ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND YOU!
Ashok Puri
Director and India Head
Kaizen Institute India 24 th July 08
Einstein truly knew the importance of energy. Today no one can talk about process without talking about energy. Energy is the basis of everything that exists. That is essentially what E = MC means. In any industrial economy, the energy used for production of goods and services incurs some kind of monetary cost. Different kinds of energies are utilized in this production- human energy in the form of wages, machine energy in the form of capital equipment, or fuel energy in the forms of electricity, gas or petroleum. Similarly even time is also energy since whenever the other forms of energy are available but not being used, potential energy is lost. If we think of money as a form of energy, this aspect of time is very clear. Money can be used to make more money. If time is lost in putting the money to use, then energy is lost. Therefore, energy takes many forms, like parts of a machine, to highly abstract energy like time. However, the chief concern of those who are in the business is that of using energy in all its forms as efficiently as possible i.e. at the least cost, to satisfy consumer needs.
The purpose of all organized processes is to transform one type of energy into another, more desired form at the least cost. In a market economy, we understand cost purely in monetary terms, but in nature it refers to preservation and conservation of the environment and all its constituent elements: air and water quality, animal and plant species, soils etc.
I shall concentrate on business organizations and people-the processes with which we are most familiar. In machining operation, energy transforms raw material to finished states through various refining and value adding processes. The more energy of all kinds required to achieve the desired product, the more value- and therefore a higher cost is added to the finished part.
In most cases, energy is neither created nor destroyed. It is only transformed. At certain points there may be jumps in this transformative process. An example of one of these jumps may be found in the man-machine relationship. A person may be doing a job manually, using all his or her mental and physical energy to do the task. But a machine or tool can cut the total amount of human energy expenditure. This person will then have more available energy. Human energy has essentially been transformed into machine energy, because the machine is now doing the work a human being was once required to perform. Another transformational jump occurs within us when we take in nourishment. In the digestive system, food energy changes into higher-level human mental energy.
At the lower end of unrefined energy, the transforming process is easily seen and managed. As we move to higher levels of complexity, it becomes more difficult to see and manage the transforming process.
In all kinds of organizations, the managements have tended to overlook processes and focus only on results. But to focus on the results is to look at only one point of transformation to see if the desired product or service has been obtained. However, energy (and cost) has already been spent, and if what has been obtained is not what is desired, then even more energy is required to correct it. In such a scenario, the result of the entire process must be scrapped; thereby waste and consequent cost are incurred. Thus, focusing only on results can be costly, ineffective and inefficient. Most importantly, results oriented focus makes us believe that we do not have to learn and understand the transforming process as a whole. Once that understanding is lost, both the process and its supporting systems are out of control, and when errors occur we do not know how to begin correcting them.
Managing and controlling any process of energy transformation requires that we understand the process and that we have clear and accurate data about its real-time functioning that is, what it is actually doing at any given moment. In a business, managers must understand the entire production system, from supplier to end-user or customer. Long-term visibility is ensured by enhancing the overall system’s capability to transform at ever-higher levels of efficiency and at ever- lower levels of waste- and its management’s job to see that that happens.
It is possible to use our mental energy to transform ideas into action or states of being. The difficulty is that we try to manage the results without understanding the system or how to gather clear data. Some event may result in our feeling strong negative emotions, which may lead to a conflict, confusion, fear, frustration, etc. All these require energy but this energy is almost always expended wastefully with great psychic cost.
Studying the self as a system and learning how to get the clear data on ourselves is the best way to improve personal effectiveness. The similarity between ourselves and other transforming systems can give us understanding into improving all level of work, and it can also clarify how we function. Thinking about whatever we work on will help us improve our personal and professional effectiveness.
I heard the other day an expert discussing the reasons for the poor performance of a company . Surprisingly, one of the reasons from his findings was the lack of energy in the organization. Rather than the deficiency of energy ,he drew our attention towards the negativity of the energy. How negative were the minds of the people at various levels ,particularly at the leadership levels and what havoc they were creating in the environment of the company. What is that pushes the negative buttons in their minds ?We need to understand this.
All of us in business must learn a whole new way of seeing and interpreting our reality if we are going to be able to play the new game competently, much less become champions. Our business survival is literally at stake. Without a basic change of mental framework, we will never be able to effectively use the techniques and methods that have been developed as part of the new games, or learn to create new ones better than those already in use. We need to learn to be positive ,drive positivity in our environment and thus push the organization to the highest levels of energy all the times.
Retaining the traditional ways of perceiving and thinking while attempting to make a business succeed in this new era would be like turning the command of a modern oceangoing vessel over to a captain who still believes the earth is flat. He might be expert at operating the ship, but would not venture far from port for fear of sailing off the edge, and certainly would never use the vessel to venture forth discovering new worlds beyond the horizon. And that is precisely what must be done.