Stay “Within the system” or “Break it” to improve the level of excellence in the Organization

When an organization decides to increase the level of excellence at which it operates, it becomes a tricky situation as to how to make it happen in all the relevant areas covering all the people involved and ensuring the sustenance of the new level achieved through vagaries of business. There are two high level approaches undertaken; one, staying within the system, i.e. to do a POC at smaller level and slowly adopt it in the remaining areas in systematic manner over a period of time and second one, breaking the system, i.e. change the whole system in one shot through some intervention and push it to the entire organization. There is a classic debate about correctness and effectiveness of each approach. The first approach is a collaborative approach which moves from lower middle level upwards and second approach is from top to bottom. It is also seen that there is no guarantee of success in any of the approach and there are almost equal number of successes and failures in each approach.

Let us take an example of “Six Sigma” framework, which is one of the frameworks used by many organizations to improve their excellence levels in delivering the defect free product. Since its origination in Motorola, we have seen that many many organizations have adopted this framework but only a few seem to have really benefitted at organization level and there is hardly any organization other than GE which could really raise its level of excellence significantly using this frame work. Do we know the reason for this? Will this reason solve our problem of “within the system” or “breaking the system”?

Let us look at this from a different angle; what happens when level of excellence at which the organization is operating moves from level A to level B (B being higher than A) ? first and foremost thing which happens is the organization starts performing at level B, the expectations from each unit and individuals match with the needs of performance at level B, the interactions within and outside the organization gets modified from supporting level A to level B, People behavior and HR policies are tweaked to support level B. In short the system which was operating in the organization when it is operating at level A is broken and completely new system supporting level B gets created. Once the system at level B is created and established in the organization successfully, the organization starts operating at level B. This gives us a clear clue as to why only GE was significantly successful than many other organization. GE was able to create awareness of Six Sigma at all the levels; it was able to create framework as to how to use Six Sigma within organization; it trained the employees at all levels in the framework, it also involved its suppliers to be part of this framework to raise the overall level of performance; it created dashboards which measured the improvement of performance at all levels and leaders like Jack Welch reviewed them on regular basis. Very clearly GE created a complete new system of operation for their expected level B of performance and implemented across the organization to reap the benefits. Many organizations who failed to create this level of change failed to reap benefits comparable with GE.

It is becoming clearer that when we move from level A of excellence to level B of excellence, we actually break all the systems which are operating at level A and create a set of new operating systems to support level B. It is now the question of how this journey to be traversed?.

I think that if any company follows any one approach then they will not have a success at the end of the journey but the organizations which use both the approaches in tandem, get the best results. First to decide what framework or system change that is required, a “within system” approach could be followed and various experiments could be done without changing anything in the broader organization wide systems. Once the decision is made regarding what change that will need to be made, a new paradigm for the new level of excellence need to be defined and announced. This is breaking the current system to move towards new operating model. This should be followed by again by systematic change in small chunks to reach the new paradigm in planned manner. The key in this systematic change is deep commitment of leadership for the new paradigm and their continuous involvement during the journey.  

EGO – Boon or Bane for Excellence

EGO is an interesting thing, and a lot has been written about the same. Many people have defined it in many ways. Plenty of suggestions / recommendations regarding the same are available. It has been described in books / discourses as old as few thousands of years to the most modern theories of our time. It is mentioned that Ego is kind of perception of self, felt by oneself. It provides you the necessary strength to state/do what you believe in and do not get intimidated by the other egos in the surrounding but if the person’s ego becomes big then it can drive him/her to ground. It is also seen that more and more you achieve success, your ego starts becoming bigger and bigger without you noticing it. Many a times it is seen that people do not like to work for/with a person with bloated ego. It is also seen in the organization that many of the so called debates on what strategies to be adopted, which solution should be selected, how a program to be structured, etc. is actually battle of egos of the stakeholder and typically egos find various avenues to showcase themselves to other egos and establish its supremacy over others. We can continue writing things about ego for pages and pages but it will not end, I want to examine how ego plays out when we talk about Excellence

As we know excellence is a continuous journey wherein we try to climb steps which take us to the higher level of excellence and there is absolutely no difference in personal and professional life. It simply means that we need to identify that we are now comfortable of performing certain activity at specific level of performance and then trigger our mental process to see what would be the next step on the ladder of excellence. It is extremely critical that we identify this state as early as possible and prevent getting in to the resistance barrier that is created by the Zone of Comfort. So how do we identify this stage at the earlier? Well, our ego comes in handy for this. When we feel that we are doing a specific activity comfortably and successfully, we start getting recognition from the external world in some form or other for the same. This recognition starts building up our ego and our ego starts growing. We need to observe ourselves, as soon as we consider ourselves as “experts” or “go to guys” for a specific type of activity, it is time to look beyond. It is time to look at the next step.

Ego can also be used to provoke us to take the next step. It is our ego, which typically helps us with an urge to do something better by looking at other egos surrounding it. Some one has said that you need to be with some one to become like that some one. There is a connotation that when you will be with this some one, you will observe that some one and imbibe the best practice observed in to you. I feel that in reality, it is our ego which continuously wants to become bigger and is always in search of ways and means to become bigger. So a bigger ego is identified in the form of someone like whom you want to become and our ego starts getting associated with it and see how it can become bigger through doing certain activities, acquiring some more skills, positions, etc.  So one needs to identify and examine this urge to become like some one at the earliest but keep a watch as to whether the ego is asking us to learn new things or prevent others from learning new things so that our ego remains intact. We need to ensure that our ego is pointing towards learning and positive things.

Ego can actually be very useful to push ourselves while we are climbing the excellence ladder. It being a perception of self, it actually can act like a positive spiral in our journey of excellence.  

The same ego can also create significant problems in the journey we have undertaken. We know that many a times, we need to “Unlearn” few things before we “Learn” few things required for our next level of excellence. The ego plays its part in facilitating this process in reverse manner. It normally prevents us from unlearning, it does not accept that what ever he was doing was not correct, which actually gets portrayed as weakness and ego kind of becomes small. Ego never likes to become small so it prevents us from really accepting “unlearning”. We see many times during the discussion that we kind of “agree in principle” but do not actually implement the change agreed. If we do not implement the new things, we do not move to the higher level of excellence and higher level of ego. So, many a times, ego directs us to do things which will reduce the surrounding egos. This is detrimental and starts a negative spiral in our journey of excellence.

We now come to question whether ego is boon or bane for excellence?

Although the paragraphs above have depicted that ego can play boon and bane with respect to excellence; I believe that it can be used as boon if we are able to identify our ego. Many a times we take actions, which we feel right but they actually are dictated by our ego. So as mentioned earlier, if we act based on things we “agree in principle but do not act” we will be able to move forward. We will also need to look at our actions, if they seem to be against the over all direction of entire operations, that is typically result of negative spiral run by our ego. So we need to be aware of this and stop those actions. So “Ego is boon for excellence if we keep it in control”.

“Just do it” for Excellence

As we know, excellence is a journey and we continuously move from one level of excellence to next higher level of excellence be it personal life or professional. It is a gradual process and each person or organization goes through the same individually. One needs to regularly analyse self and decide the next steps to be taken in order to move to the next level of excellence. The world surrounding us is continuously moving forward and if we do not take these steps then we actually move backwards. This is why we need to take those actions to keep pace with the world if not outstep. It is critical that we take these actions at the earliest to see the positive results of our movement.

If we look at this in a little different angle, we see that we want to move from one level of excellence to another level of excellence; we need to change something we do or manner in which we think or way in which we approach a particular thing. When we want to change something with oneself, we need to take that first step which requires all the courage we have, we need to shed the inhibition we feel about what others will say and take that first step. 90%+ population typically lie in dilemma whether to take the action or not. This is where the famous Nike tag line “Just Do It” comes in handy. Just Do it, said very simply and effectively, telling “take that action immediately without bothering about external world”.

There is another quote by Tony Robbins “A real decision is measured by the fact that you have taken a new action. If there is no action, you haven’t truly decided”. A very apt sentence; the surrounding world actually interprets our decision and its seriousness based on what actions we take. One can find the difference between what one talks and how one acts and if these two are matching, the change takes place. As said by CG Jung, “You are what you do, not what you say you will do”.

The major reason for not taking any action preventing the improvement in our level of excellence is our fear of failure or fear of reaction of the external world. That is the reason why we need courage to take that first action. Conrad Hilton has said “Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving, they make mistakes, but they don’t quit”. We need to bring that courage out to continuously push us to act and continue to act inspite of mistakes that we might make. We need to use the mistakes to learn more and act better. There is another shloka by Shri Samartha Ramdas Swami in Marathi

Kelyane hot ahe re | Adhi kelechi pahije ||

Yatna to dev janava | Antari dharita bare ||

Which means the action will give the results we want, but first we need to perform that act. Unless that action is taken we cannot see the results. Efforts to make these actions are key and need to be continuously undertaken.

If we look at this tendency of procrastination over taking the first step and resulting stagnation at same level of excellence for a long period; this quote by John F Kennedy provides answer and necessary push to look out for action the quote reads like “There are risks and costs to every action but they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction”. The mental block which protests to change and tries to keep at the comfortable zone of current surroundings will lead us to stagnate at current level of excellence and over a period of time, we will actually move backwards as the world would have moved forward. Wayne Greteki says “You miss 100% of shots you don’t take” very simple and very powerful. Unless you take action, you will not see the improvement in the level of excellence so just to ensure that there is improvement, you need to take action. It is possible that you will get success in a few actions but atleast you will see a corresponding improvement. If we do not take any action, it is guaranteed that we will not see any improvement.

So it is extremely critical to take that first step at the earliest. Keep aside all the questions raised by your mind; if you have come to conclusion after analyzing the situation that certain actions are necessary to reach the new level of excellence, then JUST TAKE THOSE ACTIONS. You may want to split these actions in to several baby steps so that you can conjure the courage to execute those. See the results and encourage yourself to take some more actions. As Lao Tzu has said, “The Journey of thousand miles begins with a single step”; in this journey of improvement in the excellence level, you will need to train your mind to continuously identify these baby steps and executing them without any pressure. I am sure that success will be yours. 

Delivery Excellence on Auto Pilot

“Delivery Excellence” is the essential buzzword for every company. It becomes more prominent in the IT industry but also manifests in different format in other industries with industry specific definition of “Delivery”. Every organization is claiming to be working towards achieving Delivery excellence. There are multiple models built by various industry bodies, universities, governments like ISO, CMMi, Malcom Baldridge Award, Shingo Prize, etc. which are used by corporates to achieve and project delivery excellence to the external world. Many large corporations have built their own Delivery Excellence frameworks based on some of best practices of these models and their experience of delivering to customers. The whole idea of these initiatives is to build a framework within the organization which will help “auto-pilot” delivery excellence. The framework is a comprehensive set of Policies, Procedures, forms and templates which define what should be considerations while doing a specific work, how to do it, what are the tools available for doing the same and how to monitor its progress, etc. However, if one observes keenly across the spectrum of organizations, the aim of “auto-piloting Delivery Excellence” is not really seen to be successful. Corporations are not really able to achieve excellence, which is defines as “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”, in their delivery function. The corporates do not admit this but continuously refine the framework and do several other things to achieve the same. They set up a focus group to ensure that the organization continues to march on the “Excellence” path.

When one observes corporations / groups within the corporations who seem to be successful in achieving delivery excellence over a longer period of time and those who struggle or show intermittent success, we see a few points which make all the difference. These are  

1                     Has the team on the ground understood the Spirit of framework?

Many a times it is seen that a corporation has nice and comprehensive framework, it is available easily to every one to refer, there is a constant communication about need of its usage and team also uses it to the letter, there are no non conformity found in the audits but we do not see Delivery Excellence. The prime reason for this is the team does not understand the spirit behind each step in the framework. They really do not think deeply about why they are doing a specific step and what the business benefits are likely to be achieved by doing a specific step. The result is blindly following the steps mentioned in the manual. Over a period of time the team totally forgets why and just follows the framework to its letter. So it is critical for every organization to device means to ensure that the spirit of the delivery excellence framework is understood correctly by the team. This could be done by devising training programs which are more focused on deeper understanding and its relevance to business rather than overview. More and more case studies of benefits could be shared in discussion mode. The best method of keeping this journey of excellence perpetual is significant participation of senior and middle management.   

2                     Involvement of Senior and Middle Management

When an organization is building up a culture, then deep, convincing and demonstrated involvement of Senior management is mandatory. When organization observes keen interest and actions in specific tenets of culture or values demonstrated through actions; it starts adopting the same as their culture and their values. So it becomes critical that Senior management visibly demonstrate through their actions that they want a culture of delivery excellence in the organization. Many a times we see that Senior management sets the parameters predominantly on financial aspects, talk a lot about the same in various meetings, set up review process around it. There is not much of discussion on HOW portion of those achievements. The HOW aspects are directly linked with things like Delivery Excellence, which are vehicles to achieve financial goals. Clear and visible interest in these in terms of setting goals for their direct reports and reviewing of the same in meetings sets the right tone. When Senior management connects the comprehensive framework which has been built by the organization to business goals the cascade effect is a positive spiral. Taking cue from the senior management team, the middle management is critical in terms of implementation of this values system and if organization sees sincerity in the actions, their belief in what senior management is preaching strengthens. Is the middle management allowing the team to go through the full life cycle of any activity or they are looking for some shortcuts from the team. This speaks volumes to the team about real value system. Thus the joint effort helps in converting the delivery excellence framework to auto pilot mode. Simple things like how the middle management or senior management reacts to the mistakes made as well as defects conveys a lot to the organization in terms of what values the organization really cares for.  

3                     How defects and defect generator is treated? 

It is critical for success of any framework that there is an encouragement to make mistakes, learn from them and improve continuously. If the defects are not treated well and defect generator is punished without giving opportunity to improve or actions are taken on personal basis rather than on issue basis; the tendency to hide the mistakes increases also culture of “Passing the Buck” or “Save Ones Back” takes front stage. This encourages team to play safe and follow the framework to the letter (not to spirit). Also many a times defect finder is not considered a good team member by the team, which slowly gives rise to a culture of “I scratch your back and you scratch mine” i.e. “I will find nominal mistakes in your work and you find nominal mistakes from my work”. So the process is followed, there are defects, there will be some Root Cause Analysis, some actions for correction and prevention will be taken. However there is a high chance that we have overlooked the real opportunity for improvement and which shows up as a blot in the customer feedback.  

4                     Is the customer party to the excellence process?

Another way to give a clear message to the organization is to involve customer as a partner in your Delivery Excellence process. There is a tendency in the organization to showcase only the end product to the customer and not the entire process. Many a times companies like to wow the customer or they do not want customer to understand the realities on the ground or companies want to continuously improve and keep most of the gains from improvement to themselves. Many times customers also will have their own Delivery Excellence processes and gives rise to conflict in terms of which framework to follow. If the corporation successfully sales the idea and benefits of the delivery framework it has and excites customer to participate in the same, be open with the customer about all the efforts teams are taking. This really gets the team pumped up as they see the importance of the framework and since customer is directly involved in to this, the WHY portion of the framework is addressed meaningfully giving a better chance to auto pilot the framework.

So if Senior management sponsors the delivery excellence framework and participates in to it actively coupled with appropriate implementation at middle management through a positive improvement oriented approach the chance for auto-piloting delivery excellence increases. If customer participates in using the delivery excellence framework then chances of auto piloting increase exponentially. 

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.     

Excellence is Habit

Excellence is Habit

Will Durant, a famous philosopher and writer of the book The Story of Philosophy, has said very aptly, “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy'.

He says it very nicely and clearly that we will not wake up one day and say we have reached excellence or it is not that we will keep on training ourselves and we will achieve excellence after a certain period; but what ever we do, when ever we do defines our excellence. There is no specific scale to measure and compare against. There are no international standards / benchmarks we can refer to and try to achieve / comply. The only benchmark is ourselves and we get measured by what we do and how we do things. So we define our level of excellence through the level depicted in most of our actions. We normally will display different level of excellence in various actions we perform in our day today life. Our level of excellence is perceived at the level where we have performed the maximum time. The other instances when we have performed better or worse than this are typically discounted.

This actually means we have a habit of performing at a level of excellence (where we have performed maximum number of times). This Habit defined our level of excellence and what ever habit we have adopted for doing actions, we are at that level of excellence. I am currently in Japan for work and I am observing this phenomenon right from when I landed. Take a simple thing like greeting a person when you meet, the way a Japanese person will greet is very elaborate and respectful. Plus this is consistent, every time you meet, the greeting would be elaborate, sincere; even when you meet multiple people, they all will greet you in similar manner. This all looks very different from the perspective of a non Japanese person, and we wonder how they can do this every day and every time they meet some one. But if you look from Japanese perspective, it is just a habit they have formed from their childhood and they just do it, they do not feel they are doing anything elaborate or different than what they have been doing. You can see such things in many simple tasks which puts them on higher level of excellence and many of us.

When we are calling it as a Habit, and we know the nature of our Habits, i.e. we try to change them but they keep coming back to same level, so is it destined for every one to perform at a certain level of excellence and no more? Is there any way to break our habits of actions at lower level of excellence and get habituated to act at higher level of excellence? Lot of questions come to our mind and we look for that magic wand or magic training program or magic book or magic medicine or something like that which, when we do we can move quickly in to new habits. We also know the answers, very simple, habits change by doing things differently and consistently. The two words differently and consistently are very important; differently, we know that we need to be at different level of excellence and we do the action in that fashion to define new level of excellence for us and consistently, which is the most important thing, that every time we do this action again, we will do it at the newly found level of excellence. It takes patience to change habits and also one can not change the habits drastically at one go they need to be changed “bit-by-bit” as I have mentioned in my one of my earlier blog.  

Also when one try to operate with one set of habits in personal life and another set of habits in professional life, we find it extremely difficult. The habits are the things that come naturally to you and you do not have to make any special effort when you are doing the same. If you have to act not according to your habits, there are high chances of failure or internal stress built up, which can create failure in some other area. So if we are not acting with same habits in our personal and professional life, one must look at it and see how one can start merging these two things. This will be the first set of habits that the person will need to change and once he becomes stress free that he does not have to remember about which surrounding he is taking the action, he can start focusing on improving the action itself.    

So our habits define how we do our actions and our actions define level of excellence we operate at. Actions through habit are very natural to us and excellence is also natural to every human being. So let us get in to habit of performing each action at higher level of excellence that we are habituated to perform.   

Excellence while Multi-Tasking

Excellence while Multi-Tasking

It is observed that for an average person, he / she will have at-least three things on their mind at any time and they try to juggle their mind between these three based on the priorities he or she considers. Naturally one may be excelling in one of those three tasks and the other two will mostly be at the passing cut off levels. One feels good that he/she has not failed in any of the tasks inspite of the juggling. One moves from one juggle to another on continuous basis and settles down as some kind of level of excellence which is far less than the level of excellence one is capable to achieve.

Most of the information comes to us in the form of either e-Mail, or SMS or phone call or any connection in social media we are connected with. The information comes in completely unstructured manner and actually it comes at the convenience of the sender and most of the times it is at inconvenient time for you. The technology has enabled us to create alerts for all the incoming information in order to not to miss any of the incoming information. Many a times we believe that we must react to the information as soon as possible and we try our best.

The world we live and operate today has become fast and the speed is increasing as we move forward. It has become more connected, thanks to the technology, which is simplifying the networking on continuous basis. It has become more data oriented, data dependent for decision making as we have the technology to gather, analyse and infer from the vast data available across the world in a very short time, some time almost real time. One is expected to live and thrive in such an environment where one is connected for 24 hours of the day, one keeps on getting information 24 hours of the day, one is expected to react 24 hours of the day. This pattern of unstructured information inflow demands us to multitask continuously and perform all the tasks demanded out of us by the information received. The information inflow is so erratic and so diverse that one cannot plan for the same but one is expected to be performing at higher levels across all the tasks all the time.

Is it possible to be performing at higher level of excellence and continuously increase it across all the tasks that we perform?

Yes; we can simply do it by doing one task at a time

Let us take a situation of a meeting in an office for discussing strategy for moving forward. Let us look at the scenario just before the meeting is going to start. Most of the attendees will be senior members of the team and they are called to contribute and collaborate to build the strategy. One by one the attendees come settle down in their seat and first thing they look for is a LAN connection or a WIFI connection to connect their laptops or iPads. One simple question I want to ask here; How many of the attendees will need information through network to enhance their contribution to the ongoing meeting for strategy formulation?.  Atleast 90% + members will answer that they will not get any help. You ask another question what is the possibility that if you do not react to any of these disturbances for the duration of meeting things will turn in to irreparable damage? Mostly you will get an answer as NIL. So if you do not allow yourself to get distracted by the incoming information, you can focus on the task at hand i.e. formulation of strategy and will definitely display higher level of excellence which you are capable of. So try attending the meetings without connecting yourself with external world and see the difference in your contribution.

This is fine for meetings, but we cannot do the same at our desk, where we are connected and onslaught of information continuously distracts us; we cannot refuse a call or an email when it lands in our inbox or someone dropping by in unplanned manner. Yes it is right that we cannot refuse the information inflow but we can always regulate the outflow (our reaction to the distraction) from our side. Ideal way is to look at e-mails / messages intermittently in between the tasks you are performing and not while you are performing a task. This way you do not get distracted while you are performing your task and you do not miss any of the information you receive and that you need to respond. This definitely enables us to focus on the task at hand till it is completed and do not miss any of the information coming. Many a times, we suddenly remember something that we might have missed to do and we get distracted, we stop the current task and start the new task. Once this chain starts then we lose complete control over what we are doing and our level of excellence drops significantly. A simple method of creating a to-do list solves this problem. It is a good practice to create a to-do list and ensure that all the tasks are listed on it and we complete them without fail. So as soon as we remember any of the task in the middle of performing another task, just add this task to the to-do list with appropriate noting and continue the task at hand till its completion. Once the task at hand is completed, pick up the next priority task form the to-do list and continue performing it at your high level of excellence.  

One will feel a little odd when we start this method as we typically are addicted to respond any information at the earliest; but slowly one gets used to it and one is able to do multitasking with higher level of excellence through one thing at a time.

Proactive Re-invention for Excellence

When a person / organization starts moving up the excellence ladder and starts climbing the steps one by one, one can see that at every step, they have undergone some change, adopted something new, or done something differently, mastered some new tools & techniques, etc. which has enabled them to move up the ladder.

I think, we should turn this information upside down. We should start creating these changes ourselves proactively and then move to the next step of ladder as per our wish. This looks simple to read but has significant challenges as to how do we know that we have to change, how do we know what to change, where to change, how much to change etc.; because, the change can easily backfire and take us down the ladder. So can we do it and be sure that we are on the right track?

We need to re-invent ourselves (same applies to organizations also) periodically through formal efforts. The key here is “REINVENTION” and “PERIODICITY”. The idea is to reinvent ourselves at regular intervals. I am stressing here the word re-invent, because it is much different than reviewing ourselves at regular intervals, which many of us do it without any significant impact. According to Cambridge dictionary, REINVENT means “to change something in basic way so that it works differently”.  Here the stress is on change in basic way and this is what typically does not happen when we are reviewing and modifying in our regular review cycles. Now the question comes that can a person / organization change their basic way of working on regular basis and can it be at will or it is typically a eureka moment for some one some time, and we do not know when it will come? How frequently they can change this? will it not create a chaos in one’s life or operations of the organization?

I think we can do it we just need to be a little courageous. Let us take a situation where in you have completed an engagement and you are yet to get in to the next one; this is the right time to reinvent oneself. How do we do it? Can any one do it oneself? I think we know the process it is same as we do when we review ourselves i.e. look at what has gone right; what could have been done better; what are lessons learnt and what changes that needs to be done going forward. This is simple and well known process isn’t it? The only thing we need to do is try and question our basic assumptions about ourselves. Our whole logic, analysis, defense, actions are based on specific assumptions about ourselves. These are typically formed from mixing our perceptions and our wishes about ourselves. These may not be perfect. So question them courageously with an open mind that we can change these assumptions in positive manner. Once you figure out what change we need to do with these assumptions, we have reinvented ourselves, till that time we just keep on circling around the same thing getting same results and staying at the same level of excellence. This is easier said than done, but doable. So we need to try it out a few times before we start understanding how do we make and handle self criticism, destabilizing one’s ego, question our basic beliefs about ourselves, etc. Due to lack of these abilities, most of the times our response to such a review brings out thoughts and actions to change things external to us; we are afraid that if we admit that the shortcomings lie with us, the impact of the same would affect us adversely and thus in order to protect ourselves, we start reacting in a specific manner; but when one does self assessment with oneself, there is no one to notice, no one to know the shortcomings if you find one, and no one to punish. If you change your basic assumption as a result of this assessment, the external world only will see the positive results and definitely applaud for the improvement. This is the beauty of PROACTIVE REINVENTION, which when you do it with yourself, on your own, before any one finds the need for it and do the change before anyone feels the need. Once you internalize this process, you can continuously climb up the steps of Excellence ladder at your pace rather than any external factors pushing you to do it.   

Simple Recipe for Excellence

This is holiday season and one thing we definitely do during this season is pamper ourselves with a variety of delicacies. This is the time when we put on some extra pounds but we do not mind as we work hard for the same all year long. I was thinking about food and various recipes and a thought came to my mind; if there is any recipe for excellence? which is simple, easy to make, any one should be able to do it, should be made from the ingredients available anywhere, etc., etc. So, any one, from grandson to grandma, can prepare it and enjoy the excellence that they will experience. Looks like it is my lucky day today and I have stumbled upon one very ancient recipe which I want to share.

This is very simple and it satisfies all the conditions which I was thinking before I started looking for one. It has only one ingredient, available with every one, which when mixed with anything you are doing, it improves your excellence level and you start enjoying the superb taste of excellence. The ingredient is “Ownership”. Just mix your ownership to everything you are doing and you will get an amazing taste.

I want you to do two things; one, look back and remember the tasks where you feel you achieved excellence and those where you have not been able to demonstrate excellence to the level you wanted or the one you normally demonstrate. Be truthful to yourself and analyze. It is more than likely that you will find that when you had owned the tasks, you have demonstrated excellence and where you were kind of doing it because someone has told you to do it but you did not really own it, results were opposite.   Second, observe the people whom you consider that they always demonstrate excellence in the things they do and see how they look at things, how they react to the external disturbances, what kind of efforts they make to resolve problems. Do they take action, reach out people, try and identify alternatives or they just update their boss and wait for instructions. You will mostly find that they would be doing lot of things on their own proactively and are able to find out better solutions and better results. You will see that they take ownership of the task they are doing and want to do it successfully. They do not shy away from any additional work that might come to their plate in order to ensure the successful outcome of the task they own. You can find these people in the organization easily; people say that if so and so person is doing the task it will get done or you will observe that for all complex and critical tasks few set of people get selected. This is all because, they display ownership in all aspects.

What does this Ownership really mean? How can we add it in every task that we are doing?

I believe that Ownership is state of mind, which gives rise to our thoughts, which translates to our actions, which we undertake in day today life, which give us the results. It comes from within, so one needs to work on oneself to build this thought process. One will need to observe oneself more closely; what thought process goes on in the mind when various tasks were performed and seek reasons why we were not able to own a specific task. It can be that you were against it and you had to do it because your superior made you do it; or it can be that you had information only of a part of complete task and no idea of the complete task and many times you do not get it inspite of you asking for the same; or it can be that you are not really aware of how the outcome of the specific task is going to create an impact on the organization level or some similar situation on personal side. These situations are pretty common and found all over, so can we prepare the ownership recipe?

Yes we can!!  

If we encounter any such situation, we should look at the task on its own merit independently, try not to connect any past emotions to them, understand what outcome is expected from you and tell yourself that you will ensure that the specific outcome will be achieved and then go on doing the task, do all the things that are necessary during the course and observe yourself delivering the outcome at the desired level of excellence. This is a slow process and one needs to persevere. One needs to observe oneself continuously. It is difficult to get complete success in one go and one needs to be at it, experiment with oneself, observe the results, learn from them and improve the experimentation. I am sure we can build the ownership trait in our self and enjoy the great taste of recipe for excellence. 

Three steps to Excellence

Is excellence a bastion of few? or any one can achieve it? This question appears in the mind of many and when we read various contradicting opinions expressed in many mediums create confusion rather than clarifying the doubts. Can someone live using excellence as life guide?

A simple three step approach applied would take us on the road to excellence for sure. The steps are Courageous Vision, Comprehensive Planning and Relentless Execution.

Courageous Vision; we all know that to achieve anything we need to have a vision, it is not sufficient to have a wish but VISION. There is a lot of difference between wishing something and having a vision about something. When we call something our wish, we typically depend on someone outside us to fulfill the same and hope that things outside us will fall in place fulfilling the wish. However when we call something as our vision, then there is a lot of involvement from self to make it happen; significant mindshare is given by the person who is visioning a specific thing. One plans actions to make it happen, one connects with external world to explain the vision and makes positive efforts in obtaining their support to achieve the final outcome. I have added Courageous adjective to vision and believe that it is very important. If our vision is easily achievable, it really does not inspire us to do any special efforts; it does not challenge us and does not help us to increase the level of excellence. e.g. if the organization has a vision of continuous growth but at a much less rate than what competition is growing; then although the vision emphasizes that we need to grow continuously, this typically can be achieved without really changing current level of excellence. Hence we need to express our vision in the form that questions status quo, it challenges us to achieve more than what we are achieving today, it should provoke our thinking to do the things differently and it should compel us to do the things at a higher level of excellence. Expressing vision to do these things actually takes the person to a very uncomfortable zone and needs a lot of courage on his part to express and commit to this vision. That is the reason why COURAGEOUS VISION is the first step to improve your level of excellence.

It is not sufficient just to express the vision; it needs to be understood, interpreted and operationalized for its realization. These things do not happen automatically and lot of planning and execution to the plan, goes in with the same. PLANNING COMPREHENSIVELY is the key for a better execution and improves the probability of success significantly. It allows us to get to the details, understand possible problems in every step and prepares us to avoid them or enables a plan B in case plan A fails in some unforeseen circumstances. Many times we plan at high level and try and address the situations on the ground as and when they come mostly in the reactionary fashion. We hope that everything will fall in place and we are not really prepared for many of the possible distractions/diversions that might occur on the way. As soon as one such thing comes to our notice, we try and figure out what is the action we need to take to avoid the distraction; many a times we need to do a compromise and deviate from our final outcome or throw in a significantly large quantum of resources (than desired) to achieve the final outcome. We will not be able to increase our level of excellence as desired. If we plan with great details on all aspects, it really helps us to identify the possible diversions/distractions and keep our actions ready in case such a distraction occurs and we are able to achieve the outcome improving excellence to the desired level (better than the current level)       

It is important to have a challenging vision, it is necessary to plan your actions, but it is extremely important that we execute on the comprehensive plans based on courageous vision. Unless we are able to execute; no matter what ever obstacles we encounter, no matter what ever diversion we may face, no matter what ever wastage gets created due to unknown things; we will not be able to achieve our vision. We need to build that rigor which will help us build the rhythm of execute-monitor-correct-execute. As described in my earlier blog, we can internalize this rigor through a bit-by-bit process and execute the plans relentlessly. I am sure when we will reach the goal post and look back, we will observe that we have been operating at higher level of excellence automatically. I have taken an example of an organization, but the same is true at individual level also so just remember three steps Courageous Vision-Comprehensive Planning- Relentless Execution and you are on path of improving excellence