The Barriers and Obstacles Lie Within !!!

One day a wise man from a distant land came to the Court of a Great Emperor of the East and proclaimed that he wanted to challenge the learned men of the kingdom by testing how intelligent they were. The emperor readily agreed and invited some of his courtiers and ministers to face the challenge. The wise man kept a pot covered by a cloth and asked the courtiers and ministers to tell him what it contained. Every one was dumb founded and kept starting silently at each other. There was complete silence. The emperor went blank with anxiety.

Then the kings clever minister came forward, he opened the cloth, looked inside the pot and then said there was nothing in the pot. It was empty indeed. 

"But you opened it." said the wise man. 

"You did not tell us that it can't be opened" shot back the clever minister.

The wise man was cornered. He quietly left.

Learning: There are many interesting lessons which come out from this simple story that we can relate to our world of work. While I discuss couple of them here... readers are welcome to add their comments and interpretations.

Often the limitations, boundaries, barriers are all in our minds. We as human beings set the limits and most often those that never existed in the first place.

Very often just because someone thought it so... it became the accepted norm. Common sense might suggest this is not so but we don't stop by to question. Is this familiar in our organizations?

In hind sight the message may seem simple but one needs to break out of the patterned thinking in order to have more creative solutions and approaches to the problems we face.

We also learn that there are others around us who can be more intelligent than we are. Those that outsmart you.... those you never expected to. So it does no harm to accept and acknowledge them for what they bring. When was the last time we acknowledge someone for how they think... of course without pretentions or without being hypocrite like.

I have covered just one dimension of how this story can be interpreted and the message about how the locus of how we respond to any situation is driven from within.

Will be interesting to see other interpretations and dimensions arising from this story.

Even Inventing Is a Process....

They say that human society progressed on stepping stones of inventions.   This is nothing but reality.   The world has changed more, there has been more progress and more inventions in the last  sixty years or so than previous three centuries.  Such is the contribution of invention that has made this possible. 

We think that invention is the forte or realm of few different kind of people.   Some may be wondering if invention is a random,  hit and run, trial and error,  way of getting new things created, thought of or implemented.  This may have been in the past as there was no framework or pattern that could be generalized and imposed on the process of invention. 

However over past few decades thinkers have come up with frameworks for innovation and invention.   One such methodology I came across was the TRIZ framework. (Pronounced and TREEZ) that was developed in USSR and now being explored in many parts of the world.    While it may apply to engineering inventions it can be extended to other kinds of inventions too.

So from a understanding that it was impossible to learn how to invent today there is clear evidence on how to learn to invent.   I am not going to elaborate what TRIZ methodology is all about.  Google can do it for you but what I would like to emphasize here is that there is yet another process that can be broken down into a set of logical steps.   Can be mastered, can be transition and will provide opportunities for outsourcing in the future days.   Some of it may already be done in bits and pieces but along with robotic automation,   transformation etc,  will be things to watch out in the future.

Other BPS Industry Topics

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BPS Industry : Some Sectoral Challenges

Creativity in Organization- Driving Focus from Future to Present.

Today's organizations are challenged by  a very volatile environment.  Change today seems faster than what it ever was in the past.  But didn't every generation since the middle of the last century say the same thing. 

However what we observe is that  today's world requires us to grow, improve, become better even if other factors remain same or decline.  e.g.  produce more with less people,  get more returns on same capital employed. To this we need to perform better and better.

Interestingly it is found that motivation and performance don't go along all the way.  Post a period of  positive relationship between motivation and performance it is found that performance dips and therefore beyond a point extrinsic motivation does not hold much promise.  The reason for this is that the obsession for the goal and some future "reward" drain away focus from present to future. (Read more about Yerke-Dodson's Law)

Rather the better approach for organizations would be to try and shift focus onto the creative side of the human.  When work demands creative approach or when work requires creative minds there is stronger relationship with performance. Also the outcome and motivation link gets strengthened when intrinsic motivation is the reason.and focus shifts from future to the present.  Hence organizations need to spend time to invest more in creativity and drive up the performance. 



However given the patterning slant of the human mind it is important that organizations spend deliberate attempts to drive up creative thinking and this can be done through use of tools, techniques and various frameworks that help the mind move out of the patterned and linear way of thinking.   More on this in a later post.

Discussions on Creative Leadership at Asia Pacific HRM Congress

It was interesting discussion at the session on Creative Leadership For Tomorrows World. I was part of a session wherein there were three presentations bringing in diverse views on leadership and talent..  

First presentation by Vinod Bidwaik, HR Director at  DSM India Pvt Ltd,  brought out how leadership is key to securing the future for company which is driven by innovation.   The company had evolved  over a period of 110 years from a mining company to a high tech specialty plastics products company and also getting into some amazing innovations that will drive the growth.  To enable this you needed to shape the right behaviors right from entry  screening to retention and motivation and the right leadership was needed to provide that direction.   After all Leadership is a verb and not a noun.  It is all about driving momentum and bringing change and not about remaining good where you are.  The six stage model that was presented made an interesting learning from the companies five year journey. 

The second section was on an interesting point of view by Wing Commander Naresh Taneja Head HR for IRB Infrastructure Services,  who spoke about Toxic Talent Trap and how you can go on for a long way without noticing the side effects of talent that is toxic.  Basically the session was a discussion about what extent do companies go in the pursuit of talent, what extent do you let go of your core values just because you don' want to lose a good talent.  The discussion raised questions about role of leadership in addressing this issue and ensuring that we don't end up as boiled frogs (of course with the internal environment changes) 

The third leg of the session was that perspective I shared from TCS about how leadership is not just at individual level but leadership also extends to the organization as a whole.   The small story about how TCS displayed responsible leadership at the industry level to drive augmentation of talent to enable the industry become more competitive was the essence of what we discussed in this part.  There was an interesting discussion on how competition is no longer between company A and B within an industry but going beyond to competition among nations and  leaders have to quickly understand how the dynamics of talent shortages and unavailability makes your industry uncompetitive due to salary wars and wage inflation and how it gravitates towards a competition between nations.  That is where responsible leadership as a corporate entity comes into picture to secure a sustainable competitive organization.

Creating an ambiance for innovation. What do you need?

Innovation means a sure departure from something incremental.  Something new, something different, something not done before.   Incremental change is not innovation.... rather just mere change... just like routine weather change.  Real innovation is like a storm, a cyclonic effect or even a tsunami.  I make that statement in the sense that it has a landscape changing ability and the focus is not on the damages and destruction of these natural disasters.   Most important in organizational context the product or process you created, changed or reworked should add something new of value to the customer to qualify as an innovation.   We often hear companies saying we need to strive to create a culture of innovation.   Doesn't it sound very simplistic?  When you truly manage to create a culture of innovation you can expect a drop in inhibitions,  you can expect lot of new products, services being made possible..... not just one off star kid innovations that you might find.

So what does it take.  Do you think people will read an email from CEO or Operations Leader and innovate or just because you opened an Innovation Lab your people would innovate.  Ask yourself how many people are even allowed access to that innovation lab.  So what exactly do we need to create that culture or environment for innovation.  Easier said ... than done.   There are three elements that need to be kept on top of your mind.  Apart from the investments (which keeps the money flowing into driving the innovation efforts) you need systems and processes to be in place.  Those that help reinforce three important elements that can sustain innovation.

a) Gaining Focus
b) Building Trust
c) Enabling Risk Taking Behaviors


If you want to "innovate" your focus needs to be right there - on innovation.  Focus bring attention and only when attention manifests does it get a possibility of action.   Imagine splitting your focus on several things at the same time, then what gets focus gets attention so it is only by chance that you MAY focus on innovation.  What does it mean on the ground?  It is about letting people have the time, the freedom to look for new things.  Innovation needs new ideas, new thinking which can only come from out of the box or non linear thinking or creative processes.   So people need to make deliberate attempts to bring that elusive "focus" on innovation.   Managers need to encourage ideas and evaluate rather than scrap them with a cursory look  over.   An idea which is novel cannot become an innovation unless it can be converted into a product or a service at a reasonable (practical) cost which someone will be willing to pay for it.  Otherwise it can only be applauded as an interesting idea.   

The question is who should focus.... Simple way to look at is that all those who can influence the innovation process should...if your finance guys and accountants don't understand and keep cutting down the budgets,  disapproving spending requests the focus gets lost.  The HR folks need to understand... are people given time from their routine work if they are to spend time on creative pursuits.   You can't expect everything to happen in the free time even if you THINK your employees are very motivated to spend their off work hours innovating.   Remember the 20% rule at 3M.

Trust gets broken when expectations are crushed, when false promises are made or when cunning sleight is used to distort the reality that people can obviously see.  Imagine the repercussion when one manager said.  "Team, I am not averse to your making that occasional mistake, but let that same mistake not repeat elsewhere once we learn about it" but each time someone faltered he pushed them against  the wall with subtle and overt behaviors that made them feel miserable.   Trust gets broken when simple acts of this  nature send strong and powerful signals that the slogans on innovation are mere lip service.

Finally put the first two together and you have risk taking encouraged in your organization. Without risk there can be no innovation. At a personal level innovativeness and risk taking are key traits among entrepreneurial people and this is something that you need to encourage in the question for innovation.   In today's world of large professionally managed organizations you can't just wait for the entrepreneurial talent in the traditional sense (who came with money, ideas and risk taking to invest)  rather we need to encourage the entrepreneurial capabilities among team members, line managers as well as leaders.

 If you are looking for an ROI do it for established, well oiled products and services. With right focus and trust innovation is surely going to get you much more ROI than you can ever calculate. 

However remember none of this can happen without a keen eye on what the innovation means.   Bringing innovation for the sake of innovation will not yield the right kind of results.