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!

My First Corporate Lesson

Two days ago, LinkedIn woke up along with me announcing a dear friend celebrating 16 years with Mindtree, my previous organization. It was quite a moment and obviously I sent him a congratulations note. A few minutes later it dawned on me that it was the same guy with whom I joined Mindtree 16 years back!

Fresh out of college, I had stepped into the lovely Global Village campus of Mindtree in the then Bangalore, with dreams as high as Everest and a resolve as deep rooted as the Pacific. Equipped with a Masters in Management, I couldn’t have asked for a better start than to analyse the Staff Operations of a budding company. Mindtree had spread its wings globally and was getting ready for an even major expansion.

Soon enough I learned that Staff Operations in Mindtree was working in a manner where you had multiple teams managing various geographies. All these teams where co-ordinated by a Central Operations team which at that time was a team of two, my boss and me. Among the plethora of activities, a major task was to get an update on staff engagement from each of the geographies every Monday and consolidate them to present a utilization report on Tuesdays.

This was a time when automation of operations was still on the cards and hence this consolidation was quite a time consuming process. I was tasked to follow-up with all the geography heads and ensure that all the required inputs were available by end of day Monday. By noon Tuesday all the analysis were to be completed and report was to be released.

It was a heavy number crunching exercise on an extremely complex Excel worksheet laden with macros and formulas. Having said that, the direction from my boss was quite clear. Rain or shine, the report must hit the mailbox of all recipients by Tuesday twelve o’ clock. Late by a minute, I’ll be dead!

It wasn’t an exaggeration, as I realized with horror on the first week itself that the mail was addressed to the Chairman of the company himself and copied to all senior managers. As soon as I figured this out, I had a weird sensation of equally feeling elevated in my stature while at the same time being pulled down with fear. What if something goes wrong? I didn’t even want to think of a day when the mail was received late by the leaders of the organization due to a delay from my end directly affecting critical decisions taken in the company.

Initially though the mail was sent by my boss, as days passed, he let me sent it from my mailbox itself. It further brought a huge load of confidence in me. I remember having a glow on face especially on Tuesdays with the sheer thought that the Chairman of the company along with the who’s who of the organization were awaiting the most important mail of the week from me!

The feeling of empowerment was reaching its pinnacle when one day it happened. One of the geo heads, who was a recipient of these mails came over to meet my boss on a Tuesday afternoon soon after the report was released. I was sitting next to him and heard them talk about Utilization Report. I was beaming with pride and was expecting him to praise our small team on how much value do we bring to the organization. Instead he said, ‘It is absolutely rubbish a report and it directly goes into my trash!’

Speechless would be an understatement and what made it worse was when I got to know that his view was subscribed by a few other managers as well. My motivation levels took a major hit. My boss noticed the change, but said nothing. The week went by without any other incident. Next Tuesday came and the Utilization Report went out as usual. A couple of hours later my boss showed me a mail. It was a mail asking for a few additional information on what was reported and the response went back promptly. It was from none other than the Chairman himself!

That’s when my boss spoke for the first time about the incident the other day. He said, ‘Quality, not quantity matters’.