Anna’ther Opinion

Good Intentions

This is what happened in the corporate headquarters of a very well known organisation based out of Mumbai.

The founder, a man with a genuine concern for his people and strong faith in the basic integrity of human beings had created a great staff welfare scheme. He wanted all his staff to have the benefit of good wholesome food available at the lowest possible price for breakfast and lunch. To make the model work, administrative costs (including staff required to service this need for the nearly 1000 people) had to be kept at a minimum. A very reasonable rate (approximately equal to the cost of ‘vada pao’) was fixed for both meals and the food was available in eating areas to be self served in fixed portions. The person availing this service was expected to drop the money in a box, serve himself and after eating, clear his plate and the table. There was no one to serve or check for payment (as this would have increased cost of the portion).

After struggling with it for many months, this service was shut down. It was draining the organisation on a daily basis. The number of portions consumed NEVER equaled the amount of money collected by a long margin. The difference between portions and money collected also increased over time.  What was observed was that many did not pay for the service and many others took more than one portion without paying for it. The founder preferred to shut it down rather than police it and run. The employees are clearly unhappy that this had to happen and today, everyone blames someone else for the fiasco.

Unshakeable Faith in Our Proclivity

I was attending a resident’s community meeting the other day and the group was discussing various measures that had to be undertaken to improve security, maintenance, environment and compliance to create an overall better community. The two most telling decisions taken were:

1. Not to form a residents association with financial and other empowerment as this was considered to be the beginning of the end. Office bearers would be looking for special status and rules for themselves, financial probity would become suspect, service levels would fall and groupism would start. It was agreed that the entire service of managing our condo would continue to be outsourced. This motion was accepted with near unanimity. Everyone of course felt that they were never going to be the wrong-doers but were convinced that someone else would be.
2. To get better security, maintenance etc., the group that had to be tackled was that of the residents themselves as they were the ones responsible for most transgressions.

Personal Accountability

Something else that is making news, albeit not as the banner headlines but in the inside pages, is the whitewash that Team India has just been subjected to in England. What is remarkable is the number of people who are being ‘blamed’ for this defeat – the BCCI is being lynched and the IPL (not long ago celebrated as the greatest thing in world cricket and a gift from India) is being flogged.

What we see, in all the anecdotes so far, are fingers that are being pointed at those that wield the power and have the authority.

The finger is rarely ever pointed to oneself.

We find this in our study of organisations quite often. People hardly ever consider themselves to be part of malaises like lack of collaboration or politicking or sycophancy. It is always someone else who indulges in it and most often, it is the leadership which is responsible!

Whenever we have encountered this, our recommendation has always been to encourage each individual to take responsibility for his own action in entirety – and not link it to anyone else’s action. We posit that a unilateral act like that is a mark of true leadership. This is based on our belief that pointing fingers indirectly encourages the individual to abdicate the responsibility of any self-action; usually that does not end up in a successful ‘change’ initiative. The behaviour change that is today required is at individual levels – whatever the behaviour may be (the behaviours to be changed will usually be different at different levels in the organization).

There is enough written and many views available on what makes corruption so endemic in our society. You can read Being Indian or this blog for some opinions.

In the context of the present agitation that we see, it would be truly refreshing to see it move towards fingers pointing back at self. I am glad to see some tentative first steps in that direction (‘I will not pay bribe’ group). There needs to be a lot more of this. Otherwise we will slip back as we allow those with the right ‘connections’ to get into Ramlilla Ground ahead of those in the queue and still point fingers at others who do the same.