Continious learning approach.

I was having a discussion this morning on Gtalk with Baba (my father-in-law). He told me he was reading about ‘Kaizen’. I told him, I had studied about ‘Kaizen’ during my Masters here. ‘Kaizen’ is the Japanese style of management; it very much became a part in the Japanese management system after the Second World War. At the very jist of it, it means ‘continuous improvement’.

He asked me, if Kaizen was being implemented here. Well not so much I replied. Not in a way that they say we are going to apply ‘Kaizen’ but I guess it is inherent here. I can’t generalize, but people do believe in ‘team work’ and are open for suggestions.

In one of my conversations with my colleague at Marks and Spencer, she asked me, how different is the work approach in Pakistan from here? I told her well, there are many a things that are different. Just to name a few, for example, I call you by your first name. If I was in Pakistan, I would have added a Baji (elder sister) with your name. I recalled an earlier incident, that it was difficult for me to call my Manager, who was around 55 or 60 by his first name. I said to her if I was in Pakistan I might have been calling him ‘Sir’.

I said: “We have this habit to link and to form a connection with our work colleagues. It has both positive and negative points. Sometimes, you can’t tell them, that they are not performing well on their task. In such a system, there are also occasions where, ‘seniority’ is considered more than ‘capability’”

Another thing that I have noticed is that back home, if you do something wrong you will be told directly ‘you shouldn’t do it this way’ or ‘this is wrong! It shouldn’t be done this way and this is the way to do it”. Whereas, here if you (my colleague) were to tell me something which I was doing wrong, you would say ‘well I always like to do it this way’ or if I would have asked for help, you would always say ‘I would prefer doing it this way’. I really appreciate this approach. In a way, you are not undermining the person’s capability to do the task, not telling the person directly they are doing something wrong and only ‘you’ know the correct way of doing it. But this manner emphasizes that there might be a better way to do the task, which they might not know. So, rather than dejecting their approach towards work, you tell them, the way you prefer to do it. To adopt or not to adopt thus lies with the person.

You might have noticed, that I am always drawing comparisons between Pakistan and the U.K. Rather I guess the management style is the different not just between Pakistan and the U.K but between east and the west or I guess across countries, even between firms. There might be similarities as well some of the Chinese firms, might work like the Pakistani ones and the American firms might follow the U.K style or vice versa.

But I do agree with one thing, that a continuous learning approach is a must. The day we say, 'we know the best' that's a dead end. Management style should always be flexible, open for suggestions and a two-way communication system is a key for a firm to progress. Also if we would all, think about improving ourselves and stop pointing out faults in others, and have competitions with ourselves, then we as individuals will progress towards success and then our firm will be successful, because of our collective efforts.