A few days back I was watching a T.V program " Man Vs Wild". While I feel great after walking for a few kilometers during morning walk, here was a guy walking kilometers together in the dense forest. It gave me huge motivation and I instantly decided to jog everyday rather than walk routinely. Also I felt the need for the new shoes to support my new decision. For the next few days I felt so good with my improved stamina and started imagining if I could accompany the person in the TV show. It all went as planned for a week.
It was the 8th or 9th day after my new Stamina Improvement Regime (SIR) started. The alarm started as usual at 5 am indicating me to wake up for the SIR. Before I decided o hit the snooze button my brain started citing reasons like, delayed sleep last night, unusual power cut that disturbed the sleep... the reasons that looked more than genuine, were endless. When the reasons reached the desired level I decided to excuse myself for the day.
In the second week of my SIR the frequency came down to three times a week from everyday in the previous week. Then slowly it became once in a week.
When I was trying to understand as to what was preventing me from doing what I passionately wanted to do, I could find a few similarities in the organisational behavior too.
People go through huge amount of data before taking decisions in an organisation. Spend lot of time in making plans for execution. Think of "if and buts" and prepare blue prints. Then the execution starts with a big hype. Everybody talks about the new strategy. It becomes the talk of the town. People at the lower levels resist, discuss, rebel but have no choice but implement.
Implementation levels improve over a period of time.The strategical fever reaches newer levels. Then something happens and the execution levels continue to appear to be normal but they are no more normal. Exceptions start taking place. After a few months it's only exceptions, except the plan everything else gets implemented. People say the strategy is wrong, impractical. Then the board decides to find one more strategy and the whole new exercise starts again.
I share here an incident that happened in Trichy (the place where I live) that could give some clarity as to why execution levels fall over a period of time.
Tamilnadu Government took a decision to make wearing helmet compulsory for the people riding the bikes. Police department for the next one month strictly checked and fined the people who are not wearing the helmets.People too bought the helmets to avoid fine. For a month or two everything went well. Then slowly police department reduced their focus on checking the people on roads. From a small minority of people who were not wearing helmets, in the initial days, more and more people started riding without helmets over a period of time.
Now in most of the cities in tamilnadu people no more wear helmets. But in case of Trichy it is completely different. Here majority of people still wear helmets. Let us see what made the strategy work here when it failed in most of the cities.
Trichy police in the first three months ensured that they kept the check points for every two kilometers. If you are not wearing helmet while driving then you are sure that you will be caught somewhere on the road. It brought the fear in the people.
Then when other cities reduced the check points Trichy police maintained it for another three more months.
Even after an year and half still though the number of check points are reduced, you can suddenly find an inspector checking and fining the people without helmets on the road.
Trichy police department is able to convert the FEAR into HABIT.
Implementing the strategy is the responsibility of the employees. But continuous, un diluted monitoring of the same is the responsibility of the organisation. If organisation fails to monitor then employees fail to execute.
A long execution and monitoring time to convert the strategy into habit is what I thought could be secret.
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