the stakeholders. We have every right to choose to live in the past and in sharp denial of present realities but ‘change’ as a constant doesn’t really need consent of the people involved; it will on its own keep transforming itself relentlessly and if you choose to not run with it, you will witness it run ahead of you for some time and then it will go past your sight. Let’s do a little study, pick up top 100 corporations of 1900 and then see how many of them exist today? And then see of those that exist today, how many continue to hold the same prominence in the marketplace?  A quick 15 minutes research will tell you that no more than 8% of the organizations have survived and effectively transformed themselves in keeping with time. Let’s ask ourselves, what did they not have? Were their balance sheets not swell enough? Were they not men and women of great character and grit? Did they not dream big and build an organisation, a brand that was admired? Answer to all of these questions is a resounding YES. They were all successful companies with all the money and the might that one could wish for but yet they did not succeed the test of time and finally succumbed owing to their unapparent inability of welcoming change.



Why? With a lot of ease and in an almost unthinkable way one can, secure in the knowledge that they won’t be wrong, say that the conglomerates that went down did not innovate. But isn't that the eventual output that one desires, sadly, in most cases, without providing for enablers that create the ground for innovation, we bake it, consider that it will happen anyway. Desire to create a plush and green garden, quality seeds, best fertilisers and state of the art irrigation supplies are all useless without the company of adequate sunlight and fertile soil. No amount of dreaming will ever sprout a flower out of a concrete marble floor. And there I say, what has been said in many books and case studies, one such book is “Rebuild by Ramya Ramamurthy’ that I would recommend you read, that before you target to innovate, you’ll need to create grounds that will foster such outcomes. Therefore the two top hindrances that I gather are below.

Lack of imagination.

Resistance to change.

Modern workplace is one such essential ingredient that makes way for free and fearless thinking, creative problem solving and solidifying sustained urge to keep transforming the ways of doing business. It is important to constantly re-imagine the tangibles of business to reinvent ways of doing it better.



The advent of technology and the ecosystem powered by ubiquitous internet has at a maddening pace changed the face of commerce. Back in the day, linear thought process prevailed, in which designated spaces and set designs ruled the way people conceived and conducted business, but that is no longer true. Physical boundaries are disappearing, templates are no longer relevant and precedents are being challenged like never before.  We’re at a classic cusp of time, what was once considered a shining knight in the armour is now a heavy and ineffective piece of metal that is best not carried. A great man once said that there is a reason why we look ahead when we walk, because what is behind is going to fade, look for what is ahead of you and prepare to get there, if you want your journey to be a long and rewarding one.



We’ve tried defining a modern workplace and also established how it is an important and effective enabler. It is time to look at some the principles that we must take into account when creating the sketch for a modern workplace.



Before we get into the specifics of some of those principles, I must say these examples are a  few of many tools available for deployment, you can choose whichever one you like. What is important here is to be accepting of the progressive principles of creating an obstruction free environment in which no time is wasted in waiting or finding the ‘spot’ or the ‘condition’ needed to create (deliveries/solutions/outputs/work). It is about creating an ecosystem that frees people and gets them to a state where they have everything that they need to work at all times within their comfortable reach so that they use it seamlessly to create spectacular results. It is also about eliminating all practical frictions that come in the way of productivity, making use of the best and most secure of the technology/infra that is available today.



Liberalisation: There can’t be a dispute on the fact that people make organisations and for people to deliver their best, they must be allowed to concentrate on the most important business problem by eliminating distractions of conformities. In a tier one city, an average person spends 3 hours on the road commuting ‘from and to’ work. 3 hours is 12.5% of your day! Preparations to get to work takes another 40 minutes on an average day: you dress in a certain way, get your tanks full, car cleaned, fix food to a deadline and then get onto the road. Nearly 4 hours of the day devoted to an exercise that generates no value for anyone. I’m not even counting the carbon emission and the irreversible environmental damage that we unknowingly invoke upon mother nature. 73% of all vehicular traffic is generated by work routine related commute. Imagine what would a world be like if these cars were not on the road? Better air to breathe and faster commute on events of travel. We’ve spoken about time, let us look at the cost burden on organisations to maintain and create offices? You pay for spaces which are vacant 16 hours a day. Is that an efficient system? I know some of you are saying that design of some business is such that people have to gather at a place, sure, they have to, but have you looked at ways to minimise it as much as possible? If no, then you have work to do. Studies say, that only 30% of the spaces that orgs occupy are actually needed. So if you have an org of 100 people, your real estate should have not more than 30 seats, people can in a planned manner come and meet each other in person, work together and yet have a great sense of space. 70% of your org can be on a work from home on any given day, on a rotation basis. It is a win-win situation for all stakeholders: Employee save on travel, work from comforts of their home, no one is ever getting late to work, better work-life balance, less friction among colleagues and benefits of disintegrated centre of deliveries and companies save on cost erecting and running the infra, lesser housekeeping and upkeep needs, lighter electricity load. Do not worry, there are tools available to measure which employee spent how much time on work. Apart from measuring core output, you can should you wish to even measure cursor movement even keystrokes, with ease, while passing the flexi hour benefit to employees. Surveys suggest that 87% of employees will happily elect to work an hour extra if they had to not travel.



Collaboration ( Digital and otherwise) : Wisdom of the crowd must not be lost, modern day organisations are a truly heterogeneous group, people from all kinds of socio-economic backgrounds, academic disciplines, social skills and personal beliefs come together to create solutions for customers. In 2019 a well-coloured wall comes second to stronger and snappier data connections, there is a need to smartly move investment into digital infrastructure. Hardware agnostic platforms should win your attention, you need to be able to eliminate barriers of space, formfactor, time and group to enable your staff to work, from wherever they are. To conduct a meeting, there is no need for people to look for the meeting room, they can use their excellent phones/computers/tablets to connect with you digitally, anytime anywhere, thereby bringing the lag to a virtual zero. Appearance for long has been a hindrance to productivity, practices of compensating for poor delivery with great rapport has been prevalent for a long time. People sometimes just want to be seen with the right people and at the right time and to make sure of that, waste a lot of time. In a digital workplace, all of that is eliminated, people are always connected so they reach out to one another in need and not just because they don't have anything better to do. Because employees are not physically crossing path, they would make up for it with their superior delivery, because, remember, all of us want to come out as the best. Who wins in the process? The organization and the staff: both. Organisations spend crazy amount of money in securing hardware, to create computer surpluses. Imagine having to spend 1K dollars in getting decent computer for your staff as option one and another in which you give 500 dollars and the employee and let him put whatever extra he would like to and own a hardware of his choice to conduct your business? Your cost has gone down by half, you’ve given the employee the choice that he will love and the hardware is anyway going to become obsolete in 3 years, so why not? If the staff already has a set, give him 200 dollars and onboard him. A case for cloud is not even required to be made if data is on the cloud, it is secure and at the same time always available on a data connection. The point being, that you wrap your organisation in software and not essentially hardware or physical dimensions. Deploy real time collaboration tools ( cloud based office suits), have project management tool implemented so that governance on the work is as real time as the work itself. For every lag,wait and re-do  that an inefficient infra creates the burden of additional unwelcomed and indirect cost piles up on the organisation, which you can and must avoid.

Transition from output to outcome : For aeons measurement method deployed to gauge efficiency has been largely output based, it is time that we graduate to an outcome-based system. Let me share a simple illustration, the judgement should not be based on how complex or comprehensive the backend is but on how simple and intuitive the user experience is. In the context of an MIS or a developer, length of code or syntax of formula is not a measure of hard work, but the flawless output is. We must move as far as practically possible from measuring clock hours and start considering, how the final outcome has been impacted. For instance, for a customer service agent the metric should not be how many customers did an executive handle but how many did he satisfy. I hope you get the Idea.



Well Being: Clinical researchers have proven beyond doubt that poor lifestyle practices substantially reduce cognitive capabilities, therefore it is imperative that designs are well thought of to nudge people to live better and healthier lives. Before I give you a few cases to ponder on, let me share with you that, India loses 21 billion dollars to absence from work on temporary health issues, every year, that is a lot of money!

Here are the options.

Come to office on time, work for 8 hours and get marked present.

Meet your objectives and get marked present.

Meet your objectives get marked present and walk 10K steps each day to earn coins needed for better than average appraisal?

A PMS that considers health goals around weight, waist sizes, too with KRA outputs?

When you engage with your staff on well being you create a bond far more personal than just professing how your organisation has to offer better professional future. When you encourage, your people, in a structured manner, to adopt a healthier lifestyle, you are helping them as much as you are helping yourself. There will be fewer sick leaves and even attrition will get impacted positively because employee value everything other than salary more than they are worth in the real world when handed in good faith. Quality health and accidental insurance and saving schemes not only give the employee a sense of protection but goes on to create the brand as a prefered employer. Remember you’ve only created 30% workstation, in the rest of the spaces you can create collaboration spaces, reading corner, exhibition centre, gyms and wellness spot. That infra will any day be appreciated more. The basic principle is to create hooks by offering meaningful engagement opportunities to the employees so that they see a lot of value in sticking around for long. I do not think that there is a need for me to make a case for how the cost of hiring and leakage of attrition impacts overall revenue objectives. So it makes perfect business sense to care for your employees.



I hope that with this article, I’ve given you reasons to believe in modern workspaces.



Many May day wishes to you.



Till we meet again bye bye.

The unambitious, you!

All of us need to truly love something to exist meaningfully; it doesn't have to be one thing. It can be a combination of things, people or situations.. just about anything that we identify with unthinkingly, something that feels like our own, a natural extension of who we are, in its most elementary form. There are many ways to want ..not so many to know. The story of human evolution has been written in letters of adaptation and with the ink of patience, there has never been a shorter method to mutate naturally into a higher race, from fish to monkey to monkeys staring at blue screens all day, using both opposing thumbs to press mostly and not so much to grip, has happened in millions of years. Some advance laboratories today are creating working models of human heart and in some capacity also the brain – these aren't dwarf achievements, these could potentially change how we conceive our world. But even in its most profound state it is not evolution but an attempt to emulate, another proof that we are monkeys for the most part of our being. Monkey see .. Monkey do.. until we find what we love. That realization alters that course of being for better, does little to speed though.

Through centuries of recorded history, we have been educated about the need to progress and prosper, heroic stories of accomplishment has presented to us with the sole purpose of igniting inspiration in us. We pick up our idols and start emulating the qualities that made them who they become. It is a good thing to do .. we have to create something out of limited existence, we must leave behind things for people to remember us by. Nature is a great leveler.. it allows successful as well as failures to leave the same things behind – stories. Tales of who were we and how did we deal with our lives, in our times. And what can be better than creating a story about something we love. How we come to love a few things more than others is a topic in itself, the neural science, making it work is interesting .. we will surely touch upon them some day. Today, however, it is about identifying which is that thing, or if we have actually found it.

Would you believe me if I told you that everything that we do unambiguously has the potential of becoming things that we truly love and desire? But hold on, isn't being competitive and coming out as the winner a thing? It most certainly is, but what we are talking about today are things which exist at the level much deeper than the sense of accomplishment in our thought center, in the most pristine parts of our brain. These things define who we are in far more meaningful ways than how much money we make, what our net worth is, what job title we have .. how big our homes, our cars, and offices are. Let me put this straight, I'm not trying to make a saintly argument here. Nor am I trying to hike to a moral high ground from which wealth seems as waste and material belongings are another representation of limiting chains. While you are at it .. make the money you want .. create the home that you've always wanted, be on the cover of every magazine that you liked reading in your growing years. Possibly be so awesome that every poster is in the town dreams to have you in it. Material matters are important ..it is the unit by which society measures success and you have to score. Go be the person you must become.

My argument is simply this .. to get better at being that person that owns stuff, good stuff, you will first have to be the person who loves, and this is only the romantic love, that SRK has fooled our generation to fall for. This love is admiration that Gandhi had for truth, respect that Nelson Mandela had for equality, and importance that human/civil rights had in Martin Luther King’s world — you see what I'm saying? This love is not Manmohan's silence or Modi's chatter .. this love is the time that Dr. Tharoor takes out to keep writing books and publishing them at a stage in his life when he can simply reap the benefits of who he has been in the first 40 years of his life. This love is feeling that got AJP Abdul Kalam to take up teaching .. after leaving the majestic Rashtrapati Bhawan. This love is also in some ways called "purpose", life's mission, identify or just a hobby. Pick the word that you think describes it the best, as long as the definitions are aligned expression isn't a problem.

For all we know life is not a lazy Sunday afternoon or a busy Monday morning .. it isn't a laid-back Friday evening or an exhilarating Saturday – life is a concoction of all these and more. It is the routine of Tuesday, weight of Wednesday, throbbing of Thursday .. all if it mixed into one. Have you ever wondered why you find it difficult to concentrate in your silent bedroom but find it easy to read your book, in a crowded café that you like? Have you mulled, why discourteous staff bothers more when the food is not particularly tasty? The same traffic jam feels ok when you are on your way to meet a person you know as a horrible being?  Why do we procrastinate a few things on the same day as on which we absolutely can't sleep to encounter an important event, the following day? Mind is a mess for some and mystery for others but is always is the key to the world that we like to build for ourselves. Product of our mind is thought and these thought are the only things that we really have .. everything else is just an illusion. Coming back to the definition that I attempted creating, I based it around being unambitious, I say so because in things we love .. we do not compete and this fact that we are not in a race promotes the kind of peace that is needed to create unison & tranquility, in other words concentration or happiness or simply put pleasure. Let me give you a few examples, if you like reading and Ruskin Bond happens to be your writer of choice, when you read his finest creations you do not bother about reading too fast or too slow .. you just enjoy being there. So much so that you often re-read, revisit the plots even without the book, think about what your writer said before sleeping amidst the emptiness of night. Now, think of a contract that you read at your work .. what things come to your mind? You've to read comprehensively, objectively, quickly .. make notes, be ready etc.. these are important things but at a cognitive level, to read that contact masterfully, you will need to have a Ruskin bond in your life .. if you do not have it .. you can't do an awesome job at reading and comprehending that contact.

Neither me nor your best friend .. will ever be able to tell you what should you love and why? Your mother can .. mothers know everything .. and they are always right. Whenever I have been defeated in life .. I have always run towards my mother .. her company gives me the strength to fight back. Maybe she is the one who inspires me the most and from her, I find things to love and be the person that I wish to be. I'm not sure .. if this method will work for you. On finding what you love .. you are truly on your own. I can tell you when you find the thing that you love .. you will experience one or all of the three things & thus .. you'll know you've found it. When you do, keep it close to your heart, keep growing into its stronger, bigger and better shape – that alone, will give you the story that you'll leave behind.

The three things are:

1) You'll be willing to reconsider, restart and even resume ..

2) It will make you forget .. everything else that you otherwise consider important. ( This forgetfulness is not a mental disability but the general phenomenon of being substantially more aware of something and giving other things lesser importance, momentarily)

3) It will be addictive, you will effortlessly want to do it more and more    ( so is smoking, drinking and drugs – but those aren't things that you love .. those are things you simply get trapped in for lack of education and dare I say, lack of awareness)

I will end this with a hope that you find what you truly love and create a wonderful story with it, one worthy of leaving behind.

You have a good Sunday.

‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’

‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ I’m borrowing this line from a legendary business writer, if you’ve read him too, you’d know he means it. Will reveal the name of the gentleman towards the end of the article. Not all business houses and leaders think as high of ‘culture’ or invest enough resources in setting it right .. they often, on the contrary, are found wrestling with challenges that crop up as a result of not having strong cultural fabric tying loose ends of their organization together. For some reason they miss the fact that covering a wound doesn’t take the pain away; but this write up is not about them but the 'subject', so let’s get back to it.

Organisations have multiple identities, they exist for economic reasons, they also have a social purpose and sometimes even a moral signature; all at once. Travel far and wide, pick up any sector, county, sect or society in the Morden world, you’d find that wealth creation is at every core of its existence. Why else would you see democratic governmental setups talk about GDP growth.. etc? It is a good thing. Prosperity in practical terms is believed to be a close blood-related relative of happiness and therefore pursued wildly. There is no prosperity without wealth. This is not just a boring business administration line, you’ll find substantive evidence of it in mythology too, Hindu mythology in particular. The fact that we worship Goddess Laxmi and in her praise sing and chant mantras which when translated from Sanskrit into our language of daily use means “ to make happiness possible .. we need wealth so .. lord grand me it, in abundance” in summary 95% of the times, balance 5% is chorus, trying to match up with it, is proof enough.

For prosperity one needs perspective, though: this is true even for those who see happiness in things unrelated to wealth. For instance the great poet, Mirza Ghalib held that to lead a good life, all one needs is a good heart, someone to love and great prose to say so differently in different times of the day. If you read Diwan-e-Galib you’d find it. ( This is a rare book and is found only in the national Mirza Galib library at New Delhi, besides Nizamuddin Aulia Dargah). Do check it out.

Perspective is important and integral to organization building. Let’s agree that there is no right or wrong perspective .. as long as your straight view is legal and permissible you’ve every right to pursue it. It, however, needs constant reiteration in an organization to

a) keep people adequately informed and

b) making sure that people do not forget it. 

While an organization is way more , but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just assume that organization is a huge money-making machine : A huge press that prints currency, coming together of many moving parts some mechanical and others human ( accounting, sales, customer service, branding, information technology, procurement, and other, business acumens). From dusk to dawn it prints, converting paper into powerful currency. People who run it are happy seeing how humble paper with their labor turns into one with ink valued a lot more than when it arrived raw on the other end of their press and so are those who supervise it and fund its operations. Imagine, that the machines aren’t oiled routinely, its motors aren’t greased frequently, as a result.. some parts fail, causing a portion of the paper to get wasted, some ink going down uncountably. Let’s just say that workers are lazy, uncaring, selfish and insensitive, instead of letting the supervisors know about what caused the waste of paper and as a result lesser output, they choose to cobble a convincing tale, attach very little significance to it when presenting it to the top guys with the intention of having them pass it without they attaching much attention to it. And this happens over and over again as more parts fail thanks to aging, wear and tear over time. The insincere lot, keeps making their concocted story sound more believable by sprinkling experience to their false cover up reports.

Or they are nice people but in absence of reiteration do not find motivation to report the issue, some may be at a level of less than required intelligence, thus unaware. Silence irrespective of reason is not healthy.

Because not all organizations are small and confined to a small & manageable by physical inspection geography/ office; not every business leader has it in within his means to check and verify every bit of information that is being shared. As a result, having heard the story so many times, they begin to believe in it as much. The real problem keeps flourishing unchecked. Neutral voices that go a-galore against the malpractices are subdued or gagged easily for they are a minuscule minority, as a result, the misdoing continues till that curial breaking point is reached when it becomes terminal and death seems the only cure.

Things come to an end: of what is left people make their last sum of money and walk their separate ways to their next destination. 

In the process what could have been a prosperous endeavor ends in misery, distress, and disrespect. 

Let us imagine, the same set of circumstances in an environment that drives ‘truth’ for a culture, one that rewards dispassionate reporting of events negative as well as positive. A currency factory, that doesn’t reprimand unreasonably, one that encourages people to come forward to own problems and faults and of course has practices and people in place to quickly respond to the situation and correct it. The error would have gotten reported and perhaps the press would still be running as respectably as possible. 

When you’re a 200 to 500 people organization; setting these things right is not as big an issue. In all probabilities most sensible people would have been a part of the hiring process, there is near real-time interaction between management and the delivery apparatus. The problem comes when you have an operation running in scale when you have half a lac or more people operating out of a geography well spread out, in diverse areas of work. Then the challenge is real and it is not just of setting the culture right but also developing detection methods to know what is broken and where? Because the complexity is of an enormous order not acting is equivalent to inviting untimely death.

In this write-up, we will only deal with the detection of the broken and I shall follow this one up with another article on restoration, in the coming weeks. Do keep an eye on this blog for it.

What we need to understand is that broken things are not a problem. In the real world things break all the time, the problem is not having a pair of conscious eyes set to find out what’s broken and then also not having an honest intention of fixing it. Time is of the essence when it comes to fixing.

What we need to know here is that ‘doing’ part of any job is relatively easy .. in deciding what is to be done, how and when lies mastery. Everyone knows that to score decent marks one must study hard, yet not everyone scores well .. because the underlying behavior of all students isn’t healthy. One who sleeps in the class, doesn’t complete his homework and disobeys the teacher is less likely to do great in academics .. may turn out to be a great dancer but if the need is to have an academician .. you will have to look for the traits that make one. 

Therefore, organizational symptom study is vital.

Below are a few detrimental symptoms for you to observe in your organization, if they exist .. your organization is a positive candidate for restoration. 

1. When people agree ‘all’ the time with those in the position of power: Let’s accept this we’re not right all the time and when people simply agree with all that we say, we are headed for a disaster. You need people who without fear, favor or malicious intent disagree with you, give you a contrarian view. One size doesn’t fit all, don’t we know this?
2. When good news outbalances the bad ones on a continuous basis: Let’s say when you review a process or a business and it only tells you all that is right all the time with very little mention of what went wrong and why .. you have got a problem. Well, even Sachin has had to walk back to the pavilion on ducks, if the unit is not failing either it is not trying hard enough or just faking it.
3. Evident Follow ups: If you preside over a system that runs on follow up and delays .. it is a clear indication of the fact that either you do not have competent people or your competent set isn’t sincere. In both cases, if you do not get your people to change their attitude towards ‘on time’ delivery/ response; you will have to change them and if you do none of the two.. you’re setting virtual lighted matchstick to a stack of hay which is dripping with petrol. Someone is always monitoring, natural justice, you see!
4. Disregard for conformance: This one is rather easy when you see people not conforming to the norm for the heck of it.. you have a problem. The common way of finding it out, when people run late for a scheduled meeting, all the time. When they wilfully come unprepared, almost always. Or better yet, do not attend crucial meetings. You should know they do not care enough and you should care little for them.
5. Shortage of Ideas - When the group that you work with starts falling sort of Ideas.. you experience relatively long & unexplained lull, often .. you must know that your people aren’t thinking and because thinking is 50% of doing an excellent job. Chances are they aren’t even doing what they are really supposed to do, let alone anything nearly good.

Well, if you see any of these symptoms surfacing enough in your organization, you should declare an emergency. At this point, you should slow down expansion and fuel restoration. Because if you do not fix .. it will break .. and sooner than you think. 

BTW,  Mr. Torben Rick, is who said "Culture eats strategy for breakfast"

Have a great Sunday, catch you in the next one!

Before Innovation ..

“Innovation: why and how”, is the title of the article that I wrote last year in the month of June ( I’ll link it at the end of this article for you to read), in which I expressed my views around building the blocks of innovation in an organization. A few months before that I had resumed the role of leading innovation efforts for my then employer, a multi-billion dollar concern, spread across the length and breadth of our planet, for its global delivery businesses in India .. it was an exciting experience, never before had I ventured into anything that did not really exist as a department. All my previous roles have been about leading a certain section of business .. pulling performance of key metrics… working hard to beat the competition blue and then being happy about it. 

This, however, was different .. in the sense, from framework to measurement techniques, to milestones .. everything was to be set up.. 100% ground up. We were a great team and we managed to put a spectacular show. Ever since, I moved ahead in life.. with different set of responsibilities but innovation in many ways remained an inseparable part of my work life. My current job responsibilities have it, too, with another very respected and reputable business house.

I’ve been reading, observing, conversing, consulting and mulling over this subject intensely for nearly 2 years now. As I spend more time on it my understanding of the subject changes .. I certainly need to learn a lot more, for my knowledge to become definitive but, I see no harm in refreshing the accumulation of last 1.7 years on to the previous write up on innovation, with this one.

Here we go!

Firstly, let me just admit … it is incredibly difficult for individuals like us to get people excited about that fact that we drive innovation for a living. That very introduction, almost always, in matters of moments, makes the listener carve out an impression about us, they think that those who work in innovation aren’t ‘doers’ and therefore perhaps not as hardworking or as stressed as they are with their traditional day jobs. It is not unnatural for people to undervalue anything which is not about the muscular part of the execution. We tend to see greater value in labor and that is attributed to our history and the path of evolution that we have undertaken as a race .. perhaps thousand years from now, muscular part of the doing will get flipped by neural part of it, but the reality of today is in front of us and we gotta deal with it. 

The good news is that all leaders unanimously recognize the need to “innovate” and therefore are willing to invest time, effort and money in making it happen. In the previous write-up, I have dealt with why it is a need and some part for the how as well.

In this attempt, let me take a step back and ask this question - what comes before innovation? Or in another word.. if innovation were to be a behavior or let’s say the culture of an organization is there a prelude or prerequisite for it? If yes, what is it? Let’s stay with this for a while. 

Innovation is about the ‘new’ .. it is about ‘better’ ways of doing what is needed in cases where nothing ‘new’ comes out of it as a product/service offering. And so it essentially means discarding the old, which means ‘change’, change can’t happen without the willingness and ability to ‘adopt’. So it is then safe to say that innovation is about anti-conformity to precedents. One must have the courage to question the status quo to invent new ways to open fresh avenues. 

So before you set out to make innovation a culture in your organization you’ll need to make grounds for below two virtues to thrive unrestricted. 

1. Curiosity 
2. Persistence 

Let’s pick curiosity first, there is a chemical called dopamine that our body naturally produces when we are faced with a problem, a situation or a challenge bigger or deeper than choices what we encounter routinely and therefore the urge to jump into solving it comes first and inherently to humans. What we often forget is that before doing, we must “think”. We take a lot of pride in our troubleshooting ability, despite knowing that in most cases we do not go any further than treating the symptom. Mastery actually lies in killing the underlying cause, symptomatic redressal is the drug of the gimmick. 95% of times solutions tabled in an organization are superficially designed solely to doze the fire off. Very few stays with the problem for long enough to think, to investigate the real cause, to establish facts to back their claim and then attempt to solve it. Which is why problems often reoccur causing enormous time and resources to get trapped in a never-ending daily battle. Having practiced the half-baked approach over and over again a vast majority of the workforce sadly starts enjoying it and therefore without knowing even propagates incurious methods in pursuit of immediate fixes. “Fix it now” .. “I do not care” are popular phrases of those who think ‘thinking’ is a such a waste of time.

Nothing great was ever archived overnight .. the famous expression; “Rome wasn’t built in a day” exists for centuries ..for a reason.

I’m not trying to argue against speed .. what I’m trying to put to the table is that we should attach another dimension to speed, let’s say ‘direction’ for it to become meaningful and then be crazy about it. Therefore not speed but ‘velocity’ is the value that we must aspire for. The urgency of the situation will get you to the estimate of speed that you must have without you really querying hard but only thoughtful consideration will guide you to the right direction, therefore before you get into the ‘doing’ spare time and THINK!

Thinking is essentially being curious.

As business leaders, we must promote curiosity in our people and thus in our organizations. Here are a few things that we could do for that.

• Encourage people/staff to as WHY relentlessly till they get fact-based answers, not just from their subordinates but also supervisors. Asking seniors a lot of useful questions is very important. They must not have a free pass.
• Make your people aware of the context .. great ideas do not work if they are not designed for the environment in which their application is due.
• Inhibition of learning from others is a real roadblock. Be willing to take inspiration from people .. copy ideas ( do give credit to the original thinker, that is a good manner) & implement. 
• Adopting a bigger mindset is important. You do not solve a complex problem if you are stuck in petty conflicts of interests, behaviors and people. If you have an irritant around, ignore it. 
• Alternatives are good to have even for those items/things/tasks that are operating at an optimum level .. it is part of being future ready. Make people explore it.
• Be a doer .. roll your sleeve up, be ready to dirty your hands. People who sermon are priests and not workers.

Incurious set of people do not grow! 

Had the daughter of the inventor of the Polaroid camera not asked “ why do we have to wait to get pictures”, the father wouldn’t have got the motivation to find a solution and the industry wouldn’t have changed. The right question is just as powerful as the insightful answer .. ask them!

Persistence, because the road to success is often laid by the brick of failures. If you get discouraged by setbacks far too quickly .. it isn’t going to work. There is light at the end of the tunnel but only those who walk the entire dark tunnel will get to bask in its glory.  STAY PUT.

It is ok, if you’re having to try harder than others .. perhaps your purpose is more meaningful.. keep at it and you’ll find the answer, for sure.

Business leaders need to recognize the merit in following the below chain for creative innovation to happen. 

"Preparation --- Incubation --- Illumination --- Verification" .. & then repeat of it. 

Link to "Innovation: why and how", as promised. 

: https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/06/innovation-new-normal.html 

See you in the next one .. have a wonderful Sunday!

Make hope your culture!

Happy new year, people! I hope 2018 is treating you well.

Earlier this week, I, kickstarted series of education session for brilliant people in my team .. the objective was to get to know them better and give them a different perspective, some thought for them to ponder over! Four sessions to cover the entire staff. And in the process, I essentially repeated myself, four times over and that got me thinking that perhaps, the message will find deeper application if it reaches a wider audience, so here I’m.

Organisations cannot survive in our times if they aren’t heterogeneous in composition, ‘more of the same’ is no longer a winning mix. You need people from various educational & social backgrounds, skills, personalities, and beliefs to come together to achieve what is the common objective. Everyone in their unique ways takes the group forward, every day, by contributing in the space that they work. A techie writes compelling codes making the product complete and competent, that enables the salesperson to go out there, stand hand and shoulder above the competition to win customers, those won over .. need help and support by a group committed to making bitter experiences better by applying what they consider valuable - service skills. Someone works tirelessly on excel files trying to make sense of it all and everyone else that is there is between who try and give it shape and enable it to work like a machine that is well oiled and up to date.

Often times, however, we get so overwhelmed, by the challenges we conquer that we begin to undermine the values that others bring on to the table and there seed of conflict is sowed; it only grows bigger if not checked in time. People who are there in the field get seduced into considering that those who operate from the office are lazy and unconcerned and those at office desk begin to believe that those fighting it out in the streets are outright ignorant and often times ill-behaved too- hair-splitting may get the observers a clearer view of who is right but then the organisation is not served well with these conflicts not even in the least bit.

It is said that when strong personalities come together conflicts become inevitable; because people generally do not like to budge. What does one do in such situations? These are real-world issues and often do damages which are far more grave than a bad business decision, they tend to make the organization shallow from within. People then come together only to pose for photographs not so much to really be together. These situations are just as tacky as they are tricky !!

In my talk, I spoke to my people about the great leveler that nature is when it rains .. no matter which way you pray, which school you went to .. whichever subject you could be major in - you’ll all great drenched! Sun rays do not light rich homes more than poor huts. Morning breeze is just as soothing to all people, of all background and beliefs - we’re the same people, we hold dear similar aspirations! ‘Expression’ however differ and that alone creates all the ‘differences’ that exists today. We must all be watchful of what, how & where we express ourselves. 

Whether we like it or not ; whatever we do for a living has a profound impact on who we are and even before we realize what we do all day starts reflecting in our behaviors and quietly creeps into our belief systems too, changing us from within, sometimes irreversibly. Be very sure of what you wanna pick up as a profession.

A goldsmith values precision over power; blacksmiths love power more; Pain in patient doesn’t prick emotions in a doctor, a worker at a construction site doesn’t mind dust, a scientist is not afraid of failing, customer service professional have fragile emotions yet are resilient - these remarkable traits are not what that these people were raised on or born with - but were acquired working and slowly it shaped their worldview. They all think differently of the same thing, sometimes.

These forces are so strong that it can come in the way of the larger objective at times, greater goals may sometimes, succumb to these differences. Every organization needs to be aware of these challenges and should have a strategy to overcome them.

Alongside financial & performance goals, the organization should also keep in mind, cultural goals and invest strongly in making it happen. In the face of most difficult times, it is the strength of character that pulls people up, organization are no different. Clearly identified values and very well articulated intent; are a good start but it mustn’t end there. If you look at Indian business landscape, we have more than a handful of successful business houses but if you were to name top two, The Birla and the TATA group walk away with the prised perceptional value, there! The reason is that these organizations really invest in values.

Every passing day makes it tougher for organizations to survive, they deal with multiple challenges, from rising cost to shrinking capital to customers walking away to difficulty in keeping top talent. Things will continue to get more complex and confined as time progresses.One can choose from the open ocean of positive adjectives and traits and make it their own by sweating to act in accordance at all times, but if, I were to pick one, I would say, it must be “hope”!

Without the audacity is ‘hope’, integrity, kindness, candor, respect, resilience, forthrightness, frugality and just about everything else is just as incomplete as is a cup of tea without the tea bag! Nothing is going to live until the end of time without failing and when failure sees you in the eye, “hope” comes handy. The failure can be of any shape or size but the undeniable fact is that it will always be there in some proportion or the other, it is inescapable and a lot/group that is not hopeful and madly so - will not always get thru difficulties.

The group I was addressing, did buy the message and wanted to know how does one really apply the currency of hope to buy goodness. Answering it is simply, you gotta practice “self-talk”.

It is a system in which you give yourself instructions mostly verbal that you’d be the best at whatever you’re doing. When on the road, you would try and be the best-behaved person there. When playing a game you’d instruct yourself to be the best gamer - not every-time you’d end with the best score but if you have the value of hope by your side.You’ll find reasons to try again at being the best at what you do. 

Hope keeps us going, in the shiniest of the times and the darkest of the hours. It is hope that made cars on the road and airplanes fly in the air, possible ( and also innovation and the engineering ;) . With unwavering faith and untiring effort, we can achieve whatever we set our minds to. Let us not forget, we should do what we must but in sight of the fact that our journeys can be singular but the destination is shared! We must remain one hopeful force, in all our rises and in all of our falls, we must hope and win together.

So here’s my message - always remain hopeful and keep telling yourself that you have to be the best at whatever you’re doing - everything else will find its own sweet place.

Until next time ;) 

Chaos & Clarity!

Clarity is one thing that human minds understand and desire the most - this is a proven fact! If I were to put this any simpler I’d say - things which are simpler and truer are easier for people to comprehend fully. This dates back to the very origination of organized learning, we started from symbols and then gradually graduated to present form of storing & propagating knowledge by effectively combining competencies of character and images both- we call it info-graphics!

The first step to clarity, however, is Chaos!

This may sound a little out of place, but if you give it a thought you’d realize that - we wouldn’t seek clarity if it wasn’t for chaos! Humans are combative by design (this includes submissive, authoritative, passive, extremist, docile - all kind of human being). For those of you who are having a hard time believing that we are a combative race, should recall “survival of the fittest”. This principle from Sir Charles Darwin has been proven beyond doubt and because we have left millions of years of evolution behind us - we have grown from Fishes to Monkeys into our current forms where we have created the world for ourselves - full of conveniences and vocations.

That brings me the question - is Chaos a bad thing?  More often than not negative sentiments are attached with the word, if you were to ask 10 random people if they'd prefer chaos all of them would in one voice say that it is not desirable. I’m here to argue otherwise. 

I’m of the firm belief that Chaos helps progress!

I’m not arguing the impossible or on purpose trying to take the negative line of wisdom to attract attention but am saying so because I’ve carefully examined human history ( all that I could learn so far). Order is what is desired and chaos is what is opposite of it, now think of it. Orders are actually patterns that we fully comprehend and chaos are those we are not able to quite grasp, which is why we rearrange. It holds true for us putting our books on the shelves to folding clothes to finding the shortest route to our favorite cafe. 

It is always about bringing order!

One could argue that entire human progress should be attributed to this one thing - bringing order!

When we made villages outsiders dense forests - we organized housing near the source of food!

When we started thriving near rivers - we organized the capability of soil to give best results near a water source.

Fire was invented to end the chaos of darkness. 

Wheels brought order to the chaos of ease of movement. 

& then came the motor and that changed the world, beyond imagination.

We owe our entire progress, all our inventions and discoveries to Chaos.

Simplification is what we do best and that is what we must do to end the Chaos around us. Imagine standing at a center of a maze - the chaos of uncertainty surrounds us from all direction. We begin from not knowing, but progress, when we get the urge to know that first step and when we take it towards seeking clarity, we start ending Chaos. We move from one bit to another with relentless effort and quest for clarity, we reach the other end - Chaos leads to Clarity.

So next time when you find yourself in Chaos of any kind, remember, that it is for good and you can combat it in three simple steps. The thing here to note is that you cannot not have the patience to follow thru. If you leave it mid way you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life.

Steps:

• Believing that this can be solved.
• Break it down into smaller and manageable problems 
• Take one problem at a time & progress till you reach the end.

Don’t get bogged down because there is Chaos .. this very chaos will make you find ways to Clarity, something you love and enjoy!