Train 18 series, part 15...participation of staff

When I talked about industrial relations on IR and ICF, I commented that trade unions were necessary to act as a bridge between the management and the workers. At the same time, direct interaction with a genuine model of workers’ participation in management is equally important. But, usually, some sporadic insincere and ornamental instruments pass on as workers’ participation measures. We, however, did take make some serious attempts to involve all levels of the team in the functioning of ICF. Without dismantling any of the committees and machineries already in place, although the same had proved to be largely decorative in nature and substance, we devised some more effective and participative methods.

You cannot controvert the simple fact that in IR and perhaps most organizations, the fountainhead of new thinking and transformational changes emanates from the leadership. But a host of significant ideas and innovations must be tapped from the bottom to top or otherwise these would remain underground, never coming to fore for actual implementation. We set up a simple mechanism of monthly meetings inviting suggestions from all. The suggestions would be received till hours before the meeting and all the individuals who took the trouble of forwarding any idea were invited to present their proposal. All key executives would be present. The response ran to some 20 to 25 new ideas and Sri Babu, the Secretary/ICF would take them up one by one. Nothing was discourage or disparaged, everyone was thanked, albeit some humour was always a part of the interaction. The ideas would usually be either accepted for implementation or examination and rarely dropped summarily. The idea would then be a part of the successive discussions till its implementation. During a wrap review, I was astonished to see that more than a hundred ideas were actually implemented and some were under various stages of implementation in the last two years or so.

An aside about the designation ‘Secretary/ICF’. The secretariat of a General Manager is headed by a senior middle level manager designated as Secretary to GM. The role the Secretary plays is complementary to the GM; he must know of all goings in the organization and actually take up and direct many things on behalf of the GM. The secretary, moreover, is the first sounding board for a GM. Briefly, an asset a GM can ill afford to misuse or underutilize. To that extent, if I as the GM was for all ICF, so was the secretary and I immediately changed his designation from Secretary to GM to Secretary/ICF. I do not know how much Sri Babu liked it but from that point onwards, I employed him gainfully in so many different areas and aspects of ICF and it proved to be of immense benefit to my style of working.

Apart from the enrichment we derived from these sessions in terms of improvement in processes and even designs, many new connected issues got highlighted too for additional review. I remember that in the second and third meetings, many executives walked in unprepared, perhaps under the impression that like all such exercises in participative management were merely light-minded and dissipative routine. A rather harsh mouthful to some of these easy going officers on a couple of occasions was enough for this machinery to take off and sustain itself as a very positive tool for progressive works in ICF.

Government organizations are too steeped in rules, regulations, legacy and traditions making them inherently unwilling to change. One could not hope to deliver a project of the magnitude of Train 18 and that too in an ambitious format with a truncated time line without some changes in the processes and ways of working. It was, therefore, necessary that I looked for an opportunity to talk and interact with people to figure out why they did not want to change. Apart from the obvious reasons, it could well be people's habits or their fear that their personal equities and reputations, defined as they were by their present roles and expertise in processes, would be compromised. So what would one do? Talking, listening and thinking had to help. That was the reason I tried to demolish all stupid and feudal protocols which severely restricted interaction between various levels of hierarchy in ICF. Going out unannounced on the shop floor at peak working time, with or without the CWE concerned, and just shaking hands with the workers was such a pleasure. You can always decry the practice as showmanship but personally I found it very beneficial in bridging the divide towards a free and frank interaction. Admittedly, most of the exchange was in the nature of “Any problem?”, “No problem, sir.” But I found it very pleasing and frequently some minor issues did get addressed and resolved through these direct feedbacks.

Keynes, the famous economist has said somewhere that the difficulty lied not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones; he has also said that ideas shaped the course of history. Spot on, sir!

Constant interaction with staff had its lighter moments too. Once Sri Trivedi, the PCME, refuse tea in my room, telling me unabashedly that the tea served in my room was the worst in all ICF. To a person like me, perhaps lamentably, tea in office is just tea, it can neither be good nor bad. But I could not let the affront go unaddressed. The tea maker was politely asked to carry a poster with the legend, “I make the worst tea in ICF” to Sri Trivedi’s room and everyone had some fun. Soon thereafter, I dumped the doctor’s advice and switched back to coffee instead of tea. And voila! I was told the filter coffee in my room was one of the best in whole of Chennai. The tea maker soon had another poster to carry:

Another very fruitful exercise that we initiated was what was later aptly christened as one month one idea by Sri Srinivas, Chief Design Engineer/Mechanical. It was something which I would always do in my earlier postings as well. What it involved was that every single officer of ICF was required to come out with an idea for any improvement in any area of ICF once a month; the only caveat was that this was not an empty ideation rhetoric but the implementation was also going to be the baby of the officer who extended the idea. Typically, I would sit with the officers of one group, say, Design or Shell Factory, with their boss and the officers would present their ideas. After a free and involved discussion, the idea would be either accepted or discarded. If accepted, the officer concerned had three months to fully implement it. If discarded, the officer concerned had to come up with not one but two ideas in the next monthly meeting.

At first look, all this may appear to be rather farfetched. Not at all! Most of the officers rose to the occasion and would at times bring two ideas, in any case, so they were ready with an alternate if their first idea was not accepted. Two or three best ideas of the day were recognized then as there and a certificate given to the officer concerned and his photo receiving the certificate splashed in all inter and intra net mediums. There were only a handful of officers who were bereft of any ideas at all and cut a sorry figure in the meetings.

By the way, what do you do with an officer who has no new ideas? In my opinion, such officers were those who would contribute nothing  towards progress and transformation; they were consciously consigned to some insignificant work. And why should we carry the burden of suchlike? I also initiated a process to actually get rid of them. I would, however, have loved to consult Ghalib,

hai aadmī  bajai  khud  ik  mahshar-e-ḳhayal,

Hum anjuman  samajhte  hain  khalvat  hi  kyun  na  ho

(A man himself is a bedlam of thoughts and ideas, I think of solitude as a party)

Some officers did not fully follow the import of ideation followed by implementation through a single window; they tended to pass on the blame to some other agency during the review. After some meetings it was clear that excuses would not work, simply because the choice of the idea was theirs and responsibility of its implementation was also theirs; of course, it being known that the magnitude of the idea was not important, with even a small new modification in designs, processes or upkeep being equally welcome. If some officers still had excuses, the bard came to my help, and I would reaffirm strongly, like Pembroke in King John, “And oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.”

Was the experiment successful? Immensely, without any doubt. ICF has some 165 officers. Some group of officers with daily involvement with the GM were excused; some other less intense groups were required to have an idea only once every three months. But any rate some 75 to 100 ideas would be generated, on average, every month, making it some 3000 ideas in my tenure. Taking an average strike rate of about 70%, some 2000 ideas got converted to a stable new improvement in this period. It is creditable as nearly all these works would not have been done but for the one month one idea activity and you can imagine the impact of the exercise. Some of these ideas, particularly from Furnishing shops, were not only adopted for regular coaches but also adapted for Train 18.

With apologies to the poet Firaq,

Chhlak ke kam na ho aisi koi sharab nahin,

Par khayal-o-faham-e-ICF, tira jawab nahin

(there is no wine which does not lessen when spilt but the thinking and discerning ICF, you are just matchless)

Amazing. The more we met, the more ideas emerged.

Dear Hamlet, you can be repudiated for once, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”, perhaps, but in ICF the endless dreams brought something new all the time.

We recognized these novel attempts towards progress by constructing a shed at the entrance of Furnising factory and displaying some of the innovations; the shed was done tastefully and named, Innovation Illam, the house of innovations. It bears a mute testimony to these months of ideation and implementation in ICF.

So far so good. One question I repeatedly face from management gurus when I go for a talk in management institutes, or even otherwise, is sustainability of whatever good was done at ICF. Or not just sustainability but continual or further improvements. That, if I did really put some good systems in place, how would I ensure continuity? I understand, in hind sight, that this is a natural dilemma faced by anyone in a leadership role. Honestly, this was a question that did bother us but like a typical government executive, I hardly looked at this seriously enough except mouthing some platitudes about the resilience of railway men, that no one was indispensable and that leaders came and went but the organization survived. Now that I have all the time in the world, I must revisit and ponder as to what I did and of course mostly what I did not do. I hope to cover it in one of the next posts.

(to be continued…)