5 step change framework for BPOs and product Ideas!

In the last article, I argued how the winds within the wings of traditional phone-based BPOs are being stolen by cheap, easy, and widely available automation alternatives. I also propounded that weakening prospects of the BPO industry do not necessarily mean a reduction in the overall scope of outsourcing as a business decision. There is a bit of a dichotomy between the two parts of this statement, which at one glance could appear disorienting and that is ok. If you read the 2nd part of the last article carefully (I will link it down below) the confusion will disappear. The more prominent question which the previous article did not answer fully is that if BPOs have to become a platform company to survive what sort of platform company should they really become? It is a legitimate question and that is the inspiration behind this one. It is in order to mention here that overwhelming 80%+ feedback emails that I received from my smart readers were seeking clarity on this very question. So here we go.

Before we get into the specifics of it, I think we should spend a minute thinking about why is ‘change’ important for business, and then when the business does elect to change how is it that the organization should attempt it? Answering the first part of this question is rather straightforward, the needs of an evolving society change over time and to cater to that organization in the business of meeting those needs must change too. Now, on to the tricky part of the question, what is it that the organizations that decide to change try to do when they pivot? Organizations sacrifice products for saving business. Remember the goal of a for-profit organization is to make money and to not make money exclusively from doing 'a thing'.

Now with that out of the way, let’s focus on the element that often startles those who attempt to embark on a change. The strangeness of the new, the absence of familiarity, lack of knowledge in the new arena that they consider pivoting into. Right out of the gate let me concede that the fear is legitimate, 100% so. Imagine that if you woke up in the middle of the night in a deserted desert with icy cold sand under your feet instead of your bedroom and on the warm bed on which you slipped into peaceful slumber earlier that night? The first few minutes would fit the exact definition of hell, will it not? You would then normalize your new situation and think about how did you get there and what are the options in front of you to get back to where you actually slept? You would at that moment be scared, unhappy, uncertain, nervous, and irritated. Would you not be at the sea completely?

Can anyone count that turbulence against you?

Imagine an entrepreneur who has been making XYZ amount of money from a set business, tried and tested product line is being asked by someone to change it to something else because they think that is the future. It is a tough bargain, but then one that must be made because what is today will most certainly not remain so tomorrow. A case for change will have to be continually made and pushed at the right forums, because, as big a force is need for change, the urge to remain the same is also not a weak trap. Torn between the demand of tomorrow and habits of yesterday, the decision-makers feel exhausted, clueless, and sometimes a bit disenchanted too.

I can't claim to have discovered the formula that works in turning key people around, every time. I have failed a fair amount of times myself too, but it is in the times that I did win, I find both my motivation and purpose. So my dear readers, if you are the one pushing for the change, I wish you luck and urge you to try out your own strategy.

I better stick to the part of the puzzle that I am most comfortable with, that is knowing how to carve out the change. It is important to note here that the change that we are referring to here is the change of device and not so much the substance of what is being executed. That is in essence it will still be reaching to a customer to either sell or serve or remind them of the both or either. It would be easier for the brand to sell what it has already sold, it is this core belief that often prohibits the founders from changing. So, as a change managers, we should start from there.

I present to you the framework!

5 step framework for BPOs.

Let's understand how is the current stack of clients/customers stack up. Data probing will be necessary. Here are the questions that you will need to ask and answer.

1. Figure out your area of strength.

• Which industry?
• What line of work?
• Which medium?
• What nature?
• Is there a specific demographic?
• Not just for existing clients but past customers too.
  • Why did the customers who left you did so?

Plot these details on the table.

A quick analysis of these details should reveal to you that which is that technology feature that can fully automate the work that you are now doing in a manual manner. Pick that product and then assess.

1. Would you like to create the product bottoms up?
2. Or you have the wherewith-all to acquire an organization that might already have the solution ready.
   1. If acquisition looks difficult, try merger possibilities.

2. Get critical stakeholders on board with the idea of ‘transformation’.

• Board
• Investors
• Key employees.

It is important to keep critical people in the organization informed of the direction in which the organization is wanting to pivot into. As it is this set of people who are going to make it work. This conversation is best not kept unidirectional, consensus building is needed. Bring the team on board and then get on with the plan.

3. Finding the resources (money and other things).

• Budget.
• See how you’re placed.
• Plan for the shortfall if any.

Change is easier said than done. Resource mining beforehand is critical to success.

4. Getting the team ready.

• Restructuring the organization.
• Hiring the skill sets that would be needed to build/run/manage the solution.

This is perhaps the most important part of the puzzle. Old world conventional leaders do not want things to change because they know it is too late for them to change and they also know that if things change they will become irrelevant. In preparing the team, the leader needs to understand both sides of the story: why is change vital and what is the cost of not changing.

5. Make a new business goal.

• Make a new goal statement of the company and then socialize it.
• Plan
• Act

Both your mission and vision statements might need to reflect the change in plan. Make it happen, socialize it - take it to the last employee. You need the whole of the organization to rally behind the change.

These five steps pulled right should carry you through, without much trouble.

For those of you who are not wanting to get on with the first step right away and wish to think through a few ideas for building platforms, here are a few.

Platform/Product Ideas for BPOs.

1. CRM Solution for managing customer service end to end.

• Dialler.
• Workforce management system.
• Knowledge management.
• Training management system.
• Performance management Module.
• Quality management system. 
• Data and Reporting modules.

2. Creating a solution for the industry where most of your contacts come from.

• Video KYC in BFSI.
• Digital onboarding.
• Social Media command center

3. Systems designed to reducing churn.

• Survey tool.
• Linking usage with trigger points.
• Devising strategies for increased longevity of the customer.

4. Conversation engine.

• BOT.
• RPA.
• Desktop Automation.

5. Vendor management system.

• Client onboarding
• Client sign up
• Life cycle management
  • Complaint and compliment modules.
  • Billing and Invoicing.
  • Change management.
  • Forecasting and supply details.

No matter what you do, you must not remain the same, because those who do not change perish.

On that note I shall end this, take care and good luck.

Link to the last article 

Outsourcing and BPO; the past and the future!

Outsourcing and BPO; the past and the future!

Outsourcing exists because economic inequality has been a persistent reality of our world, and as far as we can tell it is not going anywhere. Both futurists and economists believe that whilst growth infused inequality improves the lives of those on the weaker side of the economy too, in balance, but at the same time, they also admit that it does little to reduce the gap between the two extremes - crazy wealthy and desperately poor. Growth, the world must have, as, without it, anywhere between 1 and 2 billion people across the globe will die of starvation. You might wonder why I say inequality makes the case in favour of outsourcing? “Shift and Lift” & “Same mess for less” were common terms that the western world used when they had to make an unofficial argument to export jobs east.

Yes, it is the snobbery of the developed world, but of a kind that gives hundreds of millions of people in the underdeveloped world a chance at life. Imagine if India did not export the fruits of its cheap human labour to the west, what % of India would have been penniless looking into an abyss of hopelessness? The thought alone will intimidate you, to put things in perspective, it will be close to 150 million people, without any source of income.

All outsourcing however is not created equal.

The society operates hierarchically, and business calls its regime-  ‘band’.

Human history gives enough evidence for us to know that as society progresses and becomes technologically advanced it renders the least complex and the most repetitive of its tasks to machines, leaving smart humans with time and energy to concentrate on solving intricate mysteries of the facets of the ever-evolving world. “Cognitive capital invested on relatively simpler tasks does not give satisfactory returns”, as a principle has been known for ages. Let’s use this frame to understand outsourcing.

Outsourcing exists in every industry that operates on planet earth. Let me give you a few examples. 

• Apple manufactures in Asia. 

• An overwhelming majority of software developers in cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Gurgaon, Pune etc are developing and maintaining software owned by the west. 

• Third world countries (the third world is not an economic classification but a political one, countries that remained unaligned in the cold war era were given this label. Singapore is also a third world country), do financial accounting, transcription, translation and even train machine learning models with real-world data.

• Phone sales, customer service, credit card operations, travel logistics and loan processing - need I say more?

The way to classify the ‘band’, that I spoke about earlier is to judge a task by this simple standard.

• Have the people involved in outsourcing been academically trained in the same field? 

• Specialist outsourcing: If the answer to this question is a yes. Then you know that you are talking about high-value outsourcing. Like software (development and support), hi-end manufacturing etc.

• Generalist Outsourcing: If the answer to this question is negative, you know that what is being spoken about is low-value outsourcing: call centres (anything to do with phones), transcription, etc. 

At this point, you may be wondering why am I only insinuating about stronger currency hiring weaker denominations in the context of outsourcing? And you’re absolutely right, same currency outsourcing is a reality too. In fact, in the absolute share of manpower, it is roughly 60% that of all people working in outsourcing, but in revenue terms, it is just about 30%. You might wonder why 60% of people generate just 30% of the value? It is owing to the facts, listed below. 

• A vast majority of this outsourcing is generalist in nature. So unit pricing is abysmally low.

• The capital that enables politicians to try their electoral fortune comes from corporations, which want the minimum wages to remain as low as possible so that industries can remain competitive in the world market. As a result of which cheap labour is found in abundance, here.

• 98.99% of the tasks that these generalists perform can be automated, therefore, to remain relevant they are forced to operate at a cost that does not give the outsourcer compelling reasons to go all out to automate the workflow entirely.

Thus far we have covered the economic basis of outsourcing. Let us now look at the brief history of outsourcing in India. I shall focus on the BPO side of things, if you know me you’d know why and if you do not, read other articles on this subject that I have written and you’ll know.

Business historians classify outsourcing in these three different eras. 

The beginning of traditional BPOs from the 1900s to Mid 2000s.

• This was a straightforward period when consumerism was beginning to take gargantuan shape. The west needed a cheap solution to sell and service their customers, they started looking for countries that spoke their language reasonably well and offloaded the work to them. As they engaged with the east in this context they understood that they have tapped into an infinite pool of motivated, hard-working, sincere, hungry for growth cheap labour with plenty of skills to pull off generalist jobs well.

• Tasks after tasks kept pouring and India benefited by having an avenue of employment large enough to engulf its vast semi-skilled workforce.

• Wealth creation led to an increse in demand and indigenous manufacturing and distribution and real estate gained from it. 

• A high density of phone connectivity in the west enabled it.

The Medieval BPO Era: Omni Channel BPO 2000s to Late 2010s.

• West felt the need to cap their costs after nearly a decade long free for all outsourcing party. From this directional change, Indian players started offering goodies like process re-engineering, downstream innovation, process transformation and commitment to productivity enhancements, to keep the contracts alive.

• The phone was no longer the king of the reigns, the internet had made its entry into the homes (broadband) and in the hands (smartphone) of people. Asynchronous support channels gained ground, chat and email became popular too. 

• Other forms of work like simple MIS, basic data analytics and accounting processes also boomed in this era.

• In this period, the proliferation of phones picked up in India too and with it, large corporations began outsourcing their tele support, chat and email work to BPO service providers. Domestic BPO became a viable business. 

Contemporary Era (A): Insight-Driven BPO late 2010 and pre-pandemic.

• Corporations that had just come out of the slowdown in the west needed to tighten their belts. With great force, ‘lean and six sigma’ and similar standards became a part of the everyday routine for the Indian BPO industry. Providers burnt the midnight oil to achieve more with less. ‘Cutting waste’ became the mission of over a million people. As a result, a slew of process and product innovation made its way into the still flourishing industry.

• ‘Analytics with process transformation’ occupied the focal point of the industry.

        + Data-led process transformation.

                + Informed Insights-enabled digitisation.

    + Automation

+ Simple fetch and tell BOT.

+ Desktop automation.

+ RPAs.

 

Contemporary Era (B): Automation driven support late 2010 to Pandemic.

• There is a significant overlap between these two phases of outsourcing that is on account of the evolution of the outsourcers. Not every company woke up to the magic of automation at the same time. In Era A we have spoken about how the laggards of the industry reacted. In this section Era B, we are going to talk about the leaders and technology-first organizations. 

• The business landscape for the evolved part of the economy changed to proportions imagined by no one. The start-up revolution completely changed the way the world looked at business operations. Companies decided to trust algorithms for all rule-based tasks. Organisations like Ola and Uber were born, which was completely devoid of transactional support, the ‘application-only-operation’ became a thing. I know some of you are thinking about the brief period when both Ola and Uber used to take bookings on the phone. I must remind you that it was a period in which the organizations were educating the customers about this new technology, app-based operation. As it gained critical mass on the application, phones were switched off.

• Cheap data and economical smartphones came within the reach of the common man and what the west had experienced half a decade ago became the story of the economies of the eastern countries, too. 

• The organisation started working to reduce repeat with maniacal focus. Self-help was made cool.

• These technological advancements made their grand entrance into the scene, as well.

• Conversational AI.

• Advanced context-aware chatbots.

• OCR.

• Speech to Text and back to Speech - the whole cognitive stack. 

• Data modelling and advanced analytics. 

• ML gave machines an edge over humans involved in generalist tasks. 

• The little that was left of the traditional market was overwhelmed by the pandemic, which forced people to not only get acquainted but also comfortable with using support platforms and the internet for fulfilling their needs.

These advancements took away the winds under the wings of traditional BPOs.

• The technological solutions in the medium to long term became economical than a human doing a generalist task. 

• The efficiency gains of machine-made humans look unattractive. 

• Transparency, accuracy and ability to generate rich structured data from automated operations made generalists appear like chimpanzees in comparison to machines.

In the last two years of the pandemic alone the size of BPO has contracted to the extent of 24%, the 2/3rd that is still left is being slated to go down to half, in the matter of the next 12 to 18 months.

Why could the BPO industry as a whole not evolve with the changing market? Is a fascinating question, whilst answering that is an entire article in and of itself, I would say that ‘hyper inward focus’ is to be blamed for the ruins of the industry. The fact that this sector has not been attracting fresh capital for over 5 years now is somehow not catching their fancy. The aged leadership teams (50 Yrs +) has personal stake in keeping the charade on, as this late in the career changing stream would be impossible for them, so they shrewdly keep knitting stories of potential and show the 20% floating clients (who keep moving from one BPO to another) as territory for expansion to the promoters to keep their jobs going.

Much like Kodak, BlackBerry and Nokia were too busy with the make-believe world that they had created for themselves BPOs too are living the illusion of sustenance. The real world however has moved on, taking lesson from colossal failures of these one time giants.

Future of the BPO industry

• BPOs that metamorphose into tech products and platform organisations will survive and come out stronger on the other side of the churning. 

• Organisations like Concentrix, Wipro, WNS, Teleperformance, Infosys and Tech Mahindra are on the right track.

• The BPOs will have to find a way to put the great understanding of customer behaviour, their needs and wants that they have acquired over the last 2 decades, into developing tech products that solve the most pressing support questions of the day.

• They will have to move away from transaction handling and become consultative organisations that handle end to end customer journeys and not just what happens on the phone/chat/emails.

• Designing service philosophy and related processes.

• Budgeting service operations.

• Developing and deploying the platforms for support.

• Owning to the business outcome and billing for output rather than time spent on the job.

BPO that successfully catapults into an organisation that has skin in the entire vertical stack of service will not only survive but thrive.

Remember, what I opened this article with, outsourcing is here to stay - old devices of outsourcing (voice) will have to be given up in favour of new tools (cognitive tech).

With that, I would like to end this.

See you on the other side!

Till then stay safe and take very good care of yourselves. 

Remember vaccinations save lives.

Remote work and urban planning!

(Note: The changes that we speak of in this article is expected to happen in the course of the next 10 years!)

Workplace of the future (a part of which is already visible) is no longer going to be a 'physical space' but a 'network' that enables the staff to connect with the resources needed to carry out the affairs of the business, in a seamless and secure manner. Even before the heat from the Pandemic started burning us out, the bottlenecks that excessively centralised and vehemently urbanised operations force upon the ecological balance of the cities had begun to appear counter-productive. The health risk from the wretched virus has in a way fast-tracked much-needed change in the organisation of the modern economic hubs.

A survey found these startling facts:

• The commute for urban workers is getting 10% longer every year, 2/3rd of the respondents said that it was the worst part of their workday.
• Cost of living in cities was thinning saving capabilities of the working middle class, leaving them in a vulnerable position, with less than 30% having enough in the bank to run domestic affairs for a quarter without fresh influx.
• 70% of all things that cause Global warming originated from the cities. 

Modern cities, as we know them, were shaped by the Industrial Revolution; locations near ports became important distribution centres of goods, as a result of which accumulation of both people and properties followed. Back in the day, being physically present was the only way to make commerce happen and thus congestion in metropolitan centres was both natural and a conceded consequence. Thankfully, the advancements made in modern times have liberated us from those limitations; 'in-person supervision' is not the only tool available to humankind, today.

The Internet has already happened! 

Will anthropologists find considering the 'invention of the Internet’ comparable to the ‘discovery of fire’, outrageous? They may and I won’t dislike them for it nor does my assertion push their opinion any further from the fact than, it is. After all, they have studied life before ‘fire’ with whatever pieces of evidence that are still present, their shelves are full of books uncovering life after fire. The vantage point from which my contemporaries and I see the world, we find the impact of the world wide web just as staggering.  The conundrum of the internet is fascinating though, it brings people together, video call with someone sitting on the other side of the planet is an excellent example of it and it also tears people apart, the unsavoury impact of social media on human relationship and society is a piece of fine evidence. No tool, however, is inherently good or bad. It is the intention of the user that makes the outcome come out as noble or otherwise. For instance, gun on its own doesn’t kill anyone; those who point and pull the trigger do.

The Internet has democratised information, removed many a barrier and brought civilization to the advantage of functioning without physical contact with comparable and in many cases even better outcomes. Imagining a world tottering under a Pandemic without the internet would really be an exercise of picturing the devil. When the virus locked us all up in the confines of our homes, we turned to this very tool in our arsenal to accomplish everything that needed to be done: from schools to senates; everything shifted its operation ‘online’ (entirely in some sections and in parts in others). A world without the internet will impact more than just the running of business today, as it is now the lifeblood of human existence.

Ubiquitous ‘Work from home’ has changed more than our relationship with work. It is substantively altering run of the economy, urban planning, ecological balance and human mobility (both migration to and reverse migration from centres). A little over a year has already been lost to the virus, thankfully, we have viable vaccines now, but inoculation of 7.5 billion people spread across an entire planet is not an easy task. The most aggressive estimates suggest that it is not going to happen in less than 5 years, at any rate. The window of struggle is so long that that measures implemented as temporary modifications will become a part of our lives by the time we see the menace off, following the sheer rule of practice. 

Cities have undeniably suffered more than the rural areas from the mega virus breakout. The volume of economic activities that are conducted in these urban centre cause interest groups to invest in infrastructure to sustain the commerce: high delivery attracts higher resources and the accumulation keeps getting thicker. Heightened economic activities attract talent and thus workforce migrations happen. Cities provide better services to its dwellers, from education to health and sanitation - everything is a bit better, a bit nicer; and thus becomes a magnet to those who seek better standards of living. A virus that found its carrier in humans hit these metropolitan centres hard, congested spaces and high population density provided the perfect breeding ground for the virus. Growing scare and overflowing hospitals drew people in masses to leave for a safer place. Different segment of the population had different reasons for moving out of the city. Here a few.

• Migrant labourers: We saw millions track treacherous roads on foot, ranging anywhere between 100 and 1000 km, back home as the imposition of lockdown cast shadow of doubt over their paycheque.
• White-collar workers: Those who could work from home, preferred to be at their native places in Tier 2, 3 cities and villages with their families, instead of continuing at more expensive rented places in the city of their work.  Traffic woes and other difficulties that came out of congestion did little to dissuade people from abandoning the towns. 
• Urban Native Dwellers: With schools getting digital too, parents had little trouble in shifting bases. They welcomed the once in a lifetime opportunity to live in a greener, more affordable area, devoid of every suffocation that large city imposed upon them. All other compromises that were to be made in absence of modern amenities were happily embraced as the price of convenience and quiet of their new base location.
• Business: Leaders began to see how unimportant and wasteful are the office spaces of the city. They understood that they do not need to be present in the plush corporate parks anymore. The possibility of making substantial cost savings, by allowing workers to work in a distributed model, was greeted with an unabashed cheer.

Where do these changes leave our beloved cities? Will they siege to exist? The answer to that question is not a simple one. This proposition has many layers. A city is built not in a day, it comes about brick by brick, with centuries of investment, careful planning and infrastructure augmentation; not all facilities of which are portable. For instance, a super speciality hospital can’t be dismantled and thrown into pieces in smaller cities, at the drop of a hat. Government establishment, the core of it, are all in the cities, which means from litigation to other needs which can only be fulfilled by the state will be required to be performed in the city. What then happens to the future of the cities? To understand it, let us imagine that the entire population of all cities is that of 100 people. Let us assume that 30% can ride on the Internet (Cat 1) to get their business rolling from outside the cities and therefore will easily move. Roughly another 30% (Cat 2) of the population survives from the services that it provides to Cat 1. This shift will cause upward mobility for small % of people from Cat 2, as a reduction in manpower will increase the cost of manpower. What do the rest do? How will they sustain with their entire market migrating outside the bound of the cities? As a result, another about 20% will find the cities unviable.

With nearly 50% of the city gone, its ability to attract investment will also go down, one would assume in a larger proportion than the fall in the demand. The thing to note here is that disintegration is not going to be uniform, in the sense that the entire population will not move from city A to village B. We would see smaller clusters sprinkled across the country. These spread out earners will begin spending in their new localities and with that demand and supply equilibrium of the new places will get impacted, tipped for growth.  Mini-cities will start coming up in suburban and rural parts of the country. Open spaces in the city, the spaces vacated by 50% of its erstwhile dwellers will slowly began to repair itself, healing of sorts with begin. 

Studies show that 10% to 15% shift in demand in the real estate market is enough to cause revolutionary change, and in this case, we are speaking about a minimum of 30% of movement from city centres to the suburban and the rural areas; major changes are bound to come.

Some of which could be:

• Polly Centric cities
  • 15 minutes commute cities
• Distributed city models.
• The rise in the demand for co-working spaces as mini-city begins to rise. Corporates will much prefer disintegrating large offices in favour of small co-working spaces in the suburban areas.

Such a remarkable change will also have an impact on the social set up and living arrangement of those who would participate in this change. Cosmopolitan mini-city will become a thing.

We should talk about two of the important phenomenons.

• Lack of separation between work and life: Commute works as an active separation between work and home. For many, it provides for the much needed pondering time. A healing chamber of sorts, a time in which working population, adjusts the disorientations cause both at work and at home.
• Social and emotional separation: There is a range of emotion that we face at work, different from the offering of the home, therefore, response systems have also been developed in us differently. For instance, an employee hearing the music in front of his co-workers is not the same as he getting to face an uncomfortable situation with his family in the company. People essentially live different lives between their work and family - a merger of the two could cause an emotional imbalance in many and mental disbalance in some cases.

'Work from home' has taken that cushion away from people, now, there is no way for them to physically separate themselves from what is being said or done by their counterparts at work and life partners at home. But all is not gloomy and sad, because this system of survival has evolved through years and generations of practise, trial and error, hopefully soon, the human race will master the art of thriving in this new set up too. If not in this generation, at least the one after it will come out to be better prepared and perhaps by then complimenting infrastructure (both soft and hard), policies (both public and private) and procedures and ways of life alongside the technology would have gotten much better.

The future is certain to be different from our present and I am confident it will be better too. 

With that, I end this.. Bye-bye!

Change, is not easy!

A large part of my professional career in corporate India has revolved around bringing about organisational change, different organisations gave it different titles, some fancier than the others, stacked initiatives differently within the organisational maze but the expectation has more or less remained unchanged in last 16 years - simply put, 'make it better'. The 'it' has been a variety of things to a diversity of people in a wild medley of circumstances. I've written about my experiences with bringing about transformation in many articles (26 write-ups in the last 10 years). Every time, I revisit the topic though, I find that my understanding has differed from my previous chronicles of it; I can't say for the better or not, I would let you be the judge of that. But it has not remained the same.

It is rather easy, some would even say commonsensical to believe that bringing about change is about coming up with a winning and a powerful idea, one which is better than prevalent practice in every conceivable way and then going on with it. After all what else can one need to drive organisational evolution? I used to hold this belief close to my chest too before I began my journey 1.6 decades ago. I could not have been any further from the truth, though.

You'll grow old listening to how dearly people want 'reform', vociferous support for the cause will fall from the skies before you can say the word 'TOM', and yet CHANGE does not happen, as smoothly. Private opposition comes from the very constituents that renders lip service to it in public. The dichotomy that surrounds transformation is fascinating, it is paradox of all paradoxes. Martyrs are respected, celebrated and idolised and yet no one wants their own kin to become one - such is the story of change. People support an idea as long as it does not demand a personal investment of time, effort or money, especially a change that is seen as taking the game away from those who enjoy control. It is fought with tooth and nails. Organisations pride themselves on the value that they generate, remember a unit keeps running only as long as it keeps making those who have invested in it, richer than they were before and therefore it is not a love affair that one can keep running despite occasional heartburns. The whole world knows the story of "Kodak", "Nokia" and "BlackBerry" and yet, change is resisted.

One wonders why?

People make societies and very people like you and I make organisations too. Our strengths play out just as much as our insecurities do; in that sense, the profile of an organisation is a collective characterisation of the people it employees, nothing more and nothing less.

I'd like to summarise my tryst with a change in two categories :

1) Change capital

2) Change capability

- [] Collective Intent of the controlling vote of the board.

- [] Business urgency.

- [] Long-term commitment.

- [] Innate desire of the chair.

Intellect and thoughtfulness of the leadership team

1. Knowing what to change; the core idea itself; requires thoughtful consideration, deep intellectual exploration and creative thinking.

2. Saving the idea from atrophy of inaction requires budgetary allocation and muscle for execution.

Both of these can only come from the top. People at the bottom of the pyramid no matter how engaged, skilful or well-meaning lack organisational control and influence needed to bring about large scale change.

Collective Intent of the controlling vote of the board.

Business Urgency

Long term commitment

The innate desire of the chair

- [ ] Communication

- [ ] Planning

- [ ] Execution

- [ ] Transition

- [ ] Course correction

- [ ] Realisation

- [ ] Closure

Selection of Idea

Communication

Planning

Execution

Transition

Course Correction

Closure

(Disclosure: The diagrams are from IJRTE Research paper)

I see below 5 elements as essential, non-negotiable building blocks of what I call the 'change capital'. Without these in place, making any alternation is impossible. So if you find yourself in a setting wanting of any of these, you got to take a pause, first work on priming the situation.

- [] Intellect and thoughtfulness of the leadership team.

Let's go over them one by one.

Two questions come out undeviatingly from the label, 1 - Intellect and 2- leadership team; one might ask why these two? To pull a large change, one that has transformative potential and organisation-wide reach - the most fundamental prerequisites are:

Bringing about real revolution is a lot more than romanticising with the idea of change. All transformative endeavours are daunting in nature, necessitating constant reinforcement. It is a long drawn process, it may start with a directive but can't be carried through without substantial investment in bringing the culture of the unit up to it. Cultural shifts are unlikely to bring about unless intentionality is displayed and demonstratively pushed and practised by those at the top. The inertia of the organisation, the old normal works against it with every fibre of its body.

Owners of the P&L unknowingly train their senses to smell and see monitory gains in the short term with a great degree of clarity and objectivity, everything else is just dressing not the main dish. Not every change, pays returns back on the day of commencement, benefits of some initiatives are only realised in the long term and that steals the thunder away from the hustle that change brings with itself. Attention is often diverted to what is considered both urgent and important for carrying the day out. 'Cause of the change' becomes the casualty, here.

A tenant can't be expected to worry about the structural integrity supporting the longevity of the property that he or she occupies, for them it is just not relevant, as their needs are momentary, at best. Contemporary calls are always dearer to the leaser. Change management bears uncanny similarity if leaders do not have long term commitment with the business they would not care enough to have it transformed, into anything better. The incentive of implementing change is understandably just not stimulating enough.

How badly do you want to win? If you want it for real, you bring it to the fore, at the top of the agenda. Otherwise, you naturally keep shifting "the need for transformation' to the future. Do those who hold the key to the business want to change, is the critical question? This issue is less organisational and more personal. Before it is answered the leaders must drift on an introspective journey. The process is taxing, long term and one ridden with conflicts so unless the desire is ironclad, there is no way to make the change for the better happen.

Let's assume you have all the key ingredients in place; congratulations you are halfway through. To bring about an effective change you'll still need a few more things.

With it, I come to the 2nd item - Change Capability

This is a more functional part of the problem, the list below captures it comprehensively.

- [ ] Selection of Idea

Let's look at them one after the other as well.

We're often tempted to ape what others are doing, following the fad is a thing not only in fashion, it creeps silently into the strategy vault as well. You need to know to guard against it. I resort to the process of rejection, list down all the possible ideas for a given situation and then start crossing bad or weak ones out to arrive at the top three or two. Check for its alignment with the larger business objectives. You do not have to work overtime to make the idea sound bold or come out as courageous, it does not have to be. The design needs to appreciate the current business landscape and should have plans for the future at heart. Alignment with the business goal is a must. Every scheme also has the responsibility of proving how it will improve/changes the offering against its competition in the market. As long as these criteria are met, you'll be good.

It often becomes more important than the idea itself. Remember, for your idea to win, it will need the backing of the decision-maker and also nod from those who are going to be directly impacted by it. When you craft the communication plan don't ever forget that your audience is unaware of the background work, the research and the rigorous process of rejection that you've followed to arrive at the final point, which you think carries the cause well- so keep the presentation of the idea suitably descriptive. Always know the taste of your audience, no point placing Arundhati Roy to someone who has been brought up with Chetan Bhagat; dumb the exhibition down if you must or regulate it a few notches up depending upon the unique requirement of the house that you are going to subject your presentation to. Be a moderator, in the conversation. Being good at language pays in ways more than one, you'll know when you present your idea.

The devil lies in the detail, break the steps down to their most granular form, never mind, if a plan that could have got made in 20 rows gets extended to 2000, the more the better. But remember 'more' and not 'more of the same' is being advised here. You do not have to fall into the trap of repeating what has already been said to make the plan look magnificent. A good plan is not an enthusiastic but realistic one. It should account for buffers, count in all the possibilities and the things that could go wrong. Delay is not good news nor is taking too long, balance is the key. Another key objective of a plan is to make stakeholders aware of the contribution that they need to make to infuse life into the idea. Be clear and be firm in the detailing.

I on purpose did not call it project management but execution. As the leader of change, you have to have your skin in the game. You can't be enacting high almighty who only presents himself to review and to point out what is not right, you also have to shoulder the obligation of making what is wrong, right. The most critical items are best co-owned. Integrity is vital, in the execution phase you must keep the sponsorer of the change duly informed of the progress that is being made. They deserve to know the real reason, not the sweetened one. Tell the truth, call out the slacks, if and when they present themselves. Remember, your primary responsibility is to drive the action as planned to the closure.

Agents of change are seen as thieves of comforts, they are hated because people think that they wish to make the lives of the people who are outside of the change management process (ideation) difficult on purpose. Many times, change exposes the truth, in the most uncomfortable, dispassionate and indiscriminate manner which people fear and therefore detest. Protecting the turf is a primal instinct, therefore change is seen as a possible loss. In an odd situation, the anxiety of change also encourages people to work against it. These anomalies must be identified and flagged appropriately within the organisation.

Not all plans work, and there is no harm in accepting when they do not. A common mistake that change leaders make is that they get so invested in the idea that they operate unreasonably to make sometimes even a failed idea work because they simply do not have it in them to concede - "I got it wrong". Getting it wrong is not as bad as pretending that all is well when it is not. Not only it is unethical but it also does the organisation immense impairment by discouraging people from trusting future initiatives. Such conduct discredits the process of change. When things don't work, admit it, go back to the drawing board and try again.

Declaring war is just as important as announcing peace. When the project does draw to a close, communicate so effectively and efficiently. Give an honest account of how true has the endeavour been to the planning that was done. How much of what was promised has been achieved? Go thread bear. After the announcement has been completed, make people aware of the changes that they will have to bring in their routine, aid adoption. Make plans for training those influenced both directly and indirectly. When it comes to letting people know, doing it a little more than needed won't harm nearly as much as not communicating enough.

At this point, you must have thought why haven't I confronted the elephant in the room - "Corporate Politics"; well simply because it is ubiquitous. It exists before the idea of change, while the idea is being given flesh and blood and also after the completion. If the inherent culture of the organisation has the antidote, it won't matter and if the culture lacks the intelligence then the organisation won't be able to embark on any serious change anyway; so I have omitted it.

Know that life of a change agent is not an easy one, it is full of confrontation, pugnacity, strifes, failures and discouragement - when you sign up for it tell yourself that you'd not let the trivialities swamp you down.

ये इश्क़ नहीं आसाँ इतना ही समझ लीजे

इक आग का दरिया है और डूब के जाना है

(जिगर मुरादाबादी)

With that let me end this, GO MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN!

Action in curious times!

We're in confusing times, making choices have never been more taxing, as a result, more often than not, we find ourselves attaching the cart before the horse. Humans have never quite known the future when I say this I discount the audacious claims that the astrologers make. We have, however, mastered the art of basing our predictions of the future on a combination of historical performance and present prevailing conditions. Even when the output of our models does not meet the realm of reality with a degree of accuracy enough to make us proud. We take comfort in the consistency of the present. We have a natural talent for neutralizing things, at least in our imaginative and somewhat delusional minds and that makes for a tranquil compromise between the actual and the desired.

COVID-19 has shattered that peace brutally and perhaps also irreversibly. Not only is our current condition unpredictably unstable but our faith in the history of human triumph has also been shaken curtly, by it. To cope with the tragedy, depending on the mental make-up, some of us are doing the wise thing of picking up books that have a detailed account of human response to comparable tragedies in the past. There are also those who prefer inferior in quality but a quicker way of gaining some insight, however superficial it might be - Google searches/Youtube and whatnot. Everybody is looking to find inspiration for a workable solution to the grand mess. Information overdose is not helping the situation, either. Let's take a moment to analyze the visuals that surround us today: What are we consuming these days?

1) Stories on the growing number of infected.

2) Mounting deaths.

3) Painful tales of human tragedies.

4) Unprecedented economic damage.

5) Wage cuts.

6) Loss of livelihood.

7) A slew of bankruptcy petitions.

8) Shortcomings of the government.

9 ) The apathy of society, particularly the rich and the privileged who even at this tragic time has not stopped their vulgar and foolish show of wealth.

These are indeed disturbing developments and none of them are either fictitious or rooted in propaganda to paddle a frightening narrative forward. Death and every other form of destruction are indeed common in 2020.

"So long as we're alive we will have to hustle", I'd like for you to read this devoid of any motivational undertone, I don't like passionate exuberance. I'd like you to evaluate it as hard cold truth; an undeniable fact. In the last article, I argued for us to make peace with the Virus and in this one, I'm trying to, extend that argument further in a more functional way. I offered "questioning everything as the SOP" for creating co-existence with the cruel Corona Virus.

We will have to re-imagine every facet of our life and then reorganize our ways around the new design to survive first and then someday, hope to prosper, again. How should we begin, what should be the sequence of events and where should we stop. Are important questions and conventional wisdom of human existence tells us to adopt. Disclaimer, you may not agree with one or all of these and it is ok to approach it differently: let me reiterate “NOBODY HAS THE BLUEPRINT". But guess what we do know the common mistakes that we humans have made, let us begin by committing to not repeating them. Let's talk about the 4 most common errors committed through the course of industrial history.

1) Not asking the right question: If you do not ask the answer is always going to be a NO. Asking the right question is vital because responses are almost always as good as the question. A psychological thought experiment was conducted at Harvard to verify the impact of question on response. In the test, a visual of a car crash was shown to three different sets of people, each was asked the same question but framed differently.

Set 1 - What might be the speed of the cars at the time of contact?

Set 2 - What might be the speed of the car at the time of the collision?

Set 3 - Guess the speed of the car when they smashed into each other, BOOM.

This is how the respondents reacted.

Set 1 - Recorded lowest average speed, in response.

Set 2 - Almost everyone in this group guessed the speed to be higher than Set1. The difference was about 30%.

Set 3- Guessed the highest speed, it was twice as much as the speed that Set 2 had guessed.

You can try this experiment too.

Do you understand the power of the question? When you do ask, make sure that you ask the tough questions and do not mix emotions with your quest. Remember your customers do not pay for how you feel about your business but how they feel. Your emotion must take a back seat. A good question Inspires curiosity, creativity, and deep thinking.

2) Putting tact before strategy: We often pick up our "to do" lists and label them as a strategy. The list populated by most basic and commonsensical items, pristinely presented as 'end all be all' response to a situation. The suggested actions have been commonly found to have no root in data or any other kind of qualitative research. People relegate strategy to mere things to do because it makes them feel good, in-charge, and especially because it comes at little cognitive investment. From lack of intellect to absence of awareness/ experience/ exposure to emotional imbalances like fear/anxiety to plain laziness causes one to fall in the trap. The idea is to not stigmatized those who may have got it wrong but to gently steer them to the realization of shortcomings of their approach. To subtly guide them to what may be a more comprehensive thought exercise. If your response to the plan is not answering the below, it is not a strategy yet, you have got work to do.

a) Does it tell you how your identity is going to change?

b) Does it give you a sense of your revised organizational/unit/ goal, objective, and value-based goal?

c) Does it provide for a framework to asses your current offerings?

e) Does it provide the new outline of business as a whole and not ways of doing it?

e) Does it cover existential threats?

3) Putting off tough decisions for the future: We do not enjoy taking tough decisions, so much so that we procrastinate, sometimes even indefinitely. Like closing our eyes does not make the world a dark place it only darkens our vision of it, not attending to a tough situation does not make it go away. You're better off facing up to it. There is no escape from it. The more you delay the costlier the delay will become. Correcting cost is painful, saying no does not come without heartaches but you gotta do what you gotta do. So get on with it.

4) Resistance to change: This one is lethal and omnipresent, there is not one atom in the universe that can deny its love of inertia; all of us are suffering from it. But not all of us suffer from it in all areas, as long as you do not wish to change your personal life and its settings - it is ok. But if your choices impact others or your organization you have no right to hold ‘change’ hostage. The harsh truth is that if you do not change the market won’t halt its transformation for you to alter your resolve. The world has witnessed mammoths like BlackBerry, Kodak, Nokia, and numerous others that resisted change more than they could afford as a result of being market leaders they became inconsequential, in no time. You have a clear choice in front of you; Would you rather accept to change or let progressive movement in the market force you out of the scene. Considering to change is not when the change actually comes into effect. It is a continuous journey, as a leader you’ll need to support it in an unabated fashion, keep removing bottlenecks, keep encouraging and facilitating change for the larger good. The buck for change stops at you, in simple matters like choosing humble Namaste/ Adab ‘hand-wave of Hi’ over handshake or also in complex affairs like steering the organization out of the COVID19 mess.

Darwinian survival of the fittest is also about the elimination of the weak. Who would you rather be, the strongest or the one that got eliminated?

Optimism without action is daydreaming.

Pessimism without action is fear-mongering.

Realism without action is promoting ‘status-quo’

Pick whichever ideology suits your temperament and appetite but in the end, to remain relevant, you’ll need to ACT.

Until we meet again : Stay well, stay safe!

Linking the first article in this series here: you may wanna check.

Title: CO-EXISTING WITH COVID19!

URL: http://www.lavkush.co.in/2020/05/co-existing-with-the-covid19/