What's management theme of 'the path'

This Document was provided to the Hub of Operational Excellence at

http://www.'The Path'.com to initiate the co-creation of the Path. 1

Copyrights 2013 © Shridhar Lolla. All Rights Reserved. This document was shared as a part of the preview process with the members of www.time2change.co.in on 08Jun2012. It is now revised in retrospect on 03Apr2013 to let the prospective readers of The Path know the central theme of the book. Distribution or reproduction of this document in part or full in any form requires explicit reference to the title and the copyrights holder.

The Theme What's core of the book

'The Path: Leveraging Operations in a Complex and Chaotic World'

The genre of the Book-'The Path' is Business Management and the sub-genre is Organizational Transformation.

Organizational Transformation is about bringing change by an order of magnitude in the way an organization works, which leads to substantial business benefits. The operational practice of significantly improving performance of an organization on an ongoing basis is called Operational Excellence.

The focus of the Book is in bringing transformation through better Operations Management. And, it presents a saga of getting onto the journey of Operational Excellence.

If you have a look at case-studded management books on Organizational Transformation, you would perhaps, notice a repeated pattern in the flow of the content.

The books often start with a situation of an organization in dire straits (as if, almost about to collapse). And then, there are anecdotal events that lead to significant improvements in the performance of the organization. Subsequently, there is a theory that fits snugly into the sequence of events. And finally, there is a prescription of a new management theory to transform organizations.

Books after books follow the above flow. And, so you have hundreds of books and so many different approaches, each claiming its supremacy in dramatically improving organizational performance from the brink of oblivion.

Why do these books start with the narration of failures?

Because, Transformation involves significant Change, not only in the way things are done but also in the behavior and culture of the organization; it involves people. Thus, making Change happen and stick is not easy; and there is often a lot of resistance to change. A vast majority of the community engaged in Organizational Transformation, therefore, finds and believes that most of the Organizations embrace Change only when they are under Crisis.

The only other way (than being driven by Crisis), organizations have been found to transform is because of a good Leadership. And, there are several case studies on Leaders as change agents.

However, in today's connected world, the business environment has become increasingly complex. Due to which, any significant improvement initiative by an organization, despite having best leadership takes painfully long time, exhausts organizational resources, disrupts ongoing business and costs huge money… and at the end, the resistance to change becomes even stronger.

Perhaps, it makes sense to search out for the next level of concept in Organizational Transformation. It means an approach of transformation that is suitable in today's ever changing

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and unpredictable dynamic world of business. Such an approach must give quick results that are sustainable, without taking too much of risk and without being too expensive.

Within the realm of Operational Excellence, a significant part of the world thinks that improving Operations is about focusing on cost, while another not so small part of the world thinks that it is about improving quality. Such thinking prevails even though most of the managers know that Quality, Cost, Speed and Flexibility must 'together' improve, for an organization to be competitive in today's business environment.

Managers face enormous difficulties, when they actually get into implementing their improvement programs. When they try to improve one parameter, the other deteriorates, pulling down (or neutralizing possible improvement in) overall performance of the organization. And, when the other parameter is improved another one deteriorates. Thus, although at any moment, one or other parameter seems to improve, at no moment the overall performance of the organization seems to improve proportional to the effort. Thus, organizations keep hopping from one improvement programs to another, only to find their employees exhausted….'scarred and scared' with even modest improvement attempts of the management. Of course, it takes toll of the trust between people within the organization.

Irrespective of historical and current performance, today, Managers are in a hurry to improve performance levels of their organizations on an ongoing basis. The question of why to improve performance does not exist. But trying to approach improvement initiatives the same way again and again, does not take them anywhere.

The Theme

The subject of the Book-'The Path' is about the search to improve performance of organizations on an ongoing basis. It is about making Operational Excellence central to core strategy of organizations and building an Operations Centric business model. It is about how an organization (its people) builds its own path of Operational Excellence.

'The Path' recognizes that organizations operate in complex environments and have limited resources. Hence, trying to improve everything, everywhere and every time is not the best approach. Further, by recognizing the ever changing and unpredictable nature of the business environment, it considers 'the time required to cause the change' as a significant competitive parameter for today's organizations. It presents how by using 'responsiveness' as an anchor metric, an organization can move quickly from one level of performance to another higher level on a continuous basis; without exhausting its costly resources and without taking too much risk. In doing so, not just 'responsiveness' but every other metrics of the organization improves significantly.

What is the Book not about?

It is not about prescription of a tool or a technique. (At least it is not intended to be.)

Rather, it acknowledges that the available tools and techniques of achieving significant improvement in performance are, worth of what they are meant for. In this regard, the book is about the journey of operational teams marching on the path of operational excellence; and discovering tools and techniques on the way.

Where does the content of the Book come from?

It was mentioned in the upload 'How Did it Start!' that writing of the book was triggered by the uneasiness created within a team meeting by the response of a senior executive. This specific non-trivial incident might appear somewhere in the content of the Book. Several different incidents




mentioned in the Book, actually took place repeatedly in different organizations during last two decades. Across organizations, only specifics of the incidents changed but their nature remained same. These incidents took place in Steel Plants, Capital Goods factories, Software Development Centers, BPO centers, Heavy Engineering Factories, Construction Sites, Renewable Energy Projects, Distribution Centers, Service Centers, R&D Centers, Printing Shop, Electronics Development Office and Pharmaceutical Plants.

It just happened that I was involved in a large initiative in the Pharma Industry, when the Book was being written. During the initiative, I got the opportunity to observe and work on these generic incidences for over 1500 days. And, it made sense to build the content of the Book within the setting of a Pharma Company. In the hindsight, I feel that the background of the Pharma Industry (Operations in Formulation) suits the nature of the book, since the involved operational steps are just a few, although the challenges of ever improving Operations are as daunting as in any other industry. Thus, it helps in keeping the content maintain a balanced presentation on organizational transformation that is applicable to most of the industries.

So, is the book about practices in large and established organizations?

Yes, but the substrata of the Book do not just come from the best practices of established organizations. Actually, its content is deeply influenced by my working with Start-ups (new businesses) for over a decade.

Why do I bring startups here?

A Startup business is inherently resource constrained and is borne in highly risky and dangerously unpredictable environments. And, we also know that for established organizations the business environment has become ever more difficult and unpredictable.

So, while established organizations are 'forced' to sustain themselves in an ever changing and unpredictable environment, Startups 'choose' to operate in such environments. A Startup business happens to be the place, where one could see organizational problems at a very fundamental level and observe the way entrepreneurs use their native ingenuity to solve them. Thus, there is a good possibility for large organizations to pick a few rules of the game from Startup organizations.

For example, entrepreneur driven organizations tend to be very responsive and agile by nature. And, we said that established organizations need to be more responsive in dealing with today's competition. It means that established organizations trying to be competitive in the current business environment could learn a few aspects of 'responsiveness' from Startups.

Since, Operations is synonymous to Actions, across the Book you would find continuous improvements driven by the behavior of 'learning by doing', where 'hypotheses drive actions', 'actions drive results' and 'results precede policies' … which we believe is the behavior needed in today's environment…

We find that the specific behavior of entrepreneurs to be Focused and Responsive in building a sustainable business becomes an important reference for the behavior for established organizations in the current business environment. In essence, the content of the book is also about making established organizations nimble like start-ups.

In reality, every direction to improvements mentioned in the Book was first tested in startup environment (living Laboratory) before it was applied in larger organizations.

What does it mean for the realm of Operational Excellence?




Operational excellence is not about achieving certain results with certain tools or techniques. It is about integrating strategy and processes with people and culture of the organization. It is about making the behavioral change in people, teams and organization, so that improvements are sustainable (ongoing).

When I was discussing about the Path with one of the co-creators, Vaibhav (now responsible for operations of two key facilities of a conglomerate), he extended the perspective, "It may be beyond being small or large organization. On an absolute basis, smaller organizations may have less resource and capabilities compared to larger organizations. But on a relative basis, both types of organizations always have similar levels of resource and capability challenges compared to demand posed on them. The fundamental situations do not change."

Then, he said, "Fundamental principles of business remain the same, the tools and methodologies change with organizations, in time and space. And therefore, organizations must build the capability of improving implementation of these principles better, on an ongoing basis. It is about how your capability compares with the demand posed on your organization. And what you do about it."

So is it a case study book with best practices?

It is not about best practices. It is about concepts and behaviors, which make an organization to run sustainable improvement programs. It is about how an organization by itself could figure out its own ever improving practices.

So, is it a typical self study and descriptive management book?

Operations is about what we do on day-to-day and hour-to-hour basis, when we chase a work order, process order or sales order or a project task. Whatever may be the amount of scientific logic we bring into the Operational Systems, on day to day basis intuitions and emotions overwhelm us. The book is therefore, written in a semi novel format where different professional characters work together in an operational environment that challenges them continuously to ever improve their organization. It is not an out-right business novel because at the end, business results matter and, processes and behaviors must be aligned to deliver these results.

The book is essentially for practitioners of operations; hence it is light on semantics and management jargon; and uses native operational language.

Here are the pointers for sharing your views:

1. What prevents a majority of organizations from sustaining improvement initiatives?

2. What are the emerging concepts of Operational Excellence?

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Note: By improvement, we would mean Significant Improvement.

Date: First Posting 8th Jun 2012

Current Posting: 03 Apr 2013

What's management theme of 'the path'

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Transcript of What's management theme of 'the path'