Reforms - Do we really need them this way?

The meaning of Reform is to put an end to (an evil) by enforcing or introducing a better method or course of action. When we talk about economic reforms it is about the course correction of an already dilapidated socialist economy of our nation till 1991. 

Leadership and use of best talent

There is a notion in the management fraternity nowadays, that the best talent shall be given the responsibility of managing the rest. This is fundamentally wrong. A talent in doing a job or mastery of a specialized skill does not mean that the possessor of the skill or talent would be good in managing people. Management involves a lot of tasks in administrative nature, that consumes a lot of time. There are people who would be good at handling people, but with limited expertise in specific skills.

We have excellent example to support this argument in Mahabharatha. In the war between Pandavas and Kauravas, Pandavas had chosen Dhrishtadhyumna to lead their troops, a person with a lower profile but with a clear motto of defeating the Kauravas, who was born to kill one of the strongmen of Kauravas Dhronacharya. He was a warrior of an impeccable courage and skill, but not as comparable to Bheeshma or any of the other Kaurava front-line generals. He was given charge of administrative duties of the Commander-in-Chief to device strategies and conduct the war, while the likes of Arjuna and Bheema were left free of other tasks and to concentrate on fighting the enemy.

Whereas in the Kaurava army, the task of commanding the forces was given to Bheeshma who was also the one to tackle Arjuna, Abhimanyu and the likes. He was over burdened. His fall on the war field had a morale damaging impact on the troops. Next came Dhronacharya, who was capable of defeating all the Pandava warriors, but was over burdened with the duties of Commander-in-Chief and the daily chores took it's toll on his performance in the war field. But Arjuna or Bheema or any other of the Pandava brothers were fighting wars and Bheema as sworn was on a killing spree of the Kaurava brothers. No front-line warriors of the Pandava forces were given any additional administrative task of anything.

Their supreme leader Yudhishtra was a good listener of his people, who listened to his adviser Krishna and they often brainstormed before devising strategies and were at unison at mind of the way they were going to conduct the war. After the decision was made the C-in-C was given the powers to carry them out. Whereas in the Kaurava camp the supreme leader Dhuryodhana never listened to his advisers. He made them do what he thought was right and the freedom of operation for the leaders were absent. Any step taken inching away from the idea of the supreme leader would result in the head honcho yelling at other leaders in front of others, which resulted in the loss of morale of the troops and also made the leaders perform what was told, but not what was right.

Let us relate this to the latest of the wars. US has waged war on Iraq. Let us not get into the merits of the reasons given by US. The conduct of war was given to professional generals and they have chosen people to do the jobs and they have served the purpose of the war. Saddam was defeated, dethroned and now he is dead. Whereas the other side had advantages of home ground, patriotic people, courageous generals and staff, but yet the leadership was not listening to them or given freedom to them to do what is right. The generals had to follow what the leader had told them. Unlike the allied forces, where the political leadership had given due support to the military leaders had them conduct the business of war. They had finally defeated the enemy.

The same applies to business also. Where the top management conducts the day to day affairs of the business, it ruins the operations finally. They should get the correct people to manage the talent, nurture the talent and make the talented feel good. The conduct of the business operations is the job of the person who manages the operations. The middle management should be given direction to tread and they have to choose the path to tread. The conduct of the march through the path should be left to the junior management. The junior management had to decide at what pace to march, where to slow down and where to speed up.

The people who are chosen to manage things have to possess some talent in the core business to understand it, and the knack of managing people and motivate them to do the right thing. The middle management has to have an understanding of the business and they have to ensure a different and right way of doing the right thing is devised or found in testing times and lead the people in the chosen path. The top management had to be there to look around and find out how to achieve the broad objective and all involved are rewarded and left happy at the end of the day.

We have examples for this too. Lee Iaccoca was not an extremely talented automotive engineer, but he was instrumental in bringing Ford to forefront. Jack Welch was not an extremely talented chemical engineer, but he turned GE around and is still known for his managerial acumen. We have examples in every industry.

Bottom line is skill has to be taught and nurtured and updated. Talent has to be developed and nourished. People management is taking care of the talent and skill, by not ruining it with more additional responsibilities.

Technical support is mechanical nowadays.

I was reading the much talked about book of former IBM Chief Louis Gerstner. It was like a reference material for management students. Once Mr. Gerstner was referring to an incident with IBM tech support that happened when he was with Amex. The Amex technology people had installed a non IBM server in their department, and the IBM tech support representative refused to support the existing infracture of which 99% were IBM products. The reason behind that was one 3rd party product in the whole lot.

As a tech support guy, I could understand the reason behind the IBM stand at that time. It was early 1980s and technology at that time was not as people savvy as it is now. Even products from the same manufacturer would not be compatible with a different model of machine from the same company. So, a 3rd party server in the network would cause constraints in the support process. The way of expression of that IBM techie and the apathetic reaction to Mr.Gerstner's complaint on that were a cause of concern.

But this attitude of the tech support continue even today. We have an industry standard architecture for any hardware product. We have the most common Operating System, Windows, that occupies 95% of the computers nowadays. Even in cases of Linux or other Operating Systems , we have applications those enable cross platform compatibility. Well, the issue I'm here to discuss is that of the hardware part. Wehad an issue when one of the customers of the company I work with, had called us for.

He had a computer purchased from us which had a network adapter integrated to the motherboard. His internet was working fine for two years. Once he had an issue with the internet. He called us and asked for help. We checked it and found that the network adapter had to be replaced, but in this case the entire motherboard and offered to send a technician to his home to replace it. He said he could not wait for 2-3 days for our technician to go and replace the board. He said he would call us when he was convenient for this arrangement. Someone at his office gave an alternate solution also, that was to purchase a network card and install it. He opted to purchase the network card from a local store and called us for support.

Our tech support refused to help him with that card. That was a 3rd party card, so we should not support, was the reason given by our team. The customer had contacted the card manufacturer and they told that they are not sure about installing parts in this computer and asked him to contact the computer manufacturer. We in turn, referred him to the card manufacturer. After couple of hours of shunting back and forth he decided to hire a local computer technician to get the job done for a cost of a couple of hundred dollars.

Then came the mammoth trouble. The customer then called us asking for refund of the warranty money. His argument was that we didn't support him during a critical time. He was running a business and was in need of internet connection to work on his orders. He could not wait for 2-3 days, our tech support had asked him to wait for. For getting crucial orders processed he had purchased a network card, but we refused to support him citing policy and procedure.

Interestingly during these days, I had gone through a session (online, of course) on customer service. There they had mentioned an incident about a bank taking up a customer's personal request to inform his wife about a flight delay. That bank customer was overseas and called his bank's toll free number, asking them to inform his wife about the flight delay, since he didn't have enough money to make an international call. The bank could have given him some credit and asked him to call his wife and charged him later. Nobody would complain as it was not the bank's job to take up personal requests. But the bank's customer support did take up that request and promptly called the customer's wife and informed about the delay. Then that customer had started recommending this bank to anyone who asked him for any banking needs.

Where did we miss in our case? He was our customer. He had some emergency and had purchased a part from local store. He asked us for help. That part was compatible with our computer and the OS in that. We knew what to do to make that work. I think we should have helped the customer, after giving him the mandatory caveat that we're not trained in the product he had purchased, but we were help him trusting that the product is in compliance with the prevalent industry standards. We could have gained the customer's confidence, and might have got the "word of mouth" in a positive sense.

Our people were cursing the customer stating that he had asked for a warranty refund after violating policy agreement. We're not running any Government that could penalize anyone for violation of its policy and regulations. We're running a business. To sustain customer base and grow it, we have to be customer centric. We have to get rid of the rigid mindset of following policies and losing the customers, and start thinking rather issue centric and focus on resolving customer's problems. Customer support or technical support should have a dash of humanity to survive by serving humans. People who run the service industry must understand the basic tenets of service. Policies are for customers; but customers are not for policies. Would the metric breathing and number crunching corporate czars have time to listen to my voice, that echo most of our customers'?

Understand the Business before you attempt to run it

I recently read an article in Harvard Business Review, about why Robert McNamara-the most talented systematic analytical thinker who lead Ford to big success-failed in Vietnam and at World Bank. The bottom line conclusion was that McNamara didn't try to understand the dynamics of fighting a war while leading the US Defense department. He thought systematic rigorous analysis of data would help in fighting war in a better way, but ended up counting corpses. His failure here was that he didn't understand the basic differences between fighting a war and managing a business.

In world bank also he had good intentions but when it came to managing operations, his results were not successful. The reason was that he was not experienced in banking and directing economic activities such as poverty alleviation, employment generation etc. Though one of the whiz kids of the post WW-II economic boom has done a lot of good to Ford, his skills and thought process were not compatible with running Government and Global political economy.

While reading this story, my mind reminded me of a not much similar narration by my friend, who works with the technical support of a leading computer manufacturer.He works with an outsourcing company of the MNC computer manufacturer. He has a manager who hardly understands the intricacies of the business this particular department deals with. The department my friend works with deals with legal issues arising out of technical support provided or lack of it.

When this manager took over he asked about Average Handle Time and asked these people to cut it short. Cutting short AHT is a welcome measure, if done through proper training of associates and prompt support of the issues they face on the call. But when you deal with potentially legal issues, AHT should not be a metric, and that was why the client did not consider that as part of the SoW. But this manager and his know-it-all superior officer were skeptical about not having AHT as a metric. "You can't run a call center without AHT as a metric, damn it!", was the know-it-all's response when my friend and couple of his colleagues who were with the department from the day one, attempted to explain the modus operandi to him.

After 9 months of analyzing various data in various forms with all the available six sigma, lean and other tools, the know-it-all manager concluded that not the per call AHT or the C-SAT responses from surveys are important, but stopping further legal/quasi legal escalations was the prime job of this department and the metrics driven by the client right from the beginning drove the people towards that goal. But it was too late when he realized that. Damage was already done. People who were trained to work towards the client centric metrics have either left the job or driven out for non-cooperation.

My friend and his colleagues were taken off important assignments they had already been handling and were asked to look after the data collection and repository, kind of a clerical job. My friend was about to slip into depression but was saved by his never-say-die father, who advised him to do the work given in a non-comittal manner, so that his health would not deteriorate further. Now my friend is looking for different options out of this business.

As a management student, I found this story interesting as we could learn some lessons atleast how not to manage a business. In down south of TamilNadu a business community would call such a learning as purchase of knowledge. I spoke a lot with this friend to find out the character of this know-it-all manager. I found out a lot of funny things about this person. He really would treat his subordinates as dimwits, dorks and dunces. This had made people with self-respect to feel slighted and gave them a sense of alienation. People who never had the intellect but came into the business by sheer luck or referrals, would call this man a go getter, but the client once was heard commenting off line whether this man could fit in for an FLA role.

The main draw back of this know-it-all manager was that he had got known a lot of things and had failed to determine which to apply where. He would apply lean, six sigma, ISO, CMM and TQM principles for a single operation, and would finally end up messing up the entire business since people would lose sight of the purpose and concentrate on data analysis. It was found out that he had taken all the ideas of the quality tools from his managers and show off as if he knew all of them. He was also heard of telling my friend and other team members to show respect to him in front of others by not questioning his ideas. This is evidence that the said ideas were not his.

I came to a conclusion that too much of analysis of available data by putting them in different formats, plotting the same numbers in different diagrams, perpetuating the process of data mining would not serve the end goal, since perpetuated data mining deviates the operations from the end goal and induces people involved to live with multiple forms and formats of data and coming up with different analysis irrespective of their relevance to the purpose.

Everyone know McNamara was a man of good intentions and had indeed made good the ailing Ford Motor Company, but was not as successful in Government and World Bank. We could come to this conclusion from his biography "In Retrospect." But with the know-it-all manager I was referring to, none would know whether he was a man of having go getter instinct or just a person who happened to talk to many people and know the jargon of the business critical tools and trying to implement everything he (half)learnt everywhere intimidating people with all the jargon and his infamous examples. Now my friend told me that this know-it-all fellow blames the client for not being intellectually capable enough in understanding his way of running (ruining?) the business and went off to a different company for a lower position.

Unless we get to know of this person's background, brought up and thought process, we could not conclude about his intentions. We may have to wait until this person writes his autobiography, (GOD!!!) but the bottom line would still remain that with his know-it-all attitude, which is much discouraged by every sane management teacher and guru, this person had ruined a business process of an already troubled business. Though this may make some soft hearted people flinch I have a saying that perfectly fits this person. "Tough times won't build character; they put it to (dis)play."

For such people, I would recommend just to read and understand the title of the famous book which means,"know the rules before you break it." Gentleman know-it-all! Understand the business, before you attempt to run it.

Taking Business Client centric

There is story told in almost management every management seminar, class or workshop. There was a telephone company which was leading the market with large customer base. They outsourced their billing and customer support to a company called Alice services in wonderland. There was a proposal in the telecom company to club the bills of one customer for different services. For example, if a customer has 3 phone connexions, one for office, one for personal and another for his wife they would be clubbing together the bills of all the three. This arrangement was to check the paperwork and reduce the billing expense.

Customer were given an option to choose for it or ignore it. The next month, there was a call volume spike at Alice services, with customers who opted for the new joint billing finding it difficult and wishing to return to the previous state. Now that the Alice services have no clue what to do in such a situation. The customer were pressing for a restoring previous status or threatening to close the account. There was no SOP for such a situation.

Alice services were given the business of soliciting new accounts and also closures as and when necessary. So, when customers insisted on closure if their demands are not met, they opted to offer closure, as they have no specific instructions for such a situation, and customers were also demanding a quick solution so, checking with client was also not feasible. The client realized the impact after a week and a loss of hundreds of accounts. Then a roll back of the scheme was announced and alterations made to take necessary care for the business to stay. But the damage had already been done, smarting from that took a lot of time and money.

This is one of the banes in outsourcing, but there is another side to this issue also. Taking everything to the clients. To service a customer's special request, the outsource partners would wait and get the clients approval, by which time the customer would have gone out of hands.

The same happened in a place where one of my friend works. He was with a team that handles critical issues and dissatisfied customers. His team was trained by the client and they were deciding on the solutions to be provided for the customers. Once there happened a management change and the new manager didn't know an iota of the business intricacies. He was much concerned about the industry basic standards of TAT, on-time calls, and metrics like same day case closure, delayed case closure etc. The business was of a nature that the customer's were to be taken care of in every possible way. When freebies were to be stopped due to recession-bite, these guys still managed to get it in a different way for the customers.

But the new manager insisted on metrics through numbers. He didn't care for appreciation letters, praising mails etc. He wanted numbers to show that he mattered. When client came up with new work arounds, he would not question back as to the nature of the customers the team was handling. Had he done so, the clients not so business conducive proposals would have been scrapped at the start. Without discussion, the client's proposals were implemented and when results shot back they would still take "gaalis and golis" from the client and go around with the new work around.

None seemed to have realized the famous words of Jack Welch,"If an idea doesn't stand for a no holds barred discussion, the market place would kill it ruthlessly". The manager had his infamous justification, "If client says crow is white, crow is white. Because he is client and it is his business." Finally some of the people who were veterans in the business were sent off as they were not doing their "allocated job" and were asking too many questions. Now people who were retained in the business are looking around for opening elsewhere.

Well, what is the moral of the second story. BPO businesses should been run client centric. But making it centered around the client and according a demi-God status to the client would definitely ruin the business for the client- they are also humans and would err by nature- consequently to the outsource partners.

It should rather be a cooperative effort by both the client and the partners right from choosing the people to run the business. People who run critical business should atleast have a minimum business intelligence, rather than a "Yes Minister" attitude. The business managers and leadership team should dare to question the client on his proposals keeping the business in mind. Outsource employees should have the feeling of ownership towards the part of the business they run for the client. This attitude could be brought through by training, orientation and encouragements by the outsource management and the management of the client.

Jack Welch, Louis Gerstner and Lee Iacocca have developed a sense of ownership for GE, IBM and Ford respectively and they succeeded because of that. For that matter, take any of the successful business managers. They own it, they win with it. If you don't feel you own something, you will have indifference towards it. If you have indifference towards it, you will not care for it. If you don't care for it, you're not fit to run it, be it business, family, nation or a bicycle. Business managers need to develop a sense of ownership towards the business they manage to successfully run the show.

Implementing Change

Change is the most live thing happening in the world. Every passing second is change, but yet humans find difficult to accept visible changes. We tend to hide changes in physique due to aging with beauty therapies, hair dye etc. When it comes to change in some thing we do in life, personal or professional, we tend to avoid change and to the possible extent we tend to evade change.

This is because of the psychological effect to remain with status quo and the fear of the change having in store something unpleasant. Unless change is forced on us by forces of the market or of the nature, we have some suggestions from experts on how to implement change and manage it.

Good or bad change has resistance. People are so mentally intertwined with status quo that they detest change when it is inevitable, but live with it as TINA factor plays a major role. The transformation process will be successful, when the organization goes through a step-by-step process of change. Real change happens when the change in practices, structures, and strategies and vision are implanted in the changed culture.

To successfully implement change we need to plan the change. A meticulous plan with every detail covered with the goal in mind has to be prepared. In the planning process, opinions and ideas shall be asked for from everyone involved. This would be a welcome move as people would be open to improvements and more willing to advise others than taking suggestions. With all the ideas, we need to carefully consider them and get a consolidated frame work. This frame work is known as a plan.

With this plan, devise a strategy to implement it. A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Unless we're implementing military strategy, highest secrecy is not required. So, we need to give the people involved a brief idea about the goal. Tell them the ways and means we're about to follow. Welcome ideas and suggestions, as we've always time and space for improvement, unless we've a closed mindset.

We have psychologists to affirm that people change their mind-sets only when they see the purpose of changing. How to make/help them see the purpose of change? How to get our vision visible to others involved in the changes we're planning to make? The only way out is communication. Communication is an important factor that favorably contributes to successful implementation of change. US President Barak Obama is the latest example of successful communicator advocating change, who took people in his stride.
(We can also get some elite Gentlemen to the list Lee Kwan Yew, Deng Xiao Ping, Jack Welch, Lee Iacocca, Loius V.Gerstner Jr. who showed us how to successfully implement change and have it sustained.)

Communication is two-way and helps the change process to move on smoothly. Unless the initiator of change is able to communicate effectively his/her ideas, we cannot guarantee success. We need to change the beliefs that influence specific behaviors. For that we have to be witty enough to communicate to people, answer their questions, reason out with them on the need for change. If a change is forced, people would either resist that by making mistakes and blaming them on change, or would quietly walk away from the organization, but both would end up in a messed up end result.

If the change is implemented successfully, there ends the job? NO. The implemented change has to be sustained. It is not enough you stand you must stay in the business, so adaptations to the changed culture needs to be done. Adaptions are also changes of small nature. Is this a never ending process? YES. That's why the adage goes, change alone is constant. How to live up to it?
Change the organizational culture to get going with adaptations and be open to changes of any magnitude.

How to do it? Let us summarize whatever we thought in the previous paragraphs. Conceive an idea and vision for change. Plan it. Get a good strategy to implement it. Communicate the goal and need for change. Take people along. Implement change. Stay awake to time to time adaptations. This is the way to sustainable success.

Should the heading be "Cultivating sustainable success"? I'm open to thoughts from everywhere. Let us think for good change!

What they DON'T teach at Top Business Schools?

Bouquets, brickbats and troubles target the ones who are at the top. The recent crisis in global economy, the recession (Oh! it is slow down.... I'm sorry Mr,Chidambaram. Fine. That's okay, he is no more FM.), the financial mismanagement, the failures of giant companies, the learned and certified people who connive with or show callousness when it comes to fudging in a grand scale, you name it. All these point to the top notch B-Schools, as most of the people involved in such condemnable conducts, in one way or the other, are from the top B-Schools around the world.

Recently rocked Satyam scam raises the suspicion to higher levels. Given fact that most of the top business people are educated in top most B-Schools, we tend to ask what do they teach you at Top B-Schools and what do they not? Not limited to any businesses, all these companies have Top B-School alumni in leadership roles. These are the people who have the genius of overlooking the basics of management, which is quite well known to common man, but in a very much de-jargonized language. "If you give more loan to a person already in debt, he would not be able to repay", is the basic knowledge of laymen, that was overlooked by these elegantly educated experts, which led to the sub prime crisis and resultant global economic downturn.

The paying of bulk bonuses to top executives, irrespective of industry trend or economic trend is another part of this Top B-School culture. Talk at length about sacrifice and inspire people to shed even their shirts in sacrifice, but don't compromise even a dime in your pay is an attitude that would not help the society to live in tranquil. These people with top B-degrees, top notch doctorates, and pay checks those of Godzilla's size, fail to realize the baseline of lifecycle that good or bad things would come to and end. The universal fact that darkness would definitelybe followed by light and vice versa is known to common man, but not to these elite men.

This is a pathetic failure of the education system which doesn't prepare people to accept the adversity as part of human life and endure it with positive thoughts and deeds to make it less painful. The thought process is not developed properly by the education they had, hence whatever they had is not education. The ruin runs thorugh to the rock bottom of the system. Right from the primary school we tell our children that studying will give them a better life. We tend to ignore the fact that education is a life long process, not a preparatory process for life and we pass on this wrong notion to our children also.

The refusal to accept failure is hailed as a fighitng spirit, but the fight against failure is fought without ethics and victory often evades such fighters. A mistake was spotted with the functioning of the home loan system and people at the helm of affairs refused accept failure of their system and made it more complicated with the subprime. Such kind of refusals to accept failures deserve termination from the system.

Unless we do some self analysis, and try to find out our mistakes and correct them, we'll have more crisis of the subprime kind. Business schools and the teachers there shall devote some of their time to educate their students on educating them that there do exist something called non monetary values in human life. What they don't teach you at top B - Schools are the basic facts of human life without which any education will not stand worth, the true sense of the word.

Why people quit organizations?

The prime problem that creates a sub prime of talent in organizations is attrition. The common definition of attrition is a reduction in numbers usually as a result of resignation, retirement, or death. Refer to any dictionary, and you get the meaning that "the act of weakening or exhausting by constant harassment, abuse, or attack", "the act of wearing or grinding down by friction". I'm not here to think aloud about job hoppers. I'm here to speak about career minded people who find it difficult indeed to leave an organization and the relationships they have nurtured throughout their stay in an organization, yet part ways.

Why do they decide to move out? The frustration they have with their work, which makes them feel ostracized without reason. Most of such separations happen during change in the organization, with the immediate colleagues and boss or policies which make people feel that they have been lured into something worthless to work for. This could be either because the management had failed to convince the people about the change, or the good change promised, had been brought only in paper.

Brain drain is because most of the managers tend to manage people in an autocratic way. They do not explain why a decision is made and in which direction the organization would tread thereafter, and what are the contributions expected and gains to expect. Either the managers lack the capability to communicate, or they expect the people to follow orders without questions. Even in military establishments, do or die orders without explanations are given only after taking the people into confidence about the decisions made and the decision makers.

We lack true leaders and fill the leadership positions with managers, who remain glorified overseers, instead of being given the responsibility to lead a part of an organization. This could well be attributed to the organizational practice of appointing people without adherence to proper recruitment process, lack of plans to educate managers, failure to impart the organizational values to new recruits irrespective of the levels they've been hired for. This results in a know-it-all attitude of managers taking charge of a new environment, which demands ceaseless learning, instead.

If a good manager takes a bad decision that results in attrition of good talent, we can accept that as bad time and move ahead with a confident satisfaction that a lesson is learnt. But when an incapable fellow takes indiscreet decisions, to assert his control over the department he handles, with a gross indifference towards employees' concerns, that would put the organization's goals in jeopardy with freshmen all around looking forward to (of course, incapable) manager for every other step, resulting in pandemonium.

If managers tend to run their departments as their fiefdoms without adhering to industry standards or organizational principles nor an acceptable civil conduct, it is high time for people who run the business to raise their eyebrows toward this and their fists, if needed, to save their business. The widely talked about management adage "People don't leave organizations; They leave managers", is worth a bar of solid gold for every letter of it. Well, talked a lot about chaos and the root causes, now let us think about some ideas to arrest attrition.

Talent retention is not just about giving fat paychecks, bombarding the employees' wallet with other benefits, and fun activities at work. Talent acquisition and talent retention are the much discussed about topics in management circles. But most of us are not following them up with talent nurturing. If a person in promoted as manager he had to be trained with management basics, a brush up on organizational goals and principles, and a constant follow up on his activities by his boss unless he satisfies the purpose he had been recruited for. Just by promoting people based on the time spent with the organization and/or their proximity to "somebody" in the organization is nothing but forcing people to do the job they can't do best. This would result in organizational anarchy.

People have to be given hope that their contribution would be recognized and rewarded. They have to be allowed to voice their opinions that counts for the process of business they work for, as most of the top notch management advises and ideas have come from production/assembly line, than from board rooms and lecture halls. It is the responsibility of the organizational leaders to acquire, nurture and retain managerial talent and thus facilitate the organization in turn to acquire, nurture and retain other talents to stay firm and fly their flag high in the business environment.

Integrity compromises at work - Why?

Every human being lives on, based on trust. We go to sleep trusting that we would awake after a good sleep. Work is given to us in the same kind of trust, that we would finish it up as required, without any questionable actions. Life is shared among people in different forms like friendship, relationship, etc in the same sort of trust. But when the trust is found violated/breached, it would be chaos in the concerned relationship, personal or professional.

Of late we have come across quite a disturbing trend of integrity violations at workplaces, right across the globe . Why these are happening? The answer to this is none other than performance pressure and lack of a work culture. When it comes to performance managers prefer to reward the go-getter kind, irrespective of where they go and how they get the results.

I know a person who was awarded best performer for getting unbelievably good numbers with his work. His photo was flashed across the LoB and he was rewarded for being an example to others. A couple of weeks he was found to have fudged the numbers in some way and was asked to leave the job. But still, his name remained in the toppers list and people were shown that result as an example till the end of that business quarter.

These sort of activities send out wrong signals. I know people who did what was told to them and got axed, while the perpetrators got safe with preaching integrity to the rest. It is the administering of the organizational culture that really matters. Organizations need to send out clear signal that integrity violation would never be taken easy, and follow that as night follows the day. This would keep a check on people aiming at short term goals, losing sight on long term objectives.

When people work for immediate gains and lose sight of the long run objectives, they create and operate in a vicious environment, that would end up the organization and the people in trouble. The consequences may come up to losing a client account, thus bringing heavy loss of business and goodwill. The thought leaders in an organization shall make sure the middle and junior management is educated and constantly reminded on the long term objectives of the organizations, so that they could be aware of the consequences when they tend to go for the short term benefits.

This happens because of the aloof style of management, where the modusoperandi is not checked before lauding the result. A culture of checks and balances could effectively be implemented only if it comes from top down. The difficulty when it comes from bottom up is that, at any given point, the mission could be aborted by an aloof/corrupt manager.

It is the responsibility of the top management not just to preach integrity and roam around, but also to check at random and make sure an awareness and alertness of being watched is created and spread across the organization.