Sujavna 2:18

The clock on my wall shows it is 15 minutes past noon on the 29^th of April 2012.

And I am desperately trying not to succumb to the temptation of writing about the miserable two days that I spent last week - attending what was meant to be an internal strategy conference aimed at helping my organisations’ teams to have greater ambition, deliver more excellence and generate more impact - and what it finally turned out, which was, at best, a reaffirmation of team-spirit!

So how does an organisation institutionalise the development of leaders who can inspire? How can it realize in a timely manner, that there are leadership issues! Where can it learn that 360 degree leadership does not absolve its Board-level leaders from performing as leaders? Is there a right way to re-engineering leadership, and how does an organisation ensure that such changes provide sustainable improvements across all spokes of a balanced scorecard of performance against objectives? Who “bells the cat” if the organisation is not in a crisis-mode? Does “whistle-blowing” really help, especially, when leaders are perceived through much of the rank and file as “nincompoops”, but a culture of survival dictates the internal communication ethos?

And how where and how does innovation step in, in such environments? Can any come from inside the organisation, or will this have to be externally driven? Whether externally-driven or internally-evolved, what are the risks that have will need to be managed? And to sum up all these questions, do we have enough of case studies that can illustrate the cost-benefits for organisations that have gone through innovations that changed, for them, the entire leadership paradigms and helped them move into a new orbit of success?

As I ponder on these questions, I know that I have a lot of work cut out for me to just understand the basics of leadership challenges in today’s world.

Sujavna 2:17

It’s 1030am on 22^nd April 2012.

As I had promised last Sunday, let me share with you how I did make an effort at using logic and counter-logic to direct my actions during the week that went past.

The first opportunity to pursue this line of analysis was the unexpected “puncture” of one of the tyres of my car, just as I reached my office early on Monday morning. It was a day that was scheduled for an entire day of back-to-back meetings from 8am until 5 pm at the workplace. Conventional logic, suggested that, having reached my office and parked my car safely, and because it was very early in the morning for any garage to be open, I should go about my work scheduled commitments and leave the change of the tyre to the next day – after all I could call a taxi to take me home in the evening; counter-logic, though, demanded that with the rest of the week also requiring me to be reasonably mobile for various meetings and social visits, the most sensible option was to call up a local garage or my car-service provider to send someone to change the tyre and instruct me as to what to do with the damaged tyre – even if that means that I may have to be disturbed in the midst of a meeting to receive the mechanic and provide instructions. I opted for the latter and called my car-service provider, who turned out to be very efficient and customer-friendly. Not only did he send a mechanic to change the tyres within 15 minutes of my call, but his mechanic was well-trained to do the job without needing more than 3 minutes of my total time to provide instructions. The surprise element was to become aware that the car-service company operated 24x7, have the capabilities to respond within 15 minutes of a customer-service order – all of which were not a part of my service contract, and I could come to know this as I had opted to pursue a counter-logic option. (It is nowhere my case that counter-logic always provides a better solution, but counter-logic will lead to understanding the dimensions of an issue and a solution better, and also bring out unknown facts about the environments that we take for granted).

Hope you also had a great week and are having a great weekend.           

Sujavna 2:16

It is 12 noon on 15^th April 2012.

Hello there, how is this Sunday turning out for you? Is it yet another Sunday for you and you are doing the same things that you do every Sunday or is it an extra-ordinary Sunday, where your day is moving along in directions that you did not anticipate?

In either case, have you wondered (and better still, acted!) on how you could turn this Sunday (and perhaps all of next week) into a period in which you use some lateral thinking and achieve a lot more, but the additional bits of achievement, have all positively given you, not only “a feel good factor”, but also “satisfaction of using an analytical process of logic: counter-logic”.

If you have, I would be delighted to hear about your experience. And, I promise, I will share my experience in my next blog.

Wishing you a great Sunday, and an even greater week ahead.

Sujavna 2:15

It is 0730pm hrs on 8^th April 2012

As the aromas of a wonderful meal that is being prepared in the kitchen waft into the living room and catalyse my cravings for a delicious supper, my mind also wanders to the cacophony of ideas that were being bandied about at a conference last week, by some of the leading bankers and politicians of India as their singular contribution to institutionalising financial inclusion in India. What was singular about the whole cacophony was that there was not a shred of evidence that the captains of Indian public sector banking industry and their political bosses are attempting to demonstrate some innovation in their approach. Nothing more than a push factor towards registering new accounts and not a shred of evidence of considering how to instigate and use the pull factor.

And so I wonder:

As a child I was educated

To believe of just one divide.

‘Twas an arithmetic operation that denoted

How to share and put aside.

Now when I am old

I am being told -

There are other divides

Economic, Digital, Communal, Lingual, Political, Financial

Yet to find some common sides

They offer little hope for anyone at all

But De Bonos boys will with their Hat

Generate the multipliers to annul the Divisors

And make the world indeed become Flat.

Hope your Easter weekend is turning out to be a great one.

Sujavna 2:14

It is 11am on 01 April 2012.

And I have been indeed very pleased to have become aware in the last few days that there is a National Innovation Centre (NInC)  and that this Centre is developing  Cluster Innovation Centres (CIC) across eight industrial clusters in India. Mr Sam Pitroda, Innovation Adviser to the Indian PM is credited to be the brain behind these developments, I understand.

And yet, a disconcerting ambivalence keeps nagging me – would these CICs really spur innovation across these eight clusters? My ambivalence is a reaction to the stated objectives of these efforts; while facilitating incubation centres is a stated objective, the others appear to be a rehash of simple productivity objectives, marketing objectives, business development objectives. Even the methodology of partnerships (with the likes of CSIR, ILFS, MSME Foundation, CII and FICCI) reeks of a paucity of ideas and a penchant dislike for risk-taking. And finally the approach once again is top-down in its prescriptive model rather than a bottoms-up.

So what is my point? It is that the NInC and the CIC have simply forgotten that Innovation starts at their doorsteps. Where are the innovations in the CIC approach, in its operational models, in the partnership paradigms, in the performance targeting and monitoring and in turning the whole environment of innovation upside down - from Innovation being a operational efficiency tool and/or a business  success strategy to one of creating and sustaining an affordable ecosystem of strengths that a whole community of value-enhancers (not just supply chains) in economic clusters benefit from?

And why are CICs designed to be inward looking or just insular as far as their impacts are concerned? If we acknowledge that today’s local cluster economy is increasingly interlinked to a global village (market-place), then isn’t it time that the CICs also look at collaborating with other CIC equivalents across the world?

I guess I will be cogitating on these and allied matters in the coming weeks and will be writing more on this. Hope you are having a great weekend and preparing to begin the new financial year in full gusto.