I was seeing a match of India versus Pakistan. Virendra Sehwag hit a slash. It went through a second slip. Inzmam, the Pakistan captain, put a second slip immediately. In the next over, Sehwag hit a uppish shot through covers. Inzmam put a man in short cover. Had Inzmam been a manager he would have got a good performance award because he was responding quickly to the situation? But because he was a sportsman, the commentators handed him a pink slip for 'responding late to the situation'.
I had gone to meet a plant HR manager, a group company of a multinational. When i asked him if he has a problem of lower demand, he said they have none, because 'sales' is managed by the multinational firm. He told me that they have no problem of attrition, because engineers are paid well. When i asked him that there is a problem of quality, or at least quality at higher cost, he said there are none, because quality processes of mother company are replicated in this plant. He was patting his back that everything is running smoothly. Unfortunately managers are not trained to notice 'how unattended problems slowly accumulate' to show their presence on one fine day. And because they respond after the problem is visible, the response is too late to rectify the situation in time.
I remember visiting a call centre three years back. The VP was showing me the excellent facility of lunch and cafeteria provided to the employees, pick up provided to them from the house, the training imparted to them on regular basis, the excellent salary package provided to them as the 'reason' that they cannot have any problem. But only after meeting a call centre representative i could see the 'problems simmering' when he told me that ' what he hears in 8 hours of job is just complaints and complaints' and then he has to hear his supervisor give him a verbal lashing that he failed to 'meet the average call duration time below the target'.
How long this call centre 'system' would have 'accumulated the problems' until they became visible? Any manager with a little bit of 'non-linear thinking' ability ( also called as systems thinking) would have guessed that the problems will appear sooner or later? Today the problems in call centre have been allowed to accumulate to such an extent that the entire delivery model of call centre is being overhauled. If you have read the Jim Womack book on 'Lean solutions for services' you will realise what i am talking about.
The same is true of any company, any organisation. Not that managers should look for 'problems'. Not that every problem should be 'attended to' or 'fixed'. Not that every 'unfixed problem' festers and becomes larger.
Unfortunately managers never learn the very basics of how problem symptoms appear, how to anticipate the problem situations in advance, which problems to address before they grow beyond a limit, which problems symptoms to ignore completely.
Managers are just unaware of the mathematics of problem accumulation and resolution. Even though managers could be good intuitive system thinkers, they rarely learn systems thinking consciously. Without having the capability to view the whole system at a time, and not just fragmented function, they can never learn to anticipate problems. They can just respond like Inzmam. One ball later, one month later, or even one year later.
I had gone to meet a plant HR manager, a group company of a multinational. When i asked him if he has a problem of lower demand, he said they have none, because 'sales' is managed by the multinational firm. He told me that they have no problem of attrition, because engineers are paid well. When i asked him that there is a problem of quality, or at least quality at higher cost, he said there are none, because quality processes of mother company are replicated in this plant. He was patting his back that everything is running smoothly. Unfortunately managers are not trained to notice 'how unattended problems slowly accumulate' to show their presence on one fine day. And because they respond after the problem is visible, the response is too late to rectify the situation in time.
I remember visiting a call centre three years back. The VP was showing me the excellent facility of lunch and cafeteria provided to the employees, pick up provided to them from the house, the training imparted to them on regular basis, the excellent salary package provided to them as the 'reason' that they cannot have any problem. But only after meeting a call centre representative i could see the 'problems simmering' when he told me that ' what he hears in 8 hours of job is just complaints and complaints' and then he has to hear his supervisor give him a verbal lashing that he failed to 'meet the average call duration time below the target'.
How long this call centre 'system' would have 'accumulated the problems' until they became visible? Any manager with a little bit of 'non-linear thinking' ability ( also called as systems thinking) would have guessed that the problems will appear sooner or later? Today the problems in call centre have been allowed to accumulate to such an extent that the entire delivery model of call centre is being overhauled. If you have read the Jim Womack book on 'Lean solutions for services' you will realise what i am talking about.
The same is true of any company, any organisation. Not that managers should look for 'problems'. Not that every problem should be 'attended to' or 'fixed'. Not that every 'unfixed problem' festers and becomes larger.
Unfortunately managers never learn the very basics of how problem symptoms appear, how to anticipate the problem situations in advance, which problems to address before they grow beyond a limit, which problems symptoms to ignore completely.
Managers are just unaware of the mathematics of problem accumulation and resolution. Even though managers could be good intuitive system thinkers, they rarely learn systems thinking consciously. Without having the capability to view the whole system at a time, and not just fragmented function, they can never learn to anticipate problems. They can just respond like Inzmam. One ball later, one month later, or even one year later.
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