Come in, we are open!

Seventeen years ago, I stepped into my first corporate experience as a Business Analyst associated to Staff Operations of Mindtree in Bangalore. After the initial induction, I found myself seated among the elite company of Staffing, HR and Finance teams. Mindtree was already a known brand by then in the Indian IT industry for being a people friendly organization. Having said that I was in for many surprises as Mindtree did break a few cliches associated with typical corporates.

Right next to where the HR head sat, there was a table like what was used by most of the manager’s in Mindtree where you could walk in and talk to the occupant anytime. This one was busy most of the times and the person who occupied the desk made the conversations quite lively.

I was not sure who that dynamic person was and the curious cat in me wouldn’t sleep longer. I promptly asked my boss who he was. I was stunned, will be an understatement, with the answer he gave me. He was none other than Partha, one of the co-founders of Mindtree. All the management jargons, the corporate biographies I read and every other theory that spoke of the typical ways of working of a company took a bow at that moment. It was indeed a moment of awakening. It was a tremendous realization that these founders are indeed human beings, and you could talk to them without an appointment!

That day taught me a big lesson. Not everything about a corporate culture can be understood in the induction classes. Quite a few facts about an organization will be revealed to you in due course and that could even hold a few surprises for you, some pleasant and others not so.

The culture that was displayed by the executive management of Mindtree was truly one which screamed openness. None of the senior management had to announce this every now and then. They lived and worked with this mindset. You were free to walk in anytime to anyone’s desk irrespective of their designation and ask anything professional that you have in your mind. There won’t be any judgements or reservations about your questions, ever!

It really should be an alarm bell for the senior management of any organization when your staff does not feel comfortable raising questions. It displays a culture of scepticism and lack of trust in the management. Any staff meeting that ends up with a Q&A session which is not utilized must be a cause of concern for a good leader. If you end up ignoring these signals, rest assured, the organization you head will soon experience a derailment. Hence watch out for these signals and correct your course of action.

If you are heading an organization or a department and next time you call for a staff meeting, watch out for the Q&A session. If your people do not raise enough questions, do understand that you are in for trouble, sooner or later. It is also imperative you identify genuine questions vs tick-in-the-box questions. You should welcome the former with both hands and deal with the latter with the kind of respect it deserves including diplomatically discarding if required.

Management is an art, a science and many more. It isn’t something you learn only by reading a bunch of books or doing a Masters from an outstanding university. It is something you need to approach with the warmth of a heart that beats and the swiftness of a brain that pulsates so that you know your people and give them what they need the way they understand.

Here is a toast to all the ‘real’ great managers we know around the world!