The GOAL and the way of achieving it!!
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Loading ...The GOAL and the way of achieving it…….
First of all let me take this opportunity to express my happiness over S7 Software being selected as the leader of NASSCOM Emerge 50 2009, we are all very excited and feeling déjà vu but had a great party too to celebrate the same. Want to thank NASSCOM and all involved for making this such a great success. Thank You!!
Jumping back to my topic of the blog, I am currently reading two books (one in the house and one in the car – darn I have a 1.5 hr commute to work – what is the best way to do it than reading books) – one is called the “Goal” by Eliyahu M Goldratt and other is our NRN’s collection of his essays “A Better India, a better World”; I could have not asked a better timing for reading these books together; Goal is a great book which makes you look into your business and helps you analyze what is the goal of your firm, goal you should pursue in the company and what steps one need to do to actually recognize the goal and try achieving it. Then the other book talks about the ethics, the corporate governance and other things which are essential to run a successful organization. I feel when both implemented hand in hand will lead to a super success company.
Goal is written in a thrilling novel which teaches some of the common sense basic mantras required to make an organization success and touches upon one of the most important concept of what is called the TOC or the theory of constraints. Talks about increasing the throughput and the productivity but they have no meaning unless one knows what the “goal” is. By the way there is only one goal for a given organization and everything else are enablers to reach that one goal (assignment number one – can you guess in one sentence what is the goal of your organization?). It talks about some of the important measurement metrics like the ROI, net profit and the cash flow and it explains how a firm can have a great net profit, good ROI but go bankrupt because of bad cash flow. This book goes on to show that a plant in which everyone is working all the time is very inefficient. It also very smartly introduces the resources and classifies them into bottleneck resources and non-bottleneck resources and talks about how manage them so that we get a balanced plant with the maximum throughput.
The basic idea is improvement which is not so much so to reduce cost everywhere (recession guys – are you listening?) but to increase throughput. Most of the problems one faces at running a plant is analyzed in the most common sense way rather than some complex mathematical equation which makes the whole story very interesting and there are many points where you can compare to yourself running say an IT shop and still get lot of insights into creating a process, identifying bottlenecks and trying to run a high throughput plant.
While this book talked about the process and how to set the resources going, scheduling, constraints etc but won’t touch the topic of man management and the politics or the ethics or lack of it for running one and that is where NRN’s book comes handy. This book is a great learning, a great reference for any budding as well as seasoned entrepreneurs especially for the Indians. I really like some of the idioms and quotes he uses to drive the points. He says that everyone gets turning points or lucky breaks and they can be fortuitous but it is the way one responds to these chance events that is the critical thing and is crucial.
One thing he repeats is that “the softest pillow is a clear conscience” and I agree completely. He states that every action of ones, one has to ask how it will make the lowest level worker in your corporation and the poorest person in your society better. His mantra for great team work is “Praise in public and criticize in private” and “you can disagree with me as long as you are not disagreeable”. His message for budding citizens is to aim high and dream big. Words mean nothing unless backed by actions. He quotes Roosevelt who once said “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”. It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness and quotes Lincoln, “It is not the years in your life that count, it is the life in your years”.
He is very severe about corporate governance and ethical behaviors, especially at the top. He says that ethical behavior is the foundation for sustainable success and corporate governance is crucial for the success of any corporation. He also touches upon the religion and quotes Einstein that science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind.
He speaks very high of values and quotes Aristotle that “we are what we repeatedly do” and quotes Gandhi’s words that there is enough in this world for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed. He briefly touches about India, indianess and he feels that the tragedy of India is that we shy away from bold and tough decisions because we do not want to displease anybody. He feels that 1947 got us the political freedom and 1991 got us the economic freedom. He quotes Jackson’s words that one man with courage makes a majority; courage matters is what he says and is the main virtue. He talks about the mindset of some highly learned Indians what he calls the brahminical mindset where in from generations people seek knowledge for the sake of learning and he believes that the mindset is strong even today in India. For instance when he interviews young boys and girls, they insist in working in esoteric fields that have no relevance to solving the problems that beset contemporary india. Their first choice would be Artificial intelligence!!
He briefly talks about education in India and quality of higher education and he quotes a former president of Harvard who remarked, “if you think education is expensive, try ignorance”!! He talks about leadership and he quotes many a great sayings and one that I liked are, “A great leader makes people feel an inch taller in his presence”. He talks about CEO and his role and he feels that the primary responsibilities of a CEO is summed up with an acronym PSPD (predictability of revenues, sustainability, profitability and derisk). He says that longevity is the best index of the success of a corporation and good governance is a necessary condition for longevity and growth. He says that organizations have to be very cost consciousness and it has to come from top.
Overall teaches some of the Dos and Donts of running a organization and is filled with great quotes and I strongly recommend for one and all.
I hope you liked the summary of both and hope you will pick one on your way home and learn some great things about the goal and some of the tips of achieving it successfully!!!
Manjunath M Gowda, S7 Software
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Coincidentally, I picked “The Goal” and left NRN’s book last sunday among many other books. Started reading “The Goal” since then. It is excellent match to current changing dynamics where cost pressures are high and question of survival looms large. Very well summarised take aways from two books with application to current situation.