Leaders need to demonstrate what they say

When I try to learn from my peers, juniors and leaders, I hear a lot from them in the name of leadership, integrity, Openness, broadmindedness, team spirit and Professionalism etc.

Some of the simple observations I made indicate the need to question the authenticity of the leaders who talk more about these parameters. Many people like me are victims in many situations by simply talking these words as they are and unknowingly they become the target due to the hipocrocy of the same leaders. For example, if such hipocrite leader invites open criticism, you - like any innocent person provides some frank feedback about a few areas of improvement and the leader in general appreciates your frankness in public but will keep you in the hit list. You will never know about it in your circle and probably you share your excitement of the attention you received from the leader during the feedback and the kind of appreciation you received. You only realize the effect when you find yourself in the corner, when no leader picks you up for any role and you may be shocked when you come to know that all your managers were internally building negative opinion due to your "Open" feedback. But are'nt they claim to be encouraging such "Openness". The truth is any humanbeing likes Open feedback about anyone else but not about themselves. The same will be case when these pseuodo leaders talk about integrity, collaboration, and team spirit. Such leaders talk about collaboration when they are the beneficiaries. They talk about flat organization to others but worry about even mean things like possessing Cabins, Laptops, and Corporate Cell Phones.

If you ask for a title, you are a power savvy, but they cry for a cabin. And some of them write nasty exit letters when they leave the organization for reasons like not getting promotion or not liking to report to someone whom they believe as inferior.

I wanted to share a funny incident that really happened in one of my previous companies. There were two leaders always talking about team spirit and talking very low about hierarchical working style. Incidentally both of them were close allies to the Director of the company and came in to the organization through simple nomination rather than any recruitment process.

Whenever someone approaches them for concerns like Promotion, Hike, or good workplace they were eager to tell the associates about how low is their thinking and explain that why comes first than the individuals. While both of them have great differences among themselves they have this one common factor like many hypocrite leaders.

One leader came from Airforce Background (Wing Commander) and joined as a Consultant I want to call him as WC from now. Other leader is from Army (Colonel) and he too joined as a Consultant. I will call him Col.Both of them used to sit in adjacent cubicles. From the day one, the WC kept on talking low about the colonel because he as Wing Commander is higher ranked compared to Army Colonel (I dont understand why it matters when they are no longer colonels nor wing commanders!).

One fine morning, the colonel became the joint director (probably because he is more close to the director than his enemy :) and he desperately needed visitors place and the best place he found was the Cubicle of WC. When the WC went for a training, the highly enthusiastic Colonel got the cubicle vacated and made it as the visiting place for the Joint Director (for him). And he asked the Office assistant to move all the stuff of WC to another Cabin (better than Cubible ofcourse as per the standards of these leaders) and started using the visitor space.
When the WC came once to the office in the middle of training, he was surprised to see his place converted to visitor's place. He instead of checking with the right person (his enemy Col), enquired the office assistant on who did this and why. Poor office boy explained that it was the decision of Joint Director and showed him the wonderful work place (Cabin!!) elsewhere. Honestly that is much better place. But WC's Ego was hurt and he was probably upset simply because the movement happened without discussion.So he came at 8 AM in the week end (He never came to office before 10.30 AM in his life) and hurriedly moved all his stuff back to the original place. He asked the office boy to make all the changes and started sitting there even by ignoring the training. And I am afraid he was scared to go even to rest room as the place can be occupied by the respected Joint director again.

On the other hand, the Colonel came to office and noticed the change and started burning within himself. He called the boys and asked how it happened and was furious and fired the boys on why they obeyed WC's orders. He asked the boys to inform the Wing commander to vacate the space immediately shouting at them loudly ensuring that WC beside the cubicle can clearly hear what he said. But WC was quite determined and ignored all that and protected his space very well. the cold war went for 2,3 days and than the colonel sent a formal letter ordering the wing commander to vacate the place. The order dicated by him to the typist with as loud voice as possible and every word was clearly heard by WC. Still the typist typed the letter got it signed by COL and then circulated to Wing commander through internal dispatch process. It all took about a day while these two people were sitting side by side. However, the wing commander when received the order, tore it in to pieces and the eagerly watching colonel kept silent and continued to suffer from burning stomach.
Ultimately the Colonel talked to him and questioned him on how can a circular from Joint director can be ignored. Wing commander equally shouted and clearly communicated that he was ready to resign but can not vacate the work place. All juniors, office boys and even visitors had good entertainment on that day.
I do not want to elaborate on what happened later, because this is enough to explain how nastily can the socalled responsible and matured leaders behave for a work place. I wonder how these leaders have right to talk to any of their team members about some unknown terms like Professionalism, Integrity, Official protocol, commitment and other silly words that these people dont even understand.
I see some of my colleagues in the career who worried about their cabins, laptops and the company cell phones more than their life. There was one colleague who invited medical emergency when he was informed to vacate his cabin for accomodating a critical project team member.
I came across another leader who was desperate to have coffee but could not have it because the office boy was not available for 2 hours (For him, going to Coffee machine and getting a cup of coffee is not leadership. A new dimension ! )
I personally believe that a leader needs to first know how to be led, how to behave exemplary rather than making statements that he / she doesnt practice.

Why did I write this?

For some entertainment to myself :)

Youth demonstrates only destructive unity?

Once again I am choosing a debatable topic. This relates to the current scenario where youth are playing active role in burning buses, destroying other public properties, beating innocent people in the name of fighting for justice. While I dont want to discuss the genuineness of the cause for which these socalled youth especially students, I want to ask a few questions.
Did they try to fight when several innocent people died due to twin bomb blasts in our state? Did they think of atleast knowing the truth when one individual allegedly eaten up crores of public money? How many of them tried to question the government on how the funds are getting utilized? Do they believe only mass attacks without really knowing why are they doing? Did they ever try to control rapidly increasing street dogs in the city?

If they cant show civic sense in many day to day issues, how can they claim to be representing a cause about which they have no clue on how can it eliminate the problems. I am sure if I pick one of them and ask them to explain he or she wont have any proper answer. All they knew is moving with sticks and doing some thing sensational without sense.

I feel pity of the parents who might not be having control on their kids.

I again repeat, I am not expressing my opinion on the issue and as long as people fight with clarity on why they are doing, and if it is performed properly there is no objection at all. If people are clear about the issue, whatever the incidents we hear and watch in TV would not occur at all.

Youth is powerful and with such strength, it can do wonders to improve the society. If this energy is not channelized properly the results are most disasterous.

Media more harmful than terrorists?

Many of my friends know I hate media. I hate even the statements like "Pen is mightier than sword" and rather believe the current current media is more harmful than the terrorists.
Probably I am inviting debatable discussion but feel this is a valid topic to discuss and do something about it. There was a time when Rajiv Gandhi used to say "Hamen Dekhna Hai" while the viewers who had no choice but watching Door Darshan were saying "Hamen Nahi Dekhna Hai". That was when the proposal to introduce Prashara Bharathi Bill was well received by many. I was one of them because I also was seeing only SAARC meetings and Rajiv's speches in DD News and nothing else.

But I and if I believe many of my friends need to swallow the words and accept that whatever bad Door Darshan may be, but the TV Channels needed the kind of governance existing in DD.
The recent 26/11 shows there were many supporters in India who helped the terrorists for killing innocents in Mumbai. I sincerely feel more than any one, it was media which helped them the max. They showed everything of rescue and attacking operations through TV. While Commandoes were trying to interact through Signals, the media was very busy to show every moment of their's to improve their viewership and helping the terrorist supporters know what is happening. If this is called the strength of Media it is more harmful than Terrorism and more mean than Prostitution.
I remember an incident in Mumbai when two girls were abused by a mob. they must have felt quite humiliated after that unfortunate incident but more humiliation happened when the Media competed to show the snaps and provide as much description as possible to explain how they were ill treated. While they justify masking the faces of girls their spouses were still in the photos clearly telling everyone in the world about who were the vicitims of this shameful action. And media tried to justify they are doing their duty in taking the snaps in another incident when a specific community was beaten up on roads. Can they do the same if the person getting beaten is their relative? And what if the person dies? With this justification they may even do the coverage of killing of any person in the name of "doing duty".
Recently Politician was physically attacked by some barbarious people. More than that, I hated the people who were desparately positioning their cameras to capture how badly the person was being hit. Given a choice I may prefer to punish these people rather than those who really hit the politician. The fact that these people really wait in the sensitive area for incidents to capture and contribute to increase the viewership of their TV Channels. What if some of these people are hit by me and if I ask the cameramen to cover the incident?
What happened in the first week of new year 2010? Some channels discussed toomuch about a rumour published in a Russian magazine and discussed to such extent that a company's properties were attacked. The attacks were definitely not from the public and were doctored by a few antisocial groups. But the TV Channels are the triggers to these incidents right?
Media manipulates the news. I remember the incident in US when some of my friends stayed 1 year after a terrorist- who involved in 911 incident vacated the same house. The Police wanted to investigate and hearing that the Media met a few neibours and asked about our friends. Unfortunately my friends vacated the house 1 week before 911 incident to another house in the next lane of the same colony. When Media asked, the neibors said that these people used to talk in strange language and a couple of times, they heard the word White House. However one of their colleague was also interviewed by Media during that time, when he revealed that the people actually were his colleagues and that they were staying only in the next lane. And you know, Media omitted this piece of information when telecast because the whoe excitement will be lost. It created terror to my friends and they were worried for several days till they got confirmation from Police that their investigation is routine and they knew the terrorist left long time back. All the Police wanted to verify was to see if any evidence be available from this house.
But what is the contribution of media in this episode? What if some mad crowd attacked these people with such bad input from Media?
I feel there needs to be more governance on Media especially the News Channels. the kind of provoking and violent movies shown in other channels only come next to New channels.

PMI Conference: A National Event

I recently presented a paper in PMI Conference. The event took lot of time, and I tired a lot for various reasons and being sick, still motivated to attend the sessions for one and only one reason. And it was not about presenting my paper. The motivation was because of the way the event was organized.
the curtain raiser was a great presentation following our National Anthem "Vande Matharam". The vision about 2020 talked about some of the great facts about India. India is the country who invented the ZERO, the numbering system. We are the country where World's cheapest cars was made through indigenous innovation. The Session also mentioned about Mahatma Gandhi one of the greatest leaders ever born in this universe. And with many foreign delegates present, there was no hesitation to be proud about our country, including singing both the national anthems, unlike some pseuodo intellectuals who were worried about foreigners getting embarassed about we singing our National Anthem.
Patriotism is something that is the right of all of us. And demonstrating it doesnt need any special forum and any hesitation. Thats where I saluted the event.
While we have our own issues like high population, poverty, lack of education while most of them depending on many others, we are still united and determined to improve. Identifying project management as one of the important driver for the development of this country is very good point and is something to work on.
Personally I feel, the root cause is Population which urges the people to go for short cuts in wherever they needed to compete among toomany players. Thats where the corruption starts. And thats where people ask for reservations without real education. When more people live in less space lot of resources needed to be shared but the urge for survival forces burglary. In addition, the health issues comeup as toomuch population cant assure hygene.
HOWEVER, project management being order of life, some of the issues can be overcome. For example, if I plan my travel properly I dont need to bribe the Ticket Collector for a berth in the train. It also saves you a lot of costs which you may need to pay as premiums while doing the things in the last minute. Cost Management- part of the Project Management can help you improve your reserves and use them in right place. A good quality avoids bad investments and more value for less money in short time (as there will be no rework).
I have seen costs being shot up in events like marriages, just because Project management techniques were not applied.
I will definitely be part of this initiative of cascading the PM culture everywhere. I know it is difficult but not impossible.

What is our Social Responsibility?

My daughter needed help from me for reading news in her school. She came with news items and asked my opinion on how to read. While giving the guidance like how to start and how to give relevant expression in subtle manner as per the context of new item, I also wanted to give my opinion on the kind of news she can share.
Should we speak about Yedyurappa's political instability and the unfortunate killing of US Soldiers?
I didnt know what are the norms set by her school for such events, but guess the news must cover the categories like political, technical and sports etc.
I still wanted to be a bit eccentric as many people know.
I asked her to downplay the news item (as given in NDTV) of Yedyurappa who stated that he was forced to ditch some loyalists in the process of establishing stability in Government. I asked her to read it somewhat like the Crisis in Karnataka ends as Chief Minister made an assuring statement. In similar way, I asked her to read the news in AP in the lines like Congress is now united and want to work for win in Greater Hyderabad.
Than, in the sports section I asked her to highlight the success of Viswanathan Anand and Sachin emphasizing that Sky is the limit for performance.
I also asked her to mention Mistry's innovative Product Sixth Sense under technology. In addition, I asked her to include the miracle baby survived with heart outside body.
The reason why I wanted to spend more time is to ensure the discussions will be more healthy. There will be lot of hurting incidents that keep happening. While there are many reasons for that, one of the major cause in my opinion is the broughtup and lack of healthy thinking.
If you have two pieces of information like "innovation like Sixth Sense" and a hurting incident, I prefer to share the first one and ignore the second. I feel the media also must do the same. As long as they give more space of headlines for bad events, these events keep happening. Whereas many good and motivating events are not attracting the attention of us.
I want my kids and her friends to have the healthy habit of discussing good topics and improve hopes on change towards optimism.
Not sure how many of you agree.

People Management: Some strange issues

As a people manager I faced many issues in dealing with my team members. I was known as (as stated by one of my peers), some one who passionately supported the team. But more than this, I was also known as an aggressive manager. Either because of my concern about the career progress of each and every team member or because I was not happy with the kind of progress that the team members are unable to match to my expectations, I used to push the team a lot to deliver without providing much to relax. While there used to be a few team lunches and a couple of cricket matches more the team remembered were about the frank feedback I provided to them.


This is where I wanted to mention about the beautiful observation by my leader Sriram Papani. He very rightly pointed out that nowadays the youth are unable to digest the constructive feedback as they are not used to it.
The root cause is because they were regularly pampered by their parents, aunts, uncles and great parents at any age. If they paint a picture that is the greatest in the world. If the girl sings she is just another Latha Mangeshkar. If the boy writes a poem he is at par with Ravindra Nath Tagore. There was no feedback on how they can improve. There was also no mentoring from the parents on the fact that there can always be someone better than their kids. While this whole explanation looks quite simple, it was not acknowledged till Sriram stated in his own perfect style.

And when the kids go to school there is same scenario. In the name of keeping away sensitive matters the schools give only grades and no marks. And the teachers design the rewarding in such a way that every student gets some or other appreciation or distinction. One may get best singer award and the other the best painter. In all the cases no constructive feedback. I need to make a disclaimer that I dont say all schools are this way. But the outcome is same. My kid comes and shows an article and says she received a great pat on the back by her pricipal. The article looks ordinary even at my kid's standard and I felt like giving some feedback on how it can be made better. My kid didnt like. Probably I am too cynic as some people say. But even at smaller scale the kids needs to know that there is scope for improvement everywhere. right? and there can be some people who may perform better than themseleves. Right? How long can we cheat them?
Once I heard the theory of Sriram, I started observing what is happening in my surroundings. What he said was no exaggeration at all. And I am no exception. My daughter comes to me and shows something she made for a project work and she said the teacher did not like it. Immediately I heard my wife criticizing the teacher. My wife felt the teacher must have encouraged my daughter. I discussed with my daughter and understood there was some good feedback from the teacher and it was surprise because even in schools I am seeing Star ratings to my kids every day. The teachers were saying that the kids are getting disappointed if star is not given. In such environment I felt this is a different teacher who wanted to give some feedback but for obvious reasons my daughter didnt like her.

A sensitive issue but this atleast needs some acknowledgement by parents and others. And one couple cant resolve this,without the support of others. If we do not teach the realities how can these generations survive. The kids need to know that there will be some areas where compromization is needed while the general attitude need not be accepting everything. The kids need to compete but in right spirit and must learn appreciating the other's success as well.

Probably this is the reason why I see some of my team members unable to digest the feedback. I took the help of my HR and explained the need for HR to take it as a serious trend and must manage in the induction. Let me see how it works.

Common Sense: Is it really Common?

Common Sense: Is it really Common?

I thought of sharing peculiar inferences from some of my observations. They all concluded that common sense is something very rare to see or I can say the most uncommon.
A few years back I participated in a management game where we - a 20 member team were asked to say numbers from 1 to 100. Each person says the next number to the number said by the neibour but whenever the number has 3 in it, or if it is multiple of 3, the member needs to clap instead of saying. We failed to complete all 100 numbers continuously even after 5 attempts. The observation is that every person says only 5 numbers in this process, and he or she knows what is going to be the next number to say (by adding 20 to the number he or she said). There was no need to look at what each member was saying. All he had to do is saying his number (which he already knows) once his neibour finishes. After 2 attempts I proposed this, but there was such a strong reluctance that one member said it was quite confusing.
Same is the observation in the traffic. If every driver looks at front and right of the vehicle while driving, will there be any confusion? But if you say this, everyone says how can we forget left and rear ? What is the guarantee that the others also look at front and rear? If we needed to be safe, dont you think we need to look everyside? All are valid points but is it difficult to start when the traffic guides say this is the practice? Did we all learn driving properly? If not, can we atleast show common sense that it is less likely to meet with accidents if all our focus is limited only to Front and rear instead of all sides? If you look at 4 sides there is a possibility that you always miss 3 sides anytime. If all of us practice what traffic guides say, you may miss only 1 side that too partially. You still need to look at rear if you want to stop suddenly or if you are taking a turn, but not always. And I didnt invent this. This practice was what is taught and documented.
Third observation is about how we treat the sincere people. In any business how do you plan for your profitability? Take a case of Credit card services. They look at the costs of defaulters along with other costs like service costs, sales etc, while calculating the profitability and decide their charges accordingly. To make it more clear, they put the costs of losses from non-payment of customers and try to recover from the revenue received from other (sincere) customers. So if you are making punctual payments you are also making the component related to the loss from the other defaulting customers. Do you get any reward for being punctual or loyal? Not sure if every vendor rewards you. But it is sure you paying more for other's faults.
Similar is the case about how we look at punctual people. If I schedule a meeting to start at 10 AM, I may find only 50% of the people joining sharp at 10.00 AM. What is my default action? I will request all the people to wait for 10 minutes till others join. Who benefits from this? the defaulters who join late. Where as the punctual people are at loss. Did we ever acknowledge this
?
What happens in our domestic dealings? My wife attends my son more than the daughter because my daughter compromises and understands what we explain, but my son is adamant and wants what he asks. What are we conveying in this process to our daughter? Did we try to acknowledge our daughter's understanding behavior and reward her? In our case may be Yes, but we ourselves are not able to digest if she also refuses to compromise some times, and that was when we acknowledged her good characteristics and ask her not to deviate from them :)

There are many losses in our life at various degrees when we do many things just by not thinking and blindly following the patterns. Probably if we start thinking the world may change.

A Change for betterment?

Today I got an SMS from Loksatta the group in which I joined a few weeks ago, that the team is distributing clothes to the flood victims and requested all of us to cooperate. I spoke to someone and got the details of place where I can handover the clothes. I gathered the old clothes from my house and collected some from others in the colony. While going to the office of Loksatta, I was having my own doubts as this is a community which has support only from a few so called intellectuals.But when I went it was not that bad. I was not alone and there was heavy rush of people from many places and different professionals. I met one medical shop employee, a building architect and a plumber among many people who were all volunteering to help me in taking out the packs from my car boot. None of them belonged to the party but they were all helping. Someone asked if I can pay some donation as well. As I was not prepared for it, I said I will send the check and asked for the address. But he was kind enough to offer that he would come and collect from me. Again he is not Party member and is someone like me, who is hoping for a change and trusting loksatta as the change agent. there were just 2,3 staff who probably belonged to the office while all others from several places are enthusiastic to contribute for a good cause. I remembered the days when I worked for RSS and did similar work for flood victims in the 80's. RSS members were quite energetic, honest and effcient to reach the victims first while all others including the Government took more time. We in fact went with Roti's collected by almost everyone in the quarters and took them to the flood victims at our own cost. RSS never used the donations given by the people for their own travel nor food. Instead we all spent our own for managing our needs. Our leader told that the money given was for the victims and each paisa must be spent only for them.Those days we were all children of parents earning hand to mouth with little savings and all we had was willingness to contribute but without finances.Today I am seeing similar efforts but this time it is from more capable people with more financial strength and energy. Why cant I think it is a sign of change towards improvement for the country. I dont belong to Loksatta Party but I believe in some of their approaches. Who knows? This institution which I dont want to call as a political party, may be the agent to implement the real change the country wanted.

What inspired me to Blog?

Before I start anything, I need to mention that the inspiration to start the blog of my own came from Punchagan. Punchagan used the blog very effectively for organizing and presenting the thoughts instead of venting out at wrong place, provided me a hint on how I can take the direction.
Nothing is a wrong candidate to discuss in the blog, as long as it is presented well. In Punchagan's blog I noticed that there is a way to share everything and make some meaningful inferences.
An incident about a person in stretcher while travelling in the train, feelings about some awkward questions in the interview and a few more which I may not take the liberty to mention here as it is quite personal. But the point is that blog is a good medum when leveraged effectively.
Now let me exploit the power of blog.