CORE DELIVERABLES

Office Kaizen is a cost saving model used globally in various organisations. It is known for reducing multiple TIMMWOOLDA wastes at factories and also the ‘white collared’ offices including banks, IT companies, educational institutions and any other industry. It helps in making the processes leaner,  efficient and more productive.

Kaizen means Small and Continuous improvements for Good. Office Kaizen when integrated with 5S, helps clear most of the non-value added activities for which the client does not pay us. This helps us reduce our unwarranted expenses and increase our profit margins and also helps create a positive environement for our employees.

The following is a brief review of what Office Kaizen does: 

1. Sort – Acts as a cleaning agent by identifying wastes and differentiating value added and non-value added activities and material
2. Set in Order – It helps organise work practices and material properly. This is the most critical part where most wastes are eliminated
3. Shine – Clean and tidy area which looks very organised and renewed for Kanban display  
4. Standardise – Define clear SOPs for the work order and set a tone of work for the future
5. Sustain – To define clear audit and review policies to ensure SOPs are implemented and work order is maintained

Fostering a culture of problem solving and training of leaders (to conduct GEMBA walks and audits) and other employees is a necessary ingredient in the success of Office Kaizen implementation

Strategic Human Resource Management is one of the most critical and yet ignored aspect which contributes towards ‘sustainable’  organisational success.

We help organisations develop robust KRA and KPI tracking structures linking them with fair and transparent appraisals and resultant R&R outcomes for the workforce. This also includes training and consulting employees from top leadership and following what we call the ‘navratna leadership’ model in the implementing of this process.

We also help organisations develop the maximum ROI out of their training interventions through a process called L&D Implementation System through uniquely designed tracking process of the learning outcomes while integrating them with the KRA’s.

Counselling services for such implementation are also delivered for organisational growth and development to senior leaders including CEO’s and other C-suite managers on leadership and strategic thinking.

• Leadership Mindset
  • Navratna Leadership – Executive leadership is not as much about doing things as about the art of getting things done. Leaders have to focus on the KPIs and motivation of only their direct reportees and ensure results. Equally important is to train the team to manage their navratnas the same way !  (the art of delegation – dar ke aage jeet hai)
  • Thought leadership – Is leadership about a position, about a skill or about the way I look at my responsibility towards organisational growth, employee welfare and the interest of shareholders and stakeholders? We collectively try to discover an answer to this area through our learning intervention.
  • Spiritual leadership – Sound leadership is essential for the success of any team and therefore the organisation. The missing piece in the puzzle of corporate leadership is perfect balance between empathy and discipline. Spiritual leadership, an emerging philosophy globally, is a the piece that fills this gap.
• Strategic Thinking – details are mentioned further
• Change Management – details are mentioned further
• Team Building – A leader shall be known by the quality of match winners in the team. How much camraderie the team members have, how progressive is the team culture, how fulfilled the team members are and whether they believe in personal growth or not as they strive for organisational growth are a few parameters to judge a great team build up. 
• Decision Making – One good or bad decision can make or mar an organisation. Sound decision making ability is a necessary virtue in an individual at a personal and leadership level. One needs to be clear about the purpose of the work at hand so as to be able to correct in taking decisions most of the times. Critical & Creative Thinking are necessary pieces of decision making skill set and hence must be developed if not discovered yet.

VIRTUES has conducted Bhagwad Gita sessions at Zydus Life Sciences (one week programme), ICICI Group level and other SME’s, MSME’s and start-ups which have been hailed by the stakeholders.

Managements and their workforce today struggle to find a sync between their subjective needs even though  their needs are complementary. As a result, both are overwhelmed by the resultant inner and outer conflict. We commonly see this as a resultant pain at the organisational and personal level. 

Bhagwad Gita is an eternal philosophy for holistic and sustainable growth. The last verse of Bhagwad Gita – 18.78 mentions prosperity as a byproduct of skill, ethics and clarity of though metaphorically mentioning Arjun and Krishna.

There are four aspects in Bhagwad Gita which help in excellence achieved in work and personal life:

• Karma yog talks about the right way of working as a Workplace Monk (karmyogi) who realises his/ her true identity through work. Karma yog talks about working with the mind focussed on excellence and not results. When one works in the domain of self-actualisation with a Kaizen mindset, excellence is a natural by product.

To achieve a better understanding of karma yog especially when results don’t come as expected in spite of best efforts, the next three domains of Bhagwad Gita come handy.

• Gyan (Sankhya) yog – Gyan yog talks about realising your true identity which helps in creating a fearless worker fostering creativity and growth mindset in the professional at work.
• Bhakti yog – There are times when one gets stressed due to failure or because of fear of failure. In addition sometimes one needs the quintessential patience to achieve the desired success. Surrender (samarpan) becomes an essential component of character in such times which is a by product of understanding Bhakti yog
• Dhyan yog – Meditation, mindfulness at work helps achieve all the above three characteristics required in a winner. Enough research has happened to talk about the benefits of meditation at the workplace as well as in personal life. 

The success of any organisation wholly depends on the quality of the strategy formulation as well as execution. As part of the corporate strategy, it is essential in the beginning to have clear vision, mission and uncompromising value  systems driving every process and employee in the organisation. The design of clearly articulated SOP’s implementable to the last section with uncompromising focus on discipline is what differentiates a great organisation from an ordinary.  

Creating organisational growth strategy through the flow chart of – 

1. identifying the need for strategising
2. goal setting with SMART aspects being taken care of
3. planning, including design and implementation of tools like 5S and Kaizen if necessary and use of other tools in planning
4. forecasting – clear and upto the last minute of the project in hand or for atleast five years in case of organisational strategy in a specified format
5. decision making, need for putting your foot down in implementation and reporting if necessary while also being flexible as per the need is a skill of a strategist leader
6. implementing including last minute reporting procedures in place
7. R&R within the zone of discipline
8. and finally creating a report of learning through the project.

The challenge in the workshop is to move ahead from theory and take it to the practical level of thought process.

Change is the most difficult to implement in great organisations particularly. The reason is obvious – set patterns of doing things. But the disturbing factor is the lack of creativity and excellence, in short Kaizen in the organisational culture. Any process of change management (or Organisational Development as it is called) is the but-in for doing still better than what was done. 

To achieve this is not easy with thinking minds. Paradoxical as it may seem, managements need to do soul searching within themselves on the need for change and their inherent attitude towards growth. Once that is done, the organisation is ready for a change management intervention !!

1. Buy-in from the management sets forth the process of change mananagement:
2. Creating minsters of change in the top
3. Create a goal, plan and forecast
4. Create a robust reporting system 
5. Evaluating at pre-defined milestones and part of SOP…
6. … linked with R&R and disciplining measures
7. Post implementation reporting structure

• Conflict Management – Conflicts at the workplace is a testimony to the fact that there is a democratic culture for the employees where ideas and thoughts float around in the path towards progress and growth. It is essential though how conflict is managed or resolved in the given situation.
• Negotiation Skills – Negotiation forms a very important part of the entire official communication. Not only do we need to negotiate with clients and vendors, negotiation with internal stakeholders is equally relevant and is rather more frequent. There is an urgent need for creating a win-win in all negotiations considering the work stress and conflict scenario we see around us at workplaces.
• Emotional Intelligence – Emotions are what define an individual’s personality. The way we handle situations emotionally (respond or react) create or perceptions in the mind of our stakeholders which range from family to clients. This programme will focus on the areas of emotional intelligence which we need to master so as to create great, long lasting relationships with our clients
• Communication Skills – Communication is a vital organ of the human society and has been instrumental in the growth and sustenance of our species. While language has been given maximum importance, the subtle aspects of communication have been ignored most of the times, sometimes creating misunderstanding and conflict amongst people. In this programme, we will focus on – one how to make better the usual communication skills and two, to master the subtle skills of communication and complete the pie of communication.

Anurag’s doctoral research hovered around the topic – Meditation as a Tool for Organisations to Enhance the Emotional Intelligence of their Employees.

Emphatically, the research done on 500 employees of companies of various industries like pharma, IT, Manufacturing and more showed that by doing meditation for one week for 20 minutes per day, emotional intelligence got enhanced by 7.54%. 

This research serves as a case in point for managements and HR to include meditation as part of their daily routine so as to get the behavioural and cognitive benefits of enhanced emotional intelligence among the workforce.