Dr. Pulin K.Dutta, Pune.
I quote from the print media some excerpts on two stories published in Indian Media sometime earlier. I found them very interesting and important not to ignore as trivia. Apparently, they may be seen as disparate; but a careful reader should know both are related. I will try discussing it later.
Story No. 1: New York Times, May 30,2009: “When a new crop of future business leaders graduates from the Harvard Business School next week, many of them will be taking a new oath that says, in effect, the goal of a business manager is to ‘serve the greater good and greed is not good’. However this oath according to the school, is voluntary and nearly 20 percent have signed ‘The MBA Oath’. How about that? It further says, ‘It promises that the Harvard MBA graduates will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their ‘own narrow ambitions’ at the expense of others.’ How interesting? I will be happy if the readers pondered over this oath a bit more and draw their own conclusions. The obvious questions that came to my mind were:
Does this new oath mean that so far the Harvard trained MBAs were not educated enough to appreciate to “serve the greater good’ and ‘greed is not good”? Only 20 percent of the aspiring MBAs signed on, “that the Harvard MBA graduates will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their ‘own narrow ambitions at the expense of others”. Does that mean, even now 80 percent of these Harvard trained future managers are likely to go the old ways – irresponsible, unethical and advancing narrow personal ambitions, leading to greater disasters to come! Is Mr. Obama listening to such stories in his own back yard and doing something about it or continue bailing out failing companies managed by such incompetent managers? Few of them even came to the White House begging for alms from the President in their private business jets. Under such a perverse situation, do you believe the Harvard Oath will triumph? Incidentally, soon after assuming office the President even made statement to the press that the American corporations were suffering due to
excessive greed.
Story No. 2: The Indian Express, June 18, 2009: The heading reads, “Babus give themselves 10/10, so govt. to change IAS annual performance review system”. I may add here that only recently an out going VC of an Indian University rated himself as 10/10 in a press interview.
What do such ratings mean? Does it make any sense to anybody? What is wrong or right in such ratings and why? Many of us never thought it necessary to question such things, taking them as God’s order. However, if any authentic scientific examination is carried out, you may find such beliefs as mere superstitions. In fact, this was indeed done and shown beyond doubt by a reputed physicist and teacher Dr.W.E.Deming (1900-1993) and thus laid the foundation of the Third Industrial Revolution in Japan, in 1950. Just in passing, I may add that Professor Yoshida said once, “In Japan, Deming comes next to God”. Following him, many industrial psychologists and scientists, like Russell Ackoff, Peter Scholtes, Brian Joiner, Henry Neave, Myron Tribus and others did considerable work on this and established that rating, ranking and annual performance appraisals are nothing but illusionary distortion of our judgemental mindset, which are terribly demoralising and humiliating to humans. Above all, it destroyed the system of interdependence of human beings in an organisation. Consequently, the organisation suffered.
I guess my readers are not likely to agree to disregard the rating and ranking systems in jobs, schools and colleges. Why? I cannot understand. May be we have been conditioned from our childhood this way, with the presumption that “we should compete to get good ratings and competition is healthy”! Some claimed without rating merit cannot be judged. Some others say how to make promotions fewer, otherwise, to make the people crave for or salary raise. Some claimed, it motivated people. How that is done is not the question for some.
I only know to get a favourable Annual Confidential Report (ACR) from the boss, people are made to behave like bonded labour and swallow self-respect. The most astonishing aspect is that even the humiliated victims by the ACR weapon oftensupported its use without a murmur. I saw this often in my seminars, in organisations in which I worked and lectured just like the slave who could never think of shackle-less freedom or the fanatic religious preacher who can never tolerate the existence of another point of view. Or like those teachers at the Institutes in business management and Human Resource professionals, who could never believe that the Annual Appraisal of Performance was a cruel joke and never really measured anything, let alone performance. For, performance cannot be measured in the short term of a year. Can you measure and appraise, integrity of character, honesty of purpose or love for the organisation of fellow humans? But then, to be ‘professional’, we need not bother about such ‘philosophy’, not measurable parameters! Are the Business Schools listening?
The statement attributed to Lord Kelvin, the great physicist, “What can not be measured, can not be improved” is not applicable to human minds. The clever management teachers twisted it by replacing the word, “improved” by “managed”.Very clever!! We cannot and do not measure love, affection, integrity, behaviour, attitudes, values and character in our lives; but can we take it for granted that these very important human aspects need not be taken care of adequately and refined or improved for sustainable success of the organisation and happy families?
Ever since I met Dr.Deming in 1992, I have been talking passionately about these matters in a number of organisations, institutions and in written articles etc., hoping to make a small difference. I cannot claim a high success rate, though in few companies I worked during that time, I even put the new found ideas, learnt at the feet of the master into practice. Nobody was seriously accepting or challenging them but was intrigued all right. A few CEOs even agreed but could not push it strongly enough against waves of internal resistance of fear and individual gains and losses.,especially encouraged by the HR professionals!The schools of management and administration too were unaware of such revolutionary concepts and also fearful of teaching things differently. They put up prison walls against such things instead. They kept following the path of the 100 year old American management and administration culture and practice, with the argument that if it worked for the Americans, it should be working for us too.
However, the irony is, it is no longer working for the Americans, never mind how many fads and techniques are invented and sold as “cure all” and “quick fix” stuff. I suppose any general reader of newspapers now knows the scandalous stories of Enron, Chrysler, GM, Ford, Lehman, AIG, Citi and Stayam etc. Are our executives,bureaucrats, management consultants and teachers in the schools of business and public administration learning any lesson yet? The answer is a big ‘No’. Why? Because, the Americans have not done so. Why should we? Eminently logical, isn’t it?
We seem to be rather pathetically slow in re-learning, which for a country of one billion plus population could mean impending disaster in many areas like the economy and up-lifting the overall quality of life, which I believe must be our aim. But, if we keep on doing what we are doing now we may find ourselves in big trouble much sooner. The current euphoria of India rising as an economic power can not be taken for granted. The Americans also believed their economy can never be in deep trouble. It was true for over 100 years. Some of us were more than delighted to emigrate to that land of prosperity at any cost. A green card was the ultimate dream coming true! His market value in getting a bride here was very high. Husbands were
available in good numbers though!
The root cause in the USA, to my mind is the system of education from the primary to the college levels which is very much archaic and outdated. You may not agree; but if you experience it yourself, you will know what I mean. This is so in India too, even though some of us won’t like to admit. But very much true, I know it. The worse is the evaluation system that we as well as many others in the world have. It never really
measured anything meaningfully, let alone performance. Everything was done for here and now, ignoring what may happen in the longer term.
We know already that steroids do not boost field-performance in the longer haul in spotrs; but get strong hold on the user for life to ruin potential performers. Also, it resulted in rampant corruption, fudging figures and making education a profitable business. You may be shocked to know that few institutions charged as
much as rupees seven lakhs and more for a two year MBA course and there are long queues of parents waiting to pay for it. Why? Because, after coming out with the MBA certificate, one was sure to recover the cost with compounded interest by fair or foul means. Let us not forget the top bosses involved in large scale frauds at Enron et al leading it to die were all gold star Harvard MBAs. By now, I imagine the reader is finding this piece irritating and about to turn to another page.. I can only say sorry. Why write if my readers are not satisfied? If happy on the other hand please let me know, I may even get inspired to continue.
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The author may be contacted by e-mail at pulin.dutta@gmail.com
2 comments:
Found this on the web.
'The reason families do not have such performance systems in their families is because they know intuitively that it would destroy family unity. Yet we try to overlay a system that will not work in a family and then use it in a business setting to improve performance. Why don't we just say we just don't know any other way and let it go at that and stop trying to find some explanation that makes sense. Maybe it is like Jerry Seinfeld says, "we are just guys, we are the same ones who honk horns at pretty girls in the hope they will get in our car, they never do but we don't have any better method. Does not work on girls to get in our car and performance appraisals do not work in business but we keep trying.'
I don't think that performance appraisals are meant to improve performance or motivate employees. They certainly don't succeed in that, and after so many years, most people accept that fact. However, performance appraisals do provide companies with an excuse to not hand out raises, bonuses equally (or at all!). After all, everyone cannot be perfect at everything. Since the raises are handed out after the performance appraisals, it is much simpler to stack the deck and ensure that the flavour of the month gets the reward.
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