Con-calls – from Operatings mechanisms to rituals or

timefillers?!

Most of you would be familiar, and in all probability be party to Monday

con calls – on rather any day con calls, just that as much as we know,
most of them are done on Mondays – most organizations think that this
is the most potent tool they have to enhance the performance of the
team, and as a consequence the organization.

A brief looking back on how con calls came to be – new CEO’s of large
corporation used it as a potent tool to connect with the line managers,
understand the business – for which he is new, give his own incisive
insights about what is likely to evolve in the coming future, take
genuine feedback and opinions on what is happening on the ground.

Carried on with a decisive objective over a period of time, con-calls

were one of the most potent tool to create and foster operating
mechanisms, bring in appropriate directions to the line managers, and
in turn the respective teams, and thus percolated across the entire
length and breadth of the organizations.

Smart, efficient and look-into-the future leaders and CEO’s used the
simple looking and ritualistic con-calls to gain insights and make
inroads and move in the strategic direction, galvanizing all the
stakeholders towards the market-share and revenue-share goals of the
company.

Anyone who cares to glean through business history of how and why
social/business operating mechanisms came in, will appreciate the
immense value proffered by con-calls.

Cut to the present; at the cost of generalizing, I would opine that con-
calls are just time wasters in most companies now; Instead of serving
sensitive and strategic goals, they just pander to the ego’s of
whomever chairs these calls, which are void of an agenda, and used to
just override subordinate views, and in many cases just involve in
verbal bravado.

In most organizations, the ritual is carried out just to verify collated

data, and speak about unrealistic things, with no cognition of what is
happening on the ground, and what issues and challenges the foot
soldiers of the organization go through on the way to business goals.

Rather than serving to set direction and advise on what could help
moving towards better market share and better revenues.. such calls
just waste valuable organization resources, and even worse, just de-
motivate an entire lot by their tone and tenor.

It would make eminent sense for the senior management or the HR of

present day organizations to ponder if an SOP for con-calls will help.

Just by measuring the RoI on such con-calls, let’s all hope that they
either turn to be more goal driven and productive or just don’t happen
at all….

I would invite views on this.