What’s in a Head Count?

‘Processes kill Innovation’. Do they? It was the first question raised in a recent CMMi training attended by me. After all, who likes rules and regulations? They only serve to hinder creativity and freedom. The battle is in being disciplined or being shackle-free. The aim is to achieve a Goal in either case. How can it be best achieved?

The trainer gave this trivial example of a scenario. A Head Count being taken before any Flight takes off. The Goal is to ensure and verify that all the Passengers are in. To take this Head Count, every time the official starts to count beginning with the A-1 seat, 1..2..3..4 and so on. She takes the count; tallies with the total Passenger count in the Booking List and off you go. So what’s the point and the big deal? She is supposed to follow this routine and hence she is doing it. OK, no issues.

The question is can we bring innovation into this seemingly irrelevant routine? Yes, we can.

The process is to get the Head Count. It should be our responsibility to define how we can get it:

1. We can start from 1..2..3 and so on, if the total passengers are apparently less than half the flight capacity.

2. If the flight is near to seating capacity, we can always count the empty seats and knowing the total number of seats, we can easily get the Head Count.

3. If the flight is full to its capacity, there is no point counting. A simple scan should confirm this.

This is ridiculous. What innovation can be achieved by changing the way a Head Count is taken?

Nothing tremendous, I know.

But once we enlarge the scenario:

1. We knew what the Goal was. (Ensure and Verify accurately that all the Passengers are in)

2. We can define ‘N’ ways to do this taking the known constraints. (Time)

3. We can give additional provision to suit our method based on the context

4. We know what the Goal is now. (Ensure and verify quickly and accurately that all the Passengers are in)

OK. Enough of processes and innovation. In fact, I have called it innovation. You may call it Common Sense (I know it’s so uncommon). Maybe even stupidity in being so trivial.

But what we lacked and lack in all our undertakings is applying common sense. Be it traditions, rituals, way of thinking or every day routines, there was always a ‘ALWAYS DO THIS WAY BECAUSE IT IS DONE LIKE THIS’ and ‘THIS WOULD BE BETTER BUT LET US NOT DO IT’ conflict. At every stage, when a change was desirable we failed to adhere.

For a society like ours (Indian), we should have evolved at every social milestone. We would have been oblivious to Caste and Creed discrimination, gender inequality and several social issues. As a simple example, it was common for a Man to re-marry when he became a widower. But it was considered a Sin if a widow did the same.

If only common sense came to the rescue at all those points of our society and civilization’s progress….