Learning & Development (SMB Perspective)

If you are a Small and medium business (SMB) you have to face challenges on various fronts. While the obvious aim is to get more business at best margins, this simple “breathing” exercise for your organization is supported by various parts of your organizational body. You would need able support from your sales, finance & accounting, sourcing and most importantly the “brain” behind all this, the people!

As an SME then your challenges are not very different from any big multinational organization. It’s only the scale and speed at which these would impact your operations that matter. In a growing economy you are probably best suited to take benefit of the growth in the market as you are very agile and communication can reach the last mile very easily. However equally true is for not so good times of the economy like we are experiencing currently. The impact of recessionary times would spread quickly to your organization, unless you operate in a niche area or have an innovative business model.

Thus the need to constantly communicate and educate your workforce and keeping them ready for the next challenge is far more important and business critical in an SMB environment than in a big corporation (Don’t worry the big guys have their own sets of problems to deal with!)

Though the need to develop and constantly keep the workforce engaged to the cause is well established in every organization, the mechanisms deployed to achieve the same are as varied as there are organizations. I compare this to the learning methodologies that you and I adopted while we were in school. Though we both get similar marks, (ok u scored 5% more than me!) we definitely deployed different methods to study. However the school teacher taught us in essentially the same manner.

What happens in any learning effort is also very similar to this experience or exercise. We immediately expect the trainer to be the teacher who is supposed to know more than us and hence “pour” out his wisdom onto us, we are then supposed to figure out the best possible way for us to make use of this information, thus converting into knowledge or skills or both. However our busy lifestyles don’t always permit us the time for reflection and introspection on the inputs received, thus making this effort more complicated than we imagine.

Apart from these challenges an SME is also highly pressed for resources like time & money! Hence here’s some wisdom for you to evaluate options to ensure that your teams stay connected and stay on top of that next wave!

Actively support individuals who show high commitment to self-learning. Reward such people with cash & kind. This would help you spread the message that learning is as much important for the individual as it is for the organization. After all you studied first to get hired, why that equation needs to change if you want to continue in your job!!

Use technology. Today you have umpteen options available, which help in reducing/optimizing your one time costs or start-up costs. If you figure out that you need to train your sales people on your products, create an e-learning package, it would help you in solving two aspects – One it’s cost effective and more sustainable than a person! Two – since its one on one I can choose my pace which is so very difficult in a classroom session! (SaaS- Software as service is the key delivery mechanism being developed by organizations for SME’s like you)

If you value learning you need to reward knowledge or skills. Install programs in your company wherein a person is rewarded based on his contribution to the community and not the company alone. We all would be operating in some community like IT, metallurgy etc, reward your team members who have contributed to this community knowledge in terms of paper presentations, industry seminars, blogs, wikis etc

Traditionally our parents decided what we should learn; we continue that practice in our organization by giving that power in the hand of the managers! Instead make employees responsible for their development and allow them to choose what they want to pursue! There are various models available by which you can make this functional in your organization to ensure that people pursue what’s relevant to them and the organization. Believe me! Its only 10% of the population which would be looking at exploiting this for personal gain, if any.

Support a culture of learning and sharing, the person who not only learns but creates a resource to share with others in the organization/community is more valuable than one who holds knowledge close to his/her chest! It does not require huge infrastructure (like IT etc) but needs a whole hearted support and encouragement from you, the leader!

Paternalistic Systems

I was reading an interesting management book on performance management, which talked with lot of information and data about how “paternalistic” are our current Performance management systems are. It mentioned that current systems do not allow employees the necessary freedom and choice to exercise their opinions/options in a realistic manner.

This got me thinking and I soon realized that the whole system in which we human beings operate is paternalistic. Take a look at our government systems and you would soon realize that half a dozen things that you would like to try or experiment with are either banned or fraught with risks defined by the government. One can argue that if things like speed limits, drug abuse were not banned or restricted we would be a very unruly society. We have also defined socially accepted norms or manners which help us decide whether the person is cool or not so cool, to fit into our description. This does have the risk of everyone being judged through the same lenses or yardstick.

Though there is space for individual expression, we can easily agree that it has to be done within a defined framework and anybody who has or continues to challenge the framework itself has to fight hard to prove his/her point of view or worst being labeled as lunatic. We have umpteen numbers of examples from history which would highlight this fact. Very few of these defined lunatics were later on held as greatest geniuses of the world, many times after 2 or 3 decades of their demise!

This goes on to prove that we as human beings have created these paternalistic systems for us to operate. Just like any other living organism creates its own system of hierarchy to ensure effective operation along with survival and growth of its own breed. This aspect gets further complicated due to the variety of breeds that comprise of this generic classification called “humans”. We are further separated by our cast, religion, place of habitat or origin etc which greatly influences the basic framework (e.g., Japanese are more loyal towards their employers where as Americans are more loyal to self)

There is no wonder then these frameworks get applied to the institution of organizations created by mankind. We define a very clear hierarchy in the organization to ensure that every operator at each level knows the superior, supposed to be more responsible and knowledgeable. The quintessential manager or leader is typically defined as a father figure who is supposed to nurture and guide his/her subordinates. Many a times these managers/leaders find this very aspect of their job the most challenging part.

Here again I do see a very compelling similarity between parenthood and managerhood!!
Just like when you and I become parents we struggle, though the feeling of parenthood comes naturally the related dexterity of being able to nurture and guide kids is learnt the hard way or in some cases not learnt at all. According to me, the same applies to one becoming a manager, the feeling is good but the necessary traits to become an effective manager need to be learnt the hard way, trial and error.

Also the parenting methods can’t be universal neither same method produce the same result for all pupils, the same applies to management aspects. This is where as a manager you need to be sensitive to the needs of individual employee and be able to tailor the solution accordingly. Some of the simplest books on this subject like “One minute manager” or “First Break All rules” do highlight this fact.

As one starts to understand this one also has to be ready to accept that not everyone can learn all that is there to be learnt in this vast area of being a manager. People increasing are getting comfortable with the notion of not being a manager at all or accepting their innate desire not to manage people, just like some individuals deciding against parenthood!

Organizations of all sizes and especially smaller size organizations have to be more sensitive to this need and have effective mechanisms to address the same. In the SME environment the ultimate father of the house is the owner/proprietor/CEO who has the view of the entire family. A great deal of responsibility rests on his/her shoulder in this aspect. Establishing clear rules of the community, shared purpose, do help in keeping this small family together and committed to each other. The clearer such community rules are to the members of the organizations the better it is. This process also has to be very similar to the ancient practice in Hindu cultures of assimilating the newly wed girl into the customs of the family. Though certain practices in that culture focused on coercion, we are essentially talking about the participative practices in the culture which enabled the family to stay together.

In conclusion, we can learn a great deal about our organizations basis how do we create and operate our society or family. One has to be ready to understand and apply these principles in the organization to realize the impact and effectiveness of the same.