A lesson in thrift from a tube of toothpaste!

A bachelor—who lives alone in his apartment—woke up one Monday morning to find that his only tube of toothpaste was almost fully flattened out. That was the point at which he would usually have thrown it out and taken out a new one, but it turns out he had forgotten to buy any more, and so he decided to make the most of what was left. He used the end of his toothbrush to squeeze out a portion big enough to serve his need for that morning. He forgets to go shopping that day as well, and again manages to squeeze out enough toothpaste from the same tube for that night. This goes on for another four days. Finally, the weekend arrived and he had time to go shopping!

A friend of mine was telling me this story from his own experience, saying how lazy he was getting to be. But I was wowed by something totally different: look at how a tough situation brought out the best in him in terms of efficient utilization of available resources. According to that story, he normally wastes about one week’s worth of toothpaste in every tube, just because another one that is easier to use is readily available! Now, look at toothpaste as a mere metaphor and think about how often we do the same elsewhere in life, especially in the office.

Let’s say you have two pages to print, that you usually prefer one page per sheet of paper, and you decide to print only on one side. But when you have just one sheet of paper left to print those two pages, you will compromise and print on both sides of the paper. You decide to use the available resources more efficiently.

So why don’t you just do that all the time?

When bluffs and tantrums backfire

There are times when you meet a stranger and your exchange turns out to be less than pleasant. This can happen anywhere, like in a department store, a parking lot, a party or even on the street. The next day, when you walk into office, imagine your shock when he/she is introduced as a colleague who joined your office; or worse, your new manager! It isn’t entirely fictional, I happen to have heard of a couple of cases from the ‘victims’ themselves.

Another possibility is when a bluff/excuse you successfully pulled off once turns around and bites you at a totally inconvenient time. For instance, a Software Engineer had excused himself from a particular assignment away from his hometown saying he had to take care of his mother, who wasn’t in the best of health. Barely a few hours later, when an onsite assignment came up in the UK, the same person expressed interest.

A brief conversation took place soon after:

HR: Are you sure, don’t you want to stay back and take care of your mother?

SE: That’s ok, my sister is there at home. She can manage.

And believe me, this was a true story, narrated to me that same afternoon by the HR manager involved. Don’t ask me which company!

It is surprising how things turn around as fast as they do. And of course, I am not trying to preach you into a life of 100% honesty where every lie you tell needs to be accounted for. Just make sure you have nothing to be ashamed of.

You may be right. But as a manager, your job doesn’t end there

Do you remember the first time you became a manager? Or at least, do you have some expectation of what it will feel like when you do become one?

Suddenly, you are responsible for the actions of a lot of people. Your job is expanded from "get your job done" to "get your job done, ensure your team members do the same, co-ordinate all those jobs and deliver the result expected". Of course, that is putting it mildly!

They say the problem with most managers lies in the fact that they do not communicate well enough. When there is a conflict or a disagreement, chances are one party will be right in his/her observation. When a member of your team is right, his/her duty is to inform the manager and possibly show him/her how. The decision is then left to the manager. But when a manager is right, his/her duty doesn't end there. In addition to informing team members, they have to be convinced that this is the path to take and ensure that everyone is on board. Just knowing you are right does not add any value in the big picture.

The key here is to over-communicate. One cannot sit back and assume things will be agreed upon and followed by everyone on the team just because he/she was told to. It takes a lot of cohesion and understanding for a team to reach that level of maturity. That could tend to infinity (call upon those math memories). Until then, lack of adequate communication by a manager is the perfect excuse for employees to slack off!

Flashback: An End to Outsourcing?

Outsourcing – a concept which took the world of business by storm a few years ago – is slowly becoming a more complex arena, say experts. In the beginning it was pretty simple: Certain business-related activities which are too expensive or cumbersome to be carried out in-house, is taken care of by an external agency specializing in the area. The primary benefits included specialized skills and cost savings – especially if the outsourcing is done to a foreign destination where labor and infrastructure are significantly cheaper.

Asia in general, and India in particular, has traditionally been one of the leaders in outsourcing destinations, primarily due to the savings in labor and availability of certain specialized skill sets like IT. However, this is slowly beginning to change, if recent trends in the industry offer a reliable clue. Take our own IT services scenario as an example - the increased demand for IT skill sets in Asia have driven up the costs incurred in hiring and sustaining an IT professional. Similar is the case with business infrastructure, where the costs have skyrocketed for the same reason. As a result, IT service organizations are compelled to drive up their prices and hence the companies wanting to take advantage of outsourcing are beginning to realize that there is little or no ‘advantage’ left!

Think of it as inflation: Costs drive up prices, which in turn drive up costs – to put it simply. This has recently begun to have significant effects on outsourcing. Last year, New Call Telecom, a British organization dealing in telecommunications, was in the news for recognizing this and actually taking steps towards this. The company has scrapped its plans for a call center in India, and instead set it up back home in Lancashire! Also, countries like Brazil, China and Egypt are the new contenders for ‘favorite IT destination’.

The IT outsourcing industry is changing fast. We, the people, must essentially change with it.

Gathering intelligence using Social media

I was looking at a review for mobile app called Local Mind. If you are thinking of going out tonight, all you need to do is quickly open Local Mind and put a question across to fellow users who are already at this place you intend to go to. If so inclined, they can give you a real-time update on how the place is, what the crowd is like and even quick tips on the offers that are currently on. It is the social networking equivalent of calling ahead and checking with a friend what a place is like – except, your ‘friend’ base is suddenly expanded and you can get answers from the people who are at that place right now!

Stop for a moment and think – what else can this system be used for? The concept is really simple. Take something you do in everyday life, where you are likely to call a friend and check in advance, then do the same on a social network. We usually depend on the past experience of a friend, about how he/she felt about something/someplace he went to some time ago. This time, you are getting real-time updates from people.

How about doing the same when you are about to join a new project, under a manager you are not familiar with? Or on the other side, how about doing the same about a new team member who is about to join the project you manage? From one’s fellow team members and former managers, you can collect a lot of information, even though you really don’t know them personally.

Social media can do so much more for a business than branding it in front of potential customers and investors. The easy part is getting the answers, while the tough part is to choose from what you get! More on that in the next post

Collaboration for Innovation: When and How does it Work Best?

 

The work life of a modern day professional has two key phrases in its description:

1. Continuous innovation and idea generation

2. Making oneself relevant to the business and the organization

These two key phrases are essentially tied to the concept of thought leadership. The Global CEO study by a major IT MNC showed up some telling numbers when it comes to innovation. 40% of corporate chief executive officers and other business executives suggested that employees are the primary source of innovation. About 35% attributed it to customers, while fewer than 20% suggested that ideas primarily come from internal R&D. The reason is pretty simple: At an employee level, there is tremendous amount of collaboration between unrelated thought processes. Customers may not have this luxury, nor will an R&D unit that works according to a predefined thought pattern – exceptions possible.

The first step in any major instance of transformation is when someone thinks about a situation and realizes there is a definite problem to be solved. Then comes the organized thought process and hopefully, a stage where a solution is found. But this poses a question – At what stage is an instance of innovation mature enough to be presented before the people?

If you have an idea, research upon it, build a prototype and present it, it works well for the business in the sense that it is a product that is ready to go. But in this case, you are depending heavily on yourself and your inspiration to get a product out. How often is this viable?

Several ideas that come to you may have been dismissed just because of the fact that you don’t know what to do with it. But someone else might have some excellent follow up thoughts on it, without ever having got the original spark. Collaborating at a very early stage of the innovation process will produce better results than working together on a prototype at a later stage – in terms of the number of ideas reaching the market and also the quality of the product created from the idea

Value creation for employees

Having touched upon value creation through loyalty and its importance in an organization let me round it off with a few more thoughts on the topic. I was having a conversation with a fellow USsociate, who asked me to shed some light on the other side of the coin – Value creation for an employee, by the organization.

I did mention it briefly in a prior edition, but let me elaborate on it a little bit today. It is analogous to the oldest instance of business transactions, which has remained essentially the same amidst all the economic evolution that has happened over centuries. The exchange of value for equivalent value in a different expression is essentially the root of any ideal transaction. On the part of the employee, the value transfer occurs through making use of his/her skills for some activity or result beneficial to the business. The organization running the business receives this value addition and instead, compensates the employee through some other expression of value.

Some of these expressions are more obvious than the others and hence are often mistakenly considered to be more precious than the others. For instance, tangible ones like the salary, bonuses, benefits, stock options, etc are very obvious to the employee. But certain other things, such as chances for learning and development, training options, the attention paid to the employee by the management and even the experience of working in the organization are also part of the value proposition, although they rarely get noticed. Surrounding yourself with quality people will naturally have a positive bearing on your own quality as a professional and as an individual. Working in a good organization is probably the perfect opportunity for this.

Look beyond the tangible value you get from an organization and also take into account what else you are gaining from your professional life.