Cracking through the tough times

Blog prompt by: FJB 

Blog written by: ChatGPT

As the saying goes, tough times never last, but tough people do. The corporate world is no exception to this rule. The recent economic downturns, global pandemics, and other crises have put many businesses on the brink of collapse. However, there are always opportunities to survive and even thrive during tough times. In this blog, we'll explore some practical tips for corporate readers on how to survive in tough times.

1. Stay positive and motivated

The first step to surviving tough times is to maintain a positive attitude. It is natural to feel overwhelmed, stressed, or anxious in difficult situations. However, it is important to focus on the positives and keep motivated. As a leader, it is essential to inspire your team and keep them motivated. Share positive news, celebrate small wins, and keep your team informed of your progress.

2. Review and adjust your business strategy

In times of crisis, it is important to revisit your business strategy and adjust it to the new circumstances. Analyze your strengths and weaknesses, identify new opportunities, and focus on your core competencies. Consider diversifying your business or exploring new markets or products. Be prepared to make difficult decisions and implement changes quickly.

3. Cut costs and optimize your resources

Tough times call for tough decisions. To survive, businesses must review their expenses and cut costs wherever possible. Look for areas where you can reduce expenses, renegotiate contracts, or consolidate operations. Focus on optimizing your resources, including your employees, technology, and processes. Consider outsourcing or using freelancers to reduce labor costs.

4. Communicate with stakeholders

During tough times, it is essential to maintain good communication with your stakeholders, including your customers, suppliers, and investors. Be transparent about your situation, share your plans, and keep them informed of your progress. Show empathy and understanding towards their concerns, and be open to feedback and suggestions. Building strong relationships with your stakeholders can help you weather the storm and emerge stronger.

5. Stay agile and flexible

Finally, one of the most important ways to survive in tough times is to stay agile and flexible. Be prepared to adapt to changing circumstances, pivot your business model, and embrace new technologies. Stay informed of industry trends, monitor your competition, and be ready to seize new opportunities when they arise.

In conclusion, surviving in tough times requires resilience, creativity, and hard work. By staying positive and motivated, reviewing your business strategy, cutting costs, communicating with stakeholders, and staying agile and flexible, you can navigate through difficult times and emerge stronger. Remember, tough times never last, but tough people do.

Have you the courage of your convictions?

Having the courage of your convictions .... (def.) saying or doing what (you think) is right even when others disagree

We set out on our goals and missions with great ideas and visions. Few of us end up reaching our destination as we end up being waylaid by naysayers, distractors and obstacles. Having the courage of our convictions is what leads us through. The ingredients necessary to build this courage is passion, determination and perseverance.

Courage, or the lack of it, is built and demonstrated in small, daily actions. There is no need for a big show of 'Joan of Arc'-ish behavior to display courage. Believing in what is right as per you and staying on the course to see it happen takes a lot of small steps.

The courage of your convictions is very personal to 'you' and hence is uniquely interpreted by each one differently. The added emphasis with parenthesis above is meant to focus on 'what you think' is right. There is no one definition of what is right and what is wrong. One man's meat is another man's poison. Hence one's belief of right and wrong depends completely on their own moral upbringing, childhood experiences and environmental circumstances of tolerance and justice.

I am not advocating sticking to one's dogmatic beliefs and not tempering our views of right and wrong as our experiences mature. Our beliefs and thoughts are dynamic and our actions would be remodeled as we uncover new experiences and beliefs.

Speaking is one of the biggest fears people face. Speaking up - even more so. People think they are avoiding trouble by falling in line. We are only inviting greater problems by not speaking up at the appropriate time. If what we are doing does not fit in with the core values of who we are, then this inner conflict will surface in some form or other.

Having done the right thing would rather put us at peace with ourselves first, put a sense of purpose in what we are doing and make us succeed in much larger proportions.

Next Wave Strategy for Indian IT Industry

I felt honoured to be a part of the panel discussions on Indian IT Industry at Communique 12 organized by Symbiosis in Pune. http://www.sitm.ac.in/International_tele_seminar_Communique.asp

The viewpoints put forth by me covered how Indian IT can move towards a product based model as opposed to a people based revenue model, challenges to Innovation and opportunities for diversification.

Moving towards a Product oriented model

• We can take some lessons from what made the services model such a huge success for Indian IT Industry
• It was no doubt a perfect example of private initiative backed by government policy which made IT in India a priority sector
• IT in India is engaged in the services model by design since the IT policy in the mid-1980s stressed on Electronics and Software as a solution for unemployment
• That policy definitely succeeded as we see the number of people in India today employed in this sector with education institutes churning out almost 400k candidates in the market every year
• There are indeed IT companies in US one example which comes to mind which generate $700 mn revenues with less than 50 people
• This model may not be suitable for India. It may be great for one or two companies but in the larger national interest of serving the lowest of the low, the utility of this model in really helping India raises more questions than it answers.
• Putting the social aspects aside, let us see how do we make this model work for moving to a product based model
• There are several challenges which have prevented this model from being adopted so far
• We are often found lacking in India in terms of facilities and infrastructure required to encourage product based model
• It is indeed easier for me, sitting here in India, to register a company in Delaware US and get a server procured and installed in a US data center rather than India
• Existing product expertise is sitting on foreign shores. Indian IT has excelled in the routine, but when it comes to core product architecture issues we need to depend on outside expertise
• No doubt Indian IT has resourceful manpower. This manpower is dedicated and career oriented and has a focus on self development.
• But this mindset may not augur well for innovation and product creation. To innovate you need a maverick and not a career climber
• From a policy point of view, we need to encourage this product expertise to come and reside in India. Existing product innovators among organizations should feel encouraged to set up India based Product Innovation and Development Centers. Mind you, not just Offshore Development Centers where you hire code jockeys while retaining the architecture skill set in home country but Product Innovation and Development Centers where product is created from the ground up in India
• In order to get the government think tank on the job of how to make India a home for Product Innovation and Development, they must be made to see what is in it for India. Industry need to go back with the answer on how does becoming a product development center instead of a services based industry which generates employment for millions, really favor India?
• This thinking about Indian interests has to become foremost for Indian IT industry which can then result in directional changes in policy to make product based model a success as the services based model has done.

Innovation

• We touched upon the manpower resourcefulness and mindsets required for innovation.
• For innovation to succeed there has to be a tolerance for failure (1/3000 ideas are successful)
• India is a nation in a hurry. We are playing catch up with the rest of the world. We feel that 40 years of socialism has left us behind. What we are seeing happening in society today is an acknowledgement of the existence of a better way of life and an awakening and a revolution of the masses towards the need for a better life.
• In this social milieu of speed and change, we have to see where innovation fits in. Innovation cannot exist by itself. Innovation has to fulfill a need. Innovation is made successful not by the innovator but by the users.
• For organization be innovative, we have to realize that innovative organizations are made up of innovative individuals. While the organization can provide a platform for individuals to innovate, it can also result in shackles for innovation.
• Organizational innovation programs are often linked to corporate imperatives plans, markets for growth. There is limited scope for a philanthropic approach to innovation within organizations.
• Individuals can also be organized. Individuals can be agile. Individuals can be innovative. Most innovation comes out of garages rather than corporate R&D labs.
• What organizations can do is provide a platform for innovation. They cannot attempt to control innovation and can perhaps channelize innovation by setting up the right environment, posing the right questions, encouraging risk taking thus empowering the innovators.
• Organizations can ENABLE while leaving it to individuals to ENACT
• Organizations also need to think in terms of what are the right measures for innovation - investment and resources spent or ideas nurtured, patents filed.

Diversification and geographical growth

• I will acknowledge the work of Prof Rupa Chanda from IIM-B for the next section where I pick up three themes for diversification, very roundly covered in her article - US protectionism - An opportunity in disguise? http://www.iimb.ernet.in/newsletter/issues/97
• The need for diversification comes from saturation of existing markets, economic slowdown and protectionist measures adopted by countries. The situation described for the US applies as well for any other countries adopting such measures
• Market diversification
• Indian IT industry is largely an exports based country and there is a definite need for diversification, competitiveness and exploring new areas of growth.
• Indian domestic market is largely ignored, even though Indian economy is seeing comfortable levels of growth as compared to other markets.
• Foreign investment in India is on the rise because of the opportunities here in India. What about Indian IT investment in India? The investment here has to be for market creation and market growth. Margins similar to those earned for exports cannot be a key focus in Indian markets.
• Local presence in target markets
• Local employment creation in the markets that IT industry operates in should be made a key priority. For sure, countries where Indian IT industry is seeking to create a market would welcome them if they are seen to be solving unemployment problems of those markets.
• As contributors to the local economy, the industry will also gain in lobbying strength
• Government support in foreign policy
• Government can help in creating a safe environment for Indian IT industry and Indian professionals in the markets they operate in.
• There is a need for engaging with these countries at diplomatic levels to ease the entry of Indian IT industry and preempt any protectionist views.
• Just like in the success of services model, private and government initiative and partnership can go a long way in influencing and investing in bi-lateral and multi-lateral commercial agreements
• Lastly the focus of industry can be turned towards Nation Building within India - there are indeed opportunities in e-governance, e-auctions, e-learning which can be explored towards achieving the goals of sustenance, growth and national benefit.

You Are The Traffic

There is a sign on a busy stretch of highway in Luton which says "You are not stuck in traffic. You are the traffic." Really makes one think. Many have been the times when we have been wistful about ideal scenarios and how we wish things were better around us. What we probably do not realise is how much we contribute to the problem itself.

If we are not engaged in working towards making things better, then definitely we are making things worse. If we do not provide the solution we are a part of the problem. My exhortation to you today is -

STOP WHINING! START WINNING!!

Look around you in your work environment and I am sure you will be able to make a list of 10 processes which hinder your work in some way or the other, making you inefficient or making you spend family time at work or making you put in heroic efforts. And as I have noted earlier in my trilogy on The Elusive Business Process, heroic efforts are a sure shot indication that things are being run in an ad hoc manner.

Here are a few tips on how to identify what is not working in your organisation -

1. Hours spent in escalation calls and on e-mail - If your employees are spending most of their time handling e-mail, it is a sure shot indication of processes which do not work. Any transaction which cannot be handled by the process, lands up in the inbox. The amount of time your team spends on e-mail will be directly proportional to the time you as a manager will spend on handling escalation calls and mails.

If you are encouraging completion of transactions on e-mail, you are contributing to the problem. A transaction handled on the e-mail, while resulting in temporary instant gratification, does not solve the problem permanently. Primarily the information and the solution remains confined to the few people involved in the mail. And reply-all does not solve the problem either.

2. Innovation in routine transactions - Innovation is good. But we do not want all our employees to start innovating in their daily routine chores. That is supposed to be run blind-folded and only taken up for process improvement or SLA impprovements. Routine can even be questioned as to whether it is indeed adding any value to the company. But once established as a required value-add task, it should not have to be perforce improvised upon to get anything done around here.

3. Personal interactions and rapport get things done - Another clear indication that process is not working. All good behaviours in themselves but as tools to get work done, it indicates your organisation will not survive the next round of exodus. This also leads to processes which get enforced for few people and get bypassed for few others who have a good rapport.

4. Lack of workflows and automation - Lack of software or existence of software which does not have workflows is another factor leading to things that do not work. Basically this leads to a breakdown of information flow across functions that are supposed to deliver the goods or the as a whole to the customer. Either it does not work fast enough or it does not send the right information to the right functions at the right time. The key requirements to make the organisation work as one unit are integration, communication and empowerment.

5. Process for the sake of process - If anybody ever tells you that you need to do particular steps because a) managements says so b) SOX says so c) we have always done it this way, be assured that 9 times out of 10, you have come across a non-value add process. Question Why and question it five times before blindly following such processes.

Processes exist to enable business and not to hinder it.

Attitude matters

There was an old ad which used to go "It's not size that matters. It's the attitude." It is as much true for organizations as it is for individuals.

This is one factor which allows you to rise above circumstances, background, hierarchies and make a mark for yourself. It has both positive and negative connotations. Keeping with the spirit of this blog we focus on the positives.

Having a positive attitude and approach means half the job is already tackled. When somebody tells you something cannot be done, just delve into the issue and bring out the real motivations for the behavior. You can easily categorise such a negative response into the following reasons -
Skill set issue - The person does not know how to approach the task and get it done. Can we provide a training or a SOP which will mitigate the negative and turn it into a 'can do' situation?
Intention - This is where attitude steps in. It can be a case of 'I do not want to do this' due to a variety of reasons. I am too senior, too junior, not the right person, why can't someone else do this. All of these can be attributed to an intention of not doing the task. You can easily identify this person does not want to give his 100% to the job.
Values and Ethics - A positive spin to the Intention aspect will be if the task being asked of you goes against the grain of your values. Again a strong attitude is required to put your foot down and point out the wrongs of doing such a task. Today in most organisations there are governance bodies which can be approached in such conflict situations.

In evaluating the above points, we touched upon a couple of important aspects. The desire or intention to serve the organisation's goals and a can do attitude which allows us to give our 100% to the job.

In whatever we do in our personal or professional lives, I have seen those people succeed who have a desire to serve the larger interests. Such people bring with themselves a sincerity of purpose and are able to percolate their values into the environment. Thing start to fall into place with such people around. With such an attitude, you win the respect, appreciation and affection of all you touch.
These people do not come to their jobs just to make a living, they are there with a vision, a purpose, a desire to achieve and leave the place in a better shape than they found it.

Here's a quote to describe the motivation behind such an attitude - " I don't know if I will succeed in this, but I know for sure I would have failed if I had not attempted it."

Another question to ask oneself is - do I give my 100% to what I set out to do? I tried my best is not good enough. If the result is not as per expectations, then somewhere that 100% was definitely missing. Another try, another approach is definitely called for. You cannot quit after having 'tried your best'. You have to keep at it, not till your boss is satisfied with the output, not till your customer is satisfied with the output, but till your inner self is satisfied with the output and you are convinced you could not have delivered better. That is called giving your 100%.

Keep in check the trait of taking each day and just getting done with it to wriggle out at the end having put in less than what satisfies you. Success is not a stroke of luck or a bolt from the blue. It is a choice which is in our hands and is carved out of the so many mundane tasks that define our character and approach and attitude. We have this choice and we exercise this choice every day for every task that we encounter. The number of right choices we make defines our attitude for success.

Another thought here is that the only attitude we can control and change is our own. We cannot lay down how people will behave or how the wind will blow. All we can decide is how we will take it and make the best out of it.

I will end this article with an oft-repeated story of three people cutting stones and on being asked as to what they were doing, one replies "I am cutting stones", the other replies "I am earning my wages" while the last one replies "I am building a temple where people will find succour". Attitude Matters.