Yet another Analogy- ‘Outsourcing, the Dolphin Park analogy’

Some time back I had described the restaurant analogy for Performance engineering. Here is another one. This time it is on outsourcing, but in lighter vein.  Outsourcing is well discussed and I do not have anything more to share on it that readers would not know.  In fact this narrative is more about problem solving skills of a person I worked with at some point of time. I would like to mention that all content here are fictional in nature.

 

 

The Dolphin park analogy was inspired by this middle manager I had the privilege of working with and would refer to as ‘Dee’.  Dee was perfect fit for middle management and an embodiment of its values as reflected in his waistline. He had no vision and no time for other’s vision. His job was keeping delivery well-oiled and he did that extremely well. He always prepared for worst case scenario mode. I had pointed to him on need to get his cholesterol checked. The morning of lipid test I found him devouring fish curry with wine. I told him that he needed to fast twelve hours before test. He mentioned, he wanted to know worst case results. Dee always had the last laugh. Well after everyone stopped, the halls would echo with his laughter.

Outsourcing is extremely challenging business.  There has to be year on year revenue growth, cost reduction for all, innovation and improving client and employee satisfaction. Dee’s favorite comment was ‘who will look after my satisfaction?’  With commoditization of outsourcing business Dee was under intense pressure to find other channels of profitable growth.  On an occasion Dee visited Dolphin Park with his children, where kids could swim with Dolphins for a hefty price. The only fish that interested Dee was one in his curry, but the Dolphins gave him his Eureka moment. No customer in that park bothered about price and there were no satisfaction surveys.  Quick cost calculation, few slides and new premium service was ready to be launched.

 

Inauguration and photo-ops were completed with as many folks packed into a photograph as a wide pic panorama camera would allow. Now came the difficult part, procuring dolphins. It was discovered that international rules disallowed trade in dolphins. Resourceful as ever, Dee contacted his uncle who ran fish trawlers in Bangladesh.  He mentioned that some unfortunate dolphins would get trapped in their catch. International rules also promulgated rehabilitation of accidently caught dolphins. He mentioned that it was beyond his resources to rehabilitate the dolphins as he focused only on catching and selling fishes. Dee recalled he had paid by accident few bucks to ‘Friends for Dolphins society’ who had come to his kid’s school. Actually he did have pretty vivid memory of that incident. Dee was was very sorted out person. He would know appraisal ratings of his reportees right at the start of year and also currency bills in his wallet would be sorted from lowest to highest denomination. Dee was standing at bus stop to drop his kids while some volunteers were passing box to collect contributions. Since all parents seemed to be donating, lion hearted Dee also contributed. Unknown to him his wife had borrowed a 100 buck note from his wallet and put it back, but not in right order. As the first currency note picked up and dropped by Dee flew into the box did he catch the 'two zeros' on it. Since there were some curious onlookers while Dee contributed he could not do much about it other than put a brave face and hope they noticed. Collateral benefit of that incident to organization and client was that 'transaction rollback' facility was seriously emphasized in all subsequent projects.  Anyway, quick contacts were made and the society enabled import of the Dolphin’s to the newly created ‘Swim with the Dolphin’ parks.

There was enormous publicity and great response and for a while it seemed perfect. Alas, happiness is never permanent, at least in outsourcing business.  Question to Dee was – ‘what next’?  The dolphins were rarely caught and so business model was not scalable. Resources engaged in managing dolphins were from coastal areas or those whose families were connected to fishery business. Also dolphins were proving to be notoriously expensive. Dee didn’t even know that they required insurance and care funds once they aged and were not games worthy.  Resources engaged in dolphin care were also grumbling as this is not what they expected to do. It was apparent to all that the party was over but not to Dee the eternal problem solver. Dee came up with his solution- ‘give up some dolphins’. There was uproar on this outlandish suggestion as it was already proving hard to find more dolphins. Big review meeting was called with frothy mouthed seniors. One thing that Dee was very confident about was handling people like him no matter their seniority level. His philosophy in his words was- a dog always recognizes another one  and understand too.

 Calmly, Dee explained it all in the meeting. Some dolphins would be released to open new dolphin parks addressing business scalability problem. The current resources engaged in care of dolphins have been spending extended hours with dolphins and have picked up their moves. They will be dressed up in dolphin costumes and they would be able to provide thrills of swimming with a real dolphin. They would be more cost effective addressing cost issue. This would also provide growth and greater opportunities for resources looking to travel.  They would become ‘flexi’ resource pool while the original dolphins would be the ‘core’ pool. Dee mentioned that he had already performed a POC, when a dolphin was sick for few days and he had to substitute. When you have a plan, no one ever questions after they made sure that they will not be held for its failure.

 

The only difficult part came in explaining it to the resources.  They were shell shocked. It wasn’t enough they had to take care of dolphin which was not what they expected to do, now they were expected to act like them. There was a revolt across ranks. A good manager has solution for everything and where he doesn’t he does a very good job of explaining the problem. Dee was always a people manager since he anyway had no other mentionable skill.  With great wisdom and benevolence he explained it to them. ‘Guys- people spend $200/hour to swim with a dolphin.  You will get to do that for free!’

Dee may not have had great vision or technical skills, but I admired his problem solving skills. It is a great asset to have in challenging industry such as outsourcing.