We must revisit productivity. We now know what what always knew, that productivity was never a function of the number of hours spent under supervision, it’s going to be a battle of perception vs hard data. Data which Pakistani companies do not have. I never understood why we needed to have a 6 day working week in most domestic enterprises. Time ≠ Output. The experiment with work-from-home during the pandemic, as the freeze begins to go away, what is the optimal way to manage work life balance? Is a 4 day work week the answer, will local businesses get their act together. Typical HR functions are not geared to deal with this issue. In the tech sector in Pakistan the reality is bitter. The smartest talent is moving online and getting more geographically agnostic in the work they want to pursue. As our overall exports across sectors get better, our overall talent pool is getting more restricted. The brightest will leave. Smart companies know that what they do (or not do) now will show its impact in a year or two. This is that one task that will define how businesses end up doing in the long run. Choose wisely.

Outcomes

Companies expect certain outcomes from their employees. But suck at defining them. The worst thing ever is to say to an employee, "treat company money like it's your own" it is a recipe for corporate disaster. Yet it happens every day and worse for locally owned businesses where the leadership at the top is any thing but a model to be followed. Just like "be yourself!" is terrible social advice, given that you may not like what is at the end of each person reality spectrum, asking them to treat company money as their own is traditional HR speak in the absence of the realisation of the outcomes it may garner.

Everyone's relationship with money is different. Then why would you consciously advocate people to do some thing that is built on that construct?

Managers are doing a dis service to new hires by not defining boundaries and setting expectations and rules. Let me illustrate: Some one who comes from money vs some one who had a tough time putting meals on the table will have radically different views/approaches and relationship(s) with money. You are setting your self up for failure when you do not define the acceptable benchmark. This is a recipe for unhappy moments later on.

Running startups early on, a curated move away from the corporate world where I would fly only business or first class did not translate into buying said tickets in a new-co role. It's a judgement call. But to expect this from every one who doesn't have the experience to judge, is setting them up for an extension to your own failure.

Outcomes are as much about planning as they are about end results. When you don't plan for the right outcome you are funding your own disasters. Do not put employees in a place where judgement doesn't equate cashflows if they make a mistake. Map your outcome as managers, business leaders, HR because if you delegate the role of benchmarking acceptable standards down stream, you are delegating your outcomes to statistical odds. Do not expect employees to appreciate that it costs a lot of money to run a business, define it instead for happier days and outcomes.

Companies expect certain outcomes from their employees. But suck at defining them. The worst thing ever is to say to an employee

One New Thing

Some thing business have generally sucked at in Pakistan is codifying process. You cant measure what you cant define, what you wont define you wont be able to measure. If your business runs on people vs process you are about to hit scaling problems and growth problems. Yet it happens every day. Companies are talking about digital transformation and automation and RPA. Yet there is no switch that turns on this activity. Due to the reality that generational businesses and SMEs have not spent the time to be classically trained to reduce work flow and design better processes. We barely have processes. Yet there is so much demand that businesses even in the absence of process continue to thrive, this is valid till we are in a closed economy with incumbents. When we have to compete globally we will suffer more.

So whats the solution you ask? Any company that is growing from between 20-50 employees needs to have an Automation Role. Be it a director a chief automation officer a chief process officer or some one who just understands the value of a system vs not.

What is this persons job you ask?

Short answer: Improve everyone else’s job.

Long answer: To have a singular goal be to improve others’ workflows & processes with automation, re factoring, delegation, elimination or combination of all of these activities. Easier said than done. In a traditional business they also need the autonomy to do this, which typically resides with sponsors of the business or the CEOs. Neither of them being generally qualified to have the skills or bandwidth to undertake said activities. You need someone in the trenches, with the bandwidth attention, skills to fix these processes. But even before that, you need some one who understands the organisations processes and can lip sync to them just like they can to their favourite song.

How do you do this in practice?

This only happens when you create this role, empower it, then have the belief that they will create the process to fix other processes. Treat this person or role as a resource. The execution can be as simple as an initial Monthly automated survey goes out to everyone asking about any processes they do viz a vi the time it takes and the outcomes that are expected from it.

This role/person would then prioritise and act on those with the most impact. Sounds simple in theory, near impossible to do in real life at large cos or scaling companies.

This role works in tandem with the people who already own the process you want to document or automate, unless individuals in their respective roles can step up to offer and communicate new or better ways of working as well this is a landmine of challenges. An outside view is more helpful than not, whilst we can expect people to share their own challenges and how to fix them, it doesn't work on its own. People need to be told and shown from an outside in looking glass what they could do better, because they have built muscle memory and it is near impossible to change your own muscle memory with out intervention.

In my work in digitization, process understanding is the foundational layer that leads to better outcomes. Typically I find that people don’t know there’s a better way. Even when they know it, muscle memory prevents them from moving away from the obvious, they need someone nudging them to use either the tools or the knowledge to enhance their outcomes.

Boring stuff that scales

A question. "What kind of things would you pay to learn about your competitors?" Instead of always looking inwards, it pays to look outwards too. This is a boring enough question that if asked with conviction can really help you scale your outcomes.

So what questions should make it to your list?

1. List of their customers

2. Revenue

3. Most successful content/web pages/ad copy and ad spend

4. Main traffic sources

5. AOV

6. what they’re testing on their website, what their flows look like?

7. Customer tickets with complaints

8. Latest hires

9. Product roadmap

10. Conversion rate in diff channels

So here is the plot twist. If this is what keeps you up at night, you may be on the right path. But for you to scale, you have use all this and grow you own business first. If any or all the items on the list are things you'd like to know about them. Make sure you know your top 10 first. Unless you know your own data, you cant scale. These are great questions or thematic areas to apply to the competition to keep an eye on them, but don't get your eye off the ball(your own) in the pursuit of digging up competitor info.

Focus on the highest ROI stuff to scale. We know this, but how do we internalise this?

I recently came across a wonderful tool to help you deal with this. Across projects, businesses, task and generally bring order to chaotic settings. A simple strategy based off an excel sheet. A sheet that has all the possible tasks, and scores them based on anticipated ROI, certainty of ROI, urgency, time required, and whether the task can be delegated. Then sort the sheet based on any of those factors to pick tasks based on priorities.

Its called the RICE score: A prioritisation framework for estimating the value of ideas. Details here.

You (likely)heard(saw) it here first

Low sugar mangoes? Really, is that a thing? Keitt variety has the lowest sugar level up to 4.7 percent while Sonaro and Glenn have sugar level up to 5.6 percent and 6 percent respectively. Grown in Pakistan. Pakistan markets now have sugar-free mango varieties for people with diabetes. The fruit, which otherwise has high sugar levels, has been scientifically modified by an expert at a private cultural farm called M H Panhwar Farms in Sindh’s Tando Allahyar. If you want to try some you can order them here.

What you should be reading

What you get: Lots of great systems and principles for small businesses. Boils down some complex organizational efficiency concepts into easily to digest and apply to nearly any business.  It introduces possibilities that you never thought would be possible as a small business owner and also gives a step-by-step process on getting there. What it helps you understand is that every business has a QBR (The Queen Bee Role), which is the singular task you would base your future success on, and should be protected at all costs. It builds on conveying the fact that you need to free the business from dependency on you, and free yourself from dependency on the business. If you are confused about cause and effect in relation to outcomes this is a good book to help you understand and organise your thoughts around how to codify your business so that it runs like clockwork.

What you get:

Monetise your time

Add smart people to your network. Learn from them regardless of whether you like them or not. If your network does not have people who you can learn from you are investing time in an outcome that doesn't scale. This is not about social climbing but instead social learning. Whilst the Internet is an information machine. You can learn about literally anything on the planet online. Certainly at the level of depth that you would have learned from any formal education, but in-person interaction adds to internet scale. What does that mean? Monetise your time by learning from others.

It is very important to find a strong and smart people in your circle. Who knows your weaknesses and won’t judge you. Who knows your strength and still want to help you grow. Who see the bad in you and want to help you out. The ones who fight your battle even in your absence. That is the circle you want, vs circle jerking and empty accolades.

As you learn to be a good leader it is extremely important to surround yourself with smart people. Your ceiling will not be higher than your own knowledge if you do not have smarter people in your circle.

Know this:

Once you can internalise this, you will choose to include smarter people in your circle.

Ask your self:

Does your circle of influence have a similar perspective/demographic as you? Asking their opinion only proof-texts your own which leads to narrow mindedness and the persistence of injustices.

Find smart people who respectfully disagree with you & be receptive in conversation. Like money, if you invest your time only to seek validation you aren't growing, you are investing in a low return outcome. Invest wisely.

(Proudly)Made in Pakistan

The Alnno-Ventura is a respiratory aid device, developed to be especially effective against Covid-19, and is being manufactured by the Alsons Group in Pakistan under license from UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering in the UK. These devices have been gifted by the Govt of Pakistan to help fight Covid19 in our neighbouring countries, the current back of devices being exported are going to Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal & Maldives.

One Last Thing

There was once a time. Where Pakistan was the global hub for international travel. Even in a pre-corona era, for us to do business we had to fly wrong way to do business the right way. Here’s a glimpse at the sad truth, we have lost Cathay, Malaysian, Singapore, Swiss, Al-Italia, Japan Airline, Air France, Lufthansa , KLM and British Airways(to a large degree), I am sure there were others that I don’t know about missing from this list. For us to be ready for the post-corona era, we need to get our act together on accessibility. I wrote a detailed post on our aviation challenges, that post had little to do with PIA but a lot to do with how others have capitalised from our initial victories and the early achievements our forefathers who had fought hard to put structure, growth, ambition and results in place.