Relationships – Revisit, Review, Relate

The web of relationships creates the networking required for success in problem solving. Great relationship with stake holders makes the process of achieving ‘stretch’ goals interesting and exciting.

So make this day for 3Rs – Revisit, Review and Relate.

Revisit the mission statement of your company and review the progress of the projects with special reference to building and enhancing relationships;

· Within the commando teams

· Between innovation spirals.

· Between the steering committee and the spirals

Make sure that there is no turf protection.

Know the Customer – Face to Face

Knowing the customer is a long-term process. Keeping your finger on the pulse of customer trends can ensure consistent profits. Here are some of the systems that can help build and understand lifetime relationships with the customer.

Interviews and focus groups can give a lot of information. They can help customers participate in reinventing processes and products. Management by walking around (MBWA) is the hands on way to find out what the customer feels day to day. Research and surveys give you information. But customer aspirations and fashions change. Those who are not in close touch with their customers may be too late to react to new trends. Barrack Obama became President of the United States by contacting 5 million people on the internet. He collected far more funding than powerful old timers like Mc Cain and Hillary Clinton.

Raw data needs to be interpreted in terms of customer needs. The way McDonald’s responded to change in attitude to health and concerns about obesity by providing low fat and salad meals shows a proactive attitude to change in customer need. This naturally leads to protecting profits.

The concern for environment is another issue where the auto industry has to take customer focussed decisions. During a economic down turn does a big gas guzzling car become almost vulgar? Are people ready for electric cars? Is the Rs. 1 lakh Tata Nano poised to grab world markets?

Study the needs hierarchy. Is it true that on the brink of the economic precipice people are more concerned about surviving than about impressing the neighbours? This is a whole new economics of recession.

Reflect on your findings. Study broad demographic changes where should a global major invest? In India with its largest number of young people or China with its aging population? How should Indian companies change their strategies to deal with the explosive youth power?

Explore the Customer’s Point of View Within the Teams

At regular intervals, it is important to revisit products and processes to course correct them to meet the changing needs of customers. The revolution of rising expectations among customers makes the introduction of new features essential to maintaining the competitive advantage.

Get the team to address the following questions and integrate the ideas into their problem analysis:

· Which requirements of the customer are not being met?

· The revolution of rising aspirations is constantly throwing up new customer needs. What are they?

· Which of those needs present the most valuable opportunities?

· Who are the customers in this category who are ignored by existing players?

· Why are they non-users today?

· How can we remove the barriers and make them users?

· How can we keep costs low?

· How can we create a more efficient system of distribution and delivery?

· How can we network to ensure efficient co-creation?

· How to make profits from the start?

Henry Ford famously said, ‘If I had listened to customers, I would have given them a faster horse’. The customer, by himself, may not know what is possible. It is only a partnership between manufacturing, marketing and customers that could help create the product for the unknown future.

Teams need to integrate what they hear with what their vision is. They need to listen to customers and to themselves synergizing the two. This is the day to discuss the customer needs with each other internally.

Keep in Touch with Customers

Customer creativity enables the company to negotiate new products with customers. It is the kind of process that reinvents the future. For instance, customers were not even aware of the possibility of a Walkman. Only an intense negotiation between top management, manufacturing and customers could have created it.

Customer interaction can be induced by the following:

· Management by Walking About (MBWA) is the most appropriate way to ensure that the customer’s voice is built into products and processes.

· Advisory committees of opinion leaders can be an effective method of keeping one’s finger on the pulse of public opinion.

· Focus group interviews to enable customers to explore ideas with skilled facilitators, trained to go below the surface of suggestions and complaints.

The customer is not a passive recipient of your product but a creative participant. Listen and invent with him.

Understand the Environment of Creativity

The value system of a company can provide the environment for creativity. People can do their best if their work is: ‘Good for the country, employees and customers. ‘Or as the Honda mission statement puts is ‘Joy to the employee, joy to the customer and joy to the country’.

The typical corporate atmosphere is competitive and ruthless. People rush to satisfy their selfish desires for glory and the limelight. Anyone standing in the way is viewed with anger and hatred. In such an environment, the individual uses fifty per cent of energy protecting his ego and his turf. So much energy is wasted on one-upmanship and putting others down. The ability of the group to function is therefore severely compromised.

It is important to understand that we can have a win-win environment. In such an environment everyone will be willing to take risks and go through the process of failures. He knows that in an experiment, there are no failures - only feedback.

Actions that make you creative.

Listen * Paraphrase * Stay loose until rigor counts * Protect vulnerable beginnings * Take on faith * Temporarily suspend disbelief * Assume it can be done * Share the burden of proof * Connect with accept * Be open to join * Build on * Speculate along with * Share the

risk * Set up win /wins * Make it “no lose” * Support confusion/uncertainty * Acknowledge Credit * Value learning from mistakes * Be attentive * Be interested * Show approval * Give early support * Eliminate status/rank * Be optimistic * See the value in * Assume valuable implications * Take responsibility for understanding * waste no energy evaluating early.

Empowerment Is the Result of whole hearted participation.

If the teams learn the secret of positive fields or mindspace, you can improve your Happiness Quotient. You can also get the best out of others. Making members of your team wholehearted participants rather than indifferent spectators is the key to organizational success.

Wholeheartedness is a state of full presence. This state involves complete enjoyment of a task. Participation, with full commitment of body and mind, is irresistible. I become wholehearted when I give all of myself to an interaction or task. These interactions create a field, which allows me to be present in the moment, without defensiveness. The most fundamental characteristics of a positive field are that it quells anxiety and produces feelings of acceptance and a feeling of being affirmed. It is like walking into a room full of people who love and accept you, unconditionally. It is a feeling of being meaningful and safe – this frees up energy for connecting

An important constituent of the positive field is affirmations. An affirmation is a verbal, tonal or non-verbal act of appreciation. A compliment can be a verbal hug. A verbal hug can replace a thousand words.

Think about the analogy of a TV monitor - depending on which button you press, you get a different image. So too, depending on the environment, a different person emerges from the self, where different personalities lie coiled like snakes waiting for the snake charmer’s call. Some places access the highest and noblest self while others access the beast, the meanest.

Set and Share Your Goals

Work-life is so pervasive that often all other aspects of the individual wither away. A key challenge, when companies are tracking stretch goals, is maintaining work-life balance. Top management would also benefit from attending this presentation. Let each person set their personal goals for the year and share it with a friend, who will work with them for the next 90 days. Let them become familiar wi@ 8@\prants of their lives.

Family, Worklife

Personal, Social

Divide the group into four teams and ask them to make a presentation on each of the four areas. The suggestions can be circulated to everyone.

Here are some key suggestions:

· Can Saturday be a day when child-friendly facilities are provided? A facilitator creates a Kid Power day at ICICI.

· How can families be involved to support organizational goals?

· Can social life be improved by activities related to corporate social responsibility? Try getting everyone to participate in a tree planting day.

· Can the team be taught yoga and meditation?

· Is a corporate gymnasium or membership for one feasible? Are year-long matches (cricket or kho kho) a possibility?

· Can a counselor be on call or can volunteer staff members be trained as counselors?

· How can the company enable individual talents to flower? Will a monthly ‘Talent Evening’ work?