Economic Tasks

This article deals with economic tasks that any business has to discharge for economic performance and economic results. It attempts to organize these tasks so that executives can perform them systematically, purposefully, with understanding, and with reasonable probability of accomplishment. 

Economic performance is the specific function and contribution of business enterprise, and the reason for its existence. Tasks leads to obtaining economic performance and results and for tasks to yield results need to be thought through and done with direction, method and purpose. 

There are several successful businesses and effective executives - as there are many with at best mediocre results. One searches in vain, however, for an analysis that identifies what successful are doing to give them results. Nowhere is there a description even of the economic tasks that confront a business let alone how one goes about tackling them. To every executives desk come dozens of problems every morning, all clamoring for their attention. But there is little to tell them which are important and which are merely noisy.

That executives give neither sufficient time nor sufficient thought to the future is a universal complaint. Every executive voices it when they talk about their own working day and when they talk or write to their associates. 

It is a valid compliant. Executives should spend more time and thought on the future of their business. They should also spend more time and thought on a good many other things, their social and community responsibilities for instance. Both they and their business pay a stiff penalty for these neglects.  The neglect of the future is only a symptom; the executives slights tomorrow because they cannot get ahead of today. That too is a symptom. The real disease is the absence of  any foundation of knowledge and system for tackling the economic tasks in business. 

Today's job takes all the executive's time, as a rule; yet it is seldom done well. Few managers are greatly impressed with their own performances in the immediate tasks. They feel themselves caught in a 'rat race'. Before an executive can think about tackling the future, they must be able to to dispose of the challenges of today in less time and with greater impact and performance. For this they need a systematic approach to today's job.

There are three different dimensions to the economic tasks, 

1. The present business must be made effective; 

2. Its potential must be identified and realized; 

3. It must be made into a different business for a different future. 

Each task requires a distinct approach. Each asks different questions and each comes out with different conclusions. Yet these are inseparable. All three have to be done at the same time: today. All three have to be carried out with the same organization, the same resources of men, knowledge and money, and in the same entrepreneurial process. The future is not going to be made tomorrow; it is being made today, and largely by the decisions and actions taken with respect to the tasks of today. Conversely, what is being done to bring about the future directly affects the present. The tasks overlap. They require one unified strategy. Otherwise, they cannot really get done at all. 

The next set of articles lays little claim to originality or profundity, but it is to my knowledge an attempt at an organized representation of the economic tasks of the business executives and the first halting step towards a discipline of economic performance in the business enterprise. 

Setting up a Virtual Control Tower

"If you know what is happening around you it is easier to make informed decisions" - I realized this while I was drinking water from a bottle that was opaque. Usually when I am playing tennis, my partner gets transparent bottle, so I am able to keep a track of how much water I have to drink and how much I need to keep for my partner. While drinking from the opaque bottle, the information of how much water is left in the bottle was not available to me and I was not able to make a judgement whether enough water was left for my tennis partner or not. 

I am now able to relate to the scenario even while working and I am able to understand that many a times, when I do not have full information it is like the opaque bottle of water, I am not able to decide whether I should go ahead with one thing or the other. Similarly business managers while doing any kind of task / activity are under this dilemma unless they have data that they can access.

The concept of the “control tower” is increasingly becoming prevalent in the supply chain management and that means having the ability to track deliveries in real time, which in return helps make the delivery process more efficient. 

In simple terms a control tower is a hub for visibility, decision-making, and action. With visibility acting as initiator for rest of the actions and processes. An organization can adopt this philosophy and also configure their projects, activities and tasks around this idea to be able to take more informed decisions and take relevant actions. 

We have taken the first step towards this concept and built our own task management application, with the vision to develop a virtual control tower that can help organisations in making informed decisions. During this time we have realized small day to day tasks provide lot of insights into what is actually happening on ground and at clients place, which can be acted upon to improve delivery of service / product to the customer, reduce delivery lead time and take actions that are right the first time (which in turn reduces, reworking or over working).

Is WhatsApp an effective task manager?

Usage of WhatsApp as a task management app is increasing day by day. The ease of use and accessibility has made it everyone’s go to application. In my recent interactions with owners and managers of organizations, I found out that on an average a company having 60 employees have 20 WhatsApp groups to manage coordination among employees. While managing so many groups is a tedious and erroneous process, alternatives are limited and not economically viable. Thus managing tasks over WhatsApp is gaining traction.

Ideally managing tasks involve monitoring current to do list, tracking number of hours spent on a particular activity and keeping the relevant stakeholders like owner / manager timely informed. A task also needs to remind employees before it reaches near to the end date. WhatsApp is a communication platform and it is used to communicate between people. One part of task management process is to have an effective communication and WhatsApp application is known for that, but the core of an effective task management process is not only communication but also timely reminder, monitoring and reporting. Objective of any task manager app is to save time, collaboration effectively and manage easily. It needs an easy to use task management system for users of organization to maintain to dos, keep track of tasks with time, supervise tasks and monitor their completion. WhatsApp would be solving on portion i.e. communication, but other factors that are more important during activity execution is completely missing. In fact using WhatsApp for team collaboration is not a safe bet for the long run. Instead of reducing time and increasing productivity, organizations tend to spend more time in managing tasks and monitoring activities. While performing tasks if there is some important information to be monitored or referred to, then the users need to search for these in different groups and there is a high chance that one might miss the information given the large volume of data exchanged on WhatsApp. Another feature that is missing from WhatsApp’s feature list is real time status update and notification of how many tasks are pending with each user which could be used in understanding user load and availability.

For increasing productivity it is important to asses, how much time has been spent on what kind of activity to identify the improvement areas. WhatsApp or any other communication platform will not address this and thus it prevents them from becoming a sustainable model for managing tasks.

To summarize, using WhatsApp or any other communication platform might be lucrative in the short run, but absence of several features does not support an organization in its growth. A dedicated task manager with necessary features can play a vital role in organization growth.

Managing Task is similar to Managing Inventory

The COVID - 19 situation has led to piling up of tasks and increased pressure on all businesses to clear up and handle the new challenges. While working on the development of task management application which could make it easier to manage the tasks and also keep a track of work that is piling up, we realized that features of any task are very much relatable to managing an inventory. 

Just like how managing inventory is vital to any business and issues with inventory can contribute to business losses, even failures. By striking a good balance between tasks that are pending and ones that are completed can help an organisation thrive. Good inventory management practice is equivalent to controlled cost of operations, a good task management practice, along with controlling cost can help with understanding and mitigating risks.

Value stream mapping which is an improvement tool used to implement lean concepts, focuses on waste reduction and inventory control. The underlying idea is to make the process so seamless that there is no inventory in the waiting at any work station and the work / processing happens on pull basis rather than push basis. Similar fundamental principle could be adopted while managing tasks where each individual is not piled up with lot of tasks and they are focusing on doing tasks that is requested by the client.

Inventory analytics plays a major role in controlling inventory as it helps identify items, that are not moving, items that are nearing stock out, items at different work stations and ones that are ready for dispatch and time taken for inventory to move and process through different stages. A similar analytics module can help one in controlling tasks, whereby one can figure out, the tasks that are pending with particular users and their department, tasks pending at different categories, tasks allocated and yet to be worked upon, tasks that are completed on time or delayed and overall estimated processing cost of certain tasks.

We are working on developing a platform that can combine the lean management philosophy and inventory management practices, to be able to manage, track and process tasks in a more effective manner to enable organisations to respond better to customer demand and controlling cost of operations.

"Awe"Struck HR

In a business one of the most critical and thankless job is of an HR. The prevailing mindset in the industry is that HR never value adds to the business. Their roles in many organizations is restricted to that of Administration and HR function becomes synonymous with that role. With the fast paced increment in the field of technology, the HR function can finally be free from its traditional role of administration and move into a value addition function.

Our organisation is going through the transition phase where HR function is being seen as a value addition function. The day to day administrative task for HR still remains, the biggest of them is managing leaves of over 100 employees everyday and relying on manual systems. 

We have started an initiative to digitize the leave application and approval system. It has worked like a charm and the HR department is "Awe"Struck. All the employees have access to google forms, which they can fill up for leave application from any device and at any point of time. The reporting managers get an email request to approve or reject the leave of the employees. The system is so well integrated that HR is notified of every step in the process. The biggest advantage of the solution is that the HR executives need not spend time in processing the leave request and updating the excel sheets daily. Now the task of HR remains just to oversee the process and focus more on analysis of leaves, through which they can do significant value addition to the organisation.

Unique DNA of Business

Not many businesses are successful and those that are have some thing unique about the way they do business. I consider a business professional successful, when they are free to brainstorm on things other than what they are currently working on.

I met one such group today and I have been thinking ever since, how do I make the business that I am into, a successful one. I observed that the group has strong and dedicated work force and work environment, they have thought of clear strategy as to how to handle the day to day operations. To come to this level they have been doing things differently. They are better networked and among the three partners the responsibilities have been clearly laid out. The set of employees that work under them are from low education background but very well trained on the product that they are servicing. The business model has been very well laid out and execution though they agree has significant scope for improvement, is very process driven.

Another such case I understood that is differentiating Asian Paints compared to other paint manufacturers in India is their dealership network and relationship, which has created a strong entry barrier for any new player with deep pockets. 

Data Audit: Get the basics right!

All the past posts and numerous articles highlight that to get analytics right and for maximum utilization of technology, the core of analytics i.e. data has to be understood and compiled properly.

There will always be some scope to improve the analytical outcome, but the more refined and well managed the data is the better is the output for decision making.

Understanding data is tedious but not hard. To get data in the right mindset, there are a set of questions that sets a solid foundation,

1. What data are we collecting?
2. Where are we storing the data?
3 . How do we protect and document the data?
4 . How long do we keep the data?
5 . Do we have function for every piece of data?
6. What is the process for honouring request to delete data?