Internal Enterprise Data To Enhance Decision Making

Devdutt Patnaik is the Chief Belief Officer (CBO) at Future Group. As a CBO he is not a full timer but regularly interacts with the HR department discussing essential principles that need to be followed. He is a renowned scholar in the application of mythological lessons in the corporate world. Owing to his vast experience, he gave the keynote on ‘Leadership Lessons from Indian and Western Mythology’ at the recently concluded Gartner summit in Mumbai.

In an exclusive with Biztech2.com, he talks about people management; relationship between people and technology; and the ultimate objective for organisations. He also talks about how energies should be more focused towards deciphering the pattern from tonnes of data getting processed at enterprises.

Your talk at the Gartner summit this year focused on joining the dots, data points and picking up knowledge from the pattern that emerges out of the design. The CIO community also lives in a highly complex and dynamic environment of ever changing technology landscape, how do they extract knowledge from this environment?

No data exists in isolation. For example, the data with the sales department in itself has no importance unless it is a part of the company’s data and the same applies to all the departments. They are all a part of the larger organisation. Often they are viewed in isolation, this implies that we are looking at the dot and not joining the dots.

We lack the vision of joining sales with IT, HR, Finance etc and every department with every other department. It is only when we begin viewing the company from this angle that a pattern emerges.

Usually decisions are taken considering departments in silos and not in conjunction and that is where the big pattern is lost.

What are some leadership lessons that you would suggest to CIOs?

The leadership lesson is about focusing on people’s happiness. The biggest mistake is that we think that people are logical, which is untrue. They are a combination of logic and emotion and emotion is by definition irrational. One has to work at that but unfortunately people don’t give enough attention to that. Good leaders focus on that aspect, in fact more than that they focus on the logical aspect.

The difference between a leader and a manager is that the leader focuses on the emotional aspect and the manager follows the logic; hence, one always follows the leader and not the manager– and hence one has to align with the manager.

How do you co-relate people management and the technology systems they work on?

We have to look at the relationship between people and technology. Often technology comes as an imposition, as in – “this has to be done.” For example, when a new system is introduced, there is not enough time invested on the nature of shift happening from the current practices to the new practices. There should be an empathetic approach shown for employees who are emotionally connected with the system. While the systems are changed, the comfort zones are broken and this transition has to be handled with showing a ‘You’ attitude.

The new systems might make people redundant and it also needs some special skillsets, which the concerned employees might not possess and it is assumed that they should possess. There are new tools being introduced and they might not have a clue on how to operate them.

The resultant friction between employees is because of this absence of the essential understanding of the emotional relationship between the system and employees.

How is ‘impact of technology on employees’ measured?

It is imperative for a CIO to make a list of all the departments and technologies used, along with the rational for using that particular technology and how it will help the employees grow form point A to point B. They more often look at this from a statistical level rather than from a human angle.

Hypothetically speaking, a sales employee will understand the necessity of entering accurate data in the system if he understands the criticality of that data in decision making. He should be well informed about the importance of authentic sales data otherwise he will view data entry work as a burden, which is actually not the case. This will result in him doing his work with more accuracy and interest because this data entry has an objective and he rightly understands it.

The question is the employee can also enter false data and that becomes a problem because so long as he thinks of himself as an individual and not a part of the whole, he cannot associate with the process completely.

For example– the same sales employee’s job is not only to get sales but also enable future sales by the doing an accurate data entry; however, that is not being told to him. He thinks that his sole responsibility is only to get sales for the company. They are under the wrong impression that if they meet targets, their sales data is naturally getting captured in the ERP then why bother to enter it separately.

The same analysis can be applied to the secretarial, marketing, CEO level etc. The impact is different at all levels. Adequate time should be spent to do an impact analysis of the technology usage and map it at least at the leadership level and understand the top two or five things that will impact the human aspect.

You say ‘profit’ should not be the purpose of the business, it is just an outcome. If not profit then what should be the objective?

Profit is not the goal, it is an enabler. Profit leads to survival and sustainability of the business activities but the point of life is not to survive, there is much more to it. It’s like food which helps people survive but the purpose of life is not to eat food.

However, in current times, food has become the purpose of life and we have regressed into an animal state where everybody is chasing money.

Apart from profit what should be the objective of organisations?

There is no ‘apart’; profit should not be the objective. The point is, are your consumers and employees happy with you? If the consumers are happy, then the revenues will come in and a satisfied employee will manage costs better and improve the productivity. Now if the revenues are coming in and the costs are controlled, profit is a natural consequence.

Companies will have to take a call on what’s their ultimate objective– to make profits or to keep their employees happy?