Equal (In) Justice!

Jane is a mother of three adorable little ones, Ben, Stacy and Keith. As is the case with many households across the world, their home is always filled with cries and laughter from the games and fights by the 'darling devils', a name Jane calls them occasionally, half serious and half fun!

Usually when one of the darling devils crosses the limits of fun, Jane reminds them about the rules of the game and generally they fall in line. Rarely when the reminder did not work, she usually bestowed them with minor disciplinary actions such grounding for a day with no access to TV, games etc. But these actions were limited to the culprit which helped in directing the action to the one who committed the mistake. It also acted as a serious reminder for the rest of the kids that their mother meant business and they better get their act straight. The strategy worked all the time.

One of those days, there was an incident when the limits of fun was trespassed by Keith, the youngest of the kids. The offence was committed with the greatest margin of naughtiness till that date. Jane was furious! She was so mad that, shortly the announcement about grounding came through with new set of rules. No tabs, No TV and No games for an entire week. Her fury did not stop there. She declared that the grounding applied to all three kids. No questions asked! Jane even went beyond and got her rules framed and hung them on the wall of kids' room.

Keith tried to revolt but soon accepted his destiny. Ben and Stacy could not initially comprehend why they were getting punished for a mischief by Keith. They raised their voice of dissent. But their concerns died a painful death when their voices hit a solid wall of resistance erected by their mom. They retreated with great pain and a deep feeling of betrayal, something they never experienced before in the family.

Life moved on. Jane found her new way of reprimanding, quite easy and effective. The intermittent voices of dissent were suppressed with authority. Little did she know that her 'darling devils' were slowly drifting away from her. Soon a day would come when they all stopped talking to her. The house was no longer filled with cries and laughter from the games and fights by the darling devils. Only muffled wails and faint sobbing rippled across the walls of once vibrant home.

The rules remained hanging on the wall.

The End.

After story: If you felt a connection to the above narration to what is happening in your office environment, it is not merely incidental. An office is a logical extension of a family. The nature of decisions and its impact on people, are quite similar, whether at home or in office.

Hence if you are in a leadership role, may you be blessed with the cerebral prowess laced with emotional intelligence to take decisions that will unify the extended members of your family at office, than driving them away. Always remember, rules are meant to follow, but if you are the one who is setting them, ask yourself if they make sense, not just logically, but emotionally as well.

A Spicy Mistake!

During my college days, I tried my hands on preparing a few dishes based on Kerala cuisine. While the success rate on those were not that great, over a period of time I mastered the art of making a good tea with milk.

Hence, after Ruby and I got married and settled down at our one-bedroom apartment in Bangalore, one day I told her I will make a special tea for her. While sceptical, she agreed to that idea and watched me making the special brew for her. 

Milk, water, tea powder and sugar, all found its way one after the other into the saucepan. Then came my secret ingredient, cardamom, also known as the Queen of Spices, for the distinct flavour and aroma it brought to any dish prepared with this unique spice. It gave an even more special effect when used to make tea. I must also add here that cardamom is one of the most expensive spices you get to buy, with some of the best quality ones costing as high as USD 100+ per kilogram.

As I was preparing the magical potion, I took a couple of pods of cardamom and started to peel the outer shell. All the while Ruby was watching me with eyes filled with curiosity. All of a sudden, I could see an unexplainable burst of emotion in her eyes followed by a loud cry! That was the exact moment when I finished peeling the cardamom and added the empty shell to the boiling tea and promptly trashed the seeds that were inside the shell.

In the same tone of the cry, she asked me why I threw the seeds. With all the innocence in the world, I told her, I always used the shell and threw the seeds away. That perhaps was the first time I saw my darling wife totally speechless. After the initial shock, she regained her composure and with an amazing sense of patience, explained to me what a historical blunder I was doing all the while. 

The seeds in fact were the essential part of that exotic spice. I listened intently and since I wasn't easy convinced, I did my own research and realised that my sweetheart was indeed right! From that day, the cardamom pods at our home had been thanking me for making real use of them.

The best part of this incident was not just knowing the correct use of a spice. On the contrary, ever since the incident, I had been telling my better half about writing a story about this. She was the one who didn't agree, as she was concerned about it would influence the perception of others. 

For me, this is true leadership. A good leader will give constructive feedback on mistakes by a team member, irrespective of the gap in hierarchy between them. At the same time the leader will ensure enough privacy so that perception management is achieved as well.

Just like how effective feedback helped us to have better tasting tea, professional environment demands meaningful exchange of constructive criticisms which all parties involved need to provide and receive in the most practical sense.

May we all be blessed to be a good leader who can empathize with a team member. As a team member, may we have the courage to accept the feedback and incorporate good learning which can take us to even greater professional heights. 

Empowerment – Incredible Leadership Stories

After two gruelling years of MBA from Christ College, one of the prestigious institutions in then Bangalore, I took my baby steps into the corporate world with Mindtree Consulting, the name by which the company was known those days. It was a mid-size IT company compared to the likes of giants in Indian IT diaspora such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro etc. My staff ID was just 4299.

I joined the Staff Operations department of Mindtree which was entrusted with the critical task of finding the right person for a job. Those days, Staff Ops department of Mindtree was designed to have regional teams taking care of staffing requirements of clients in their respective geographical areas with US being the biggest, followed by Europe, Asia Pacific etc. There was a Central Operations team as well to co-ordinate with these different regional teams to ensure that staff utilisation is effective and optimized. My boss and I were part of the latter.

While the structure worked, there were already talks about this model to be redesigned to match the planned growth of the organization. To facilitate this, the management decided to get a seasoned Mindtree Mind, how the staff was addressed in Mindtree, who managed a large client in the US.

The word got out and all of us in Staff Ops team were quite excited, as this man was to be our new boss. What was even more interesting was the rumour that he was going to consolidate Staff Ops function to achieve more synergies. Lot of improvements were expected. Little did we know that along with him a sea of changes were to follow, some of them we did not even anticipate. The man's reputation preceded him.

Dats, that was how our new boss was affectionately known in Mindtree circles. As soon as he took charge, he called for a combined meeting of all Staff Ops teams. We were quite surprised with his demeanour. The man who ran one of the biggest accounts of Mindtree in US, the man who had been tasked to consolidate the entire Staff Operations for the company had a remarkably calm way of going about with his business. We were impressed on day one itself.

The action then started!

His first ask was to get all the leads list down daily activities we carried out as a team. He reviewed the list and identified all those activities that did not strictly belong to Staff Ops. There were a bunch of tasks that our team performed on daily basis which in fact belonged to other functions in the organization such as HR, Quality, Recruitment etc. This was quite typical of young organizations, a learning that was applied over the period of growth. Dats immediately scheduled meetings with his counterparts in those departments and agreed with them to own their respective activities thereby freeing our valuable time to do more meaningful staff allocation specific activities.

We thought we were all set to start with our new life. That was when Dats broke the biggest surprise. It must be either the work culture he picked up from US or his methodical approach to everything that we came to appreciate in the days ahead or both. Dats noticed that some of the team members worked late in the evening in office for multiple reasons. He called the entire team into a meeting room one day and made a statement that still echoes in my head even after almost two decades of the incident. He said, ‘None of us are doctors and no one is going to die if you stop working at the prescribed end time of the day. I do not want to see any one of you staying back in office unless there is an emergency that you will be able to justify to me’!

Those were golden words, teams across the corporate world would love to hear from their bosses! He was incredible in not just saying that but to live a life and showed us how to really have a work-life balance. God bless bosses like you Dats! You are indeed a rare breed! 

Proximity Leadership

It had been three years since Alex joined the multinational company which is primarily into manufacturing. They had two major divisions, one dealing with products for businesses and the other had a range of end consumer items. There was a president each, Bob and Jim, heading these divisions. It was a hierarchical organization. 

For someone at Alex's grade, he never interacted with either president, not even to their reportees up to two levels below. While both the presidents had charismatic personalities, the chances for Alex meeting them remained as remote as ever. Having said that, Bob was known to be more jovial and took occasional rounds across office floors greeting people. Jim on the other hand was least spoken and rarely seen in public around office but was revered by the powers to be of the industry. He was considered as one of the most influential presidents in the world of manufacturing giants! But to meet him was next to impossible. It was even said that the top management usually took a private elevator to the nineteenth floor of the corporate headquarters, which housed the offices of both the presidents.

One fine day, Alex was waiting at the general lift lobby to go up to his floor which was on the fifteenth. The elevator arrived and along with three other waiting colleagues, he got into it. The door was about to close when he saw a quick movement outside. Soon enough, the door opened again. A man stood outside. Alex looked at him and felt like his eyes were deceiving him. 

The man entered the lift and greeted Alex along with the other three in the elevator. He had such a towering personality that Alex felt dwarfed in front of him. That was none other than Bob, the president of the division Alex worked for. This was the man Alex never thought he would meet in person ever! Bob looked at the ID tag on Alex, called out his name and had a quick chat about his department and how he liked his job. The few moments Bob spent with them in the elevator, turned out to be a defining moment for Alex. He did not even know what got him. But he knew one thing for sure, he was motivated beyond anything else ever in his three years in the organization. Alex returned home as a highly charged up employee and remained that way forever. The aura had its effect on him!

I am sure we all had been in the shoes of Alex, one way or other in our organizations at some point in our lives. Proximity, when it comes to leadership, plays a significant role, especially in an era when we see offices becoming more distant than ever. 

Now, the big question here could be, who do we think is right? Bob or Jim? Is this even a topic of discussion? For both, there is something right in their own ways of working. Eventually, it boils down to the personality of the leaders. Each one of us needs to have a clear understanding of our personalities and build ways of working that suits us. Else we may end up as someone who tried to get into the shoes of others which did not even fit us, not to even mention how awkward it looked.

We may work for organizations where we see Bobs and Jims of the world. Learn to appreciate them for what they are. All what is required from us is, when it is our turn, ensure that we adapt a leadership style that fits the best for us.

The Wooden Throne

Imagine you are a VP in an organization managing operations at one of the Latin American countries. One day, you get a call from the headquarters in Europe to join an urgent meeting with the rest of the VPs. 

Before even you knew it, you are appointed as the CEO of the parent company. The position comes with a unique authority which is absolutely unquestionable. That was not all. You are to lead an enterprise that has its nerve centre in a country for which you are even the Head of the State! 

Now let us talk about the geographical spread of the firm. There are probably only a handful of countries in the world where you do not have your offices and operations established. Needless to say, the revenue generated and assets owned by all these entities are quite formidable. It is worth mentioning the numerous priceless historical artefacts the firm owns by virtue of being a vital part of world history for more than two thousand years. 

You can stop imagining now. Let us talk reality. What I pictured above is just a glimpse of what Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio went through on 13 March 2013 when he was proclaimed Pope, the Head of Catholic Church, as 266th successor of St Peter.

One word to define him: Reformer!

Enough had already been spoken about him. I would love to share just one personal experience that deeply influenced me. Soon after he was elected, in one of the initial public addressing, Pope Francis made a small change which created a significant and lasting impact on people across the world. He discarded the traditional grand papal throne and replaced it with a simple white wooden chair. A message that was loud and clear. Far better than a million words put together to convey the need for simplicity and change. 

Leaders such as these come rarely. Probably once a century. But the legacy they leave lasts forever!

Papa, may your soul rest in eternal peace 🙏🏼