A successful but hateful Strategy to re-energize Large Pakistani Organizations

Let's be clear on one thing, great leaders don't have time to give a single organization their whole life. They tend to have varied objectives in life, a single organization whether it be PIA, Steel Mill, Banks or even the State Bank of Pakistan has only a small footprint in overall scheme of things. If you are a great leader, you tend to move from places to places making revolutionary changes where ever you go.

At least, this has been the story of Pakistani Organization. A Leader comes in, with great power given to them, tasked to change the whole organizational culture. And there have been more than a couple of successful instances, were the same strategy has worked.

The strategy is simple, it acknowledges that there is no time to improve the current organization so they create a parallel organization within the organization, it has more power, resources and flexibility and it cuts the ties with old organization. The newly hired people in the new organization are comparatively fresh so they can be molded to the modern needs. What we have now are two completely different sets of people, one (comparatively) old aged, slow, bureaucratic, somewhat loyal and the second sets of people are better educated, young, fast paced, without any red tape culture, would work there ass off to complete the project on time and would move to a different organization without a second thought. There is a hiring freeze in the old organization so they don't grow and are slowly washed out, 'golden handshakes' also comes in the picture if they want get rid of them early.

So far the strategy has worked at State Bank, HBL (and other banks), Lucky group, K Electric and some other organizations. The results are somewhat confused but a lot better than what it would have been if nothing was done. Though one thing is for sure, the organizational output increases drastically.

How can you identify whether this strategy has been implemented in an organization or not. You will see on occasion a really frustrated employee who always have bad words for management, who sees the management as someone who are hell-bent on destroying the organization and on other occasions an employee who are specific, young, with decision making ability and people who work late hours.

Whether the strategy is good or not, would have a different answers depending from which angle you see. But one thing is for sure, the performance and quality of output increases twofold.

How to Improve Pakistani Cricket

Finally, we are out of the World Cup race, a race we weren’t prepared for, a race we have been preparing for the last four years. What went wrong and what were the findings are discussed widely by cricket commentators and lovers alike. Muhammad Yousuf even suggested to fire all the batting line and never ever bring them again in the Pakistani Team. 

We are bursting on those people who have little control over the issue. The players did their best, that’s all they were capable of. The selection committee in the same way, did their best. The cycle won’t improve unless there is a grave effort in revamping the management process of the Pakistan Cricket Board. Pakistani cricketers are ‘thinking’ of playing with a strategy that is two decades old. Times have change and they need to change the way they play their cricket. But then again, a strategy is when someone actually has a plan, according to Amir Sohail, a veteran cricketer Pakistani Cricketers never played with a Strategy. They just focus on some players to perform outstandingly, if that clicks they think their strategy worked. These are all important issues but the main issue is not of operations rather a strategic change is needed. 

Things won’t improve unless politics is tied-up with the cricket. When Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Nationalized the industries in Pakistan, he was not expecting that the Ministries would be handed over the control of their operations. Like most of the civilized world there are proper systems to govern the nationalized industries. One of the system which is in practice is to have a Board comprising of a mixture of Public and Private representatives from different walks of life, be it Philanthropist, Industry Practitioners, Ministry representatives, Judges, Entrepreneurs and people even from the organization itself, they make all the major decision including who will lead the organization. This system is in practice by many successful government organizations of Pakistan, one of them is the leading educational institution of the country, IBA Karachi. 

People of IBA are not hired from outside the country, they represent ordinary Pakistanis. What is different is the Governance structure. This same kind of system should be made for other organization of Pakistan, PCB should be the first one to have such kind of transition. Hopefully, we won’t see Ijaz Bhatt and Najam Sethi type of people that are just aristocrat, who are hugely flawed in the way they lead their organization.

Rising to the top - the short way

If you are looking for a short way to rise on the corporate ladder, you won't find it here, go and do some actual work. What I am more interested is in shortest possible way that would put anyone close to the top management, from there on, it is all about hard work and luck to play its role.

The point came in a discussion with some marketing friends. As we all know the marketing folks are closest to top management! who better to dig out the influential tool. Yes it is a tool and its called 'Pricing'

How does pricing brings you closer to the top management.?

Well, for one, it is the thing in direct control of the top management, all other Ps (Product, Placement, & Promotion) are the result of extensive R&D, there is little that can be changed. Secondly it comes last in the four 'Ps', and we all know that we remember the closing argument/scene the most, that's what pricing offer, the last scene in a long play. On top of that, pricing translates into profit, pricing strategy sets mood for the profit to rise (or fall, in-case you are fired, don't say I didn't warn you) 

Speaking honestly, pricing is not that simple, it is actually quite difficult. It has to take under consideration all the factors, from the raw idea of the product till the consumer sees the product in the shelves, the whole supply chain has to be thoroughly studied and mastered. It means that to be a great pricing strategist, you must master the whole chain that it had followed. 

Putting your Ideas/Vision on Paper: Mind Mapping

How many times are we plagued with the problem of communicating our ideas to someone, the more time it takes to communicate, the blurry the idea becomes. In the end, what is really left in our minds are half-baked communications we made and even that information does not last long. The most innovative ideas are so complicated that even reworking through the earlier process does not help, often we use common sense to solve the issue and as they say, common sense is the biggest hurdle in the way of innovation.

One way to sort out this issue is mind-mapping, the technique is not new, some examples even date back to the 3rd Century. The technique is very much in use in today's world, in fact its usefulness has increased manifold due to increased complexity of personal & business life in the current world scenario, where deep thought is a luxury not everybody can afford.


The technique starts with a word or an idea, which is then associated with concepts and thoughts, which in the end is associate with a task to accomplish, there is no restriction on the length of the chain. The idea is to reflect the thought process ending up with small tasks to be accomplished. Words cannot justify the benefits of this technique. A Practical application of the techniques reveals its benefits


Mind mapping can be used for an array of tasks, from personal, family, business, career or any aspect you want. For example, see the mind map above, where a candidate is working on the thought process for his job interview, working on the questions that can be asked or even those questions which will not be asked but inferred from the resume.
 
Mind-mapping can also be used for brainstorming, visual thinking, problem solving (even to Game theory). There are many softwares for mind mapping, one popular one is 'Freemind' which is freely available for download at download.com.

Employee Appraisal System

Organization spend millions for establishing a balanced employee appraisal system, which is targeted to concentrating the company resources to productive use (by asking employees to take up projects & projects have cost). Employees are themselves given the responsibility to quote their objectives, which may or may not be guided by their own motives. 

Assume 50 people having listed their own objectives, those objectives will be moving in their own directions, some for example may work on centralization others might concentrate their efforts on decentralization. 

Where would the organization end up? No where, because they don't have a direction. In the end all effort & cost put into the project goes down the drain. 

One solution for the problem is Balanced scorecard system, it first establishes core objectives for the organization, which in the end gives a list of objectives which can be assigned to teams or employees. These efforts when concentrated in a uni-directional manner, will yield positive results. 

Balanced scorecard is not the only solution for the problem, many more exist. The beauty of Balanced scorecard is in its larger system which takes into account many organizational issues like tracking progress, establishing critical efforts, resource generation etc. One benefit this tool has over others is that, a lot of effort has already been put into documenting the process and system, which makes it easier to understand.