Questioning – a sure shot way to Excellence

Let us look at the following quotes

• I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better. I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself. (Elon Musk)
• Religion asks you to believe things without questioning, and technology and science always encourage you to ask hard questions and why it is important in science and technology. So I was always interested in science and technology. (Vinod Khosla)
• The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity (Albert Einstein)
• In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted (Bertrand Russell) 
• He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever Chinese Proverb
• Questioning is to thinking as yeast is to bread making.Questioning is what converts the stuff of thinking into something of value.( Jamie McKenzie)

If we read through quotes from some of the eminent persons mentioned above, It becomes clear that questioning is critical for enhancing our knowledge as said by many eminent personalities from all walks of life. Most of our scriptures as well as scientific works are actually answers to questions asked by some one. So a question comes to mind that can we use this technique of questioning to improve our level of excellence effectively? I think we can!  

As we know and discussed in previous blogs, “Excellence is the commitment one makes with one self to continuously do better than what one has done previously in the entire activities one performs on personal and professional life.  The benchmark is oneself and it is continuously moving upwards. There is not end as to final level of excellence”  

When we want to improve our level of excellence, we need to first identify what level we are in and what needs to be done to move to higher level, then execute them to reach to the higher level of excellence. We can actually use questioning for this purpose. If we question the “status quo” in our life and ask why for the same, we will get the answers to what we need to do to improve. Whenever we feel comfortable in doing a specific activity and feel that we have achieved all the things necessary to do this activity and consider ourselves as experts or we do not find difficulty in doing the specific activity; it is time for us to question ourselves to check what can be done to better the same, what would push us to the zone of uncomfortability for the next level. As soon as we feel comfortable and being human we prefer to be in the level of comfortability, we stop improving our excellence and as the time passes, we start falling down. So questioning oneself regularly and answering the questions by being truthful to oneself provides us the way to the next level of excellence.  It is very easy to question others but questioning oneself requires courage as one feels that everything one is doing is the right and best way of doing things. Even if we question ourselves, it requires further courage to answer them truthfully. We actually know what can be done to improve our level of excellence but either do not admit it or we are lazy to take those additional efforts and continue to use shortcuts which keeps us at lower levels of excellence. So questioning status Quo and answering it truthfully surely takes us to the next level of excellence. 

Organization with a Perpetual Positive Cycle of Excellence

We read a lot about Excellence at multiple levels like individual, team, organization, etc.; talk about facets that are important to bring about excellence within oneself or an organization; attend a lot of training courses on achieving personal excellence either in general or in specific areas like Sales, Customer relations, Production, Supply chain etc. Do we see the results that seemed to be possible after attending these sessions or reading those books? Most of the times, the answer would be NO. If we ponder over the reasons, one that comes up pretty frequently is that I do not have the right settings to implement these ideas, or I do not have complete buy-in for all these ideas across the organization, or something similar. So is there any way that we can create the organization which will help us breed excellence and nurture it so that it spreads across and grows continuously? Another thing comes to mind is that I am not at a powerful position in the organization to effect the change across so how do I bring this change? There is also a fear about acceptability of the concepts as well as outcomes of the change?

There are multiple ways to create such an organization and I will be discussing one of the ways in this article. However before that, let us deliberate a little on the fear of results as well as position in the organization hierarchy to effect the changes across the organization. Fear of results or fear of acceptability will be present whenever one tries to do some change from their present stable process be it on the organization side like changing the goods distribution mechanism or on personal side like changing from personal transport to public transport for commuting between home to office. One just needs to anticipate some possible outcomes other than the expected ones and prepare oneself to face the same. E.g. you may want to stock up the distribution depots sufficiently before switching to the new method so that even if something goes wrong, you will have some time to correct without giving any problems to business. It is also observed that this fear slowly comes down as one starts progressing on the path and achieves some milestones at desired pace so start slow, plan well and implement each step on the way meticulously. Keep the tab on results/reactions you are getting vis-a-vis expected and keep on tuning the change.

Any change an organization adopts, never adopted at organization as a whole. It is typically conceptualized, prototyped, finetuned, socialized and then implemented. So when you have some idea which you want to implement, it will be first implemented small so implement it in the small team which you might be leading; show case the result and take it to the organization level in step by step manner. The acceptability of change is more if it is backed by some results at multiple levels. So if you want to create an organization that breeds excellence and nurtures it, you may want to create this in a small team working in one area and then transmit the results as seed to other teams to build their organization on same principles which slowly rise to the organization level. So although it might take a longer time to implement this change than if you were a CEO of the company, it will surely get implemented as it is showing results.

When we are setting up the organization / team we need to look at following aspects along with the established principles of organization design and do the necessary changes so that we will get the team which breeds excellence and will allow us to sustain it over long period. These are;  

FOCUS: Every team needs a focus and the focus is typically provided by the leader of the team e.g. Project Manager provides focus to Project team and CEO provides focus to the organization. When the leader provides this focus, which ultimately translates in to goals of the members at various levels, “excellence” should be part of the same. Excellence is not a onetime activity but a continuous process; the messaging as well as expectations should clearly demonstrate the same. This focus really gets translated in to desired results if the focus of individuals matches with that of the leader. If the Team focus and Individual focus is different, then the results get diluted significantly. Hence it is critical for leaders to clearly state their focus towards excellence and demonstrate the same through their actions. It is also important to have interactions with the team at various levels regularly to check on the focus at various levels and make efforts to get as cohesive focus as possible.

FRAMEWORK: Best way to demonstrate the FOCUS is through framework which will be used by the team. So build a framework in such a manner that FOCUS is clearly visible to the team, through goals, objectives, mechanism of reporting & monitoring, metrics that would be used, etc. Create benchmarks for excellence levels in different areas of work; create incentives for achieving higher levels of excellence than benchmarks. The framework helps converting focus in to reality and is defined at two levels. First at level where, you define strategies or thoughts or policies or philosophies and the second at operations level where, you define actual procedures, approval mechanism, etc. It is critical to ensure that all the excellence tenets are included in definition of the FRAMEWORK that needs to be used to operate the organization and they are respected by everyone from top to bottom. One important part of FRAMEWORK is mechanism for reward and recognition; this is one of the critical point in terms of providing a push for “excellence behavior” seen in the associates. We need to craft this mechanism diligently in order to nurture excellence.

FLEXIBILITY: Flexibility is critical for breeding and nurturing Excellence. If the organization does not allow flexibility, it will not allow experimenting new ways to do things, it will not allow people to think out of the box, it will not allow people to fail and rise, it will not allow people to do better than what has been prescribed by the framework. The organization becomes rigid and does not encourage self-improvement. So the Framework when designed, we need to keep in mind that we do create it in such a manner that we encourage experimentation, we encourage associates to think differently and improve their level of excellence.   

   

FAITH: In the organization theory, it mentions of X & Y type of associates and various organizations are designed around the belief of management in the workforce attitude i.e. whether they believe the work force is predominantly X type or predominantly Y type. I believe that we need to set up the organization with a faith that associates really strive for excellence. With this FAITH in the team, we build our frameworks, and then chances are there that we will be able to create minimum hindrance organization. Off course, there will be exceptions and we will need to deal with them but we cannot strangulate the openness as well as flexibility which is built in the framework to foster Excellence Behavior for the sake of exceptions.

FUTURISTIC: Any organization when designed or any team which is formed is formed by keeping future in mind. The leaders predict the needs or the organization based on their vision for future and assessment of the current. The type of excellence traits that will be needed in near future as well as distant future needs to be identified and translated in to creating framework for the organization.

These five factors can be deliberated in much more detailed manner however it is clear that all the five factors are pretty interlinked and needs to be balanced on continuous basis. It becomes easy for the organization to implement these things if they have flexible IT systems supporting the framework. The robust IT backbone provides impetus to leaders to implement and demonstrate what they preach and it becomes transparent for the team that “excellence behavior” is recognized. The perpetual positive cycle of excellence sets in.  

Do & Say or Say & Do

Do & Say and Say & Do are two thought processes used by us in our life for trying out something new. Today I am deliberating both of them and see which one of them will be more useful for improvement of our level of excellence.

Do & Say is a pretty solid thought process told to us by our seniors from ages. It tells us first to do the things, show the same to others before you ask others to do. It is perceived as necessary to demonstrate that what one is saying is doable, and is done by the person who is telling others to do. By doing the things one can establish the credibility to the results which it can achieve. It also provides confidence of the results to the person who is going to ask others to do the same. If one experiments and finds a success then he can tell others to do the same and achieve the similar results. If the experiment fails, then he can modify the experiment till he gets the success and he does not have to ask others to do the same till he finds a success. This approach is comprehensive and has a great convincing power.

In Say & Do approach, the person advocates what should be done to anticipate specific results and then does it along with others. This approach does not guarantee the results as in Do & Say approach but provides an opportunity to experiment together. It requires team to decide one thing together, build the roadmap as they move along and achieve the results together. Lot depends on the vision and thoughts of the person who is articulating what to do and the belief people have in him. This is pretty difficult and thus not seen as often as Do & Say approach.

So which approach will help us in improving our level of Excellence more effectively? 

Couple of things that are different in these two approaches are, Do & Say approach advocates that only successful experimentation should be shared with others, whereas Say& Do approach advocates every experiment should be shared before actually experimenting.

Do & Say approach asks for individual to do experiment in isolated manner, modify the experiments till the desired results are seen and then ask others to do the same experiments. On other hand, Say & Do approach depends on sharing of ideas / experiments that one needs to perform to expect certain results and once the team is convinced about the experiment, then perform the experiment together.

Individual perseverance is key in Do & Say approach, as one needs to continuously work on new ideas / experiments till success is achieved and this process is marred with many obstacles before even idea reaches others. Whereas Say & Do approach totally depends on idea and logic which will make every one believe that it will be a success. Once agreed, it is a team game and success and failure is together. This approach requires more courage than Do & Say as there are more uncertainties to tackle.

Typically Do & Say approach provides a guaranteed success albeit slow but Say & Do approach provides a possibility of faster but un guaranteed success.

So which approach will be more effective if we have an objective to improve the level of excellence at which we are operating individually as well as at organization level? I feel that the Say & Do approach will be more effective as it enables one to experiment more often, it requires leader to conceive new ideas along with methods to implement, build logic to convince team about possibility of success; This really takes Leader to higher level of excellence that what he is operating currently. It enables the leader to take the team together in the experiment and elevate the whole team to a new level. It will encourage the team members to think differently as the team might encounter problems while implementing a new idea as well as they can think their own new ideas for experimentation. It also enables leader to teach the team how to handle the failures. So the ideal approach could be mix of both with Do & Say approach for product areas and Say & Do approach for Process/People related areas.