Wherever Smart people work, doors
get opened
We all work
hard in life. We work hard in our jobs so that we can excel. We work hard to
maintain our relationships. After working hard for an extended
period of time we all realize that there’s only so much we can achieve by
working hard. We need to do things differently not do different things.
However,
when we have only 24 hours a day, just like everyone else, we will have to
start working smart too apart from working hard to get the maximum value for our
time and effort. Working hard gives us results and working hard and smart at
the same time gives us the best results and top billing.
Smart work is doing things that bring about the desired end result. Smart
work is result oriented. And that end result that is faster, easier, more
productive and efficient. At the same time the person doing Smart work does not
feel overtly tired or worn out. It is not the number of hours that a person
works on an assignment that is important, rather it is the output that is
expected and achieved that matters.
Hard work is a conditioned belief from times immemorial.
Working hard was important and crucial. We believed back breaking, long hours, was
work and that it was hard work.
Things have
changed and the way we are look at work too has changed. Work itself is no
longer seen as pursuit that is done repeatedly for years at a stretch. It is
only the means to the end. Organizations too have started to take a dynamic view
and a smarter way of doing things. Smart work has picked up stream and there
are many examples of companies bringing in new concepts and practices based on
the concept of smart work.
1. Outsourcing: Outsourcing is an arrangement in which one company provides
services for another company that could also be or usually have been provided
in-house. Services and activities that have been regarded as intrinsic to
managing a business have been outsourced.
Benefits:
Work gets done at the same cost or even at a lesser cost than earlier and
employees are freed of mundane and repetitive work. They can concentrate their
efforts on more productive and fruitful activities.
2. Seamless working: Seamless things are connected so well that you can't see
what's holding them together. They're flowing, consistent, and
well-put-together. If an employee leaves, another employee takes over
effortlessly and does a great job immediately and this can be referred to as seamless
transition.
Benefits: More work can
be done with lesser people. Whats App the world’s most popular messaging
service has an annual turnover of US 1.5 billons dollars but has only 55
employees on its rolls. The productivity of each employee works out to a
whopping 183 crore Indian rupees/employee!
3. Matrix
organizational structure: is a company
structure in which the reporting relationships are set up as a grid, or matrix, rather than in the traditional hierarchy structure based
on a single boss and many subordinates. In other words, employees have dual
reporting relationships - generally to both a functional manager and a product
manager.
Benefits: Inter
departmental conflicts can be avoided. Employees become work and task oriented.
Bosses also become less protective of their departments and become more
employee, task and organization oriented.
4. Employee
stock option (ESOP): is a stock option granted to specified employees of a
company. ESOPs carry the right, but not the obligation, to buy a certain amount
of shares in the company at a predetermined price.
Benefits: One of the biggest challenges that many companies face is
the attrition rate. Attrition is the number of employees who leave an
organization in a year. ESOPs can work as motivators. They have to be paid in
the future and are linked with performance. As they are future oriented
employees tend to stick to the organization.
5. Flexible
manufacturing system (FMS):
is a method for producing goods that is readily adaptable to changes in the
product being manufactured, in which machines are
able to manufacture parts
and have the ability to handle varying levels of production.
Benefits:
There is no need to have independent factories and assembly lines for each
product. The same production facility can be used to produce different
products. For example the same car manufacturing facility can produce a 1000 cc
car, a 1200 cc car, a sedan, a hatchback or even SUVs. Thus fixed costs get
apportioned to many products and cost of manufacturing individual products
comes down. Products can be manufactured as per demand and there would not be
any idle production capacity.
6. Kaizen: is a Japanese
term that means ‘improvement’. When
used in the business sense and applied to the workplace, kaizen refers to
activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees
from the CEO to the ordinary workers.
Benefits:
Responsibility of running the organization become democratic and everyone in
the organisation is empowered. There is democracy and a sense of ownership.
7. Just-in-time
(JIT): is an inventory
method companies employ to increase efficiency and decrease waste by receiving
goods only when they are needed in the production process, thereby reducing
inventory costs. This method requires producers to forecast demand accurately. This
inventory supply system represents a shift away from the older method in which companies
carried large inventories in case of higher demand.
Benefit: Too much of inventory means locking up of valuable
resources. High Inventory storing costs and loss of value of inventory add to product
costs in the earlier system. JIT eliminates unnecessary storage and releases
valuable factory space.
8. A quality circle: is a group of workers who do the same or similar
work, who meet regularly to identify, analyze and solve work-related problems.
Normally small in size, the group is usually led by a supervisor or
manager and presents its solutions to management.
Wherever possible workers implement the solutions themselves in order to
improve the performance of the organization and motivate employees.
Benefits: The beauty of the quality circle is that the
workers who produce the product are also responsible for quality assurance. In
the earlier system there were clashes between the production workers and the
quality assurance checkers. In the Quality circle concept the production
workers produce the product, check the quality and if the quality is not
satisfactory, come out with remedial actions. Quality circle localizes the
problem, tackles it quickly and sees that a solution is put in place as soon as
possible. It is the most decentralized method of decision making.
9. Reverse
engineering, also called back
engineering is the processes of
extracting knowledge or design information from anything man-made and
re-producing it or re-producing anything based on the extracted information. The
process often involves disassembling something (a mechanical device, electronic component, a
product, computer program, or biological, chemical, or organic matter)
and analyzing its components and workings in detail. And producing the same at
a fraction of the original cost.
Benefits:
This was the smart work that propelled the Indian Pharma companies especially
the bulk drug manufacturers into the world stage. The Indian Pharma companies
before the coming of the product patents regime reverse engineered the world renowned
bulk drugs. They produced the same drug in a different process and marketed it
at a fraction of the original cost. Reliance on Reverse engineering also made
China the word leader of cheap mass produced products.
10. Benchmarking is the process of comparing one's business processes and performance indicators to industry’s
best practices. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost. In
the process of best practice bench marking, management identifies the best firms
in their industry, or in another industry where similar processes exist, and
compares its own results and processes with the industry’s best.
Benefits: Typically when we buy a product there
are many features in the product that we like and there could be features that
we want but which are not available. This leads to Cognitive Dissonance, a sense
of uneasiness with our product choice. We are happy with our purchase but we
have a niggling doubt that we could have bought or should have bought some other
product. Benchmarking provides us a solution.
Indica the car that Tata introduced is a classic example of Benchmarking.
Tatas compared its car with the best available in the Indian automobile
industry. They found out that Ambassador
had the most roominess, Premier
Padmini had the best looks
and Maruti 800 was the most compact
and the least priced.
Tata introduced Tata
Indica and Indica has the roominess of an Ambassador, the looks of a
Premier Padmini, the compactness and the attractive price of a Maruti 800 and to
top it all, Indica was a diesel car. The icing on the cake was the name, Indica
or the Indian car.
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