Train 18 series, part 16...cultural transformation and its sustainability

Before I take this forward, after a small break, let me rejoice in the launch of Train 18 in commercial service. With the Honourable Prime Minister himself launching the train today, in spite of the dastardly act of terrorism in Pulwama a day before, a strong message was sent across the country. The message that India was on a path of growth and confident, proud self-reliance, without any arrogance. And, directly to some extent but largely indirectly, that the innovative spirit and untiring effort does not go unrewarded; I felt very happy and even happier for the team members of ICF.

Many friends and journalist enquired as to why I was absent. Well, primarily absent because I was not invited but I am not sure if I would have attended if I was invited. The bottom line is that fruit of our labour was there on road for all to see. Did I not borrow from Shakespeare earlier to say, “Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing”, echoing Cressida in Troilus and Cressida? The thing was won, well, almost and the ‘doing’ phase was great. My mere absence in a photo opportunity would not take away the pleasure of having done something meaningful. I also said earlier that Engineering was a great profession and verdict of his fellow professionals was all the accolade an engineer wanted. Was I not getting that already in abundance?  

Success has many ugly and shameless bedfellows but failure is very lonely. It is already showing; a minor glitch in Train 18 on its empty run back from Varanasi was sensationalized as a major break down on ‘inaugural run’. Did I not see the freeloaders vamoosing promptly? The norm world-over is to subject a new rolling stock to extensive field trial in an inferior service commercial run, monitor it thoroughly, rectify all glitches, address operating issues and then put it in the intended service This luxury was not afforded to Train 18, which in some ways was understandable as such extraordinary hype had been created around it. It seemed as if Indians were just rearing to clutch at the success of any proud indigenous development in the making. I tweeted that we should look at the initial runs with some patience; some teething troubles might occur but ICF would address them strongly and the train would certainly live up to its promise.

That said, let me come to the theme of today’s musings: cultural transformation its and sustainability.

Will the cultural changes brought about at ICF sustain with change of leadership at various levels? Will we at ICF go on with continual or further improvements? Well, looking back, I can remember that this was a natural dilemma but honestly, this was a question that did not bother me that much as you would expect in a government set up. I would typically brush the question aside with clichés about the resilience of railwaymen, universal indispensability and inherent strengths of survival in IR’s organizations. With more time at hand to think, I must revisit and ponder as to what I did and, of course, mostly what I did not do.

When I talk of cultural changes, let’s see what I really mean. Culture would cover a set of values, beliefs, norms and practices in vogue in an organization. It defines an organization as something it is and not merely through something it possesses; it’s the way things are done in an organization. It is in layers, and first one you encounter is observable behaviour and the quality of results and output. Secondly, one can determine the prevailing values by observing the first layer and thirdly, the underlying assumptions in the organization which are usually not talked about in a system; a strong well-defined culture has no such assumptions but it is rather rare. Misalignment of these layers leads to employee dissatisfaction.

Let us examine ICF in this respect. Like any other govt. organization, it had (and indeed has even today) many open secrets, i.e., assumptions. Stifling hierarchical behaviour in interaction and decision-making. Window-dressing a case to suit what the boss desired as an input in decision-making. Stifling sensitivity towards archaic protocol in dealing with employees and an overpowering arrogation to themselves misplaced entitlements by a part of leadership. Make-believe aloofness from external agencies, like industry and vendors. Fear of departmental Vigilance Wing. Mistrust in leadership with simulated subservience. Fake sense of propriety, honesty and integrity whereas everyone knew that it was more for preaching and not for practice

I knew that some disruptive measures were called for. Culture starts at the top and it is extremely significant if wish to make a dent in assumptions and move towards changing values. To that extent I have already described how I asked all members of ICF to shed the shackles of protocol, embrace total openness and also treat external stake holders like vendors and contractors as partners in progress.

There are many other culture-related issues we tried to address. My message, through personal example was to socialize with all members and groups of ICF with abundance. Friendliness comes without a cost but with great rewards. Whenever invited, I always joined in social functions and enjoyed it too.

It is not enough to be honest in your dealings, both in respect of day to downright corrupt practices and professional integrity but to be seen to be one. You need not wear your honesty on your sleeve and go for some misplaced holier than thou mission; honesty at times is also a matter of personal choice. But a message must go down that honesty at work is desirable and that lack of integrity and probity cannot be excused. We made some inroads by cracking down on malpractices at lower levels. Certain vigils were made and anonymous whistle blowing was encouraged. As a result of this exercise, we dismissed some staff members who were caught red handed or were clearly proved to be corrupt.

Let me quote an instance when we approached the issue in a novel manner. It is the norm in all railway offices that around Diwali, and to some extent around the new year, representative of suppliers and contractors move around the offices freely with large bags carrying goodies like dry fruits, sweets and even bottles & expensive gifts, distributing them to officers as a routine. What an unprofessional image does it present of an office? I remember, when I was in Germany, we had to employ a great deal of persuasive skills and logistics merely to hand over some inexpensive bottles of wine to some Deutsche Bahn, the German Railways, personnel on the 1st of January. To improve our image, this practice had to stop and I arranged to put up standees outside all the ICF offices with the colourful following legend:

“Dear visitor, If you have brought some dry fruits, sweets or other gifts, kindly deposit the same at the reception and we would be happy to send them to Karuna, our school for the special children.”

During my first Diwali in ICF, my attenders were even engaged to nab the defaulters who were brought to my room and it was fun quizzing them as they stood in my room, totally flabbergasted.

But I think we did only a wee bit more than scratching the surface. Rank dishonesty was prevalent among certain sections of staff including the security personnel; although our intention was well known and it had some effect, we were far from eradicating it. In addition, there were some officers known to be absolutely corrupt and many of them perhaps had a self-defeating, or even self-sustaining, notion that as long the interest of railways were not hurt, it was not that bad to accept bribes. Once again, I cannot say that we could make any great inroads. The only satisfaction we could have, culturally, was that the issue of honesty and integrity did come in some focus.

And what price professional honesty? Professional dishonesty is a bigger killer. A culture of calling a spade a spade and eschewing any window-dressing to justify a pre-determined end is detrimental to building a sound cultural ethos. All decision-making in railways, or at least most of it except the direct day to day operational activities, progresses in files. Great emphasis is placed on files and the way they are put up by many senior officers but unfortunately in a babudom mode; there are other who condemn it as agonizingly bureaucratic. I never bothered about the correctitude of file itself; the content was important and as I said earlier, this system of file movement could be used gainfully. Since everyone was encouraged to record contra views honestly, there was no pressure to commit to anything which, in one’s judgement, was not in the interest of the organization. At the same time, it was made clear that delay or hold up in important cases was inexcusable and the person delaying it was liable to be shamed.

Mariana says, “No legacy is so rich as honesty” in Shakespeare’s 'All’s well that ends well' in perhaps some other sense but forgetting the complicated puns and metaphors here, please see how the literal meaning itself is extremely powerful for an organization. Our attempt was to pull at least a loose code of honesty from total oblivion to the forefront in the legacy we were building at ICF.

We also tried to encourage dissent. Quite often, new members show rebellious tendencies. It should not be curbed but listened to. Many times a rebel heard is a rebel won over. An added benefit was that you might also end up doing some course correction based on someone’s rebellious outburst.

The big picture is important for silos to be broken. Since this was not a big problem area, it was easy to align all the team members towards the organizational goals. I got a neat display board indicating the time line of all major projects and asked everyone to place it on their respective desk. The time lines had to be revised frequently but it was there, loud and clear to all.

A formal process was also started. A cross-functional transformational team of officers was constituted to meet and suggest fundamental changes to ease processes and remove unnecessary detentions in work. After some months of sparring, eventually, they started coming up with many ideas and many of these were actually implanted or taken up further.

Apart from recognition of staff through various soft measures, we went totally liberal in awarding them. For every strong action against any erring employee, there were hundreds who were recognized with a certificate and a cash award. I removed all restrictions in awarding staff repeatedly; if someone did good work repeatedly, he or she should be distinguished repeatedly. During my tenure, more than five crores would have been spent on individual awards but at the end of the day, it was a very small price to pay for getting a motivated and committed work force. The awards were always distributed in a manner which evinced some personal touch from me or the concerned senior officers.

The work we did towards improving the work place, colonies, sports facilities, cultural activities, environment, cleanliness, waste management and so on was on a massive and unprecedented scale. I would perhaps devote one or two full chapters on the same. I did mention some of these in ICF-12, when I talked about “So what is ICF”.

Summarising, we made good progress in the following areas:

• Flexibility and adaptability in decision-making, curbs on delays and establishing primacy of the big picture for ICF as a whole and not some departmental objectives; some of these parochial and limited objectives frequently masquerade as performance indicators.
• Formal and informal interactions for problem solving and improved communication
• Inspiration to, and motivation of, the work force.
• Improved environment: A code of uniform, icons, cleanliness and order in work place, after-work cultural, social and sporting activities, engagement of families, greenery, improved  welfare centres, proliferation of visual art displays and so on.
• Integrity and rectitude, which are not only important but should be readily and plainly demonstrated and perceived.
• And above all, a credibly and palpably positive leadership

I now come back to the familiar question: will the transformation stick? I think changes stay put when, with a smooth but gradual transition, all employees begin to identify with the way things are done in the organization. Since we regularly communicated with employees to emphasize how new approaches, behaviours and attitudes helped improve performance, it started forming a part of the value system. To that extent, I am sure the transformation would stick. On the other hand, continued commitment of the combined leadership to take the momentum forward is also important. Will the next line of top managers embrace and personify the changes? That is and would remain an imponderable.

In any case, I have no doubt that something by way of transformation would indeed be sustained. I have great confidence in the resilience of team ICF to not only sustain many aspects of these cultural changes but to even take them to positive refinement. Someone in exasperation had once said long back about the political scene in India:

Barbaad    gulistan   karne   ko   bas  ek  chughad  hi  kaafi  tha,
har shakh pe chughada baitha hai anjam-e-gulistan kya hoga*

(*An owl alone spoils a garden; with owls perching all over, what would be the result?)

But ICF is far luckier and I must say:

Abaad  gulistan  karne  ko   bas   chand   gul   hi  kaafi  the,

Har shakh pe gul hi gul hon jab husn-e-gulistan kya hoga**

(**A few flowers make a garden beauteous; with all the plants flowering, how beautiful it would be?)

Apart from sustainability of cultural initiatives, there would always be the bigger question of organizational sustainability. That is to keep the business going and expanding; future proofing of the organization, i.e., continued success today while protecting and strengthening the needs of the future. I need to talk about it more detail later.

(to be continued...)