Change Management At Grand Scale

Sher Shah Suri, the 16th Century King who redefined Change Management, Good Governance with speedy and agile delivery

Major Takeaways

1. Sher Shah Suri embodied the spirit of Agility, and he should be studied by all those who want to see how an Agile mindset works in the non-technical and non-IT environment. His life and achievements show that agility is not some methodology that was born only a few years ago in the IT domain. It was there all along though we may have called it energetic or vigorous approach to leadership and management.
2. He administrative approach is remarkable in the context that he was delivering extremely good governance while still expanding his empires militarily. Modern states and militaries, who are nowadays leaving behind a huge mess behind their armed initiatives should learn a thing or two from this giant. He is all the most relevant in this regard because he operated within the close proximity of Afghanistan where two superpowers in the recent past have left with bloody nose without much to show for the loss of lives.
3. His administrative reforms are so remarkable and effective that many of them are still in place in slightly modified forms almost after five centuries. The reason is that he embodied what modern management thinker term as Design Thinking where the center of the universe is the customer and his gains/welfare.
4. With his grand strategy and his decisive and agile implementation, we can call him the grandmaster of strategy and execution.

In line with the ethos of Straxecution.com, where Strategy and Execution go hand in hand, today we shall pay homage to a giant who excelled at both and delivered results that are envy to the leaders even today for their sheer scope and scale.

He dethroned the incumbent inexperienced Mughal emperor and started his rule in 1540 and ruled his northern Indian empire only for five years when an accidental gunpowder explosion killed him in 1545. 

During his rule of five years, he was in a constant mode of conquests and conquered Punjab, Sindh, Malwa, Rajputana states and fought off Baloch, Afghan, and Khokhars. But it is not his feats on the battleground where he outwitted his opponents by an open playbook where everything was fair but it is his legacy outside the battlefield that still stands and inspires.

He was born as Farid Khan in Bihar that is now part of modern India and was third-generation Pathan and is known as Sher Shah Suri. In his brief reign, he accomplished the following:

1. Organization of empire in 47 sarkars further subdivided into small units all the way coming down to the level of the village.
2. Appointment of Ministers to assist him in the center and each function was further represented down the line in administrative units.
3. He rationalized taxes and simplified the collection of trade taxes and collected them at only two levels, which are at the import level and at the sales level.
4. Land reforms and agriculture tax regime rationalization. He measured the land, categorized it according to productivity and taxed it accordingly. The system implemented by him is still used in modified form in Indian Sub-continent.
5. Connecting parts of empire via a road system. At its heart was (is) the road that connected the suburbs of modern Dhaka in Bangladesh to the Attock on the left bank of river Indus in modern Pakistan. Other roads built by him were from Lahore to Multan in current Pakistan, Agra to Brhanpur in Deccan and Agra to Jodhpur with branches going to Chittor.
6. Construction of rest houses for travelers on these roads, and appointment of staff to take care of them and assist travelers.
7. Introduction of postal system leveraging the road network and rest houses he built and it was so efficient that the news of any local rebellion would reach him in the capital before it spreads locally.
8. Reintroducing the concept of standing army earlier introduced by the Khiljis instead of relying on men of feudal lords whose loyalty can easily swing with changed circumstances. His soldiers now knew where the salary is coming from and where their loyalties should lie.
9. He re-introduced branding of horses and recording of the appearance of soldiers (Dagh & Chahra system) so that only those are paid who are on the record. This practice rooted out ghost soldiers/employees practice that is something many places in Pakistan are still fighting against.
10. He made the local chieftains of the localities responsible for the law and order situation in their areas against compensation and severe accountability. This combination of authority and responsibility system was so effective that the law and order situation improved to almost no crime.
11. He issued the new currency in place of myriad of old ones, and named it Rupiah, which is still the of currency of Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Mauritius, Seychelles, Maldives and former currency of Afghanistan, Tibet, Burma, British East Africa, German East Africa, the Trucial States, and Arab states of Persian Gulf.

Let us sift through these reforms and see if we can find some pattern. All his reforms can be categorized under following one or more labels, and very interestingly these are very much within the management themes that any modern leader will immediately identify with.

1. Hierarchical: The bureaucratic system
2. Cross-functional: Each subunit of empire is governed by the combinational of executive, military, police, and judiciary branch all empowered locally and accountable. 
3. Transparent & fair: Land reforms; fair tax assessment; rationalization of trade taxes and rooting out of corruption by swift justice and reforms like branding practice of army horses
4. Enabling infrastructure movement of goods and people: Roads, law & order reforms, postal service
5. Putting the military at a professional standard and delinking the chieftains from soldiers by making the state paymaster of soldiery so that the chieftains are not tempted to usurp the state’s power
6. The entrepreneurial network consisting of Sher Shah himself along with his ministers

Strategy Of Sher Shah

If we look into his conquests and reforms and dare to articulate the strategy behind the Sher Shah’s endeavors, we can perhaps say that his strategy was to “acquire land through conquests, stabilize them through empowered and accountable hierarchical structure put in place through his reforms; and increase prosperity of empire by enabling trade towards achieving the higher standard of welfare for people living in his empire.”

Nowadays, age of empire-building through conquests are gone but the rest of the strategic approach can be adopted by any state and reap highest possible rewards of prosperity and welfare of its people. To further solidify our understanding the grand achievements of Sher Shah Suri, let us ask few questions to put in the nomenclature of modern management thinking. 

Sher Shah As Agile King

Is there any other way to describe it? Keeping in view the area he conquered and reforms he introduced and implemented, we can say that he was highly agile and versatile. Consider if a ship captain has to build the ship while sailing it too, and yet he ends up finishing it before those who are in the dockyard and still struggling with progress – this is what he did. Any proponents of modern agile methodology can learn a few things from this 16th Century King.

For those who get stuck in the muddy waters of thinking as to how to translate the scrums and kanbans into non-IT project management avenues, here is the masterpiece of agile execution, and the lesson is that agile is not about some methodology but is about the mindset and spirit of execution.

Sher Shah’s Change Management Approach

 Prof. John P. Kotter in his book “XLR8” and Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huiling in their book, “The 4rth Discipline of Execution” argue that the day to day or settled side of the business should be handled by well defined, rule-based structure but that will get you only so far. For change management or to achieve big goals, there has to be a complementary set up within the organization that is entrepreneurial in its approach. When these two systems complement each other, the achievements are always grand in scale. 

As we saw above while classifying the reforms, which were either hierarchical in nature or populating the hierarchical structure, he along with his ministers was the complimentary structure that was at the heart of change management and spearheading the empire. Whatever they conquered, they stabilized by establishing the governance structure.

Lessons for today’s CEOs and leaders is that while embarking on change management, or transformation, they should take care of both sides of the business if the change they want is sustainable and long term. 

Normally in businesses, it is the inertia of the existing structures that hampers the bold movers to spearhead forward. But in the rare cases, if the case is opposite then the consequences are even direr. Militaries of the world are quite guilty of such kind of mistakes. US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq without the subsequent plan of stabilization is something that, if taken care could have resulted in huge saving of lives and avoidance of misery. 

So dear Generals of Pentagon and other militaries, please read about this great man, and learn not to mess up the whole nations.  

Design Thinking At Its Best

No one can route out the personal ambition of grandeur that drove this king on the path of greatness that he chose for himself. But people with such ambitions can be found in every century or even in every decade but what made him great was his drive behind his reforms, and that is what that gave him right insights to institute right reforms.

As design thinkers of today say that the path to great product starts with the empathy of the end-user, so did this lion king had the best of his people in his heart. When he was appointed by his father to administer his estate, he wrote to his father, “Justice alone is the mainstay of Government and source of prosperity to the governed.”

Such empathy was also the reason that made him build a network of roads so that the trade activities can be facilitated. The same sentiment was also behind rationalization of the tax system that burdened the poor in its previous form and made it transparent by documenting the ownership that the corrupt practices of the tax collectors are curbed. 

Conclusion 

The reforms that he instituted, and the road and communication network that he built was something that Mughals built on and India became a country that produced almost quarter of the world’s GDP, and this was this prosperity that attracted the European colonists, though Portuguese were already had ventured in India as traders. When British subsequently conquered Bengal (and whole of India afterward), it was perhaps the most prosperous province of the whole of Asia and when they left, people were dying of famine in millions. It is said that the Industrial Revolution had its origin in the money that was looted from Bengal.

So can we say that this King had an indirect hand in the industrialization and prosperity of the west? I’ll leave the answer for the readers of a political bent to think about it and comment.

While those who want to learn about the change management or transformation, do read up on this great man. He might teach you a thing or two that not even the best business schools can teach.