Good things happen when you believe

When I first landed in Scandinavia (Denmark), I was reeling through a painful time in my personal life. Work, the amazing Danish people and Denmark at large kept me going through those rough times.


There is something about the Danes that I instantly fell in love with. To be more accurate, it was my first Danish manager. He is a super amazing, super humble, inclusive and caring individual with loads of competence and skills. And he became my Danish family from the day I landed at the super-little airport in that quaint Danish town at Jylland, the southern island in Denmark.


The love around me and the peace around me was exactly what I had needed. I started to meditate and got my feet wet with Nichiren Buddhism in that tough time, and magically life started to change. 


Fast forward 8 years, I have continued to live in Scandinavia with my absolutely amazing life partner, having achieved the dream of doing an MBA from a top university and working in an area that I love. I did change my country of residence and work - moved to Sweden five years ago. Nonetheless have always stayed connected to Denmark in all these years.


When I came to Sweden five years ago, almost naively I expected people to be the same. I believed that people would still have the same habits, the same or at least similar culture and certainly they must understand Danish. Boy! I was so wrong. I still vividly remember the blank faces of my Swedish colleagues when I tried to say something in Danish. Initially I thought it was my low competence in Danish, but soon enough I discovered that Danish and Swedish are quite different despite many similarities. The same was true about the people. In my five years at my Swedish company, I came across a plethora of people. I was almost spoilt by the love I received in Denmark, and thought that it would be the same in Sweden. It was different.


Some of my colleagues in Sweden have always loved and cared for me, are super humble and super competent people. I tend to believe that people who are confident and are comfortable in their own skin are also inclusive. The first group of my colleagues fall in this category. Then there were the dire opposities. I came across some colleagues who seemed to elbow hard from day one. It felt strange, given it was Scandinavia and given my expectations from this land. Nonetheless, life kept moving with the good ones being by my side always.


Over the years though, a new kind of thought started to breed in my head. A thought that many non-Swedes actually say out aloud. It said, "If you are not a Swede yourself, it is very difficult to climb up the responsibility in a deeply Swedish-managed organisation".


Somewhere I started to believe this. Until one day we got a new manager for our team followed by a new manager for our business unit. Put the two together, these two new managers have set such an exemplary example of leadership for me. I simply adore their style of leadership and work. And I felt so privileged when I was given and almost handpicked for new and challenging assignments within the department.


And that is all it took to break the old perceptions that had started to grow like a mould in my little head. It is a cliche, but truly good leadership can do wonders.


Good leaders promote inclusiveness, trust people, and build condusive learning-environment around teams such that every single individual can grow and develop new skills and competence. That is all it took - Good leaders.




Good leaders I love to work with, and am super grateful for.

Communication in a multi-linguistic and multi-cultural workplace

Five years ago, I took a big life decision and made two big changes to my life. I changed my country of residence and work. I changed my profession. These were positive and happy changes in my life.

However, back then little had I known about the transition journey this change will take me on. Fast forward five years, I am with the same company, the same team, the same country and continuously learning new skills and new life-lessons everyday. While there are many stories to tell from the past five years, today I will share with you one that is a particularly big learning for me. If my story can empower even one single reader/writer out there, then it is worth-it to tell this story.

The story I am sharing with you today is my story of learning to communicate effectively in an international, multi-linguistic and multi-cultural workplace.

To set a context, let me tell you a bit about myself and a bit about my company and my work.

I have been brought up, and educated for most of my life in India. I have studied English language from day one of my school years. I have studied a masters in business administration in Scandinavia. I moved out of India approximately 15 years ago, living and working across various different countries. The company I work for today is a Scandinavian company with a strong international presence. It is also the world leader in retail and home furnishing business. The job I have has many different elements to it - with one of the crucial elements being executive management reporting. In simpler terms, our team pulls together reports detailing the current state of the business, with recommendations on the way-forward. The primary audience for these reports is top management and company boards who need to have an unbiased and true picture of the company performance. The secondary audience is the wider organisation who are mostly curious to know about the company and the direction it is progressing in.

Read that context again. Did you start to get a picture of the challenge that this context brings? Let us break it down together.

First and foremost, our reports had a very diverse audience. People ranging across an almost paradoxical spectrum in many ways. In other words, people who read our reports ranged from those who loved text reports to those who loved graphs and tables; those who easily understood business jargon to those who had no idea about typical business-language (for instance the type of language used in annual reports of international firms); those who were super skilled at English language to those who used google-translate to understand the language: those who liked running text to those who liked bullets. And this is far from an exhaustive list, but you get the point!

Second challenge? - Our reports were written by us. 'Us' who are a team of people belonging to at least six different nationalities with each one of us skilled and trained in business analysis, management accounting and business reporting. With each of us bringing their own style of writing to the table.

Two together took our team on a journey of norming and forming, before we could finally crack the code of effective communication.

So what did I learn? 

1. Use the simplest and most basic words to communicate. Eloquent and verbose is hardly effective.

2. Be critical to your own writing. Ask yourself what would the reader make of my sentences.

3. Be ready to strike through. Can your sentence be interpreted in two different ways? If so, strike it out and start writing again.

4. Use numbers in an intelligent way. Do not overuse, and do not underuse. Find a balance for your audience.

5. Gather feedback regularly and keep adopting to the new demands.

6. Cut through the chase and come straight to the point.

7. Practise, Practise and Practise until it becomes a habit.

What's in it for you? 

Are you one of those who works in an international firm with many different nationalities, many different cultures and many different languages? Do you communicate with other people? If so, then here is a brief exercise that might help you take that leap forward in improving your own communication style.

1. Think about one incidence where you were able to communicate a complex matter in a simple and effective way. Write down three things that you learnt from this experience.

2. Think about one incidence where you failed at communicating with your workplace colleagues. Write down what did not work, and what could have been done differently.

3. Discuss with a friend, a partner or your colleague about what you have learnt from your own experience. Keep an open mind and take all feedback. If needed, repeat #1 and #2 above after you have had discussed your initial learnings with someone.

The dynamics of a workplace

Have you ever come across a leader who always inspired you? and still does? and may be also someone who is the worst example of leadership for you? 

I am guessing that the answer is yes. Have you ever wondered how these leaders impact the company and their people? How do they impact the working environment and culture? Why are they the way they are? 

Every company has a culture of its own. This a cliche, but what is interesting is to observe how these cultures develop. Many times one can find different cultures within the same company. Business unit A following one culture and Business unit B following the other culture. While it is inherently obvious that leaders impact the culture to a great extent, exactly how such cultures come into play is a more complicated dynamics to get one's head around. 

Most companies follow a set of principles or a set of values to ensure that the basic grain of culture stays the same. How well is such a guideline adhered to depends both on who the company choses to be its leaders and how the company steers the leaders towards following its culture?

One comes across inspiring leaders, motivating leaders but also leaders who could be information-hoarders (and hence power-seeking), could be fickle minded (and hence changing their thoughts every second). Most people perceive leaders in a very individualistic way, however their are some leaders who are always seen in the same light by the many people. 

Companies have a higher responsibility to train their leaders to live up to the values, and if the leaders don't do so; then find a way to punish or to motivate. Failure to do this leads to what we started off in the beginning. Multiple cultures mushroom within the same company leading to long term problems and a company culture of competitiveness rather than collaboration. Eventually this impacts how the processes work, leading to more non lean processes, increased politics and an eventual hit to the bottom line. 

Increased transfer costs, lack of transparency and information hoarding leaders are all byproducts of a competitive culture. 'Togetherness is better', said Simon Sinek, one of the most thought provoking leadership speakers of our times. However one question that companies need to ask themselves every now and then is, 'How together are we really?'

One of the wise persons once said that sometimes it is better to let two parts of the same company drift apart and then eventually they find a path to converge. Interesting thought - yet to be explored! 

What is it that can steer leaders and people in a single direction? People themselves? education? a suitable environment? policies and guidelines that reward the right behaviour and punish the wrong? all of it? Every factor plays a role here. The starting point, however, is always the hiring process. Hire the right people who match with your company values and live values in their daily life. Right people from the start help build a strong company culture and foundation. 

Meditation

A recent turn in life took me towards meditation, and I will like to claim that this is a very important skill that every leader must learn.

After a 10 hour day of back to back meetings, 50-100 emails read and 50 more to go, 3-4 tasks ticked off and the list still not seeming to go shorter, missed deadlines and some accomplished ones - it becomes more than important to bring down the pace of life in the head! Just still, just blank. 

Meditation is not reflection. Meditation means slowing down before starting to awaken again with a new energy. There isnt one meditation technique either that would fit the needs of one and all. The mind chooses what it finds peaceful. Some might need yoga, physical training, swimming while some could relax and slow down with walk on the beach. 

This stillness serves as the door to new energy and keeps one away from stress. 

To be able to lead oneself and others, it is inportant to have a calm mind and meditation is certainly a way to get one. 

Paint it lean !!

Today i was at a conference by Niklas Modig on lean. As always it is difficult to find one purpose for using lean concepts. What is lean? Some had say that, and other might feel that they have already used all the methods and tools of lean. And thats where the catch is!!

As I understand it, there is no such thing as lean. There is no such thing as one method or one tool, but there is got to be one value and one purpose behind everything else - 'Reduction of waste and complexity'. 

In Niklas's words, it is increasing your flow-efficiency and increasing your resource efficiency that leads you to the path of success. You could always ask what is success? What is it that we are trying to achieve? Being a customer relationship person, the idea that most resonated with me was the idea of driving customer satisfaction. Well !!! Brrrrrrrrr!! wrong answer.

Isn't this just common sense. Which company would drive or do something that increases customer dissatisfaction? At least the ones in their sane minds wouldn't. So yes, this is a high level truth. But the goals behind implementing lean have to be more implementable and tangible in nature. For instance - find out if you want to lean out your physical products flow, or information flow or knowledge flow or ? + make sure that the process, the advantages/disadvantages and the results/progress are visible to everyone up to the bottom line each day of the business. 

Thats the true meaning of lean. Simplify, simplify and simplify !! 

One of the interesting things that came up during the discussion in the round table was the supporting eco-systems that need to support anything that we do to ensure that we become better each day. These are like life support systems - performance management and incentives & Trust + team work. Without these life support mechanisms, businesses will choke to a slow and steady death, if I can say so!!

Not to paint a bad picture, the important thing is to ensure that the values and principles of a business at the top level of strategy are aligned with what we try to do at the business strategy and operational strategy level. In absence of this alignment, the change would be so incongruent that it would never stick!!

Bring on more board meetings !!

The tension in the board room was building up as the board meeting progressed. Why have different people on the board? Why have people on the board who perhaps come for meeting only five times in an year and don't know about the day-to-day operations? - All this became so clear as the radically different approaches started to emerge from different sides of the round table. Very very interesting, high-energy, high-pressure talks - all of them trying to bring in more constructive feedback to the growth of the company. 

Language plays a very important role in these meetings. Ask the board members to converse in a foreign language and the limited vocabulary makes the talk abridged and limited. In the mother tongue, things get dirty and for the best more than often. 

It is simply so important to have this strong third perspective. It is so important to have the right people on the board who are able to take things professionally and keep their heart out of such discussions. People who can single minded focus on making their companies go in the right strategic direction. 

I loved it to be part of this meeting because I knew I was with the right people !!

Opinion: Are we incentivising our societies to becoming negative?

The more I explore customer analytics, consumer experience management and understand how we want to gauge who are the customer groups that a company should focus on, the more I worry about the vicious circle that we have built up in this world today. 

Let me explain using an attribute that is commonly used to understand the consumers - consumer sentiment. Large analytics teams and complex analytical softwares pay a hell lot of attention to this one parameter. Their logic is that the more negative a consumer's sentiment is, which is measured in the world of algorithms through certain key words for instance 'unhappy', 'highly disappointed', 'depressed' among others, the more important it is for a company to pay attention to this consumer if they want to retain the consumer. 'Red flags' and red traffic lights flash across the screens of call centre agents and customer representatives who want to service these customers at their best depending on the capabilities of their product or service. 

On the other side of the table is the consumer, who by the way is not stupid. The consumer knows that the more strong and negative he or she is in his/her response to anything that he/she is unhappy with, the faster and better service he/she will get, with a good chance to even win some credit back. And thats exactly what many consumers do. 

The result - our societies are becoming more and more negative. Patience has gone for a toss !! and don't get me wrong - it is definitely and absolutely important to be constructively critical about things that aren't the best because that is the only way to ensure that the things will improve. However, here the scenario is not the same. Millions, if not billions, are empowered today with the knowledge that the more critical and negative they become - the more credit they can earn. 

Are we driving our own societies to negativity? Shouldn't customer analytics be more psychological based analysis that can exactly figure out what and how real a consumer sentiment is? I feel there is not just a small flaw in this whole analytics technique - it is a huge risk looming around the corner that will perhaps make people more negative than they ought to be. 

Company Boards: Key Findings

Purpose of the board: "To steer the company in the right direction". A board has focus on making sure that the company is making the right strategy and more importantly it is obligatory for the board to ensure that the day to day management is the right management to have. 

Two main things: 

1. Have the right top management

2. Ensure that the capital of the company is secure

Usually the trick part is how to make a good board. There are no scientific performance evaluation criteria, but usually there is a good understanding if the management is good and if they are listening. So its almost like  putting up a good team together. 

Annual cycle: 5-7 meetings per year. 

If you are an international company, you should have an international board. Of course having the knowledge of the company is more important than the nationality. Particularly only national companies do not really need an international experience. 

Employee elected members usually help the board when the company is in trouble. In this situation, these people know what is wrong and that is good input. However, when there are good times then there is not so much value add to the board work to have employee elected presentation. 

In most cases the motivation for the board is to maintain their own reputation. 

Who steps into the board room: Someone who have had a real bottom line experience as a bottom line manager, and then has done something to be higher than the middle managers. Then is when you enter the board room. 

Sometimes you need to be at the right place at the right time to reach the right level. 

Ref: Agnete Raaschou

The fate of parasitic businesses

Recently Google announced that they are binning their google reader. As the news went out, the world went into a fury. B2B customers who were practically running their businesses based on Google reader estimate millions in loses. B2C customers are more worried about the millions of news feeds that they had painstakingly saved. 

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/03/end-google-reader

This act of Google is like a reaffirmation to people on how important originality of thought is. Basing businesses on Google, Facebook or any other company is not entirely wrong, because this can simply be viewed as a Supply Chain where one business caters to the needs of the second. However what is important to note here is that in a typical supplier-buyer relationship, there are contractual agreements to safeguard the interests of both parties. However lately, within the new web-world, such contracts have taken a back seat. Clearly there is no incentive for Google or for Facebook or others to continue providing any of their service, and they are likely to shed off their dying service the moment it stops making money for them, leaving other parasitic businesses gasping for breath. 

More importantly what worried me about this behavior from Google was their indifference to their own customers. This is little less known behavior, because even though there are no contracts between customers and businesses, businesses usually pay a lot of attention to fulfilling their customer's requirements. Having said this, it seems that google well knows that its customers are linked to it via multitudes of product propositions, and so binning one will not create a major loss for the giant. It is also an amazing realisation that humans adapt very fast, and so it is quite likely that people will find new ways to get to their favorite reads and will stay with Google. 

The worst hit, though, are the parasitic businesses, who have not just lost their business engine, but also have lost their customers. 

Trust is all that matters

When two people talk for the first time in a workplace, or otherwise, the relationship has just started to peep its head out from the nest and look for longer flights in the future. Flights that will be coupled with high winds (and may be storms), with strength, with will power, with pain and with trust. 

Sometimes a peculiar characteristic emerges from such relations. Situation 1: If in such a relation, I see person 1 always dominating over person 2, what strikes me is - Is person 2 stupid? Is there something like always? Is there something that is always not making sense when person 2 says it? Why is person 1 always saying the right things and dominates? 

As complicated as it is, studies of people's behavior is complicated. In more than often cases, person 2 is a better leader as he is not leading from his/her ego point. He/She lets the person 1 to ride the high wave on purpose. The danger of doing and accepting this behaviour in long run, however, is that in such cases, one: many good ideas are never brought forward or smashed, two: person 2 might as well lose confidence. And this is the point where the trust starts to deplete. 

Its interesting how all the studies teach managers that trust is essentially the most vital element of any relationship in the workplace, yet people revert to their ways of chiding each other, and operating from their egos to run such relationships. 

Business Basics

"I want to ... express the principles which we in our company have endeavored to live up to.... Here is how it·sums up: We try to remember that medicine is for the patient. We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been." - MERCK

An accident prone spouse is not so bad ;D

In 1921, Earle Dickson was working for J&J and happily married to wife Josephine. She normally had lots of cuts and burns from housekeeping. Dickson modified the large surgical dressings then available from J&J, fixing the small pieces of gauge that he used to cut from the dressing with adhesive tapes to whichever part of his accident-prone spouse has recently injured. Tired of creating these on ad-hoc basis, he started to make them in quantity, covering the adhesive-strip with crinoline fabric so that the adhesive tapes stayed fresh.

James Johnson, the company’s president once saw him wear one of these home-made bandages on his own finger, and was so impressed by the product simplicity and convenience that mass production of Band-Aids soon followed.

Ref: 

"DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS"

-By Andrew and Mary Braff (2005)

Leadership and Team Simulation: Everest

This morning when I had set out for the Organizational Behavior and Decision Making class, I did not quite know how fulfilling my day would be.

Till yesterday night, all I knew was that we will play an online game called ‘Everest’ (made available by Harvard Business School). I also knew that I am playing the role of a team leader for a group of 5 people. So late in the night I was sitting and listening through the various videos and preparation material available on Harvard’s website. I had an idea about what this game is trying to bring forth to us, so I did pay attention to the key aspects, leadership style and technical know-how for the game in the night (KNOW THE RULES). One of my key goals was to avoid group conflict.

As part of the game, we had decided to start at Base Camp, and the game simulation was not too far from the real time everest climbing. The team would gather at Base Camp with food and supplies and ascent to Camp 5 in 5 days. We had an extra 1 day as buffer.

A view of Everest southeast ridge base camp. The Khumbu Icefall can be seen in the left. In the center are the remnants of a helicopter that crashed in 2003.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Everest_base_camp.jpg

The team consisted of 4 more people – a marathoner, a photographer, a photographer and a physician. Each of the team members had their personal goals and also team goals (common). It was up to the teams and largely to the team leader to ensure that the goals are met  in the best possible way.

This morning, I reached the class and by 9:30 our group (G1) had collected around a table with their systems ready. It was interesting from here on how the team dynamics evolved.

Base Camp 1: The team openly discussed their common goals followed by their team goals. There was an initial conflict within the team about whether they should focus on accomplishing team goals or personal goals. However we decided early on that we prioritize our common goal (Avoid Rescue) and made an additional goal for our team G1 – Stay together and get as many people to the top as possible.

Observations:

• Being honest in a team is a big virtue. This helps understand that all goals cannot be achieved 100% so a trade off is important.
• With trust in place, it is important to agree on a clear goal and strategy early in time.
• Knowing the rules of the game and sharing knowledge is crucial to ensuring a Win-Win situation.

Base Camp 2: Reaching to Base Camp 2 was easy. At this point, we made a quick team-check and checked on heath, weather prediction, frost-bite dangers, supplies, speed and food. We realized that our environmentalist was weak at Camp 2. When asked about what help she needs, she could not analyze (based on information available) about what help she needs. So we decided to move on.

• Working with information that you have is important. Make the best out of what you have.
• Regular performance check is important characteristics of good leadership.
• Communication is the key. As a leader, it is important to be a good listener and a good facilitator of information.
• Trust and Honesty is the key.

Base Camp 3: The moment I proceeded to Camp 3, it was pleasantly surprising that all the team members were worried if the environmentalist is doing fine. The team was FORMED already.  This was very satisfying feeling.

We found that actually the environmentalist was critical. She had asthma and she couldn’t move further. She still didn’t know what she can do to improve her health. At this stage, I was about to send our environmentalist back, when the photographer came with an invaluable piece of information – “If the physician gives inhaler to the environmentalist, she will be ok”. BINGO!!

We now realized what the game was doing to us. It gave us different information. All of a sudden the online simulation became a common risk to us and we all paid extra attention to the information we had, ensuring that the information is correctly communicated.

However, the challenge was not gone even after the inhaler. The environmentalist was still critical. All the other team was in good health, and some team members though one option could be to split up. However, we looked back our goals and decided to stay one day with the environmentalist at Camp 3.

• Working with information that you have is important. Make the best out of what you have.
• It is important to revisit your team goals and take a good strategic decision.
• The key to keep going in tough conditions is to keep the team motivation high.
• Group cohesiveness is a great motivation for the group to succeed.
• In crisis situations, team members need to have the best possible levels of psychological safety feeling.

Base Camp 3 (Day 2): The next day the environmentalist’s health improved, however the photographer and the leader’s health became critical. I knew that I had 15 years of mountaineering experience so I could survive. I decided to move on. When I asked about what the photographer feels, he echoed my thoughts. An important challenge here was to decide how much oxygen canisters everyone gets. So after some calculations, we arrived at the distribution. With the canisters and some extra load on our backs, we proceeded to Camp 4.

• Regular performance checks are important to keep the teams going
• Analyzing information is important to avoid failure
• Knowledge sharing is the key.
• Leader needs to show strength to keep the teams motivated.

Base Camp 4: Surprisingly at Base Camp 4 we were all in good shape. Some of us were weak but not critical. This immediately had a huge impact on the team morale. We again made a check of the weather (ensured we had at least a 24 hour window of good weather), checked on health and decided to move to Camp 5. Wow, we are close  .

• Regular performance check is important characteristics of good leadership.
• Good strategy made early on in the teams increase team’s performance potential immensely.

Base Camp 5: We all successfully reached the SUMMIT !!
(Overall Team Goals Achieved: 94%
Leadership Goals Achieved: 100%)

• It was amazing to see how this  online simulation could impact teams and people.
• At the summit, when actually we were really feeling we had reached the top, we clapped and laughed for almost 2 min.

Final Take: Understanding Team Dynamics, Accepting changes as they come, Analyzing available information, Predictive Decision Making and Effective Communication are the magic rules behind successful teams.