Invisible Tension

"You have to pay penalty: Rupees Two Thousand.

Why Ma'am?

Because you didn't 'declare' that you had held a passport as a child.

Madam it's inadvertent. During last visit the other 'window' advised to make fresh application under 'reissue' category instead of 'renewal'.

Then go to that window", shouted the 'cashier' (window).

"Fine. I don't have cash right now. Do you have facility to pay on-line?

Don't waste my time...". The lady reacted with an angry sermon. She kept me waiting endlessly. At the closing hours she put some remarks on the application asking to come back on Monday.

Questions that remained unanswered were:

Has she put some adverse remarks on the application?
Are they going to accept the penalty in cash on Monday?
If they do, then what are the next steps?
How many days it'll take to get the passport?
If they don't, then what? And so on.

My son returned with these thoughts that kept bothering him until Monday.

In many situations, one gets preoccupied with such worrying thoughts primarily because of lack of visibility of "what next?"

Someone borrows money but doesn't observe commitment to repay. Nor does he bother to give visibility to when he'll repay. A case of shattering trust.

School authorities don't give visibility for admission process and deadlines and so on.

A standard advice under such circumstances is not to get preoccupied with worrying thoughts. But it's easier said than done.

Isn't there some responsibility (on us as suppliers) to our customers?

Can't we bring in visibility to our role in meeting expectations of the customer and a timeline to do so?

Or is it a strategy by design to give the customers sleepless nights by forcing her to guess "what next?"

If 'Yes', then for a criminal it might be fine. But otherwise it's a criminal behavior.

Succession-Plans In Fast Lane!

How Much Can We Better Our Recruitment Processes?

In Order To Improve Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes, How Much To Add To Training Budgets That Are Already Heavy?

How Much To Better Our Succession-Plans?

These are some of the worries that keep haunting HR professionals. One reason is, increasing inventory of disgruntled employees. Employees disengaged due to job dis-satisfaction in particular in spite of having good systems in place. Other reason is attrition.

How to overcome this?
What is the solution to this dilemma?
How to reduce or prevent attrition?

Sometimes the causes might be aptitudinal. Sometimes it may be due to gaps in matchmaking at recruitment stage itself due to misleading presentations by either of the stakeholders.

It ultimately results into recruiting people and then figuring out how to fit square peg into round hole in order to accommodate them. Failure to do so results into branding them as defocused if they stay disengaged or as not-trust-worthy job-hopper if they quit jobs.

Hereunder might be a simple way to find out whether passions and aspirations of prospective recruits match that of a company's needs. HR professionals and companies might like to drive following steps to ease their worries.

Step-1: Prospects, both the recruiters and recruitees, need to look for matchmaking of mutual passions. Read blogpost that answers How To Take your career in fast lane!

Step-2: Prospective recruitees write their comprehension about thoughts expressed in the blogpost in maximum 50-words!

Step-3: Prospects write briefly about their own passions: Maximum 50-words!

Step-4: HR professional (assessor and selector) from recruiting company studies above 100-words in order to draw parallels. Based on the parallels s/he draws her conclusion on matchcmaking of passions and aspirations between the prospects and the company.

The findings might be given an appropriate weightage alongwith that of various other available criteria for recruitment.

In support of the above process, the recruiting company might like to design a few prompting questions that the recruitee answers.

Better the matchcmaking of passions and aspirations, better will be the mutual choices of recruits and companies, lesser will be the disengagement and better will be the Succession-Plans!

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder:

Take your career in fast lane!

Do You Ask Right Questions? 

Do you exercise your choice meaningfully

Overworked? Tension? CPU of the mind hung-up?

Prevention: The Best Cure! ... Is it really so?

Do you know a Best-Career-Plan 

Don't Forget: Stir-Coffee-Well !

Strategise To Achieve Targets Daily

Listen To The Iceberg, Not The Tip 

Nauseous Communication Gaps

An Experience of Heart-and-Soul

Taken-For-Granted ? You Deserve It !!

Be Bug-Be Or Big-Be ?

How To Make A Difference

Beware Of Political-Presentations

Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis

Would you like your purse to be transparent?

Answer from some people may be a Big-NO with exceptions of course. Reason is obvious if you look at the picture.

Anyway, transparent containers are usually preferred to opaque ones. Like for instance transparent glass bottles  usually used in a typical kitchen. They are also used in some industries like processed-foods, pharmaceuticals, etc.

Why do people prefer transparent containers?

Obviously because contents therein can  be easily seen even from a distance just by a single look. You may call this as a step towards look-free²-engineering in order to reduce number of glances or looks (as required in ergonomics) thereby reducing search-time.

In fact, making or rather more appropriately 'designing' a workplace¹ to be transparent (alongwith systematic arrangement of equipment therein) is a principle practised in Seiton-pillar of Five-S. It makes the workplace¹ search-free² as well. Five-S is a Kaizen-tool to make improvements proactively.

Is it so important?

Apart from making the workplace¹ look-free², search-free², etc. there is also a 'not-so-obvious' reason behind the practice of 'transparency' principle. 

Transparency makes abnormalities, if any, obvious and visible. Look at the purse again if you don't believe this. Had it been opaque, you couldn't have noticed 'defects' inside: Be it chaotic (lack of systematic) arrangement or a sharp object inside it causing injury to  finger or a leaky-pen messing up other items.

An opaque container on the other hand hides defects behind it. Imagine a stock-out situation resulting due to invisibility of say grain-stock attacked by pests inside it. Or imagine a situation when a  pendrive containing  important information couldn't be fetched just-in-time (JIT) when 'need'ed in spite of it being in the purse. 

Or imagine a loose connection inside an opaque computer-cabinet or in an opaque (closed) electrical control room the spark of which resulted in a devastating fire. Realizing this, leading businesses have already begun marketing transparent-cases of their offerings as a differentiating proposition.

So the later one i.e. to make 'defects visible' is more important subtle-reason of designing a workplace to be 'transparent' than the former one i.e. to improve 'visibility-of-contents' itself.

Ways-and-means to make a Gemba transparent

Ways-and-means could be many. Some are as follows.

1/ Use of a transparent glass or plastic (for a container or for a cabin partition or as an enclosure of a product).
2/ A simple daily-cleanup (of a desk or a house) like done in Seiri-pillar of Five-S by getting rid of items unused (lying idle) over a given time period.
3/ An advanced daily-cleanup like a mother bathing a child or a workplace practising Seiso-pillar of Five-S that exposes cracks, crevices, etc. as defects.
4/ Seiton-pillar of Five-S: A systematic arrangement of routinely used items, consumables, tools, tackles, etc. using space vertically (rather than spreading the items horizontally) so that more can be stored close to point-of-use in an arm's reach.
5/ A system-based method such as an RTI-Act to make governance visibly transparent and thereby to unearth corruption as 'defect' in governance

What is the learning?

Taking it a little ahead, making a Gemba transparent is the desired result. Choice of ways-and-means to do so lies with the user. However, there is 'no-choice' at all not-to-do-it.

Otherwise ensuing crises as a result of not doing it do force one to do it reactively though. History has enough proof of this and costly at that. Causes pushed under the carpet do boomerang (raise their heads) in the form of crises exactly when we don't want them! 

Look at the forced-cleanups as in (rape-fame Shakti-mills compound) picture that had to be undertaken reactively after experiencing costly-consequences.

"History never really says gogoodbye. History says, 'See you later'", as Eduard, Galeano, Uruguyan writer and historian, says unless of course you work on root causes. 

So better to 'Cleanup-Before-Crisis'! Better to be proactive!!

Footnote-1, Workplace is called as Gemba in Japanese language in the context of doing Gemba-Kaizen for workplace improvement-management.

Footnote-2, These are Free-Engineering concepts to make a workplace free of, say, a non-value-activity (waste) like searching or looking or unscrewing, walking, etc.

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or sharing this post via social media.

That's How Morons Work 
Functional-Aesthetics 
WOW Work-Culture: By Telling or Selling 
Take Habits For A Ride 
Make It Simpler, Rest Will Follow 
How To Make A Difference 
A Ride To Hell 
Make checklists your friends  
Drove To Hell ... Almost ! 
Treat Root-causes, Not Symptoms ! 
Nauseous Communication Gaps 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Raam or Krishna-Shyam: Tell me Hey Raam! 
Will It Work Here?  
Some Moron ! Some Great !!! 
That's How Morons Work 
Suggestions On-Sale, None-To-Buy 
Technology in-place, security dis-placed 
Succession-Plans In Fast Lane!  
Prevention: The Best Cure! ... Is it really so? 
How Many Times Do You Wash Hands 
What You See Isn't What's Made 
Am I 'Short-sighted' or 'Long-sighted'?  
Beware Of Political-Presentations 
Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis 
Hoarders Of Filthy Hoardings 
Are You Good If Others Are Bad?