Yesterday, I received the much-awaited Book—
The Professional (by Subroto Bagchi)--which I mail-ordered a week ago. I couldn’t help but gobble-up all the pages in one-hour go. Each and every paragraph connects with reality so much so that I felt as if I’m reeling my own experiences as I recollect and reflect on each message. Unlike the two earlier books by the same author, this book is structured as a set of touching messages with narrative of no more than two or three pages each. Though the author recommends reading it sequentially from the beginning to the end to imbibe that ‘professional formulae’, I find that even if one starts reading it by flipping to any random page I bet that he wouldn’t resist the temptation to switch back to the beginning and go non-stop till the end. I liked very much the presentation style, authenticity of the message and power of storytelling in this book, the only other book--somewhat similar in style--that came to my mind is ‘The Greatness Guide’ of Robin Sharma.
The section that I particularly paused, read and re-read was “The Responsibility of Dissent” and the example of ‘Satyam saga’. I find the author’s observations very insightful, analytical and thought-provoking for any professional who would find him/herself in situations where one is tempted to discount his/her conscience or professional judgment when playing ‘yes-man’ to the powers be. Let me quote the last paragraph which says,
“…When professionals get together, they assume that the purpose of every meeting is to get consensus. But consensus is not always beneficial and can sometimes lead to disasters. These can be avoided if each professional in a group exercises his responsibility of dissent and the purpose of the group’s decision making process is shifted from the urge to agree to doing the right thing.”
How true it is? We find such people everywhere—in government, politics, public and private sector as well. People would either like to ‘play safe’ by toeing the ‘official line’ or do not want to ‘rock-the-boat’ for fear of being shaken up or just preserve their position and power by shrugging off ‘why me? Let me be a good boy to my boss as long as I’m here’. This psychological atrophy (rightly ‘professional inebriety’) is cancerous particularly if the leader affected with that syndrome belongs to senior leadership in the organization, and worse off, if the CEO him/herself is the one who ‘shoots the messenger’ upon hearing a dissent or ‘bad news’ from any of his/her lieutenants. We know how British could rule India for more two centuries by subjugating the local rulers and Kings who over a period became subservient to the British in order to protect their local self-interests. But then, they (Kings) were many, scattered far and wide, and without any of modern communication technologies we today take for granted. However, in a democratic setup, and in today’s connected organizations where every news (rumour, fact or fiction) travels at the speed of light to the other side of the globe, making an assumption that ordinary citizens (or thousands of employees in any distributed organization) could not ‘guess’ that such a ‘catastrophic event’ (like ‘26/11’ or ‘9/11’ or ‘Satyam saga’) might occur anytime appears ‘irrational’ at least, in hindsight. Everything appears connected and logical in hindsight, right! Why did many ignore those early warnings coming from different directions?
Crowdsensing Weak Signals
For many of those in the middle management or employees on the shop-floor who are distantly connected with those ‘un-dissented evil decisions’, making sense of the resultant weak-signals and acting on them is certainly a challenge, which I hypothesize as the problem of ‘right brain vs. left brain’ thinking (this topic is beautifully covered by the author in the section ‘Logic or Emotion’).
How many times you heard your boss saying ‘Don’t just complain, show me the data or evidence. We need facts. It might be your personal opinion; others don’t feel that way’ or ‘don’t talk about the organization or other department’s problem, just mind your job’ or ‘demonstrate ownership, stop talking about issues, give me solutions’, etc. Intelligence is not just data. ‘Azhmal Kasab, a terrorist from Pakistan, will be arriving at Mumbai on 26th September and he will reach CST at 8:23PM and start firing at the passengers with an automatic rifle’—if this is the kind of data needed on 25th for the Mumbai police to act, think of who could give it, except the terrorist himself! Information is never complete for any decision making. Many times, we receive only weak-signals or just see smoke without precise information. However, managers (schooled in traditional MBA style thinking and decision making) have not been trained to ‘see beyond’ numbers. They (left brain thinkers) vouch for data, data and data and analysis and analysis (leading to paralysis). As Daniel Pink—the author of ‘A Whole New Mind’(also referred by Subroto) --says in his book that 21st century belongs to right brain thinkers.
A British Economist once said, “If a Measure becomes a Target, it ceases to be a Measure”. Roughly, what that means is that when people come to know how they get measured, they tend to game the system in their favour. We frequently conduct customer satisfaction surveys as part of our ISO 9000/CMMi compliant quality processes. How many of them do you sincerely feel ‘objective’ and the survey questionnaire not biased towards its benefactor-leader/department? Satyam has every certification or award under its belt. It received the global award for best corporate governance; couple of years ago it even got rated as the ‘#1 Best Employer’ in the survey by reputed HR consulting firm. Biased by hindsight, I am not contesting that the awards are not speaking the ‘facts’. For me, they just constitute one half (left-brained statistical analysis) of the totality which must be equally corroborated by ‘right-brained emotional’ survey. For example, in an organization of say, 50,000 people, the best way to ‘smell’ the ‘happiness’ (aka employee or customer satisfaction index in left-brained language) would be to listen to water-cooler conversations of people with their peers—their unbiased opinions, perceptions about their company, bosses, work, support groups or processes. A dip-stick (non-invasive) survey of around say, 100 people across the organization would certainly give a ‘non-numbered feel’ which can be used to validate the formal statistical surveys. For example, if you are a foreigner interested in understanding India, there are two ways you can go about: one, receive authentic and formal documents on Indian economy, Corruption Index, GDP, etc etc., from World Bank or Government websites, or spend couple of weeks living in a small town/city in India interacting with people and listening to their stories. Which one do you feel represents the ‘reality’? How do you make a ‘formal’ decision if you are to make some big investments in India?
Listening to unsolicited signals and acting on them requires right-brained thinking. While formal management reports, audit statements, and market research data from analysts feed your left-brain, you’ve to tune your other half of your brain too to receive and amplify weak-signals (‘noise’) in the form of informal opinions, perceptions, water-cooler conversations, blogs, and even rumours to form a holistic opinion of your world. ‘Experience’ is a right-brained word (in search of quantification by left-brained statistical analyzers). Therefore, perception is the reality as experienced by the real people who matter to us in the real world.
Can ‘Satyam-like’ events be predictable? If so, why did crowdsensing fail in Satyam case?
Actually, sensors (people) and signals will always be there in every organization. Depending on whether the organization is tilted toward right- or left-brained thinking, the quality of analysis and decision making might vary. In Satyam case, though we assume there’re only very few people at the top who actually got involved in the ‘act’ (as per the confession of Raju) or few aware of it (bystanders) and even including those responsible ‘innocent non-dissenters’ in board meetings, the fact that the rest of the management and leadership down below to the employee on the shop-floor could not make-sense for long and blow-the-whistle is clearly an interesting case-study in organizational psychology. Having lived in two large IT organizations during the last 15 years, I make my inference as follows:
Please note, employees are closest to the leadership of an organization than external investors or customers. More than anyone else, they could certainly have ample opportunities and time to ‘smell’ potential dangers, if their senses are not numbed.
Actually, smart sensors (people) are always there in every organization. They are sincere, honest, analytical, could connect the dots in any situation and smell potential problems lurking in the ‘near future’ (undefined though). Some of them may be emotional too (who unfortunately likely perceived as ‘non-factual’ by their left-brain centered bosses). Here lies the ability to separate genuine complaint by loyal employee from those of ‘chronic cribbers’ (non-committal, tuned-out individuals) Also the attitude of the leader (boss) to encourage open airing of issues of any kind without fear of punishment (do not shoot the messenger). Why do we encourage sharing of only good news and hush-up the bad news?
There will be zillion problems everywhere. If a leader receives ‘un-qualified’ complaints or concerns pertaining to the same problem from several of his/her team members, it’s certainly a smoke signal for a fire about to flare up somewhere in the near future. How soon the leader acts? Does he/she act at all? People look for visible action by the leadership. If the response does not come within reasonable period, people assume either indifference on the part of the leader (behaviour related) or active conniver (part of the problem itself) or start having self-doubts about their own assessment of the problem (‘I might be wrong, after all, my manager is more experienced and knowledgeable than me in assessing the correct state of things in the organization.’)
A professional dilemma?
Even if the leader senses imminent danger (from the signals received from team members), is there a way for him/her to safely ‘escalate upwards’? What happens if he/she raises an alert via email or simply drops it in company’s ubiquitous suggestion/complaint box? How frequently such boxes (public grievances) get opened and issues addressed seriously (as per the Quality or scheduled management review processes)?
If the above mechanisms fail, is there a whistle-blowing policy in the company, wherein employees can post such potential threats or escalations (on even the top-leadership) to an independent third-party (board member or an agency)?
Who is monitoring the ‘unofficial and opinionated’ communication in public blogs and near water-coolers? If all internal formal mechanisms fail, people (at all levels) gravitate towards public messaging to vent out their frustrations. Take a look into the personal mail-box of CEO/chairman and examine all the communication received from employees levels below. Instead of treating that as ‘noise’, why can’t this be channeled to formal board meetings for sense-making by the board (right-brained food) as a supplement to their regular left-brained numbered thinking?
One doesn't have to be an accountant to feel and validate the numbers: By being an insider to an organization and living within its walls, it doesn't need much intelligence for any employee to assess, for example, the 'cost management' (as reflected in the outward behaviour)--how frugal or lavish in its spending, whether it can justifiable against revenues, etc etc, mostly by observing the environment around oneself. If crowds could sense that, then it must be an item worthy of escalation or 'whislte-blowing' to the top.
Divide-and-Rule Policy: Everything is connected to everything. Every group’s activity in the organization directly/indirectly impacts every other group’s activity/performance. Are we masking these dependencies (no systems thinking?) Like what our colonial rulers did during their rein in the erstwhile Indian empire, is the organization fragmented enough, thus creating many silos so that no single group/division can see the ‘big picture’ to draw conclusions?
Rethinking Confidentiality: Data confidentiality cannot become a cover for hiding poor performance. Let stakeholders start questioning everything the management says ‘confidential’. Think why should it be? What would be consequences if we let loose the information? Who are we afraid of?
Why exit will be the only option for many? In most instances, in an organization where crowdsensing is disabled, disgrunted employees (who could not find vent for their expression of dissent/discomfort) would either exit the system silently (ky keeping the valuable intelligence to themselves) or suffer professional burn-out and become unproductive in the long-run, in either case contributing to further decay of the system.
Like in the Satyam case, even if the top leader(s) are connived in the game of wrongdoing, crowds (employees, share holders) can easily sense and prevent disasters from happening by reacting much ahead. Crowdsensing works in this connected world. Let's enable it inside our organizations.
KG Krishna
