On a recent bicycle ride on a very tough course, it set me thinking about monitoring progress. How can my riding compare with knowing your position in a business situation?
As I keep riding, I constantly keep looking at my speedometer, and at each rest stop, I monitor my progress from this sports information computer. I check my average speed, distance traveled, and elapsed times, and from there I can calculate how long it will take to complete the long ride. My other system, my body, tells me how tired I feel, and my determination and will power serves as the self-motivating factor. However, the sports information from the computer gives me immediate and constant information for me to monitor my ride.
Then when I am biking uphill, I must think of the strategies that I must apply. Going up too fast can make me tired and disable me from completing the long ride. Therefore, there is a tradeoff, choosing faster over slower and taking the specified road instead of the flat and easier road that I just passed at the junction. This is the equivalent of finding a fork in a management decision; taking one path means that you cannot simultaneously take the other path, although one path is shorter and easier than the other is. The other easier path could also have been easier but would have put a dent on integrity. The problem is that no one can have it both ways, and then everyone else can have it to. Your castle needs a moat – or you will be undistinguished. So that my performance is distinguished, I ride slower uphill to preserve my energy and staying power to complete the long ride. In the same way, when you start a business project, it must have staying power to fruition. You must harvest the fruits of your labor. In addition, going downhill, I must be careful not to go too fast or risk serious injury or even death. My monitor is indispensable for going downhill as well.
Then for my security and the moves of others I always look in the rear view mirror to watch for passing riders and traffic, as they say in the business world, “watch your back.” Then I have to watch for potholes, pieces of glass strewn on the road, likewise we have to watch your environment constantly for uncertainties.[1] I need to make changes as I discover new terrain on the path to success. As they say in the business world, you have to know what else is happening in the environment. It is apparent from this chapter that bicycling is risky. It is the same in business or any venture. If there is no risk then there is no reward, and there is always the chance of failure. At least, attempting something translates into moving forward, not backwards. If you find on the route, that it is too hard and you made a mistake, change your strategy before adding more resources. It is blameful of business to fix a strategy carved in stone.
No one is an island, inasmuch as no business is an island. I am not alone on the road, there are other bikers and there are other players too: automobiles, trucks, motorcycles, pedestrians, all going their way for a different purpose. We have in the world many human cities, thousands of people survive near one another doing different kinds of work or as biology puts it, each species finds its own “profession” or “niche” leading to speciation. For instance if two businesses occupy the same niche, in the same location at the same time, they will compete with each other for the good of society or one will be overtaken by the other for putting the better priced and quality goods to market. Then there are the road signs akin to the rules and regulations of an organization, which are disciplines in the ride too. The governments of the world put forth regulations to control the ethical behavior of organization and bring to book those who cross the line.
You also have to realize that you are not operating in a vacuum. While you are excavating your moat, someone else across the globe may be making a catapult or cannon. Look at what is happening to the industrial sector, once the preserve of the so-called first worlds of North America and Europe or the industrialized world, has brought in a new set of players. India is excelling in embedded software, development of inexpensive drugs, business software, chip design and health care. You can have good healthcare in India and a vacation too at one-tenth the cost of the USA or Europe. China is creeping at an astonishing rate with mechanical engineering, computer graphics and handwriting recognition. Russia, Israel, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, they are all excelling in aerospace, computing and communications. Europe is far ahead of North America
in communications. There is now a U.N. of world suppliers out there. That means, strategically thinking, it means recognizing that the world has other purposeful people whose aims may constrain or challenge yours.[2]
Challenges or constraints are a good thing as it allows for competition and cooperation, not harmonization and consolidation. Every move you make will evoke a response. Therefore, you must imagine the moves of the other players and factor in your reaction to theirs. Without the other bikers passing me on the ride, I would not feel challenged and my performance will suffer. The passers by, lift my spirits and help me to improve my performance. That said, in an organization, some folks are naturally better than the others are. That is OK, we can learn from those who are smarter or better than we are. You have to be a good sport.
However, strategically thinking, riding a bicycle to reach the end of a destination at a specified time is far less complicated that thinking strategically for running an organization. Now you need a system monitor much more complicated that a bicycle computer, yet the principles are what really matter. Navigating a complex organization through competitive environments is at least as complicated as flying an airplane (see textbox below). Managements need instrumentation that will give them all the succinct information about many aspects of their organization and the environment to monitor the journey to its intended purpose. The cardinal error is thinking too much on only what management needs, juniors have needs too for monitoring information and their progress.
You always have to look forward into the game, look at your meters, monitor your progress and evaluate your course of action to help you end up where it is you want to be at this moment in time and in the near future. [3]
In addition, it is important for you to consider your project, your piece of work as a part or contribution to the piece of the puzzle of the total organization plan. My bike ride was to help find a cure for multiple sclerosis, and the money I raise from that ride is my contribution. Managers and you should likewise keep an eye on the ball or strategically speaking the ‘whole’ as each player adds to the whole. Keeping juniors informed of the 'whole' and their contribution of their moves in the value chain is a very important management ingredient. What each person does is important. Moreover, what each other does, even in competition with each other is important too.
If you breakup your PDA or notebook computer, you will find a United Nations of suppliers. From design to parts, you will find that several countries had participated in making that product. In other words, within an organization, each of us is the individual supplier, working for one goal in a value chain. That overarching value chain for UNICEF, for instance, is to improve the wellbeing of women and children in the developing world. If you reconcile an account faster, you may just speed up the inflow of funds from a donor, or you may get succinct information faster to a project officer. Any increase in speed means some woman or child out there could be the indirect beneficiary.
Making your organization succeed, in doing your part and focusing on your own position only is not enough, because in practice the opposite holds true. You have to put yourself in the shoes and even in the minds of the other people (or players). When I rode uphill and other riders too, we were of different backgrounds and sizes, of different intellect and social status and wealth, and we all had different kinds of bicycles, but we just all came together as ordinary people, putting ourselves in the shoes of the bicyclist and even having the mindset of a biker. I have many a person say, “oh, you only rode 60 miles, and took four hours and forty-one minutes. I have a friend who rides so much faster.” However, that person making the comparison did not wear the shoes of the rider. So many times, supervisors may put unfair deadlines on juniors, because they have not put themselves into the shoes of the other.
You have to know where you will be going, even in your personal life, where do you want to be next year, next five years, and ten years and so on. How would you like people to remember you? Establish those goals and have a list of your parallel and sequential activities. It can be as simple as having a goal to reduce weight. Some goals are impossible to achieve, just drop them. If I had a goal of increasing my height physically, that would be impossible to achieve, but I could do that psychologically. Work on your psyche and better yourself, your work, your organization and your environment. However, establishing goals that are too high to reach can only lead to disappointment and disaster. That is why I personally disfavor targets, but would choose to benchmark and make reasonable projections.
Nevertheless, you need a scorecard and a road map to know where you are going and where you are in that road map at a moment in time. Without that monitor, there is no end in sight. Get your roadmap and monitor today.
[1] Uncertainty – in the economy, society, and politics – has become as great as to render futile, if not counterproductive, the kind of planning most companies practice: forecasting on probabilities. PETER DRUCKER.
[2] In most of these excellent third world countries where globalization has had a foothold, UN systems have field offices out there with minds and brains that can be a challenging counterpart to UN headquarters located in developed countries. Each staff member is likewise a purposeful person what ever their position and work they do in whichever location. That raises the next challenging question. Is centralizing global systems still a good thing?
[3] I am sure, the UN and its agencies has executive systems and more subordinate systems to help navigate the organization.
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