Jugaad @ Work

Indian Corporate Culture Insights: #5 Indian Ingenuity

We corporate Indians are proud to own jugaad. It is widely accepted and respected in the global business world as a source of low cost innovation. A magic mantra for profitability as it is expected to quickly produce high value ideas. It sounds good, but this is not actually representative of what jugaad is or where it comes from. 

The word belongs to the rural north of India, referring to improvised vehicles made of random spare parts and materials cobbled together to work somehow. These are neither deliberate innovations nor the inventions of geniuses, but the desperate creations of people who have an urgent need but lack the resources to fulfil it. Our instinct for the ingenuity that has produced jugaad has developed amidst the background of colonial rule, poor governance, inadequate infrastructure and a paralysing bureaucracy which works better against us than for us. In practice, jugaad is a quick, immediate fix that buys time till a more permanent solution can be found.

In Indian business, however, there is an increasing emphasis on the short-term. Salary variables are linked to short-term results, people stay in one job for shorter durations and innovation cycle times are decreasing across industries. No wonder, jugaad is currently projected as the smart solution rather than only a temporary fix. We seem to be ok putting a bandaid on a bleeding wound rather than seeking medical help to cure it permanently.

In my previous articles, I have mentioned the intense pressure and competition in the Indian corporate environment, the prevalence of conscious and unconscious biases as well as the critical importance of the hierarchy. This creates an atmosphere of distance and distrust at work, which makes it quite difficult for us to own up to any weaknesses or ask for help. Jugaad or quick-fix thinking comes to our rescue in a very personal sense, when we feel we have no other recourse. 

One of the toughest challenges in our hierarchy-driven culture is saying no to a boss or senior colleague. Mohit[1], a twenty-something in his first job with a travel start-up, has learnt this fairly early. He says, “There was lot of work load on weekends, the other people on my team started saying, we are out and so you do this work. They were loading the work on me. Eventually I started doing this also, I said I am not home, I am not carrying my laptop. There is a network issue, so you do your work. This is how I have to deal.”

Saloni[2], Growth Manager of an Indian start-up in Delhi, shares her experience of how she learnt to manage her work. Initially, pressure to show she was working hard was difficult and overwhelming. When she looked for guidance, a busy senior told her to “handle it however you want to handle it.” “As I was getting to know my accounts,” she says, “I slowly realised that you don’t have to be after everybody all the time. Whoever is telling you, we should help them, if they are not telling it means obviously either he is not doing work or he is working well. There are always other reminders, like automated mails or if they are getting some problem issues, then their mails will be coming. So checking their mails and only then calling or mailing them has reduced my work.”

HR expert, RR Nair[3], says, “Research has shown that there are four dominant learning styles. An individual can have a mix of two or more but it is not common for one person to be equally comfortable with all four. The first is the Activist style, where people learn by doing, the second the Pragmatic style which is about being instinctive and quick, the third is the Theoretic style, where people respond to data, concepts and frameworks and the last is the Reflective style, which is introspective and very time-intensive.” The Pragmatic style is most often required at work, where decisions and actions need some drive and urgency, and this is also where the jugaad instinct fits.

Shyam[4], a general manager with a large consulting company in Bangalore, seems to have it all when we meet at his new apartment in a luxury housing project on the outskirts of the city. He is a corporate success, has a great lifestyle and a well-earned sense of balance, supported by his wife and mother. He shares many lessons as he reflects on his career journey but one stands out for the passion with which he talks about it, “We need to encourage smart working not hard working. Hard working is for show but it is not productive.”

Despite his obvious success, Shyam is cynical about the corporate world. His one experience of being laid off, much earlier in his career, is probably responsible. His conviction is that only performance matters and it must be priority so you can either move up in the organisation or move on. In his opinion, staying put is not an option and shows a marked lack of resourcefulness.

The Quantum research report identifies an emerging need for smart work as more aligned with the corporate requirement of efficiency. It faces resistance in our culture because it is often set up as an alternative to hard work, which is a deeply ingrained code. Smart working is more accepted and, in fact, expected at senior management levels, where the decision-making and delegation powers lie, but at the lower levels there is more demand for diligence as bosses view it as a direct impact of their leadership. In this sense, smart work seems to be closely connected to jugaad, as a fix that works quickly but is not usually officially sanctioned.

Hard work is perceived as required for the benefit of the organisation but smart work is perceived to be for the benefit of oneself, to progress in the corporate world and as a protection against the stresses of overwork and office politics. We want to do it but it’s difficult to own up to it. There seems to be an underlying fear of work being completed too quickly or easily. Perhaps, it makes us look redundant or we feel it will lead to work overload or we fear coming across as sly and/or lazy.

When I joined the corporate world as a management trainee, I was part of a formal induction on the standard operating procedures of the advertising business. It seemed simple enough but when I started my actual work, I was confused. Every time I tried to follow procedure, I was laughed at. Neither the clients nor the production teams expected to adhere to the formal timelines, with each of their expectations at opposite ends of the spectrum. I felt like I was stuck in the hated childhood game of ‘donkey in the middle’, being bombarded from all sides. I studied the behaviour of my peers and seniors to learn that the actual ways of working were very different from the ones I had been taught. The production network was, quite often, just a piece of paper to keep the client feeling in control. The actual timelines varied with how skilled the project lead was at pleading with or bullying the production studio. There would be several rounds of delays, with the blame being spread around to avoid sticking to the project lead. When finally, the project was delivered, all would be forgotten and the next round would begin.

Why would we have processes that don’t work in practice? Sometimes the answer is glaring, like for some multinational companies where they want to set global standards without considering local conditions. Sometimes the answer is less obvious, such as a few Indian companies where no one wants to question or debate the boss’ understanding. Start-ups have a very high success rate in the first few years when they are led by young founders who learn by doing themselves and continue to stay close to the teams that do the work. These businesses often start to flounder when they are scaled up with speed, when additional funding comes with the pressure to professionalise and standardise their processes. Jugaad becomes necessary when employees don’t feel empowered or supported in doing their work and yet, feel the constant pressure to perform.

“Jugaad or ‘hustle’ has become a positive trait to be demonstrated in current times,” says Minaxi Indra, business leader and President, UpGrad Enterprise, “In my experience it seems to be a glorified substitute for a lack of planning. As a business, while 100% certainty isn’t possible, it can definitely be managed by process adherence and business planning. Escalations have unfortunately become a faster way to achieve the outcome rather than a last resort for help by the aggrieved team/party. In one of my previous sales roles, colleagues seen as hustlers were appreciated. They over-committed deliverables to customers and increased their deal sizes. This led to internal servicing teams being pushed against the wall to compensate for this over-commitment by either stretching, becoming “jugaado” themselves or raising exceptional approvals to deliver on the promised outcomes. Many a times jugaad is seen as a worthy synonym for being innovative while in reality it’s anything but this.”

Escalations, in theory, are supposed to be exceptions. Clients or colleagues are meant to appeal to our higher-ups to turn up the pressure in case of gross incompetence or negligence. In practice, escalations are now so common and expected that they are part of the process. We appear to believe that things cannot happen without due pressure and escalation. Many stressed and stretched workers actually wait for the escalation to make the task a priority.

Ritu[5], Senior Manager at a global technology company, says, “In one instance, the Global Finance Team took a harsh stance against a demand of some of the partners to relax the company’s credit terms. They did not want to give in and allow this to become the norm of their partner deals. This was, in part, also a test to check how many of the partners would accept this stance and how many would escalate their demands to the senior management. All the other countries accepted the stance, but partners in India continued to escalate it to the highest levels, so the terms were relaxed but only for India.”

I conducted a poll[6] on LinkedIn last week to check the use of jugaad in Indian corporate culture basis personal experience. It’s interesting to note the pattern of the results, which forms a bell curve, like a normal distribution. If we had a much larger set of corresponding data, it would suggest that what we like to think of as a behavioural outlier or exception might actually be the norm.

“When there is too much work pressure and politics, you have to be diplomatic. To know what to say or not to say – this is neither honest nor dishonest,” says Rahul[7], a team leader at a technology firm in Delhi. “You have to be adaptable and change yourself to be able to work in the corporate world. I feel I got my first promotion because I changed my work ethic and mentality and I was also good with the office politics.”

Indians have a flair for the dramatic. In our heads, we are the heroes of our very own Bollywood movies, which teach us that brute strength or honest intelligence, can only take us so far. Victory requires a little more, something ‘hatke’ (different). The Mahabharata is littered with micro stories of rules being bent, avoided and even broken for the sake of a win. Reframing a moral or ethical breach as ‘jugaad’ makes it more palatable to the conscience.

Kabir[8], who works in sales for an up and coming travel start-up in Bangalore, says, “I’m a Muslim, I don’t drink. So, I don’t go to bars, not even to meet up with potential clients. But, you know, my competitors would convince them to go to a bar, do whatever possible, give them whatever needed but see to it that their deal has happened. In fact for competition, people have sent the wrong people to our property and we’ve sent the worst people to their property.”

Psychotherapist, Kalyani Capoor[9] says, “A brain that’s wired for threat perception, a work environment that’s driven by pressure and a cultural conditioning that fosters competition often leaves little, if any room for ethics. Neurologically speaking, this triad acts as a perfect trigger for the emergency response of flight, flee or freeze. The more evolved cortical centres of the brain are then hijacked and it’s these cortical centres that regulate our moral judgement and ethical decisions.”

This is a reason why compliance is so difficult in India. We have one of the worst ratings on the ease of doing business. Layer that reality with processes and policies that are often designed for a theoretical fantasy. Add a few more layers for our competitive ambition, our eagerness to please the boss and a belief that we can only rely on our own ingenuity.

Business consultant, Ashok Capoor[10] says, “The bureaucracy and unpredictability of the Indian business environment makes compliance with global norms of doing business quite difficult. Business leaders need to set down clear guidelines that are sensitised to local business conditions and empower employees to adhere to them. If there is too much focus on short-term business deliverables alone, then compliance may likely suffer.”

Jugaad is not a skill. It is a compulsion. We have a historical preference to be subversive rather than petition unsympathetic authorities or submit to systems we don’t trust. We have developed jugaad rather than patience, driven by intense pressure, competitiveness and short-term thinking. Imagine the possibilities if the same ingenuity that drives jugaad was instead empowered to create real, long lasting solutions that aligned purpose, people and profit for our businesses.

If this is a conversation that interests you, please share your views in the comments section.

#thecompanywekeep #indiancorporateculture #corporateculture #insights #learning #culturalinsights #penguinrandomhouse #learning #corporates #culturalintelligence #career #corporatecareers #pressure #stress #jugaad, #ingenuity, #inventiveness, #compliance

The previous articles in this series:

·     A Crisis of Opportunity (Introduction at https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/crisis-opportunity-divya-khanna/)

·     We Are What We Eat (Setting the Context at https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/we-what-eat-divya-khanna/?published=t)

·     Our Corporate Caste System (#1 Hierarchy Rules at https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/our-corporate-caste-system-divya-khanna)

·     Working in a Pressure Cooker (#2 Intense Pressure at https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/working-pressure-cooker-divya-khanna/?published=t) 

·     Comparing Night & Day (#3 Gender Guides at https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/comparing-night-day-divya-khanna/?published=t&trackingId=MejssV3d%2F4vfZspx8lx0Eg%3D%3D)

·     The Personal & The Political (#4 Competition Surrounds at https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/personal-political-divya-khanna/)

[1] Respondent name and minor details changed to protect identity

[2] Respondent name and minor details changed to protect identity

[3] Leadership consultant and former Director-HR of Unilever group companies

[4] Respondent name and minor details changed to protect identity

[5] Respondent name and minor details changed to protect identity

[6] https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/profiledivyakhanna_insights-culturalintelligence-learning-activity-6723884050609786880-lWUp

[7] Respondent name and minor details changed to protect identity

[8] Respondent name and minor details changed to protect identity

[9] Practicing psychotherapist for over 20 years, who also conducts mental health workshops for corporate setups

[10] Business consultant and former MD of Diageo-USL