Recently, I lost a young friend and
colleague. He was in your face, larger than life and always positive.
There was nothing too wide, high or difficult, everything was made
possible. He had a never say die spirit. Yet, he is not amongst us,
he moved on to a better place. In an instant. I cannot get the
incident out of my head so as I write this I am thinking about him.
It is my tribute to him.
No one should be surprised because
there are only two things certain in life, Death and Taxes. Taxes we
usually have under control one way or another. On taxes we may cheat
and possibly get away but not adviseable. Death, why bother we never
think about it. It is something that does not happen to me. Right,
wrong...it can happen to anyone and anytime. The funny thing is we
never plan for it, not consciously and I am being dead serious here.
Years ago, when were being audited for
the Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award, we scored pretty well on
many parameters, operations, human relations, financial management
etc but we fared quite miserably on leadership. My ego was stung for
sure. When the audit team met me, they knew what my question main
interest would be but skirted the issue. Finally, unable to contain
myself I asked why my leadership scored low and how was it possible
then for other parameters to be scoring high.
They explained very nicely that while
my management skills were good, they did not see any successor, they
did not see anyone being able to run the Company after me. They had
asked the question “after Blaise who? The answer they saw was no
one. If for any reason I could not make it to work, the Company would
totter.
This came as a shock to me, I had never
considered anything would happen to me. We did get a commendation
award. Corrective action followed. A meeting was organised with the
team. They agreed that the Company was important to them too, at that
moment. They were working to satisfy their needs and not just to
ensure my livelihood. So we decided to make the Company “Boss
Proof”. The Company must run even if the Boss is taken out of the
system. Today, many years later, we are closer to our goal, closer
because the target is always moving.
The key aspect was we introduced
systems and ensured decision making was more system or rule based
rather than on “bosses” mood. Delegation was another area that
was worked on. The problem with delegation is employee turnover. The
person you delegate to decides to move on and out. You cannot control
turnover but the problem is better addressed with use of systems.
With systems in place the new person knows where he fits and can thus
get involved faster, proverbial HIT THE GROUND RUNNING. Periodically,
the setup needs to be tested, easy the Boss goes on a month long
vacation. After returning, the fining tuning has to be done after
review and grey areas resolved. This is a continuous process.
It had its benefits, one of our MNC
customers was doing an audit and they ask questions related to
continuity under different situations. They do not want any situation
to occur where they will be left high and dry because the supplier
has to stop or close down because the top management was indisposed.
They are especially cautious in cases of family owned businesses.
I am not sure if my friend had done
such an exercise but it is highly recommend that every business,
especially vulnerable SME's undertake a risk audit and put corrective
actions in place to reduce or mitigate the risk involved. My friend
inspired this article, may his soul rest in peace.
No comments:
Post a Comment