How to Make Good Soldiers In YOUR Organization?

"Hey Guys! I love this place!!!" exclaimed Janett.

Janett was dressed in a casual 'kurthi' (The Indian top) and a long flowing skirt that was down to her ankles. Her hair was un-kept and despite her pale color (When compared to the Indians) and her naturally blond hair seemed to fit well with the people around.  Knowing that Janett had never ever stepped out of California, I was pleasantly surprised that her outfit and outlook were in tune and in sync with everyone her.

I wondered "How did she know how to dress perfectly in a country that she had no idea about?"

A few days passed, another friend that was traveling to India drove his own car in India. Within a matter of minutes he had adapted himself to drive on the roads here (which is, on the left side of the road). Again, I was surprised to see how he adapted himself to his surroundings?

"Who taught him to use his car horn to communicate with fellow drivers than curse them?"

Then a thought struck me. "If we can somehow recreate a system in our organization similar to what a country and its people do to tourists, then we can create a sustainable culture of productivity, discipline, and  healthy competition that will propel the company forward".

I got curious. I started posing a question to people. "What made people behave radically different in different places and setting?"

I questioned people from all walks of life from industry leaders young adults that were just starting their career.  The results of the discussion were as follows:

1. Culture is the written and unwritten rules of a place (while this is not the exact definition, this is what literally everyone in my sample set agreed on).
2. Culture of a place is driven by positive and negative feedback provided by the people in the society.
3. These feedbacks drive people to act differently than the otherwise might have.

Now, it gets interesting!

Meaning, if a company have a system to measure its employees on a daily basis by providing positive and negative reinforcements through its social network (its employees) then we can have a simple and effective way of controlling employee behavior.

While most people agreed to this they would also add that it is impossible to control behavior this way.

Well we have good news. With Club VA there IS a way. Club VA (Vantage Agora's patent pending social enterprise platform product) allows you help control employee behaviour and motivate them in a very objective manner to bring value to your organization.

About Vantage Agora 

Vantage Agora (VA) is a global provider of back-office solutions, custom IT services and consulting services for companies in the insurance, finance, and healthcare sectors. As a SSAE 16 Type II audited company, Vantage Agora utilizes advanced data processing and quality control systems on a secured network to ensure efficient, comprehensive management of back-office for the insurance and finance sectors. Along with that Club VA has helped several companies improve their operational efficiency of their organizations. Founded in 2004, Vantage Agora has offices in Cleveland and Dallas.

Insurance Supply Chain Visibility

The first thought might come to your mind is “What on earth is that???!!!!”

All of us in the insurance industry from agents, to MGAs, Reinsurers, & the Carriers work toward one purpose to provide the best value to our customer the ‘insured’. In that sense all of us are tied together in a chain. This is called as the ‘Insurance Supply-Chain’. The ability to track a customer account beyond the four walls of organization into the supply-chain to service and improve the value to our customer is called ‘Insurance Supply Chain Visibility’.

“Well…” you say “Why do we need this Supply Chain Visibility?”

Let us learn from the manufacturing sector. Up until the ‘90’s it was impossible for the common man to have a custom built car! But with better supply chain visibility and online collaboration these challenges...Read more

About the Author

As the founder of Vantage Agora (VA), Harsha has been instrumental in the growth of the company since its inception. Harsha has over 20+ years of experience in consulting, Enterprise Social Networking, Business Intelligence,  and Process improvement. His work with companies such as Fidelity, American Airlines, I2 Technologies, etc, has made him an Expert in Business intelligence and Process improvement. 

Harsha has developed a patent pending 'Enterprise Social Network – VA Club', Harsha also has 4 process improvement patents.

Harsha graduated MBA from southern Methodist University (SMU) Dallas, a masters in Computer Science from Louisiana State University (LSU) Baton Rouge, and a Bachelors in Engineering from Bangalore University (BU).

About Vantage Agora

Vantage Agora (VA) is a global provider of back-office solutions, custom IT services and consulting services for companies in the insurance, finance, and healthcare sectors. As a SSAE 16 Type II audited company, Vantage Agora utilizes advanced data processing and quality control systems on a secured network to ensure efficient, comprehensive management of back-office functions such as insurance, accounting, financial and administrative tasks. Founded in 2004, Vantage Agora has offices in Cleveland and Dallas.

Know more about Harsha and Vantage Agora.

VA Finishing School: The Basic Art of Front Line Management

The life line of delivery is flawless execution. Meaning, every delivery team has to have flawless execution day in and day out. This battle is won and lost in the trenches. These trenches are run by the first (sometimes referred to as front) line managers/leads. The success and failure of any project depends on how well the entire management has helped FLMs to four areas of their work. The best way to think of a FLM's rule is to the think of them as the 4Ps, (Plan, People, Process and Projects).

In this article we talk about some important aspects to consider in each area to become a successful FLM.

1. Plan: Without Planning/Training these people most companies have failed in execution and if not in execution they have failed in scaling the organization:
   1. The plan for your team should be in-line with your customers plan for the project. You should feel free to ask the goals of every project. What is the Key Result Area (KRA) for the project? What is the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for the project? What is the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for the project? What are the business impacts of not hitting the SLA and why the customer/management is setting these objective SLAs.
   2. Based on this understanding you will need to come up with your own plans for your team and your people. This plan should be broken down into plans for the month, week and day and should help achieve the company annual plan.
2. People: FLMs by nature are the best technical people that have been made into FLMs because they are good at their technology and not because their leadership skills. Given this, most FLMs are not the best of people managers. You as an FLM need to be trained in people management. It is critical for your success. While HR or hiring can hire the best it is critical that there you take ownership and have the mindset to help people. It is as simple as that. If you are kind to your people they will be kind to you. You as an FLM should be the ones training your people with close supervision from other management team members.
   1. Mindset: The most important aspect of being a leader or FLM is to have the right mindset. Remember you can never be lazy or negative about anything. Your entire team is looking up to you. If you say anything negative or get lazy or hide from your responsibility your team will not respect you and will never take anything you say seriously. Being an FLM does not mean that you will try and fight management for your team. While this looks good on the short run it is doomed. Make sure you work with your management to help your team. Be honest, humble, and hungry. Things will take care of themselves.
   2. Review: You must have a monthly KRA review with each employee.
   3. Feedback: Have a daily feedback if required with each employee. Ask if they have understood you. Have the team member repeat what they are supposed to do at the beginning of the day.
   4. Care: Find out how their day has been at least once every three days. Know your team members personal life. That IS your business. Make kindness a way of life.
   5. Who is your backup: Create a second. Will they be able to handle your job if you are on vacation without bothering your manager? That is the only question you have to ask when training them.
   6. Remember your customer is also a person. Here is how every customer thinks. No matter which company, country or type of work, the mindset of the customer is always the same.
   7. The Customer is looking to get ahead in his or her career by managing your project well: Companies are structured in a way that when an employees career grows, the company grows. This is news to be excited about. The first rule with customers, know what makes them succeed. It is your job description to help them get further in their career and help improve their company’s Return On Investment (ROI). This will help you and your career in the end.
      1. The customer is NOT out to get you: The customer actually wants you and your team to succeed. Because when you do they look good. When things are not going right for you and your team the customer is NOT out to get you. Any customer or manager is trying to understand only three things:
         1. Do you have a plan to fix the problem? And if this fix is a permanent fix?
         2. Do you date when your get well plan will bring the project back to GREEN?
         3. How they can help you solve the problem?
3. Process: Every FLM needs to have a process to run their daily operations and drill or scrum. Without this process your will fail. Some of the critical processes to follow are:
   1. Morning Operating Rhythm (OR): Create a morning OR for your team. Go through this with your management and then make sure that you go through your operating rhythm without fail. Also create an Insurance dashboard for yourself.
   2. Daily Scrum: Spend 15 minutes to make sure everyone in your team understands the tasks for the day "WHAT", "WHEN", "HOW" needs to answered here.
   3. Talk to your team: Most of the time the individual contributors need to be verbally explained what needs to be done every day even if the information is written in requirements or process documents.
   4. Define the goal to the team: For example if you are going to be testing 100 items with an intent to find out as many bugs as possible tell the team that they have to get to a goal of creating at least 5 bugs each. But make sure you let them know that they have to stick to the test script.
   5. NEVER jump steps: When explaining things to people never jump steps. It is critical that you make sure that your team also understands that they don’t jump steps. Jumping steps is a sure way of getting things wrong.
   6. Review: Tell them when you are going to review and what you are going review at the beginning of the day. Continuing with the QA example, tell your team that you are going to QA every bug that is reported. If you working on operations or development let your team members know that you are going to do a sample QA of the work done by everyone in the team. Before you QA, THINK!!!! “What is your goal?” “What is the customer going to look at when they see our work?” Then QA the work. 99% of the errors that will come from your team will come from the lack of understanding of the fact that they don’t look at their own work from the end users perspective. Out of these errors 90% of the errors is going to be caused because your team members have jumped steps or trying to take short cuts. Yes even the so called human errors are caused because someone got too cocky about the work they are doing and got careless.
   7. Questions from the team: You have to explain the work at the beginning of the day. Encourage your team members to ask questions. The best way to make sure that your team does not ask questions is to make sure that you NEVER yell at a person that asks questions. When people ask questions, please make sure that you don’t just answer it. Make sure that you ask more questions to test if they have understood the process completely.
   8. Timing of your reviews: Again, the operative word is ‘THINK’. Don’t review the work of your team at the end of the day. Review a sample of everyone’s work after they go through the first pass. Then again, when they are half hour from lunch and then again one hour before the end of the day. This will ensure that the work that they are doing can be corrected during the day and not at the end.
   9. End of Day (OR): Before you send your daily update into your dashboard or your email to your customer/management make sure that you have reviewed all the numbers that you are sending. The simple way of making sure that the numbers are correct is to review the numbers backward from the email or the dashboard as a customer would. Your sample tests at least one or two should come from this message or dashboard to make sure that you are doing what your customer will do when they review this information. Again the operative word is ‘THINK’ customers!
   10. Highlights for the day: Collect all questions and make sure that you put this into the knowledge base of your team. Make sure that you check with your management in your weekly call about where to store this information. Again, don’t assume, ask!
4. Projects:
   1. Timely delivery: Know the timely delivery KRA for your project. Make sure that your team knows about this number every day.
   2. Quality Delivery: Know the quality delivery KRA and SLA for your project. Make sure that you mention it to your team every day as a part of the daily operating rhythm and also put it up on the Insurance dashboard.
   3. Understand the RYG for your project: When to raise your project from G to Y and Y to R and back.
   4. When you in trouble: (And you will be from time to time) make sure that you:
      1. Create a plan with your management on how you going to fix the problem for now and a preventive measure for the future.
      2. Confirm on when you will be back on track
      3. Confirm to the customer/management on the dashboard on what the plan is and when you will be able to get back on track. Also communicate if you need them to communicate anything specific to their customers
      4. When communicating, make sure that you are proactive. If you ever get into a situation when the customer or your management or your employee follows up with you for information then you will always have a tough conversation.

In every part of your 4Ps have to practice consistency of purpose (Rule 22) in everything that you do. You have to move from being a manager to a leader (Rule 11).

Every FLM at Vantage Agora goes through an experiential learning excercise in being an FLM. The promotion to being an FLM means they get baptized by fire. We do this to ensure that your projects and operations get the attention it deserves to be successful!

About the Author

As the founder of Vantage Agora (VA), Harsha has been instrumental in the growth of the company since its inception. Harsha has over 20+ years of experience in consulting, Enterprise Social Networking, Business Intelligence,  and Process improvement. His work with companies such as Fidelity, American Airlines, I2 Technologies, etc, has made him an Expert in Business intelligence and Process improvement. 

Harsha has developed a patent pending 'Enterprise Social Network – VA Club', Harsha also has 4 process improvement patents.

Harsha graduated MBA from southern Methodist University (SMU) Dallas, a masters in Computer Science from Louisiana State University (LSU) Baton Rouge, and a Bachelors in Engineering from Bangalore University (BU).

About Vantage Agora

Vantage Agora (VA) is a global provider of back-office solutions, custom IT services and consulting services for companies in the insurance, finance, and healthcare sectors. As a SSAE 16 Type II audited company, Vantage Agora utilizes advanced data processing and quality control systems on a secured network to ensure efficient, comprehensive management of back-office functions such as insurance, accounting, financial and administrative tasks. Founded in 2004, Vantage Agora has offices in Cleveland and Dallas.

Agora Times: Social by Social

"I am going to quit my job!" announced Madan. 

"It's about time", I said.

I was not surprised because, I have known Madan since we were kids and have known it for a fact that he is headed for greatness. I knew it was not because he had started a company in the employee assessment space and created an industry where none existed. Nor because he was one the youngest entrepreneurs to get the country's top honor or because he had made millions well before the age of 40. I knew there was something more to him. I just didn't know what. When he made this announcement, I had a strange feeling that this was it!

I smiled and said, "Okay, what are we going to be doing now?"

He grinned ear to ear since he knew I would ask him that question.

"Harsha, we are going to create the largest rural workforce and provide employment to millions of people around the world and make the world a better place for everyone!"

"Now you are talking!" I said.

Madan didn't need to be prompted, he went on, "We have already proved the model. We have taken people from some of the most poor villages in the country. The people selected have been the ones with zero education. We have created a training program that teaches them from life skills training, finishing school, reading, writing, and using computers to the extent that they can be employable in any company in the world to process electronic data."

"That  is impressive" I said. As their customer, we have used some of their employees and found them to be reliable, well trained, and diligent.

"But, Madan, how are you planning to scale and execute this? I know you have an unparalleled training program, but you don't have too many people in one village. You have to have all these people work and execute in unison to succeed in delivering to this major undertaking."

"Well, it is simple. That is where you and Vantage Agora come in" said Madan without batting an eyelid.

I laughed. But my mind was already racing.

A year ago Madan and VA tried to convince customers to use the rural workforce. We tried to convince some large fortune 100 companies to give back-office operations work to us that we would get executed by the rural workforce.

The 'C' level people were easy. Within minutes of hearing the story and the plan, they would commit to helping out. But the operation managers would give us donations, hardware, software... everything except work. The reason was simple. He/She was not prepared to risk the perceived quality of the work.

"This time we are going to do this differently," I said. "This time we will keep it simple for the customer:

1. We will tell them that we will do their work at a lesser cost and better quality.

2. Provide them visibility and control though a patented online social network based dashboard
3. We will provide a structured continuous learning platform
4. A self healing social network that learns from its mistakes

5. A unified platform of learning and execution that will bring about operational excellence without having the customer worry about 'HOW' we would get it done."

"And, Oh! BTW Mr. customer, it is all for a great cause of transforming the world by helping the rural youth with a quality life!" added Madan.

"I get what you are saying" continued Madan, "We will use VA's patented enterprise social networking  platform (Club VA ) to bring different people in different villages and different programs all under one network to achieve operational excellence at a scale and quality that has not been done before!"

"That is right!" I exclaimed, "We are going to achieve something that has never been done before by executing Social by Social!"

Two Months Later

1. A clear plan has been laid out to 'Execute the Strategy to Success' by Sudhir Achar (CEO and Founder of VantageAgora) and Madan Padaki (CEO of Head Held High). A board of advisors from all over the world have been signed up to help the cause.
2. The VA Operations team has already made site visits to the HHH teams.
3. All HHH projects have been transferred into the Club VA (VA's Patented Enterprise Social Networking platform) to provide the operational excellence to existing customers.
4. Madan and the team is already getting investors lined up that want to make it big and make a difference to world around them.

The rural workforce is changing, one village , and one youth, at a time! We are doing this with a unique way of going 'Social by Social'.

Social: A practical incentive program

For a long time I had given up on motivating people to excel. Given up, because I had tried everything possible and prescribed. From team huddles, to team outings, one on ones, power talks, external speakers,and online videos. Name it and I had done it. Yet, I consistently found three sets of people in every organization that worked, consulted or mentored.

1. Go Getters: There were a set of people that had a great attitude, needed no motivation, not pep talk, no carrots, no sticks.

2. Followers:  They just pushed themselves only as much as required or when told to. These were the people that need constant goading.

3. Bad Apples: There was a third set that had negative attitude, created most disturbance, took most vacations, most sick days, created negative energy . After a number of years I realized that most HR and team motivating work was done for these people. Eventually they were the ones that quit the organization at times when we needed them the most.

I had to find a way in which I could get more go getters. But how??? Click here to read...

Social: Executing without overheads

"2 months! You have to kidding me! " shouted Mark at Jill, our head of procurement.

It was later in the evening around 7:00PM, most of the employees had left for the day, but the ones that were in the office were collecting to see what the big public bawling was about.

"This can't be good" I thought to myself as I got nearer.

"Hey, hey!!! Can we please take this in my room." I interrupted their intense disagreement.

While we walked towards my office, I wondered,

" I was brought in by the CEO and the board as the head of operations (of this software development company with nearly 500 developers in three centers) to help them streamline the operations and grow the business ."

"For my part, I have done everything by the book. I have incorporated (Key Result Areas or Goals) for each department in-line with the organization goals. I have then rolled out a balanced score card throughout the entire organization. Put in a system of measurement on each project, and finally made the leads and managers responsible for customer success. All in just over a year. This was a no brainer. It should work!"

"Yet…," I pondered on, as I made them both sit down in my office and got them both a bottle of water

"We have issues:

1. Each project seems to be working as a little company and nobody seems to care for the organization

2. At the ground level there was a constant struggle or issues between all the departments. It seemed that we needed more and more processes and rules because every rule in some way crossed some other teams productivity

3. Teams were interested in getting only their task done without care for anyone else. It felt like we were running a bunch of mercenaries…"

My thoughts were interrupted when Mark, (Mr. Magic as I called him) our creative design group head spoke up.

"Harsha, I have to have the latest hardware for my project (The actual hardware is not important here), and have made a procurement request as you have asked us to, but yet Jill here is telling me that it is going to take two months!"

Jill replied "But Harsha, you have asked me to import these machines from the low cost vendor as a part of organization cost management process."

'That is fair', I thought, but before I could react, Mark rebutted, "By that time my project will be done and dusted by then! Look, I want to be a team player, I have even done the analysis on the web, I have even called a couple of vendors locally and they can have the machine in-house by tomorrow morning."

"But that is going to cost more" said Jill defending her department goals.

"By how much?" I asked both of them.

"$285 more…" came the answer.

I nearly fell of the chair!

I asked them to go ahead with it. I told Jill that we will add this to her budget and that it would not affect her department targets. Notice, I just broke my own rule to do good to the company.

Both of them went about their business and completed their projects successfully.

As they left the my office, I shook my head in disgust.

"$285! And, they are fighting like kids! But it is strange. But both of them are empowered employees and were doing everything by the rules I had had set up for them, if you look at it they were both trying to do good for the company.  Somehow, the organization and I had let them down. The organization structure and the systems and processes that I had laid out with the best of intention was the real reason for them fighting. Their corporate goals  were opposing one another!"

But how would I fix it????

As I reached home, my daughter came running to me and asked, "Daddy, which nail polish do you think I should wear?" and thrust out 5 different choices from her moms collection!

It had been a long day, I thought to myself "Why me?" in a bit of self pity. Then did any self respecting parent would do and washed my hands off it by saying, "Why don't you ask your friends?".

She got distracted by something and went away.

An hour later just my daughter flopped in the couch next to me. I noticed that she has a crazy shade of blue nail polish on her hands that was mixed with pink and silver dots!!!!

Knowing fully well something crazy was going hit me, I ventured, "But I did not see you call or go out? Did you talk to your friends?"

She quickly said, "No, I checked with my friends on the social networks and we decided that I should go with a combination than just one color!"

She disappeared just as she had appeared but got me thinking of the problem earlier in the night.

That is when it hit me!!!!!!

The world around us has changed. We have three main advantages going for us.

1. We can’t put a processes/rules around everything. We have to let the organization evolve through empowered execution.
2. With the internet information is instantly available to everyone (Not just the procurement guys!)
3. The power of social network can be used to harnessed (People are influenced by their social network) companies to drive employees to execute strategies to success!

The Club VA (Our enterprise social network software to enable operation excellence through empowered organization!) is built to help companies execute leveraging these three advantages.

Results: After we implementing the Club within the organization we found the follow results:

1. Not only did we not have any of the problems described above, the server utilization increased by over 20%.
2. Employees felt empowered to make decisions for the organizations at the execution levels that decreased costs by 10%
3. In just one year of implementing the software we were able to bring about team cohesiveness and reduce attrition by over 50%.

If you want to achieve similar results. Please feel free to call any one of us at Vantage Agora.

Managing Companies to Success Using Dashboards

A short visit:

I saw Tony Starks coming out of the airport terminal looking exactly like I had seen him 10 years ago. He is 6 foot 4’ and built like Iron Man himself. He was looking sharper than usual even after an 8 hour plane ride from Europe to India. Starks Enterprise had signed a big agency for the European operations and Tony had come to launch it. Tony had just been named CEO of Starks international after his father’s unexpected demise. Tony is in the services industry and had started working with Vantage Agora as a customer only a few weeks ago. He was coming in to see how the project was taking off before he got completely caught up in his new role. Tony and I worked together in the past. I had come to respect his incredible creativity and brain power in terms of software development. I had also come to respect the fact that Tony was a self made man before he went and joined his dad in his family services business. In under five years Tony had helped grow the sales of the organization grow from a $23 Million to a $456 Million. For the last year plus sales had stalled because of the relentless economy. The pressure on margins had become so high that Tony had engaged with Vantage Agora back-office service and started his own team with Vantage Agora to leverage from the cost benefit and process efficiency we bring to the table.

On a side note, when we worked together Tony was the one that introduced me to golf. Not only did he introduce me to the game but also taught me the finer points of the game.

Lack of Accountability or Lack of measurement:

We were in the office early next morning at 7:00AM sharp. After a six straight hours at the office we headed out in the mild December afternoon towards my golf club. In Bangalore the weather is beautiful year round but in December it is especially nice between 60 and 70 degrees. On a weekday at 1:30PM in the afternoon there was literally nobody on the course. In India you have the luxury of having caddies that carry your bags. This gave both of us to catch up on varied topics of life and business.

The first hole is a short par 5 which I managed to double bogey while Tony true to his form managed to par with a great sand save. I grumbled to him that his business must have taken off really well and that he is getting to practice even after taking on his new responsibilities. That is when Tony actually confessed that he has been having issues. I casually enquired what kind of issues.

To this he replied, “Oh! It is the usual thing I guess. On one side I have the old timers that are not big on any automation and change. Now they are opposing every change that I want to bring about. On the other side I have people that have no accountability. They all seem do to the job for the sake of doing and don’t seem to care about anything. All they are interested in is how secure their job is and how much raise will they get. I am really sick of all this because I have a great feel for my customers and business but I have no idea what is happening on the floor. It seems that I am running at 100 miles/hour and the rest of company is running at 99 miles/hour but in the opposite direction. Bottom-line there is no accountability at all in my organization.”

I just thought of how typical this problem was with literally every company we meet. Not just in mid-sized or small companies but even in larger companies. Most senior managers believe that their systems have failed them or their employees have failed them. They say this when they themselves don’t use the same yardstick to measure both themselves and the organization. I must not have realized but must have started to smile. Obviously Tony was not amused and challenged me. “You think this is funny. I am here trying to ask you for your help from all your executive consulting background and you are mocking me. Nice!”

Please read follow this link to read more...

About the Author

As the founder of Vantage Agora (VA), Harsha has been instrumental in the growth of the company since its inception. Harsha has over 20+ years of experience in consulting, Enterprise Social Networking, Business Intelligence,  and Process improvement. His work with companies such as Fidelity, American Airlines, I2 Technologies, etc, has made him an Expert in Business intelligence and Process improvement. 

Harsha has developed a patent pending 'Enterprise Social Network – VA Club', Harsha also has 4 process improvement patents.

Harsha graduated MBA from southern Methodist University (SMU) Dallas, a masters in Computer Science from Louisiana State University (LSU) Baton Rouge, and a Bachelors in Engineering from Bangalore University (BU).

About Vantage Agora

Vantage Agora (VA) is a global provider of back-office solutions, custom IT services and consulting services for companies in the insurance, finance, and healthcare sectors. As a SSAE 16 Type II audited company, Vantage Agora utilizes advanced data processing and quality control systems on a secured network to ensure efficient, comprehensive management of back-office functions such as insurance, accounting, financial and administrative tasks. Founded in 2004, Vantage Agora has offices in Cleveland and Dallas.

Know more about Harsha and Vantage Agora.