Processes in (a) Crisis

Processes, Why do we need them, When do we need them.

It is generally said that Processes are needed for Quality Purposes and you would need processes for doing Quality Work. It is also often said that Quality work is skill dependent & we need processes to hedge against uneven skill sets.

But what happens in a Crisis situation. What is generally seen is that  the Processes get tossed into the recycle bin and work gets delivered Some How In Time (S.H.I.T.). The team puts in a heroic effort to deliver a defect free work product. Most of the time people turn a blind eye to the damned processes and use whatever short cuts they can use.

There are even some instances where people create crisis and solve it to become heroes. But lets leave that aside.

Lets look at what happens during an actual crisis.

• Panic, Loss of Time & Spatial Awareness
  The first thing that happens is Panic & Fear. The situation makes people loose track of time & spatial awareness. Spatial Awareness makes people focus on a specific task & not have a view of the big picture. This can result in loosing opportunity to rectify the situation.
• To Err is Human.
  The second thing that happens in a crisis is injection of errors. Errors are of 2 kinds - errors of ignorance & errors of ineptitude. If the errors are not corrected then cascading errors result in Failure. In industries which do not have a positive attitude to errors the probability of failure is more. In industries which do have a positive attitude to errors, the errors get corrected & the cascading effect is halted.

Crisis Situations are present in all industries. Lets look at what some Industries do to tackle and prepare for the situation

Fire Dept

Fire Departments continuously train for crisis. They train for scenarios where there are multiple objectives. The live exercises check whether firemen loose their situational awareness and miss out the big picture while getting bogged down in a particular situation and resulting in failure.

Aviation

Aviation industry has processes & procedures which are always updated to incorporate learnings from disasters & crisis situations. Processes are ingrained in the aviation industry because they are based on learnings in which price has been paid with lives. There is a heavy usage of checklists in Aviation and pilots swear by it.

A good example is Hudson River landing of US Airways Flight 1549. The aircraft had a bird hit which caused both engines to shut down. The situation was statistically too rare to even have a flight simulator scenario. Capt Sullenberg remembers feeling fear before he started going through his checklist even though he knew that he may not finish all the items. He shortlisted his options going through the checklist & decided to land in the Hudson river. His training prompted him to chose the location near operating boats so as to maximise the chance of rescue. This was a good example of people knowing what they were supposed to do and they did it and as a result, nobody lost their life.

Surgery

Any surgery involves risks. Dr Atul Gawande through research showed how using checklists during surgery in an Operation Theater reduced mortality by 35%. In a surgery it is quite easy for an otherwise competent doctor to miss a step, or forget to ask a key question or, in the stress and pressure of the moment, to fail to plan properly for every eventuality. Using Checklists has reduced effects of errors during crisis in surgery & forces the surgical team to walk through key steps in a complex surgery & reduces errors. This also forces junior members of the team bring any missteps to the notice of the entire team. This has been promoted in hospitals throughout the world by WHO.

Processes designed & deployed without any thought has created a situation where People equate processes to documentation, metrics and burden. Industries should look at other industries and learn to create appropriate processes. In Industries where lives depend on decisions made, Processes are created as result of learnings and people live by processes.

When a driver is new its the conscious mind which does the thinking, but when the driver is experienced the thinking is done by the subconscious mind. A well defined and oiled process becomes like second nature. Its similar to how driving becomes second nature to experienced drivers. 

If any Process is tossed away during a crisis then that Process does not deserve to exist in the first place. A process should aid the team in times of a crisis. Processes should inspire confidence in the team so that they can depend on it in times of a crisis.

INDIA of my Dreams !!

Today is the 65th Republic Day of India / Bharat / Hindustan. A day on which in 1950 the Constitution of India came into effect. A good day to start my blog. 

I don't wish to restrict the blog to any specific topic but like my interests will cover many things under the sun. My aim is to provoke critical thought. 

The views expressed are my own and I dont mind if others also share the view :-) or have a counter view. Everyone has a right to hold their own view & express it.

My vision of INDIA

The Largest population and Largest Democracy in the world. Conscious keeper of the world and finally worthy of the Permanent seat in the UN Security Council that it refused years back. Worthy of the rich lineage of Mahatmas which taught us to follow ones Dharma. People living in glass houses dont throw stones at others. India will have its own house in order. It will be the leading nation is conflict resolution across the globe. It will have the moral, financial, diplomatic and the military might to carry out the role.

Caste and Class would cease to exist. People would chose their life partners irrespective of the caste, creed, class & religion. Religion would play a minimal role in the lives of people. Everyone has freedom to believe & practice their beliefs. But its in the background.

Freedom of thought, expression and speech is the basis of democracy. The right to express one's views is respected in the democracy even if one does not agree with the view. One is able to have a view because of the democracy. There is a balance that is exercised.

Every Indian has an equal opportunity to grow and prosper. Children are the future of the nation. The nation ensures that all children get the best start in life. All mothers get adequate nutrition and access to healthcare before the delivery and get a maternity kit. The kit contains basic items like clothing, medicines, toys etc for taking care of the child. This would ensure a drop in infant mortality. This has been pioneered in Finland. 

All kids get a kit on the first day of the primary and secondary school. The contents of the kit change as per requirement. 4 Languages would be taught in school from day one which include Mother Tongue, English, Hindi and any regional languages.All languages taught equally.

Science & Maths are taught thru English. Mathematics is taught using techniques like Speed Mathematics & Vedic Maths to take drudgery and fear out of learning Maths. Scientific temper and critical thought create confidence in a child to face any situation in life. There would be Sports & Fitness facilities across the country. Accessible to All ages.

India would have a professionally managed sovereign fund to build a corpus for future generations. The fund owns all the govt stake in the PSUs in addition to other global investments. Each generation can only use a small percentage of the profits from the fund for balancing budgets. The fund can provide a higher percentage to take care of emergencies.

Industry and Agriculture would be equal pillars of the nations GDP. Manufacturing and Agriculture would be major part of the GDP. Service industry would be lesser part of GDP. Manufacturing will be decentralised. Parts will be custom manufactured in 3D printers. and assembled doing away with the need for mass manufacturing for economies of scale. It would be easy to start and run own business whether in manufacturing or distribution. eCommerce, direct selling along with logistics would be the major way business would be done. Corporations would exist to fulfill a need and work towards a vision. Profit would not the primary motive for existence of Corporations. It would be a byproduct of why corporations exist & grow. Tourism would form a significant part of the Service industry.

Equitable distribution of growth across India. There would be Urbanisation of villages. Population will be less concentrated in cities. People will live in Villages. There would be a Decentralised work culture. India would have the Best Telecommunication systems in the world. Robots will be everywhere to take care of most mundane repetitive tasks. People would work from home or gather at places near their residence which provide office support facilities.

Agriculture would be reformed. There would be more mechanisation of agriculture. Farmers would have the freedom to grow and sell produce directly to consumers or corporates. Cities would have biogas plants to generate energy and manure. The manure would be supplied back to farms. This would complete the nutrient cycle in the ecosystem. GM crops will be used to increase agricultural production in order to feed the growing population. Diet of people would be less Carbohydrate loaded. There would be a balance of 40-40-20 Carb Protein & Fats.

Affordable healthcare would be available for all. There would be a Network of public & private healthcare facilities. Emergency services would be available across the country. Communicable diseases would have been eradicated. Cancer the final frontier would be conquerd at the metabolic level in addition to targeted nano particle delivery mechanisms. Epigenetics would play a major role in early disease detection. Nutrigenomics would play a major role in disease prevention.

There would be a Decentralised Power Grid which would have a combination of local generation - (Solar + Wind + micro hydro) and centralised generation ( Thermo-solar + Nuclear Fission + Nuclear Fusion + Hydel + Thermal). There would be Nuclear fission reactors based on Thorium which would be safer than the current Uranium/Plutonium reactors. The same along with Nuclear fusion reactors would provide major part of the power. For places where it is difficult to have a source of centralised power generation there would be Sealed Nuclear Fission Battery packs to power Towns, Cities and villages. These would last a period of a few decades after which they have to be replaced.

Architecture of buildings would incorporate Solar & Wind power generation. Solar lighting using natural lighting along with fiber optics would reduce the need for artificial lighting during the day.

Public Transport would be extensive across the country. It would be made up of automated air, water, high speed rail and road transport. There would be a Hubs & spokes model. Private transport would be used mostly at the last mile. There would be robotic personal transport consisting of 2,3,4 wheeler vehicles.

There would be Scientific temper across the population. Pseudo sciences like astrology etc would have no place in the general population and would be only at the fringes. There would be lot of effort on R&D which would launch many startups. India would have a space station of its own. The space station would be large enough to generate artificial gravity at the periphery through centrifugal force. Space travel would be transitioning from using Chemical Energy based propulsion to other means of propulsion. India would join the rest of the world to derisk the human race and distribute humanity to space stations and other planets and moons across the solar system