Inside Out

From the name you can not make out what this post is about so to save your time and energy I will like to mention that the post contains my opinion about assumptions and realities in companies. Assumption when we are inside company and realities when we are outside.

Always people asking questions are seen as trouble makers, they are people who will never follow..these people are untouchable and should be kept at arms length. This is the approach of managers.

Managers will hire consultants and get the work done, consultant will ask the same question as the employee asked but as consultant an outside party asks the question it suddenly becomes important. It gets the due attention that was needed. And perhaps if company paid attention to what employees was saying it could have saved thousand of dollars. It amazes me that you can start your career as consultant straight from college. Big consulting firms hire graduates from B School and put them directly in consulting role. So it shows that it is not different things that need to be done but rather do the same things differently. The outside view will allow you to do that. So in organization someone should always be doing this. looking at organization from outside, looking at it as if you don’t know anything about the organization and then evaluate from whatever data is available to outsiders.

Shareholder are one of the most important stakeholder of company and their opinion is important. But companies fail to take the advantage of that. Some companies have millions of shareholders so that is they have millions of outside eyes watching them. each eye will bring different perspective and each one has some different expectation. What companies do is that they will send postal ballot form (As it is required) and ask whether you approve the deal to buy the company, whether you approve appointment of X person as CEO. So most of the decisions are already taken and shareholder approval is just a process.

I want companies to ask what product you want us to bring in next five years, what field you think company should invest etc. You can get good feedback from them, it may not be something top class which you can work on but it will certainly give you outside view of the company which will help evaluate plans for the future. Asking your top shareholders only will be big mistake as you will play into hands of some individuals who want to make extra money all the time.

When you are inside company everything is rosy, all plans are good and every plan has guaranteed future success. But actually reality is different and when company comes out with the plan it fails. Then it hires consultants to fix the thing and pays through the roof to them, using expertise which consultants have from prior experience. So what you are doing is replicating the process that your competitor or someone in the industry already tried. And now you want to make it a success and so you make it happen rather than it happening.

I am not suggesting consultants do not bring value to company they surely do, they give valuable insights that you are missing. The point I am making is that they are able to do it because they look at organization from outside, they look at you as client. They are not afraid to say things which employees may not dare to say.

So as manager you have to respect employees who object your policies and raise questions. The simple questions asked today can answer the complex problems of tomorrow.

Note: The intension of the article is not to point fingers at consultants, I used the example only to establish the fact that looking at company from outside solves most of the problem. In case anyone has different opinion, then I respect the same.

Signing Off

Nikhil Parchure