The Self Destructive Habits of Great Organizations (Part II)

In my last post, i had spoken about the first tell tale signs of organization decay - The Grapevine going sour. The second in the series is as given

2.Organizational Paralysis

Great Organizations have great amounts of data. Great amounts to data is subjected to even greater amounts of Analysis. All this leads to nothing actually, a state of Paralysis. Thats only one part called data paralysis.

The second part is that a Great organization has a great ego. It believes in the profundity of it knowledge and data. They are very objective of the snapshot of the market which made them great. They forget the human elements in the picture, the subjective side of the consumer. That is where they make more mistakes. This part is called: I dont learn.

That folks, is game, set and Match for another competitor, another technology, another man.

Two examples to illustrate this:

I Dont Learn (alternatively listen,speak, do...)

Some time back, a friend of mine, a product manager, happened to show me a yet-unreleased product. He kept ranting about the product and the technology, the consumer offering, the greatness of the product. I saw the product (from a consumer lens) and it did not get me excited because it was very plain Jane in its looks (that is an understatement). I pointed it to the Product Manager. He did everything to refute me, convince me, confuse me and ultimately took umbrage to the fact that i had given a negative feedback. I did not wish to create angst and hence said nothing more. The product failed miserably after launch. While they spoke so much about the rational benefits (feature richness), they hadnot spoken anything about the emotional connect with the consumer. So a well researched, well meaning, everything-of-all-things product lost! Our invincible-nothing-wrong-with-my-product' product manager took a transfer to another role!!

Nothing-wrong-with-my-product was a philosophy deeply ingrained in the Organizational DNA. This organizational had won pitched battles in the market placed for years basis that philosophy/approach. But that was yesterday! Today the same features come dime a dozen and bundling features together does not make a new story. An emotional connect with the consumer does. The same rules that won the battle yesterday donot win it for them today. They had forgotten the consumer thru and thru today. If technology is good, then, intelligence is god.

Another day, another example, this product manager who really was the god-of-product-management was trumpeting his yet to be released product. I was one of the last and the least people who he would take time to sell his product to. Voluntarily i checked the product on his table and remarked how it looked very similar to a very not-so-well-done product that was launched an year back and was presently exactly half priced compared to the new product. The "God of Product Management" registered the point and gave a well rehearsed output and spoke about "comparatively" and "individually" and "features and the whole wide world". TtCH! How was i to disbelief the "god"? The fact was that at his elevated level, he was still missing the point. Incidentally, the same product was pitched against another competitive offering which though technically inferior had all the hooks that consumers wanted. I am awaiting the result of this bloodied battle, but the fact remains... They dont learn.

Data Paralysis

You can pretty much trash all the historical data sheets you got. Numbers in history teaches us nothing new about a market in present. A senior analyst once told us about a survey in the company, saying that there were 2.4 billion data points and yet, not enough learning, insights, understanding and action on them. All the more hilarious was another suggestion from one of the top bosses one the need for more analysis.

Simple reasons: With 2.4 billion data points, and the learned sages (The top management), everytime they had to take a decision, they stepped back into the past for decision making. It perhaps provides solace, where in something that worked in the past should also work in the future. Wish it did! Fact: It doesnot. And they are still NOT LEARNING.

Where does this learning happen?

Most of the learning is supposed to happen at market place and then actioned at the boardrooms and the corner rooms. Reality: The market doesnot teach you any new stuff, nor does the intellectualizing help. This is because of two things... Latent needs cannot be obvious. So a consumer may have a latent need which he cannot articulate. You would have to have different and perhaps extreme levels of engagement to understand those latent needs. You cant make a tour map to Ladakh by simply looking at the roadmaps of India. You have to drive through the entire lenght of 1800 kms to make your travellogue and hence the tour map.

Bottomline: A decaying organization looses touch with its raison' d etre, its consumer. While its ranks, are full of people, who will say, "well, we know that", you can be doubly sure that, it is anything but "knowing that". The other symptom of decay are the number of meetings and coffee cups that happen around data and action points. For every such meeting, action points and decisions, you can assign a grave to the whole of them...

The Self Destructive habits of Great Organizations (Part I)

I am aware that there is a book that goes by the same name and is a best seller. I havent read it, i intend to. Probably for the gyan and all but more so, because i want to see if there are concurrences and parallels in what the book explains and what i read and learn in my workplace.

Great organizations/brands happen to be a result of either of these things:

Persistence of a brand over time (Coke, GM, GE etc)

Individual/team genius (Bill Gates's Microsoft/ Sergey Brin's Google)

Ability to adapt businesses for the future (Nokia/IBM)

Interestingly there are stories of great organizations that have just fallen way side. There is this interesting statistic where companies that were in the Forbes Best list 20 years back dont exist anymore. And as far as i remember the numbers were unusually large and challenging.

This post will try capturing those tell tale signs within the organization, which speak of decline. I begin writing it as i see it happening in front of me in an organization which, not so long ago, was one of the best places and brands to work for. The tell tale signs are not tangibles, they are not results, they donot get captured in P&L statements, they donot emblazon ET Headlines. these tell tale signals are what flows through the veins of the organization: The People and The Processes. The first signs of rot happens there and stays there for a long time. It is not a gradual decay. It takes its time and at one point of time zooms up exponentially and becomes uncontrollable in time for the fall of the great edifice, our great organization.

Sign 1: Watch out for the pantry table discussions, the smoke break conversations, the grapevine*. The best indicator of how the organization is faring is those animated discussions and jibes. Employees are informal, unabashed, unashamed during these moments.There are tools like Organizational polls, those once a quarter Hello-How-are-you senior management-employee get togethers, those Development plans and discussions, those feedback sessions which are good in their own terms. However, what happens over in the chai-tapri, sutta-break is the real pulse of the organization. Hey Mr CEO! I hope you are radioed in to that... (Corollary to the self destructive habits of great organizations is another school of thought on the infallible CEO. I would probably put my view on that ome time.)
The discussions and the moods can be a serious indicator of how the employees feel about the organization. Everything from the office secretary to the industry strategy gets debated. These discussions have moods and swings, and can be entertaining, gyan, perspective giving or general hogwash. However, when these forums start having a general sense of dissapointment on organization or "organization and individual" issues, things are not as good ass they should be. Worse is when Salaries and Incentives and promotions gets discussed or people start bitching. Then starts the active sharing of job opportunities information, salary break ups etc. It takes a lot to dispel this negativity in the ssystem and worse is that this negativity also starts rubbing off on newly joined, not-so-dissatisfied junta by fueling their fears. It erodes credibility in a manner that can be very damaging to the organization. It actually works towards cutting the linkages between the employee and the organization. The CEOs corner office typically is the farthest both literally and figuratively from these discussion boards. The farther it is figuratively, the more the pain ,angst and dissatisfaction....
So one of the first tell tale signs of the fall is the Grapevine...

*:I first had a whiff of this thought from a book that i had read 3 year back, a book on shaping your careers by David D'Alessandro. I remember him mentioning about Grapevine. Grapevine wa the typical Chai,sutta break or the informal get together of employees and discussing work, lives, seniors, rumours and organization Over the next three years after having examined this theory around and across, i would certainly agree on the Grapevine being the most-effective-accurate-cheapest place to understand how the organization is doing.

(to be continued...)