Management and Leadership – Raja Venkata Blog

Chief Operating Office (COO) – Responsibilities

A COO is a Master tactician of a diverse organization managing complex operations on a day-to-day basis, with multiple stakeholders (and potentially Unions), that supports and oversees all organizational functions, but still not directly responsible for any product or solutions development, or sales and marketing.

On a daily basis, the COO:

Develops, implements and monitors key operational and performance metrics (and KPIs) of the organization to achieve desired and optimal outcomes and results, and also prepares key forecasting reports.
Manages projects, resources and risks.
Manages all the support functions like program office, HR, Legal, recruitment, and procurement managers.
If it is an NGO, startup or a government organization, leads the fundraising efforts by securing funding rounds and carefully manages capital.

Ideally, he always reports into the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or President and is an integral part of Executive Leadership Team (ELT). He collaborates with the President/CEO in setting and driving organizational vision, operations strategy, and achieving organizational results. Some organizations (mostly Government and a few education institutions) use Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) as an equivalent role, with very similar responsibilities.

List of Responsibilities – a Cumulative collection of many Cs:

Compliance: Maintains full compliance to local and state laws, regulatory bodies and industry standards by establishing robust policies, procedures and controls, and by staying updated on any regulatory changes. Risk management and mitigation is an integral part of this exercise for the entire organization. One must be aware of all political, social, economic, environmental and technological risks and effectively manage them. In some organizations, this role is exclusive to a Chief Compliance officer who may or may not report into the COO.
Commercials: Manages all end-to-end commercial engagements, with all customers and stakeholders
Capital Management: Oversees and manages all local and global facilities and fleets (if any), plans and manage all capital projects, and leads all procurement and logistics support.
Commitment to Operations Excellence: Upholds commitment to OpEx by adhering to financial targets, driving operational strategy, enhancing brand reputation and ensuring prudent resource allocation and cost control. Aggressively manages the investment and expenses to ensure company achieves intended budgeted revenue targets and margin– this includes ensuring revenue and cash flow by negotiating contracts and meeting all settlement and collection targets (Business Development activities). Develops budget forecasts and operations plans, assesses, and analyses operation capabilities, variances and ensures adherence to budget.
Change management – Develops and implements appropriate systems, identifies areas of process optimization and implements necessary changes to maximise efficiency (and productivity) and minimize costs.
Communications: Oversees all Corporate Communications through professional presentation, facilitations and interpersonal skills, thus delivering a consistent and clear messaging for the organization, both for internal and external audience.
Customer: Creates and executes the customer experience framework and is also responsible for the customer relationships and customer service delivery. A key metric (s)he drives is the CSS – Customer Satisfaction Survey.
Culture: Fosters a culture of employee engagements, continuous improvement, transparency and teamwork, thus building a corporate lifestyle of high performance and core values, accountability and employee growth
Community: Fosters community relationships by establishing grievance redress mechanisms and social safeguards for the organization’s work with local communities, if any.
Care and Confidence: Facilitates and respects the employees and cares about the infrastructure of the organization. Inspires confidence to the internal and external stakeholders, including partner relationships and vendor management.
(Working) Conditions: Accountable for the Occupational, health and safety (OHS) of the organization by assuring safe working conditions for all teams globally, including emergency/disaster planning and response, first-aid and emergency-response training and employee safe-behaviour training.

So, what is role is NOT?

Not a Chief Financial officer who analyses and reports everything financial, but a COO supports financial monitoring, planning, forecasting and budgeting, by receiving key inputs from CFO on a regular basis.
Not a Chief Marketing officer, but a COO does monitor all the key customer metrics including the Satisfaction scores. IN some organizations, CMO reports into the COO.

Not a Chief Product (development) officer and not responsible for actual delivery of product or solutions to customers, but a COO does monitor all the programs that run within the organizations and ensures compliance to resource and cost budgets.

Tips on Time Management

Here are some tips on Time Management :
– Manage by planning priorities well, and reduce or eliminate non-priorities
– Ensure you know the value of time and respect it. Be on time for appointments (call ahead if delayed). Don’t waste your time or others time. Times flies (but you can still be the pilot) and once lost, cannot be got back like Money. Time is limited (just 24 hours a day) unlike money, and hence utilize it and take care of it for good returns and happiness
– Invest more in Planning it right before executing anything – do a good risk plan (what-if scenarios) so that you are better prepared. As a Chinese proverb goes : ” It takes more hours to sharpen the axe than to cut the tree “. Think ahead for contingencies. Planning, they say, is to document the future into the details of the present.
– There is always time for everything important to you but you need to ‘find and allot’ . “No time” is never an excuse. Distribute the limited time to be more meaningful to you and to serve your purpose. Enjoy the present moment. Make your time, and take your time in things that give you happiness.
– Tomorrow never comes or comes late after many hours, hence do it NOW. Do not regret waiting for another day if you can achieve things today. Achieve more or something else tomorrow.

TREAT TIME with VALUE – it is PRECIOUS. MASTER your TIME through Discipline and Control

FIFA world cup 2022 management lessons

FIFA 2022 World Cup finals: France vs Argentina. What a game. One of the best finals ever witnessed. There are few management lessons that can be inferred from the match:
1) Big players deliver during the big games and this is why they are paid the big bucks. All 11 played well but the big guys deliver more. There is always commotion amongst the rank and file in your organization about pay disparity on the same grade. One or two may get paid higher based on potential and delivered results or past achievements. But if you do not perform to potential or not delivering consistently, then you are shown the door (case in point C Ronaldo). Michael Jordan was paid big bucks because he delivered consistently for Chicago Bulls.
2. It is always the team that matters first. Both Messi and Mbappe not only scored goals but also were involved with many assists that went into the goal post. This is the trademark of great team player, however big they are. Individual greatness is not revered if the team fails.
3. Around 10 minutes before the first half , the French coach did two substitutions. Till that time, it was all Argentina. France were just in the field, doing nothing much. It take a good coach to recognize the inertia being built up to re-organize the team. Constantly re-balance your team for optimum and desired results. After that, the last 10 minutes of the first half France came back strongly and for the rest of the game.
4. Always look for the right moment to strike, especially when the competition is sitting on glory- after about 80 minutes of play, Argentina was slightly relaxed at 2-Nil and seeing this lethargy, MBappe strikes twice within 100 seconds to equalize and drag it to extra-time. And they did it again near the end of second half. Always be aware of your competition and suit your response accordingly. This is why organizations do competitive analysis but this has to be done regularly to change your game.
5. When it comes to penalty kicks, it can be anyone’s game. But anticipation is key. The better goal keeper either by plan or by luck anticipates where the striker would hit and goes to that side. It happened during the second hit of France – it was prevented by the Argentinian goalie. Take informed risks, and have mitigation plans in place.
6. Pressure makes one choke. Experience does matter when it comes to handling pressure. All five strikes are doing the same job – hit the ball to the goal. Some people freeze (like the third hit by France which hit the goal post and went away) and others deliver.
7. Incidentally, Argentina lost their first league match to Saudi Arabia. Many pundits started writing them off. Two things : (i) Never under-estimate the opponent – even the weaker team can cause an upset (ii) It takes will and effort to bounce back and eventually win it. Yes, it is possible. Never let setbacks ruin your day. Keep on trying till your succeed.

Great to see two equal teams fight till the end.

The Bulls and the leaders

My extrapolation from a statement in Jeffrey Archer’s book when it comes to quality of senior leadership at the top of any organization: ” Only the suffix differentiates between the Bulls and the Bullshitters “. So true, lots of very ordinary guys who speak quite well with great Powerpoint skills are able to reach higher rungs of any organization, suppressing the awesome talent with real substance that are there inside the very same organization.

Let not Metrics drive you

Should the Metrics drive operations, or the strategy drive execution for better results? Never should anyone chase their own tail.

I see lots of so-called leaders use umpteen metrics to drive their tactics (like resource utilization, revenue/employee, customers retained and lost, etc.)- when you start getting into this mindset, you would be always catching up and trying to make a fish climb the tree to get fruits (yes it happens – engineers get shifted from one domain to another without re-skilling just to meet the numbers). At the end of the day, one ends up always reactive.

If you a strong leader, get the strategy to form objectives that make execution meaningful, and one can arrive at metrics this way, with some minor course corrections on a continuous basis. You need to think ahead as to what makes your product or services sell, where do you have to re-train and up-skill your employees now to be beneficial in one or two years down stream, what customers are expecting from you and how do you put plans to fulfill their need etc. This way the entire organization will look up to you for steering the organization forward. Think ahead, have a great team around you, act decisively and rock & roll.

What does a Product Manager do?

Nowadays one of the hottest job titles that you would see everywhere is a Product manager. If you open up any job sites, the numbers of jobs for product managers are plenty. But what do you mean by a Product manager and what do they do, and how are they different from other roles in the organization? Although none of these are set in stone, this article would try to educate you well about the role itself and how it differentiates from other roles. This is written for a medium to large sizes corporation in mind, because in start-ups there would be the same person donning many of these role hats.

Product manager is typical of any product development organization who sells a ‘whole product’ (hardware system ergonomically packages/stand-alone software like a security software or a productivity software) but rarely found in a professional services organization. This role is not well described or absent in semiconductor chip industry (where the chip by itself is not a product but has to go into a system to become a product), or an IP company, or any physical component manufacturing company. When I say a “whole product” it would have one to many hardware components, a box or an external package, the firmware and a software solution that enables the product to the customer. Say a Fridge or a TV or a tablet computer.

Product manager is someone who is accountable for the build, the marketing and the sales of the product to the end customer (a business or a consumer) that meets specifications and manages the entire product life cycle from ideation to handover. A customer here is the one who buys and pays for the product. A Product manager’s life starts with articulating the “why” of the product along with the strategic marketing to find a place in an organization offering (why is it important to be in the roadmap of the offerings?), and then is the person behind the “what” of the product from an end-customer perspective. He comes from the business side of the organization and should have a handle on the user experience story of the product to ensure SUCCESS of the product.

From the project management definition, let us be clear on responsibility vs accountability: The accountable personis the individual who is ultimately answerable for the product and has all the ‘veto power’ for the product. Only one accountable person can be assigned to a product. The responsible personis the individual(s) who actually completes the tasks associated with the design and delivery of the product. The responsible person is responsible for action/implementation. Responsibility can be shared.

A product manager needs to have a combined skill of a strategic marketing person (who defines the market and the product initially and create the opportunity to sell), a product marketing (one who defines what features get sold to what customers) and a technical marketing (who is responsible to work with technical team to define and deliver specifications of the product).

So, how is it different from the other roles with the organization?

Project Manager(PM): A project manager is accountable for “when” the product gets delivered or deployed. A project manager, whether the project gets delivered in the waterfall mode or the Agile mode, is the one who takes the product from planning to delivery, and lists out a list of tasks, deliverables and milestones at various intervals of product delivery timeline, draws the interdependencies between the teams and works with the engineering team to ensure the timelines are being met (or highlights the risk if it is not for business to take a decision)
Delivery Manager(DM): A delivery manager is responsible for “what” gets designed and developed by the engineering team (may be different iterations here to reach the “what” that is being asked by the product manager), and then “how” it gets delivered to the business unit, working closely with the project manager to ensure the timelines are met.
Account manager(AM) – This is a role more common with professional services organization as the person responsible for a particular customer account (yes, it can be there in product development organizations as well). In fact, product manager has many customers for his/her one product whereas an account manager has one or two big customers for which many products may be rolled out.
Product Owner(PO): This is akey role in Agile/Scrum methodology of project management who defines what (priority) user story gets developed and delivered along each sprint (or blocks of timelines), and creates and maintains the backlog of user stories for the agile team. Yes, PO is also ideally from the business side of the organization, and has the power vested in him to accept or deny the delivery from the Agile team at every iteration. He is the user advocate sitting in the development team. There is a good possibility a PO would report into the Product manager for a particular product.
Product marketing manager (PMM) – although some of the responsibilities may be shared with the product manager, a product marketing person ideally is responsible for developing positioning, messaging, competitive analysis, product’s USP, and to work with sales team to generate and close opportunities. I personally do not see very many product marketing roles now as I believe this may have morphed into a product manager role with added responsibilities in many organizations.

Again, due to other budgetary and resource factors, nothing here can be taken in absolute terms as responsibilities unique to a particular role, but it is essential we understand the differences in expectation between the roles. In short, if you have the skills to take a product from ideation through planning through development, and constantly are marketing the product along the way, and delivering it to the customers and they are delighted about it, then we can say that you are doing a pretty good job as a product manager.

Newton’s 4th law of Business

“Newton’s 4th law of Business”: For every action, there are consequences in the business world. If the consequences are positive, you are hailed as a great leader but if it is negative, the swords are dangling on top of your head. So, as mature leaders, it is best to analyze each action before you take it for the potential consequences so that you can manage them better once you take the action. Never act on impulse.

Better you chances of success by:
– having a critic as your asset although it can be unpleasant, so that you can consider the criticism objectively before you act, and
– never repeating the same mistake twice – you should have learnt the lesson the first time. There is no mercy for two failures due to same or similar actions to the same or similar problem – “two strikes , you are out”. Seek out to mentors before you act if unsure.

Value Centric Organizations – I

As organizations get to be more global, more diverse, more flexible and more agile in this digital world, it is imperative that they stay transparent to their employees and stakeholders although this is going to be a challenge for most. The management and the employees must operate through a ‘common fabric’ that ‘stitches’ them together cohesively in a collaborative manner in such dispersed and virtual organizations. This common fabric are a set of VALUES based on ones beliefs, convictions, ethics and principles which would be the ‘guiding principles’ of the organization. The beliefs of an individual would be based on their cultural, educational, family and ethnic background. The behavior is based on the values and the culture is based on the employee’s behavior.

Global organizations in the future would be more flat, less-hierarchical and power neutral, with lots more of first level management handling employees based on geography and markets, and lots more matrix managers handling the projects. Both these types of management would have to work together in an ‘electronically-social’ environment and work towards a common aligned purpose, made effective by top leadership through a set of values that would be the framework of the entire organization. One has to ensure they stay true to these values during all times, good or bad.

When you start an entrepreneurial venture, the sets of beliefs and principles of the founders becomes the undocumented set of values for the organization. Yes, their personal values become the one that the organization practices. And as the company grows, the managers and employees imbibe the same set of values and this becomes their path of choice to productivity and profitability. As the company becomes a mid-sized one, it is best to document the set of values and limit them to 5 or 6 and the organizational culture would be a reflection of these values.

If there are mergers or acquisitions happening, it is best for the top leadership to sit down quickly as part of the integration process and chalk out the combined top 5 or 6 values for the combined organization. It is also a good practice for having a survey done internally with all the employees to understand what they feel the organization stands for and then summarize the top 5 or 6 values – the benefit here is the values came from grounds up and since all employees participated in the process, the motivation level of adopting it is quite high. Some companies go this exercise every 5 years or so, and may change one of the values in the process based on the feedback received, but the core values do not change with time. It is a good practice to have the values written at the back of the identification badges of the employees so that they get reinforced daily. The most common values you would see across all organizations would be integrity, quality, something to do with community and customer satisfaction to name a few.

Having got the values worked out, it is important that all the policies, strategies and performance measures reflect them. The tactical part and the approach of doing things may change, but not the strategy that is based on the values. There are two parts to any performance appraisal system – “What” objective was achieved and “How” it was achieved. The values address the “How” part and the performance should be evaluated based on the values exhibited while achieving the desired objective. Values essentially connect the organizational goals to the employee’s achievements, thus becoming a motivational tool.

Going back to my previous statement that the future organizations would be less hierarchical and more flat, the values help the employees manage themselves without much of a need of active supervision and they begin to trust each other as they work across boundaries to achieve common organization goals. They feel more empowered because they believe that they impact the organizational positively at all times, they believe the system they operate in encourages excellence and they have better work-life balance because their beliefs are the basis of the values of the company. No one can ask for a better win-win situation than this.

The author, Rajagopalan V, is a business and technology consultant based out of Bengaluru, India and is a foot-soldier for value based leadership and conducts management workshops in Asia in helping organizations come out with their own set of values.

Results Orientation : an Essential value to any org

Continuing on with my Values Centric Organization article published recently, I wanted to introduce you all to something that the leading semiconductor company Intel cherishes the most – RESULTS ORIENTATION. The timing of this article is coincidentally a tribute to Andy Grove who died today- the first employees of Intel after its two founders and later years its CEO, Holocaust survivor from Hungary and a practical management guru. I salute you SIR.

As Intel describes it, it is set challenging and competitive goals and focus on the output by assuming responsibility and executing flawlessly. Any issues or problems that come in between have to be solved and confronted constructively and quickly to achieve the goal. Focusing your resources on the important results is key for success and managing through people to create a positive impact for the organizations is every manager’s priority. I do not see many organizations recognizing results orientation as a critical value.

For all types of organization, be it a small privately held one or a bigger public company or a government establishment and even a not-for-profit one, delivering on your goals successfully is essential. The leader in you should be able to push self and others to desired results and should celebrate successes. The value of results orientation is the basis behind setting up a matrix organization where every talent within the organization works for a product, solution or oriented towards a service, from various functionalities. The entire team has to agree to a set of objectives (remember SMART) and work together to achieve those with high quality. At the end of the day, the products or services that the company sells or gives is the one that brands the company to the customers. Even if you are in a research organization, it is critical that the development happening inside is mapped to a product that they can sell eventually or a service that they can offer later.

Every employee should review the work they are doing regularly with their immediate management and prioritize what is urgent and more important. Each employee needs to plan their work accordingly to ensure that important goals get done within the required time. Be realistic at your workload when you take on more work. As a manager, one must be aware of the stress levels within the team and try to re-prioritize and re-distribute the workload within your team. It is a good practice to keep your ears to the ground and actively listen to your team and to put some sense around what they say. Finally celebrate small successes and the eventual ones.

In these Agile days of working, it is easier to have discrete sets of results achieved within a shorter time span and corrective actions put in place for any deviations that happen. Three behaviours come to the fore-front to achieve results: Effective time management, managing stress at work (there is always going to be stress, you need to find your own ways to manage it properly) and good influencing skills to get things done. From the HR perspective, a few tweaks must be in place so that they start measuring the engagement and commitment levels of the employees to the programs they are in and to the organizations, and monitor if key decisions are being made quickly by the managers and whether they are putting undue stress on his or her employees to an extent that it affects results. Most metrics should be taken at a project or program level and not at a horizontal functional level.

For those of you who have not got the privilege of the working for Andy Grove and living during the times when he built Intel, I would highly recommend two books, “High Output Management” and “Only Paranoids Survive”.

The Author is a business and technology consultant based in India and if also a former employee of Intel. He also conducts leadership programs that are based on key values of organizations.

Knowledge Hierarchy and Innovation equation

For many folks who have been accustomed to standards and best known practices, the DIKW Pyramid clearly talks about the hierarchy and the relationships between the four levels of hierarchy. Data is the fundamental unit which is just observations which is hard to interpret alone. Once you infer something from data, it attains some meaning which is termed as information. Once you process and organize the information and give it some structure and then analyze it, it becomes Knowledge. When you apply knowledge in action, you develop competency. Knowledge is more theoretical and competency is more practical. And eventually, when you start becoming more effective and are able to make clear decisions, all attained by experience and continuous learning, you are termed wise. Thus, if one can define them loosely in an equation:

Information = Relevant Data + meaning or value

Knowledge = Processed Information + analysis or synthesis

Competency = Knowledge + application (this is just a step defined in between K and W)

Wisdom = Competency + experience

People confuse knowledge with intelligence which may not be correct. Creativity and Intelligence are more associated with some action and related to Innovation. Intelligence takes into account the ability to reason, be culturally aware and also be situationally correct.

Intelligence = Depth of Competence + reasoning ability

Creativity = Intelligence + Fun, according to Albert Einstein

Jiddu Krishnamurthy, a well-known Indian philosopher, adds Freedom to Einstein’s definition which I would approve as you need freedom to be creative. In a bounded environment, creativity is limited.

Some of these definitions may differ from some other definitions by researchers and scholars and are subject to other interpretations as well, but these are just defined in layman’s terms to give a clear picture to understand the information hierarchy and what more does it take to be innovative. The skills required for these two would be different, as the former is more execution relevant and the latter is more about using knowledge to create something new.

Disclaimer: All the above definitions and relationships already exist in some form and author has just compiled them cohesively together.