Wednesday 5 December 2007

Valufacture


December 12, 2007: PN received mail from Gyan, one of his project managers. Gyan’s mail said, “PN, I am coming back from the project after two years in Delaware. I have something interesting to share.”

An excited Gyan met PN and spoke about his experience on the project.

“PN, when I went there, I wondered how on earth I would spend my time after office hours. But as it turned out, I did meet some very interesting client employees. We would talk all about India—the snake charmers, and the elephants, and so on. They had all the usual questions. Many had the perception that snakes roam around everywhere in India, and that the place is full of elephants.

“During one of these discussions, I told them about yoga and that I am a certified yoga teacher. They asked me whether I could teach them yoga, and I was happy to do it. They did not have any yoga teachers around, and this was an opportunity for me to serve them.

“They took me to their HR people, and I gave them a presentation on yoga and its benefits to physical and mental health, showing how it helps improve relationships and productivity, and so on. I also told them that it had nothing to do with any religion; it was just a spiritual journey for a sound mind.

“They were happy with what they heard and asked me if I could teach yoga to any interested employees. They asked me how much I wanted to be paid for my time teaching. I told them this was my gift to our esteemed clients. Anyway, there was great enthusiasm and participation in the yoga sessions.”

He showed PN the testimonials from the company and individuals.

“The best part was that the employees and the head of HR fought for my extension so that I could be around longer. This was the best experience of my life. Not only did I get more business for the company, but I also have the personal satisfaction of knowing that I can use my passion to help someone else. I wouldn’t be surprised if the clients give us more projects, only because what we gave them was over and above their expectations of the contract.”

PN thanked Gyan for sharing this with him. He arranged Gyan’s meeting with Shoma, the company’s PR person, and asked Gyan to repeat the story to Shoma so she could include it in the house magazine.

PN remembered Edward De Bono, the champion of lateral thinking, who spoke about “valufacture.” He felt that what Gyan had created was an extra value to the project. What he had done had not been a contractual obligation but an unexpected offering to clients.

PN shared the Gyan story with his team members. They were proud. But they felt that this story was a success because Gyan had managed it in a mature manner. To make this a proposition that could be repeated, they wanted something formal to be drawn up.

Someone said, “PN, as you are aware, many of our people would give their right arms to stay on-site if they had to. If we tell them that one way to achieve this is to teach our clients what they themselves are good at, we could risk landing ourselves in all sorts of trouble.”

There was consensus that there must be a proper mechanism to handle this. PN agreed and asked them to come up with some solutions.

Some time later, the team members met to discuss this. The conversation was dynamic and spirited.

“Do we know how many people know yoga in our organization? And how many are certified?”

“There are many branches of yoga; which one do you want to teach?”

“Guys, I think we should leave how to deal with the client to the individual project manager.”

“Why do you want to stick to yoga alone? There are many things our people can teach.”

“Like what? Riding elephants? Snake charming?”

“Oh, come on. You know Indian cooking is all the rage. They could teach them cooking.”

“Forget it. I’ve seen westerners cooking better Indian food than any one of us in this room. Everything is available on the Internet, and everyone sells ready-to-cook Indian meals.”

“We don’t have information on our people’s capabilities; we don’t know whether our offering is going to be of value to clients, and we don’t know what kind of legal hassles we could land ourselves in. On top of all that, we are saying that this is a free service. I have never seen a better business proposition!”

“Great, you know, you actually stated all the pain statements. If we work on each of them, we’ll find a solution.”

“Fantastic! I agree with you that valufacture does not mean we should give it for free. But when we want to exchange something for money, it should be contractual.”

“So the question is, how do we contract? Are we going to say in the contract, ‘along with the software, we will also provide 250 man hours of yoga to the client organization?’ That looks a little silly. I hope the clients don’t cancel the whole contract because of it.”

“I think, at this moment the best we can do is to get together the senior people, the project managers, and tell them about the Gyan story and leave it at that.”

“Better still, we’ll ask Gyan to tell the story. He’ll feel happy sharing his experience. People can ask questions and get answers from the horse’s mouth.”

When the team next met PN, they told him what they thought—that the organization was not yet ready to institutionalize the Gyan experience. PN respected the team’s view. Everyone agreed that after a formal recognition of Gyan’s contribution at a meeting of senior managers the chapter would remain closed.

It was a very good meeting, and the managers asked Gyan useful questions. The meeting ended with everyone going away with different thoughts about Gyan’s experience. Some of them repeated the story to their juniors; some of the juniors repeated the Gyan story to their juniors. But nothing happened on the matter of valufacture.

After some days, there was repeat business from the Delaware clients, who requested Gyan for the project. Gyan joined the project, and he knew many of his old friends were waiting for him and for their yoga meetings.
John Galt shrugged! He was patient. He was prepared to wait.

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Bangalore, Karnataka, India
My purpose is to manufacture success and happiness