Coordination, Cooperation & Collaboration in Business

Thank you. This is C. Paul Singh, President, NISSMAT. The same, a very good evening, and thank you all for joining us. I extend a warm and hearty welcome to our eminent speakers of the evening. The National Institute of Security, Safety, Management and Applied Technology has so far conducted under 33 webinars where eminent scholars have participated. Each session we had normally two participants who address the webinar. Today's webinar is 134th on the subject Coordination, Cooperation and Collaboration in Business. The session shall be addressed by two eminent speakers: Kashyana Singh from USA, a work practitioner, a poet and a TED act speaker in USA, and Ms Venkuburti from India, the professional with 35 years of experience in corporate traveling.

Let me introduce the institution that is established in the year 1990. It started training courses in the field of private security, safety, security management and deployed technology. Today NISSMAT has become a think tank organization with the association of more than 185 scholars who are providing inputs in the field of the security, safety and technology. NISSMAT has established four wings. First is the disloc forum where we organize webinars, where we organize seminars, conferences, awards, debates and declamation. This was academy to conduct virtual training programs, NISSMAT Enterprise to undertake audits and studies in various sectors, and if the foundation we intend to start, which is undertake welfare and social welfare work for the society a lot, with particular reference to line order, security and safety.

After having introduced NISSMAT to you, let me introduce to you the moderator of today's session, Major General Deepak Mehta. Visit is the third generation officer of the army. He's a postgraduate in defense studies from the Madras University. He has seen active operations in J&K, both encounter incidents, area around the line of control. He commanded an infantry brigade during operation for karma and also a Mountain Dew. Subsequently he raised the first information warfare cell in the army as a pilot project, and has had instructional appointments in the field of training and establishment in the Army War College and an Indian Military Academy. Major General Deepak Mehta shall moderate this session.

Who is with us today took voluntary retirement from the parachute management of Indian Army at a young age and jumped into an unknown area of business. He is a businessman unafraid of telling the truth, a thoughtful and inspiring leader. He is adept in creating alliances. He is the past president and former chairman of the Council of International Investigations, USA, and his other body of Malcolm Thompson world and cutely award.

After having introduced Mr Promenade, I'll say a few words about the subject, coordination, cooperation and collaboration, which is to be addressed by the two speakers. The subject of this webinar was selected and decided by us with the hope that it attract the interest of the delegates about the value of exploring, value of understanding, value of identifying why and how the organizations need to work along with each other for effective results. Coordination, cooperation and collaboration are normally the core of any inter-organizational relationship, says this strategy has received extensive attention in the business world. A brief clarification of the exact meaning of these three terms is perhaps important, because more often than not one is overlapping the other, and people don't have exact idea as to what the word means in the business world.

Now coordination can be defined as deliberate and ordinary alignment, an orderly adjustment of the partners to achieve giant goals, right? Cooperation is a giant pursuit of a great ghost. The girls have been agreed, but you have to giantly pursue to attain these goals. Cooperation is not always energy thing, and efforts are required to achieve cooperation for harmonious and productive workplace. Collaboration is the perhaps the sub total of coordination and cooperation among alliance, coupled with interdependence on each other, trust on each other, and focus for developing collaborative solutions so that the alliance is not fleeting and is at least lasting to some extent. But in global understanding, a well-developed ability to create and sustain collaboration gives any company a significant competitive leg up. A shared purpose in all the above cases is the key driver. The proper coordination, proper cooperation and collaboration, however, depends on the leader's ability to resolve a division, to resolve differences between departments, between teams and between even organizations, to create a relationship with a shared VM and shared sense of purpose. Our eminent speakers shall deliberate and discuss the implication of this priority awards, that is coordination, cooperation and collaboration in business. Thank you very much. I pass on the session to the moderator now.

Thank you, Mr President. Before I proceed with the webinar, just to bring it to the notice of everyone, we have participants from the US, UAE and India. This webinar has been sponsored by Striking Vision Intelligence Networks and Discover Detective and Security Agencies Private Limited, and supported by Premiership India, Skills Tax Score and Premise Premiere Investigation and Detectively.

A few words about the President. Mr C. Paul Singh joined the Central Police Service in 1962. He had the initial training at Mount Abu, thereafter advanced training at the Police Academy in Hyderabad. He has served in large number of states with India in various and senior appointments. He was asked to raise the Rapid India, a rapid force, against the communal rights, and he was the first boss of that organization. What is metastoria service, he was awarded, he was converted, conveyed with a large number of awards. Today being, they are, just read them out: the President's Police Medal for Distinguished Service, India Police Medal for Meritorial Service, Police Special Duty Medal and Bar, that is called a trash, and the Army Center Medal. After retirement he was conferred with the prestigious award of the Security Personality of the Year by the President of India and the Global Security Conference. He is presently still involved in this field. He is advised the Asian Professional Security Association of India, in the Indian chapter only, Director General of the Central Association of the Private Security Industry, Central Association of the Private Security Industry in India, and I think he's got a very checked career behind him.

Now the first speaker, Morty. She had the experience of 36 years in this field of management. She, in the, has mastered in the field of tourism and visa. She has worked with very senior, a very big tourist company, the Carlson, the Koni and Thomas Cook. Ed diversified into teaching role and outsourcing with the global industry in the setup of the management of many offices in the various countries. Her proficiency is in business development, operations and profitability management, team management, leadership, custom relationship management, crisis management, quality process and consistency management, and many more. She is presently doing a job of her own. Auto went from this.

Thank you very much for the introduction. I'll just start sharing my screen. Questions, can you see my screen? Yes. Great, okay. So thank you very much for the introduction, and good evening to everyone. Good evening or good afternoon based on your locations. Today's subject is very, very interesting, and definitely some sounds very simple, but it's actually quite complex when you actually start working on it. I would like to divide this. I think the whole, the cooperation, coordination or collaboration starts basically with communication, which is, which definitely needs to be very clear and very crystal clear in what you really want to convey and what the exact objective is.

Important for us to really understand the definition of each of these, and therefore it's, I have listed them down, and just as President C. Paul Singh said, cooperation is actually more of an individual goal. This individual goal is basically given if you're working in an organization. An organization that normally starts with the head office. You have your executive chairman, you have your executive board who convey the message, you have your departments, the message goes down to the departments, you have your team leaders, your departments and the individuals. That's where the individual goal comes, and cooperation is basically an individual goal. Coordination is normally done by the team leaders and the department heads to, and under, to ensure that there is a systematic alignment of the objective that is to be achieved by the management. Collaboration is the shared creation, the final outcome of the entire process. This process is, can be both internal and external. It can be used, it's used basically for building alliances, internal alliances, builders, supplier relationships, vendor relationships, and inter-department, intercompany, different partnerships as well.

What's important here for us to understand is what are the, what are the different factors which are, which contribute to this culmination of the entire collaboration. Most important is communication with clear goals which need to be achieved. This communication is very important to understand that it has to be actually disseminated down the line to the last level. If this is not done, you cannot really achieve this, because the entire purpose is lost and there is confusion at all levels. The objective has to be realistic, something which can be done by each of the individuals and by the teams. Timelines has to be conveyed and communicated down the line to everyone, and it's very important to ensure that whatever is the objective is, it is achieved. Sorry, I'm sorry about that. It's important to understand that the commitment of the has to be done within the timelines, and to also understand what are the interdependent roles that each department plays. This finally results in the credibility of the organization.

Sizing is, the sizing for the objective is very, very important. I'd like to quote a little example over here which is very important. Most of the times when an organization wants to achieve something or roll out or maybe transition into a process, it's very important to do the right kind of scoping, and that finally results in a seamless process rollout. Sizing is important. The example I would put, an example of one of my rollouts, where we were expected to roll out the visa application center in Morocco, and we had done the entire sizing which was given to us by the mission. We were told that in a day there would be not more than 70 applications, and accordingly the entire infrastructure was built. And on the day of the rollout, we saw a huge crowd outside the application center, and we realized that there was chaos. Finally we ended the day with 700 applications, 700 and odd applications, and we were not sized enough. This despite the scoping, the communication was not clear to us, because the mission forgot to actually tell us that they were also accepting applications and they had stopped accepting applications. So the sizing was not right, and within a week we had to set up a new application center three times the size. So this is where this communication is very, very important, and therefore the FAQ or the questionnaire that we actually prepare is very important.

Communication is, the entire process of coordination, cooperation and communication is interlinked with leadership. Leadership is a very complex subject. I'm sure all of us know that these, it consists of man management, manpower management, a lot of business management, profit management, but most importantly it's also managing your team to make them understand what exactly your objective is, to make, to be able to communicate with them at all levels. This, in, and once you have the team with you, they listen to you, they would actually talk to you, they would understand your objective and carry out the required task. Empowerment is most important, because without the empowerment there will be no cooperation at all, and neither will they be able to achieve the objective. Decision making is very important, I would say at this point of time, because without decision making power there, you cannot really achieve what you really want to do. Expect this, timelines is something we have already spoken about.

I would like to talk about a few instances over here in terms of successes and failures. One of the instances here that I would talk about is to discuss with module the successful budgets that have happened. There are three examples that I would put. One would be KLM, KLM France, the other would be SOTC Koni, and the third is Thomas Cook and SOTC. It's important to understand what is the objective of each of these. KLM France, the objective was very clear: increased market share, consolidation. Both the brands are very, very strong brands, and there were huge cultural differences despite the fact that they are both European airlines. There were two different managements, there were operational challenges, there was compensation differences, there was a dissatisfaction amongst the employees. There were loyalty members of both airlines who were dissatisfied because of the change in the cultures of both the airlines and the change in routes. All these were things that were not factored into at the ground level. They did not take the ground level, and they did not communicate with the ground level in terms of taking their inputs, neither did they communicate to them what exactly the objective was. The entire process was done at the management level of both. They had both the headquarters. However, the final objective was very clear, and it was finally a success over a period of time, and the huge benefit that they had was basically consolidation. They optimized on their manpower, on their infrastructure, on their lounges, and over a period of time people have come to reckon with the airline as one. It's a huge challenge. It's not easy to achieve something like this. It can actually make or break the whole process.

The other objectives, and the other objective which SOTC and Keoni had, the objective was very clear. SOTC is an Indian, knob was an Indian organization and still is an engineering organization. Keoni was looking, was a Swiss, Switzerland company based in Switzerland, and they needed an entry into India. So as you can see that these are two different cultures, but at the same time they needed to come into India. So the best way for them to do, was coming to India, was to actually acquire an Indian company, which is SOTC. Huge challenges here, again the same challenges as in KLM France, and it took a while, but I think this was done very well, and the entry into India happened over a period of couple of years. It was not a very easy task, but at the same time it was achieved within a period of two years, as I mentioned earlier. But there was a little dissatisfaction down the line also, because the entire process was not communicated at the network level. Both of them based in India, excellent wrapper between the two companies. The objective was very clear. It was basically consolidating themselves and solid, optimizing on costs, and of course getting a greater market share and killing competition. So this matchmaking is very important, and I think what we have learned over a period of time is the fact that both the cultures need to match. People have to, communication has to be sent down the line right to the lowest level so people understand what the actual objective is, so that they act and work accordingly.

However, there have been certain failures as well, and it would not be correct for me to name something here, but there have been some instances, and there have been mergers, attempted mergers, which have fallen through only because there was lack of commitment from both sides or from either side. The fact that there was no sharing of information or full transparency of information being shared, part information being shared, so communication was an issue. Lack of coordination, time zone issues, and unable, inability to manage the mentality of people, I would say. And that, and the entire operation had to be, the entire collaboration had to be aborted over a period of time. Six months of time was wasted between the two companies, but at the same time nothing was achieved. So it's important for us to understand that these three factors, there are a lot of coming, there are a lot of Cs that we can talk of: its cooperation, coordination, collaboration, communication, credibility. There's a lot more that one can talk about. It's a very intense subject, but these are the fundamentals, and it's important for us to know that this, the objective has to be very clear and disseminated down the line through the leadership and through the right channels. That's what I would, I have to say right now, and I guess my time is up.

And actually you have more time. If you want to speak, you can speak more. Sure, how much more time do I have? We have actually 10 more minutes. Okay.

So I think it's important to understand where the roadblocks are actually. Mostly it is with the, it could be the attitude of people, it would be the fact that there are the actual challenges. Monitoring the entire process is very important, especially during a project rollout or during a merger, or then during the entire process. It's important to have your project timelines well set out and disseminated at the right levels. If that is not done, you, the entire process can be a failure. So we have seen some of these processes, like for example, I remember quite some time that when we were doing the biometric rollout for UK visas, we were doing a global biometric rollout. Unfortunately, what we forgot to actually understand were the dynamics of rolling out in certain countries where there were challenges of internet or ground realities where there were strikes, or you know, there was cultural issues, or you know, certain nuances of the labor laws which we were not aware of. So it's important for local people, especially at a global level, it is important for people to actually convey the information, that to do a cultural and a social scoping is very, very important, and this has to be conveyed down the line to the project level and the people running, doing the project, to make sure that it's a seamless integration that happens. The entire transition process can actually be, you know, be unsuccessful if it is not conveyed correctly to them. I think that's it from my side. I think that we should, yeah, Kashyana can give us our views on the entire subject, and then we can go to questions and answers. Absolutely, Deepak. Thank you, ma'am. Thanks, thanks very much.

I request the second speaker, Miss Kashyana Singh. Out over 26 years professional experience, you spent 18 years the end-to-end management role, both in startups and establishment, established corporations. Early she was the Vice President of Mid-Marketing Health Solutions, and presently she is the Vice President of Private Health Management. She has a great experience in terms of organization catalyst and also versatile leader. She embodies and strives to embody the TED Talks themes to work in her daily work. She's an established and a very distinguished poet, and anyone who is interested in poetry, for her, her Portuguese can be heard and read across the various international platforms. Over to the speaker, please.

Thank you, sir. Can you hear me? Yes, it's loud and clear. Okay, great. I will need help in, if Puja can share. I'm calling in from my phone, so it'll be a little difficult to share my screen. Natasha, Natasha, you can share, please. And while that's coming up, well, thank you for your detailing on the four Cs, but also the brilliant examples, right? The best way to learn is with storytelling, and I love that you brought forth real-life examples to the table in terms of what really the four Cs are, Cs, right, whatever number of Cs. Like you said, we can bring into the topic. So first of all, before I jump in, thank you. Thank you to NISSMAT, thank you, sir, the chairman, Deepak sir, thank you for having me, and Venku, it's great to be covering this subject and topic, which like you said is both complex but equally critical, with the audience today. Thank you.

If we move on to the next slide, I'm going to skip through the first few very quickly because we've covered the definition a few times, but I do want to call attention to this picture on the screen. And if you see the C there, the C is a chain of human beings, right? And that's really, I kind of, the sense of what we are talking about. Whether you talk about collaboration, cooperation, coordination, communication, credibility, context, criticality, all of that ultimately is human chain and human linkages, and we'll go into a little more detail about what Venku said in terms of what that matter, how that matters with regard to culture and with regard to project management.

Let's move on to the next slide, and I'm not going to go and talk about the definition specifically again, because both the chairman and Venku covered some of the definition. But let me just say, in my view, collaboration is about the criticality to understand and let the team that set play, or the teams, because it's always more than one team that is at play, to understand what is intended to be carried out, right? And generally speaking, there should be, and this was part of Venku's example in terms of the Morocco visa center, there has to be a wide degree of latitude or flexibility in the system. And when I say system, I do not mean the technical system, but the system, this human chain of system, whether in terms of project management, scoping, testing, evaluating, burning in, in the project, and ultimately that delivers the highest level of collaboration at place.

The one thing more I'll say on collaboration before we move on is, what's better, is it collaboration or competition, right? Ultimately we are all here in the world of business for the sake of getting profitable. Let me say to you that it's actually fashionable to have the leverage of collaboration in today's world, or cooperation, our communication, or even co-option. A competition is being replaced, the word competition or the theory of competition is being replaced by the theory of collaboration, and it's almost fashionable for business leaders to bring the term collaboration or co-option to the business world, into the boardrooms today, and that's how important collaboration is.

Let's move on to the next, instructions, cooperation. Like I said, I'm going to take a very simple example of a child. Two children independently have picture books, right, coloring books that children need to use, but they only have a shared set of crayons. Each child is primarily concerned with their own picture, because they need to color the picture and get it right. However, the two children agree to use the common box of crayons while they are actively coloring the picture. So if one child needs a particular crayon that's already in use by the other child, then that child lets the other child know that I need that crayon. That's the simplest definition of cooperation, and it happens every day, day in and out, in our lives and our daily routines. It just needs to be expanded and extrapolated to the corporate arrive, and whether it's in terms of mergers, acquisitions, or alliances or otherwise.

A woman, Puja, the next one is coordination, and again I'm not going to speak to the definition, but I think I want to pause here and say, let's again just pause for a second and understand what are the different alliances, right? And again, Venku, thank you for referring to the different examples, but for a second, there's slight nuanced differences between an acquisition versus a merger versus a strategic alliance that can change the level or the positioning of these three or four Cs in the process. So an acquisition, as we all know, is the takeover of a target organization by a lead entity. A merger is a combination of organizations which are mostly usually similar in science and in size, and a new organization, or what we call a newco, gets created, and neither one of the parties is acquiring the other. And a strategic alliance is truly a collaboration. It started most often in earlier situations with non-cooperations and with non-profit organizations, but it's obviously become very common in cross-business and cross-industry situations, and it's basically intended to leverage the strengths of each party to achieve a common goal. So I wanted to spend two seconds there, because there is a slight nuance that starts to happen depending on whether you're at the forefront or a part of a merger or an acquisition or an alliance, and each one of them can have success or failure depending on how you position these three Cs in them.

Let's move on to the next one, Puja, and the next one is communication. To me, the way I like to think of it is, communication is at the core of these four Cs. It's become extremely important, even more today, in the virtual world that we live in. Like sir Deepak said, people are calling in from all parts of the world, and that's enabled through what we call asynchronous communication, right? So communication in today's world can be synchronous communication, which is real time or in person, and asynchronous, which is non-real time, combination of virtual and in person. Employees themselves communicate with other employees during these mergers and acquisitions or alliances, and what could that do? That results in either rumors, because they don't have the information that they should have, in the transparent way that they should have, or at the speed and at the point in time that they should have. And that's challenging when dreamers start, because it's hard to manage rumors, and speculation is never a good way. Speculation should never be a strategy. And that mostly, very often, in the early stages of these murders and acquisitions, we've seen, and I have lived through them, that the business and the floor, the floor on the organization, becomes a rumorable. And how do you plan for communication such as to disseminate relevant communication and remove harmless communication, and also to encourage storytelling? Like I said earlier, when could just shared stories, the best way of communication is storytelling. But as part of the project plan and as part of the communication plan, leaders who are running it need to be clear on what is the story we want to disseminate, what's the story we want to propagate, what is the key words we want the organization, whether it's the newco in terms of a merger, or the acquiring and the target company in terms of an acquisition, or the two non-profits in the case of an alliance. And ultimately that helps impacting the goals of this, the strategy. What it also does, it builds employee loyalty and trust that's needed, because ultimately it's a human resource rich environment that we live in today, and it reduces culture clashes, right?

We'll go, let's go into the next one with that point, because I don't want to spend, a little more depth in what Venku pointed out, is culture. And think of the culture as the wrapper around this entire process. And when I come to project management, I like to think of project management as the nucleus, or let's use the example of the further example of the body: the project management is the central nervous system of this process, right? So what is culture? If you move on, we, you will see the definition, and if you have to remember one sentence in what the culture is, I like to position culture as the soul of the business. It guides the behavior of people. It tests your ability to stay anchored when there is disruption, and obviously in these alliances, whether it's murder or an acquisition or a strategic alliance, there is disruption. There's disruption to day-to-day life, there's disruption to potential, simple thing as a paycheck cycle for the upcoming team, there's disruption to management practices, there's disruption to the way the work happens, meaning the processes that are at place, and sometimes there's a disruption to what actually gets happened, because when there's acquiring entities, or when there's mergers, very often there's product line changes as well that happens. And therefore, through all of those changes, the soul is the culture, and if we can retain, if the team that's in charge can retain the culture, or ensure that there is a clear goal of what the new cultural guidelines of the cultural values need to look like, then all of these other destruction areas are less disruptive. There always will be disruption, but they are less disruptive.

So if you move on, one of my favorite quotes is what I wanted to share with this group. Move on to the next one, Puja, thank you. This is Bill Cozy, and I had time, I had met him in a conference once, and he shared this quote, which is: you cannot design your new core, right, the new company, until you understand the culture you have already. It's important to understand what he's saying there, because the acquiring company cannot dismiss the culture in the acquired company. Culture is deep rooted. Culture is the soul, and the company that is being acquired needs to also have an openness and a vulnerability to adopt good principles that might exist in the acquiring company. So therefore it's super important to understand the culture on both sides of the fence, and ultimately the combined, a newco entity, to create what might be either a new culture or an amalgamation of the two cultures that are coming together.

Let's look at what more about culture, and therefore what should you do, right? High level, you diagnose. Just like for every situation, you diagnose and say, how does the work get done at the gemba? And for anybody who doesn't understand what the gemba is, in Japanese Lean and Six Sigma philosophy, the term gemba is a Japanese word which stands for where does the work get done, meaning the floor, right? And obviously we have to remember that the floor today is a virtual floor, but it's important that leaders are not operating at a 50,000 feet level, that they, and the project managers are not operating at a 50,000 feet level, or the consultants are not operating at a 50,000 feet level, but operating by understanding what happens in the gemba. How does the work get done every day? What are the handshakes that happen every day? What are people passionate about? Why do I come into work every day as an employee, besides just carrying home my paycheck at the end of the week, month, or bi-weekly, as the cycle may be? So diagnosing how the work gets done is the first step to understanding and then integrating cultures.

Then you prioritize, and not just prioritize, you prioritize relentlessly, because there can be 250,000 things that are needed in a merger and an acquisition or an alliance, but prioritizing relentlessly is important to execute effectively. Then of course you plan, right, and this is where project management comes in. You plan using the best approach that serves the need, based on your diagnosis and based on your prioritization. Then you codify, right? And codify is not just a term for software and coding on a computer keyboard, but you codify the behaviors you want, or you codify the practices that you want. And remember, I'm saying practice, I'm not saying process, because practice is a level above process. Practices, the human aspect of the culture that happens while the processes are being run. So you codify them, and then you role model them. A lot of the failures that Venku mentioned, there are two spectrums to the failures that might happen. One is lack of project management and lack of diagnosis and clear establishment of scope and the ultimate end goal, and the second is leadership. And when I say leadership, again, I use that generically. Let me use the word influencers. The influencers and the organizations that are going to impact the end result not role modeling the behaviors they're expecting to be codified in the organization. So that's the, it's a very simple five-step cultural integration plan, but it goes a long way if the one is thoughtful about each of these steps and keeps coming back. It's not a linear process, it's a cyclical process, and you keep coming back to prioritize relentlessly as you discover new things about the two organizations that are emerging.

Let's move to project management before we pause for questions. And so, like I said, project management is both the nucleus and the central nervous system of this process, and before we move to the next slide, I want us to align to a couple of things with regard to project management. This process, whether, again, any strategic alliance can be managed as a project, right, or a program, and there's slight differences between the two, and those are important differences. So we won't go into the details of those differences today, but just know that it's important, for as part of the diagnosis step, for the team that's leading the merger and the acquisition to understand, is this suitable for a project management approach or is this suitable for a program management approach? Because once that is done, the type of leaders you deploy to lead that will be different, the skill sets you need will be different, and potentially the approach you follow will be different as well.

The second thing I'll call out here on project management, and then we'll go into the next slide, is there are different project management methodologies, right? It's a science in itself. It's an academic study in itself. So project management is not about slapping 500 line items on an Excel sheet and giving it to the person who has the least work available and say, run the project. That is not project management, but that is very often how these groups or these companies tend to end up driving these mergers and acquisition, which is why, even when what we call happens successfully, these mergers happen successfully, the cultural integration takes a long, long time. And it has been said, I'm not remembering the exact percentage, but there is a study that says even a merger, a merger that's been successful and goes into motion, very often can be unwrapped and undone even within the three to five year window after the merger. So going back to my point about the culture being the soul, and therefore the cooperation, the collaboration, and the communication being important, because that doesn't stop once you think the project plan is completed. That continues for many, many years after that to be successful, and is most successful if we know what methodology to apply, we devote the right kind of resources and the right approach to project management behind it.

So let's unpack project management a little bit. If you move to the next slide, and I've kept it very simple for this audience, because project management is a study and probably a session in itself, and I'd love to spend more time on that. But really, it's the standard four Ws and one H: the what, the when, the where, the why and how. And that, by the way, is the simplest tool that we can apply in any management situation, whether it's a disruption situation like a murder and an acquisition, whether it's problem style solving in the gemba, or whether actually, from violence, it's writing poetry, right? You need to understand the what. What are you trying to say? What are you trying to solve for? When did the situation happen, and when should the next few steps happen? Where does the ownership play for this? And also, where does the change management flow through? What's the geographies at play? Again, I'll keep repeating Venku's example about Morocco. What are the geographies at play? What are the tools that different parts of the organization, within the existing organization and the newco, use today, and what will they be using tomorrow? What are the levels that this penetrates into? If there are factory shops, are we going into every factory shop across every geography? In a virtual situation, are we ensuring that we get everybody and allow them to have face-to-face time and the ability for leadership to look into the eyes of their teams and say, this is what we are doing, this is when we are doing it, and this is why we are doing it?

The why becomes extremely important, and I took note when, when Venku, you spoke about empowerment. Empowerment sits in the step of why. When you try to work across cross-cultural teams, and that is obviously what's going to happen in a strategic alliance, empowerment is important. However, empowerment happens when people know the why. What's the context? Why is this task assigned to me? Why does it matter to the mission of the company? Why does it matter to what mioko wants to be standing for? Why does it matter, the file, to the financials? So that the lowest level of the task and the lowest level of the employee in the organization, whether it's a matrixed organization or a linear organization, needs to understand the why, and that's the most difficult aspect of project management as well as of leadership. And we spoke about leadership being critical to all of this.

And then of course, the last is the how, which is, what are the success measures? How will we define success? We can go about the motions, right? We can check the boxes and say we've done the 250 steps that were defined, but were we successful at doing that? And the important thing on success measures is not just having success measures, but having aligned success measures across parts of the organizations that are coming together. And then of course, project management serves as a governance plan. The one last thing on the governance plan that fails very often is, you do all of this well, what you see on the union is all done well, but then the critical people on the team, the critical leaders on the team, the critical influencers on the team step away and think the magic will happen inside that project plan, and that's not true. The governance needs to ensure that there's continuous engagement by the critical influencers to drive the what, the when, the where and how. That's really how important project management is, and that's really how critical culture is, to ensure that these four Cs that we are talking about happen, but they don't just happen as cosmetic aspects of the situation, but as inherent aspects of these situations.

Let's move on to the next one, and that's just a highlight of a couple of good, successful mergers, or actually, let me just say, couple of the big, the largest mergers in the last, in the history, actually in the last probably couple of decades. And you will see their examples of what, again, my friend Venku shared earlier in terms of what could be the goals of these mergers, right? If you are merging as the same industry or similar industry, then obviously there's a goal about product alignment, there's a girl about financials, there's also goal about geographies and where you're getting in. But there are sometimes mergers that can be extremely disparate companies coming together because of reasons other than, right, just the project management aspect of it. And there is the good and the bad and the ugly in terms of what examples we have.

I want to bring to the table, and if you move on to the next slide, Puja, just two examples that I've always looked up to when I've worked on these situations with my teams or organizations. One of them is Uber, the merger of Uber, which is the car company, or the taxi, the new taxi company, and Spotify, which is the music playlist, right? And I bring this example up because that's an example of, like, really, Uber, you run taxis, and Spotify, you have people playing music, you do your playlists of music on your phone, on your devices, and that's what Spotify does. How the, how this to even come together, and why does it matter? And it matters because, who, when you ride in an Uber, I'm sure everybody's ridden in an Uber at some point in time, it allows Uber riders to stream, which is run their Spotify music playlists, while they are riding an Uber. Wow, that's something, right? Because that's a cross-disparate merger, but it changes the value of what the end user experiences. And I bring that to say, that's the most important why of why a merger and an acquisition or an alliance should happen. It's not because internally there is something. The customer's value needs to change, and we all know that the customer is not just the external customer. So in this case, in the Uber Spotify example, the customer is not just the person who's riding the cab, but the customer is also the driver, because it allows the driver to have a better experience with this integration. So, and it makes the Uber experience more personalized. It encourages, and vice versa. So you'll say, what does that do to Spotify? What that does to Spotify is, it encourages users to get into the Spotify Premium plan, which is a higher paying plan, because it allows more control of the playlist and the music that I want to listen to, right? Uber's rivals, we have Lyft and others, don't have a personalized music experience, and so this gives this ride share giant, right, this is the ride share world of riding and taxis, a competitive advantage over Lyft or any other similar companies that might exist. Now I'll say one more thing on that example. Do all Uber riders have Spotify? Probably not. Do all Spotify users ride with Uber? Probably not. So therefore, you're getting access to more footprint and a broader access to an audience through this business alliance. And doing that well was important, because it could have looked like a sham if it wasn't done well, and it's a differentiator now that it's done well.

I'll share one more example, and then we can pause for questions, is the merger of Starbucks, or the alliance of Starbucks, with two companies: Target, which we all know is the big, the big box store across the United States, and Barnes and Noble, which we know is the bookstore, the large, one of the largest chain bookstores across the United States. So what does that alliance do? Starbucks has its own shops, kiosks, whatever the size may be, within almost all Target stores now, and within the Barnes and Noble stores now. And so what does that do to both? Obvious, right? Target has a high amount of football, and everybody, as including me, as you walk out of Target, you're probably going on a longer shopping distance and a shopping spree, and you're going to be traveling, and so you pick up a Starbucks on your way out. Definitely we'll do that, right? Similarly, in a Barnes and Noble, I like the silence of Barnes and Noble to read or to write, and I find a desk in the corner, I pick the book that I meet from the Barnes and Noble library space, and then I pick a Starbucks, because I don't want to step out for eating or for drinking. So that's another very interesting but a very effective alliance that has helped the three organizations at play.

So what you'll see on the screen, therefore, in summary, there is the good, the bad and the ugly, right, of these alliances. The one thing to remember is, there are different strokes for different folks is the philosophy to a lot. So the principles, the project management and the cultural integration, and then in an Uber and Spotify example will be very different from the principles, the culture and the project management in the Starbucks and Target example, and also very different from a Starbucks and Barnes and Noble example, because the customer is different. So we have to keep the customer in mind when we design any of these programs and when we run through any of these alliances. And I repeat: culture, culture, culture. Hindsight is 2020. There is enough examples in the world outside to look up to and to understand, but it's extremely critical that culture stays the wrapper around any of these programs. So I'll pause there, and maybe this is where we open up for questions, either from the panel or from the audience.

Thank you very much. Both the speakers have given an excellent talk. I have a lot of questions, for the questions have been answered during the talk itself. Anyone who has a question to ask, please. And Kashyana, you know the Air India has been acquired by the Tatas. Has been talking of culture, there is a complete cultural difference between how the private enterprise or the Tatas functions or the government, we are functioning, which was in their India. What are the challenges that would be there for this acquisition, and how would you, what should the Tatas be doing to succeed?

I'm sure you have your own inputs as well, but as far as this is concerned, I think Kashyana's point of culture is very important here. Tatas is a private organization with certain goals. For them the customer experience is very, very important. People working in Air India, that's a public sector, the mindset is completely different. It's a nine-to-five job. They know that the job is very, very secure. Now with the privatization, the job is definitely not secure. There are higher demands in terms of service delivery for the employees who took it casually earlier. To come to work at a time which is convenient for them is not possible. More than that, it's also in terms of compensation. Air India has had certain compensation scabs which Tata may not have or may have. In fact, Tata's compensation slots are slightly better than what the Air India slacks are. But in terms of culture, I think it was more the work culture, the customer experience, the aircraft, the maintenance of the aircraft. Private sector, the service delivery is very important in terms of the quality of the aircraft that is used, the quality of experience the passenger has. A first class passenger must feel like he's actually traveling first class, not traveling in an old aircraft which has not been maintained. So the credibility is more important for a private sector than it is for the public sector. Kashyana, you would want to say something on this too?

Yeah, yeah, thank you. I mean, I think what you're saying is a hundred percent right. The most critical, there are multiple nuances, but the critical piece is the expectations of a high performing culture, right? That's the change, because the Tata culture will be a high performing culture. Now, the two aspects to that, right? Employees will probably know, they know it, starters, and Tata values are well known across everybody who's in the business world, will probably know that they don't have to worry about their jobs. But they also need to know that they will have to worry about what they deliver, and there will be what is going to be a performance management system, which, a PSU, right, in a PSU situation, they're probably not used to, and so it's going to be different from them. From the lens of the Tatas, to your question, how, the challenge is going to be to create and sustain the value proposition for these employees, right, and ensure that the value proposition is not just about the retention of the job, but what's the meaningful purpose to achieve the goals and allowing them with the organizational strategy. I'll say just one other thing here, that in any of these situations there will be feds. There are, in any organization there always are what we call fence-sitters, right? There are employees that are sitting on the fence anyways, and when these acquisitions happen, and especially in this case, they will have been considers, and it is not uncommon nor unusual for some of the fence-sitters to be weeded out, either automatically or through a program and a process.

No, further to what, how does the judiciary come into being when the merger acquisition is taking place? For example, what Elon Musk and Twitter doing, what Walmart and Biyani are doing. How does the legal aspect come into being? Close now, go ahead. You can, you can. I would say that I think it was data sharing, which again, I think it's communication, but we are all outsiders. At least I wouldn't know much about this, but I would say that it's a question of sharing and communication. If the entire information has not been shared and communicated to Elon Musk's team, then he doesn't have access, and you know, the access is duplicate, the information given is either duplicated or it's not, there's not transparent, there's no transparency in the communication that has happened. But Kashyana, you are on the ground, so you would have better information on this.

Yeah, and I mean, I will, there's, that example is a little off the normal as well, right, knowing the personalities at play. So we do know Elon Musk has a personality that's coming into this display, which is why I said it's important that the organization is bigger than the leader of the organization, right? And so the organization that Elon Musk leads, or the organizations that he leads, haven't been able to become bigger than him from a persona or a personality. And when that happens, all of these other principles that we've spoken about become either subservative or irrelevant, right? Because there's a personality that's coming into play, and we won't go into the psychology of narcissism and the psychology of personality here, but we know what happens, right, when, whether in world leadership or organization leadership, is led by people that have narcissistic tendencies. And so that's a whole different aspect to your question. Thank you. Right, but the point on legal aspects is, there is a whole legal process, right, and Venku will agree to this. There's due diligence that needs to be done, there are legal timelines that need to be met, there are legal sign-offs that need to happen, but all of that gets overridden when you have the situation that you just brought up.

I have a question. Yeah, please. We all know that culture is driven from the top, and the culture rests on the values or the pillars, as we call it. Today we are focusing on cooperation, coordination, collaboration, whether it be between individuals or teams or companies. Now this starts from the bottom and not the top. So what I believe is that the alignment at the lowest level is perhaps the most important, the Rockefeller's first habit, as we call it. Unless we can align the organizational goals with the individual goals, and then systematically move upwards to teams, this is not going to work. So depending on culture may not be the right thing. It has to start at the bottom, get the alignment state by state upwards, and then you will see teams and companies cooperating, and there will be coordination, and of course collaboration is the final result. Do you agree with me?

I disagree. Yeah, I completely, I disagree that culture sits at the top. I actually think culture is throughout the organization. The walking the talk of the culture needs to happen from the top, but this is why I brought up the concept of gemba. Gemba is nothing but what happens on the floor. It's the culture in the gemba, the codified word practices in the gemba, the employee emotion in the gemba, is what the leadership team, again, I keep saying, or the influencers or the project leaders, need to take and infuse into the plan to drive the integration. So I disagree that culture is on the top. I actually think culture is, again, I repeat, culture is the soul of the organization, and where, whatever you miss, culture is not the words. It's not the words written on top of the mission statement in an organization. Culture is what happens in the gemba, and diagnosing that, like I said, is important to create the plan for what's required to be adjusted.

How do you ensure success of organization in terms of teams cooperating amongst themselves? Now we've spoken of whether it's a merger or an acquisition, but business works throughout, within the organization also. You need coordination, you need cooperation, you need collaboration between different departments. What is your advice that organizations should follow on a daily basis so that their own productivity improves?

I think it's very important, first of all, to ensure that there is a proper structure in an organization. People management is very, very important. It sounds very simple, but it's actually quite complex. Again, I think one needs to bring the human aspect into the picture while working in a working environment. Leadership is important. Then the acceptance of the leader is important. First the leader needs to make himself acceptable to the people that he's working with, and vice versa. And the leadership skill is important, only because not only for communication, but also for making people work. I don't think you can achieve anything by not, I think being aggressive is not important, it's being assertive, and with a combination of people management to ensure that the objective is achieved. Empowerment is important. I would say that people need to feel important. It's important for people to feel that they can make decisions on their own, and that management will stand by their decision, and ensure that the integrity of the organization and the process is maintained.

Yeah, thank you. And I agree, and just taking, continuing from there, there is actually a whole concept to your question, with that, is called collaboration conundrums, right? There's a whole concept, an ongoing organizational delivery, where you could sit across the table and actually evaluate what kind of a collaboration conundrum are you faced with. Let me elaborate on one of the conundrums. One of the conundrums in today's times is the size of teams and the technology dependence of teams. So we all would agree that at one time a typical team size was approximately 18 to 20 people. Today a typical team size is 80 to 100 people, and the very thing that drives the success in an organization also becomes a collaboration conundrum. It's been often seen that complex teams, highly qualified teams, actually find collaboration more difficult than some of these simpler teams on a factory floor, right? And the concept of we'll sink or swim together gets difficult to deploy in a complex, large, disparate, cross-cultural, technology dependent team than it might be in a team that I can gather together in a room and address and look every individual in the eye and speak to them about collaboration. So to your point, yes, there are ongoing challenges on deploying these four Cs, but the answers again need to be customized, and it has to be different strokes for different folks, depending on what type of an organization, and within an organization, what type of a team you are talking about. And it cannot be done once. It's not a one and done issue. It's an everyday issue that needs to be at the center of, like said, people management and leadership, as we are reviewing what we are doing.

I would also like to add over here that I think, you know, as you go along in an organization, there are always going to be issues, and people related issues, project related issues. It's important for the leader who's sitting on the ground to actually take a fair view of all the issues, and have possible, you know, the results should be a fair judgment of whatever issue we have. This is what is very important. People need to feel that there is fairness at the place of work. That's very important, and when they know that there is fairness at the place of work, they actually will collaborate and cooperate with you.

How do you, for managers with the software levels, how do you tell them that, how to coordinate and how to cooperate? Because these are two important issues that every leader would be faced with. He's got to have team cooperating with each other, and then he's got to coordinate everyone, and now with the team sizes being 80 to 100, as Kashyana said, how do you achieve all this? What would your advice be?

Any team leader or a department head has gone through the process. He's gone through the cycle of growing through the ladder, so he understands the nuances at the working level as well. So he knows, and he needs to make sure that he takes his team along with him to make sure that the objective is achieved. It has to be timeline bound. He needs to delegate, he needs to empower his own people, he needs to motivate them to do what needs to be done within the certain timeline that has been given to them. So it's very important. He needs to handle his own issues with his team. Escalation metrics is very important, and at the same time, and understanding what the actual crux of the problem is, to be able to actually resolve the issue. He should not be seen as a weak leader, and the people working down the line, if they're well motivated and well directed, they would definitely cooperate and coordinate this to achieve the ultimate result.

Actually, the question which asked, I think it depends on the size of the organization. If the organization established from the small, like I can talk for the service I was in, we used to have a morning conference every morning with the principal staff officers, so that once the instructions are passed, it's common to all. Whereas in the larger organization, it could be monthly or a weekly, and then the command headquarters where I was, we used to have a weekly coordinating conference. So that's all. It depends on the size of the organization one is working in, and at the level. Sorry, go ahead. No, no, your turn.

Yeah, I was just going to add to everything that's been said, which is, what, who we hire in those positions is also important, because you hire for non-leadership leadership roles, right? So you cannot hire for individuals that, again, I'll take the Elon Musk example, that are there to be personal heroes, right, or for personal glory, but that are non-leader leaders, which means you work with the team and you drive through a leadership approach with the team. You have the right kind of emotional intelligence along with the analytical capability, to your point, in evaluating what the situation is on the ground and adjusting your focus, right? Because collaboration, again, collaboration, cooperation isn't a one and a done. Whether you have a daily huddle or a daily rounding, like in hospitals you have rounds that doctors conduct, whether you have that daily, or you have it on an emergent situation, or you have it weekly, that's important, because that drives the governing principles. But what's important is to continue to check and adjust based on what's happening on the ground, to continue to drive collaboration and cooperation. I also just want to say, you cannot tell. This is not, you have to show. There's a difference between showing and telling, and telling doesn't enable cooperation, collaboration or communication, but showing does. Touchdown and from bottom up. Yeah, and participating too. I think participating in the entire process, a leader's leadership, participate in the entire process, actually.

Hello. Interaction, interactional dimension. Coordination and collaboration is possible through two more Cs which they have added. One C is communication, and the fourth C or the fifth C is culture. Now the question only is that all these things ultimately depends upon creating that sort of attitudinal behavior from the lower to the top, keeping in view the culture you are having in the organization and the culture you are trying to achieve through collaboration. So ultimately it is exactly the same thing. You come true, it's an interactional dimension, and this interactional dimensions can be properly made by a good leader, because it works into external dimension. You may have cooperation, the coordination at lower level, cooperation into the higher level, and collaboration is umbrella, and over and above here today in Venku, that is communication, and Kashyana. So these Cs are relatively going to achieve one through the, ultimately outcomes could be that they are so much together as to make a success for any organization together. The addition to the above Cs, they probably have to add certain thing, the scholar says, therefore, better and lasting alliances. It is very important for a leader. It's not a question of, as one of the questioners said, that how do you go on level, question is how to merge. They are always, any good leader will try to coordinate and try to achieve the ultimate entries, that is, an individual at the lowest level, so that it goes after some, ultimate aim is the same, that you have to have a successful alliance after collaboration. My point is that we have gone a little beyond this three, which I wanted to, my subject was on cooperation, cooperation, but they have gone into FC, yes, communication, yes, cultural and attitudinal behavior, leadership role, and most important, the ethical collaboration is a key operational thing, whether it's, and pointed over, one of the speakers. So these are some of us that I mentioned for all these words which you can take it further and further.

I have one last question. What is the advice that you would give to the real managers on the ground to improve the ability of cooperation in their teams? What should they do to improve coordination?

I can jump in. I would say everything that the chairman just summarized and we've been talking about. It's important to emphasize that in order for a team, to your point, on the ground, to drive this on a day-to-day basis on their teams, it is important to have a process and the key KPIs or measures of success, and then keep circling back to those on a day-to-day basis to say, are we achieving the goals we set out to achieve? How are we measuring those? And if something is off, what do we need to go back? Again, like I said, that side, that chain I said is cyclical, and go back and diagnose and say, does something need to be adjusted? Because we have new members on the team, we have a new product that we are now driving home, we have a new customer line that we are speaking to, and so does something need to change? And goes back to the communication piece, but the continuous cycle is the advice I would say. It's not a one and done, it's continuous, number one. Number two, there has to be a governance plan which includes a process, it includes the success measures, and it includes the critical stakeholders that are defined and aligned with the right stakeholders across the company. And then, like Deepak sir said, whether it's a daily communication or a monthly communication or a weekly, whatever is the most relevant and makes sense, needs to be established. And I'm going to bring in one more C, which the chairman may like or not like, which is consistency. All of this is important, but the consistency of doing it in a maniacal way is equally important. And so very often, when managers in the ground miss the mark, even though they may be the brightest and the sharpest managers, is because they do it, but they do not do it consistently. And so that's my input, Robin, to your question.

Thank you very much, because you know, managers on the ground need to have directions as to what exactly they need to do to become more successful, and my question was related to that particular aspect. How, sorry, sorry, please go ahead. Hi John, you wanted to ask a question? Unmute yourself. Unmute yourself, John, your music.

There are basically five departments in my company. It is sales, operations, customer relations management, HR, admin and finance, basic structures. What are the steps I need to take to ensure that there is cooperation, coordination and collaboration between these departments? What are the specific steps I need to take? Most important, I need to take steps. What are the steps you recommend?

Most important, I would say, is that you need to have weekly inter-department meetings, because most often the mistakes that management make is having, isolating the departments. It's important for people to have a holistic view of what's happening in the organization. Rotation of job is a very good example, but inter-department meetings with the heads is very, very crucial, and of course having team meetings, town halls with the employees is very important. I think that would be the base. Thank you very much.

I would add, absolutely agree. To your point on specific steps, I'll keep going back to what I shared. Ask yourself the question of, have you understood and aligned first within each department on what the outcomes are, and then understood what the collaboration across departments need to be, and established that on paper. So culture is not an esoteric idea. Culture translates to the process on paper. Translate that to paper. Establish the governance process, like Venku said, in terms of communication and interdepartmental governance, and then follow that consistently, including the step of checking and adjusting based on the success measure review that you're doing, right? And obviously we are oversimplifying, because we have an hour here. Just the process of establishing it requires more in-depth discussion. We are oversimplifying, but those are the four steps. And I would add to that and say, hire, hire for what you want your cultural collaboration, cooperation needs to be on the ground. Hire for that type of a person, because some things are trainable and some things are attributes that individuals bring to the table. So ensure your leadership team has those right attributes. Thank you.

Another question to ask? I actually have one. Some of the traps that I see over here is how to manage one-upmanship and individual self-centeredness. These are two obstacles which I face, these two demons. Don't have them on a team. No, I'm joking, I'm joking. Well, I think that we all understand the forming, norming, storming, performing, adjourning steps of a team, right? That needs to be followed on the ground, and I go back to what I said again: common principles of success that are agreed to by everybody, and the why behind, like, why does that matter to me that I should do that? Is that because you, team leader, or you, CEO, is saying it, or is that because I am influencing a bigger cause? All of us want to serve a bigger cause. Am I influencing a bigger cause in either the organization or in the world, right? And then, to your point, the one-upmanship goes away, because now there is no question of one-upmanship, because there are calibrated goals of success. Now there always will be variants of behavior and variants of leadership on the team, and that goes back to the process of review and alignment, and ensuring you're adjusting your leaders if you think they're not suited for that role. But every leader is suited for some role, because that's why they're in that position, and you need to cross adjust. I think Venku mentioned it somewhere, rotational opportunities. So do you need to change the team mix and the combination of the team if you're seeing a lot of the one-upmanship type of behavior seeping into your team? But to come to the realistic point of view, Dr John, yes, one-upmanship is there in every organization, and it's a difficult demon to deal with, and a shining star will shine at some point at the ground level. Thank you.

I think we have had a very illuminating exposition by both the speakers and a very fruitful discussion thereafter. Before I request the President to conclude the session, I just want to bring it out to all the attendees here that NISSMAT provides opportunities to the sponsors at a very small cost. Anyone who's interested, please get in touch with nismat.com. Over to the President, sir.

Thank you very much. The moderator has already lauded the inputs given by the speakers. I'm not going to laud it further. Of course, excellent inputs, we are thankful to that. I'll try to bring one point on the table, particularly in the concluding sessions. These alliances and partnerships are, according to, wherein, in a way, very, very romantic. They share their hands together, as you ship in any alliance with your other partner, married partner. They shared their hands with hopes, they shared their hands with aspirations to make their alliance a success. This relationship fails when the spirit of my organization, or I, or my business, or my culture becomes more important. The spirit of which that our culture, evolving culture: what should we be doing, what should be our culture, what should the new minds culture, not forgetting your own culture, but particular new culture, and such realized. So this is a very romantic sort of way of interpreting this thing.

No, a shared purpose of all the above cases is probably the key driver. The key driver is the leader, of course. Then for proper coordination, for proper cooperation, for proper collaboration, for proper alliances, you have to depend on the leader's ability to resolve deviance, to resolve differences, to resolve minor irritants between the various alliance partners, or if it is organization, within the departments or within the teams in the organization, and to create a relationship team with a shared mirror and a shared sense of purpose. With these words, I conclude the session by thanking both the speakers, both the eminent speakers, who have given us excellent inputs in terms of not only the three Cs, but the four C of communication, the fifth C of cultural interaction.

The next webinar, and going to be, our next webinar is going to be, is total loss prevention achievable, and this particular is, his last relationship, is being held on Saturday. Please make a note. Earlier we are having Friday mostly, this webinar. This time we are holding Saturday, on 12th November, and time is 7 PM, because some of the delegates from outside India have told us that 6 PM is too early for them. We have shifted the time to 7 PM for this particular webinar, is total loss prevention achievable. On Sunday, plus remember, on Saturday, dress number, at 7 PM. Please make a note in your diary and be with us to attend this scintillating session. Again, thank you everyone who has come and participated in this particular webinar. Thank you indeed. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Excellent speaker, excellent talk. All my doubts have been cleared. Let's hope we all do this. Okay, thank you. Bye-bye. We need to do this everywhere. Absolutely. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you. Thank you. It was a delight to be with you. So appreciate it. Bye. Thank you.