Why I read...

My parents were not rich. I didn't succeed even single rupee from them but I succeeded a rich property from them, ‘my reading habit’. In my childhood, my elder siblings gifted different books and my mother used to read all the stuff including newspapers. I had a small cupboard attached to the  wooden table. I made a small library with all stuff. Not so many books, but good books and magazines to read. My village was so small that we had no library. In schools, we had very small library. Even newspapers were not delivered. Environment maintained for reading something  was discouraging. But my small library with limited books helped me a lot. I must have read all the books hundred times. Those books were my friends and mentor too.  

Today, I can afford to buy books and my son is very fortunate that he has all the reading stuff available including encyclopedia, magazines, books. He like to read all. He knows most of the stuff which probably his 5^th standard peers don’t. Perhaps my son will definitely recognize me for this rich heritage. I also suggest to my friends, colleagues and employees in my organization to get books for their children.

Unfortunately people take books only for putting in show case.  During this week, I was invited by two business schools for  interacting with the students. I spoke on employability and what industries expect from Management students. I asked common question, “how many student read any newspaper?” At both colleges and hardly 5-6 students raised their hands. I asked how many student read book except academic books. Hardly 2-3 students raised their hands.

There are lot of excuses, but there are people who get time for reading something. Perhaps all the students will get the job. Perhaps by not reading newspapers and books, they will not mislay anything. However they will definitely lose the opportunities to excel, opportunities to learn something extra which may be useful in dealing with difficult situations in life…

There are two people in this world, who like reading and who don’t like reading. I have seen people who even don’t bother to read newspaper. Reading is a habit and it is developed during childhood. Unfortunately in our education system reading is limited to academicals books. It is associated to examinations. Students are forced to read and then solve questions in examination and examination is associated with hidden fear.. fear of failure in exams so reading itself is dreary for them.  

Everything written in books may not be right, there are some opinions, especially in autobiographies, philosophies etc., but they give us different perspective and ideas to be used in different circumstances. For me, books are friends, mentors and coach. If you don’t have anybody to consult, then books come to your rescue. Authors give you a perspective and sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it is just fun, but give dose of encouragement and motivation; sometimes it’s just philosophy but gives you an intellectual strength; sometimes, it is just knowledge, but helps you to differentiate from others.

Instead of just blindly following to so called babas, bapus and maas, take some time for yourself and read something. Nothing to lose, but just gain something.    

Iceberg of Ignorance

There is a cost of ignorance. If you are in the business, you can not be ignorant about, no matter which. The Managing Director of one company had a great vision of being number one in his sector. He tried to implement best processes in the organization. Top international consultancy companies were hired for building business strategy, operational excellence, Human Resource processes and so on. People were charged to make the difference. However the leadership development was the crucial factor. He appointed a core team to lead the organization under his leadership. Unfortunately he was ignorant the ground level fact of competencies of these people. Just philosophical lectures in the meeting don’t make you successful. You need to act and lead from the front. The members of his core team (they use to call them as “a steering committee” and employees used to call this committee as “steering committee without steering”) never worked on the ground or shop floor or in the market. These people were philosophers in the organization and were more interested to push their own agenda.

The leader was fully reliable on his core team members. He never tried to listen the voice of common employees in the organization. It does not mean what top leader has to spend his time on shop floor, but at least he should have the method, tool to understand the pulse of the organization, market etc.

Top to down communication is always easy but most of the times selective. Same applies to the down to top communication where most of the communication is convenient. People have a tendency to keep the issues under the carpet or to be ignorant to the same. In above case company lost a big revenue, market share and core employees. These all were very much ignorant about the market, issues and people dimensions.   

Iceberg of ignorance

The gap between knowing and doing is definitely responsible for such cases. But the major reason is being ignorant to the situation; the gap between the shop floor view and the balcony view.  Balcony view helps you to act on a vide spectrum of the business, however shop-floor view helps you to detect and correct errors. Problem known the senior management is only 4%. 96% problems are hidden from the senior management. This big iceberg of ignorance sometimes hits to the whole ship, the organization.       

You may get lot of stories why you lost the market share, revenue etc, not necessary that are facts.

Learning, knowing from the circumstances, people, and being close to the ground, either market or shop floor will help you to remove your ignorance. Learning facts is important scenario. In knowledge society, where lot of data flows, you have to work out on the factual scenario. This will help you to change your existing response, challenge your assumptions and reframe your knowledge.

“Let’s remove our ignorance and be more knowledgeable from this Diwali. Wish you all  Happy Diwali.”

Everybody Knows Syndrome….

One day, a blonde staying in our colony hit a biker. All blamed her for causing the accident, by making a left turn despite oncoming traffic. She angrily said, "Everybody knows I turn left here at this time every morning."

Her explanation was idiotic and definitely is metaphor for professionals. This is a unique example of 'everybody knows' syndrome. We assume that others don't need to be communicated something we know. Most of the times, we assume that other person must be knowing the said information. Even it is also assumed that the other person didn't need to know, or should have known without being told. We expect that people are superheroes and they can find out anything without being told.  

Just have a look inside the organization; you will surprise to know the frequency with which this misunderstanding occurs. In large and complex organizations, the frequency of misunderstanding increase rapidly. 

People assume that the others are on the same platform as they without realizing the fact. But the question is why we are victims of everybody knows syndrome?  Some obvious answers might be: we're too busy to consider what others need, or too rushed. Perhaps we have a difficult relationship with others who need to share the information. Or fear of loosing something can be one of the reasons. However, we should start by looking at structures and systems rather than personalities.

In many cases the superior responsible for passing down information probably did the subordinate's job herself before being promoted. That means she probably communicated much of the explicit information to her subordinate, but not necessarily the implicit information and knowledge. Implicit information is not top of mind, nor readily articulated. It needs to be raised as an issue, digested, and put into words before it can be communicated. Therefore, it's neither quick nor easy.

The best way to ensure that the information 'everybody knows,' especially implicit information, gets communicated is to develop appropriate systems, processes that make this kind of communication systemic.

One of the major causes of communication failure is the "everybody knows" syndrome. This involves a decision not to communicate because of an assumption that everyone else knows what I know. It's especially a problem for implicit knowledge, which falls outside established systems for communication. Look for ways to ensure that information and knowledge get communicated systematically.

And, while it may be tempting to look at personalities when the 'everybody knows' syndrome strikes, you'll only get good solutions by looking at structure and systems.

How you transfer the knowledge?

Our parents went to the school to get the information and subsequent knowledge. They had limited access to the information. We also went to the school to access the knowledge from our teachers. We had better access to the knowledge in libraries. Today, my son studying in standard II has the access to the knowledge on his figure tip. In knowledge society, we have computer and laptops at every home; in schools definitely. Internet and google have made the revolution in knowledge and learning. Everything is available on your fingertip. Just type what you want and you get it.

Some people forget that they are living in knowledge society. The knowledge which is easily available to them is also available to others. The same is applicable in organizations also. As a manager, if you do not coach and train your team, they will anyhow get it from somewhere, but then you will loose the respect. If you delegate the job to the trainer; then trainers should be equivalent competent. The job of trainers also is critical. The days have gone, when trainer would show slides, conduct different games and transfer the knowledge to the participants. What they show is already on internet.    

Once, we invited one trainer, he was supposed to speak on life skills. After the session he asked the feedback from participants. “We were expecting something new, we already know this stuff.” One participant bluntly told. “Yes, we know this, but it was refreshing for us.” Second participant was more gentle.

I personally feel that this knowledge revolution has made the trainer’s job more challenging. They actually have to innovate, create new material and find out new methodologies to engage participants.

And even as a manager also, you actually need to be coach and mentor for your team in a innovative way.   

Best luck.

We know everything, but we don’t do anything!

You go anywhere, in any company, in any meeting, people talk about everything. They talk and show the expertise they have. They talk about strategy, they talk about tactical planning, they talk about business plans and they talk about everything except execution. The person who talks more in the meeting is assumed the expert in his profession. Off course they are professional having knowledge in their respective domain. They know “what”, they know “how”, but still they don’t do.

The person who talks less is considered dumb. If somebody talks with big presentations, in excellent language skills and with lot of technical jargons gets more attention. However the problem is with “execution, doing”. There is a big gap in “knowing and doing.” They know, they plan, they talk and sometimes they colloquy, but they do not do and act. I have seen so many examples. They had lot of business plans and expansions. They hired renowned consultants, but all the projects miserably failed. The reason was “knowing doing gap”.

Organizations should form the opinion about employees based on their performance and their contributions is the organization and not what they talk. The reality is they form the impressions based on how smart they seem. Being critical to the ideas of others is another way to project oneself as a smart. The reason why such smart talk is appreciated because the quantity and quality of talk is assessed immediately but quality of leadership and managerial capabilities can be assessed with a large time lag. One manager to whom I know was promoted on senior level position only because he appeared to be the smart to the managing director while co-coordinating one business summit. Being critical is not always good but being critical for everything and exhibiting the knowledge on every subject is the problem.

When there is an expansion plan, every manager tries to get enough workforce. Putting people first is easy job, buy delegating and empowering them is very difficult to implement. Knowledge transfer is also the issue. Certain things are just assumed.

Success of the organization depends upon the executing what is already known. I always ask the question, if you know so many things, then why you don’t implement it.

As rightly said by Stanford professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, it is important to convert the knowledge into actions than only knowing and exhibiting your wisdom.

“Why knowledge of what needs to be done frequently fails to result in action or behavior consistent with that knowledge…we came to call this the knowing-doing problem—the challenge of turning knowledge about how to enhance organizational performance into actions consistent with that knowledge.” Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton

Share thy knowledge

Sharing is good. Sharing relieves your stress. It helps you to know many things which you don’t know. Sharing makes you aware with many things in the world. Sharing makes your thought process more strong and gets different insights. You can actually get good tips to make your life better. Lots of incidents happened around us. But do we care? Do we learn from these incidences? I doubt. Sharing relieves your stress and gives you the strength to survive. Sharing improves the communication. It improves interpersonal relations. Sharing is sometimes draining and making mind empty for new thought.

There are people who do not share. They just block everything with them. If you are sharing with your parents or wife, you are relieving and getting something from them. Somebody proudly says, “I don’t share small things with my wife”. Share makes the relations more strong. Fear restricts sharing. Fear of getting fired, fear of losing knowledge, fear of making somebody more strong. “If I shared my knowledge with somebody, then who will ask me”. Is the major fear people have. Insecurity of losing something is the major problem.

Off course, sharing is two way process.

In one company, I had a big team of HR professionals. One of my colleagues was very resourceful person. I recruited him for supporting me to implement Balanced Score Card in the organization. When he joined he took one initiative. When all HR colleagues come to the office, we would extend the morning meeting for 15 minutes and everybody would share any incident, professional, personal, which impacted his life. The incident could be anything. After one month few team members were not ready at all to stay for these sharing giving different excuses. What can be the reason?

Why to share personal issues? Somebody may say. Right, one should not share personal matters unless the person is trustworthy. After completion my degree, I attended one workshop. During the workshop one person who was a senior administrator shared his personal story with the group when the trainer asked to share experiences with group. After the class, few members were making the fun of that story.

We had one senior in my earlier organization. He used to conduct long meetings in the organization without any results. Once he asked to share personal experiences to every team member on decision making. On another occasion, he asked to share the incident which make member tough. He insisted that the sharing should be from personal life. All team members were reluctant to share their personal experiences. They were ok with professional experience. Most of the members cooked good stories and shared. This guy was more interested to become personal by asking such sharing. His intention was to identify the weak points of the person and use them when required.

Professional companies encourage the knowledge sharing. Knowledge Management and Learning Organizations are the need of new era. Every professional can contribute by way of sharing actual cases he handled.