The Hindu Business Line : Signboards and signals

The railway station in Bangalore was abuzz with noise, colour and constant movement. India was on the move in its own jostling and inimitable way. However, something struck me as I looked at a scene I had not seen for a while. The platform was swept clean, there were benches for people to sit on, the place was well lit and, above all, there were signboards aplenty. Signboards which informed us of where to find the facilities, expected arrival and departure timings of trai ns and, most critically, where to find which compartment. I suddenly realised that with this one step, the Railways had removed one of the most chaotic and exasperating experiences that all of us have undergone at railway stations — the search for our compartments. In the past this meant asking someone, taking a wild guess and in general participating in a mass experiment to validate what I would call the ‘Societal Brownian Motion’.

In corporates too, we often see the lack of signboards that can help smoothen the way matters are conducted. To illustrate, let’s take the matter of performance management. More often than not, expectations are not enunciated clearly either by the one who will assess or by the one who will be assessed. This is probably because of our normal cultural inhibition to articulate our real needs in a polite but firm manner, made worse by the lack of training in conceptualising and conveying expectations clearly and concisely. The net result is that even as two or more people sit down to discuss this important issue, much more is unsaid than said. Extra Sensory Perception is not the most ideal means to communicate expectations. The resultant fuzziness starts a chain reaction of suppositions that lead to problems and unfulfilled expectations.

Someone told me that we Indians are superb at handling fuzzy situations because we constantly live our lives on the edge of chaos. The signboard which ought to be saying ‘Important: Pay attention and be clear’ seems written in invisible ink. Performance management is an ongoing process that needs constant monitoring, feedback and facilitation to improve.

However, since the start is fuzzy, this process also gets derailed. The signals from both parties, which ought to be flashing red, amber and green for each of the issues under discussion, randomly alternate between the colours causing total bewilderment. What makes matters worse is the fact that many a time we have to infer the colour of the signal by the absence of some other colour. This is like many of the traffic signals on our roads, where the green light has to be inferred when the red light goes off and when neither the amber nor the green lights come on!

Another area of serious concern is written communications. Our default mode today is e-mail and here there are plenty of chances for creating chaos over many geographies and within a very short time. By not being concise and clear, many a time, we leave the communication open to subjective interpretations by people with whom we may not have a shared context or culture. To complicate matters, when a message is wrongly understood and acted upon, we hesitate to set matters right quickly.

In the meantime, it is highly probable that others who may only be peripherally involved find it necessary to add value to the whole process with their interpretations and inputs. The net result can be likened to the wallowing of a herd of buffaloes in a pond. The consequences can seriously impact decision-making and can also adversely affect relationships. The need for signboards to guide what needs to be achieved and the use of signals to clearly express and explain crucial concerns cannot be overstressed.

In medieval times, when travel between places was infrequent and fraught with physical dangers and imagined ones due to the fear of the unknown, the maps apparently had signs saying “Here be dragons.” I feel this still applies when we address issues in companies. There ought to be readable signposts and signal lights that flash when limits are being breached.

(The writer is advisor to 3i Infotech, Manipal Education & Medical Group and IDFC Pvt Equity.)