Business Process Mix

In general I have come to a realization that every organization needs to have an optimal ‘business process mix’. Firstly, what is a business process ? A business process can be defined as a sequence of elemental steps, which are required to ‘get a task done’. In terms of computer science, a business process is essentially an algorithm, i.e. a well defined sequence of steps which is required to transform an input to a desirable output. 

I believe for that for the ‘de-risking’ of day to day operations of an organization, having well documented business processes is essential. This helps in making the organization less dependent on a particular individual / resource for it’s day to day operations. This helps in increasing employee / management confidence in running a sustainable organization. A sustainable organization is one which is ‘fault-tolerant’, i.e. which has built-in redundancy. This means that the absence of a resource will not overly affect the core operations of the system / organization. A sustainable organization always tries to make itself redundant. It clearly identifies the core-strengths and functions performed by it’s resources, and tries to duplicate / cross-pollinate these functions all throughout the organization.

It seems to me that smaller organizations have a much higher need for documenting business processes, than larger organizations. This is because smaller organizations, by definition, have fewer resources and hence the responsibilities per resource increase. This increase in responsibilities leads to higher risk, per individual resource. This increase calls for a more aggressive business process documentation approach in smaller organizations, than in larger organizations. On the other hand, I have heard that it can take forever to get anything done in larger organizations, due to the highly structured processes. This can also be called as the ‘meeting for a meeting to organize another meeting’ syndrome. In such cases it would seem that it is important for someone at the top ( or the bottom, or at any layer in the hierarchy ), to be able to see through all the layers of management from top-to-bottom, and devise newer / more streamlined business processes. 

When nothing goes as expected ...

Over the past few days quite a few things have been going wrong. I am talking about several aspects of my life. The situation did seem grim initally. However, with a little bit of self-confidence, hard work, help of friends and I might add luck as well, I have emerged better off than I was before the calamity started. As part of this process of recovery, some concepts, have been reinforced in a more concrete manner than they were prior to these problems. These concepts are:

1. You always learn a whole bunch more from failures, than you do from a simple, straight-forward success.

I believe that no one will disagree with me when I say that the taste of success sure is sweet, but what is wrong to take so much pleasure from one success so as to become negligent of facts and fail to do a critical analysis of reasons for success. Life is a battle, everyday. This being the nature of life, it is best to convert every *attempt* at doing *anything* into a learning opportunity. Such an attitude helps in making one's character more resilient and *silently* self-confident. It maybe argued here that success implies victory, so what more is left to fight for if one has already won. This would be true, if life was a single *shot* affair. But, the fact is that life is *always* a fight, a daily one. While some aspects of life are under our control, the others are simply not. Hence, one may not always achieve success but there is also a chance of failure. The reason why failures help are because they make you much more prepared for the next battle as compared to a success. ( This does assume however, that one is willing to learn from one's mistakes !)

Another related aspect is the more battles you fight, the more prepared you are for the ones which are waiting for you. Here, the term battle is loosely used to mean *attempts* at achieving something, without caring for failure. The more one is obsessed with a potential failure, the more one gets discouraged from trying something. Therefore, one should never be shy of trying something new. As they say, leaving your comfort zone makes you a stronger person.

2. Hard work *always* pays.

Over the years, I have had some very vivid examples of the above, proven to me in a very direct manner. What has varied is the duration over which your hard work will pay, but for me I have found it always does. This lesson was reinforced again during the recent /battles/. When I say hard work, I especially mean hard work in areas which you are passionate about, and where you have *not* been asked to do that work by anyone else. Such activity is, to put it in another way, *pure* because it has not been performed due to any external prompting, but has been done completely due to your own passion. There is a chance that the quality of work while undertaking such an activity will be high, simple because it is borne out of an innate interest.

Planning vis-a-vis Execution...

Sometimes , when someone asks us: "Hey, you were going to do this task 'x-y-z', did you do it yet ?", we reply by saying that even though I have not done the task yet, but I am "planning" to do it in the future. It is at times like these that we must reflect and think if we were really planning to do that task in the future, or was that statement used more like an excuse.

One must always consider that a person is always recognized and remembered by what he or she has already "done", not by what he or she "plans" to do. For example, let's take the case of Mahatma Gandhi's famous Dandi march. Suppose, that it so happened that Mahatma Gandhi expired a few months before the march. Assuming here for a moment, that the Dandi march was until then, Mahatma ji's largest venture, would we remember him by saying, "Mahatma'ji was great, because he had planned to undertake the Dandi march"? Would we remember him by saying, "Mahatma'ji was great, because his planned Dandi march would have mobilized thousands of Indians and bolstered the non-cooperation movement?"

I personally believe that we wouldn't have thought so highly of Mahatmaji if his thoughts and ideas had remained crystallized as plans (i.e. never materialized). In other words, his Dandi march was appreciated and recognized, because it did happen, and despite all the hurdles it did get executed. The fact that the Dandi march did happen, and it did mobilize thousands of Indians is something which we give due credits for, to Mahatma'ji. Therefore, plans are not worth the piece of paper they are written on, if the plans themselves are not planned to be executed. The eventual measure of success of planning, are the achieved results and the results are only possible after execution. This post does not serve to undermine the value of planning. I recognize that planning is a very important tool in the success of a project, but planning must always be done with one eye on execution.

On Excellence

I have found that excellence is a habit, and it is not like a feature which can be turned on or off selectively. That is, if you excel in a certain sphere of life, then I believe that your chances of excelling in other, seemingly unrelated areas are high. That is because the secrets to success, in seemingly unrelated areas are the same, only their implementation is different. As a side note, my personal experience has been that there are some days, when I am more diligent than the average, and on such days the quality of my work, irrespective of the domain is of a fulfilling nature. On other days, the exact opposite is true.

Questions...

Questions

-          Asking questions, lots of them with genuine interest is one of the best ways of learning. Before a questions is asked however, it is very important to realize however that one must try to accumulate all the possible resources and tools one has to possibly answer the question. Let me try to answer what I sat. Questions are usually asked in response to ‘problems’. Now, it is possible that at any given point of time you might have the necessary knowledge base to attack a question, but you might not have the correct direction / approach to attack the problem. Anyways, my point is that the process of self-introspection / investigation into one’s existing knowledge base is very important _before_ one asks the question because once that is done, and your question gets answered, you know _exactly_ what you were missing in your thought process and/or knowledge base and you are much better able to integrate the knowledge acquired to attack future problems. Furthermore, such knowledge is more likely to stick with you for a longer period of time.

Learning

What always fascinates me is the fact that no matter what happens, you can always get to learn more about things, articles and people, whom you think you know so well. A couple of examples, from different times.

I have owned a digital camera for nearly 3 years now, and I had read through the manual for it as soon as I can. Before coming to the US, I thought I was so content with my supposed knowledge of my camera, that I thought that it is too old and too familiar, and I shouldn't keep it with me. In hindsight, it was a good decision to get it. Anyways, nearly an year after I had bought the camera, I went to a place called Brasstown Bald, supposed to be the highest point in Georgia. Afternoon changed to evening pretty fast, and before we knew it was night already. Before that day I had tried to take many pictures in night, but somehow they never came out right. Then I saw Lakshmi Anna take a picture of all of us in night mode. I saw how he switched to a different mode, and made sure that the camera had a solid base so that it could remain stabilized. I checked out the night mode icon on his camera and found exactly the same icon on my camera. Then and there I took my first night mode picture, and it was beyond my expectations ! It was such a beautiful discovery ....

Another event happened today. In the past I have often been frustrated when I have had to press a separate button after I have taken a picture, rather than the auto review mode being on by default. Well, guess what, today after 3 years of me having this camera, I randomly bumped into a deep hidden setting which can switch the default auto review mode on ....

As they say, " When the student is ready, the teacher shall come " !