Thought for Today

Dear Team

A few days back , I came across following quote in Eco Times :
“ If you do everything you are asked to do, and you do it well, you get a C. In order to be a superstar, [ to get an A or A+ ], you have to do things that nobody asked you to do “
---  Vivek Ranadive [ CEO, Tibco Software / Author : Two Second Advantage ]
The article goes on to say :
“ Last year , Ranadive sacked his America Sales Chief despite the Palo Alto, California-based infrastructure-software provider surpassing market expectations.”
Some years back , when Jack Welch was CEO of General Electric , he had laid down following rules for his Divisional Managers :

Ø If you cannot be either no 1 or no 2 in your business , get out of that business

Ø Every year sack the bottom 10 percentile ( by way of performance ) of your employees

Danger is , coming from industry leaders ( such as Ranadive / Welch ) , such statements are blindly accepted as Gospel Truth !

Problem with most companies is :

Ø Bosses seldom clearly / unambiguously spell out , what they “ Expect “ from their subordinates during the course of the budget-year , by way of measurable “ Achievements “

Ø There is rarely in place , an “ independent “ mechanism ( like Finance Manager ? ) , to continuously “ measure “ the actual achievements ( against targets set in advance , at the beginning of the year ) , and publish the “ Deviations / Variances “ for ALL to see transparently

Ø Year-end “ Performance Appraisal “ exercise , degenerates into a match of , : In Boss’s opinion Vs In subordinate’s opinion “

Why ?

Because many “ Activities “ being carried out by employees are NOT measurable in terms of “ Measurable Achievements “ !
There are always many activities of certain individuals ( that must be undertaken for smooth performance by the others ) which cannot be measured in terms of , Sales Turnover / Orders Booked / Billing done / Costs reduced , etc

In my opinion , in any given organization , there are only very few employees , whose performances can be measured Quantitatively
And , in turn , they depend upon timely assistance of many others to be able to do their jobs

But don’t fall back on my arguments to take the easy path out , viz:
How can I fix targets for Receptionist / Office Assistants / Administrators  etc ?
Prepare a list of ALL their repetitive activities and  list day wise / week wise / month wise etc
Paste this in front of his / her desk and tick whether done ( in that week or month ) or not
Some 50 years back , when I was Production Engineer in the Switchgear factory of L&T , I had prepared such “ Lists “ ( Department wise ) and called these ,
ACRA ( Annual Calendar of Repetitive Activities )
Then pasted these ACRAs on the notice boards of each department , for everyone to see
And made Department Head responsible for simply ticking whether that activity got done ( or not ) in that particular week / month
With such ACRA staring in your face every day , employees looked up what was expected to be completed , not only during THIS week but also during the NEXT week or NEXT month !
This had a remarkable impact on getting things done on time !
Unfortunately MBA does not teach you the fundamental principle of SUCCESS in any project / activity / enterprise, viz:
Against a time-line , make a list of things to do !

hcp