No Fear of Non-Performance

I strongly believe that "No fear of non-performance" in any organisation is directly proportional to no motivation or low motivation for performers. When the times for IT were great and all were busy with projects buzzing I felt less time was being spent on identifying the performance and non-performance. This resulted in some decisions which though were not wise but still worked as the business was great and even one or two slips could be overlooked which is not the case now.

I tried to analyze the reasons for No fear of Non-Performance and the one which looked directly onto my face was No definition of performance. Who to blame for this - organisation, managers or the employee. For sure it cannot be the employee and organisation is nothing more than the people so it means that the managers themselves are responsible for no fear of non-performance of their subordinates. Again as I always say it flows from the top. But are the managers not willing to do this i.e. set good performance criteria; sure they would love to it, so where is the issue. For this analysis we will need to move a step up - have the good performance criteria been defined for the manager himself, if not then I am not sure how he can set the goals for his team and he may still set them but cannot be sure that his and his teams goals are aligned.

Above could be one reason the other I can think of is lack of willingness or competence to challenge non-performance. It is very essential to challenge not only the team but ourselves too. Customer for sure will ask for performance hence if the manager does not challenge non-performers then the customer will have to do it each time, which I do not think is a great idea.

Coming back to the point of No fear of non performance being directly proportional to low or no motivation for performance, this is so true. End of the day all want reward and appreciation for good work but when the good and bad are equally appreciated then that is actually a disaster and a negative motivation for the performers.

Please do not try to read non-performance as making mistakes, making mistakes is fine and a step in learning process. Non-performance is failing to meet the desired expectation level. Even non-performance is not the problem as long as the people have the right attitude to be able to realize the need to move into the performance zone. The danger is "No Fear of Non Performance" or "Unwillingness to move to performance Zone" and the lack of clarity to define difference between "Performance and Non Performance".

Feel The Pain

For us to help a person in pain is to first to feel the pain and then understands where it hurts.

The major issue today is that everyone is ready to provide the cure without even realizing where the pain is leave alone empathizing with the person. We have readymade solution and answers to all the problems in the world. If you really want to help another person then firstly put yourself in his/her shoes and feel where it bites. Many times what people say as the cause is just the symptom and offering cure to a symptom cannot be a lasting solution.

I have been with the customer in crisis time in multiple situation and most of the time they say nothing is working out. Our people rightly say we have offered solution and the improvement is showing but the customer is still not satisfied. Let us take a moment to see what is wrong here, is the customer wrong - no way, as he knows his business best and if he says he is not happy we got to believe he is not happy. On the other hand we got to believe the SLA indicators clearly showing improvement, then where is the gap. The GAP my friend is that you did not feel the pain and the customer could not express it explicitly.

Most of the time during crisis situation what the customer wants is not the solution but your understaning of the problem and when this is missing you cannot have anything but a frustrated customer. Think of yourself complaining about a problem and someone giving a solution with you beliveing that the person did not even get the basic problem right. Can you be satisfied with the solution even if it is correct. No Way and so is our customer. He wants a patient listening and is more satisfied with the conviction that you have understood the issue independent of whether you have a solution at this time or not.

This could be in a family situation too at times you cannot offer solution to the complex family issues but a patient hearing to your wife helps her beyond the actual solution same is true with the office colleagues and friends.

What I want to leave is with the thought that try and hear the pain, feel it before jumping to a solution and also my personal belief is that all problems are not as complex as they appear and so are the solutions, just by outlining the problem and the pain right you would have reached 75% closer to an easy solution to complex problems.

Just feel the pain before answering it...

Unlearn to Learn

I have been thinking for a long time to start a blog. The reason was simple - for one I wanted to put down my thoughts in a place to myself revisit and reason them out secondly I wanted to invite views on the way I am thinking.

I strongly believe learning is everywhere it is just that you need to have the attitude to unlearn. Yes the first thing needed to adapt to learning is to unlearn and the second most important is to believe that the person you are trying to learn from has something to share and give which will be useful for you. Many times we think we know much and we challenge the understanding of the people whom we are trying to learn from, the learning cannot happen this way.

One of the simplest examples I wish to share is the learning I got from my little daughter, she was four then and I got a small book shelf for her, I went to her room and started to put it on the wall. She told me that the height I was placing it was not correct but as it happens I told her I knew what I was doing. I reasoned it out by saying that it was at my shoulder height which is the way it should be, she immediately said that if this was supposed to be her shelf and she had to use it then it should be at her shoulder height and not mine...and she was right!!

This is where I felt the need to unlearn and add different perspective of looking at how we do things. May be there is a better way and a teacher close by, lets keep our eyes open...