IT has been almost half a year since KESC’s management changed hands but the service does not appear to be improving. On the contrary, the frequency of power outages this summer appears higher than was the case previously.

Under the previous management, power outage even once a day would have been considered too much to bear. Now, many localities are putting up daily with power failures more than once a day and for long durations. This is hardly customer-centric enough that the KESC earlier communicated to the general public.

Customer-centric implies not just a customer orientation but the customer at the centre stage with the customer either involved enough in determining the type and level of desired service or, at least, informed enough about the reasons behind the quality of service received.

What the public is receiving from the utility is not even customer-orientation yet according to which the scale of service delivered to the customer is determined pretty much unilaterally by the service provider but in a way that would yield customer satisfaction.

At the present moment, the public is highly dissatisfied with the utility’s service which betrays not just a lack of customer orientation but a complete absence of customer-centricity which jargon, though used liberally, has yet to show up in KESC’s practice.

The public could, at least, be given a timeline with information about how and when the service quality is likely to be restored and then improved to give satisfaction. Customer delight looks like a dream goal too distant into the future.

If the goal of customer satisfaction is as elusive for the new private sector management as it used to be for the much condemned public sector management, why then was KESC privatized? The response will surely be to be patient and to give time to the new management.

In the absence of public information on what is going on inside KESC, one would need to know how patient is one expected to be for performance decline and for how long?

The biggest challenge for a transforming management is the period of transition through which the organization must be led with stability. That is, if performance cannot be improved in a short period of time, the least that is expected is to at least retain past performance during the period of transition. That KESC is not being able to retain even past performance is a sure cause for concern as its performance deterioration generates high negative spill-over effect into other sectors. Under these circumstances, other related sectors would also experience disequilibrium that will be derived from KESC’s disequilibrium as KESC tries to jump the hoop.

The least that the KESC can do is to carry its major stakeholder of customers along through routine public statements about the efforts being made to provide the desired level of service along with a timeline. This will not only galvanize organizational commitment but might also enable diverse perspectives that would facilitate KESC’s transition to the goalposts that should be shared with the general public in whose interest it is that KESC functions effectively and efficiently. To be customer-centric is to be moving towards a ‘boundary-less’ organization internally as well as externally. Amongst the first boundaries that need to be brought down are the ones with the customers. To keep the customers wondering, that is to keep them in the dark, is to be too far away from the desired goal of being customer-centric.

KESC has been slow to respond to the pent up utility needs as gauged by performance compared unfavourably with the past’. This reflects upon a lack of ability to translate top management change into organizational processes that would deliver. Questions abound.

Is there resistance to change within the organization causing internal frustration due to which the service quality is failing to look up? Is KESC having difficulty working with all those powerful interests who like to consume without payment?

Does financial resource generation, therefore, remain an issue without which the infrastructure would be difficult to overhaul and replace with quality equipment? Do skills and competencies need to be built up to move towards a boundary-less customer-centric organization?

Are rewards inadequate to match the goals given the financial constraints that will abound for as long as some segments view ‘free’ electricity consumption as a matter of right and not exchange? Is some kind of a ‘de-layering’ being contemplated that is likely to make the organization resistant to change?

Has the top management found some internal rigidities after takeover that they did not anticipate earlier due to which their response time is stretched? Is there a cultural context that is totally new for the top management and that will take longer for the new management to come to terms with?

Consumers sweltering in the heat and losing productive output at the same time have difficulty reining in their imagination every time they are rendered idle due to frequent power failures. Many consumers would like to help due to a mutuality of interest only if KESC would take a key step towards customer-centricity by bringing the veil of secrecy down between itself and the general public.

However qualified and experienced the top management may be, people remain apprehensive as other public sector organizations too have had qualified top men who were unable to effect the change for the better. One attempt at CBR’s turnaround under a top manager from the private sector in UK ended up alienating the workforce instead of winning them over.

The top man created two cadre in the hope that the old hands will want to catch up with the new highly paid entrants. Nothing could have been more self-defeating as this policy invited more resentment than cooperation from the old experienced hands who knew the way around the CBR. Also, the above policy assumed that all old employees were averse to honest effort which is not true for any organization.

Skilful CEOs are quick to spot those awaiting change from amongst the old employees and they build a change coalition comprising these change agents who had thus far been kept buried under the rubble of mediocrity that rules the roost in most public sector organizations. The job of the change leader CEO is to dig out such change agents who would together drive the change process for others to catch up with them.

Unless change is contemplated with the help of mavericks from within the old herd, change effort will not be far-reaching, claims to the contrary notwithstanding about success that may be success only in form and not in substance. There is success claimed about CBR ‘reforms’ undertaken thereafter.

One wonders how this ‘reform’ effort is successful if there is surplus CBR staff awaiting offloading or accommodation elsewhere when the tax-to-GDP ratio needs enhancement significantly. If the latter is true, why can all the CBR staff not be accommodated and meaningfully deployed within CBR to increase the tax-to-GDP ratio? Hope the KESC will not be undertaking a kind of a reform that will betray glaring contradictions.

There is another kind of reform that claims success even though it is success only in form and not in effect in our country. Any organizational change effort that changes the internal architecture and studs it with qualifications, fancy resumes, and profits through price hikes, side bet ventures, and unfairness to key stakeholders is synthetic at best if it fails to accomplish the mission of the organization.

A classic case is that of our banking sector ‘reform’ that allows profiteering despite their networks ornamented with some of the highest professionally qualified. The upshot in banking is, however, not too different from the profiteering tendency in our sugar industry that is run not by very highly qualified men.

So, the qualifications at the top must transform into organizational processes owned by the people cross-functionally who should be woven into an integrated whole with unflinching commitment towards the organizational mission. It is only when an organization’s reason for being, as sanctioned by the society, is fulfilled that success of reform effort can be justifiably claimed.

It is hoped that KESC will soon fulfil this requirement that is the touchstone of success in a change effort. Until then, hopefully KESC will keep the people informed about the progress and the terrain it is having to traverse in the process.