R Gopalakrishnan September 05, 2013 Last Updated at 21:46 IST

R Gopalakrishnan: Contradicting the bosses

Organisations that do not encourage people to speak up or highlight bad news run the risk of facing
massive disasters
In the previous InnoColumn (Supporting creative failures, August 9),
while discussing how organisations can support creative
experimentation, I had referred to social context. This is about how
people interact in a group, the jargon being group dynamics. I should
narrate how the subject entered my consciousness.
In a company where I serve as director, a proposal to invest in an
African country was discussed over three meetings over 12 months.
There was a powerful, positive logic but, on the flip side, there were
severe risks. The analytics were presented persuasively by the CEO: after all, a CEO must seem
convinced if he or she is piloting a proposal. There was no table-thumping opposition from the directors,
but there were many statements of risks and caution. The CEO saw these as encouragement, but it was the
weak absence of "no" rather than a clear "yes". Finally, it came down to judgment and intuition - and after
12 months of deliberation and investigation, the directors agreed not to pursue the investment opportunity.
A few months later, an editorial about the sorry state of that African country appeared in a respected
international paper. I shared the editorial with several directors with a "Thank God" note. Their individual
response stunned me: everyone, including the CEO, said "I said so while opposing the proposal." And I
thought, if everyone said so, how come the project was discussed over 12 whole months?
The answer, it was postulated by one director, lay in the highly respected image of the board chairman.
Directors perceived the chairman to be supportive, so everybody had spoken in such a muted way, that
their message was lost completely!
History is replete with cases of epic and expensive failures, not because of lack of intelligence or
technique, but because of a climate that inhibits free flow of suggestions. Very often not being able to
speak up or bring forward bad news creates a spiral of silence that can result in disasters of massive
proportion.
In How NASA builds teams, author Charles Pellerin talks about how ignoring social context caused his
NASA team to launch the Hubble space telescope in 1990 with a flawed mirror. In hindsight, a trivial and
avoidable error overshadowed the accomplishments of thousands of dedicated people and in the process
squandering $1.7 billion of taxpayers' money. Here is what happened.
After a textbook launch, the team soon discovered that the Hubble was launched with a flawed mirror. A
detailed investigation followed and the findings were startling. A huge error was discovered in adjusting
the null corrector used to figure the mirror that caused the flaw. The device was at the contractors' plant.
The hints of the mirror flaw existed in numerous tests. The review board wondered why smart technical
people had not rigorously pursued these hints. It was found that the schedule and budget pressures caused
them to move relentlessly forward.
The question was why the NASA scientists and engineers did not address these inconsistencies. The
board then made a disturbing discovery. The contractor never forwarded these troubling results to
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NASA!! The board finally concluded that a leadership failure had caused the flawed mirror in the
$1.7-billion telescope. NASA's management of its contractors had been so hostile that they would not
report technical problems if they could rationalise them. They were simply tired of the beatings.
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell alludes to case of frequent air crashes of Korean Air from 1988 to 1998.
The captain's social status was so high that the junior officer would at best be oblique, even in cases that
required more than direct communication. Thus in most cases, this huge power distance led to the plane
crash since co-pilots allowed the pilot to take major decisions even when they were questionable.
Charles Perrin explains the 4-D team building process that includes online behavioural assessment to help
understand each other and measure the key driver of team performance: the social context. Mature
companies understand the impact of culture and team climate and have created mechanisms to measure
and monitor these soft indicators that practically impact everything, especially fostering innovation.
Companies need to inspire employees to put their most creative foot forward and come up with new ideas,
concepts, processes, inventions, or improvements.
Tata group's innovation forum has developed a tool, Innometer, in alliance with Professor Jukian
Birkinshaw of the London Business School to manage this much-required creative spark. It helps Tata
companies to assess the social context in their departments, divisions and companies.
Innometer assesses the prevalent process and culture for innovation through surveys, one-to-one
interactions and focussed group discussions. Innometer develops creative tension at three levels: within
the company by pitching one function or geography against the other, between companies to encourage
healthy competition and, finally, between a company and its global benchmark. The creative tension is
palpable because Tata companies are used to being measured for business excellence processes.
To get positive traction out of this tension, Tata developed InnoVerse to identify challenges and provide
triggers to employees to generate creative solutions. It is based on the concepts of Prof Clayton
Christensen of the Harvard Business School. The group has derived benefit from the Innometer and
InnoVerse through the willingness of employees to pitch in with ideas once the explicit and implicit
barriers were broken.
Often in their pursuit to meet organisation's aspirations, senior leaders have to push subordinates to
outperform themselves. However, they also need to be careful about an environment of fear where
opinions stop flying. It's a tough balance, and that is why perhaps many leaders don't get it right.
In the InnoColumn of the last four months, I have written a lot about the climate and culture within the
company. There are other factors in play, not the least of which is serendipity, which will be the topic of
the next article.
The author is Director, Tata Sons
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