Don't find fault, find a remedy....

I am inspired from the quote “Don’t find a fault, find a remedy…” and past thirteen years working on various short term and long term consulting assignments I have found one thing in common … most of the enterprise solutions and process improvements programs often “fail” because corporate strategic objectives are misconstrued, or because processes and systems are not aligned with your business necessities and the fault finding starts. We need to move away from addressing the need and start understanding the want. The need is met and so is the business running, what is required is meeting the wants of the customer and that can be accomplished by understanding the strategic objective. Unless one sees the big picture all process improvements are penny wise pound foolish…. I have so far engaged with more than 40 – 50 consulting assigments with various customers both internal and external and all are focused on cost reduction, optimization, cycle time, efficiency resulting in operational excellence and EBITDA improvement as a central theme the biggest ever challenge I have successfully conquered is bringing business change at an organizational and individual level and shifting / transitioning individuals, teams and organizations from a current state to a desired future state such that the change made are fully aligned to the corporate strategy and business objectives.

My projects are usually slow compared to others but what I have discovered when I fall back is at least 60% of my changes are cemented so strong and have become the DNA of the organization which gives me immense satisfaction.  Often one will discover a situation where you are slipping on the budgets, on the targets, on the schedule and that’s the reality… may be the estimation has gone wrong or the gathering stakeholder commitment and involvement is delayed nonetheless it’s very very important that the customer alignment and the user community buy in is of at most priority.

Advising and partnering to provide the customer with an integrated end-to-end approach in a consulting mode looks easy the difficult part is the EXECUTION… here is where the metal is tested, often situation arises when you are standing alone and need to figure out a way to gather momentum of the user community to embrace the solution and the stakeholders start owning it.

Many a business units add new channels in response to customer demand, with inconsistent processes and disconnected views of the customer supported by individual back office systems and the lack of communication to the shared service functions raises the challenge in operating efficiently. Coupled with poor understanding the voice of the customer affects the business and the noise starts this is where most of the times I get involved and start the due diligence activity and backtrack to the origin to find out the root causes to resolve them…

It’s a RAT RACE out there and a rush to win the customer contract we often forget our fundamentals of communication and this is exactly where the chaos starts. Every individual is a leader in himself and the challenge is he/she ends up making decisions without involving the larger community and lands into issues mid-way during the execution, the margins start to look week and the pressure mounts on the EBITDA slipping to amber and then into red start showing signs of distress coupled with few more decision that impact the people involved … low morale … attrition… cost pressure… everything start looking terrible in a few weeks … alas… had you stepped out from the RAT RACE and looked at the big picture…

Well… cutting things short… fall back and check in your respective organizations if you have a strong communication tool which enables and connects the Sales Force with Delivery…  if you don’t have one and are still dependent on outlook start investing in a CRM and ensure this CRM is fully implemented and tracked such that your forecasting and pipeline info is reaching the right audience in the organization … else you will someday be  left alone and will have to stand alone… though you will not give up and ensure the projects are completed… but seamless execution needs strong communication and partnering to run as a well-oiled engine... instead of find faults one should learn lessons from the past and incorporate as a best practice to move on… J

Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it

Its seven years now that I am currently working with the same company and I have a friend of mine who has so far jumped thrice, while I have sharpened my leadership skills he has sharpened his communication skills... or perhaps the way he sells himself.

We happened to catch up after a long time and spoke in length, I happened to share with him an instance where last year I did not put in best of my efforts and during my yearly appraisal my performance rating was way beyond my expectation, and this year I worked extra time, I worked hard, I did a fantastic job, I was always a part of the solution and was able to resolve the toughest and complex issues, overcame conflicts and delivered the results and my performance rating was not upto my expectations…

In return he told me the following story which helped me understand “We do a great job… we need to communicate the same in a right way for people to understand”

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: "I am blind, please help." There were only a few coins in the hat.

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, "Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?"

The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way."

I wrote: "Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it."

Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people that they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?

While we parted for the evening, he asked me when was the last time you updated your profile.. to look EFFECTIVE ... ?

Now let me ask the same question to all my readers… when was the last time you updated your CV .. to look EFFECTIVE ... ?