The Barriers and Obstacles Lie Within !!!

One day a wise man from a distant land came to the Court of a Great Emperor of the East and proclaimed that he wanted to challenge the learned men of the kingdom by testing how intelligent they were. The emperor readily agreed and invited some of his courtiers and ministers to face the challenge. The wise man kept a pot covered by a cloth and asked the courtiers and ministers to tell him what it contained. Every one was dumb founded and kept starting silently at each other. There was complete silence. The emperor went blank with anxiety.

Then the kings clever minister came forward, he opened the cloth, looked inside the pot and then said there was nothing in the pot. It was empty indeed. 

"But you opened it." said the wise man. 

"You did not tell us that it can't be opened" shot back the clever minister.

The wise man was cornered. He quietly left.

Learning: There are many interesting lessons which come out from this simple story that we can relate to our world of work. While I discuss couple of them here... readers are welcome to add their comments and interpretations.

Often the limitations, boundaries, barriers are all in our minds. We as human beings set the limits and most often those that never existed in the first place.

Very often just because someone thought it so... it became the accepted norm. Common sense might suggest this is not so but we don't stop by to question. Is this familiar in our organizations?

In hind sight the message may seem simple but one needs to break out of the patterned thinking in order to have more creative solutions and approaches to the problems we face.

We also learn that there are others around us who can be more intelligent than we are. Those that outsmart you.... those you never expected to. So it does no harm to accept and acknowledge them for what they bring. When was the last time we acknowledge someone for how they think... of course without pretentions or without being hypocrite like.

I have covered just one dimension of how this story can be interpreted and the message about how the locus of how we respond to any situation is driven from within.

Will be interesting to see other interpretations and dimensions arising from this story.

Discussions on Creative Leadership at Asia Pacific HRM Congress

It was interesting discussion at the session on Creative Leadership For Tomorrows World. I was part of a session wherein there were three presentations bringing in diverse views on leadership and talent..  

First presentation by Vinod Bidwaik, HR Director at  DSM India Pvt Ltd,  brought out how leadership is key to securing the future for company which is driven by innovation.   The company had evolved  over a period of 110 years from a mining company to a high tech specialty plastics products company and also getting into some amazing innovations that will drive the growth.  To enable this you needed to shape the right behaviors right from entry  screening to retention and motivation and the right leadership was needed to provide that direction.   After all Leadership is a verb and not a noun.  It is all about driving momentum and bringing change and not about remaining good where you are.  The six stage model that was presented made an interesting learning from the companies five year journey. 

The second section was on an interesting point of view by Wing Commander Naresh Taneja Head HR for IRB Infrastructure Services,  who spoke about Toxic Talent Trap and how you can go on for a long way without noticing the side effects of talent that is toxic.  Basically the session was a discussion about what extent do companies go in the pursuit of talent, what extent do you let go of your core values just because you don' want to lose a good talent.  The discussion raised questions about role of leadership in addressing this issue and ensuring that we don't end up as boiled frogs (of course with the internal environment changes) 

The third leg of the session was that perspective I shared from TCS about how leadership is not just at individual level but leadership also extends to the organization as a whole.   The small story about how TCS displayed responsible leadership at the industry level to drive augmentation of talent to enable the industry become more competitive was the essence of what we discussed in this part.  There was an interesting discussion on how competition is no longer between company A and B within an industry but going beyond to competition among nations and  leaders have to quickly understand how the dynamics of talent shortages and unavailability makes your industry uncompetitive due to salary wars and wage inflation and how it gravitates towards a competition between nations.  That is where responsible leadership as a corporate entity comes into picture to secure a sustainable competitive organization.

Leadership Perspectives Series: 1 Vision, Leadership & Direction

There are several dozens of theories on leadership.   Understanding them needs deliberate effort and time.   There are also other ways to build perspectives on something like this.  One simple way is to build perspectives through quotes which are powerful in communicating the message and simple elaboration which gives examples of "action" or "grounded understanding"   In the Leadership perspective series we shall try to understand some simple facets of leadership and we have about a dozen such perspectives coming up in next few months.

We shall start with two simple quotes on Vision and Meaning that are critical elements that leaders should focus on.  Having a shared vision is something that we always speak of when it comes to fulfilling objectives as a team.   Then you would have heard about putting your heart and soul into it once you have a clarity on vision, purpose, goal etc.   Here are three simple quotes.

"We are more in need of a vision / destination and a compass rather than a road map." Stephen Covey

This quote really captures the fact that it is more important to have a destination and then chart a course for our selves.  Anyone who has used Google Maps today understands that there are many paths between two points and while Google does it without emotional upheavals involved.  However human beings are different, they have a high need for deciding their own path.  It is highly motivating to involve people in the decisions and let them be part of the core decision process and this is what drives them to perform.  So a good leader should avoid providing the solution but rather help build a perspective and let the people working in the organization decide the way to reach there.    

“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Leaders are one side of the coin.  Followers make up the other.   For a leader it is most important to understand what each one is good at, what they excel in,  what drives their passion and then ensure they dwell on that.   Realizing ones potential is what every leader would thrive on.    Egg Them on their strengths and they would never have to work a single day.... rather they never feel they are working. At the same time a good leader will surely want to give a chance to people to make mistakes and not get bogged down by failures. 

Sample this...

"A leader is one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation and yells "Wrong Tree".  Stephen Covey

It is about owning up and accepting that mistakes can be made... however most importantly it is about not repeating the same mistake.  A good leader surely does not deny the fact that you should learn from your mistakes as well as from that of others and then transfer that learning across situations.   That is why we often hear that the constellation of experiences is what makes a person a leader

Finally from the Holy Bible

When there is no vision, the people perish.  Proverbs, 29:18

It is about not understanding the right word that leads to moral chaos.  Although it may not directly be an attribution to leadership vision it is about having a understanding.


More on leadership perspectives in subsequent posts.  Adieu !!!

Book Chapter in Responsible Leadership

Authors:

Rajiv Noronha, Gen Manager & Head Organizational Effectiveness (BP Services @ TCS)

Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, VP & Global HR Head (BP Services @ TCS)

Venkatnarayanan N K, Gen Manager & Head- HR, Banking Services (BP Services @TCS)

Responsible Leadership, Vol 2, XLRI Symposium Proceedings,  Excellent Publishing House, New Delhi

Published Nov 2013,   Pages 50-71

Publication was based on presentation by Rajiv Noronha at the Symposium on Responsible Leadership at XLRI Jamshedpur which won the Outstanding Paper Award

Chapter Summary

Responsible Leadership is about making business decisions that, next to the interest of the shareholders, also takes into account all the other stakeholders such as workers, clients, suppliers, the environment, the community and future generations[1]. Since 1991 Indian economy has made significant progress and opened up new opportunities for the youth. Yet two areas we have not addressed seriously as a nation, in order to keep up with the pace of changes that happen around us, are employability and education. 

On employability - today job opportunities are much more abundantly available for graduates and those with advanced degrees in their field of study. Talent supply from colleges has also increased several fold since 1991 but the paradox is that there is a shortage in the midst of abundance. This is primarily an outcome of the lower levels of employability. Several studies and surveys have indicated employability levels of between 20 to 30% among all graduates. In many cases the graduates are employed in jobs that are far below their real potential leading to disguised unemployment. On education – the issue that one needs to worry is the extent of contextual relevance of the curriculum being imparted. Industry captains have been talking about the time lag to update the curriculum to make it relevant to current industry practice. In the learning imparted at colleges we are few years behind in terms of what the industry does and what students learn thereby making it a problem both for the students as well as for the industry. Significant time and effort in training the fresh graduates to make them up to date before they can be gainfully productive can be avoided if this gap is minimized. This case study highlights how Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been able to display the well intentioned facets of responsible leadership to address these two critical challenges that we face as it is directly relevant to the business we are in. A significant point of departure of this case study is that we look at defocusing “Leader” in the sense of a person and focus more on “Leadership” and how the organization can create significant capability in terms of making the difference, enabling a culture that facilitates the needful display of leadership that builds on synchronous and pressing needs for organizations, individuals as well as the nation. We call this a win-win-win and try to understand facets of Responsible Leadership at TCS through this case study. While there are numerous examples that one has seen at TCS we try to bring out how Responsible Leadership is fostered by using two examples from recent years.

[1] Financial Times: Internet reference http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=responsible-leadership (Acc: 10 Sept 2012)

Responsible Leadership : Abstract of Case Study

Responsible Leadership: The Case of Tata Consultancy Services

Rajiv Noronha, AVP & Head Organizational Effectiveness (BPO Services)
Ranjan Bandyopadhyay, VP & Global HR Head (BPO Services)
Venkatnarayanan N K, AVP & Head- HR, Banking Services (BPO Services)

All Authors from Tata Consultancy Services

Paper was presented by Rajiv Noronha at the Symposium on Responsible Leadership at XLRI Jamshedpur and won the Outstanding Paper Award

Abstract

Responsible Leadership is about making business decisions that, next to the interest of the shareholders, also takes into account all the other stakeholders such as workers, clients, suppliers, the environment, the community and future generations[1]. Since 1991 Indian economy has made significant progress and opened up new opportunities for the youth. Yet two areas we have not addressed seriously as a nation, in order to keep up with the pace of changes that happen around us, are employability and education. On employability - today job opportunities are much more abundantly available for graduates and those with advanced degrees in their field of study. Talent supply from colleges has also increased several fold since 1991 but the paradox is that there is a shortage in the midst of abundance. This is primarily an outcome of the lower levels of employability. Several studies and surveys have indicated employability levels of between 20 to 30% among all graduates. In many cases the graduates are employed in jobs that are far below their real potential leading to disguised unemployment. On education – the issue that one needs to worry is the extent of contextual relevance of the curriculum being imparted. Industry captains have been talking about the time lag to update the curriculum to make it relevant to current industry practice. In the learning imparted at colleges we are few years behind in terms of what the industry does and what students learn thereby making it a problem both for the students as well as for the industry. Significant time and effort in training the fresh graduates to make them up to date before they can be gainfully productive can be avoided if this gap is minimized. This case study highlights how Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been able to display the well intentioned facets of responsible leadership to address these two critical challenges that we face as it is directly relevant to the business we are in. A significant point of departure of this case study is that we look at defocusing “Leader” in the sense of a person and focus more on “Leadership” and how the organization can create significant capability in terms of making the difference, enabling a culture that facilitates the needful display of leadership that builds on synchronous and pressing needs for organizations, individuals as well as the nation. We call this a win-win-win and try to understand facets of Responsible Leadership at TCS through this case study. While there are numerous examples that one has seen at TCS we try to bring out how Responsible Leadership is fostered by using two examples from recent years.

[1] Financial Times: Internet reference http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=responsible-leadership (Acc: 10 Sept 2012)