[BITList] The King of Sweden's Queuing Woes

[John Feltham]

 From another List....


The King of Sweden's Queuing Woes

Does the King's queuing woes have a lesson for Public Services in India?

The article by Arun Maira, Chairman - Boston Consultancy Group - India,
reproduced below is very easy on reading and sprinkled with anecdotes
that don't take away the punch. Its an eye-opening lesson in first
principles.

Someday my carpenter will be able to read and write and I will make him
read this.
================================================================= A
fundamental problem affecting the quality of public services in India is
indiscipline amongst both providers and users.

"The culture of indiscipline begins at the top when important people
feel they are above the rules", says Arun Maira, Chairman, Boston
Consultancy Group-India. His article:

The King of Sweden inaugurated the annual Tallberg Forum in July 2005
and decided to stay on to attend some of the sessions. I was lucky to
find one of the last remaining chairs in a popular session the next day.
A little later, I felt someone, who could not find a chair, standing
beside me. Looking up, I found it was the King himself! Someone else
noticed him and pointed him to a vacant chair in another part of the
room. In Sweden it did not seem unusual to find the King waiting behind
others.

Before the start of another session in Tallberg, I was in animated
conversation with a Swedish executive. A distinguished looking older man
came up and asked if he could sit in the vacant chair next to us. The
Swede turned to him and said that we were all assigned to groups and he
would find his name in the lists posted at the door. So the gentleman
walked back to the door, but reappeared a few minutes later and sat down
with us. When the conversation was over, he introduced himself to me. He
was Peter Wallenberg. The Wallenberg’s are perhaps the richest and most
powerful Swedish industrial family. It did not seem unusual in Sweden
that a Wallenberg should be treated, and expect to be treated, like
everyone else.

Last June, I was sitting in a plane boarding passengers from Delhi to
Mumbai. Union minister for agriculture Sharad Pawar came on board
carrying his hand-bag which he himself put into the overhead locker and
then sat down waiting for other passengers to board. This was unusual;
because in India it is customary for VIPs to be escorted into the plane
at the very last minute with airline staff carrying their bags for them.
The airline coach into which the passengers disembarked in Mumbai got
held up on the tarmac due to 'VIP' movements in the airport. Soon a jeep
with red light flashing came to take Mr. Pawar off the coach to the
terminal. He refused, saying that everyone on the coach was in a hurry.
Very soon, an alternative route was cleared and all the coaches that had
been stranded reached the terminal.

Running to check in at the Mumbai airport a few weeks back, I turned and
found Ratan Tata behind me, pulling along his carry-on. The airline
staff also saw him and rushed to grab his bag and offered to get him a
boarding pass. He would have none of it. He was in queue behind me and
the others, he said. This is rare in India, where some 'important'
businessmen only show up at the last minute, their staff having already
checked their bags and obtained their boarding passes for them.

The Swedes are disciplined and have the best run public services in the
world which work for all, rich and poor. A fundamental problem affecting
the quality of public services in India, whether they are provided by
the public or private sectors, is indiscipline amongst both providers
and users. We must change our basic Indian culture of indiscipline,
people say.

There are two requirements to change cultures. The first is to begin
with simple things that affect everybody and the results of which can be
made visible very soon, like house-keeping as the first step to create a
culture of high quality. The second requirement is to begin at the top,
with the people who should lead and show the way. For example, the CEO
should stoop to pick up the trash paper on the shop floor rather than
asking his aide to do it. HOWEVER, it is not easy for people at the top
to forego their privileges.

In the 1970s, when some executives determined to create a new culture in
Telco's new factories in Pune that would be more egalitarian and less
status oriented than the culture in any other Indian factory at the time
(including factories of MNCs), they proposed eliminating separate
canteens for managers and asking managers to queue with workers in the
same canteens; also that the security staff would stop managers' cars in
their sample checks of vehicles at the factory exits. Some managers
resisted the changes with two arguments. One was that symbols of
difference are necessary to strengthen the authority of people in charge
which is the age-old argument for providing the King with a crown and
dazzling clothes to improve the authority of the King's government! The
other argument was that senior managers' time is more precious than time
of workers and hence they should not have to wait in queues in the
canteen or at the security gates. This same argument would justify CEOs
and ministers arriving at the last minute to board planes with their
bags having been checked in before hand.

But imagine the embarrassment of a senior Tata executive who
self-importantly rushed onto a plane in Mumbai that had been held up a
few minutes to wait for him. The first person he saw sitting amongst the
fuming passengers was none other than J R D Tata! JRD had checked in
punctually with the other passengers with no pretensions about the
greater importance of his time.

Another reason why top people must use the same facilities as the masses
is to know what the real state of affairs is. Sumant Moolgaokar,
chairman of Telco, would occasionally stop on his tours of the Pune
factories to use the workers' toilets. And if they were not clean, God
help the resident director! So the resident director got into the habit
of using the toilets himself, just to be sure.

Some years ago, the India Brand Equity Foundation, presenting foreign
investors' impressions to Indian CEOs and government officials, pointed
out the delays visitors faced in the immigration and customs' queues at
our airports. Some Indian CEOs were surprised. They did not know how bad
it felt because they were whisked through by special escorts!
Fortunately, this was looked into and now, I am glad to say one can
clear out of our airports even faster than in America and Europe, even
though the infrastructure in our airports is poorer.

Culture is not about hardware: it is about software the attitudes and
behavior of people. Money is not required to change culture:  
leadership is.



ooroo

If you don't hear the knock of opportunity - build a door.

Anon.