Train 18: Public Leadership and Design Thinking

 

After a series of talks, newspaper articles, media interviews and yes, my blogs, since late 2018 to date, on Train 18 and the transformations at Integral Coach Factory (ICF), it was natural that I would increasingly be beset by the Déjà vu syndrome. How long can this lather, rinse and repeat process go on in my discourses? It did make me think and reassess the project. To some extent, a timely input from a friend, a professor at one of the IIMs, helped me emend.

There are actually two stories from my ICF and Train 18 experience. One is the public leadership story and the other is the making of Train 18.  

The Public leadership story is about change and the influence of control. I always present a slid comparing a GM of IR (General Manager of Indian Railways) with a CEO of a private enterprise and show that the former, unlike what many believe, is more empowered to change things.  A senior bureaucrat in India, represented by a GM in my story but equally applicable to across the spectrum of bureaucracy, is vested with tremendous authority and power but hardly any, or only misplaces, accountability. There is practically no bottom-line accountability and only a mislaid responsibility for top-line and even simple questions of propriety and performance. A GM never gets sacked and even if it happens, it is due to some inconsequential issues which irk the powers that be and not because of lack of attainment or execution. There would naturally be a view that this should be the reason for which we should make senior bureaucrats more accountable for their actions, or indeed inactions, like a private sector CEO. 

After a series of talks, newspaper articles, media interviews and yes, my blogs, since late 2018 to date, on Train 18 and the transformations at Integral Coach Factory (ICF), it was natural that I would icreasingly be beset by the Déjà vu syndrome. How long can this lather, rinse and repeat process go on in my discourses? It did make me think and reassess the project. To some extent, a timely input from a friend, a professor at one of the IIMs, helped me emend.

In contrast, an alternative also exists. Since accountability of may not happen till kingdom come or the all-pervading penetration of bureaucracy in enterprises may take eons to loosen, a story that highlights that change can take place within the archaic system itself is worth telling. Particularly to bureaucrats who have their heart in the right place to do something but feel stifled by our crippling government environment and systems. So from the perspective of public leadership, a case can still be built up for defining your role and define what you are willing to be accountable for. One would then actually need to redefine one’s job in respect of locus of control, influence, more accountability to people and less to government. Many of the transformations ideas, as practiced at ICF and also to some extent from my previous tenures, can be covered as a recipe for desirable leadership and other arguments would follow smoothly.  

The making of Train 18, on the other hand, is a story about extensive coordination and design thinking which can be a lesson for managers cutting across all sectors. This a story is about extensive coordination and Design Thinking. Design Thinking is retrospect? Perhaps but as a part of the project, you pick up so many disparate things and put them together to deliver something of awe!  

To my mind, we do not have many instances in the Indian context which symbolize Design Thinking delivery. The Train 18 journey can be put forward with this view, ‘Design thinking in practice: The Train 18 case’. I would like to think that putting the project into a Design thinking framework can unravel this story. Closely connected to this is the idea of the cost of coordination. The key team members of ICF did this extremely difficult job of coordination. The technology and expertise existed, or was within the striking distance but there were huge imponderables in respect of where and with whom. We were able to put together our own experiences take the risk to empathize and coordinate.  

I will try to write and speak accordingly from now on.