As I travel to MLabs’ inaugural conference on ‘management innovation’, my thoughts drift back to the first time I interacted with the brain behind this unique initiative. Ideas that I have nurtured since long came up as I spoke with Prof Gary Hamel and along with it the delight that some of these ideas have successfully been implemented in HCL. But as always, I am excited to learn new ways that others have of ‘reinventing management’ for the 21st century.
Reinventing management is fast becoming the necessity today. More so because we stand at a threshold of welcoming the next generation of employees, who do not want to work in organizations managed in ways of the past. Gary has made an apt mention in his book ‘Future of Management’ that Management innovation matters a lot and for CEOs, who other wise claim to be champions of innovation, there is a barn sized blind spot when it comes to management innovation. Managers don’t see themselves as inventors any more but as pragmatic doers.
I believe management today is missing the bold sense of experimentation. This is because it is historically based on obsolescence and unfortunately continues to do so. Dig deep in an organization and you will see there is an obsession with the past, obsession with ways that have no relevance to the future, ways that are now OBSOLETE. An obvious paradox, but that is what many leaders do. They talk of innovation driving the future of businesses in the coming times but stay stuck in past ways of managing their organizations.
Hierarchies and layers of paralyzing bureaucracy, command and control style of management are no longer important. What matters is finding ways to support collaboration, problem solving, and open discussion in communities of interest. The future demands experimenting with new ideas. My question is -are we ready to innovate and experiment or will we continue to speak about change and do little else?
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I completely agree with your views on reinventing management. There has been a lot of talk, specifically on corporate blogs about how managerial approaches need to change on account of globalization. Recently there was a post on the mahindra blog (mahindrauniverse.com) about "the world becoming a global village", I would like to get your views on that.
Hi,
The way i see it is that every other organization is struggling with this issue. I for one am convinced that the lack of experimentation and the desperate need to conform with the ways of the past is there in the middle management. Unfortunate but true that most middle managers today are focused on either building kingdoms or are taking the easy way out. It requires courage to stand up and experiment. It is not that there is a need to conform to the organizational norms. If it is driven by the need to conform, that also is a positive attribute. Rather it is the need to exist and the easiest way to do that is to conform. Which is not such a great attribute.However, the dynamically changing business environment will ensure that the experimentation survives. The market will ensure that entropy of the system remains positive.Pravin Lal
There is a lot of perspectives being discussed in this topic of managers as inventors and managers as doers. A lot is expected from middle and senior management in terms of taking the right decisions and also showing employees how to play in a changed situation.
It is hard unless top management leaders like you (Vineet) show others that what you valued in the past are changing vastly with changing times. For example, a change in direct reports, have you effected a 90% change in direct reports or only 5% to address a growing concern of your board? If the change you have brought about is flagging low at around 5-10%, it is indicative that you mind is aware of the change needed but you are continuing to operate in your old ways, having people you have trusted in the past, but may not be a fit for the current problems you have on hand. (This is a hypothetical scenario and should not be perceived as a suggestive analogy.) The % of change also slides from the spectrum of being a doer to an inventor.
Bottomline, rather than asking are we ready, I would say show them how to innovate and expect them follow without command and control nurturing collaboration, problem solving and open communication environment.
As I read your blog entry, I recall a statement that I often like to use during my conversations – "One has to keep running in order to stand where one is today". It has become imperative for Organizations today to shed their old ways of working and constantly innovate, just to exist for the future. As Chris Trimble and Vijay Govindarajan argue "most companies do not understand how to foster a genuinely experimental environment. Judging the new company ("NewCo") by the performance standards of the core company ("CoreCo") won’t inspire change, hence the need to forget. But NewCo does have to borrow selectively from CoreCo’s best resources in order to gain the foothold necessary for success, and it must learn from its experiences rather than stick blindly to its earliest plans. " There are several examples one can think of of companies that have been successful in their avatars as "NewCo" (HCL is one of them) and several others which have not been able to let go of their "CoreCo" ways (3M, for one, has seem to lost out on innovating new products because of its overemphasis on efficiency). Innovation is the result of an invention put to practice. With the powers of collaboration and new-age media such as social networking in their arsenal, managers of today are more equipped than ever to engage themselves and their teams in fostering an environment that supports Innovation. Such platforms destroy bureaucracy and transfer ideation to lower rungs in an Organization and it is here where people are ‘closest to the floor’ and more aware of ground realities. The famous ‘Work Out’ session was one such attempt that helped GE achieve breakthrough innovations much earlier than competitors could. Placating factors such as recognition and rewards serve as catalysts in the process. I believe that managers today are more and more responsive to the mantra ‘Innovate or be left out’.
"Hierarchies and layers of paralyzing bureaucracy, command and control style of management are no longer important." A way I could think of doing this is to shift the KPA/Recognition from direct revenue or direct resource based to IP/Prodcut/Innovation/Different Ideas. Build program management roles instead of single management based unit/structures.
Innovation has always been there – that is ‘change’. Redifining the process with focus on inclusion will make the case. Couple of thoughts and an action:(1) Execs should have clear and strong idea about core strategy – with a stronger idea about evolution in the area e.g., non-competitive strategies.(2) We, as global citizens, should extracts learnings from the works like The Geeta about Karma and inclusion for all. How every action could affect everyone else – must be of prime importance. For example, 0ne company cannot throw carbon in environment expecting its corp-citizens would not be affected directly or indirectly. We are learning this now at a huge scale. Let us open up for fixing the mistakes we have scheduled in our calendars. Shame is for those who do not want to change, pride is for those who promote evolution – including self-evolution.
I applaud your decision to make public your 360° Survey last year, though I am certainly not surprised at the reticence of most companies to follow suit. In many U.S. companies, management tactics often deviate sharply from the lofty principles articulated by top leaders and those principles are predictably diluted as they flow down through the organization. The result is employee morale at levels I’ve heard described as a "national disgrace".
I saw your actions as nothing less than a natural evolution from the autocratic to the democratic and the first situation where "employee empowerment" might be something more than a catch phrase. If I were the benevolent dictator of my company, I would make public surveys mandatory and would most certainly use them to grade supervisors and even make them the most significant factor used in considering whom to promote. Under such a system, no one could hide an abusive or dishonest subordinate because he "makes his numbers". After all, compassionate, empathetic, and ethical supervisors achieve goals as well and accomplish this while raising levels of employee fulfillment. Kudos to you for starting what I sincerely hope becomes a revolution.
Innovation in my opinion is extremely misunderstood.It is very relative, and both Thomas Alva Edison, and the Mechanised/Improvised Buggi Operators in Western UP are innovators.If we look at the state of IIT ( Indian IT-pun intended), then we see that most of the volumes are repeat , most of the volumes are arbitrage triggered and most of the volumes are silent on innovation but verbose on cost and quality.
All this is not a "fault" per se , but again in my opinion a market response to a demand cloud. Now if the businesses are of above nature, and the investors are in habit of looking at extremely high operating margins then the appetite of a business leader in a "big" Indian IT firm is compromised in favour of volume or commoditizing his operations.
Are we all trapped in the comforts of seemingly un ending demand for our commodities, seemingly un satiable desire in our customers to keep consuming our ennui inducing and un innovative offerings, chasing un realistic margins and actually achieving it, and in effect a cocaine like daze stupendous growth pattern. So why do we need to innovate? Isn’t lip service enough, even if there is a desire in a leader to innovate , he/she can not innovate alone, his/her organization has to respond to this call, but then the quarter on quarter theatre which is orchestrated in full public view has its own demands.Vineet, people in your position are extremely bandwidth strapped like many others, but people in your position are also capable of effecting “change” not just in your own company but in the entire industry because you can kick start a pan industry dialogue on “Desire to Innovate in Indian IT”.