The Power of What We Don't Have

"The grass is always greener on the other side".

Because it is human nature to undervalue and overlook what we have. Something that holds back not only individuals, but many families, organizations and entire societies as well.

An equally serious problem is the failure to realize and tap the power of what we don't have. To count the blessings we don't have (yet). Let us reflect on how fatal this can be, in an organizational context.

Complacency

An organization which is not aware of what it lacks is easily misled into believing that it has everything that it needs to perform. This complacency is often contagious, and can be a very powerful force in defending the status quo. And in further closing one's eyes to what the organization does not have. Thus feeding on each other.

The social pressure and tendency to conform can make this blindness particularly entrenched. Leading to a situation where everyone tells everyone else: All is well. A sure-shot prescription for obsolescence.

Low Aims

The inability to appreciate what we lack is often responsible for (very) low aims and aspirations. Forget the stars or even low-hanging fruits, organizations might end up aiming at the roots. 

This is aggravated due to a planning handicap. I have seen this happening in project after project, in an organization I am familiar with. The leaders at the very top articulate high aspirations and give sufficient autonomy to the next leadership level to meet them. However, the leaders at this level, who have to execute the project, end up being highly conservative, laying down very low aims. Aims which sometimes don't even better the past.

Why do they do so? One reason I have observed is this. They take the resources they have (at present) as the starting point. The aims flow from - and hence are determined by - this. This approach not only limits what the organization can achieve, but also confines the ambition and imagination of everyone. 

The leadership should instead have taken the (lofty) aims as their starting point. And then figured out what resources (and processes) were needed to attain them. As Gary Hamel and the late C. K. Prahalad say, "Competitiveness is born in the gap between a company's resources and its managers' goals". By fitting their goals to current resources, the managers above fail to bolster the competitiveness of their organizations.

Thereby killing innovation systematically, though (perhaps) unwittingly. 

What can be done

Some humble pointers.

1. Make an inventory of the resources the organization has, and how they align with its processes and priorities. Understanding what we have is perhaps the best first step in understanding what we don't.
2. Keep looking outward as well. Analyze not only competitor organizations, but competitor industries and processes as well. And well, potential partners/collaborators too. 
3. Apply the Johari Window to the organization.

4. Keep asking: 

   Questions #innovators love: What are we (really) doing? What (all) are we not doing (today)? #Innovation #ChangeLeadership
   — Dheep (@TheDeepServant) March 10, 2015

5. Aim high. Stretch resources, processes, systems, people. And of course oneself.
6. Based on the above audit and the stretch goals, make an inventory of the resources the organization needs, but does not have.
7. Figure out how to make use of these resources to meet organizational goals.

Does this make sense? Please share your thoughts. Thank you.

How much to Promise & Deliver

Recently, I had the good fortune of attending a half-day leadership motivation workshop for a large organization. The primary aim of the workshop was to bring about a change in the mindsets of the management and employees of the organization. So that they work better together as a team. A high-performance team.

(I am an outsider to the organization, but was present, in a different capacity).

A well-known personality was given the mandate of motivating this group, of reigniting the latent leader in them. And the person did speak very well. I learned and re-learned quite a few things from his inspiring speech. I was impressed.

Until when he shared one "success tip", which completely shocked and disturbed me. It seemed to me that the entire purpose of the workshop was being defeated by this one single-line tip. 

This fatal tip was (and is): "Under-promise and over-deliver".

The speaker seemed to have offered this advice as a clever way of 'managing' superiors' expectations.

However, a closer examination would reveal to us that...

1) This is not a sustainable approach. If we consistently over-deliver, it would necessarily bring to light that we purposefully under-promise. This could then force us to promise higher and higher, thus reducing more and more our ability to over-deliver. Till a point reaches where we cannot under-promise. Or over-deliver.

The advice has a short life-span in this sense; this however is fine. Which brings us to a more important issue...

2) The situation will play out as above only if the superior is sufficiently smart, discerning and has sufficiently intimate knowledge of his/her subordinates' work. Otherwise, the subordinate might find it convenient to keep under-promising and over-delivering relative to the 'under-promise', while he/she could have promised as well as delivered much more! Leaving the superior under the illusion that his/her subordinate has over-delivered. Thus creating sustainable illusions of performance and hidden non-performance.

But this situation would arise only when some human actors involved have wrong intentions. There is an even bigger reason why this advice is wrong....

3) And that is what makes this advice fatal. Especially so in an organizational context. 

As discussed in an earlier post, there is a host of factors which hinder the free flow of ideas in an organization. And hinder organizational performance. Dominant among them is the basic human fear of making a mistake. Of failure. And hence the tendency to aim low. Often very low.

On top of this innate tendency, if all employees begin to consciously under-promise, organizational growth would be dampened by a huge extent. Nothing could perhaps be a bigger innovation killer! This is more so in an organizational context because:

• Under-promises have a diminishing cascade effect as they travel upwards. If A1 under-promises to his/her boss A2, the promise that A2 makes to A3 based on that would be even smaller! And so on!!! This way, the promises that reach the top management could very well be very modest indeed!
• Delivery demands allocation of resources. If promises made are modest, allocation of resources would be made accordingly. Further, the natural tendency is to be conservative when allocating resources. The modest allocation of resources in response to the 'under-promise' makes it that much more challenging to deliver even what was 'under-promised'. 
• The organization performs best when everyone is on the same page. When there is a shared aspiration and a common understanding of goals and the ways to attain them. The mechanics of this advice goes against this, by creating artificial barriers between people regarding promises and deliverables.
• The ensuing failure to aim high, to extend the horizon of the possible, could thus be fatal to the organization. It would be failing spectacularly in realizing its potential.

I found the advice to be particularly disturbing because the organization in question was a typical 'traditional' organization, plagued by very low aims, risk avoidance, aversion to making mistakes and conformism. This advice was hence the very opposite of the wisdom the management and employees of such an organization needed. A license to aim low in the delusional hope of 'over-delivering' relative to a low standard.

[Being an outsider, I could not publicly question the speaker about the wisdom of his advice (I wanted to, for the benefit of the audience). However, I approached him in private afterward; on advancing my reasons, he admitted his fault, though subtly.]

So, let us keep it straight and simple. Promise. And Deliver. 

PS: Here is a totally different perspective on the issue, leading interestingly to the same conclusion. :)