Enigma Solution

The organisation that Silos built. What is a silo. ? It is a long tubular structure mainly used for storing grain, sugar, cement etc. Observe and you see that Silos have an opening only at the top and another opening at the bottom. Most organisations structures are built like silos, tall structures encapsulating a group of people and activities which are called departments, sometimes they are also called organisational verticals. The silos only connect at the top and sometimes at the bottom. At the top of each silo is the department head. Everything has to come in and go out through this person. Silo's are structured linearly. Power and authority reduces as you go lower down the silo. At the top of each silo is a boss called the General Manager and then below that person there is Senior Manager, and so on until you get to the very bottom where there will be staff members and worker. At the bottom of the silo, exist junior most employees and workers These are the people who have to ...

It was 1984 and the third anniversary of us brothers joining of the family owned and managed manufacturing business in Pune, India. I was 26 and responsible for day to day operations of the plant. Excited to be given an opportunity to start working at last, with our enthusiasm and hard work we were able to double output each year. Initially growth came from taking up the slack in the system and then later from some capacity additions. Our efficiencies left much to be desired. Just keeping pace with volume demand was soaking up all our time, we responded with the main tool in our tool box, ‘HARD WORK’, which comes easy to the young, for youth loves expending energy. However there is a limit, to what senseless hard work can achieve. Demand was galloping, and there were no more funds available for capital expansion. We had already borrowed to the hilt. We simply had to become more efficient.Further progress depended on adopting a different approach. But what? Had we not been under pressur...

        F requently requested to assist organisations large and small, I observe a common and recurring theme.  The issues revolve around the struggle of owners /managers to manage effectively. This is visible predominantly in companies that have started small and are growing, in family run businesses and families themselves. They are invariably puzzled that management approach, style and methods which worked so well in the past, now just don't work anymore. They resort to even more hard work and effort, yet the situation only worsens. Finding themselves in unfamiliar situations they dart here and there implementing fads, half hearted strategies alien to their thinking and character. They do this because they are getting frustrated and doing something is considered better than doing nothing. They change staff and managers. They churn product mix, vendors and even customers and markets. They try so many things but nothing seems to work. They chang...

I was initially amazed, not any more. On visits to organisations to hear the familiar lament "Nothing ever happens without me. Must I do everything myself?" The manager / owner takes some action supposedly to get things done. Soon thereafter the situation lapses into the earlier condition. This is like sitting on a see-saw. We go up, only to come down again. It is like taking three steps forward and two and a half steps back most of the time. This style of functioning saps the strength and eventually the spirit of the organisation. At best the organisation will survive and plod along and in many cases just goes out of business. We were no different until we adopted a philosophy called KAIZEN with great success. 'Kai' in Japanese means small 'Zen' means change. Thus Kaizen means 'Small Changes.' It is a kind of discipline, of continuous improvement by the introduction of small changes all the time. Adopting Kaizen is not a magic wand that will suddenly ...

Upward delegation I belong to a family of workaholics. Not necessarily something to be proud of. We worked very hard but not always smartly. I could rarely get home before midnight. My brothers and I slogged it out. We enjoyed this feeling of stretching ourselves to the maximum of our potential. Come to think of it, It's not a bad thing to work hard, but it's got to have meaning. It is also quite irrelevant if the quality of life is missing. The way I was working and managing felt like I was on a nonstop treadmill. With each passing day, I experienced ever increasing workloads. It felt akin to living in a kind of happy prison where I actually enjoyed the hard labour. I have since discovered that my situation was not unique. I knew I should find a better way. What could that be? Could there not be abetter way to grow the company and ourselves without being so frustrated. When you are young you have boundless energy. I was far from tired but kept asking, should there not be more ...

I am saddened by the undeserved and bad press that Toyota Motors a great organisation has been receiving in the recent past. Notwithstanding the latest problems in quality and its first loss in 27 years, nearly everyone knows that Toyota Motors is one of the most successful companies in the world. What is not so widely known is how Toyota got there. How did a company almost on the verge of bankruptcy several times emerge from the ruins of a war exhausted and destroyed nation to conquer the most profitable, technology savvy companies in the automotive world within a few short decades? There are many reasons for Toyota's success but the most significant is "Lean Thinking and Management" , which Toyota pioneered and continuously perfects. It was 1987, New Delhi. India. Mr. Rahul Bajaj, chairman and managing director of Bajaj Auto group gave the keynote address at a CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) program. I thought he was speaking something strange, incr...