Ved Krishna on self-management in an Indian paper factory

Lisa: Ved, I’m really excited to have you on the Leadermorphosis podcast. Thank you for being here.

Ved: Thank you for having me.

Lisa: I thought we could start with the Yash Papers story because it’s such a beautiful story, and particularly the event that happened more than 20 years ago now that really catalyzed a complete shift in how the company was organized. So tell us, tell us about how Yash began and how it’s evolved.

Ved: We started as a very small company, just some way for my father and my mother to find something to do in life and to make sure they make their ends meet. So it was really a small company, and they kept growing the company. It was structured in a traditional hierarchical system sort of way where there were line supervisors and managers and a typical hierarchy setup. That’s what my father knew, that’s how companies were managed.

However, we had this big incident which you mentioned in our township. It was a Hindu-Muslim clash which led to a mosque being demolished, which led to complete curfew. The factory was about 12 kilometers away from town. All the so-called officers were based in town. It also meant that I’m talking about the times before mobile phones came about, and there was no internet, and our phone lines actually typically didn’t work, and rioters may have brought down the phone systems. So there was no way to connect to the factory.

So it was curfew for a month, and the assumption was that of course, you know, they would have to shut down the factory because you need the material, you need sales, you need fuel for the boilers. But since we couldn’t do much about it, the idea was okay, we would go back and do what we can to salvage.

So when the team actually came back, they realized that it had record production. That was startlingly surprising because the workers self-organized to get raw material on credit. That made the team realize, or mostly my father realize, that there was no reason to have this hierarchy. And that’s where our experimentation with self-management began.

My father found a person who was talking about that around then, and he had read “Maverick” by Ricardo Semler. So that happened around the same time, we’re talking about ‘92, ‘92-‘93, and all these things came about to take us in the direction of self-management.

Lisa: And what’s been your journey? Because you inherited the business from your father after he passed away, and I understand that you’ve been on a kind of journey of your own, finding like where is your place and is this the right place for you, and what’s the purpose of the business and how should it evolve. So can you tell us a bit about that?

Ved: So I joined because I just wanted to do whatever he wanted to do, which was to travel around the world. What I realized was that I wanted my father to be able to become free, and I thought if I came back - and I was studying in England then - if I came back and took over or started to manage the show, then he would be able to do whatever he wanted, which is what more or less happened.

Except the business tested me in all sorts of ways, and I kept feeling that this wasn’t my thing. So my wife asked me the question, “What would you do if you could do anything and there was nothing hampering you?” And each time, it would be something to do with nature or with better living.

Around the same time, I met one of my mentors who taught me a few things and said that everything happens for a reason, everything is part of a journey. And he said, “Whatever you came to now, there is no way for you to wish it away. You have to be able to build on top of that rather than trying to find a Shangri-La up in the Himalayas and meditating for a couple of years.” And then he said, “You can try it, but it won’t, according to his experience, it won’t matter too much.”

So what I also realized was we were making a lot of packaging material, but we had no control over its usage, and typically it was used for things where we were making pulp-based packaging for different applications. So we decided to start working towards making packaging that is compostable. And that led to us focusing in two areas: one was finding replacements for flexible packaging, which is typically potato chip bags and multi-layer sort of plastic bags, and the other was styrofoam - both of which were non-recyclable or compostable and fundamentally had carcinogens as well.

So that was basically the journey. The company started focusing more towards meaning and purpose. It’s an amazing journey to move out of typical manufacturing. I also realized at the same time that operations wasn’t something that excited me, and that led to me taking the best decision of my life, which was to fire myself. That led to good things, and I can do things which I truly enjoy, and there are people who are better at operations and leading the operations, and they are driven by operations. So that happened over time, which is a blessing, Israel.

Lisa: I’m wondering if you could share with the listeners some of the things that make Yash unique in terms of how you organize, how decisions are made, because it’s quite a unique company, particularly in India I think, in terms of having these self-managing teams. So what are some of the things that are special about Yash?

Ved: So it’s been an interesting journey because typically the background being that it comes from an extremely hierarchical society. So everything in the society is around caste status in the social order. We literally hear each other’s surnames, and we can spot everybody by what is their status in life. The whole society is organized around this hierarchy, and it just goes on and on and on through school and through upbringing.

It brings its own competitiveness because it’s such a huge population vying for a small number of seats for everything. So that brings in another angle of competitiveness and again pushing the other person down.

So within that, we’ve had to have our struggles. The idea of reducing fear within the system and also reducing sycophancy, because fundamentally the way the system works is that kissing up to leaders’ role is to push down, to establish their own status is really important in society.

So that has been a very interesting journey because each time we get somebody new, it starts again. The person comes from that system, and it’s not just the leaders creating this. It also happens in the society that people are not used to taking decisions. Typically we come from joint family background. Literally even at the age of 40, 45, 50, if you’re not the head of the house, you’re not even deciding where your child is going to go to school. You’re not even deciding who you’re going to marry. You’re not deciding what you might work on. That still continues.

So it’s not just the leaders; it’s also the people who are working who don’t want to take decisions. Typically their default is to look towards someone else. So we’ve tried to over time put in teams and try and push down - push down is not the right word - pushed decisions onto a team and tried to work from there. So it succeeded in part, but it’s succeeded not ubiquitously. It succeeded in part, but it still remains an uphill struggle every day.

And especially since I take a back seat from the operations, it becomes a bigger struggle because again leadership doesn’t have the patience to work on top of that. But that said, we have to become an innovative organization, and if we are to actually tap into the genius of each person, we need to find a way which does not suppress creativity.

So yeah, so we keep working at it, but it’s always trying to fight out against all the possible social norms there are. So it becomes an interesting exercise.

Lisa: It sounds like it sounds like it takes a huge amount of willpower and patience and perseverance to keep holding the space for people to step into this decision-making authority and to give them the courage to go against the system that is so ingrained. And I’m wondering, where do you get that strength? Like, what’s motivating you? What’s driving you to keep persevering for that?

Ved: I don’t think I know any other way to live. So it’s sort of - I keep trying to not do this. I keep trying hard, and I’m told by like my finance partner that I have to step out, I have to be more of an investor, but it’s really difficult for me to watch that happen.

So just for an example, we were discussing an ESOP scheme yesterday, and as soon as you’re discussing a scheme like that, hierarchy creeps in. It’s literally like, “Oh, workers should be given this much and leadership this much.” They try and water down the tags that they put on people, but typically they would set up a three or four layer hierarchy.

And I have to try and see, you know, like how can we - because everything is an indicator. So every little step has to be aligned. Otherwise, you can’t have a hierarchy in one place and then say, “Oh no, titles are not hierarchical.” Such a thing is an indicator.

So we had a discussion yesterday, and I was just so uncomfortable. So this morning I sent a text to our CEO, and I said, “Okay, like this is - the two-sort-of-layer hierarchy is the maximum we should go to.” And of course, he hasn’t replied to that.

It’s just - I just feel that it’s not human to do it any other way. So we have to - each time I look around me, I see so much light and so much genius in each person, and I see the possibilities that we are losing. So I just think that it’s such a lost cause if you don’t push and try and build towards that.

Lisa: I had the pleasure of visiting you and meeting some of the people who work at Yash and the factory and everything in January. And I know that you’ve been working with my friend and colleague Susan Basterfield for a number of years. What has been the nature of that work? How did that come about, and what have you been learning from each other?

Ved: Susan is just such a gem. I think just being around is “Reinventing Organizations,” and I think it was just such a mesmerizing experience. It was literally like I vibrated through that book because I could feel the energy, and it was literally like every page was what we would have liked to be. And that’s where the connection started.

Of course, I mentioned that to a few people, and it’s been an uphill struggle against because they start putting logic into it. And as soon as you put logic, you know, things start falling through. So at that point, I just posted there, you know, would there be somebody in here? It was just wonderful to get connected, and the universe brings people together.

And I think it’s just so special because she’s such a learner. Just being around her is - she’s somebody who is constantly trying to soak up, and that’s beautiful again. So she’s been here a few times, and I think we’ve learned. Ideally, we would have had more structure to it, which we tried in the beginning, but then again, it becomes tougher to do. You don’t have that channelization. You don’t have people who can integrate them.

But I think we just let Susan visit, and you visit us because this is beautiful too. And Susan connected us to other people who spent time with us. We couldn’t get enough that you should have been here longer, but that’s just - it’s some vibration, and it creates some connection. And I hope that we can continue slowly acting out more in that direction.

Lisa: What are some of the practices or some of the things that you’ve developed at Yash? You mentioned a little bit about self-managing teams and trying to push decision-making down to kind of frontline team members. What are some of the things that you’ve put in place that are working really well and you’re proud of?

Ved: So we start every day with an assembly where everybody comes in, and this ecosystem is connected across an 80-acre campus. So those who are not there also listen, and every bit of data is shared. So it’s literally production data, downtime data, consumption data. So everybody knows what is happening.

We even have boards there which come from the ideas in “The Great Game of Business,” again another wonderful read. And there are boards there which even screen what was area-wise, what was the cost at the particular activity yesterday. And it just brings people to a forum where everybody stands as equals, and we try and discuss what is to happen that day. And that really brings people together. And of course, we use it as a forum where if we are to rejoice about something or concerned about some things, those are all the things that happen on that forum.

The other one is creating - and again, I just reiterate that this is in context of the society we come from, so it makes it a little more - and these small indicators are really important. So we also created a dining room where everybody washes their own plates. Now from a Western perspective, it may not be a big thing, but bringing everybody to a common key makes it interesting.

The third thing that comes to my mind is that we let go of typical designations, and everybody is a “head” in the company. They’re a head or a trainee. There are two designations, which means that you may be a cleaning head or a business head or machine head or something else, but that is your role. So we defang hierarchy. So there is no movement upwards, so to say, hierarchically, up a designation ladder. So of course, all the movement is more on the talent ladder as a designation.

That’s the next thing. The fourth would be that we meet on a daily basis in cross-functional teams, which are called ATM and swim teams, and people decide what they were to do in each of the areas.

The fifth thing that comes to my mind is that, again, coming from the perspective of everybody understanding how they are contributing, the machines literally have an electronic board which gives them data on whether they are functioning at the targeted contribution level, higher or lower. So what happens there is that each person on the machine is knowledgeable about where they are producing or how they are functioning.

So there are a multitude of ways. And of course, the self-managing teams themselves, which means on a regular basis, they decide what needs to be done. So those are the multitude of ways that we have tried to build towards a more egalitarian culture. But that said, there’s a huge amount of challenges as well.

Lisa: What are some of the challenges? You’ve mentioned a few of them. Does anything else come to mind in terms of what’s been really challenging in creating this different paradigm of working?

Ved: The main challenge is leadership styles and actually enabling leadership to understand how they would be benefited if they were to encourage people to become more self-managed. And that’s the greatest challenge because each time you hire, it cannot be policing. You cannot put ideas on how they’re leading. So there has to be a more gradual hand-holding, and that’s the greatest challenge: to not be able to do that.

And if you have your HR and your company leadership coming from a hierarchy, that’s their default. They very easily slip into that role. And the greatest challenge becomes to get away from blaming people. In the end, each person wants to do great work to work. So those would be some of the challenges.

Lisa: I hear from people often that, “Oh, you know, self-managing organizations, that sounds great if you’re in North America or Europe, but that wouldn’t work here in India or here in Nigeria or here in Myanmar.” You know, insert country of choice. What do you think about that? You know, as someone that you’ve mentioned some of the challenges of the culture where you are, for example, but do you think it’s possible to have self-managing organizations in any cultural context?

Ved: It’s definitely more challenging because I do travel, and I see different cultures. And of course, I do agree that where equality is more or less the norm, it could be easier.

But that said, it’s more needed here. So that’s the difference. So it may be easier because anyway, if I was to manage the way I am managed, I think that most of my people in the West would give their resignation in the first couple of months. So you have to push down naturally. Many times it’s “This is to be done, and there is no room for negotiation,” and people like that. So that would not work in a more egalitarian society.

That said, it’s basically more needed in a place like India. And then, I’ve not worked in Nigeria, I presume it may be similar, but if I look at India, it’s so needed because again, the basics of humanity remain the same. I think we all look for meaning in our lives. We all look for purpose. And we all look to be able to contribute at some level. And human kind talks about it.

So if humankind is based on these fundamentals, sense of being, then there is no reason why it should not happen. I do think it will be much more of an uphill struggle, and you need a lot of aligned people in order to really understand. And whether we have that kind of energy to be able to do it is the bigger question. But I personally don’t see any doubt that it can happen, no doubt definitely change the way humans look at work.

Lisa: I think that’s really beautiful what you say, and I love your phrase about everyone having genius and creating organizations where people can tap into their genius.

I also had the pleasure of visiting the Jingle Bell School, which your mother set up. So I feel like you’re, you know, this remarkable person with - it’s so clear to me that you have this inner, very authentic drive as part of who you are, that you want to create, you know, a wonderful workplace for people. And I wonder how much of that comes from your parents. And it’s so inspiring to see this school as well and to meet some of the students there and how engaged they are and how confident they are, and just a complete shift in mindset from the hierarchical kind of education system. And so there are sort of parallels I can see between Jingle Bell School, for example, and Yash and your philosophy. What are your thoughts about that?

Ved: Oh, absolutely. And both my parents are aberrations to the society where they’d be very different. And I think that that has definitely been moral as far as part of our DNA because not only did both of them come from a very traditional home, they both broke the mold, forged their own part, not only in the work they did but the way they lived.

And their own relationship was extremely rich. Coming from both coming from a traditional sort of joint family background, that was really surprising that they decided to build a nuclear family. And like for us, as growing up, there was absolute equality. There was no way my mother was picked out by anything.

So because we saw that at home, and of course, you know, always churning out strengths - my mother was busy bungee-jumping at age 50, and my father was traveling on his motorcycle till he was 70. And of course, I think that that further sort of propelled us toward the work they did.

I think that my father, far more than my mother, came from the mold off - and I think the Jingle Bell that you see is also part of that journey where my father actually pushed my mother. He believed strongly that kids should learn to play. And then it was something that was because of my father’s push, and of course, my mother also worked a lot on that idea.

But my father, he believed that, you know, this is the way we need to educate, this is the way we need to build our organizations. And he - I saw his own evolution. He came again from a very traditional management background, and he realized over time how he’s missing out on genius. And he was great at building people and with people. And he didn’t have the money or the resources to hire fancily. So it was always enabling, you know, finding ways to find growth in people. And I think that also shaped our organizations.

Of course, it’s totally amazing what she’s done, impact you can have on society itself. Because from this little town, you have kids all over the world exploring their genius, and it’s unbelievable the advances that she’s had. And of course, she’s taking it more and more forward. They started local schools, abilitas, and the same pedagogical approach, and that’s going to be an exciting change in the next few years.

Lisa: What is your hope for the future in terms of Yash? And now you have this wonderful product Chuck as well, these compostable packaging, and sort of continuing to explore these different ways of working and empowering people and so on. And I know Susan hates the word “empowering.” What is your vision or hope for things in the future?

Ved: I want to be in joyful places. So that’s the selfish idea around it. That’s the basic hope because we come from a society where I could say something, and everybody would nod yes. So that should be the norm. So the more people challenge me, the more successful I think we are becoming. And we’re getting more and more and more and more of that. And especially as Millennials come in, and we find that we give them an atmosphere, and I just love it.

It’s like this morning, we were in our innovation meeting, and our mascot of innovations was this grumpy Russian bag. And we were discussing him, and anyway, he was amazing because we were discussing what our innovations should be like. So we felt that fundamentally they should be dissatisfied in them. So they should be grumpy because they have to be frustrated. And then they have to be able to exert that frustration, say that how everything is wrong and how everything needs to be corrected. So that’s something that we would love.

And I think it also comes from diversity. So we’ve tried to be - so we started, like you mentioned, the compostable tableware unit brand Chuck. And when we started that operation, because it was going to be a new operation, we decided - and doesn’t even meet the person having that operations, who came from a local village, propose that we hired 50% women. And that was drastic because it’s a very different place to actually challenge that equation. So I was so proud that we did that.

Continue to nurture that ambition of having more diversity. So each time, it’s even in the last meeting when we were doing our hiring. I’ll actually ask, “Are only heterosexuals to be hired with us?” So literally, “Are you hiring people who are different? Are you not? Like how many people did you hire who didn’t look like you?” So how do you challenge the norm? So how do you challenge - there’s so much beauty that comes from just people who think differently, who challenge status quo.

So yeah, so for me, it would be to find ways to provide beauty to challenge status quo, to enjoy full place, and places that give meaning, places that give people joy. Because there’s so much time that we spend at work where they can align their purposes with that of the organization and then try and DPR.

Lisa: That’s a very noble and inspiring ambition, I think. For the people who are listening to this podcast, many of them are on journeys of their own to find new ways of working, to create more conscious, human, soulful organizations. What would your advice be to them, given all of your experience and what you’ve learned over the years?

Ved: All for it. Please report it. It’s just fun to see one person even come out and just let go of the shears. I think that one person is just rewarding.

I keep giving this example of one of our electrical engineers. We made full meeting in a big sitting where everybody was there, and the plant had - our factory had gone down. And in an open meeting, I asked him, “So what went wrong?” So he stood up, and he said, “I messed up,” as simple as that. He said, “I was experimenting, and I didn’t know what to do, and I decided to try something, and it brought the whole plant down.”

Now, this is a huge thing, ready to stand up and say that “I messed up.” So that’s that one thing can keep us going. That one thing gives us hope. So I would say that, you know, if we can create more and more of that, people can lose their fear and let their genius out and stop putting things under the carpet. Figure it out and try and work with it. I think we would have done our bit.

So I hope that more and more people can join the bandwagon, see the beauty of letting people find meaning and create places where they enjoy doing what they’re doing.

Lisa: Are there any other thoughts or stories that you would like to share? You’ve covered a lot of ground, so I’m just thinking, is there, there’s always more and more stories.

Ved: I think it’s just the one more thing that’s coming to me right now is the whole idea of making mistakes. So I think in an organization, it’s really important to provide a space where people actually are able to freely take risks and make mistakes. And Kuras, that’s one of our foremen, I used to tell all the people who are on the fitters and mechanics that if you’re not - if you’ve not broken a bearing, you’re never gonna become a fitter. So that’s the kind of space that you want to be. You don’t have to repeatedly break bearings, but you have to be able to have the freedom to not have the fear to do it. So that’s the one thing.

And the second thing in our space also, because we judge people very subjectively, I think it’s really important to build systems which enable people to become really transparent in their performance and have very standard systems. Because that’s the base, it’s like if you are building on a building, a symphony, and you want to innovate, you have to know the basics first.

So I think the basics - in order to build a system which is more or less self-managed, you need to have very good standard operating procedures. You need to have very good training systems. You need to ensure that people know where the gaps are. It’s not the subjective judgment on whether I like someone or I don’t. So there have to be a lot of SOPs that need to be brought in, and there is a lot of training that need to be brought in. And people should lose that fear of just like even deciding where this stands because they can always improve.

And I think building those systems is too important, and without that, it becomes difficult to innovate. On the symphony, the bass player has to be very, very strong. The foundation has to be really strong. So I think we’re still working on that, and I think it has to happen. But when that happens, it’s like - you know, places like - I find so much inspiration from places like Zappos or Apple. Or even - I know that - but go to an Apple store, and there’s a certain experience which you are guaranteed. So you talk to the person in Zappos, an experience that’s guaranteed, but it’s also scripted really well, and the people are trained very well.

So I think that’s what we need to think more like, and build that. And once we do that, we have anyway created a lot of people who are able to innovate on top of that. So that’s the only thing that comes to mind.