NASSCOM EMERGE Community Catalyst for Growth of Emerging & Start-Up companies

I think what is extremely important in taking any enterprise upwads is a strong and clear-thinking leadership with another layer of thorough professionals to execute business strategies in the Company.  Inability to hire right kind of resources or hire resources at senior positions who really do not fit-in into the role is another self-created pitfall.  CEOs/CTOs  should hire people with superior business acumen without the fear of displeasing some people in the bargain. 

Clearly conveying the vision, mission and business objectives of the Company in a most simplied manner is another area that would help.  Fear or inability to maintain clear communication upto the appropriate downward levels does no good to an enterprise.  Consider the core team and employees as business partners let them feel proud of the fact.

Success and failure are a journey and not destination ! Leadership at all levels can take the co to whichever way they like.

prem

Challenge and dilemma seen often is that

-every top manager feels he is strong and clear in his leadership

- Owners/ CxOs recruit the best ( what they feel is best -- means self comfort...)

- every recruit at all levels are justified by stakeholders and power be

- each sr management do always do things right, as they know of

- they state that every employee is owner of the co and partner ...

Despite that we end up with low hanging fruits, often justified as 'best for now', 'greater things tomorrow' you can not afford to say that it is all simply a journey....and not a destination....

High Performance and Big ticket achievemnts with regular cash flow is a MUST and a Goal........otherwise who will pay us monthly salary.....

We all know US customers pay to some USD30 per hour and to some USD 200 p h. Same classmates and same nativety and same social background........High Performance is essential for better profits to the employer orgn and in turn to individuals.

 It is not a JOURNEY but a DESTINATION and everyday Goal....

Hi Rajendra,

I think you have touched a raw nerve in terms of discussing productivity. To be really productive, one need to be in a stress free mind-frame and should be able to pen-down and act-upon ideas. What we see mostly is that people around us (including ourself) keep things in mind / talk a lot, do a lot of meetings - but fail to capitalize on the flow of ideas that takes place!

I will highly recommend a book for all business owners and their top / middle management. I am making it compulsory for all my managers. It is called Getting Things Done (also popularly known as GTD).

It is readily available in all leading bookstores. If you do not get a copy and need it, feel free to contact me and I will send it to you with my best compliments.

But, this book is essential and to apply the very basic principles is more important to improve the quality of life and to increase productivity.

Regards

Abhishek

Without a deep clarity on High/Low performance scenario, we may find every issue as alarming -like recruitment, attrition, people assets, HR, training, selling and even funds.

Too many issues are anyway there in IT service business but sorting them one by one by adding new talents and new departments/HOD could be suicidal, unless we realize what a HIGH PERFORMING scenario/environment is.  Leadership, challenge mitigation etc comes only after we realize what makes a difference.

Let us take a general life experience scenario for case study - restaurant experience:  

In a restaurant, 4 people are sitting for ordering food. They wait and wait for 5 minutes (restaurant of 30 seats, in lean hours). Waiter comes in and while chatting with another peer waiter seeks orders from this group waiting. Then when asked for water, he seeks what main order is. He appears to be in hurry and impatient.  

Then after some insistence, water boy brings water in 4 glasses in one hand ( with one finger in each glass to hold the glass properly), and brings food also together.  Patience is running out and one friend tells other to have patience as food is anyway good.

 It is part of an example scenario and I am sure we can see what is avoidable behaviour which gives the restaurant a bad name or a low performing image. Waiting time is too high even in lean hours. Waiter does not treat just arrived customer with due courtesy and promptness. The delivery person brings water glasses with one finger in each glass (very much justified from water boy perspective, but creates an aversion to the customer).

Go to another good restaurant, serving equally good tasty food. Say,  Saravana Hotel restaurant- well known south Indian restaurant or Udupi restaurant in Mumbai. Water will reach you in maximum 30 secs. In clean glass. You will never be allowed to empty them as at frequent intervals, someone fills it up or changes the water glass fresh with fresh filling. (process design and compliance)

Food ordered comes in few minutes time. Even when it takes longer time, the initial speed of response and cleanliness feel makes you comfortable with that extra wait. (merit of process, transparency and repeatability).  Now we know what is low performing and high performing scenario. Food quality and taste being same, any new customer will prefer the later example by way of choice.

Now apply this episode to your IT co. Check out how long phone caller is forced to wait when phoned up. (High performing cos. have limits on no of rings, within which certainly someone will respond). Despite prior appointment fixed, customers (contract awarding or future recruits) are asked to wait unduly at reception, with promises that someone will attend soon.

Initial touch points of an IT organization shows how well it is ready to respond, time wise as well as transaction wise. Similar examples can be seen in RFP handling, customer follow up, negotiations.....which often leads to loss of business, while we often conclude falsely as loss due to prices, delivery time, technical capability or lack of high level contacts or CEO who did not take the lead seriously enough or competition knew some one closely in buying organization.

High performing IT service organizations will have proper lead collection templates, close review every day/week, re-shuffle low hanging fruits and high hanging fruits and target what must be closed this week/month. Simple excel sheet based templates are good enough to start with. Daily tracking (through documentary evidence) is essential by each sales person as well as Business Head. Weekly, same must be tossed with CEO- Head of the organization. Review every week for finding roadblocks, activate intelligence gathering, get them checked up and decide on counter- strategy to WIN.

High performing organization will always find ways to WIN and make life difficult for the competition or the buyer itself. Even if it a losing scenario it should be on 'my terms and game plan'. Thats is the spirit of a High performing selling orgn.Customer should feel discomfort and apologetic while awarding a WIN to your competitor, that helps BINDING for next opportunity.

 Appreciating reasons, and roadblocks posed by buyer or competition is low performance, as that is planning for failure. (Vivek Paul, ex-Wipro mentioned recently that Indian cos do planning generally for failure and not SUCCESS)

IT service business is pure IDEA and DIFFERENTIAL business. None can forget that if we are holding responsibility and ownership towards our role. Satisfying internal hierarchy and bosses is less important, as in a crowded co, seniors may not have sufficient time to grasp/analyze and come with killer strategy.  The sales owner (identify them)must own up issues, fight for internal awakening and fight externally with means and ways which can tilt the customer towards your cause. That attitude is itself High Performance factor.

This story gives enough idea of High Performance of individuals, teams and organization. Obviously growth depends on each one of them. CxOs have a duty to build that system, process, attitude and hunger in his set up. First get an idea of what is HIGH Performance in your business segment/subject domain. Then every issues becomes simple.

Key objective is to get contracts every week/month, with quarterly growth in top and bottomline, addition of new clients, retention of old clients, reduction in man-hours spent on same/similar kind of deliverables etc. Repeatability and sustenance is HIGH Performance. What is your Take???? We need to know and learn from each one of you ......

A couple of key parameters of High Performance organizations in my experience are:

1) Ability to take time out and look at issues from the big picture perspective. This is an ability that is required not just at the CxO level but at all levels of the organization. Given that most folks are so busy looking all that needs to get done, the big picture and the direction one is taking doesn't get thought about enough. This is not just a "strategy" thing, its at an individual level - the culture of an organization to take a step back...and find ways of improving things around them.

2) Ability to question *everything*. This is again an ability that allows covergence at all levels in organizations to a very clear an unambiguous roadmap. Teams that are well aligned yield higher performance than any others.

Raja,

You have raised a very complex issue! 

The permutation combination of creating a high performance organization is not that easy ! It is a long haul process. What comes to my mind quickly is Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline for building Learning Organization. The premise being, given the varied nature and unexpectedness in the business an organization that can continuosly learn can become a high performing orgainzation. This is my inference from Senge:

1. Personal Mastery - Individuals who are masters in their disciplines. One needs to compose the organization with these individuals. We need not confuse this with leadership. Even the despatch clerk can be a master in whatever he does with great amount of precision and perfection.
   
2. Mental Model - Understanding the human decision making process & Understanding the use / influence of structures & structural conflicts. This is an awareness of how we decide! Personally, I have benefited and used this a lot in the last 5-6 years.
   
3. Team Learning - Learning as a team. Enough has been said about this.
   
4. Shared Vision - Some good % overlap of individual's vision with Organization's vision.
   
5. Systems Thinking - The discipline that integrates all other disciplines. As in software integration, this is a not that easy! This is an approach, that makes us look for systems in such things that are known to be an ART. This even goes on to say that there is no such thing as ART and Science
   

Suresh

Dear Suresh,

Which Indian IT SME -emerging co would like to openly say that they are low performing and not at all high performing.

1. If they feel they are high performing, they must validate by benchmarking with top 5-10 Indian cos and global players in India.
2. If they have awareness of shortfall, they must write the performance factors in the specific area, share it internally openly for validation and truth, and do everything to fill the gaps. Seek external reviewer to get an assessment..., and remedy...
3. If they find it difficult to know where they are-- high level or low level, that is dangerous. Ignorence is too expensive. Because IT business is pure idea. translation and delivery-closure business. It is no different than a stock market. Global factors, overnight  can make your business irrelevant. Try asking a Devils Advocate-- you may be in for a shock

But we can not be in a state that we are proud, but are not high performing. That is emotion and not business like. Benchmarking our organization and each line of business is most crucial at higher management level. That is the task of CxOs/HODs. That is leadership -to search for gaps, causes and smart ways to fill gaps. Groping in darkness is part of leadership challenge.

50% of daily challenges of Indian SME IT is not at all there in those overseas driven local co. Why so. Then why is it difficult for average Indian SME.

Every CxO, HOD in IT cos has first task- making their area of work as High Performing. By planning strategies, tactics, best practice tailored with most appropriate documented process wise TO BE IN PLACE. Rest is any way done by others at operational level ...

Try it out...and your co performance will zoom....

Some technique to enhance High performance towards excellence is given below:

• People who operate at high levels of excellence pull each others up the scale
• Peter Drucker points that difference between top and average is constant and so the to shift the average upwards is to help the top shift upwards
• If top performers went even higher, the entire organization would migrate to new higher standards...

Extarct from 'Business Line' dt yesterday 14th July -page 12-Mentor page- article 'No Limits to excellence' by V K Madhvan. More may be read there...Highly recommonded piece 

In a large Indian Corporate, the Chairman announced that he would close down all business group with revenue less than Rs 500 cr per year. It soon was found that divisions under each group (having average contract value of Rs 20-40 lacs) found their average contract value rising to Rs 5 crore...Its peer competitor has identical business group crossing Rs 3000 cr per year....( no limits on territory, staffing, what bundled in..)....

That is the power of high PULL and HIGH PERFORMANCE...just a little of tweaking / redifinition on goals-segments -set the process, techniques and skills to attain them somehow..of course with various risk management mitigation safeguards in place with full compliance and caution

Lesson is : Do not do other way, that is since we can do this much only, that is our goal.

Focus on high performers and high performance process/techniques ( though bitter, difficult, takes more efforts-time etc). Allow them to achieve higher difficult goals....then rest also find their performance increasing......

Hello Rajendra,
This very important issue and i would like to share my idea on this. According to me following 2/3 points are very important

• Personal Interest/ Passion - Interest st play very very important role at the time of performance. "Interest to complete my work in particular hours in best possible way" is basic concept and remaining ideas definitions starts at competitive level.
• Time Management - Seating in the office from 10.00 am to 10.00 pm (12 hours) is our (Indian workaholic) mentality which does not mean and even today this is not directly related to efficiency level. when PM is calculating particular task for 8 hrs.in KRA then it should end up in 8 hours. max. 9 hrs. I believe Time management plays very vital role in calculating high or low performance
• Result Oriented Approach - We have to believe that most of the times many are people are not able to complete the assigned task in particular hrs. Cause they haven't done there self analysis or result oriented approach is missing somewhere.

Teach IndiA...is the theme launched by Times of India with heavy publicity in all cities seeking volunteers to spare 2 hours per week to help children from dis-advantages sections learn few things.....and get mentored....What a great and innovative idea this is to attract potential volunteers with such a simple business model which hardly costs money....and yet gives a satisfaction of GIVING BACK TO SOCIETY

Volunteering and sharing amongst same community - are demands of NEW AGE Society, where getting lost is so frequent and simple.

IT service business is very risky business indeed, where we may burn up lot of money in chasing a disjointed goal, without realising holes and risk...more so under US recession and global IT service margins under pressure .  

SMEs and emerging cos have a greater risk and burden...Being in IT business, we owe something to Nasscom member... Providing ideas and tips is HIGH PERFORMANCE for each one of us ....

There is a simple difference between a High Performance Team and a Low Performance Team - Communication!

In all my experience in IT and ITES, I have found that Communication is the MOST important aspect between the team members and the customers and between team members themselves. Howver, as geeks, all of us, we are most uncomfortable with such a Touchy-Feely thing like Communication and instead resort to TOOLS like Project Management tools, Methodologies, etc hoping they would give us a magic bullet that fixes things that are wrong with our project - Microsoft Project, elaborate charts showing dependencies, etc, Agile, CMM, ISO9000, etc. Nothing can go back and fix bad communication in the first place!

If you have managed multiple software development efforts you would realize that most mistakes are made in the Requirements Gathering stage - Customers think they are communicating perfectly, we think we have understood perfectly and wrote everything down. Unfortunately very little vetting is done post writing things down - Customers barely scan a requirements document and make comments in the last minute for the most part and then we go merrily designing and developing things. Then the proverbial stuff hits the fan when the first deliveries are done!

Same with ITES!

Communication needs to be multi-modal and frequent - skype, yahoo, email, video conferences and then always face to face periodically! Nothing can replace non-verbal direct face to face communication and this communication pyramid needs to be followed diligently in any project.

Agile methods help somewhat in that periodically you go in front of the custome, show them what you have done and ask "is this what you meant?". This iterative cycle fixes some of the problems but especially with small and medium sized companies, working out a contract that accommodates Agile methodologies is still a work in progress, not so easy!

Beyond communication, of course, there are things like Responsibility, Trust, tolerance for mistakes and risk, etc that make a low performance team, a high performance team. If communication is broken, nothing else can fix it!

That's my 2 cents!

Indian SMEs are not used to adequate docuementing within internal teams as well as with clients. Reasons possible are lack of documentation culture, seriousness, training or top management emphasis.

Preference to use oral methods with no written traceability creates most of the problems and challenges....Obviously in such environment tools and methods based on documented traceable system brings high performance....

Your views please in Indian context where client also finds it convenient to not get or sign off documents as then he can demands those extra features later sitting over the bills payable??/

Advice please

All my SME experiences ARE Indian SMEs! One was based in Bangalore and another based in Chennai!

It's not only Documentation Culture or the lack of it but mistakes are made when not choosing the right kind of contract for the kind of customer engagement and the kind of development effort needed! These are not some NRI's concepts but models followed by Indian SMEs today. However they need to be followed diilgently so that neither you nor the client feel shortchanged or cheated.

The biggies as well as good SMEs choose Fixed Price Contracts only when Requirements are very well defined and the domain is a well understood one or the job is a porting job where another system exists as a reference implementation. Then all changes need to be handled without fail with Change Orders and change orders only! But the key is making sure that this is suitable for a Fixed Price Contract  and this one is not! This is where many mistakes may be made initially but trouble will show down the road, unfortunately!

In your initial meetings with the prospect you get the idea that it is a startup company that is liable to change requirements frequently, you are entering into a Fixed price Contract at your own peril. Complaining later on is no good if you accept changes without going through change orders properly.

The alternative in cases where requirements may change frequently may be to set up "Managed Teams" where there is a team created for the customer and the responsibility for assigning tasks and having them done is the customer's responsibility. Then it becomes a purely Time and Materials contract. They pay for 40 hours work every week for the whole team. In those cases the customer need not sign off on requirements. They only pay for the team and it is up to them to get work done. Of course this requires careful recruitment and making sure that the customer does not feel that the team members are goofing off!

There are also variations in between Total Fixed price Contracts and Totally Customer Managed teams - It can be a hybrid. It is a managed team but a senior project manager negotiates deliverables periodically and payments are graduated based on team performance appraisals jointly by the client and SME.

There are no simple solutions in outsourcing! However if you can make them succeed with two or three customers, you may have better luck with prospects selling these concepts and implementing them diligently!

Hope this helps!

Classical High Performance derived by me using this community space....I had invited Mr Nari Kannan, frequent contributor  in this community space...to drop in our office at Chennai whenever he is in town....and Lo!      

He came from california on his latest trip and spent 2 hours with our sr management team to share his views and experience on an informal chat session...10 days ago...and what a fantastic learning we had gained by his quick radical answers to our pains and anxieties ....we could not believe he runs a small team based co with a USD million plus billing with his faith on only freshers from Tier 3-4 institutions only ....yet his team  deliveres new update every 2 weeks in his business astoudning his clients...( great USP for his business)

Hearing in person was a great experience for each one of us 7 people who joined in with just 2 day notice...That is HIGH PERFORMANCE of Collective X Community space...

We are indeed grateful to Mr Nari Kannan as well as nasscom community space...Hope others could also network and get such expert INSIGHT, otherwise difficult for SMEs..Thanks to this community

Here's an example of a great High Performance Organization in action. This is about Toyota in the U.S.

Toyota Keeps Idled Workers Busy Honing Their Skills

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122384818385826909.html

As everybody knows, Toyota has surpassed Chrysler and Ford in U.S and Global Market shares and briefly caught up with General Motors also before Oil hit $147 a barrel.

Demand for larger vehicles fell off a cliff in the U.S and this affected Toyota as much as the other ones also, since among the Japanese automakers, Toyota had the largest share of larger vehicles like big trucks, SUVs , etc.

Consequently, Toyota also had to idle its plants making larger vehicles. However, in today's Wall Street Journal there is a very interesting story on what Toyota is doing with its idled workers.

It is paying them full salaries and they are using this time to better themselves by hitting the company gym and spending a lot of time doing Continuous Process Improvement projects at work! They are preparing for the day when the assembly line is redone for the day when it is reconfigured for smaller vehicles and production starts up again.

Toyota has not laid off one employee so far in the U.S while other ones like GM, Ford and Chrysler routinely do so!

A good example for any company in the world to follow, especially during tough times!

Great point to mention. In India we in SME space, must ponder over this issues carefully and seriously.

Often we are afraid to keep bench thinking that they will be idling with no revenue add on to the co. Revelation came when I heard from Nari Kannan ( during a short mentoring visit to our office in chennai) that SMEs can not have anyone on becnch, in the sense all those who are not on billable projects/assignments must be given the workload to design/build IP related stuff, develop small utilities /components etc which can be plugged in the forthcoming project builds......great learning for me

such non billable skills do plenty of unattached projects, with shorter turnaround of 2-3 or 5 weeks , say, get them tested and released as a BUILD, which can be used by any of the multiple projects team as an add on proving new releases/ new billable add ons to existing clients even

It means senior management of SME cos must have careful planning to extract notional billable add ons which can then be encashed by faster delivery and extra money if that can be managed...

This also addresses another MYTH in indian IT industry that we all must have 20-30% BENCH, in line with practices in top tier 1 cos like Infy, Satyam etc in order th bid for large jobs or to take care of surge needs....

Message is clear...thanks Nari Kannan by citing this piece....keep it up