| If you nodded to one or all of these excuses, you're not alone. Most managers get so ensnared in the rut of daily tasks and the constant fire fighting, that they fall into a trap of "active nonaction"""working hard, but not smart. | ||
| They may be bright and committed to their work, and may yet fail to achieve results. That's the breed of managers A Bias for Action addresses. Yes, it is yet another self-help management book""the galloping horses on the cover of the American edition may have been replaced by the more elegant Vitruvius Man for the Asian edition, but chapter subheads like "Slaying the dragon" and "Winning the princess" do give the game away. | ||
| But Bias has an impeccable pedigree: it is the last book by renowned management thinker Sumantra Ghoshal (who died in March this year), co-authored by Heike Bruch of Switzerland's University of St Gallen. | ||
| Ghoshal and Bruch's work is based on an extensive 10-year study of managerial behaviour in a range of industries, from airlines and banking to software and consulting. They conclude that productive managers are in a minority""90 per cent are struggling in their careers because of "mindless busyness". | ||
| That does turn some conventional thinking on its head. Ghoshal and Bruch warn against confusing action with accomplishment, and motivation with leadership. The reason most managers are stuck spinning the wheel is their lack of focus and energy. And the only way to correct that is by harnessing their personal willpower""not external motivation. | ||
| There are four types of managers, say Ghoshal and Bruch. The rarest are the purposeful, who can focus their energies on getting the job done. Forty per cent of managers are frenzied""energetic, but unfocused, like a hamster jogging on the wheel inside in its cage; 30 per cent are procrastinators, who put off tasks fearing failure; and 20 per cent are detached from their work and co-workers. | ||
| The first half of the book is targeted mainly at the frenzied manager. Using case studies from their decade-long survey, Ghoshal and Bruch offer six""rather unoriginal""strategies for managers to improve their performance, including define-and-visualise goals; adopt task-related behaviour; and move from motivating to fostering willpower in others. | ||
| The second half carries forward the case-study approach and discusses the right way of embedding a bias for action in an organisation's work culture. | ||
| How should a leader help his employees take purposeful action? As Ghoshal and Bruch point out, that's enough tougher than being a focused employee""you need the courage to let your manager question your judgement. | ||
| All of which sounds great on paper, but Ghoshal and Bruch miss one rather important point. Several of the companies they cite (Swiss Air and Lufthansa, for instance) were on the cusp of change""changes forced on them willy nilly, due to external threats, or changes they adopted voluntarily, lured by promises of untold wealth or power. It's easier, even critical, for employees of such organisations to motivate themselves to perform better. | ||
| But what about companies that are sailing on placid seas? What will inspire managers in such organisations to harness their willpower and outperform themselves? Suddenly, the bar seems much higher. | ||
| As it is when the question of business ethics comes up. Running an ethical organisation is perhaps one of the biggest challenges Indian companies face today. After all, no one expects the corporate sector to do anything for that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you do a good deed. If that's a given, then how do you get them to clean up their act? | ||
| By first defining what you mean by "ethics", says Dipankar Gupta in Ethics Incorporated: Top Priority and Bottom Line. Before an organisation can be made to realise the practical necessity of business ethics, it needs to understand what ethics is, and isn't. | ||
| It isn't about philanthropy, taking the moral high ground or being holier-than-thou. But transparency, social awareness, respect for stakeholders and establishing employee morale and a commitment to quality are all part of business ethics, says Gupta. | ||
| And it won't hurt to point out that running an ethical business can actually benefit the bottom line. According to Fortune, the 20 most-loved companies in the US include the top 15 companies in that country. It obviously pays to be ethical. | ||
| The Indian corporate sector's attitudes to business ethics has improved in the past decade or so. But there's still not enough pressure from shareholders and stakeholders to persuade companies to boldly declare their policies regarding ethics, corporate governance and leadership. That must and will change, feels Gupta. | ||
| So, how does a company go about becoming ethical? There's no one-size-fits-all policy, warns Gupta. The best way of customising a business ethics system is through interaction. | ||
| Begin with an assessment of felt needs of department heads, paying particular attention to the human dimension, allow managerial intervention to suggest alternatives or enhance focus on specific issues and, once a system is in place, continuously evaluate it, assign benchmarks and create the office of an ombudsman. | ||
| Ethics Incorporated is a timely and well plotted book. A serious lacuna, though, is the lack of detailed case studies from the Indian corporate sector. | ||
Still, Gupta makes a spirited attempt to liven up an otherwise worthy subject by interjecting examples that appear completely unrelated. What do the Crispus Attucks basketball team in the US and the death of Royal Bengal tigers in an Indian zoo have to do with business ethics? Read the book and find out.
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