A few years ago, we had the privilege of conducting our world-class business simulation called “Collaborative Leadership” for the CEO of a global IT organization and her entire team of CXO’s at Oberoi Udaivilas in Udaipur, Rajasthan. After the simulation and during the debriefing, she made a powerful statement which would resonate with many corporate leaders even today. She said, “Solomon, most people run like chickens with their heads cut off!”
What did the CEO mean by this statement? She later explained that teams usually did not invest time in key processes like strategy or contemplation, nor did they proactively seek out information, data, analysis, and advice from people who accomplished their goals and from those who failed at them. These were valuable inputs to help make informed decisions and then execute those decisions.
We have worked with hundreds of organizations to deliver our world-class business simulations and have found that there is very little focus on thinking through things but there is great excitement in starting and executing the work or the task at hand. With the help of our empirical study, we also discovered that jumping into execution mode without proper strategy or planning often causes sub-optimal results; Not only the efforts of the team are wasted but also the business goals are not achieved or unnecessarily delayed.
Early this morning, I had an experience that reminded me of the CEO’s statement all over again. I was preparing for my second 70.3 Ironman and my exercise regime today was called ‘Fartlek’, which is a combination of speed running and easy pacing. While I was doing the speed running workout, I could hear the screeching sound of the fire brigade siren. Just for fun, I raced the vehicle but it was too fast and I couldn’t keep up and it soon disappeared into the traffic. A few minutes later, as I was doing the easy pacing workout, I saw that the fire brigade had stopped a little before the Kelkar College in Mulund East and three of the officers got off the truck to check the location of a ‘Kalpataru’ building in the area. They were talking to some people on the road and in a short while I stood next to the officers. Two of them turned towards me to check if I knew where the building was. I responded saying I did not know a building with that name close by however I asked them questions like:
“Do you have any landmark?”
”Do you know the name of the road?”
“Is it near a school or college?”
”Is there any other information about that building or the surrounding area?”
To my utter surprise, they had no answers. All they knew was the name of the building and that it was located in Mulund East. Another passerby, who had heard our conversation, was kind enough to use Google Map to locate the building but he found out that it was around two kilometers from Kelkar College, the area where we were standing. When he informed the officers, they asked us if there was any other Kalpataru building nearby, to which at least the five of us, were not aware of. So finally, the officers decided to continue to search for the building by going in the opposite direction, because they believed that the building most definitely should be close by and not two kilometers away.
As I resumed my speed run, I had so many questions going through my mind:
“In this new age of technology, why is such an important service not using any technological tool to figure out the location of the emergency?”
“Why is there no provision for some kind of intelligence before they start from their base location?”
“Why can’t they connect with someone from Kalpataru or a police station or any other aid that can give them accurate information?”
”Why can’t they simply use a Google map on their mobile devices as the millions of taxi drivers are now doing?”
I am not sure what happened at Kalpataru but if there was a life or death situation, a huge fire or a cylinder blast then the attitude of the ‘chicken with the head cut’, would only make the situation worse and would cause a terrible outcome.
So now, I ask you:
“As a business leader, are your teams taking the time to think, i.e. to think through the entire nine yards and identify what’s working and what’s not working to create results?” “What tools can we use to get things done faster and smoother?”
“What information is available and what kind of data can we make available?”
“Can we dig into someone’s intelligence – the one who has already been there and done that?”
“Are there any statistics and best practices available?”
“Can we piggyback on someone else’s success?”
“Can we investigate for someone who has done things successfully and unsuccessfully in the past, the reason why or why not and if we can learn from them?”
“What happens IF…? What assumptions are you having and with whom can you bounce off the ideas and the assumptions with?”
“Are there any research reports both free and paid?”
“What market conditions and market dynamics are we facing?”
“Are we making things happen or are we running like chickens with their heads cut off?”
