Week 3, Day 4: At Harvard Business School.
"During crisis, you live through every decisions that you have made in the past"
We had an interesting case study today. A situation that was set around a terrible natural calamity. A travel company, that had sent travelers and visitors to a country, only to be hit by Tsunami. In the face of missing information, uncertain decision points, what were the key decision points faced by the management team and how did they manage to evacuate a good number of people, even while their government was only beginning to think what is to be done.
If you look at the case, as if you were the team that was on ground that day, you would no doubt, come up with a unique sense of accomplishment, on how you overcame the adverse situation to do things, well beyond your mandate, that helped bring people together. I get that, and totally respect that. Imagine a travel agent company, that pays from its pockets (post insurance, government and other contributions) millions of dollars to get back people, many of them not even their customers - now who would have thought of doing such thing ?? How many of us, have ever had our travel agency stepping up to this level.
However, I am not able to reconcile the fact, that this company had no established business continuity plan in place. This is true perhaps to a majority of the business units.
One of the key comments, the protagonist in the case study said - "During crisis, you live through every decisions that you have made in the past"
Really scary. Imagine telling this to yourself - "He would be alive, if I had fought more for the budget for fire systems" or something like that.In our comfortable air-conditioned offices, we forget - things can change pretty quickly.
After this case study, I promised to myself, I will add another dimension to my due diligence of any proposal/project - the human angle.
That's my UnicTim - members of my living group, just before our "Faculty reception dinner"
Once during the course, one faculty member, takes the living group to dinner, for a more informal discussion, chat and conversation. We had a nice time, with one of our professors.
Laurence, Anne, Roco, Wanlop, David, Rafael, Knut and me !!
Key learning today.
1. NEVER apologize, rationalize, argue, defend the feedback you are receiving. Time of receiving feedback is for receiving only. React to the feedback, later.
2. Never give feedback with a power edge. Without always knowing it, we give feedback, from a position that demonstrates power difference between you and the recipient. A boss, trying to justify the rating he has given combining it with a feedback session. That almost, always brings up the defense mechanism, and it sounds as if you are justifying your own action NOT giving him a true feedback.
Disclaimer (finally !! I have one too !! )
I have wanted to say this for a long time. What you read in my blogs is what I have learned/learning at Harvard Business School. It may be - quite possible - that, this is NOT what HBS is teaching us. It is my interpretation and my view of things I have received.
So please do keep that in mind :), when you read my blogs.
Alok
"During crisis, you live through every decisions that you have made in the past"
We had an interesting case study today. A situation that was set around a terrible natural calamity. A travel company, that had sent travelers and visitors to a country, only to be hit by Tsunami. In the face of missing information, uncertain decision points, what were the key decision points faced by the management team and how did they manage to evacuate a good number of people, even while their government was only beginning to think what is to be done.
If you look at the case, as if you were the team that was on ground that day, you would no doubt, come up with a unique sense of accomplishment, on how you overcame the adverse situation to do things, well beyond your mandate, that helped bring people together. I get that, and totally respect that. Imagine a travel agent company, that pays from its pockets (post insurance, government and other contributions) millions of dollars to get back people, many of them not even their customers - now who would have thought of doing such thing ?? How many of us, have ever had our travel agency stepping up to this level.
However, I am not able to reconcile the fact, that this company had no established business continuity plan in place. This is true perhaps to a majority of the business units.
One of the key comments, the protagonist in the case study said - "During crisis, you live through every decisions that you have made in the past"
Really scary. Imagine telling this to yourself - "He would be alive, if I had fought more for the budget for fire systems" or something like that.In our comfortable air-conditioned offices, we forget - things can change pretty quickly.
After this case study, I promised to myself, I will add another dimension to my due diligence of any proposal/project - the human angle.
That's my UnicTim - members of my living group, just before our "Faculty reception dinner"
Once during the course, one faculty member, takes the living group to dinner, for a more informal discussion, chat and conversation. We had a nice time, with one of our professors.
Laurence, Anne, Roco, Wanlop, David, Rafael, Knut and me !!
Key learning today.
1. NEVER apologize, rationalize, argue, defend the feedback you are receiving. Time of receiving feedback is for receiving only. React to the feedback, later.
2. Never give feedback with a power edge. Without always knowing it, we give feedback, from a position that demonstrates power difference between you and the recipient. A boss, trying to justify the rating he has given combining it with a feedback session. That almost, always brings up the defense mechanism, and it sounds as if you are justifying your own action NOT giving him a true feedback.
Disclaimer (finally !! I have one too !! )
I have wanted to say this for a long time. What you read in my blogs is what I have learned/learning at Harvard Business School. It may be - quite possible - that, this is NOT what HBS is teaching us. It is my interpretation and my view of things I have received.
So please do keep that in mind :), when you read my blogs.
Alok
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