Especially for SME’s – 28: Time- Practice what you preach.

22 February 2022

Mr. Lowe: You are very right: What message you are giving them by your action? A clear message that in your company your personal work is of a higher priority than your commitments to your customers. Right or wrong?

SME 1: Of course you are right, that is the message that is going to everybody in the organization.

Mr. Lowe: In an SME you may not be able to afford a costly HR department; but what is important to see is: what message I am giving to my people in every decision I take and action I do. If wrong message is going down, we CEO’s have to blame ourselves and not the people around us. What happens when you are on a day’s leave? What do you think your number 2 will do?

SME 3: He will do the same thing as us, putting his personal priorities ahead of the unit’s.

Mr. Lowe: And so, this attitude spreads like cancer and that is how you create the culture of your organization. It becomes a kind of social club rather than being a business organization. Everyone feels good about everyone else, as in a club, and that is all! But the organization goes to dogs.

SME 1: So, you are telling the organization is just as good or as bad as its chief.

Mr. Lowe: Just as the family is just as good or as bad as its chief.

SME 2: You have said that the first thing we should do is to practice what we preach, rigorously in our daily transactions. What is the second thing we can do?

Mr. Lowe: You can make the slogan in a poster form and paste it all over your unit every meter or so. This simple thing has enormous effect as anyone who raises his head reads it and the message settles down in his mind- whether he is a worker or a VP because of multiple reminders in one day. We have to do one more thing: fine tune the systems and get them implemented before we announce this to the customers, so it is easy to follow any process and get it done without any hitch. With these things done, never saying no to external customers and making it happen becomes a habit of the whole organization, indeed. And you can confidently announce it to your customers.

SME 3: Would you like to tell anything more on SME’s management?

Mr. Lowe: Yes, I would like to make one key point more: I have told your organization is like a vehicle and you are the driver of this vehicle. The vehicle should have two opposites in it -an accelerator and a matching brake. Can you tell me what could be the accelerator of your vehicle, the unit?

SME 1: Why not what you mentioned just now “ Never say No to customer and make it happen” not be the accelerator, because it does the same job of accelerating, motivating us like nothing else?

Mr. Lowe: Exactly! They say in management that every organization should have one core purpose that acts as the accelerator for all people in the organization. I have been asking why not the core purpose for SME be simply “Never say No to customer and make it happen”? Consultants charge lakhs of rupees and spend huge amount of time of managers in the organization to evolve a core purpose. For an SME this simple statement will do as the core purpose of the organization.

SME 2: This looks so simple and can you explain how and why does it work? ………contd.