Especially for SME’s – 29: Time- Win- Win for all.

02 March 2022

Mr. Lowe: This one step makes the company climate so positive, powerful and productive that the company comes out of even conditions of sickness given-up by Chartered Accounts of both the banks and the company itself. This one step makes any company, sick or otherwise, grow rapidly as the company gets the collective best out of the human resources in any organization, like no other method or technique does. This simple core purpose, ‘Never say No to customer and make it happen’ works because you build enormous trust with your customers and, when you repeatedly say yes to them and make it happen, they would like to depend on you rather than on anyone else. Their trust on you is also because they perceive you as going out of the way sometimes to make things happen for them. They cannot have a better bet with anyone else.

‘Never say no to customer and make it happen’ works also because everyone realizes that this purpose statement is not in the interest of only a few sub-systems like owners, shareholders, management or labor but is in the interest of everyone connected with the organization including its employees and suppliers. You cannot find a core purpose better than this when it comes to acceptability and whole- hearted, committed support with involvement that this statement of purpose, ‘Never say no to customer and make it happen’ derives from all concerned- a situation of Win-Win for all.

Also let us not forget the power of a single focus that this statement gives to all connected with the company. p=f/a, a Universal law of Energy, is made to work and it does!

SME 3: What about the brake on the vehicle of a unit, which is very essential for the safety of the unit as otherwise it becomes a vehicle with only accelerator and no brake and is headed for crash?

Mr. Lowe: The brake is applied by the core values of the organization just as the accelerator is applied by the core purpose. Even the core values revolve around our customers, our God.

Core values are conditions that we impose on ourselves as sub-systems while we make the core purpose happen for our customers. We can tell our customers: We live and die for our core purpose “ Never say No to our customers and make it happen, but subject to a set of values that we impose on ourselves.” So the core values act as brakes on us as we set out to achieve the core purpose for our customers. The very first brake is: we will not do anything that gives minus to our customers.

To get our core values, we ask the question: how we are going to accomplish the purpose, the end, come what may. These values become what we may call Mandatory Processes, (MP) the means to achieve the core purpose. Without these, the end cannot be achieved, hence the name Mandatory Processes. Then follow what are essential ingredients of each MP that ought to be in place. These may not be mandatory but very critical to achieve the core purpose at the right time and with the right quality. Without these essential ingredients in the MP’s, the core purpose will in all likelihood be spoiled, which means we may not achieve the core purpose- an act that we can indulge in only at the peril of killing the organization. These essential ingredients we may call Essential Processes (EP).

Both mandatory processes, MP’s and Essential Processes, EP’s require focus inside the organization, unlike the core purpose that needs focus outside the organization. The MP’s and EP’s are brakes on the vehicle that is the organization, to keep the organization healthily on track. If we do not give them the place they deserve, not make them almost ritualistic practices in the organization, the organization becomes a vehicle without brakes, like an automobile without brakes. That is why it is critical to have an effective periodic audit system to ensure that these MP’s and EP’s are indeed operational in the company. The rest that are required, other than mandatory and essential processes are desirable processes- DP’s- that need not be mentioned as core values. Not mentioning these desirable processes- DP’s- helps in keeping the number of core values down so that the focus on day-to-day implementation, practice, monitoring and auditing of them at all levels within the organization becomes easier and practicable. Leaving these desirable processes from core values means we have a truck brake to a truck engine, car brake to a car engine and not a truck brake to a car engine in actual day to day practice and not in some manuals alone.