Friday Reflections

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

Story Line:

Thanks to Barry Warmkessel for sending the story published in the Telegraph.

Google is featuring the face of Mahatma Gandhi on its logo to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the birth of the father of modern India.

The face of the Indian independence movement leader replaces the letter "G" in Google's home page.

He joins an elite band including Michael Jackson, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci and Confucius by appearing on the 'Google Doodle'.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/6253057/Google-Doodle-Mahatma-Gandhi-tribute-on-140th-birthday.html

Reflection: from Mahatma's teachings

"All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take."

"I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could."

"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."

"A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble."

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall — think of it, always.”

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?”

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

“There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”

"It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings."

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

Many people call a doctor when all they want is an audience: the game of consultants

Point to Ponder:

Good consultants tell you (in other words, help you see) what you think you know, in a way that you understand (to take action and gain value). 

Because if you really knew what you think you knew, then (hopefully) you would have done something about it.

Story Line:

There are many games that are played inside the courtyards of corporations, but there is one exclusive game played only very high up in organizations - because it is an expensive game that requires big pockets (authorization levels) and requires the engagement of very skillful players to win.

This game is called The Game of Consultants.

Now like lawyer jokes, there are lots of consultant jokes. But just like many business situations, one party has a need and the other can offer value. Having dealt with many consultants (internal and external) for the past 20 years, here are some observations which may help you judge the effectiveness and value of this game:

1. “What a pity that you pay a man for telling you what you told him in the first place?” - That is what I said in 1989 (and how many feel) after the first encounter with an army of people from a consulting firm. But my curiosity prevailed and I got further engaged in a project to learn the value of consultants. Organizations lose control over infrastructure due to various reasons: silos, turf wars, rapid growth, lack of expertise in certain areas (and other causes I prefer not to mention until I retire).  In such cases, it is very difficult to execute new ideas without an experienced, external, unbiased and non-threatening party.

2. A consultant plays roles equivalent to that of a therapist, doctor or a surgeon - depending on your need.  A client (patient) spends most of the time talking about his problems, many times he seems to know the solutions as well.  The consultant spends most of the time listening, and then like a therapist or a doctor  prescribes specific medicines for a problem (tools from his bag of tricks). If you have multiple problems, you need to go back for separate consultation for each and get more prescriptions. If problems are major (declining market share, large inefficiencies) then consultants, like surgeons, recommend major overhaul of the system (BPR, TQM, Six Sigma, LEAN etc).

3. The corporate world is a stage, and good consultants are excellent choreographers. They organize information, people and other resources and present the overall picture in a way that is easy to understand and act upon (of course from their tool box).

4. In some situations, a consultant offers a third (out of the box) way to look at things. Imagine a dispute between two internal organizations. One says: "The glass is half full". The other says: "The glass is half empty".  A motivational consultant would say: there is an opportunity to quench thirst. An efficiency consultant says: there is twice as much glass as necessary for the water. You can cut cost and save space by buying smaller glasses.

5.  A good consultant can help organizations to get out of "Latch Up" mode. Even successful organizations fall into the trap of “this is how we have always done it”, and people become articulate in making excuses for the ways of the past. Those consultants who have dealt with many industries and companies can share best known methods and help break the latch-up.

6. Smart and long-lasting consultants never let his client feel foolish, even though he may ask or say something foolish. They know that the reason clients hired them in the first place is because they need help.

Reflection:

The most valuable learning from the game of consultants:

7.  Does your organization continue to have learning disabilities, or can it create a self sustaining culture? Thirty years ago, I read a story about an executive and a consultant. The final scene was like this:

The consultant, after many months of research into the cause of problems in the organization, meets with the executive to share his final report.  The report has seven recommendations. After listening to the first six, the executive gets impatient and tells the consultant, “so far I have not heard anything new. I will wait for the seventh and final recommendation to judge if you are worth the pot of gold that I must pay you.”

So the consultant gives his final recommendation: “You are saying that you already knew what was wrong and what needed to be done. Most likely, your people told you those six things many times. So my final recommendation is that if you still don’t do all those things you already knew about, and don't create a sustainable culture of continuous improvement, then you will forever play this game of consultants.”

The executive smiled and said, “Thanks, you have earned the pot of gold I promised you”, and handed him the check.

The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of a low price is forgotten.

"The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of a low price is forgotten" - Benjamin Franklin.

Point to Ponder:

“When it comes to your Defects Per Million (DPM) level quality goal, I don’t care as long as I do not get that one DPM” - Customer’s answer in a supplier survey about an acceptable quality level goal in 1987.

Story Line:

In the early '80s, companies used terms AQL (Acceptable Quality Levels) or LTPD (Lot Tolerance Percentage Defective) to define the levels of quality of the products being shipped to customers. Simply put, it meant that with certain level of confidence (defined by statistics) a certain percentage of materials shipped to customers can be defective (defined by AQL, LTPD level).

One term was called "Producer's Risk" and the other term was called "Consumer's Risk". In reality there was risk all the way, the risk in shipping something that was defective to customers ‘with confidence’.

The first encounter with “pragmatic” use of this term happened in 1981 when a company did final testing on a production lot where 100% of product units turned out good. The production manager (who had the full blessing of the Plant Manager) went to the operator and asked for rejected product from another lot. He did some calculations on paper, took certain numbers of good units out of the lot and replaced them with bad units and stirred the container containing that production lot.

To satisfy my naïve curiosity, he mentioned that he had made a “Business Decision” to ship to promised AQL level and nothing more. “Give customer what he pays for” was his final statement. However messed up his understanding of statistics may have been, his understanding of consumer behavior was even poorer.

Sometime later, the company lost many customers. Their offers to drop prices significantly to regain these customers fell upon deaf walls. In 1984, that company closed its doors.

There are numerous such cases, where customer will never deal with a business once they have been burnt by poor service or poor product quality, no matter how low is the price.

Here is a first hand account of five restaurants near my office: all of them were thriving at one time. But two of them, even after significantly dropping the prices, are running empty - because quality of food is on decline.  The other three, however, have not dropped prices even one cent - and their businesses have gone up 1.5X to 2X in number of customers, even in this economic environment.

Reflection: 

Except for some very basic needs, consumer always has a choice whether to buy something or not. And that choice is not between you and your competition; it is between buying a thing or not buying at all. Consumer behavior in current economic environment is a good example of this.

Cost is important to consumer but in addition they want the one that fulfills their expectations; and those expectations are very high and uncompromising nowadays.

 

You can muck around with different guitars for certain bits, but you have to have your own sound. That's your benchmark....

Benchmarking and competitive intelligence are double edged swords. If used in the right context, they can produce huge benefits. Used without proper context, they can lead countries/companies/individuals on the wrong path or even to disastrous results.

Story Line:

There was a Mogul Emperor in India, Akbar the Great (1542-1605).  One day, while on a hunting expedition in the forest, the Emperor's entourage camped in a small town. While there, the Emperor noticed that women did multiple chores in a day and wore simple clothes, and children seemed to have only one pair of clothes and no shoes. Despite all this, life seemed to go on, and they looked happy.

The Emperor sent his "benchmarking team" to study them and submit a report. This report concluded that the people in this small town were very poor, and managed their day with almost no resources.

The Emperor was very angry. Compared to this, there were a lot of excesses in his own palace. He issued an edict. From the next day, the Empress had to do all the palace chores, many servants were to be removed, and the princes' support structure was to be eliminated.

One of several learned people in the Emperor's court was a man called Birbal, who was valued for his advice, sense of humor and ability to explain different issues in a simple way. Birbal, realizing that the Emperor had acted upon benchmarking information without understanding the total picture of his own situation, decided to help the Emperor realize his imprudence.

A few weeks after his edict, the Emperor noticed that his gardens, the pride of his palace, were in terrible disarray.  The grass had started turning yellow, the flowers had shriveled up, the paths were overgrown. Very embarrassed and upset, he summoned his court, and found out that it was Birbal who had ordered the prized gardeners to leave. Fuming, he asked Birbal to explain his unwise act or face punishment.

Birbal told the Emperor that he had done benchmarking with the forest and realized that there were no gardeners there, but that trees and plants grew naturally. So he ordered the same practices to be implemented in the palace gardens.

Emperor Akbar got the message.

Reflection:

Improvement, continuous or quantum leap, is a noble goal. Learning from benchmarking and identifying "best practices" is also good strategy. But know thy Kingdom first.  What you are about? What business are you in? What does your customer expect from you? Only in that context are "best practices" really best practices. Not everything that is good for one business works well for the other.

"You can muck around with different guitars for certain bits, but you have to have your own sound.That's your benchmark...." - Dan Hawkins

Constancy of Purpose

Point to Ponder:

“Picture two animals: a fox and a hedgehog. Which are you? An ancient Greek parable distinguishes between foxes, which know many small things, and hedgehogs, which know one big thing.

All good-to-great leaders, it turns out, are hedgehogs. They know how to simplify a complex world into a single, organizing idea -- the kind of basic principle that unifies, organizes, and guides all decisions.

That's not to say hedgehogs are simplistic. Like great thinkers, who take complexities and boil them down into simple, yet profound, ideas (e.g. Adam Smith and the invisible hand, Darwin and evolution).

Leaders of good-to-great companies develop a hedgehog concept that is simple but that reflects penetrating insight and deep understanding.”

 - From the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins

Story Line:

The famous quote “The secret of success is constancy of purpose” is originally attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, a British politician from the 19th century.  This term became well known when Edward Deming, the renowned management guru, presented it as the first of the fourteen management principles in his book “Out of the Crisis.”

The first time I heard this statement was in 1984 from the leader of my group, Dr. Craig Barrett, who often mentioned this quote to keep us focused on a singular objective: becoming “the world class manufacturing company”. 

A lofty goal indeed, but here is one example (of countless many) illustrating what it means to "walk the talk" and role model what he preached:

In mid '80s it was a normal industry practice to include capital and people expenditure for product rework as the part of the annual plans. Craig had recognized that in order to become "the world-class manufacturing company", we needed to do things right first time.

He issued the mandate of NO REWORK for our assembly factories. The plant managers gladly accepted the challenge. However, only a few weeks after the policy change, one rather large lot of product with big revenue potential got the wrong marking. The manager of the culprit factory came up with multiple reasons, requests, apologies, begging (let me ship this time, promise it will never happen again!!). Craig stood firm with the NO REWORK directive.

This action had a tremendous impact on people's behaviors.  From then on, there was tremendous focus on preventive actions. Plans were put in place to introduce the necessary and fundamental changes in company structure to create a culture consistent with the vision.

As we know, over the course of time, through this shared constancy of purpose, he succeeded in creating one of the world’s finest manufacturing companies.  Not only that, but he provided a real life lesson in leadership to us all.

Reflection:

Amongst many valuable lessons I learned from Craig Barrett, having constancy of purpose is the most important one of it all. Every great achiever in life that I read about had a singular purpose that drove all of their activities and plans: Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Gandhi, Mandela, Andrew Carnegie, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, Jumong, Deng Xioping, Kitaro, Akio Morita, Kurosawa, Pele, Don Bradman, Sunil Gavaskar, Andy Grove. I'm sure you can observe and name your own.

Your people will judge you on what you build, not what you destroy

Some Points to Ponder from President Obama's Inaugaration Speech:


Your people will judge You on what You can build....

"We understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned.

Rather, it has been the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked 'till their hands were raw, so that we might live a better life."

e.g. Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Warren Buffett, Martin Luther King Jr., Hellen Keller, Marie Curie, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Disney, JRD Tata, founders of Intel, Deng Xiaoping, Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Gates, and ?

not what you destroy ...

e.g. S&L Scandals, Enron, WorldCom, Llyods of London, Madoff's Ponzi scheme, Satyam, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, the very values that made your country great and admired, millions of livelihoods

“Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame ...

That without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.” 

- President Obama

All glory is fleeting

"ALL GLORY IS FLEETING" - Quote from the closing scene of movie Patton, after General Patton is relieved of command of the third army in Germany. Thanks to Dipu Bose for the Quote.

"For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."

- Gen. George C. Patton

Reflection:

Former Secretary of State James Baker once said, "Someone asked me what was the most important thing I had learned since being in Washington. I replied that it was the fact that temporal power is fleeting." Baker went on to observe that once driving through the White House gates he saw a man walking alone on Pennsylvania Avenue and recognized him as having been Secretary of State in a previous administration. "There he was alone - no reporters, no security, no adoring public, no trappings of power. Just one solitary man alone with his thoughts. And that mental picture continually serves to remind me of the impermanence of power and the impermanence of place."

How good is your title?

"My job title not only represents the scope of my assignment but most importantly it represents the enormous obligation I have to deliver great value to my stakeholders."
   - Joe Z, my fourth boss, who went to become a very successful and respected executive

Storyline:

How good is your title? Well it depends on what you do, as Joe said in the above quote.  What happens when the focus on your title becomes more important than the focus on the value you create?  Consider the following true story:

One Friday afternoon in the late 1970s, we were having a birthday celebration and some cake with our director, "SD". SD asked Ken and I, two recent college graduates, to join him in his office for a chat. He lit a cigar and started telling us different events from his life with every puff of smoke he took. In those days, there were no smoking regulations, and as new hires, we had no choice but to endure a lot of smoke!

He (SD) was 28 years old (puff), had a Ph.D. from a prestigious university by the time he was 24 (puff), he had already become a director at the age of 27 (puff), repeated thrice that he was a director (puff, puff, puff), had a house on the hills (puff, puff) and land in an affluent area ...

Just at that moment, his phone rang. It seemed to be from his boss. As soon as he hung up the phone, he told us "My boss (the General Manager) is calling an emergency meeting. I need to go."

As he was leaving his office door, he looked at us with a smirk and said, "You guys are lucky. You don't have Friday afternoon emergency meetings at your level."

That was the last time we saw SD. On Monday morning, we were summoned to our own emergency meeting by the General Manager and introduced to our new director.

Reflection:  As our meeting with the GM ended and we were leaving the room, Ken and I had learned one of the most important lessons at an early stage of our career: your title is as good as one phone call from the boss.  What matters is the value you deliver to stakeholders.

If everyone deserves a "C" then everyone will get one

In real life, grades do not produce value. The value is in how effectively the learning is applied.

Storyline:

In the summer of 1974, I took an Applied Mathematics class under Professor Ho. During the very first class, while Professor Ho was going over the course curriculum, some students repeatedly kept asking questions about his grading system. When asked one too many times, Professor Ho said, “Well, if everyone deserves a C then everyone will get one.”

The next class was half the size of the first one. Many students had decided to drop out after listening to Professor Ho’s explanation of his grading system.

At the end of the semester, when the day of reckoning arrived, we were astonished to see that everyone had gotten either an A or B.  There were no grades lower.

My curiosity got the better of me and I asked Professor Ho, “If this is what the end result is, why did you scare off half the students with your comment about C grades in the first meeting?”

According to Professor Ho, the primary purpose of going to school should be learning, and not finding ways to manage or manipulate indicators like grades to get by. “Jumping from one class to another or from one Professor to another just to get grades does not build a strong foundation or lasting learning, which is neither a benefit to the students or to society.”

Reflection:

Later, Professor Ho revealed a secret that some students had not done well in the exams (one time sitting) but he graded them based on his observation of how much commitment they had demonstrated in real learning and effort. He believed that those students would go a long way in life and career.

"Do or Die" or "Do or Do"?

“The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.”  - Warren Buffett

Storyline:

“Do or do” is a famous quote from Mahatma Gandhi. The expression most people are familiar with is “Do or Die.” However, when studying the lives of great achievers, it is very clear that losing was never an option when they pursued their dreams.  For the great achievers, it is “Do or do.”

1. Ask any great basketball player before a game, “How many baskets do you plan to make today?” and the answer will be, “Every time I take a shot.
   
   Ask any great baseball player about his day. And you will hear, “I plan to get a hit every time I step up to the plate.” From great baseball players you will never hear, “Well, if I get 2 hits out of five at bats, it would be a good day.”
   
   This is also true for the winners (be they leaders, managers, employees, creators etc.) in many other games (science, art, music etc.) of life. They expect to succeed in any task that they accept.
   
   Such people strongly believe that if they expect anything less than the best, then they don’t deserve to play the game.
   
   
   
2. For Gandhi, independence of India from British was the only option.
   
   
   
3. For Martin Luther King, “Free at last,” was the only cause.
   
   
   
4. When Ali went into the boxing ring, the only plan he had was to come out as the winner.
   
   
   
5. Three young people I know started a business in their twenties. “Come what may, we are going to succeed” is their motto.



6. A friend in my company was shipped to a war zone. He told us before he left, “I am coming back” - and he did.

Reflection:

All achievers in life have a plan to win. Losing is never an option. They are fully aware that there will be problems along the way but their mindset is " We will win in spite of difficulties". Indeed, life is a self-fulfilling prophecy.