Enigma Solution

Does this situation sound familiar? You are on leave or on an assignment which takes you away from your workplace for a few days, only to discover upon your return, that all hell has broken loose. A customer, vendor or a key member of your team was tackled inappropriately or that substandard product or deficient service was delivered to a customer and finally some kind of financial irregularity has taken place. No amount of screaming or wringing of hands can undo the incident or the damage of actions arising out of those inappropriate actions. A well managed organisation would have a system with checks and balance that would prevent the likelihood of such mishaps. In most organisation at best you can go in for damage control to minimise the negative impact of poor decisions or improper actions. It is unavoidable that people do leave their work positions for personal or professional reasons. The absence may be of a temporary or even permanent nature. The question arises; How best to man...

Is it good for a boss to always take charge and lead from the front? Dictatorial style of management has several advantages. Plans are formulated quickly and decisions come even quicker. Action and outcomes are normally swift. The problems with bosses is that they inevitably come to believe that they alone know what is to be done, and how it has to be done, etc. They do not realise it, but in many cases they are defeated even before they start. Here is an example; Every fortnight we held a planning meet wherein we had all the heads of all departments would sit in to review the performance of previous fortnight and month. We would also review execution plans for the next fortnight and month. At these meetings we would review all failures and slippages pertaining to quality, quantity, schedule compliance and budgets and project status. As the boss I would try to understand what had transpired and almost always immedeately propose a solution. This worked wonderfully when the ...

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new”. - Albert Einstein Under the leadership of Tom Watson Jr. IBM (International Business Machines) came to be regarded as not only a great company but also a most profitable one. The vision and implementation were outstanding. The focus on people as the greatest asset was an important factor in IBM’s rise to greatness. The following example of handling mistakes illustrates extraordinary leadership qualities. A senior vice president lost US$ 250,000 (a very large amount of money at that time) on an initiative which did not succeed. The Executive crestfallen upon entering the office of Watson apologised and said " I am sorry for what went wrong, I accept full responsibility. You can expect my resignation on your table first thing tomorrow morning" . Watson rejected the offer of resignation saying, "we can't let you go, we have just spent $250,000 on your education". The gentleman in question subse...

Overly curious and hyperactive children are a challenge and exhausting for almost all parents, particularly during the periods when the school and college were shut for vacations. Our parents and Uncle and Aunts conceived an eminently practical and useful solution. They packed us four brothers off separately to accompany either our father or Uncle to attend either the office or the factory. At work since we had no real responsibilities we were given little errands and small to do projects. We would often just loiter around and did pretty much what we wanted. This was learning by simply walking around and generally bugging employees with questions and requests to teach us various stuff or give us something to do. We aspired to be like our dad and uncle and simply could not wait to grow up. When you are 10 years young a factory is a wonderland worthy of exploration. Bit by bit we learnt a lot without even realising it, about what our dad and uncle did and how things were run. ...

Last month I dropped in at a friends manufacturing plant in Pune recently. He was both happy and very busy, and why not? They were doubling sales every two years. He and his family reflected visible aspects of the India growth story. I was happy for him. We were having a cup of tea when a senior member of his team walked into the cabin. I was surprised to see that the gentleman was an old colleague of mine. We chatted briefly about things in the industry and also about former colleagues etc. I knew him to be a very good engineer and manager. During his tenure with my company we had undertaken many path breaking initiatives in technology and management. I asked him if he was still undertaking industry benchmarking studies like he had when he worked for us and which had been extremely useful for us. My friend immediately butted in and retorted; "we have a policy here not to concern ourselves with others, we are preoccupied with our own internal issues." I was aghast ...

During my various assignments I observe a worrying theme; Successful people become rigid and adopt the same style and approach irrespective of the changing environment. Success makes them highly inflexible. When changes occur in the business environment they are unable to change their style and approach They begin to believe that all they have to do is work harder, however this does not always produce satisfactory results. Result oriented leaders do their homework and often try to change their approach until they get it right. Adopting suitable technology can often make the crucial difference. The best results normally come when there is a blend of technology coupled with good management practices. Take the case of The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). The commissioners suspected inflation of the payroll by the addition of large number of fictitious employees. This was confirmed by published reports from The anti-corruption branch (ACB) of Delhi government which has investigated ma...

I remember ever since I was in the ninth grade in school, I started spending holidays and weekends at the factory accompanying our Uncle Manohar Singh ji. It was great fun and many days were spent absorbing so much by just casually observing things. We used to supply a lot of manufactured components to the famous motorcycle manufacturing company 'Ideal Jawa' in Mysore. At that time they produced 1500 motorcycles each month. Produced under license from the Czech manufacturer Jawa, beyond doubt it was India's finest motorcycle, I often accompanied my Dad, Uncle and quality staff whenever they visited the Jawa plant in Mysore for a number of issues. I observed, but did not realise until much later, that the plant had a rather large workforce yet there were very few managers, supervisors and other staff. Ideal Jawa was owned and managed by the dynamic duo Irani brothers Rustom ji (Commercial) and Farouk ji (Technical). Rustom ji & Farouk ji personally worked very hard, driv...