EXPERIENCE EMPATHY: It starts from home and a must for any business

This article was written and published by me in 2009 for Silicon India which I am republishing the edited version after reading about Hyatt Hotels’ CEO, Mark Hoplamazian

In the recent past, I was scanning through the blogs on hospitality. In its course, I stumbled upon a statement “Empathy is in. Perfection is out.”

In the article-The Secret Ingredient Behind Hyatt Hotels’ Success, it says” Hyatt Hotels’ CEO is tossing out the rule book and bringing a fresh approach to running his hotel chain. Empathy is in. Perfection is out”. Courtesy: https://fortune.com/video/2016/05/20/the-secret-ingredient-behind-hyatt-hotels-success/

36 years ago, during my induction training in AVERY INDIA, my boss gave me the advice to succeed. Those days, selling weighing machines were considered as the toughest sales job. My boss told me, “Try to become friendly with top management and love people at the bottom line.” In my successful sales life as well as quality trainer and auditor, I religiously follow and keep getting rewarded with less effort. In the process, I have time in the world to meet all my obligations and commitment. My experience can be coined in word EMPATHY. Whilst top management invites me to know about weighing machines, it is the people in the bottom-line expedite the process of getting my orders as well as giving feedback on competitor activities. In the retail market visiting tea shops and friendly communications with people visiting there was my assured source of orders for retail weighing machines. They helped me in holding the requirement for weighing machines until such time I visit them. Security staff was another segment I always keep in touch. They could help me in many ways, in terms of giving the right information and easy entry to the management office.

Empathy, relationship, humane, trustworthiness, sticking to your words is the attitudes one shall possess to become successful. It supersedes your qualification and technical expertise. Otherwise, how can a driver or an assistant who has the confidence of the boss become so powerful in an organisation?

EXPERIENCE EMPATHY

“The external world of objects remaining the same; the experiences provided by individuals are different.”

Empathy means “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”.

This principle is applicable while managing an organization as well. Before deciding on efficient and effective design and implementation of a management system one has to understand step by step, experiences of different individuals or entities on the same the external world of focused objects.

Let’s start with an individual looked upon differently by others.

And the different experience of the different individual at a given uniform controlled condition.

As Hoplamazian explains, “If you think you’re a business about serving people and interacting with people—whether that’s interacting with your colleagues or your guests or your people in the community—being able to connect with people and being able to get into the essence of what their emotional experience is all about is essential to be being successful.”

 For example, a happy family while sitting together on one Sunday lunch, what could be the experience of each of those individuals? It varies… is it not?

The ‘experience’ is certainly not the same in all the minds in that happy family!’

If the experiences are different while the objects remain the same, what is the cause for this variety?

Can we have a uniform experience?

The same object can give da different experience to the same mind on different occasions, in different places or a changed set-up. But the one common factor in all the experiences is that we must have our minds reacting with world-of-objects.

Let us understand this concept some deeper starting with experience with an individual interacting with people.

 Experience with an individual: you are an individual who is playing a character role in your life drama facing the world as it is; realising all about your strength and limitation and manoeuvre situation to accomplish your needs and wants! Just have a look at 31 instances listed down about your characterization…

1.    Friend: What is your experience with your friend?

2.    Mother: What is your experience with your mother?

3.    Father: What is your experience with your father?

4.    Teacher: Father: What is your experience with your teacher?

5.    God & religion: God & religion?

6.    Son: What is your experience with your son?

7.    Daughter: What is your experience with your daughter?

8.    Political leader: What is your experience with your politics?

9.    Employer: What is your experience with your employer?

10.                       Employee: What is your experience with your employee?

11.                       Servant: What is your experience with your servant?

12.                       Driver: What is your experience with your driver?

13.                       Contracted employee (such as a plumber, electrician, and computer technician; on urgent demand): What is your experience with your technician on urgency?

14.                       Similarly, what is your experience with:

15.                       A person who promised to lend you some money

16.                       A person to whom you have to pay money

17.                       Doctor

18.                       Government employee from you needs something to be done

19.                       Police

20.                       Enforcement officer

21.                       Thief

22.                       Celebrity

23.                       Film star

24.                       Woman

25.                       Colleague

26.                       Business relationship

27.                       Customer

28.                       Social organizations

29.                       Government

30.                       Salesperson

31.                       Bank manager; so on and so forth.

Give thought to each situation and see for yourself how your mind works differently on an individual or different individuals even though the object is the same called a normal human being the same as you are.

In the same way, we find that the world-of-objects remain, function and play or act upon according to a Law over which we have no control. But the object must come in contact with our mind to produce a reaction, which alone is the seed of our experience.

For example, an unknown individual in a police uniform can stop you anywhere following traffic Law. If we don’t realize the fact that the policeman is also is a human being is subjected to such an action is based on a Law, our mind get agitated. Once we realize the reality our mind will not react to a policeman’s action.

So then, if we can control, train and culture our minds in such a way that they can only react positively with all sets of objects and under all sets of circumstances, our reactions would all be positive. Happiness and peace are his who has thus trained his mind to react positively to the world outside.

How does this apply in a quality management system?

In an organizational set-up, we cannot afford to have variety in experiences. To have an objective-driven organization, it has to have a quality framework like a ‘quality policy’ within which each of the people working shall understand the regulations and goal and perform within the given framework.

 Quality management system recognizes these experiences and advocate for managing the organization through planned processes and systems managing variety in individual experiences, and variety in customer perceptions or variety in stake holder’s perception.

Clause number 0.1 of ISO 9001:2015 states that

“The adoption of a quality management system should be a strategic decision of the organization. The design and implementation of an organization’s quality management system are influenced by varying needs, particular objectives, the product provided, the processes employed and the size and structure of the organization. It is not the intent of this international standard to imply uniformity in the structure of the quality management system or uniformity of documentation”.

Such that, to manage an organization efficiently and effectively needs designing and implementing a quality framework within which commitment, the delegation of authority and responsibility with adequate infrastructure and information system is documented. It considers all its strengths, weakness, opportunity and threats, (SWOT), statutory rules and regulations, organizational requirements, customer perspectives, so on and so forth.