What Superwoman Lilly Singh taught me about Life, and Management

5,747,586 – that’s how many subscribers Lily Singh a.k.a Superwoman has! I was at her last show in India a couple days ago, and my ear drums are still ringing with the constant screaming of some 800 kids – mainly girls, who showed me what stereotypical celebrity concert hysteria is!

I had a very interesting and illuminating time actually – there was a pre concert “meet and greet”, where I saw teenagers crying and hyperventilating at the thought of meeting their idol, and then there were folks who came upto my kids and said – hey, we are making a vlog – come join. The kids then sang some snippets of things that seemed to afford them great entertainment. (For those interested, that vlog is called chicken tikka brothers) On the ride back, I asked the kids in the car – what was the difference between a vlog and a youtube channel; and they ALL – including my 9 year old, told me – the blog is just about her life, following her, what she does everyday etc; while the youtube channel is the funny videos she makes that made her famous. In the YT channel, she stages it – puts lights, has a table, has a good camera etc. So I asked them why then wd she have both? Why not only one? And the young one told me – Ma, not all subscribers are fans . So, NOT everyone is interested in following her life! Early lessons to learn on social media, huh!

Then also followed this very interesting discussion on “who’s the youtuber you follow most?” Names like PewDiePie (who has some — hold your breath — THIRTY SEVEN MILLION subscribers!!! What does he do? put up videos of himself gaming, apparently!), Tyler Oakley, 6.9 mil, who started the channel primarily on LGBT issues, but has since broadened – and was even on the Ellen Show, Zoella, 8.2 mil, who makes videos on beauty tips, Miranda Sings, 4 mil, who is the SAME apparently, only an off-kilter avatar, as Colleen Ballinger running PsychoSoprano – 2.4 mil subscribers! Then there are travel guys like JacksGap, 4 mil, music guys like KurtHugo Schneider, 4 mil, and Collins Key, 400K, on magic.

Then the little one had her own favourites to contribute – Bethany Mota, 8.7 mil, who basically puts DIY tips type stuff, Rosanna Pansino, 3.9 mil, who makes cooking videos, Merrelltwins, 292K who write on I don’t know what, Jacy and Kacy, 231k, who run craft and cooking tips, and “challenges” – “challenges” are the BIG thing – bad food challenge, rainbow loom challenge, make up challenge etc. etc.

But, for me, the whole experience brought forth some very interesting lessons/ parallels:

a) Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown:
It’s a pity, but popularity comes with its own onus of responsibility! I googled Lilly Singh post the show, and she pops up FIRST as motivational speaker! And truly, part of the show was about happiness (her “happy place” is Unicorn island, which is the name of her tour), and how kids should believe in themselves; and how she picked herself up post severe depression, and how life is hard, but you most probably will get to see your dreams fulfilled if you work really really hard – but that being said, the hardest piece of work she ever did was to pick her up from depression and learn to be happy.

I was like – woooaaaah – THIS is the funny Lilly Singh? But, then my daughter told me – “ma, she gets millions of letters fromm people who were very depressed and they tell her that watching her videos made them get out of depression, and cancer patients who tell her listening to her make them feel so much better etc…“.

But I was like – omg, poor kid! Here she was, just trying to have a good time, and then she is saddled with this whole 6 mil people, and she cannot say trashy stuff, and she cannot let them down…blah blah blah.

Folks in any kind of leadership position in any role will empathise – the minute you have fans/ followers/ subordinates/ children – you jolly well watch each and every thing you do/ say/ eat etc…as a senior leader in the org that took over my startup once told me, I really want you and your co founders to join me leadership – it’s really lonely at the top!

On this note, I just read this article on Kangana Ranaut declining an ad endorsement deal for INR 2 crores coz she didnt want to propogate the idea of fair skin! Way to go, and that’s a true example of responsibility beding executed well

b) Brand Reputation – and its sphere of influence:
So, as opposed to the screaming hyperventilating, sometimes crying teenagers, I was viewing the show on its own merit – I watch a lot of shows, and don’t watch a lot of youtube. So, to me, each of her famous lines were NOT famous, and her clever references, just words! What that meant was that i wasn’t in it for the celebrity/ fan-dom thingie at all, but just to watch a stand up comic-ish person.
Now, don’ get me wrong, I like her videos – I think she is funny, has a knack for hitting the right spot, and is very good at mimicry. But, as a stand alone performance her SHOW was , I wd say, just average! Then what price the screaming hysterical kids? Even post show, every child I spoke to, luuurrrved her/ thought she was rilly rilly funny etc..
I figured it was because she has built up a super image and fan base – so she cd get by, by just “referring to” her popular stuff on her videos – whether it is her collaborator Humble the poet and their songs, e.g., IVIVI, her parent characters, Paramjeet Singh (who says don’t wear Mini skirts and don’t talk to boys, and eat “jogurt”; and Manjeet Singh (who gives tips for spicyness and “seskiness”) , her superwoman gestures….whatever. After all, when the audience is in a mood to be overwhelmed, they WILL be.

It’s like the parallel with brands – they spend megabucks on advertising to build a brand – so that, sometimes when the actual product is not so great, the brand carries it through (for a while Google Glass maybe could be placed in this category. Oh btw, did you know that Google Glass may be coming back?). Or, in services examples, say Accenture builds up this formidable rep, and post that wins many deals on rep alone (nyaaahhh, doesn’t happen – but deal making does becaome easier)

The catch here is ofcourse that real brand value has to be delivered sooner rather than later. In this case, I’m sure it will be. But, does make you think about brand building, reputation and extensions (talking about “joghurt”, remember cosmopolitan yogurt?)

c) RFC:
You’ve got to hand it to these youtubers – they really know the mantra for global appeal – and now even I’ve figured it out! You have to be either funny, (Superwoman is very very funny on her videos), “cool” – now this is a relatively more difficult to describe word, or well, not to decsribe coz we all know what cool is to us; but to enact/ BE! But I am guessing cool becomes cool more by outcome than by the input/ action – so it’s how your peers and idols behave when faced with this aspiring cool thing that determines if a thing is cool. But I also see, that most often, success comes with REAL stuff – stuff that’s straight from the heart, stuff that resonates with the audience and is not faked. To give kids their due, today’s kids are very very quick at detecting “fake” – and they react therefore positively to stuff that’s NOT. Lilly spoke about true life experiences, and touched upon stuff that ALL in the audience, whether 9 yr old like my young one, 14 like my older one, or close to 50 like their mom – could nod at!
(An interesting side piece of analysis seems to be that most of the youtubers I mentioned above are 26 – is that the sweet spot age for success?)
This I think is a great lesson for management folks, and also advertisers – actually, why stop there – parents, teachers, husbands, wives, you name it! It’s best to be atleast 2 out of the RFC trio to create success – but obviously, the R is the most important – it lets you reach people, and, as I have said before, it really is about the people!

d) The Art of the Split Personality
In our time, what you saw was what you got – maybe we had a school face and a home face, but that was it! Now, one has (and maybe should have), a school group 1 face, a teacher face, a school group 2 face, a home face, a facebook face, a snapchat face, a whatsap one, a linkedin face, a vine, a youtube, a …a….a! (Btw, as you may remember from my earlier post, each face SHOULD behave differently atleast in the social media channels!
Lilly Singh, has what the kids called, her “parent” personalities – each of them is her obviously, each of them now has independent twitter, and what she called “instantgram” handles. Each of them (or, well, she dressed up as each of them), promoted and asked for subscription to, each of these handles. Each of them exists in a parallel universe!
Now, dont get me wrong, split or even multiple personalities are as old as time. From Vishnu’s dash-avatar or 10 incarnations; to Jekyll and Hyde; to Batman/ Bruce Wayne or Superman/ Clark Kent or Spiderman/ Peter Parker, we are familiar with all of them. But never have all personalities existed simultaneously – which brings me to the question – how do these kids deal with these? Is it a generational cohort thing? or just a byproduct of technology? And more worrying to me as a parent, what then is constant? (And, to refer to an earlier thread, how do they which is REAL?)
This btw, spins traditional marketing completely on its head, doesn’t it? STP – who do you target if the target is multiple? do you disambiguate this multiple personalities, or address each separately? If former, or even if latter, which ones?

e) New styles of Marketing:
i) Marketing is getting more aggressive – witness multiple avatar handles marketed at same time; promo tours; the whole digital landscape
ii) Its more crowd sourced – The entity being marketed doesn’t necessarily have to do it themselves – there are apps/ twitter handles/ vlogs ….AND people taking selfies/ pictures all the time to post
iii) Younger and younger kids now understand it

So the question seems to be – are kids getting stuff too early? is success/ gratification/ the trappings of the material world coming too early? Isn’t it better if kids remained kids?

Also, in the whole hurry to take pictures and post them, aren’t the kids missing out on the beauty of what the naked eye sees and remembers? Out of the 800 show attendees, atleast 90% had the video/ photo stuff on ALL the time (intact, Lilly even said – guys, you watch my videos on the net all the time- now that I’m here, watch me LIVE)

All in all, it was a super evening – the kids met an idol and were part of a hysterical mob and I learnt many things about kids and kids in mobs and youtubing and vlogs.
I think, all else notwithstanding, Superwoman is quite amazing, and, as I told her during the meet and greet – the world needs more like her!

Limiting Factors, Outliers, Managing Perception; and… Parenting!

Parenting is, arguably, world’s toughest job!

The next probably is working out/ losing weight

And ofcourse, after that is managing a large work force 🙂

The correlation is not apparent – but, will be soon enough.

This thought actually got sparked off this morning as I was in my Aerobics class. I realised that over the one year I’ve been attending these classes, my trainer (and good friend) has considerably upped the level of the exercise regimen. This is actually sensible, since the bulk of her class is regulars – and obviously with continuous exercise, general fitness levels have increased – hence higher challenge levels required..In fact most students are now actively into running.

But, what I also realised is that N aims her class at the “stars” in the class – those as-fit-as-her, and as-Nazi-ish-about-fitness-as-she-is, people. Again, understandable, since those stars are a) able to follow the regimen best, b) show the effects best, but most importantly, c) challenge her to work harder at the training.

However, a corollary of N “speaking” to the best is that I get the feeling (probably unwarranted) that she doesn’t then focus so much on the “lesser beings” – people like me. I also ofcourse always rationalise it by telling myself that anyway I am “cheating” – i.e., doing many of the routines at less than 100% compliance – and, at least, looking at the stars keeps the benchmark always within sight. Having said that, I still sometimes feel that when I DO manage to get to the 100% level, it would be great if I would get those treasured words of praise fm the trainer – “well done”. But, my image of being the lesser being probably colors then the trainer’s view of me, and then she doesn’t look at me as often as she does at the stars, and so misses the occasional stellar performances I do manage and so I don’t do as well maybe next time…and so…and so…

(When she DOES utter the “good job, S!” magic words, I am tempted to work harder/ cheat lesser/ push myself more)

Interestingly, this is a direct contrast to what I do when I teach English to a 4th/5th grade class at a Kannada medium government school. Generally, most of my attention goes towards the “row 1” students – those that find it difficult to grasp most lessons, knowing that if they “get” most of the lesson, the rest certainly will!

Now, how does this fit in with parenting?

As with most parents, I have 2 kids who are diametrically apart in temperament, behavior, likes, dislikes, strengths and improvement areas. One is a dreamer, the other is a doer. One is a morning person, the other has to be dragged out of bed after loooong nights reading. One likes chinese food, the other doesn’t touch noodles — and so on.

But strangely enough, one lesson I found myself repeating for both in recent times is that of – self image, and perception management related to it.

Started with younger child – she is a fiend if you ever had one. Loud, brash, the world-is-my-friend, don’t-care-about-anything, finds-humour-in-everything kind of fiend. Bright actually, but “does” terribly at school – I have been called to school at least 6 times in the past 2 years for would-be-grave one-on-one lectures by her teachers (“would be” because I refuse to be cowed down by these strictures on the child). Each teacher tells me – “knows everything, if only she would be neater in her work, submit her work on time, not get distracted and want to go for frequent toilet breaks etc etc…) Now, by the way, P WORKS at this image – she thinks its cool to be brash/ funny/ don’t care-ish.

However, this post is not about what to do with children like this (though that is a real problem for sure), but the problem that occurs as a result – ofcourse, a few teachers “get” the underlying personality of the child, I am thankful to say – however, many of them believe the image is reality – and treat her accordingly! So, if there is a disruption in the class, most fingers point at P. More importantly, once branded with the image of “casual worker”, when she does turn it better work, its sometimes not noticed – and on the few occasions that she is serious about some stuff in school, there is a chance she gets overlooked.

P and I have had frequent serious chats about “how to manage” your image or perception (in so many words!). These serious chats are peppered with examples of her two “best friends” – one of whom is truly a “good child” and is widely recognised for that, and the other is more like P, but has managed to retain an image of a “good child” (in their lexicon ofcourse, to be branded “good” is probably almost abuse! 🙂 )

Older child faced this too – she used to be keen on Indian classical dance when younger. As she entered her teens, interests changed – and she is now passionate about dramatics. But, her lingering image of “dancer” leads school to pick her for dance related events and not theatre. Being older, and after some counseling, she did manage to assert her interests – and is now a happy camper. But the point is, this “change of image” took some doing!

Now think about organisations – doesn’t this happen there too? How often have you had complaints at appraisal time from folks saying – “my manager doesn’t think I am good enough – and so has not given me x or y job”. It’s probably true, because in the natural order of things, the manager WILL pre select those he or she thinks are the best bets for any given job – thats what managers do – they “optimize” or “manage” resources. The question, however is, how much of that “image” is reality and how much just perception not directly related to reality?

A related point here is then – as the trainer/ teacher/ manager/ leader, do you address the “stars” or the “dogs”, or do you stay somewhat in the middle – my favourite – the golden mean!

Nature certainly selects the “fittest” – if Darwin is to be believed! (the fittest evolve into next generations while the others gradually die down) So, my trainer and P’s teachers seem to have precedent! Incidentally, I find this Theory of evolution video immensely funny! :

But, actually, on the other hand, nature ALSO looks at the lowest common multiple – think about Limiting factors in Photosynthesis ( the rate of photosynthesis is limited by the least amount of necessary resource available – see video for a slightly long winded reminder):

And ofcourse, in most organisations we work neither at the highest nor the lowest but at the average. This is what the bell curve does for you – it force-fits everyone in the organisation into a mean +/- standard deviation curve – and treats exceptionally the outliers. The problem with that? Think about the statistician who drowned while crossing a river that was on average 6 inches deep! (A nice explanation of averages – and what outliers do to them can be found if you click on the link)

In a diametrically opposite view, Malcolm Gladwell made famous his theory of outliers – where he correlated success to the amount of time spent working at that skill, and some factors not quite under control of the protagonists.

The question arising from of all of this dilatory musing is really this:

If you are a leader/ parent/ trainer: Do you focus on the outliers, or the average in terms of managerial/ parental/ teacher attention. And, if the former, should it be the “LCM” (those who need extra input); or the “HCF” (in other words, the stars).

If you are the led/ managed/ taught: How do I get a sense of whether I am LCM, average of HCF – BEFORE painful yearly evaluation sessions/ how do I manage the perception of my being LCM if I am not/ how do I match my self perception to that of the outside world?

Any answers? Suggestions?

Meanwhile,

The problem of Least Common Multiple came forth funnily in the movie Father of the Bride. Enjoy!

Come on, Own Up, it IS your Monkey after all!

Classic situation at home: regular domestic help off sick, temp one hired. Big clash with housekeeper – about who should be doing what. I ask housekeeper/ nanny – why a certain thing didn’t happen – she said “Lakshmi didn’t do it”. Lakshmi ofcourse said – “I thought Tulasi amma would do it”

This one atleast I get, it is maybe my fault for not delineating responsibility squarely and clearly; and definitely Tulasi’s for not doing the same (she’s been with me long enough to know what her role is – individual as well as supervisory)

What I don’t get, and I see very often now, is this:
When we were growing up, school was where we “learnt” everything – The 3 Rs ofcourse (and later STEM), but also running, basketball, cricket, singing, dance, theatre, art, debating, etc etc. School tenure was shorter (8 to 1 pm I think), we came back by 2 pm, ate a hearty lunch, slept, played till the street lights came on, did H.W., ate again and slept. Nostalgia inducing though this itinerary probably is, the point is not about the simplicity of that era; it is about what school was responsible for. I did NO tuitions, NO extra dance class, NO drama class, NO tennis/ badminton class etc. Everyone did/ tried all activities, some showed natural inclination towards one rather than the other – and then were in general trained harder on those activities than the others were.

Cut to now. There is higher exposure to the kids in terms of avenues of “co curricular” activities (by the way, in our times, it was called “extra curricular” – the shift in terminology is symbolic, but only in talk, not walk!) and attendant competitive events where they get to test themselves, benchmark against others and (presumably) get egged on to perform better…But, the discovery of talent, as well as training/ honing – is ALL done at home! So, most kids start some form of classes after school from when they turn 3-4: craft/ art/ tennis/ keyboard/ guitar/ tennis/ basketball/ swimming/ theatre/ dance/ rock climbing/ fencing/ skating. And most also rotate all these around – so, a) kids do a different activity everyday, their calendar post school therefore being chock full; and b) they get “bored” of these activities sooner or later, and so hop skip and jump to another..then another…then another and so on.

Implied here is the obsessive nature of parents today, and maybe inability/ unwillingness to give their kids free time and/ or keep them entertained (me being a big culprit too) but again, that is NOT the point being made here.

The point is, if the kids are “learning”/ “honing” everything at home, what role does the school play? Admittedly, “education” nowadays has changed form – while in our time, it was “what you know”; it now is “can you find out/ solve” (thanks to the internet, and, google 🙂 ). Having said that, should schools not be the place where they are TAUGHT tennis, swimming, singing, dancing, drawing etc etc — rather than just the place to “aggregate” existing talents and then display them in competitive events – thereby earning laurels for the school?

So, with reference to an old/ classic HBR article, whose monkey is it? The school’s, right? Then why oh why is it being transferred to the parents?

Ofcourse we see this in the corporate scenario – I wrote an article a long time ago, on this, describing scenarios where the monkey keeps leaping onto diverse peoples’ backs.

Links to leadership styles in a way – Are you a “doer leader”, a “delegator leader”, a “shirker leader” (then actually you’re not a leader 🙂 ), the “team work leader”, the “wannabe leader” or the “pretend leader” :)..sounds familiar?

I do this all the time to my husband – my taxes get paid by him, the garage door when stuck gets opened by him, exotic chicken and lamb dishes when guests are coming for dinner get cooked by him. (Wait, that’s division of labour, not monkey passing!)

We are seeing a great example in Indian Politics currently – blame game, responsibility shirking, mud slinging, disruptiveness. And, in the context of monkeys, and politics, a cartoon I love – enjoy!

Leadership Change – Dealing With It

So Microsoft finally decided who their CEO should be, and all of the world has an opinion on it. Ofcourse, so does all of India – most are proud, some contemplative.

I haven’t come across a lot on what the employees of Microsoft (and the erstwhile Nokia) think, but it’s a good time to ruminate how leadership change affects us, and how we should ideally deal with it.

Let me start with an example from home – our kids keep having these discussion frequently on “who’s the boss of the house” – and, atleast for them, its a clearly established hierarchy with role definitions crystal clear. So, Riddhi is the boss of Achchu, Mamma is the boss of all kids’ activities and behavior, Babba has veto power – and so on. One of the things that changed this year was that Manoj became the boss of Riddhi’s studies (I was part-time doing this job earlier for whatever it was worth).
At nearly the end of the year – her grades have slipped drastically, and she is now an avowed and vocal hater of all things “studies”.

Now, Manoj, who typically is the first one to read all my blogs, will argue that it is the onset of teenage/ maybe friends dynamics/ too much interest in extra-curricular stuff/ a mean mother .. etc, that is responsible.

I agree, there probably will not be any correlation – probably just a series of unfortunate events. But, there IS a before-after situation here, if not a cause-effect one. Time for introspection for all of us.

I saw/ see this when my company EmPower got bought over by a large company. The biggest thing that worried us founders was how our 400 strong people would take this small-to-big change. The advantages were obvious – bigger brand name/ better training etc institutionalised resources available/ better growth prospects since wider pool……

Over 2 years post the acquisition – I still meet many folks who say – “Those were the days – sigh!”. Now, bit of nostalgia is expected, but I think this is more than a “desire-to-please”/ “glorify older times” phenomenon.

After all, between a very flexible/ agile and woman-at-the-top family style leadership culture, and a large process oriented delegatory style, there is a world of difference, some good and some bad. Also, I think what happens with a startup is that the senior leadership joins BECAUSE they like the startup culture – they’ve largely been there and done that in larger orgs. And, for the younger/ fresh inductees, it’s their first job, so their first experience with any form of organisational leadership culture, and so they kind of grow up knowing no other. Both cases make for lower adaptability to the opposite end of the spectrum. Net net, while a lot of our people are still at the company, I see many instances of those sighing for the older ways – and then there are those ofcourse that have quit (and still talk about their time at EmPower 🙂 ).

Not an unusual situation – I have seen, and am a part of many alum networks of companies that meet quite often (Gillette alum, EmPower alum, XGB to name a few)- so there IS a common affinity that exists.

By the way, to refer again to the companies I started this post with, some snips of my friends’ walls at the Nokia-Microsoft deal last year exemplify this as well :

“The shuttle moves on from helsinki to seattle. The only difference is not the ride but the crew would change and its interesting to see whats in store. …. Nokia the brand and culture still remains close to my heart.”

“So, this is what it feels like to witness the end of an era!”

“Had once told someone that its gonna end up as a case study either way. Never thought it’d be this soon”

And this article from leading Indian Financial Outlet was posted again and again..

To take a closer look at some common issues to consider regarding a leadership change:

When leadership change is a natural/ organic process – retirement/ voluntary switching CEO: While one is expected, and the other maybe not so, both probably have probably a scenario where the company is doing OK from a performance/ morale etc perspective. The question here is – continue with an insider/ try and preserve what is already happening; or opt for completely new blood/ change things around a bit.

While there is merit in the status-quo perspective, in most cases, influx of a new personality almost naturally implies new thinking – in many cases, because the new leader would NOT feel like (maybe even be,) a true leader if he did not leave his own imprint on the organization. I think it makes sense actually – I remember discussing succession at our company post integration with the larger organisation, and at the suggestion of one name with the defense that he would be able to maintain status quo, someone saying – no, status quo actually means regression as the world will move ahead!

Witness the number of changes that happen – even to hardcore strategic moves, when leadership changes! I was discussing unification of data (in the context of Master Data Management) with an ex Bankam employee, and he said that when he was there, Bankam tried to unify all their diverse legacy systems (a problem that faces most organisations – only, it existed in a higher degree in BankAm as BankAm is basically a conglomerate of many bought out companies). He said he quit BankAm after 2 years on this project; it’s been 7 years, and the project is still not done. One of the large reasons is – that there have been many leadership changes, and each leader has then accorded a different priority to the project!

Ofcourse, if the company has not been doing all that well, it is even more imperative to shake things around. In fact, this is one of the apprehensions regarding Nadella’s appointment – that the company required more newness – while Nadella signifies a bit of a “status quo” approach.

Incidentally, the other fear that public opinion has regarding Nadella is the fact that he has asked for Bill Gates to be brought back – this, while maybe is good for the company, may just prove not so good for N himself due to the Powerful founder overshadows CEO doubt.

Having said the above, imminent leadership change is very much the flavour of the moment in the Indian political scene. Two oldtime rivals are fielding “new” faces – one, the scion of the old almost royal political family, the other an extreme right wing conservative yet modern-in-his-approach emerging regional leader. And both these parties have now been challenged by a virtual upstart, a “common man”. It’s the battle of Namo vs. Raga vs. AAP – and we have to see who wins. Exciting times ahead for all!

(credit)

And oh btw, as I was publishing this, I came upon this amusing post on what would happen if Arvind Kejriwal was CEO of Microsoft. Enjoy 🙂

It really is about the PEOPLE

(credit)

There’s a great google search ad doing the rounds – its about reunion post partition between India and pakistan. I think by now most folks have watched it, but if you havn’t, click here. (It even got written up in mashable).

For me, it drove home something I’ve been thinking about on and off for a few days – that, we sometimes tend to get so wrapped up in whatever we are doing/ seeing/ making – whether it is technology and all its accoutrements, parenting as a job, management strategies, that we forget a very essential point of any exercise – the people it affects/ for whom we are doing it.

Think about it –

Big Data – Cloud – Hadoop – Analytics – e commerce – social collaboration – smart meters — all big buzzwords of today. Many big names chase this – IBM/ Cisco/ Microsoft/ Google/ Facebook – everyone. But it feels sometimes like the chase overwhelms the purpose – the process/ the technology – whatever is almost taking over the final reason FOR the tech. (It parallels the age old “features vs. benefit” marketing debate – you know, better agitator vs. whiter clothes/ purer chocolate vs. smoother texture). To some extent, some advertising is changing – IBM’s smarter planet / (erstwhile) Nokia’s connecting people – were all attempts at getting to the raison d’etre. Thats why I like the google ad – its not about better/ more precise/ faster/ more relevant search, but the reason behind the search. Lovely!

I like that a lot of healthcare is moving towards this now – Sanofi just released an app that gamifies blood testing (you get more points the oftener you test your blood sugar) thus making adherence for diabetes easier for patients!

Most organisations are now moving from “product centricity” to “customer centricity” – run a google search on CC and you get some half a million hits…a few years ago, it was one tenth of this number!

(credit)

Look at other aspects of this “people” thing – as I said in an earlier blog, enterprises are not run by processes – but by PEOPLE – if you can figure out how to motivate/ empower/ manage the people; you've got it made! I'm sure EVERY organization can cite examples of leaders who are maybe not so technically competent, but get better results than others because they are good with people – their people management skills are better! It’s heart breaking at times for those who do have the nuts and bolts, but not the guts and holds ..(over people that is 🙂 (ok, ok, very contrived I know – just felt like incorporating some rhyming stuff).This is what also makes for organisational culture (that intangible thing that defines many org metrics – retention/ values/ client service…see my earlier blog on org culture) Its one of the things an org “loses” when it scales to a behemoth – and one of the things that folks in start up cultures value – the fact of knowing everyone around – their happiness/ their sadness/ their strengths and weaknesses what makes them tick/ what hot buttons to press. It’s also one of the hallmarks of different leadership styles (read another blog on theory x vs. y of leadership – and which one works better)

Think about home – our kids have become “projects” almost – we are forever exhorting them to – get up in the morning/ eat breakfast properly/ go to school on time/ change, bathe, whatever once they are back/ go to whatever class they are enrolled for in a bid to get upskilled/ finish homework/ study for tests/ attend the birthday party…blah blah blah – in our timely and efficient execution of all these projects – we forget that the “subjects” are KIDS – and they WILL NOT be as good/ as efficient/ as task oriented as maybe we are trained and constrained to be. Takes the joy out of childhood somewhat eh?

School kids can figure this out easily – my older daughter and her clan don’t like one of their teachers – and, the reason is not that she doesnt know her stuff, or is strict, or the usual anti teacher reasons, but that “she hates us”. After all, if a teacher doesn’t LIKE kids, its self defeating almost. I see live examples of effectiveness in the community schools I go teach in as a volunteer. One of the schools is making a huge success of the volunteer program our folks are helping them with – mainly because the principle is involved, interested, and she LIKES the kids, and likes US! Another school, is the exact reverse because the principle is a grouch!

Ofcourse, nothing brings this whole people thing home as well as just meeting old friends – despite everyone being in the ratrace – and attempting to “achieve” more and more everyday – one afternoon spent with friends – old or new (as i did yesterday), reminds you over and over again – it really is all about the people!

Communication, the Hallmark of Success

Most working moms and dads recognize these little notes – i used to get about 5 a day, mostly shoved under my nose, and, most importantly, on top of the computer screen – thus MANDATING that i finally pay attention to my child! (I remember visiting a client at a leading FMCG in lovely Vevey once, and his bulletin board chock full of post-its with messages from his 6 year old saying – daad – u missed the ski-ing competition yet again! and such stuff..)

The point is, that kids figure out really early HOW to catch an (unreceptive) audience’s attention to get their point across.

As an organisation that worked in multiple geographies, and so each one having remote team mates/ clients to communicate with often, this was a really big deal. It started with us four partners (who by the way, hadn’t even all met each other when we started! – so ours was a bit more unusual situation than most!) getting on daily calls – in those days, we discussed fairly mundane issues (in retrospect) but we talked every single day, and ofcourse had the email on pretty much 24X7. We still got many “cultural” things wrong! Like:

– One early employee apparently spied a rat in our first office, and wrote an “annonymous” letter to a co founder who was based in the U.S. saying – “is this what you want your employees to be facing?” Ofcourse that co – founder, having never been to India, got very hot and bothered. It took the two of us who were managing the Indian ops to tell him to chillax since almost every house had rats – infact, we should count ourselves lucky that was the only vermin we got!!

– We were a “secondary research” organization, which meant we trawled publicly available data sources for our analysis. Our analysts would call the “raw research” material – a data dump, and often abbreviate it to “dump”. Imagine their horror when Kyung told them that dump in America meant poop!

(See some references to how communication across different cultures has led to interesting gaffes in my earlier post)

But this daily call/ email sure forged a bond – something really really important in a startup! I remember my co founder Debjani being interviewed for a journal, and saying – our big emphasis – commmunicate communicate communicate! Its true, and Debjani specially was paranoid about communication to the point of getting up at 2 am her time to repeat/ emphasise a point to the teams that needed to work on her clients’ requests!

But the outsourced world apart, communication is almost the most important “tool” that you need in business. In fact, at senior levels, that’s all you do – whether it is talking to the street to get their expectations right in a publicly listed company; pitching your co./ products/ services/ people to the next prospective buyer; getting ‘alignment” with your boss or the other department’s key folks on the right way to do things; motivating your team members to work the extra 2 hours when all they want to do is go watch the latest release in theatres and have a glass of beer after! Actually, now that I think about it, the “communication” is almost interchangeable with ‘sales” (see my earlier post on why we all are/ should be sales people . Interestingly, that features my 7 yr old too 🙂 )

It is why there is a whole industry on “soft skills” training, and many dollars being made in teaching the “art of presentation”.

Having made a living almost all my life out of maybe this skill to “communicate” well, I now have a very different perspective – that of how important even basic facility in a language (well, actually not A language, but the English Language) is, to really get ahead in life. This gets set for me personally in perspective now when I teach a class in a government (read public) school in my community. I teach the English language to 3rd graders. These are kids who come from the locality, and have parents from the lower income strata. Some of the kids are really really bright – all of them have that bright spark in their eyes – but, they cannot speak English (the vernacular language they know is Kannada, one of India’s many languages). And it almost breaks my heart to think that these kids in general, (barring the success of our volunteer teaching program) will never have an equal shot at many careers because they cannot communicate in the English language!

Coming back to Achchu, and her figuring out multi modal communication to get my attention, she once sent me an e-mail from the other room saying – Ma! I have to write an essay on a movie for H.W., and I can’t think of a title! (She figured that while I was behind closed doors at my home office, the ONLY way to get me responding to an “urgent” need was email! She was right – I told her to write on Sound of Music!) She even gets the subtleties of – “I know mom is on a con-call, so let me ask her if I can eat forbidden candy. And, I know she will say “no” once, then twice, but the third time she WILL say yes!” Talk about “in your face” communication!

Focus Or Multi-tasking? Arjuna/ Voldemort Or Jack?

“Kill the Spare” – were Voldemort’s words just prior to poor Hufflepuff’s sole star, the good looking Cedric Diggory’s death. However, the reason why the innocent bystander was killed, was, so that “He Who Must Not be Named” and his allies could focus on the big task at hand – first resurrecting Voldemort, and then killing the “Boy Who Lived”.

What this talks to therefore is the need to focus on the important things in life so you can optimize your never ending “to do list” and check off those big ones that absolutely need to be done! It is no coincidence, after all, that “focusing” sun rays on one spot can light a fire! How’s that for incendiary?

Strangely and coincidentally, my friend Nirupama just now put this up as her status update on facebook – “Focus on the eye of the fish said the famous guru to the even more famous disciple. Focus is the mantra. As long as it doesnt lead to extreme self absorption and an inability to appreciate collalteral damage to others in your wake:)”

I don’t know what her context was, but she refers to Arjuna, one of the Pandavas in the Hindu epic the Mahabharat, and his unparalleled ability to focus on the job at hand. This was displayed by 2 separate incidents – a), when their guru Dronacharya is testing all kids on archery – the target is the eye of a bird, when asked by the guru – what do you see, everyone answered different things – from the tree/ the bird/ the sky. But Arjuna said – the “eye of the bird” thus ensuring that he was the teacher’s pet forever (my kids would say – sucker up! and probably REALLY give him a hard time ☺ )

and b) when at the Swayamvara (marriage ceremony where the bride gets to choose her husband from a wide assortment – ancient India was far more liberal, you see!) held for Princess Draupadi, the competition is to shoot a revolving fish stuck on a moving pole, while staring into its reflection in a platter of oil – Arjuna again won his fair bride by nailing the fish in the eye.

The point is, that many leaders will tell you the secret to their success is concentration, and focus on doing what needs to be done most, first!

It is interesting, and a bit paradoxical, that in a world which prides itself on multitasking, it is as important to juggle many balls up in the air at the same time, as it is to ensure that the main ones – well, all actually but the main one most of all, is the one with the most time and attention invested upon it – in other words, focus!

Of course many of you may have come across this fairly famous New York Times article on multitasking (Actually, I was googling to find the url to insert here – and found many related articles within New York Times itself! A more recent one, with a slightly different stance, was this one )which essentially said that multitasking is actually detrimental to speed and efficiency, and even overall health! Interestingly, NYTimes argues for the power of concentration too, and draws an interesting analogy to Sherlock Holmes, who it calls the quintessential unitasker ☺ – read here

For the longest time, I despaired of my Woman Friday – Tulasi (referred to in my older blog) EVER learning parallel processing vs. her painful waterfall method of working – she was an invaluable resource, but try as I might, I NEVER managed to teach her the merit of frying the onions while cutting the tomatoes, and then frying the tomatoes with the onions while cutting the paneer! All this, while the water in the geyser was heating so the kids could take a bath. She FIRST cut ALL vegtables, THEN put the wok on the fire, and when the vegetable was all made – went upstairs to switch on the hot water! No wonder she got little time to herself! I realized that this ability to multitask/ parallel process – was not a gender function (much to my regret – trashing my hotly debated theory against my husband that women made better multitaskers), not an age related one (despite the NYT article – my mom multitasks with the best of them, and she is nearly 70) not even so much a socio economic class function (atleast not directly), but one related to education – if there is one thing that the process of higher education – specially engineering/ business management functions teaches us – it is how to do more in less time. So, one can’t really blame Tulasi – except maybe for having flunked the 5th grade!

Coming back to focus/ concentration (two different concepts by the way), a lot of search engines after Google, have attempted to deliver precisely this “precision” – the “focused” results thus enabling better relevance. It is also what current “Information Firehoses” are doing – structuring the info you consume such that it is relevant/ focused on what you NEED to know FIRST. Not to say that they won’t give you the others – it’s just scheduled in order of priority.

You know, a similar paradox is when you are learning to sing and play music, or to drive for that matter. When first beginning to drive, you have to focus on each of the separate aspects – pressing the clutch, then the gear change (for the non auto drivers 🙂 ), then the accelerator – whatever. But after sometime, your body lets you multitask all these easily – it’s basically the power of repitition – of having created enough muscle memory to make the task effortless. Similarly, when you first begin to learn to play an instrument say the guitar, and you have always been a vocalist – you tend to not be able to distinguish the chords separate from the lyrics/ melody. But after some training, you are able to focus on the chords such that your ear hears the notes, the chords, as well as the beats of the percussion instrument.

This is also how you resolve the apparent conflict between proponents of focus vs those of multitasking – let’s face it, in today’s world, multi tasking is an unavoidable necessity – I think ALL of us have worked multiple projects together; heated up food to feed the kids with a phone stuck to one ear participating in telecons, OR practiced our vocal music while driving. But, the “focus” helps you decide how much time to spend on which activity – the one that wins is obviously the one you NEED to do MOST – ie, that which someone else cannot do; that which has maximum impact on profitability or client satisfaction; that which just requires the maximum time to do…etc…the effective manager actually therefore manages to combine the best of both worlds – multitask, and yet focus.

Incidentally, a related concept is that of the generalist vs. the specialist – and there is a reason why at entry levels in an organisation, you start by orientation in all fields/ functions, then in mid management you specialize in one field, then again broadening skill sets when you start moving towards senior management.

Which basically means that Arjun was right – so was Voldemort in a way (killing notwithstanding) – but so also the Jack who is jack of all trades and master of none! He is probably the most relevant in today’s corporate world.

As Brian Tracy said, “…you cannot eat every tadpole and frog in the pond, but you can eat the biggest and ugliest one, and that will be enough, at least for the time being.”

Bravo McKinsey, Et-tu Marissa? (Woman Power – Ninja Power!)

For anyone in the consulting field, McK is obviously Ivy League. For me, the one thing that I always admired them for is the fact that apparently they were the alma mater for ALL consulting professionals! So, most consultants cut their eyeteeth at McK, and then went on to other/ bigger/ better firms (The reason why this was very top of mind to me was – that I think EmPower Research was almost a pioneer in the outsourced media research, monitoring and analytics space – and hence all our talent was home grown. We hired most of our folks straight from colleges, put them through a fairly rigorous – mostly on the job – training program (which in itself was home grown and kept evolving); made them learn processes that were home grown – and put them through HR steps that were also home grown. Then ofcourse, older – wiser – maybe better, they would seek greener pastures. Not able/ even willing to stem this attrition, I would console myself by saying – atleast we are like McK – most folks in the media research field in any big company – IBM/ HP/ Nielsen/ Aon/ PA – were all from EmPower Research.

Well, another day – and McK grabs my eyeballs again – this time for something that’s really close to heart. It is putting a program (being referred to as laptops and lullabies) in place to woo back its women employees who had quit (see link). It realised that with gender diversity important – for more reasons than statistics, and the leakage that invariably happens when women have babies – it should get active on the “returnship” front. Apparently Bain, BCG and Goldman Sachs have active programs towards this too. They certainly need to – look at the stats:

Studies, conducted by McKinsey, show that about 76% of all American women aged 25-54 are in the workforce compared to 87% in Sweden. According to this study, if each state contributed 84% of women to its workforce, the U.S. economy would grow by 3%. Most notably, women are seriously underrepresented in senior positions.

Reminded me of a panel discussion I had spoken on – it was for an initiative called “Segue” by an organization called Avtar. This was aimed at returning women. On the panel with me, I had senior HR folks from Accenture, Grindlays, Mphasis. What struck me most about the post panel session was the need/ the sheer desperation these “returning women” showed – the common complaint was that it was alright for all of you to tell us statistics within your company on women who have had babies, but for all of us, the barriers are just too high. One very evocative/ symbolic question was – when the recruitment form says – last job and duration, there isn’t even a checkbox meant for people like us – this means that we get evicted by the computers – and don’t even make it to the actual human rounds of short listing!

Again reminded of a NASSCOM meeting I had attended a few years ago – where activist and classical dancer Mallika Sarabhai had said – I do NOT want to be in a situation of choosing – “EITHER work, OR family” – why should I have to face an “either-or” – I want an AND and another AND and another AND! Remember the widely controversial article written by Anne-Marie Slaughter in the Atlantic on “Why women still can’t have it all” (worth a read by the way)

Looks like the top women leaders are all espousing this cause- I will take another excerpt from my favorite Sheryl Sandberg’s TED talk – when she said “why do women leave before they leave”? Happened to me – as I was doing one on ones before finally quitting EmPower, a young analyst told me – see, I was quite cheesed off at the last promotion round when I didn’t make it – but then I figured, its OK; anyway, I have to take off to have a baby now – so I didn’t talk about it to anybody! You know what, as the exact opposite – my friend Deepika, who now heads marketing at a large MNC foods company, got promoted WHILE she was on maternity leave – causing severe angst in her colleague who was the other brand manager – his contention was – she hasn’t even been at the job for the past 2 months; how is her contribution more than mine???

I have to say, Gillette/ P&G have always been front runners at the returning women empowerment thing – P&G apparently managed ZERO attrition of returning mothers – amazing stat! – via a program called Equinox (whats the rationale I wonder – maybe balancing of work-life just as equally as the day and night on the equinox?).

Flip side of coin – and BIG disappointment/ betrayal! – I just read about Marissa Mayer, who, of all people, SHOULD be behaving differently (atleast if she fulfills many peoples’ expectation of the youngest woman CEO in a F500 company!) – and how she issued the Work From Office, or Quit dictat! Now, it may be directed at cutting flab from an admittedly obese Yahoo, but the message is a bit wonky. (See article I wrote a long time ago on Flexi Time work options for women)

We in EmPower built a finally-400-people company through extensive use of flexi-time, work from home, use of “returning mothers” plan. As a garage based/ bootstrapped enterprise, there was no way we could hire people in the early days. However, we were getting projects of all kinds from our clients – after all, if we were “makers of sense” of existing (first filter – maybe value proposition!) data – we couldn’t also put another filter and say – we would make sense only in this/ this/ this field. Ergo, we hit upon the idea of using friends and family to work with us on a flex time basis. So, we put the word out in our networks – and got lots of really well qualified people – primarily siting-at-home-because-of-kids moms – who grabbed this opportunity to do some “meaningful” work that made use of their skills. We hence had a fairly well established/ extensive network of HR specialists/ finance specialists/ marketing ones/ pharma domainers – you name it, we had it! Depending on the project we got, we would rope in the specialist, estimate hours to be spent/ compensation – and then project manage (it wasn’t easy btw, and took considerable working at!)! The ladies just LOVED it, and we were able to scale with a variable cost model! Win – win all around!

This worked so well for us btw, that our gender stats were always heavily skewed in favor of ladies – so much so, that once my partner Shoma had written the following on the HR manager’s whiteboard!!

What did NOT happen – just so you know, was what the author Leslie Kwoh in the WSJ article I referred to earlier – is saying/ expecting. “Work and family experts often tout moms as “great managers” but skills developed while managing a household don’t necessarily translate to the office, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter said in a recent essay. “Family managers are accustomed to being surrounded mostly by people who are…clearly dependent, unable to function fully on their own” Ms. Kanter wrote. “Spending quality time with people with limited vocabularies doesn’t hone complex strategic thinking”.

Well, excuse me! Our women were very able to manage complex/ strategic thinking – and balance expectations, deadlines and more. This by the way, is something I had written about – when I was takinga break from work and managing my child (It was called – “what they don’t teach you at business school” – as relevant today as it was 11 years ago! Read here) It is my FIRM belief that motherhood involves far more planning and execution/ leadership finesse than a normal workday situation would ever do!

Remember what Mallika Sarabhai said – “I want AND” – women CAN be breadwinners just as they can be caregivers! They multitask better, they have a higher developed sense of responsibility and the need to make their mark, they are more ready to make sacrifices – it would be foolish companies who would put barriers in the way of enabling this workforce (yahoo?), and smart ones who would enable them (mckinsey?).

This is the basics of management as taught to us by Tom Sawyer – remember when he “traded” painting the fence with many small bribes/ gifts? Incentivize people to “want” something they can give their best to!

Doing vs. Managing – the Queen Bee vs. Drone syndrome

This last couple of weeks many folks asked me – so why did you slow down on the blogging? Problem was, Tulasi, my Woman Friday for 7 plus years; the queen of our household; my children’s mom and dad, sister and teacher, friend, philosopher, guide – left – to get married.

While this in itself is great news for all of us, and we really lived it up at the wedding; it did leave me with a household to run…

Like any good manager, I have a warm pipeline of resources to backfill any attrition – in this case, my erstwhile second in command Rupa got a promotion, and has now taken over running the household – and I will “decrease household running cost” by hiring resources for cleaning chores lower down the value chain, thereby “also guaranteeing job rotation”.

Whilst all these HR practices were playing out in their usual way in our house, I did have to spend a fair amount of time on different from usual activities – cooking/ cleaning/ grocery shopping/ advising gardener/ pet care ( this last is a LONG story – of how we thought we had 2 girl rabbits named Sita and Gita, and one fine day 7 really ugly looking things plopped out of one of those girls – sending our entire household into a googling tizzy – on care of newborn rabbits. My nephew Dhruv and daughter Riddhi were most active. For those interested, this one is a good resource. Rabbits had to be renamed Ram and Sita) – that I had not even touched – for a good 7 years.

Made me think of the whole “doing” vs. “getting done” thing, and how your attitude towards this split in your management tasks affects your behavior, your people policies, your time management, your pleasure in your work, your motivation and ultimately your success..

I think “doing” is kind of ingrained in us Indians – even our epics teach us the value of “doing” – the Bhagwad Gita’s most famous quote by far is the one which loosely translated means – keep focused on your work, don’t worry about the reward. karmanyewadhikarasthey ma faleshu kadachana. (this being Lord Krishna’s sage advise to Arjuna as he was agonizing over fighting and killing his own kith and kin)

My mom is a prime example – she just can NOT understand our slavery to our domestic help. She has had a speedily revolving door on her help – because she sets high standards, and is not afraid of managing the daily chores herself if she doesn’t have anyone to help – at nearly 70 (the nearly is really important if I don’t want her to skin my hide!) she sweeps, swabs, dish-washes, cooks, disposes garbage AND goes for her 5 miler walks everyday when required. The good part – her house is always sparkling clean and her food is always mummy yummy. The not so good part – she pretty much kills herself doing all this, not leaving a lot of “me” time for her.

In sharp contrast is the principle of outsourcing non core activities – which led to the whole BPO/ even IT boom in India. That one says – do what you NEED to do, the rest – get someone else to do – someone who is more qualified, probably does it faster better cheaper than you and therefore optimize overall cost time and resources

But most of us essentially vary the ‘doing” vs “getting done” or “managing” bit in different degrees – and this proportion of one vs. the other actually changes as we rise in the corporate hierarchy.

That actually makes sense – this inverted triangle is good sound horse sense. I think the problem comes when we do too much of one to the exclusion of the other. Essentially, what I’m saying is that there has to be a limiting factor at each end of the spectrum – so, there IS an optimal range – which determines the min-max of “doing” just as it does of “managing”, that we would be wise to stay within.

I know of senior leaders who are so enchanted by their “doing” – that they don’t learn to delegate – and, more importantly, therefore cannot/ will not be able to pay attention to “higher order” tasks that need to be done by someone in their role – so, it’s the Vice President who still does/ looks at every report that needs to be sent out, hence not spending enough time on core business development or people issues. Now this syndrome – the “doer” syndrome in general will happen when the manager is almost “scared” to graduate to “managing” – his comfort level is in the “doing” – it’s stuff that he was/is good at – that’s why after all he kept getting promoted, and he has probably now reached his Peter’s level of incompetence. (This is a fascinating theory – for those who would like to know more, click here)

Ofcourse, the flip side of the coin – and probably more prevalent is the manager who has so lost touch with “doing” that she is only “managing”. Reminds me of when my daughter once asked me – mom, if all you are doing is telecons and meetings, when do you actually work? I had to explain to her how at the meetings we were actually taking decisions – so it was the culmination of a lot of work, and also therefore qualified as work.

This is reality, right? – at senior levels, you generally manage resources who manage resources who maybe manage more resources who actually do the work – much like the beehive. But you know, then, one has to have really well developed systems to a) enable the worker bees to judge those components of the “work” which need to be showcased to the next level – and/ or escalated as needing help; or b) at the Queen bee level a very fine knowledge of the work and the people involved to sniff out that which needs attention/ correction/ decision…

Corporate science and all, this is NOT a small deal – it is WHY the cadre of MBAs was born and grew. And despite the armies of MBAs, it is still not foolproof – witness the hours spent trouble shooting/ fire fighting rather than doing proactive business development.

I think it may be worthwhile therefore for even senior management to keep in touch with the “core” of the work – there SHOULD be elements of your organisation’s scope of activities that you can do better than most others – and, if those elements are changing – then you jolly well stay abreast of those changes. Its why doctors, lawyers and chartered accountants have to clock hours at “continuing education”. This enables one to be able to fine tune that antenna or, at the enterprise level, those systems that ensure smoother running of the organization, very often enabling value addition via innovative ideas (one doesn’t have to rely on a think tank or “lab” all the time, you know!).

But, more importantly, it helps engender respect amongst your subordinates for your abilities. Its like, in my aerobics classes, I am always more motivated to work-out harder since I see Niru the trainer herself “do” all the really complicated steps – and – better than anyone else! If she just stood and instructed – I don’t think I would have seen the energy I see/ feel in the class (I have seen dance and swimming classes for my kids where the coaches have managed by gesticulation! – those classes were really short lived, as you can imagine!).

Finally, I think for folks used to dealing all the time with earth shattering, world shaking decisions and situations, its almost a “relief” at times to get back to the basics of “doing” – honestly, I used to LOVE brainstorming sessions when folks said – can we figure out how to evolve this framework for a client?

On the other hand, if you don’t “do”, sometimes its almost a negative – someone told me a few months ago, “Sangita, in this company, the minute someone becomes an AVP – you can’t ask them how to do work – their standard answer is – “go figure it out yourself”. After all, I already tried figuring it out myself – I couldn’t and that’s why I went to him! I don’t know whether they forget/ they are too scared to do it, or they just don’t think its worth their while!”

So there you have it – coaching vs. empowerment / doing vs. managing / drone vs queen…. There is no way you can be both fully – and its not wise to be one at the expense of the other.

Maybe this strikes at the root of the dignity of labor question? Its infra-dig to “do” and better to “manage”? Tulasi’s new husband told me with a really fine sneer on his face – “she won’t do “this kind of work” – ie, household chores, any longer – we will train her in tailoring, and she will do that”

Which means, I will be without her – and have to spend time and energy training and transitioniong the new help. In addition, Ram and Sita gave birth to their second litter of 11 babies – heaven help me – I think they are headed to the Ghosts of Ram-Sita Future :(! (see picture! )

Carrot Power! (Or, Do you really need to twist and shout?)

For someone who didn’t lift a finger till a month ago at anything that even closely resembled physical exercise (actually, thats not really true – coz the only parts of my body i did move were my fingers as they tapped away at the comp/ iphone day in and day out), it’s surprising how much inspiration my daily aerobics class is providing me!

Every morning, from 8 – 9, picture me – wayyy shorter than normal, wayyy more obese than normal, – in company with folks who remind me of Erma Bombeck’s (yes, you have to excuse me, I’m re-reading her nowadays) famous one – “I exercise with women so thin that buzzards follow them to their cars”. But, as I huff and puff my way on the steppers and floor exercises, what keeps me going is the few words from Niru the instructor – all she has to say is – “Good job, Sangita!” – and I’m ready to pump a few more weights! This, despite the fact that I KNOW I’m not doing even a passable job – forget “good”. But i guess, as all leaders/ coaches/ mentors know, positive strokes don’t hurt you, infact they only inspire your teams to work harder.

It reminded me of an appraisal I had done for a mid level manager a few months ago – He was someone new we had hired via an internal company transfer from our larger (by far!) parent company. His biggest worry about his career was that all along, he had been given feedback from his previous managers that he “lacked aggression”. He thought this could potentially be career limiting. Now, this was a bit of a surprise to me – as – according to me, he had displayed a fair amount of aggression in terms of getting business, leading his ops team, flagging issues and coming up with suggestions to senior management. But then i got it – what this boy was, was mild mannered – he didn’t scream and shout at his team. Unfortunately, he came from a culture where success equated with features of “sternness of big leader” – i.e., if your team wasn’t shaking every time you uttered something, you weren’t a “good”/ “aggressive” leader!

This is classical Mecgregor’s Theory X vs. Theory Y isn’t it? And modern management principles teach you that Y is better than X (infact, Theory Z – which is a kind of derivative of Y and says that what drives most employees is self motivation (as assumed in Y) but with active and empathetic company support) is what most pundits propound. Unfortunately, it looks like most managers do believe in the fear psychosis to get work done.

Now i have a theory on this – I think Theory X as a CULTURE has been propounded and lauded of late in companies that have grown really big really fast. Think large BPOs/ IT companies – we know that the outsourcing industry, while it propelled India into the next wave of growth, gave rise to large corporations with a very YOUNG workforce. Because of the exponential rates of growth witnessed, young employees had to become managers very fast – and didnt get the chance to garner appropriate ORGANIC experience and maturity – most of which, by the way, comes from handling many and many more people situations. But the growth of the industry mandated that they had to deal with responsibilities way earlier than they were ready for it. Ofcourse organisations invested in training of all kinds – soft skills, managerial acumen, project management, people management – etc; but the fact remains that there were 22 year old Team leads needing to manage 25 year old associates. They obviously didnt have that much extra experience, so the only way they had to assert superiority was – fear! (translated to screaming and shouting!). As the orgs got bigger and bigger this culture got so ingrained that everyone thought it’s THE way to get work done – instill fear, use sheer “muscle power” – become “Laxman” instead of “Ram” in Hindu mythology…(btw, I think Ram was a bit of a wimp myself and Laxman was way more interesting, but…). To be fair to them, that was also probably the only way you could afford to deal with LARGE groups of people – so large, that they are not people anymore, just statistics and metrics (He is an E performer, while she is only A!!!)

You know what this results in — people in large organisations start managing not so much by a sense of “what is right”/ “what needs to be done”, but by their sense of “what will the boss like”, or, taken to an extreme – “what will make my boss not yell at me!” I was myself in a bizzare situation as a result of this – we were, in a group, deciding pricing for a big (I’m talking 5 million USD) bid, and ofcourse it was controversial. We had to get clearances from the boss – guess what the finance guy told me – “why dont you talk to the boss about this, he’s less likely to yell at you!” (I think that day cemented my decision to not work in a large company 🙂

So, am I saying that everyone should always be honey and sugar, sweetness and light? That’s a foolish deduction, and you know it 🙂 Also, if I’m naturally autocratic, should I become “anti-me”, thus rendering a Jekyll and Hyde type personality and confusing everyone, including me? Certainly not! The answer, which boringly is really really obvious, and everyone knows, continues to be – one has to be situational – stick with what is commonly “you” – be “true” to yourself largely (and if u do it well enough, you WILL lead successfully in general); but temper your “Y” style leadership with some sticks (note the picture above has “angry birds” on the stick! appropriate, I thought 🙂 ), and your “X” style leadership with some empathy…This, remember, is not really a treatise on personal leadership styles – we know successful people of all kinds – but a diatribe against people who think its the “right”/ “done” thing to do to always yell and shout, irrespective of what state of Maslow’s hierarchy the employee in front is/ what the situation demands..

By the way, (and don’t even get me started on this – this post is too long as it is), the situation becomes many times more complicated when it is women managers. Remember Sheryl Sandberg’s (I love her, btw!) famous TED speech on “successful women are NOT liked”? I think that needs to be the topic of another post.

While you think about the above, decide whether you want to “smile and shake” or “twist and shout”, I’ll go do a few more bench presses with Niru telling me – “way to go Sangita”!! Happy hunting!