The E - factor at Business Organizations

Management derives good deal of its vocabulary from Military & Warfare. Critical words like Strategy, Game-plan, Cross-functional teams, etc have military lineage. In more ways than one, business corporations resemble military organizations. Both have hierarchy, processes & systems, function verticals, SOPs, but most importantly the E-factor.

The Clint Eastwood directed movie ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’ based on World War II, imbues a powerful message on the E-factor. It narrates the story of a small Japanese platoon engaged in protecting the island of Iwo Jima from a horde of U.S. troops. Though the Japs were aware that they pale in comparison with the U.S., they shared the same vision & fought tooth-and-nail against them. In retrospect, the movie had some key themes that apply equally to a business organization.

If we amalgamate all themes such as shared vision, leadership, communication, loyalty, incentive, culture, etc, we would ultimately enter the realm of E-Factor (Engagement Factor) which led the small Japanese Army to delay the invasion & imbibed in them the audacity to fight till the end.

Being part of a growing organization is always exciting. But with the excitement comes a number of things to do to set the house in order. One of the biggest challenges that one faces in this regard is keeping the employees engaged at all times. This engagement is not limited to just providing a great office, infrastructure, challenging work and inspiring leader but a combination of many other factors which builds an engagement culture.

Thus, engagement would be a sum total of:

1. Incentives:
   ‘Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder.’ – Nikita Khrushchev.
   Incentives vary from person to person and hence any organization should create flexible incentives to engage its employees.


2. Empowerment:
   ‘Without empowerment, an organization will never be able to become a succsessful service leader. Empowerment is the most critical skill a leader can master and a company can drive in order to lure and engage employees.’ – John Tschohl. The number of layers in the organization should not be detrimental in empowering the employees against a particular task. Empowerment should emanate from role-specific competencies rather than fancy (and often misleading) designations.


3. Shared Vision:
   ‘A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.’ – Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Shared Vision is what it takes to walk that extra mile, work that extra hour, and embrace that extra challenge. Leaders at all levels should share the vision with all employees for them to work towards it with the same intensity.


4. Job enrichment / Skill diversity:
   ‘Most of what you will create in others, will be the stepping stone not only for their career but also for yours, resulting in more insightful work. Create for others & yourself for which you will be recognized once or twice with the kudos of the public, but will last within as an accomplishment for eternity.’


5. Cooperative cum Competitive (CcC):
   ‘The best result comes from everyone in the group doing what's best for himself as well as for the group.’ – John Nash (as quoted in the movie, ‘A Beautiful Mind’). In today’s organizational context, where meritocracy is worshipped, individual performance and creativity alone cannot serve the common goal. In pursuit of becoming an achiever, the cooperativeness should be complimented by competitiveness and channeled aggression within the team. In short, it is a recognition and appreciation of the dyadic relationship.


6. ‘My two families’:
   ‘Companies today cannot afford to ignore the issue of work/life balance. Providing employees the flexibility to address personal commitments, without compromising the needs of the business, can make the difference between a good working environment and a great one.’ – Diane Domeyer.
   The engaged employee has two families, the one at home and the other at the workplace. Disharmony in anyone of them would make the other family suffer.

Chasing Daylight by Eugene O’ Kelly

“Chasing Daylight” takes it title from a Golf Metaphor. As CEO & Chairman of KPMG, the $ 4 billion, 20,000-employee, century-plus-old partnership, one of America’s Big Four accounting Firms, he was not a man to be defeated…. Three month’s before he died, Eugene O’Kelly was one of the most powerful businessman in America. Then he was told he had brain cancer. In a moving memoir he describes what his preparations for death taught him about his life.

I was wonderin wether “Writing a book about various experiences ranging from Personal to Professional life can be a top priority, especially when you are told that you have 100 odd days to live/write.”

Even ven writing notes for this book, an endeavor almost completely driven by the knowledge of how few & precious were the hours left to Eugene, his mind would invariably begin to stray to his previous work life, to business situations he’d faced but couldn’t let go of.

What can be more ironical than this very fact that we are inspired & transformed from someone’s Death, to live a Healthy & Meaningful Life. This book will lead to a new insight on high standards, proficiency, quality & above all competency. It'll show how Paradigm Shift from Commitment to Consciousness leads to better results. It will teach how to achieve work life balance. The read leads to an enhanced conciosness, helping expand our tolerance for people - i.e. tolerance for imperfection.

After reading, one will understand better, the range of human capability & their true worth. You will really begin to understand acceptance & to accept acceptance, if you will.

“We would have greater success in achieving our goals if we tried not so much to control time–impossibility, as it is outside us – & instead tried to control Energy – eminently possible, as it is within us.” - Eugene O’ Kelly, The CEO, the Micro Manager, a perfect type “A” personality say’s those words.

I wonder, there are few books after reading of which one desperately wants to meet its Author, wants to make him one’s Friend, Buddy or Guide. This book is one of them & yet unfortunately we can’t meet its author except being with him in between these 179 odd pages & witnessing those precious few days which he “chose” to Live.

Eugene, says “My days as a man at the top of his game, vigorous & productive, were done, just like that. The whole of my life, I had expected people to operate at a higher standard. If they didn’t they might lose my confidence. I don’t mean to say I lacked compassion; it’s just that, in the business world, our index of evaluating people was Competency. It had to be.” And then it all changed and changed forever…..Don’t mistake this book by “Tuesday’s with Morrie”, as Eugene does not share any Philosophy. But he does brings some harsh & universal truths of our lives from a CEO’s perspective.

Concluding this text, I remember the famous saying, “A book should never be judged by the movie based on it.” I think similar goes with any book review. Let not this ordinary & trivial review refrain you from going through this wonderful & inspirational book.

Happy Reading...
MAY YOU LIVE EVERY DAY OF YOUR LIFE. - Jonathan Swift

Traveling the 20 Yards within…

I lack nothing but myself…
Franz Kafka

Perhaps there is no topic on the face of earth which is researched to the extent of brink barring Leadership. Thousands & thousands of books have been written since the moment mankind decided to be blessed with ambition & resolution for redefining the World. Yet if we look back on the progress made on Leadership, all we can do is pity the trees that were cut to paper the leadership books. Corroboration of the fact is the passion with which we argue over “Whether Leaders are Born or Created.”

Leaders & Leadership was never as pervasive & yet as elusive as it is today. On one hand we count it as a singular honor of life to be born as contemporaries of the larger-than-life leaders with the likes of Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Ross Perot, Bill Gates, Andy Grove, Jeff Bezos and many more who could see the big picture & paint a compelling portrait of a dramatically different future yet the other hand is at complete loss to decipher the same visionary contemporaries.

Why everybody wants to understand leadership so desperately? Is it because we ourselves want to become one! If that’s the case, most of the people are just lost in the perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory forgetting that there are no formulas of becoming a leader. Using Victor Frankl’s (founder of Logo Therapy) analogy for Happyness, we should not aim at being a Leader. The more we aim at it & make it a target, the more we are going to miss it. There is never a surety, never a path which leads to Glory.

And ironically, this lack of surety & ambiguity regarding the outcome is the best thing to happen.

Turns out that we are never dedicated to something we have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to some social, political or organizational issues, it's always because they have something to prove. Something which is not a system, yet not an organizational culture. That’s why “What makes the fire smolder in the belly of a Leader is not a sense of duty toward others but the duty towards himself.” Leaders like Ford who wanted people to have better means of transportation, Jobs & Gates wanting a knowledge driven generation, Stiglitz wanting open markets all were inspired by their dream & vision to do something, to prove their belief ultimately resulting in their growth & well being of People.

Rather than focusing on the Leader which is latent within us, we just focus on the charisma of Leaders who surround us. We passionately debate about the various styles of Leadership & always question, ‘which one is the best?’ Freud told us, narcissists are emotionally isolated & highly distrustful. They’re usually poor listeners and lack empathy. Caesar, Patton, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Steve Jobs & Larry Ellison are all considered narcissists. Consider how an executive at Oracle describes his narcissistic CEO Larry Ellison: “The difference between God and Larry is that God does not believe he is Larry.” Point is “Yet the so called narcissists translate their dreams into Great Institutions by paving their way out of complacency & inertia which prevails in every corporation.” On the other hand, Goleman & Boyatzis define the virtue of leadership in terms of Empathy, i.e., ‘possessing a high degree of emotional intelligence.’ Some of these are Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Narayana Murthy.

Interestingly both these extremes i.e. Narcissists & Emotionally Intelligent Leaders are examples of productivity & innovation. Both are gifted with different personalities towards the attainment of a common goal. Both fight for freedom, challenge the existing status-quo, create & nourish great institutions. They abhor Incompetence, discourage Imperfection, build capacity & what Welch describes as “Provide opportunities for personal & professional growth, changing the implicit contract from a guarantee of employment to a commitment to employability.

Fortunately, ‘The Leaders’ of our generation do not reside in castles (e.g. Marcus Aurelius, Caesar & Pompey) or in shackles (Mandela). They sit very next to us in glass cubicles within our sight but perhaps way too far from our vision. And then suddenly one realizes, ‘Physical Distance was never so infinitely disproportionate to Intellectual Distance.’ The journey from the corner cubicle to the glass cabin is not more than 20 yards but intellectually the distance is more like thousands of light years. All we are supposed to do is to just lift ourselves (defying the gravity as well as justifying the vision) & introspect how & when the leader within me will be there.

After understanding all shades of leadership, it becomes difficult to single-out a particular trait and emulate it to attain self-actualization. Hence, it’s imperative to understand that there is a unique personality trait that characterizes every Leader & that’s why it’s more important to explore the Leader who lives within.

We are not supposed to travel those 20 yards to reach the cabin from the cubicle. All we have to do is travel 20 yards within.