Balanced Scorecard – Measurement Tool

Many professionals talk about how Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is such a wonderful Performance Management System. Interestingly I have seen quite a few seasoned professionals talk about BSC when a client talks about successful Performance Management Systems. It’s a strange error in correlation. BSC though is a strong support to Performance Management, is not Performance Management on its own.

 

In my financial world simply put it’s just a MIS format/tool. A MIS framework that measures performance. On its own neither does it improve performance nor reduce the same. It just tells you about absolute quantum and direction of performance.

 

Having said that, there are great advantages of BSC as a framework. While the basic ingredients within the organization remain same in any system or framework, BSC does push to look at the same set of ingredients in a more strategic manner. Some of the advantages of BSC as a MIS tool in addition to providing basic data in a pre-determined format are:

 

-    It ensures you are giving due credit to all stakeholders. While any other framework might also have the same intent, it ensures no slippages due to the basic structure of framework.

-    It ensures focus on only certain strategic items of business at every level in the organization and discourages every one to focus on every items concept.

-    It makes you look beyond just financial view of the business

-    It makes you look beyond outcome oriented approach towards business

-    Amongst all other things it confirms the life of a senior management person is not supposed to be simple and instead takes that truth head on by infact complicating it further for a while.

 

I have personally implemented BSC for enormous number of clients across globe and am great believer in the tool. However its amusing how people often fail to distinguish the huge difference between BSC and Performance Management.

 

~~Rohit~~

 

Leadership Styles

 

I have come across several business leaders in my life and have worked with quite a few of them. Though I have gone through various philosophies and concepts on leadership styles, types of leaders, and infact am a certified leadership coach, here is my crude take on various kinds of leaders on a lighter note J

 

Becho Becho Becho – These are the P&L leaders. They are constantly talking about growth and typically thrive on high pressure environment. They would often create pressure environment in organization, maintain constant pressure on sales, would indulge in conversations that would tire down an individual (no matter what the subject be). For them any business is like selling soaps, a factor of supply in the market that is J To give credit to them shareholders love them and they often make very successful businessmen.

 

Heads I win Tails You Loose – These are leaders for whom life is about being one up…about making some point at any cost in every situation, irrespective of whether it makes sense or not. Often they are self obsessed and very conscious of looking good. If this trait is mixed with intelligence it can be a deadly combination…you love them at times and hate them at times. Love them, hate them, you can’t ignore them J

 

Stand for your leader – These are the set of leaders who will always say the ‘right thing’ at all times. Infact they will never accept crude realities of business as it might amount to standing against your leader at times. Good or bad, stand for each other. They create a hugely positive environment for their seniors and preach them the philosophy of standing for them as well. The tag line is “You support me and I support you….at any cost”. To give them credit like I said environment is usually motivating and positive, though problems often don’t get solved as they are never admitted.

 

Market ki Suno – These are the set of leaders always tuned into market and reacting accordingly. They would spend more time with clients then sitting in office. They are often very well respected in the market and are thought leaders. Very high on innovation as they would create a new solution during client conversation in a click. Most of this set of leaders is divided into dynamic business leaders who are very volume driven or thought leaders. Difference between them and first type on top is this set is not driven by selling something; they are driven by genuine want to sit with customer and help. Money might not even come in often J

 

Daro aur Darao – These leaders are very hierarchy conscious and create a tremendous amount of fear in organization. They would often resort to screwing someone’s happiness and sending out a message of ‘don’t mess’ J Well they do maintain very high degree of discipline and delivery.

 

Main Hoon Na – This is the set of leaders who are spiritually very arrived J Always willing to go extra mile for helping someone achieve their dream, resolve their problem, motivate them when down and out. Also run very successful business since they leave a strong impact on customers with their genuine approach.

 

Now each of the above type possibly makes a very successful businessman depending upon their skill set and capability. Just that they all have taken different routes in life. I have personally found great learning’s from each type and this is not a critique on any particular type of style J

 

~~Rohit~~

 

Change as a Competency

In today’s business environment I realize the only thing that is a constant is Change. Historically consulting has been an industry that has tuned into this concept from early stages. I don’t remember a single year in my consulting career when I did not see regular changes in organizations I worked with. Every year the structure changed (sometimes twice a year), portfolios changed, go to market strategy changed, business leaders changed, well even office address changed J Today almost every progressive industry/organization has tuned into this concept.

 

Its interesting times from skill sets point of view. What this means is traditional functional skill sets have no or little value in this environment…given how quickly business models change, current set of functional skill sets might not be required at all in near future. More than any other time, its softer behavioral skills that are more important.

 

Within these softer skill sets ‘change’ as a competency becomes very important. Ability to adapt to changing environment, ability to adapt to new roles, new structures, new way of working. Going forward successful longevity of an employee existence and performance in a progressive organization would depend upon his or her score on change as a competency.

 

What we miss in the corporate world is programs and ways to measure change as a competency and develop the same. There are surrogate assessment tools which measures to some degree openness to change, flexibility etc., but nothing concrete really.

 

~~Rohit~~

 

Organization Brand Vs Person Brand

There are two distinct ways of promoting and creating a successful organization brand. One approach is to promote and ‘Create a brand for Organization’ which in turn will grow the business and people; the other is to promote and ‘Create a brand for an Individual’ which in turn will promote the organization and business. For different set of groups, organizations both work very well.

 

Several small to mid political parties are good examples of the second approach. They often create their media plan, campaign around the head of the party because that’s what is likely to get them most mileage. Once they are able to create a strong brand for that person, the organization tends to ride on their brand. They find it easier to differentiate and strong play the characteristics of an individual in most of the cases as against that of the organizations. A strong individual brand is something that has seen to be in many walks of life. Look at some of the following examples:

 

-          When a political party makes agitation or strong remarks against a certain Amitabh Bachchan, or a Sharukh Khan does an advertisement, they are all trying to get mileage out of a personal brand.

-          In corporate world you have example of L N Mittal, now amongst world’s richest person, who has done a great job of creating a personal brand through self marketing. Before his organization reached a new country for a takeover, his personal brand had reached before and in many places government actually went all out to help him. Ones which did not, as in case of Arcelor takeover, could not stand against his strong brand eventually.

-          In education field Arindam Chaudhry of IIPM has done the same thing. Frankly with all due regards ‘Beyond IIM’ is a joke…but then he has created a strong brand and at the back of that the institute has presumably done some good work as well

 

The common thing in most of the above cases is they are usually single person dependant to take them to certain milestone of success and driven by personal charisma and characteristics of that person.

 

On the other hand several very large political parties, established institutes, corporate houses follow the principle of creating an organization brand and use that to promote its people. This is ofcourse a time tested formula and needs no detailing.

 

As much as it might look natural or juvenile in some cases due to the kind of incidents, taglines etc that you see, both methods of creating a brand are infact well thought through management concepts. They require strategic thinking and some intelligent planning of actions, marketing and media.

 

~~Rohit~~

 

Theory of Employee Engagement and Motivation

Over the years I have come across several models of calculating levels of employee engagement and motivation. Whether that’s a Hewitt Model of Employee Engagement or Gallop’s model, all of them have there own unique strengths.

 

However when it comes to means of improving and changing that, almost all of them lead to some kind of action planning around pain areas. While I am in agreement with planning around specific pain areas, I have formulated my own theory of how to keep employees engaged and motivated. Through my experience I have rarely seen this not working in organizations.

 

So here go 5 salient features of my theory:

 

Keep them occupied: Nothing is more disengaging then sitting ideal. It’s the start of most of the problems. Like they say ‘khali dimaag shetaan ka ghar’….almost all of them are happier working hard and working late. They would all crib about late hours at times but its much more motivating situation than sitting ideal. For lack of better way to explain it the feeling of getting your salary after hard days work is an motivation in itself.

 

Intellectual pressure Not Delivery Pressure: The more you create a thinking environment where everyone is getting pushed to think new and think different its very satisfying. Most of the organizations create pressure on delivery and targets which infact often works in opposite direction and shuts thinking part of the mind.

 

Plan for Individual’s Success Not Failure: It’s very important that organizations create an environment and opportunity where individuals can look back on the year and see some personal achievements and not failures. Several organizations thrive on keeping unrealistic targets around everything so that there is always something more to achieve. While to some extent I agree with theory of stretch one must ensure an employee has some proud moments to look back upon. Trust me you can plan for such moments and it will be very satisfying for them.

 

Provide Variety: Get them to work on different aspects of a job and try their hands on multiple things. It will make them feel important in every aspect of organization, create skill enrichment and provide back up support for every job.

 

Enlarge Opportunity Size: If they have achieved and delivered X size, provide them with an opportunity to try their hands on 2X, once they do that provide them with opportunity of 4X and so on. Give them a chance to feel they are constantly growing.

 

Now most of the above things need not require job rotation, career planning and such other formal frameworks. I believe we are fortunate to be in a growth economy wherein it’s much easier to create such an environment. It’s no rocket science actually. If usual day of an employee is well earned, interesting and full of high, he or she is likely to feel engaged and motivated. Unless you make the usual life for an employee interesting, all kind of formal programs would achieve very minimal.

 

~~Rohit~~