Knowledge Center

Practise the same game

Image credit: Y1997xf11 under CC BY-SA 3.0

The term 'team' strikes a chord well in today's context and resonates well across all genre. It is all about collaboration and relationship. It is all about enjoying the journey along with performance getting delivered. It is also about celebration and taking care of your teammates.

A team consisting of super talented, highly qualified members having hardworking attitude performs well in an organization. Operations head is working to increase the capacity of products of portfolio 'A'. Marketing manager is on the way to expand the market of products of portfolio 'B'. Business development expert is trying hard to develop new products in category termed as 'C'. Research in-charge is developing new process to reduce the cost of products of portfolio 'D'. Recruiting specialist is quite busy in recruiting persons for new technology yet to be absorbed by the organization. All, undoubtedly are working, to the best of their capabilities , but will they achieve the goal? Not sure! Let's park the question.

Read another scenario. Ravindra is practicing football. John practices cricket. Mathew puts energy to learn tactics of Kabaddi. The leader Mukesh gets engrossed in playing Hockey. All belong to same team and have to participate in Hockey tournament this season. What will be the outcome? You will agree that there's more probability of losing, as all the players had practiced different games.

Now, you have got 'the answer' for the performance of the above organization. Players of your team have distinct unmatched strengths and the leader has to gel the strengths of each teammate to get the desired result. Team is superior to any teammate. For achieving the best results, make sure that each member of the team practices the same game and work towards a single goal.

Department or Team – what will we need?

Image credit: The team by StaraBlazkova under CC BY-SA 3.0

Since the concept of industrial age and evolution of modern management, every company has evolved its own department structure. A company has various departments: Engineering, Projects, Purchase, R&D, Production, Logistics, Finance, Accounts, Human Resources, Administration, Quality Control, Vendor Development, Quality Assurance, New Business, New Product, After-sales Service, Promotion, CSR, Legal, Patent, Technical Services, etc.

Each department consists of people having common set of profile. You will find Cost Accountants or Chartered Accountants in Finance. You will find MBA-HR, MSW, MHRM, MLW in Human Resources. You will find BE/BTech, Diploma Engineers, ME/MTech in Engineering department. “The common educational qualification makes the department” that is the basic principle. Hence, all people in the department are trained by same set of theories, experiences and mindsets. Conventional problems can be solved by set of rules, theories, machines, policies, algorithms, analysis or Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). That's working fine.

Then, how to tackle complex, non-routine and novel problems?

Department may fail, but team can succeed. Team can consists of people from varied background and a single goal. People from HR, Journalism, Copywriting, Navy, Engineering, former entrepreneur, former bureaucrat, digital media, researchers, procurement can form the team. This team will have real diverse background, different mindsets, unbiased approaches and fresh thoughts. Current or future complex problems will be solved easily and effectively delivering miraculous outcome by team. We may call it ‘Cross Functional Team’.

So let department do depart and welcome the TEAM !

Play with ideas to be (more) interestinng

Image credit: Park bench by layered under CC BY-SA 3.0

A beautiful face with a boring mind is boring. A beautiful body with a boring mind is also boring. A fit and healthy body with a boring mind is boring too. A clever mind can also be boring.

People spend a huge amount of time, trouble, care, worry and wealth on becoming or remaining beautiful. How much time do they spend on becoming interesting or becoming more interesting?

Part of being interesting is the ability to ‘play’ with ideas. Provided thing are not claimed as absolute truth and provided they are not accepted as absolute truth, there is the 'fun' of play.

It is what happens in your mind that makes you interesting. It is how you express what happens in your mind that makes you interesting. It is what you cause to happen in the mind of a listener that makes you interesting. (Connect these sentences with film director, RJ, story writer, product designer; and read again these lines)

The mind is one’s playground. It is one’s own garden. One play as he/she wishes.

It’s time to play. Game is always on.

PTS

Image credit: Thomas Nugent under Creative Commons License

Bringing new idea is not enough, it has to be taken to market to derive benefit or impact. To develop cutting edge in today's age, involvement of many (virtually all) people is highly essential. It would be of great risk to assign responsibility of innovation to handful of persons. It needs to be cultivated in the culture of organization in such a way so that everyone reiterates 'It-is-my-baby'. People of organization have to believe in PTS. Now, PTS has two apt meanings. First, Problem to Solution. One needs to change the focus from problem to solution. Organization does not need highly qualified and well-paid people to draw attention to unanalyzed problems. It is the era of bringing many alternative solutions to problem(s). The second meaning is about setting transparent, curious and questioning culture through punchline 'Puchcho to sahi'. No data or information is the property of any individual. They must be available in zero-time to people to analyse, interpret and correlate to churn new ideas. Assumption of not to ask or resource constraints kills many ideas before they can germinate.