Compromises

1. We make compromises when we accept something which is not what we desired. Compromises are made due to our long held beliefs. These beliefs are basically about the relationships between various aspects of what we wish and what is available. Most of the time these beliefs are so well established in our thinking pattern that we do not even notice that we have them and we start believing them as true or accepted way of working.

2. One such compromise we always make is when we try to hire a person for a particular job in our organization. We specify the requirements, lay down the qualifications and experience, and skills required for the job. Then we go about trying to find a person who will best fit these requirements suited for the job with the hope that the person selected will be the best and most suitable and will fit in our organization like a fish takes to water. This is where we make our first compromise and it is the most difficult one to understand and break. We make a compromise to hire a person rather than help make the person acquire the required skill and experience. We try to fit a person to the job, job requirements and skills but we do not go about fitting a job to a person. We do not want to spend time, effort, energy and money on a person so that he grows to fit the job perfectly. We accept what is best available rather than develop a person to fit the job. 3. This is where we make the first mistake. We normally make the mistake due to a number of reasons:-

(a) It is easier to hire a person than to train him.

(b) Hiring process can be totally outsourced thus saving time and effort.

(c) You are not sure of your capabilities and have fear of failure.

(d) You do not have confidence in your training methods and procedures.

(e) You do not sufficient time or finances to train as you had not anticipated or forecasted this requirement.

(f) You are just lazy and wish to go with the flow rather than swim against the current.

4. A person you have hired has normally worked in another organization for some time and leaves that organization to join yours due to a variety of reasons:-

(a) Financial consideration- higher pay.

(b) lack of promotional prospects.

(c) Dissatisfaction with the work culture.

(d) Higher promotion.

(e) His goals and organization goals are not in resonance.

(f) Interpersonal or personal problems.

5. If we look at these reasons carefully then we realise that these are exactly the reasons due to which a person would like to leave your organization and go somewhere else. If you can bring him in by promising better pay, work culture and promotion then another company can always better your offer and take him away from you thus leading to a heavy turn around of manpower. Moreover, a person who comes easily would also leave you that easily. Basically what you have achieved is a temporary and stop gap arrangement only. You will also be worrying as to what all your secrets, clients and business this person might take from you to the other organization.

5. The best way out of this is to have persons who are loyal to your organization and trustworthy and would like to stay in your organization. This is possible only if we have people who have been given necessary skills in your own organization. The emphasis is to train and develop your own people rather than hire from outside. You are also not sure as to what all culture that person might bring into your organization. A very promising and successful person from outside may not be able to deliver what you expect him to do. Moreover there is no way you can be sure that a very successful person will continue to be successful. Qualifications, experience and skill may have a Strong relationship with the past and present but have no bearing on his future performance.

6. When you hire a person hire him for attitude, aptitude and character and not for skill and experience. Skill and experience can be given or acquired but character , attitude and aptitude can not be given or acquired . Either you have them or do not have them.

7. The only way to develop loyalty and trust is to train and develop employees. At the worker level it would be better to have unskilled workers and then train and develop them for different jobs in the organization. Use job rotation to help them develop and learn different skills and utilize them in different jobs. Reward them as they acquire different skills . These rewards could be monetary, public recognition and even promotions. The biggest advantage that the organization can derive is that it will have a large workforce of trained and skilled workers who can be asked to perform any job. Thus shortages of skilled workers at any given time is easily looked after as other trained persons are available to do the job.

8. We tried this approach in our organization where all the work force in the factories were unskilled, no previous experience and between 18 to 22 years of age. They were trained in the factory and mostly on the job with job rotation such that each worker gets a chance to learn and work on all the machines. The result was a growth rate of 40-45% for 10 consecutive years and a turn over ratio of workforce of less than 0.5%. Most importantly it helped us to build a high degree of loyalty and trust between workers , supervisors and managers.

9. It is the same thing when you say that you are the best company and the best people working for you but fail to realise that what you are going to do after you have the best people. People will leave your organization to go and work in other companies which in their opinion are better than yours. We fail to understand that it is the ' best syndrome' which is keeping us at the same level and eventually may pull us down when complacency sets in. It would be advisable to concentrate on continuously train , develop the employees so that they can become better and better, as there is no limit to this process of development. What you get back is not only a better performance but also a loyal and trustworthy employee.

Reward Mistakes

1. Reward mistakes, sounds outrageous, ridiculous and may be unreasonable. How can you reward mistakes? The normal concept is to punish mistakes. That is why rules/ laws are there to tell the people that you have made a mistake by not following so and so rule and hence deserve punishment. The punishment is to act as a deterrent with the hope that the mistake will not be repeated in future. But unfortunately the hope remains a hope and the mistake is repeated if not by the same person then by somebody else.

 2. This happens because people do not wish to talk about their mistakes and learn or to teach others from the mistake due to the fear that they will be ridiculed and punished. When a mistake is made you become human rater than the super manager you have projected yourself to be. It is the "FEAR", False Evidence Appearing Real", that prompts the persons to hide their mistakes , sweep it under the carpet or put it in a cold bag. But unfortunately the mistakes only grows bigger and keep getting repeated by other persons. Ultimately this mistake creates a crisis and leads one to do crisis management and claim the rewards that go with it ,but the damage is done and only repairs are possible. We rarely get down and ask the question as to "What led to this crisis"?, Why did we allow this crisis to develop? We only believe in doing firefighting. Why do not we concentrate on the cause that led to this crisis and not on the symptoms. 

3. Why do not we try to reward mistakes? Rewarding mistakes does not mean that people should be allowed to deliberately make mistakes and claim rewards. One needs to distinguish between genuine and deliberate, intentional and habitual mistakes. The concept of rewarding mistakes applies only to genuine mistakes and the others still need to be punished. Reward the courage to report a mistake, reward the process of identifying the cause that led to this mistake , reward the process of communicating to other people about the mistakes , its causes and the remedial actions required to prevent its recurrence. It takes courage to admit a mistake. to stand in front of others and say " I made a mistake", or " I was wrong". It is the courage that you should be rewarding

. 4. Courage is about facing fear, the fear of losing face, the fear of shame, the fear of loosing importance, the fear of being ridiculed, the fear of loosing the peer group , thee fear of financial loss , career, promotion and power. Unless one is given the courage to report and admit that he has made a mistake the mistakes will keep on repeating. it is an excellent policy to say that we have an "Open door policy" and anybody can walk in and report a mistake or talk on any matter, process , product or improvements. But we should sit down and ponder whether we have given the courage to our subordinates/ colleagues to walk through the door up to you and say " I made a mistake". The corrective action starts after the mistake is reported. And it is this courage that needs to be inculcated , encouraged and rewarded. This is the basis concept of rewarding mistakes. 

 

5. There is an Arabic saying:- " If mountain can not come to Muhammad then Muhammad must go to mountain" If the workers can not speak out or report a mistake due to fear or they do not have the courage to walk through the door of your office then one should go to the workers and talk to them and give them courage to speak out. They may not feel comfortable in your air conditioned office and may not be able to speak out in such a surroundings. In their own work place and environment which they are used to, they might feel comfortable and open up to talk about their problems and difficulties, and it is here where the mistakes may occur. They may even discuss about their mistakes, suggest how they have rectified them and come out with improvements in the process and suggest safeguards to prevent their recurrence. Listen to them, discuss improvements and precautions and implement the suggestions but always make sure that you keep them informed and give due credit to the person openly. Always make sure that the decisions are given as fast as possible and if time permits then on the spot. Once workers know that you listen to them , try to solve their problems and your focus is on correction and preventing recurrence rather than punishment then they will have the courage to speak freely and will even come to your office and discuss their mistakes and problems.

 6. To identify the cause keep asking the questions till you get to the cause:- (a) What we did that led to this mistake? (b) Did we miss out something? Some important step, some symptom. (c) Why did it happen? (d) Is the process or procedure correctly spelt out and followed? (e) Is the process of doing things correct and safe? 

7. The important point is the emphasis on 'WE" rather than on you. After this we need to concentrate on:- (a) What we could do or avoid doing that will negate this mistake? (b) Could we add or subs tract something to make it mistake proof and not fool proof? (c) Could we do things differently? (d) How are we going to make this mistake a learning experience for self and others? (e) And lastly what all we should do so that this mistake does not happen in future? 

8. Avoid asking questions as to who did what and who is to blame. Do not try to fix the blame , fix the problem or mistake so that it does not happen again. The moment you try to fix the blame you shut all doors to your open door policy. It will become just another slogan on the wall. You convey a message that one should report a mistake as he will be blame for it. You take away the courage which a person will need to report a mistake. Remember that the mistake could be due to a fault in the process, system rather than on by someone.

Last Log Book entry

1. First of all let me have the pleasure of thanking all of you individually as well as collectively for all the love, affection, respect and guidance I have received from each one of you . Probably, "thank you" is too small a word for it. The feelings, I am afraid, can not be expressed in the limited vocabulary I have, but I do sincerely hope that you will feel in your heart what I wish to convey but somehow can not bring myself to either say it or have the words to express it. It was only yesterday, that in 1994-95 , we used to sit on the floor of our present unit 1 without any tables or chairs, as we had none at that time and neither sufficient funds to purchase them, to do our routine factory jobs. It is still a dream that we used to walk miles and miles to do our job as we did not have vehicles. I can still vividly remember that we had to bring money from home during the first year so that the workers could be paid in time before 7 th of the month. I do not know how many of you have gone through such a wonderful experience which will teach you so many things in such a diverse ways. I do not think any business school or university can each you those wonderful things.. We had enjoyment and hurt, love and hate, faith and mistrust, affection and rejection, success and failure, elation and depression and to top it all the wonderful world of having to wait endlessly outside the offices to get our job done. Sometimes we had to bluff and at times threaten, pleading and at times demanding, patient and at times impatient with officials and people in order to get our legitimate jobs done for which they were paid and still demanded money from us. I can still feel and remember the happiness and pleasure , which I felt way back when we made our first machine and the refill bottle in Baddi. The feeling was just like holding your own newborn baby in your hand for the first time. Well these and some other memories I would like to take along with me , of course with your permission and blessings. These are some of the stories I would like to tell my grandchildren , while thy are sitting on my lap in the morning sun on a winter morning in the balcony of my house.

 2. It has been a long and tough journey from those days in 1994 to 2005. But even with those ups and downs, like a roller coaster ride, we had been constantly going up, at a rate of approximately 40% each year, and have now reached a position , which very few companies can achieve in a short span of 11 years. and with the limited resources we had. It is a credit to all of you who have "transformed" the company from what it was to what it is now" World's largest producer of Mosquito repellent". A tribute to the hard work put in by each and everyone of us.

 3. This transformation has not been an easy and smooth one. For that matter no transformation is ever easy, but is full of pain, hurt, failure and the joy of having successfully done that. For any transformation to be successful it has to have the essential ingredient of "Good Attitude", whether the transformation is of an individual or of a company. The attitude of a company is in fact the collective attitude of the people who are part of the company. We have been trying to do his transformation in our limited way in our factories at Baddi. I did not have a chance to interact with people outside Baddi , in spite of my best efforts to have a fruitful discussion on this process of continuous transformation. So please bear with me for a while so that I can share with you now at least a minuscule part of what all we had done in our factories. in a nutshell. The key to having a good attitude is the willingness to transform oneself and a firm belief in one's own capability. You get what you believe in. One has to become a unreasonable person in order that the transformation process proceeds. A reasonable person expects the world to go on as much as it has always been. Hence a transformation can not be successfully achieved by a reasonable man as he is very comfortable with the status quo and to change you have to question the process and hence have to become unreasonable. Please forgive me if I have been unreasonable with you at times or you have found me to be unreasonable person especially, when I have refused to accept the way the things are normally done, or have been done in the past, or in other companies where you had worked earlier. As long as we have the attitude , that it is OK, or it is the way things are done or it is the way we do things , we will not change. People who believe that nothing should be done for the first time never see anything being done. One has to have "FIRE" in his/her belly and in turn the passion to transform oneself and the environment around him.. 'FIRE" represents the financial quotient, intelligence quotient, relationship quotient and emotional quotient. The most important thing to remember is that you can transform , change the way you do things and this in my opinion is the greatest motivation of all. A belief in one self and the zeal and commitment to change. This urge to transform has to be a deep seated desire not only to transform oneself but also the environment and people around oneself.

 4. I strongly believe that " What we have become today is because of what choices we have made or action taken in the past and what we will become tomorrow or in future is what we choose to do today". Therefore choose to transform for better. I am sorry if I have been slightly nostalgic, but I do sincerely hope that you will forgive an old man like me for becoming nostalgic especially when it comes to things which one has created with passion. It is another matter whether other's recognize it or not.

 5. I can only wish all of you success from transforming oneself and as Yoda says to Luke Skywalker in the "Return to Zedi" , after he had completed his training as a Zedi master, " Let the force be with you and guide you in all your actions". The only thing I can say at this moment is that" may the passion of transformation be with you and guide you to achieve and full and true potential within you.

 6. May god bless all of you with the desire to transform and give you the "FIRE" in your belly to "Transform" not only yourself and also the environment and people around you for " Better and Better". with best wishes

Best and Better

It is generally held that you have to be the best, perform best and set the best goals. But I believe that if you are the best then it blocks all further scope in improvement. Best represents a finality and an end in itself. Because it is an end and hence there is no scope for further improvement. At best what you can do is to maintain the best in the best. It represents status quo and leads one to a feeling of being comfortable with the present state of affairs and will impede all further progress. This feeling will lead to complacency. a complacency can only be removed by lighting a fire or a sense of urgency only. We should believe in becoming " better and better". I personally believe that the worst enemy of better is best. Better in comparison to yesterday, last year , in our practices, procedures, thinking or even competitors. Best represents a goal whereas better represents a process and because it is a process of doing things, which we wish to make it better hence there is no limit to improvement. The comparison in better is with our own self, our own values , mission and the way of doing things. Better represents a continuous transformation, which has no end in itself. It is this better and better which creates a sense of passion in the minds of people to strive for continuous improvement and higher goals in order to make them successful in their careers, the workplace a better place to work. Passion comes when you love and enjoy your work, which comes out of feelings , which is due to your thought patterns and thought patterns can only be better if they are under continuous transformation, which is conveyed by the words " Better and Better".