The Zen of Business

What should be the appropriate attributes for Supervisors and Frontline Management? We are in a knowledge economy. And more important for service based industries, we are in a ‘people’ business. It is cliché to say that people are our biggest assets and when they walk out of the door every evening, our greatest challenge is to ensure that they return the next day morning. Of course, of all these assets, the most valuable are the frontline. There are no two ways about it. They are the ones earning bread for us, and they are also the ones who are directly responsible for the product you are making and / or service that you are providing. However, it seems that most challenging job is that of the supervisors and frontline managers of these frontline staff. And this is also one of the weakest links in the successful operational performance of an organization. The movement from frontline staff to frontline manager is the most important movement for any individual’s career. There is a...

What is the underlying message? One of the most famous passages from Alice in Wonderland is when Alice asks the caterpillar where a road leads to, and to which the caterpillar asks Alice where she wants to go. Alice replies by saying she does not want to go anywhere particular. On hearing this, the caterpillar says, ‘… then it does not matter where this road leads to’. If you do not know where you want to go, then it does not matter where you are going. In the daily rut of transactions, it is very easy for anyone to lose sight of the bigger picture. The same happens with me. While teaching on various topics, providing consulting, conducting operational and process audits of different types of programs across different industries in different time zones, and traveling from one airport to another, with an occasional stopover at home to let my wife know I exist, it is sometimes possible to lose sight of what is the basic, fundamental underlying message that one is trying to convey to ...

What is the idea behind ‘The Zen of Business’? While working on various projects and assignments at work – which invariably have something or the other that has got to do with different business processes, their design, definition, management and improvement – I always come across situations where I feel it would have been nice to refer to something – either to validate my thoughts or to get a stimulus into finding some solution. I usually get this reference by looking around, or through some of the books that I keep handy on the flights and travel. And believe me; the books may have nothing to do with management. They can be on diverse topics ranging from art to philosophy to religion to literary fiction. The last good breakthrough that I got was while reading Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’. But I think it would be nice to have one repository where one can dig into. It is with this idea that I am proposing to start this blog. I hope that it will be entertaining and useful to others, l...