The Plant and The Machine!

He asked me 'Will he move out? He is the one who has built this team from scratch to where it's now.'

I tried sensing emotion behind the question. Was it a feeling of attachment, of fear, or of discomfort?

I thought it was a combination of all emotions.

The person who was moving out was struggling with his own emotions. He asked me 'Is this a message to me? Am I not doing well?'

I felt for him. But I sensed the need for a change of guard.

He had built the business to a certain size. He had 'seeded' an industry at its nascent stages. He had made saplings sprout and overseen their growth to a healthy and beautiful plant

There was enough opportunity now to make plant grow to a tree. Essentially, market was poised for explosive growth. But same skills that had held him in good stead in ramp up stage threatened his success in explosive growth stage.

Soon a new leader came in. His style was diametrically opposite to previous leader.

No more was there space for experiments and pilots. Everything had to be done on a large scale. Feedback style changed to more direct and less encouragement.

It felt less like a lab/playground and more like a war machine.

We knew what we wanted to achieve and we will get it!

Did we succeed? We seem to be on the right path.

Was leadership change necessary?

Well. I don't know.

At this time, I am left with a few observations/questions:

• Do we typecast 'preference' as 'strengths' and exclude possibility of leader being able to use learned (non-preferred) behavior too?
• Plant and Machine are roles appropriate to different growth stages of a team/business. Different roles can be played by same person. But at times it may be necessary to change leadership too.
  I relate more to a plant than to a machine. At same time I feel there is a lot to learn in the machine mode.
• Sometimes a leader is impatient to make an impact. It is important to guide the leader's energy in right direction. It's possible that when one has a hammer everything looks like a nail.

-
Sourav

Differences!

A year back I told myself 'I am starting a race on a new track after a long time. Corners and turns may be different. I will just classify differences as different and stay away from associating value judgments with them.'

Have I been successful in my attempts?

I was successful in the first few months. I noticed differences. I discussed them out. At places I could make environment adopt to my style/needs. At other places i had to understand the environment and eco-system. There were instances when I didn't have an immediate resolution but a solution seemed possible in near future.

 A year down the line, a few differences have become sticky issues. There are certain places where priority of values for environment and for me is different. There are a few places where I perceive environment to be of a certain type but other stake holders don't seem to perceive it so -probably they are don´t see what I see.

How do I handle this situation? I am sometimes tempted to classify these sticky differences as bad. But then I hold on to my initial stance- ´what's different is just different. It's not necessarily bad!´

I think it's time to revisit differences map I had created a few months back. I then need to figure out my coping strategy- how exactly am I going to cope with some of the value priority differences that I encounter at work.

I remember what Charles Handy had said in one of his books - we rely on a faulty assumption that the organization will serve all our needs

It's time to think creatively again and use Handy's inverse doughnut philosophy.

 

-
Sourav

 

 

Strengths and Weaknesses

What do you work on -your strengths or weaknesses?

If you were to believe in development school of thought, then you should work on identifying and plugging your development needs.

If you were to believe in strengths school of thought, then you should capitalize on your strengths to plug your gaps.

Strengths school of thought appeals more to me - Let´s capitalize on our strengths!

But then there are times when I stumble across a blind spot of mine  - a movement from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence in learning stages.

In such times I wonder 'I didn't know till now that this was my blind spot. In past, have my strengths covered for these blind spots? Maybe! I don't know! But I could have had made more effective use of my time/resources if I had known my weaknesses'.

So Yes! We should leverage our strengths. But we should also attempt to be aware of our weaknesses.

This will enable us to use our strengths more appropriately and effectively.

-
Sourav

Short Term!

'When did I start work on this project? Seems like a long time back. How long back was it? Hmmm. .wait...hold on! I started work on it in early October. That's just a month back. That's not long back! ....or… is it not?'

I have gone through this chain of thoughts on a number of occasions over last few months.

I wonder 'what's different?' Short term isn't really feeling like short term.

There is a lot of action in my job, for sure. I'm doing work on

• designing & driving programs, &
• creating frameworks and setting up teams.

Number of variables and stake holders I am working with are high.

Maybe it is a phase- I am learning tricks of trade here and/or I am working on creating a number of atleast 1 year agendas.

But still October can't feel so long back!

I sense 'performance every quarter' focus prevalent in most publicly listed companies is at play here. Every quarter we must show a green performance.

Over a period of time every quarter starts feeling like a mini year.

But then the challenge also is to balance this reality with need for a longer term view needed for most people initiatives.

I'll make an assumption here.  Least count required to make an impact in most people initiatives is atleast one year.

Keeping our eye on one year horizon while meeting quarter performance numbers is important.

-

Sourav