I once read a speech purportedly given by Abdul Kalam, the former President of India. He lamented Indian media’s penchant for bad news. He asked why Indian media can’t emulate their Israeli counterpart. It seems, during one of his trips to Israel (this must be during his nuclear-bomb making days!) there was a series of bomb explosions in Tel Aviv and its surroundings areas. The headlines of a major local newspaper the next day screamed about the success of a Israeli man turning a desert land into a grapevine! The bomb attack made it into somewhere in the middle pages.
This story came to my mind when recently a fellow consultant shared some articles on Appreciative Inquiry (AI). The basic tenet of AI is simple and profound all at once. Essentially, AI postulates that we should focus on the positives rather than the negatives…...on the grapes not the bombs! Say for example, a senior executive team goes on a retreat to brainstorm reasons on why there is a high rate of turnover in their organization and spend days on it. What will they find? A hundred reasons why people leave. But, what does that solve? What if, says AI, they focused instead on why people stay in their organization even seemingly despite the fact many others are leaving or are planning to leave?
I suppose that changes the whole dynamics at how one looks at organizational challenges. By beginning an inquiry from the positives is definitely more empowering and energizing. In the case above, the executives may find the following reasons (positive) as to why there are still loyal employees in the organization:
1. The company looked after them during the good times
2. Working for the company has a prestige factor attached to it
3. The company has a good history among the local folks
4. The company takes people places (or used to), etc
On the contrary, if the executive team had begun their soul searching by asking the question why their people are leaving in droves, they may have found out that :
1. Over the years the company had forgotten how to look after its people
2. The company’s merit based compensation has been corrupted
3. The company’s behavior in the market place is no longer aligned to its vision and mission
4. The company’s policies and procedures are outdated, etc
Both ways, the executive team would have found out some answers but the quality of their brainstorming will vastly differ. By focusing on the negative, we give life and energy to the negative. By focusing on the positive, we give life to the positive. All said and done, people are more energized by the positives than the negatives. It is the things that work that matters in an organization. People leave an organization not because of the things that don’t work today but because of the things that used to work but aren’t working anymore. Find these things and mend them and we can keep our people; or at least we can make them stop and think that we are sincere in taking their views into account.
There is a company I know which is a house-hold name. It used to attract young talents in droves. Now, it is shedding its work-force faster than its HR can recruit. As expected, the management team has been identifying all the reasons why the company is loosing people (especially the younger ones) but the problem still persists. I asked one of the managers what made the company attractive previously and the key message that I got was that it used to be a creative company with sufficient room for people to experiment, make mistakes and learn. Today, after years of double digit growth, the company has become complacent and risk-averse – which means creativity and innovation are no longer a prime quality desired from its employees. Herein the solution! What this company needs to do now is to make it more creative, dynamic and mistake-tolerant. Why? Because, it worked before.
An interesting parallel could be made here in relation to Proton’s gradual turn-around. Take away all the technical and financial lexicon, what essentially has turned around Proton is that it went back to what works. In this case making a fuel efficient, quality, people oriented and affordable car (Persona and the new Saga). The other 20 reasons why Proton was failing is immaterial. All it needed is one example of something that used to work.
As for Abdul Kalam, he can take comfort in the fact that one of his most illustrious countrymen, billionaire Vijay Mallya said recently that “In any situation there are positives, and even though you cannot gloss over problems, you really need to build on the good parts…” Mallya was referring to the fact that his Force India Formula 1 team is yet to win a single point with only 3 mores races left in the season.
May the Force (that works) be with us!
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