Align, Simplify, Contain and Push – You will always win.

Frequently, I have come across several success stories, and the way the success was achieved by different companies. We come across failure stories more often than the success stories.It is interesting to note that numerous companies which followed similar techniques have different experiences with the success rates. A few companies got success and others failed despite using the same techniques. Let us take for example, the success of GE under the leadership of Jack Welch- Of course his charismatic leadership was the most important factor for success. They made use of six-sigma as one of the tool for driving change in the organization. I have been associated with another company (name not important) where six-sigma was used as a tool to drive improvement. The result was not even closer to what GE accomplished. The question arises; what are the factors, which create such an amazing difference?

I would like to share my experiences on this subject. Following are my observations:

1. Leadership: Our famous Election commissioner, T N Seshan mentioned that the bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle. Leadership is the most important factor. You need Passion, focus and drive to make things happen.

2. Alignment: The second important factor is aligning the initiatives. A clear goal, properly cascaded down the line with ample clarity (purpose) of the initiative is an absolute necessity. In the absence of alignment, there is hardly any progress. Employees put a lot of efforts and there are burnouts. Eventually, Results evade you.


3. Simplicity: Keeping the initiatives simple is a great power. Ram Charit manas (written in simple Hindi) became a huge success compared to Valmiki Ramayana (written in Sanskrit). The single important reason was simplicity. It is very clear from the acceptance and popularity of this literature in masses.

4. Containment: Containing the number of initiatives is of paramount importance. The number should be ideally three, certainly not more than five in any organization. Whenever, you come across increasing number of initiatives; use align and simplify to contain the numbers.


5. Push: A push from leadership, seriousness in implementation is the Execution Mantra of the initiative. One needs to talk about the initiative each time you see your reports. You need to take appropriate feedback and be willing to tweak the initiative.

Whenever I have looked at these factors, the winners and losers have stood out clearly. Therefore, before getting and implementing any big idea think of “Align, Simplify, Contain and Push”- you will win.