RUTHLESS EXECUTION

In one of the business presentation I read for an organization still struggling to come out of red, the roadmap for 2010 by the management was summed up in two words, RUTHLESS EXECUTION.

This got me thinking about the term ruthless execution within the context of an organization especially one which is trying to get in the black. There are two points that this term evokes in me

1) Firstly, the term presupposes that the business model is fairly robust and the challenge is now in implementation
2) That implementation has to be carried out with military precision, hence discipline the greatest need of the hour.

Great! Certainty is extremely comforting. My concern and the challenge is see is that there is no historical data to state that the model is fairly accurate. Since what has been done in the past with the refining of models has not yielded results, I am skeptical as to the process of arriving at a conclusion that the model is robust.

Secondly, as I strongly believe we work well with emerging realities rather than with designed futures, then the model should always be responsive to change in the environment.

Intent and skill

Recently, A question was posed to the HR head on how to deal with non performers and whether line manager could be armed with tools to have an exit mechanism. The HR head rightly said that for handling such tools, the line manager should have sufficient maturity and even then there is always a possibility of misuse.

This got me thinking about how a line manager comes to the conclusion that the subordinate is a non performer and can there be some guidelines to going about.

Well presented in a scenario form, the situations describes possible ways of coming to some conclusion. I have also suggested my ways of dealing with those situations

Be warned that the terms INTENT and SKILL themselves have a high level of abstraction and the manager would have to come with concrete examples in action settings which are a deviation from standard norms.
Also the subordinate has an equal right to provide feedback and has to be listened with an open mind

Scenario 1- No Intent but is skillful, then Feedback to and from employee on actions and effects and possible redeployment. If it fails, then letting go


Scenario 2 - If intent is there but lacks skill, then Suitable Skill development in shortest possible time or else redeployment.

Scenario 3 -if intent is not there and skill is also lacking, then Evaluation of possible reasons and feedback to and from employees. If still no change, then letting go

Scenario 4 - If intent is there and so is skill, yet business is not happening as per plan, then the business model has to be tweaked.

Feelings and Poetry

Just sharing my feelings of the current times in the form of a poem

During times of stress, there are multiple voices,
Some relevant and others, mere noises.

Beware, for there are opinions masquerading as insights,
And poor judgements as foresight,
For it is your skill to distinguish the wrong from the right.

This may be the time for action, but so also for contemplation,
This may be the time for aggression, but so also for direction.
For only a sense of urgency coupled with a sense of perspective
Could energise and bring out the creative. (Perhaps the biggest need of the hour)

Why Some Managers Talk Endlessly

The basis for the above title is on observations I have made where the Line managers have had marathon meetings with their team talking about targets, focus etc etc for hours together. This got me thinking as to the effectiveness of such an exercise and the possible reasons in the mind of the Manager. These meetings are normally characterized by one speaker (the manager) and several listeners (the team) where the same points are spoken in several ways. The listener’s involvement is in normally replying to questions posed by the speaker. The listeners have confided to me about the sheer waste of time and their frustrations with this GYAAN. The manager normally talks on responsibilities of the team, their failings, their commitments on targets (in large part forced commitment) , their improvements, suggestions etc where the frustrations of the manager are voiced out but rarely of the team. There is an implicit pressure for the team to conform to set standards of performance and behaviour

As the title suggest, I am going to attempt in offering a couple of hypothesis by delving into the mind of these managers and also state why these exercises are normally counterproductive to the team. The need to speak endlessly would vary from manager to manager and the hypothesis would cover these broad aspects.


Hypothesis 1 – This Line manager is riddled with anxieties as to how or from where the targets are going to be met. Also there is an implicit pressure on him that the team should be under his control. His anxieties on targets and his fear of loosing control ignite him into action. Since what productive action is not clear to him, the action he normally chooses is in the form of speech where by talking and pressurizing his team, he is in some way able to mitigate his anxieties. The task orientation of the meeting is replaced by mitigation of Managers anxieties.

Hypothesis 2- This line manager is narcissist and enjoys the power that comes along with the authority. Every time he speaks to his team, he gets a high experiencing the power of control as well as the ability to moderate other voices. His endless gyan is got nothing to do with the team but everything to do with himself.

For the moment I can think of these two hypotheses to explain my title based on my observations. Hopefully in future I might be able to unearth more the reasons if they exist.

For the second part as I stated earlier, In most cases during such meetings, the team normally shuts off mentally. The reason being that in all non-participative listening unless the listener is really interested in the topic at hand, he would not be able to concentrate on the talk. Lack of participation is also indicative of lack of concrete agreements, hence all talk is empty. Also if the tone is of admonition, the defenses of an individual rise leading to hardly any scope for change et al.

To end this blog, I would just like to state crudely what Humberto maturana (an expert on cognition) stated - You can only make people see your point of view by emotionally seducing them with you argument and not by appealing to objective rationality.

Mangerial Roles –An example

In continuation with my previous blog, I had discussed the role of Managerial task. I want to take it further by clarifying it with an example from my settings.

Well apart from leadership and drive, there are 3 more areas mentioned by S. Beer – Policy making, decision making and control.

Applying this in the context of lending business, I will take one examples from each of the parameters and explain its requirements. This will be applicable to the business head for the lending business channel.

1) POLICY Making – In a lending business, the business head is part of the risk Policy. Ensuring that the risk policy is not that stringent that it stifles all new business yet is not so liberal that it will lead to higher NPAs and thus affect P&L. The foresight and judgment in this area is critical in impacting bottom-line.

2) Decision Making - Every action in the present is impacting the future directions. Taking decision on what structure will yield the maximum results is a key skill. For e.g. Have I integrated the voice of the market, products, employees, Top management etc in getting the structure in place. Is the DSA model more appropriate for our type of product or would a direct sales team yield better results is one critical area of decision making.

3) Control – Sensing the data from the ambient sounds is an important skill. Within the current environment is my product suited to match the needs of client factoring the competitors? Is the interest rate in line with the market and hence has to be factored in being aligned with the market.

There are several such examples that a Manager has to take in his daily operations and this intellectual capacity and judgment is having a critical role in making the business a success or otherwise. Leadership and drive will only help in keeping the wheels on track but cannot make the vehicle run as per the desire.

SALARY AND SCALABILITY

There is always a talk in financial services that every one has to justify his or her salary, more so at the frontline sales (being easier to track). But how do people at higher levels look at justifying their salaries or how they envision their critical roles within the firm.

Surely taking the business from ‘X’ levels to ‘X+5’ levels would not justify. Taking from ‘X’ to ‘7X’ with the same resources would really test the Management skills. Now my observation for financial firms is that whenever they want to scale business, the pressure increases on middle Management who get into supervisory roles rather than managerial trying to extract the maximum mileage from sales personnel by heavy supervision and control This might make the team efficient to a degree but the model is still not scalable from the top Management perspective.

The next important question is what is a managerial role and are people in managerial positions especially Top management ( those getting really high salaries) thinking in those lines

Well again I wish to invoke the thought of Stafford beer who described the role of Management as mentioned below

Policy-making, decision-making, and control: These are the three functions of management that have intellectual content. A man may be very good at any two of them, and still make a hash of his job for want of capability with the third. And whatever can be said for the qualities of drive and leadership, which is a lot, these attributes cannot in the long run be expected to compensate for deficiencies in the three-pronged intellectual attack

Guess the above para is self explanatory. Please note that by control Beer means more in terms of feedback and action rather than supervision.

I seriously Hope that intellectual content is given its due importance in organisations over drive and leadership

(The role of middle management has not been sufficiently described my be in the above and would share my views on some another occasion.)