3 types of thinking Harish Hande highlighted for social innovations

Last week, I finished co-teaching the course “From jugaad to systematic innovation” with my friend Prof. Rishikesha Krishnan at the Indian School of Development Management. In the last class, Rishi had invited Selco founder Harish Hande as a guest speaker. In a short span of half an hour, Harish managed to instill a big dose of creative energy in the class. He told us about the type of thinking he felt is required while innovating in the social sector. Here are 3 types of thinking Harish highlighted:

Holistic thinking: Harish said, “One of my biggest barriers is the ability of people to think holistically”. People tend to identify themselves with a particular discipline such as mechanical engineering, marketing, finance but nobody says, “I am a solution provider”. We get caught up in our degrees and don’t think of what it takes to bring the solution to the doorstep of the customer.

Selco has labs in Kalahandi in Odisha, Williamnagar in Meghalaya, Guwahati and Bangalore where new programs are designed. And every program design team includes an architect, an engineer, a doctor, a finance person etc. Sometimes it also includes an anthropologist and a Yakshagana artist. They have to answer the question, “Is the solution affordable in the long run?” A solution that is low-cost today could be unaffordable in the long run. For example, a solar-powered sewing machine may enable a woman to produce 8 shirts a day instead of 2. However, if she is not able to find a market for her products then we end up creating technology debt. Hence, program design teams are encouraged to spend more time exploring the problem and think long term before they think of solutions.

Cheat thinking: How do we cheat from other processes? That is, how do we copy the seed of an idea from other working examples? Harish illustrated this idea with the mid-day meal scheme. A mid-day meal attracts kids to school in order to get nourished. In a similar way, could kids be attracted to school in order to get portable batteries charged so that their houses get lighting at night? With this observation Selco’s “Light for education” program was born where a school becomes a hub for the solar infrastructure in the village, a go-to place to charge your batteries. If American Express comes up with a new financial product, could one see if there is a seed of an idea there that can be adopted? Or could we borrow something from the vocational curriculum in German schools? What Harish calls cheat thinking is similar to what I call metaphoric thinking, a solution-centric approach to problem-solving.

Open-source thinking:  A question was asked, “How do you see the role of competition in the development sector when it comes to innovation?” Harish said, “Social sector promotes collaboration on paper. But it is the worst collaborator. Competition in the social sector is much more cut-throat than in the private sector.” He added, “The aim of many of the non-profits should be to kill themselves, not to grow.” He felt we need open source thinkers whose end goal is how many people will get benefitted rather than how do I keep it to myself. There is hero-worship in the sector where people are recognized by the awards they amass. “Collaboration is far away,” Harish said. He hoped that program design with holistic thinking would promote collaboration from early stages.

It was a privilege to listen to Harish and thanks to Rishi for making this event happen.

A systemic approach to participatory development: A short primer by Prof. Shireesh Kedare

In October 2019, I got an opportunity to interview Shireesh Kedare, my hostel-mate and now a Praj Industries Professor at Department of Energy Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay. Shireesh has been working in the area of renewable energy, sustainability, and participatory development for over two decades. In this short interview (28 minutes) Shireesh tells us what systemic approach to participatory development is and its roles in solving wicked problems such as farmers’ suicide etc.

Here is the MP3 audio of the interview (11MB) (The interview was done on October 21, 2019 at Sustainable Development Lab, Dept of Energy Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay).

The questions explored in the interview are:

0:00 Introduction

1:10 Why is participatory development relevant in a place like Indian Institute of Technology? Technology as a bridge between needs and resources on the pillars of science. What needs? Which resources?

6:30 What is participatory development? Who is doing to decide the needs? Centralized body? Elected members? Remote vs direct decision making, opinion-based vs study-knowledge based decision making, This has been done before e.g. Anna Hazare, Systemic approach of participatory development, Can we do this at the village level? City-level? Is it practical?

13:00 Can you give an example to illustrate the concept?  Identified 6 villages in Yavatmal district in Maharashtra state known for farmers’ suicide, didn’t go with any agenda, started developing a dialogue, team led by Dr. Vijay Honkalaskar on a period of 3-6 months along with NGO workers, met women-men-farmers-young of the village on a sustained basis, tremendous pessimism-depression, village suicide, noted 42 different loops affecting farming – family size, cattle availability, land quality, atmosphere, pesticides, seeds, govt schemes etc. Documented all this and went back to the villagers, showed them some connects are working, some are broken (family size has become small), complete picture started evolving, once the picture was clear they started suggesting solutions, economics, organic farming, tinted word, people have a phobia, small farmer 1-2 acre land feels this is not for him, changed lingo, identified basic processes, gap between practice of organic farming and people is too much, community action needs handholding.

23:00 Key elements of the approach: Don’t go with any agenda, Try to understand, assimilate the complete system, Go back and show it to them, get their reaction on it, Establish collective clarity, they decide what to do. It can backfire. Needs iteration. Need to prioritize – people may not understand what prioritization means and how to do it. People are wise, they should be given an opportunity to understand and solve their problems.

Hope you find it useful. More details about Prof. Kedare can be found on his home page. 

My 3 take-aways from Edgar Schein’s “Humble Consulting”

Prof. Edgar Schein’s book “Process consulting” was published in the year I was born – 1969. Since then he has been refining the concept over the past five decades. I have found the concept very helpful in my consulting career. In fact, I have read all of Schein’s subsequent books in “processing consulting” series – Process consultation revisited (1999), Helping (2009) and Humble Inquiry (2013). The latest entry from this series is “Humbleconsulting: How to provide real help faster” published by Berret-Koehler Publishers (2016). Here are 3 of my take-aways from “Humble consulting”.

Humble questions may result in big impact: One of the key points Schein drives here is that carrying a humble attitude (being curious) towards the client is important in the helping process. And even a simple humble inquiry may lead to a big impact for the client. Here is an example Schein gives from his personal experience. Schein was having lunch with the CEO and his executive team of Alcoa Australia. The CEO pointed out that the VP Administration is retiring and proposed if Steve could be his replacement. VP Finance, VP Operations and a few others said that they were not comfortable with Steve as VP Admin but they were not able to point out the exact issue. At this point, Schein intervened and asked, “Sorry for jumping into the conversation, but I am curious what VP of Admin does.” CEO said that VP Admin heads a bunch of functions such as HR, internal accounting and finance and public relations. At this point, a VP jumped in to point out that Steve won’t be able to handle public relations. Others agreed. So another VP proposed that public relations could be separated from the VP Admin function and a new VP of Environmental Affairs and PR can be created. Everybody was comfortable with this idea and the issue was resolved. The point of this story is that Schein’s humble enquiry on the role of VP Admin led to a workable solution.

Beware of content seduction trap: Schein says, “The consultant must have empathy but carefully avoid content seduction because, as an outsider, he will never have the insider’s direct knowledge of what will and will not work in the client’s culture”. Empathy is understanding the client’s situation while content seduction is a feeling that I understand the client enough and can suggest a workable solution. This looks at odds with the traditional consulting wisdom which says that an expert consultant should be able to provide a workable solution to his client. Schein cites several examples where he and other consultants conducted several interviews with the client executives, formulated a problem and devised a solution. When the solution was presented to the client, he either ignored it or rejected it outright. If proposing a solution is not a good approach, what does a humble consultant do? Well, Schein suggests using adaptive moves which will help client diagnose the problem as well as see a solution.

Adaptive moves for simultaneous diagnosis and intervention:  To understand the philosophy behind an adaptive move, it helps to understand following profound statement from Schein:  There are no “real” problems, only a set of worries. Here, Schein questions the existence of problems as objective reality independent of client. According to him, a problem exists only as a set of worries in clients’ mind. Perhaps the client himself may be unaware of the real worry. A small step one can take in order for the client to see his real worry is what Schein calls an adaptive move. Let’s illustrate this using one of the examples Schein cites. He was trying to help a bunch of smart engineers at DEC in strategy meetings. The engineers were argumentative and would often interrupt each other and shoot down others’ ideas. Schein made several attempts to bring this unruly behaviour to their notice which they acknowledged but continued to behave as before. At one point, Schein got up, went to the flip chart board and started jotting down the ideas that were being discussed. While writing down an idea, if a person got interrupted, Schein would excuse the group and request the person to finish his idea so that he could write it down on the flip chart. That made sure all the ideas were captured and the group thanked Schein for being really helpful. It was a small gesture, but it solved the real concern in the minds of the engineers of losing out on ideas. What Schein originally thought to be the real problem – unruly behaviour – was not a worry as far as the group of engineers was concerned. Subsequently, other group members began to go to the flip chart and learnt to do similar facilitation themselves.

Schein uses 25 cases from his personal experience to illustrate the principles. In addition to presenting the conversation between him and his client, Schein also gives what went on in his mind, something like a mental commentary, before he replies to the client. I found this style very helpful. I am amazed by Schein’s productivity at the ripe age of 87 and wish him many more creative years!

image source: bkconnection.com

Eckhart Tolle’s “catch me if you can” experiment

Traditionally, spirituality is associated more with faith rather than experimentation. However, some spiritual teachers such as Eckhart Tolle speak the language of experimentation. In fact, Ekchart’s experiments are typically low-cost. For example, he says, “One conscious breath in and out is a meditation”. In this article, let’s explore one such experiment Eckhart suggests which I call “Catch me if you can”.

Well, the overall objective is simple – you want your mind to be peaceful as much as possible. Perhaps it is peaceful most of the time, except, may be, when you are provoked by someone – say your boss. Dimitry from Moscow asked this question to Eckhart during Eckhart's interview with Oprah Winfrey, “When I am criticized, I get into power games, so can you recommend something?” To which Eckhart asked Dimitry, “When do you become aware of your frustrated state? after a few minutes? End of the day?” Dimitry answered, “It depends upon the situation. If the situation is minor, I am aware of it five minutes after. But when I am deeply criticized by my boss, I can be in this state for a week.”

Now, Eckhart’s experiment is as follows. Whenever you get into a negative emotion such as frustration or anger, you need to observe how long you remain completely lost in that state. Note that once you are lost in, say anger, there is nothing you can do about it because you and anger are not different in that state. The recovery towards peaceful mind starts once you notice, “Oh, there is that anger in me.” At what point of time such an observation happens is the crux of this experiment.

The objective of this experiment (or game) is to catch yourself in the state as early as possible. Eckhart divides your "Gotcha" point into three stages.

·         Stage-1: You catch yourself just before you are going to become angry – perhaps you notice the trigger such as your boss’s criticism and become alert. Your goal is to catch yourself in stage-1 as much as possible. Why? Because your emotion can’t sustain itself for long when you detach yourself from it.

·         Stage-2: You catch yourself as you are entering the state i.e. you catch yourself getting angry. Perhaps you can’t do much about it and you get angry anyway. Perhaps the awareness subsides the emotion before it takes off.

·         Stage-3: Like Dimitry, you catch yourself in the state (say anger) after some time. It could be a few minutes or as much as a week after you enter into the state. This is when most of us become aware of our emotional state.

For example, the last time I got angry was when I was standing in a payment queue at Adiga restaurant on M G Road and one person just barged in and went directly to the counter. I got angry and told him to stand in the queue. He did. And within a minute I became aware of my anger and it subsided 10-15 minutes later. It was a stage-3 observation i.e. catching myself in angry state. Could it be in stage-2 next time? Let’s see.

I see following challenge in extending this experiment. It may work for extreme emotions such as frustration or anger. Could it also work for low-intensity emotions such as anxiety? How easy will it be to catch yourself getting anxious? I don’t know. Any ideas?

Source: Primary source for this reflection is Eckhart’s interview by Oprah Winfrey on chapter 4 of Eckhart’s book “A New Earth”. Dimtry’s question starts at 53:10. A similar question was asked by Dionne from Port of Spain, Trinidad at 44:06. Unfortunately, the video is no longer available online.

Eckhart describes this experiment in the following video "Dealing with anger, resistance and pessimism" (7:15)

Schumacher’s Burma visit and the birth of Buddhist Economics

Professionally, Fritz Schumacher’s Burma (now Myanmar) visit in 1955 was a failure. Hardly anyone from Burmese Government paid any attention to his advice. However, on a personal front, it was one of the most insightful projects in his life. It resulted in arguably the most influential essay Schumacher wrote viz. Buddhist Economics – which redefined the concept of progress. What happened in Burma? What did Schumacher learn? Let’s see in brief.

Fritz Schumacher got an invitation to visit Burma as an Economic Advisor in 1955. By this time, Schumacher was trying to synthesize various seemingly disparate strands – Gandhi, Buddhism, energy supplies of the future, industrial development and “war on poverty”. The visit provided a great opportunity to experience the East and feel some of these elements first-hand – especially Buddhism. One of the core questions Fritz carried with him was, “Can one really help Burmese without harming them?”

After a few days in Rangoon, Schumacher wrote to his wife Muschi, “There is an innocence here which I have never seen before”. Pretty soon he realized that poverty and backwardness weren’t the real issues Burma was facing. It was the way the West was altering the aspirations and concepts of “development” of Burmese people which he found scary. Burmese people had few wants and they were happy. He realized that the wants make a man poor and that made the role of the West very dangerous. He urged Burmese government not to pay excessive attention to industrial development as advised by the Western experts. He felt that focus on self-sufficiency especially rural development was crucial. Nobody paid any attention to this.

What might have been a discouraging experience was more than compensated when Schumacher got an opportunity to learn meditation in a highly respected Buddhist monastery of Burma. His first exercise was only to watch the rising and falling of his abdomen sitting in a monk’s cell. The monks taught him how to cope with the distractions; merely to note them but not to follow them. The next stage was to walk up and down the monastery garden concentrating on each movement of his body as he walked. The stillness he experienced towards the end of the course was something he had never felt before. He wrote, “I came to Burma as a thirsty wanderer, and there I found living water.”

Schumacher felt that the economics as defined in the West was based on materialistic progress. It encouraged expansion of wants. In fact, big car, big house, big salary were indicators of progress. He felt economic progress is good only to the point of sufficiency, beyond that it is evil, destructive, uneconomic. Secondly, he felt there is a need to make a distinction between “renewable” and “non-renewable” resources. He looked at development activity robbing earth of its non-renewable resources as regressive.

It has been over forty years since Buddhist Economics was proposed. The GDPs of India and China have soared since then. The wants of the countrymen represented especially by the scale of scams in India have soared too. Robbery of non-renewable resources is progressing well. Net-net, have these countries become richer or poorer?

Source:

Barbara Wood & Robert McCrum, “Alias Papa: A life of Fritz Schumacher”, Green Books, 2011 (chapter 17, The Breakthrough).

Photo source: TheHindu.com , A severely burnt Buddhist monk receives treatment after clashing with police while protesting against Chinese backed copper mines in Northern Myanmar (Nov, 2012)

Using the navigation matrix in the innovation journey: from 8 steps to innovation

The title of our book “8 steps to innovation” can be misleading. It doesn’t advocate following steps 1 to 8 similar to a Do-It-Yourself kit to get a ready-made culture of innovation. Similarly, it is not meant to offer a basket of techniques to be used as per the taste of the user. It is more like a fault-diagnosis and service manual. It proposes an iterative approach involving diagnosis and corrective action to progress along the innovation journey. Let’s see how it works in this article.

In the diagnosis phase “8 steps” offers a 3x3 matrix to identify what problem you are trying to solve. It looks like this:

The two questions it asks are: (1) What to improve? and; (2) How to sustain the change? For the first question, you need to check whether your problem is primarily that of pipeline, velocity or batting average. Similarly, for the second question, you need to check if the problem you are trying to solve is a Rider problem (lack of direction) or an Elephant problem (lack of motivation) for one or more stakeholders. Elephant problem can be addressed by an activity appealing to the emotion and/or developing a structure/process that is easy to implement (shape the path). Now, let’s look at a concrete example depicted in the presentation below.

8 steps to innovation: in action from vpdabholkar

The situation was like this (Please see page 15 of the presentation). The innovation program was launched in December 2010 and within a month 40 ideas were received from 25 people. Management was supportive of the selected ideas and some of them moved forward. However, management felt that none of the ideas was “interesting enough”. It meant that none of them was promising to impact the business significantly. Was it an Elephant problem or a Rider problem? It was a Rider problem. People didn’t know which are the top problems facing the business.

One way to focus the creative energy of employees is to launch a challenge campaign. A first step in this direction is to create a challenge book (step-2). I facilitated a session of 15 managers / senior managers where a challenge book consisting of 20 business challenges was identified. We took the challenge book to the CEO who selected a challenge to be launched as a campaign. This time around 20 ideas came as a response. However, they were different from the previous ones in two respects. One, the quality of many of the ideas was much better. Detailed cost-benefit analysis was presented. Two, at least a few ideas involved cross-functional collaboration – say a supply chain executive teaming up with a sourcing executive etc. A cross-functional team led by a Vice President was formed to take the selected ideas forward.

The presentation depicts three more such examples involving different kinds of problems. Each example starts with a diagnosis of the situation, identification of one more steps as a response, a few experiments and finally an implementation. Monthly dashboard is a good trigger to start the diagnosis. 

Related article: If you want to know what the 8 steps are, please check out this presentation from my co-author Prof. Rishikesha Krishnan: 8-steps to innovation: An introduction.

Enabling a culture change in rural government schools: Prasanna shares Sikshana experience

V R Prasanna was one of the panellists at the “Enabling a culture change” session at the Next Gear workshop on innovation leadership I facilitated in July. Prasanna is the CEO of Sikshana Foundation which was rated among the top three in India in education intervention by Times Social Impact Awards (Sept 2011). Prasanna moved back from the US to India in 2007 to help scale up the organization. In this interview Prasanna shares his experience in enabling a culture change in the context of rural government schools.

The interview explores following questions:

1. Can you please share a culture change story from Sikshana?
2. Why is change difficult?
3. How do you sustain ownership in change initiatives?
4. What role rewards play in change initiatives?
5. What happens to the change when Sikshana stops support?
6. How does Sikshana get teachers to experiment?

A sample question & answer is given below. You can find the complete interview here

Q: What roles rewards play in change initiatives?

Prasanna: In our case, we found that the easiest way to motivate a teacher is a pat on the back. They work in a system where nobody cares about them. One of our initial experiences was with a teacher in a remote school –  with 12+ years of service. When we asked him , “Sir, how are you doing?” The teacher almost had tears in his eyes. When we asked, “Did we say something wrong?” He said, “First time in 12 years in this school, somebody has asked me how I am doing” That is the simplest form of reward. On the other end, we send teachers to the US. Someone who might not have seen Bangalore goes to the US and spends four weeks there.

We find rewards play a similar role for a child to change. In rural setting, when children go back from school, they dump their bag and immediately run out. Because there is nobody at home to share their school experience. To sustain the change, something needs to happen outside the school environment. How do we do this? We can’t become the parents. But the child has to be rewarded at some basic level. So we introduced something called a “spot prize” in classrooms.

Every teacher is equipped with nominal amount with which they buy something and give it away. This is one of our most successful programs. We don’t spend more than Rs. 30 per child in the whole year. We have introduced stars which they can wear on their uniform. And once they collect ten stars they redeem it for something – crayons or pencil set or they can hold on till the next ten stars and get a geometry box.

This idea (of stars) came from a teacher. I had gone to a school near Hubli. We had given spot prizes to be awarded in the school. This teacher had written some names and some numbers next to it. I asked, “What are these numbers?” The teacher said, “I liked your idea. But I run out of prizes very quickly. Attendance is a huge issue. So I have to give them more. So whenever a student asks a good question or a correct answer I start writing points. This becomes more like a game and it is getting everyone to participate actively in the class.” The next question was, “How can we do this at a systemic level?” and the star system evolved.

So I feel rewards play a huge role in sustaining a change at least in our space.

Related articles:

“Showing the way: Sikshana is helping children stay in school and better their performance by developing all-round skills”, a cover story in Business Outlook, Sep 1, 2012

Dr. Gururaj Deshpande’s insights on entrepreneurship and innovation, Jan 30, 2012 (Desh praises the interventions of Sikshana) 

What is “change by being”? Stories of Ramana Maharshi and Eckhart Tolle

‘Change by doing’ doesn’t require much of selling. Whether it is a salt march, a war or the creation of Facebook, the act triggers a change process – sometimes quite massive. In contrast, ‘change by being’ is relatively less understood. Many people may not even consider it as a legitimate approach for change. And yet, I believe ‘change by being’ is just as powerful an approach as ‘change by doing’ if not more in bringing about a change. What is ‘change by being’? Let’s get a glimpse of it through 2 short stories of Ramana Maharshi and Eckhart Tolle.

Ramana Maharshi: David Godman narrates the story of a “miserable, crabby” woman who visited Ramana Ashram during 1940s in one of his interviews. The story was narrated to him by Arthur Osborne’s daughter. During that time Osborne’s house at Tiruvannamalai was a place where foreigners who couldn’t find a place to stay would be put up. One evening a miserable, crabby woman was sent to Osborne’s place by Ashram folks. The next day she left for the Ashram after breakfast. When she came back for lunch she was radiant and glowing with happiness. Hosts were happy and curious to hear about the “transformation story”. However, the woman remained silent throughout the lunch. Finally, the hosts couldn’t resist it anymore and asked her, “What happened? What did Bhagwan do to you?” The woman was surprised. She said, “He didn’t do anything. He didn’t say anything to me. I just sat there the whole morning and then came back for lunch.”

Eckhart Tolle: Tolle narrates the story of one of his neighbours Ethel , a “middle aged, intelligent and highly educated” woman in the book “A New Earth”. One night at 11 o’clock Ethel wanted to see Tolle urgently. It was clear that she was under stress. She was trembling as she took out papers from a file and spread them on the sofa. Tolle says, “I looked at her with no thought and no judgment and listened in stillness without any mental commentary.” Ethel kept talking. She was worried about a dispute which arose after she had refused to pay service charges for the repairs at her house. Ethel kept talking for ten minutes and then suddenly stopped. Then she looked at Tolle and asked, “This isn’t important at all, is it?” Tolle said, “No, it isn’t”. She sat quietly for a few more minutes, picked up her papers and left. The next morning when she saw Tolle on the street, she asked, “What did you do to me? Last night was the first night in years that I slept well.”

Did both the stories involve a change? Yes. Did the stories involve an action? Almost no visible action from Ramana or Tolle. So, what is happening here? I don’t know. But I like Tolle’s approach – which begins with complete acceptance of the situation – without being judgmental about it. Perhaps this creates a mirror so clear that the other person sees herself and the futility of the conflict with utmost clarity. That leads to the change.

David Bohm calls a person like Ramana or Tolle “a catalyst” – a person who “makes possible certain action without itself taking part, but merely by being what it is.”

Can anyone become a catalyst by creating such a mirror? Eckhart feels that it needs practice. For most of us, the mirror is tinted – in fact, heavily tinted. With practice it can become clearer. I hope it is like building stamina.

Sources:

Tolle’s story is on page 175-176 of “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle.

“Catalyst” analogy of David Bohm is on page 173 of “The ending of time” which contains dialogues between David Bohm and Jiddu Krishnamurti.

3 Lessons in implementing a strategy from Sudhir Kumar’s experience in Bihar

Sudhir Kumar (SK) played a key role in turning Indian Railways around during 2004-2008. However, initial years in his tenure in Bihar were disastrous. He was shunted, frustrated and according one wise-old colleague accelerating towards martyrdom. What did the angry young man learn about implementing a strategy during this period? Let’s look at 3 lessons in this article.

1. First learn to survive: When SK was posted to Bihar as a fresh IAS officer, he wanted to “quickly sort out the whole world” – especially the corrupt system. He says, “While I was honest, I was also impolite, abrasive, and saw words like ‘compromise, adjustment or tact’ as signs of cowardice and weakness”. One of his first projects was to arrest the theft of electricity in Patna. He discovered that many prominent people were involved in the illegal activity. He began to go after the top honchos to send a strong message to the bad guys. Is it difficult to guess what happened next? SK was transferred to a different post. The system revolted in unison to make SK ineffective. SK learnt his first lesson: To accomplish a mission, first learn to survive in the position.

2. Empower the beneficiary: One of the assignments was to build wells for the poor. Initially, SK and team executed the project with remote control. All the decisions about selection of well site, their diameter, depth, material to be used were made sitting at the head quarter. The primary users of the well were not consulted at all. The scheme was a failure in terms of how useful these wells turned out to be. Later the approach was modified to empower the people on-the-ground in making these decisions. SK says, “As outsiders, our judgements would never be as good because we had limited data on ground realities.”

3. Start where you can easily make progress: In another project SK & team was to increase tax revenue by arresting tax evasion. One option was to attack the unorganized sector like spices or cashew nuts. However, in this category it was difficult to get authentic information. The other option was to look at organized sector categories like scooter, motorcycle and cellphone. In this category, the first sale at the point of origin was in white currency. SK started with the second option where computers could be used to maintain and track the data. It worked very well. Later on when SK worked with Lalu Prasad in Indian Railways this lesson was very useful.

Source:

“Changing tracks: Reinventing the spirit of Indian Railways” by Nilakant V. and Ramnarayan S, Collins Business, 2009, pp 29-34.

Sudhir Kumar’s photo is from IIM Indore site.

Following the bright spots and its implication for designing a strategy

In an interview Andrew Grove narrates his experience at one of the exit interviews while being CEO of Intel. Steve, a young employee who is leaving Intel, said, “Andy, if I were you, I would take microprocessors seriously. We should learn how to use microprocessors, how to develop applications and become experts.” Andy said, “Sure” and never paid any further attention to the remark. In fact he says, “It was inconceivable for me to think of it.” Looking back Andy feels, “He was so right and I was so wrong.” What Steve was pointing to was an internal bright spot – the microprocessor business – doing well at the time but without any strategic attention from management. Question is: Can focusing on bright spots be a good option while designing strategy? If so, can it be done systematically??

Strategy answers 2 questions: What game are we playing? How will we win it? At the time of Steve’s exit interview with Andy, Intel was playing memories game and losing it badly. Many companies are in a situation like Intel and figuring out what to do next. Most of the time the attention is put on the questions “What is not working? And why?” In this article I want to explore what happens when the attention is put on the questions, “What is working? And can we replicate it elsewhere?”

For Intel the bright spot Steve alluded to was already quite bright. In most organizations it is much dimmer and needs some digging like that done by archaeologists. When Sudhir Kumar started working with Lalu Prasad Yadav in 2004, Indian Railways was heading towards bankruptcy, fast. Dr. Rakesh Mohan committee had already submitted an eight volume report on the causes of the failure and possible remedial actions. The committee had attributed the falling market share of Railways to high freight rates that subsidized low passenger fares.

When Sudhir Kumar studied the data on freight traffic, he discovered an interesting anomaly. Market share of some of the commodities (like steel and cement) had gone down. However, some other commodities (like iron ore and coal) had held on. What was happening? After analysing it further, Sudhir Kumar discovered that the Railways was providing door-to-door service for the winning commodities. On the other hand, it was doing station-to-station service for the losing ones. This lead to the insight of creating differentiated freight rates based on the value created for the customer. This became a key element of the strategy designed by Railways and it paid handsomely. Point to be noted in this story is that Sudhir Kumar followed the bright spots i.e. he asked “What is working? And can we clone it?”

Peter Drucker referred to this approach as pursuing the “unexpected success” in his book “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” written more than a quarter of a century ago. He begins chapter 3 as follows:

No other area offers richer opportunities for successful innovation than the unexpected success. In no other area are innovative opportunities less risky and their pursuit less arduous. Yet the unexpected success is almost totally neglected; worse, management tend actively to reject it.

Of course, the knowledge of an unexpected success may not come to you on a platter like it did for Andy Grove. Like Sudhir Kumar you might have to go hunting for it. The good news is that there is a systematic approach on how one can go about hunting for the bright spots. See the figure below adapted from Chip & Dan Heath's Switch.

Sources:

Sudhir Kumar story is from “Changing tracks: Reinventing the spirit of Indian Railways” by V. Nalakant and S. Ramanayaran, Collins Business, 2009, pp 112-115.

“Follow the bright spots” approach is explored in detail in “Switch: How to change things when change is hard” by Chip and Dan Heath, Broadway Books, 2010, chapter 2 titled “Find the bright spots”.

Sudhir Kumar’s photo is from IIM Indore site.

Poor Economics: Designing robust interventions to fight poverty through randomized experiments

When I hear a professor from MIT saying she knows how to fight poverty, my first reaction is that of skepticism. “Does she even know what poverty is?” That’s how my mind would respond. And yet when I heard the TED talk by Prof. Esther Duflo of MIT titled “Social experiments to fight poverty”, I was thoroughly impressed. It took me some time to understand what exactly in the talk that impressed me so much. Subsequently I bought the book “Poor Economics” which she co-wrote with Abhijit Banerjee. Now, I am slowly beginning to understand why Amartya Sen has said, “A marvelously insightful book by two outstanding researchers on the real nature of poverty”. In this article I want to highlight three things that I find interesting in the book.

Intractable problem, manageable sub-problems: Poverty eradication looks like an unsolvable problem. People from Karl Marx to Mahatma Gandhi have taken a shot at it. However, it is not clear whether we have a handle on it. Silver bullet approach like “give aids” is not helping. Banerjee-Duflo take a different view. They feel that instead of trying to answer the top question, why not look at some sub-problems – each of which might have a definite and practical solution. For example, in the talk, Duflo presents three such sub-problems: How can we have more kids immunized? How can we get more people to use bednets that can reduce malaria affliction? How can we get students to attend school more number of days for a given dollar spent on the cause? The book, like the talk, shows how we can go about systematically addressing these sub-problems.

Randomized experimentation: Let’s take the question of immunization. In Udaipur district of Rajasthan, it was found out that only 1% of the children are fully immunized. The vaccines are there and are available for free. It is not that the parents don’t care about their kids. When their kids get measles parents end up spending thousands of rupees in treatment. So you have empty village sub-centres on one hand, and crowded hospitals on the other hand. So looks like the intention is not translating into action. What do you do? Dulfo & team decided to try random trials in 134 villages in Udaipur district. For one third villages there was no change, another one third villages had immunization monthly camps conducted and the last one third had camp plus a kilo of lentil free for camp participant. As it turned out the immunization percentage jumped by a whopping 37%. Note that this approach is analogous to randomized control trials used in medicine to discover drugs.

Design as if implementation matters: The beauty of Banerjee-Duflo approach is not that it does not make any assumption about the culture, anxiety, aspirations of the poor. The experiments reveal their biases anyway. I call this approach of designing an intervention – design as if implementation matters. Note that the approach does not advocate laboratory experiments – the experiments are performed in-field in actual conditions. I feel that experimentation and immersive research are the heart and the soul of systematic innovation. Banerjee-Duflo approach epitomizes both. Now, I know why the TED talk struck such a chord with me.

I strongly recommend the book for every student of social innovation.

How GE develops innovation leaders through the LIG program

GE launched Leadership, Innovation and Growth (LIG) program in September 2006 and ran it till September 2008, mostly in Crotonville, epicenter of GE’s learning & development. Altogether 2,500 senior managers in 260 teams went through this four day program. The purpose of LIG was to make innovation and growth as much of a religion at GE as Six Sigma had been under Jack Welch. On day four the course wrapped up with a plenary session at which each team had 20 minutes to deliver a presentation to Jeff Immelt, GE’s CEO. When Immelt was asked why he devoted so much time to LIG, he said, “LIG gave me a way to drive change and develop leaders at the same time”. What happened at LIG? Here is an overview on what GE Power senior management team went through at LIG. (source: An excellent HBR article “How GE teaches teams to lead change” by Steven Prokesch, a senior editor of HBR who was invited to attend one of the LIG programs in October 2007).

LIG program is a brainchild of Susan Peters, GE’s VP of executive development and Daniel Henson, then CMO. Before attending the LIG, the senior managers at a business would assess their team’s success in creating a climate supportive for innovation. The assessment would generate an innovation dashboard that would be used during the program. During the program there would be talks by external gurus as well as internal role models. A large amount of time – about 15 to 20 hours – was set aside for breakout sessions. What happens during these breakouts?

During the first breakout on the morning of day one, the Power Gen team guessed and the learned their actual team scores for the 360 degree review of their growth values. This triggered a reassessment of almost every aspect of their business. Some of the questions that got raised by the team were: “We’re not as good at anticipating major trends as we ought to be”, “Is solar a good place to be?” or “Renewable energy, clean coal, nuclear – all are going to be policy dependent. Are we good at this?” The reassessment continued in this manner throughout the four days.

The reflections generated insights – may be the old rules don’t always apply; may be limits on carbon emissions and tax incentives for clean, renewable power matter more. That sparked a conversation about GE’s ability to understand and influence government policies. Managers agreed that it was deficient and that beefing it was therefore a priority. In the next breakout session the Power Gen managers talked soberly about the state of their core. Unless the operations are strengthened it is difficult to free up time for innovative thinking.

At another breakout session the team assessed their innovation portfolio by putting each project in one of the three boxes, a framework created by Prof. Vijay Govindarajan: incremental (aimed at strengthening the core), adjacencies (taking existing technologies to new markets or taking new technologies to its existing markets), nonlinear shifts (discontinuous shifts in technology or markets with radically new products or business models).

The final LIG session involved the reports to Immelt. Power Gen team led by Bolze talked about their biggest takeways from the program, their 10-year projection of revenues (from $13 billion to $40 billion with renewables’ share going from 30% to 50%), and a vision statement – “Powering the world responsibly”. They committed themselves to strengthening the core. They confessed they needed to get better at looking around the corners to spot nonlinear shifts. They listed the capabilities they needed to build: regulatory expertise, faster product development, creating emerging-markets products “in country for country”. They vowed to lighten up a bit and become more playful, a characteristic of innovative companies. As they spoke Immelt asked questions and shared observations.

Within a few weeks after the LIG session Steve Bolze, as required, sent a commitment letter to Immelt, laying out the measures his team would take to increase the pace of organic growth. Such a letter becomes a living contract between Immelt and the team.

image source: ge.com

Gandhi’s failed self-help experiment at Shantiniketan: a lesson in culture-unfriendly intervention

Every organization has a unique culture and any act to bring about a sustainable change needs to be sensitive to the existing culture. Gandhi, in 1915, either didn’t understand this yet or he hadn’t fully internalized it. Gandhi had a four day visit to Shantiniketan in February 1915 a month after his arrival in India. During this visit he conducted a self-help experiment with all the students and teachers. Like his visit, the impact of the experiment was short-lived. What was the experiment? And why did it fail? Let’s explore it here.

In 1904, Gandhi had established an Ashram in South Africa in a town called Phoenix about 14 miles from Durban. In 1915, when Gandhi returned to India many of his Phoenix Farm associates followed him as well. It so happened that the Phoenix party arrived before Gandhi arrived and found a home in Shantiniketan. After visiting Gokhale in Pune and meeting relatives in Rajkot and Porbandar, Gandhi proceeded to Shantiniketan.

The phoenix family had been assigned a separate quarters at Shantiniketan. Maganlal Gandhi, Gandhi’s close associate in Phoenix Farm, was their head, and he had made it his business to see that all the rules of the Phoenix Ashram should be scrupulously observed. Among Gandhi’s friends Andrews and Pearson were also present.

Soon after his arrival Gandhi mixed with the teachers and students and engaged them in a discussion on self-help. He suggested to the teachers that, if they and the boys dispensed with the services of paid cooks and cooked their food themselves, it would enable the teachers to control the kitchen from the point of view of the boys’ physical and moral health. Also it would give lessons on self-help to the students. Some nodded their head tentatively, some appeared more enthusiastic. Gandhi invited Rabindranath to give his opinion. He said he didn’t mind it provided the teachers were favorable. To the boys, he said, “The experiment contains the key to Swaraj”.

Thus started an experiment involving the entire community of 125 boys and their teachers. Boys were running the kitchen, handling the garbage, cleaning the latrine, sweeping the ground and as Gandhi’s biographer Louis Fischer puts it, “forsaking the muse for the monk”. Pearson was looking after the cooking part and Nagenbabu was looking after the sanitary cleaning. It was difficult for the students. Some began to show early fatigue. Cleaning of vessels was especially tedious. A group of students played sitar next to the kitchen so as to make the task feel less cumbersome.

Gandhi had to leave Shantiniketan abruptly to attend Gokhale’s funeral. And the experiment was stopped after some time. As Gandhi notes in his autobiography, “I am of the opinion that the famous institution lost nothing by having conducted the experiment for a brief interval, and some of the experiences gained could not but be of help to the teachers.”

Gandhi and Tagore were united by their love for India and mankind. However, they were very different personalities. In the words of Louis Fischer, “Gandhi was the wheat field and Tagore the rose garden, Gandhi was the working arm and Tagore the singing voice, Gandhi was frugal and Tagore was prodigal”. At Shantiniketan, Tagore’s pupils sang and danced, wove garlands, painted sunrise and made life sweet and beautiful. Gandhi’s experiment essentially turned the place upside down. It is no surprise, it was shortlived. I feel it is a great lesson to understand what culture-unfriendly intervention is like.

Related articles:

Mahatma Gandhi and the heart and soul of systematic innovation

4 types of innovation leaders (Gandhi, Jamsetji Tata, Vikram Sarabhai, George Fernandes)

Sources:

An autobiography, M. K. Gandhi (part V, chapter IV, Shantiniketan)

The life of Mahatma Gandhi, Louis Fischer, HarperCollins

Photo: mkgandhi.org (Gandhi in 1915)

Lessons from ATIRA’s early efforts at innovating in textile mills in Ahmedabad

Eighty years after Ranchhodlal Chhotalal founded the first textile mill in 1861, Ahmedabad’s mill owners were still dependent on Manchester experts for technical guidance. By 1940s the industry had grown to run eleven million spindles and 195,000 looms. Finally the mill owners under the championship of Kasturbhai Lalbhai established Ahmedabad Textile Industry’s Research Association (ATIRA) in 1947, a co-operative research institute modeled on the lines of research associations in Britain. Scientific experiments at the lab lead to process and product improvement ideas that promised savings and productivity gains to the tune of several crores. However, the ideas were met with huge resistance from the technicians and the mill owners themselves. What could be the reason? Could it be possible that the early interventions were not robust? Let’s explore.

It all started with Kasturbhai asking Vikram Sarabhai to study the structures of industrial research institutes in the UK and Europe with a view of implementing them at home. Vikram was just back from his second stint at Cambridge. He was an apt choice because he was a trained scientist and one of their own – the son of one of the city’s leading mill owners. ATIRA, India’s first co-operative industrial research lab, was started with an initial contribution of Rs. 50 lakh from Ahmedabad mill owners. The initial staff of four – a statistician, a social psychologist, a high-polymer chemist and a physical chemist – was a unique cross-functional team. Vikram was the ring-master. Over the next few years he hired seventy people, most of them young like himself, with no experience of textile manufacturing.

By February 1952, a pilot mill had come up equipped with machinery and facilities for simulating the actual workings of a mill. Studies began to tackle the problems which were assumed to be endemic till then by the industry. One study confirmed that low productivity in spinning was due to inadequate maintenance of the machinery and absence of process controls. Another study proposed methods for reducing cotton wastage. Tamarind kernel powder, an agricultural waste product, was tested as a substitute for starch. Suggestions were made for improving ginning and weaving techniques, decreasing humidification costs, conserving energy, and so on. An estimated Rs. 20 crore, much of it in foreign exchange, was to be saved these innovations over the next two decades. And what was the result? Vikram’s methods were openly attacked in board rooms and technicians in the mills were convinced that ATIRA staffers were spies for the management. What went wrong? After all it was the same mill owners who had funded the initiative.

Well, it is not hard to see that these early interventions weren’t culture-friendly and hence non-robust. First, Vikram and ATIRA challenged the conventional gut-feel based decision making of mill owners and advocated scientific methods which were totally alien to them. Second, it emphasized independent research to home grown ideas from within the mills. It is hard to believe that there would be no bright spots in the form of ideas and practices in the century old industry. ATIRA could have identified and amplified these as a starting point. This would have built mutual trust and prepared the mills folks for accepting more radical ideas. Third, all the ATIRA staffers came from outside the textile industry and hence it became hard for them to find champions inside. ATIRA could have encouraged participation from technicians.

Over the next few years Vikram & ATIRA learnt about ‘the human problems involved in introducing change’ with significant contribution from Dr. Kamla Chowdhry, who was the head of industrial psychology division at ATIRA.

Source: Vikram Sarabhai, a life by Amrita Shah, Penguin, 2007