Two birds, no stone!

I recently got to attend a much sought after talk, wherein the speaker was a renowned expert in his own domain. His claim to fame was the application of best practices from the automotive and other age-old industries to the relatively newer era of technology management . He was adept with the likes of Lean Management, Agile development methodologies, Xtreme programming practices, etc and he spoke passionately about these, at length.I came out really excited, with some out-of-the-box thoughts to try out on a team that was willing to be the scapegoat for my experiments! A topic that he briefly touched on was something that, in hindsight, could easily be extended to beyond just software development. This topic of interest to me, was "Pair programming". I am sure those with exposure to 'extreme programming' paradigms know all about it, and more! But to those uninitiated in the jargons above, "pair programming" is just literally what it is – a pair involved in the programming i.e. rather than have just individuals working on their own programming problems, a pair of individuals are involved in putting their heads together to solving the same problem. The advantages he quotes are many – having someone to bounce thoughts off, a senior mentor to guide a junior engineer, equal peers having each other watch over so that defects are reduced, learning from each other's experience (read: mistakes), etc. The applicability of this practice or the success measure of this practice isn't really the point of write up. My thoughts are about scaling this, and looking beyond software or technology management. It is about extending this to corporate governance.

With the recent disclosures around Satyam's senior management (or the lack of it, considering none except one individual seemed to have any inkling of internal reality), it led me to think what if there were actually a pair involved in managing the affairs of a corporation. To lead on a possible modality, how would it be if every public listed company had a pair running the organization – one being the executive that's managing inside-out (this is the traditional CEO role as the public face of the company) and the second one in the "pair" being the external representative. He / She would be appointed by the majority stakeholders as their face or voice. There might be concerns as to the veracity of the second appointment, how a consensus is to be reached amongst the shareholders, etc. Of course, I don't have the answers to all these questions, but I am sure we cannot work out a magic formula that would work for every single organization out there. Each entity is as unique as it can get and it is in the best interests of each organization to determine the best way to select the second part of the "pair". This is crucial because this piece of the puzzle would need to work hand-in-glove with the 'traditional CEO' in making sure they are making decisions with the best interests of the company , both at heart, and in soul. The independent board of directors, unfortunately, don't make the cut any more for they are too independent to be involved. As the story goes, they want to be the chicken and not the pig! (non-committed vs. committed; for more background on this, Google "chicken, pig and Agile"!)

The need of the hour is a committed bunch (or two) – someone who doesn't have the same vested interests as the CEO, but at the same time has accountability to deliver, and is committed to this as a full time position. Of course, the much talked about CEO compensation would be back in focus, for there is now a 2x outflow. But I am confident that seeing the long term health of the company in good hands, and the shareholders' interests continuously and independently protected, is a fair enough price to pay for this model. As a parting thought, is there a hidden message in "pair" being a part of "repair"? The onus is on every Indian, with exposure to the West, to undo the damage that the Satyam saga has done worldwide, so that the questions surrounding corporate governance in India are put to rest once and for all!