On Being Relevant as a Manager !!

The Oxford Dictionaries defines relevant as "closely connected or appropriate to the matter in hand".

So what does it mean when it comes to a manager engaging with his / her team in work organizations?

If you are to be accepted as a leader manager you have to be relevant in today's context. The expectations, needs, desires and general view of life changes with generations.   Today's young people at work in their early twenties may never  realize that work was once done without email,  without digital systems, with type writers,  with ammonia duplication machines.  There were no scanners, no internet and also fewer cars on the road to the workplace.  Majority of companies did not provide a pick up and drop facility from and to office / workplace  in earlier decade.

This whole digital age, when things are done at the click of a mouse or on pressing ENTER on a key board has resulted in a expectation osmosis towards forming a more generalized view for everything to happen even at work in a jiffy, therefore the need for quick resolution, quick feedback, instant gratification and so on.   Which means that managers need to be fast in all of these aspects- giving feedback,  providing responses, decision making and so on. 

The new generation of employees are tuned to their mobiles all of the time,  familiar with digital technology and more comfortable if there is a reciprocal response from managers. While a manager may ask "Why should I be the one to change"  the simple response is today you as a manager may be in a minority in organizations as there are several companies with over 50% Gen Y employees.   World wide the workforce may have about 36% of millennial generation in the workforce but in countries like India it is higher and in some sectors like the IT/ ITeS it is much higher.  Remember the old saying  :  "While in Rome, do as the Roman's Do." 

Today is the age of fast and not so lasting change, people expect and are so used to change happening all of the time so it is important for managers to also change and reinvent themselves.  You can always lean back on the fact that "It always happened this way.... here"  but not for long as your team will find their managers are not relevant.  Meetings and the way they are organized should keep changing now and then otherwise they become drab, boring, seen that before kind of rituals.

Today you can send and receive as many emails back and forth in a single day to close your communication... so more frequent connects are the order of the day when it comes to work. Which means you need to connect back with your teams more often than what you did in the past decade.  In short influences on the social side of personal lives need to spill over into the workplace.

Adopt latest technologies,  speed up things even in people management, bring more variety and flavors in your meetings,  connect more often, give more feedback,  get more frequently into connect session with your team(s) and keep giving them a thumbs up for good things happening every now and then.

Egotism? From the Zen Learnings

The minister of The Tang Dynasty was known to be  a great leader and statesman.  However in spite of all this he considered himself humble and devout Buddhist.   He would often spend the weekend visiting the Zen Master to study and learn from him and both seemed to get along well.  The fact that he was minister did not affect his relationship with the Zen Master and they struck it off well like a diligent student and discerning master.

One weekend the minister asked the master "Sir, what is egotism according to you".  The master's fumed an in a very insulting and reverberating tone he sad "What kind of stupid question is that"

This kind of reply shocked the minister and he was angry and annoyed.  The Zen Master then smiled and said "This Your Excellency, is egotism"

The lesson for us is that experience is the father of explanation and you imbibe more by just experience rather than someone telling or showing.  It was however possible that the minister would not have sensed what the master wanted him to experience and that's one key reason why learning fails.  We put our own walls of egotism and scaling those walls is a huge task.

If you want to really achieve then you need to break those walls of egotism and keep the mind open to learning.  This is similar to the "Empty Cup" phenomenon in the other story we discussed.

Leaders too have to shed their obsession of self importance and start thinking about how the others can grow, benefit, learn, improve and so on. Egotistic leaders are only concerned about their own position, how they will grow, how they will move up the pecking order.... without much worry about the larger team.   You will find them organizing "durbars" or "mini courts" with participants singing praises in a sense.  

Other Lessons from Stories

The Archers Lesson

Learning from Stories

Creativity in Organization- Driving Focus from Future to Present.

Today's organizations are challenged by  a very volatile environment.  Change today seems faster than what it ever was in the past.  But didn't every generation since the middle of the last century say the same thing. 

However what we observe is that  today's world requires us to grow, improve, become better even if other factors remain same or decline.  e.g.  produce more with less people,  get more returns on same capital employed. To this we need to perform better and better.

Interestingly it is found that motivation and performance don't go along all the way.  Post a period of  positive relationship between motivation and performance it is found that performance dips and therefore beyond a point extrinsic motivation does not hold much promise.  The reason for this is that the obsession for the goal and some future "reward" drain away focus from present to future. (Read more about Yerke-Dodson's Law)

Rather the better approach for organizations would be to try and shift focus onto the creative side of the human.  When work demands creative approach or when work requires creative minds there is stronger relationship with performance. Also the outcome and motivation link gets strengthened when intrinsic motivation is the reason.and focus shifts from future to the present.  Hence organizations need to spend time to invest more in creativity and drive up the performance. 



However given the patterning slant of the human mind it is important that organizations spend deliberate attempts to drive up creative thinking and this can be done through use of tools, techniques and various frameworks that help the mind move out of the patterned and linear way of thinking.   More on this in a later post.

Some Great People Quotes !!!

“The HR profession should not be defined by what it does, but by what it delivers” 

                                                                                                              - Dave Ulrich, 1997

"Never hire someone who knows less that you do about what he's hired to do.".  

                                                                                                                    -Malcolm Forbes

"Human resources are like natural resources; they are often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they're not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves"
                                                                                                                          -Ken Robinson

Recognition is like a small drop of oil in the machinery of business.  It just makes things run a little smoother. 

                                                                                                                              -Obert Tanner

"There are few, if any, jobs in which ability alone is sufficient.  Needed, also are loyalty, sincerity, enthusiasm and team play"

                                                                                                                 - William B Given, Jr.

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work"

                                                                                                                     -Thomas Alva Edison

"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work"

                                                                                                                    - Peter Drucker

CONTEXTUAL UNDERSTANDING IS IMPORTANT

  INTENT VERSUS CONSEQUENCE -  POWER OF CONTEXTUAL KNOWLEDGE

Some fish were enjoying surfing up and down the ponds surface one bright sunny afternoon.

A man observed a monkey gently catch a fish from the pond and then rush up the tree and place it there on top of a branch.

Curious, he went alongside and asked the monkey to explain what he was doing.

"Nothing, Just saving the fish from drowning in this deep pond"

WHERE LIES THE ANGER? FINALLY DISCOVERED

A very interesting one posted by the former Principal of my school Don Bosco Matriculation School,  Chennai.

Read below...

A monk decides to meditate alone, away from his monastery. He takes his boat out to the middle of the lake, moors it there, closes his eyes, and begins his meditation.

After a few hours of undisturbed silence, he suddenly feels the bump of another boat colliding with his own. With his eyes still closed, he senses his anger rising, and by the time he opens his eyes, he is ready to scream at the boatman who dared to disturb his meditation.

But when he opens his eyes, he sees it’s an empty boat that had probably got untethered and floated to the middle of the lake.

At that moment, the monk achieves self-realization and understands that the anger is within him; it merely needs the bump of an external object to provoke it out of him. From then on, whenever he comes across someone who irritates him or provokes him to anger, he reminds himself, “The other person is merely an empty boat.

The anger is within me.”

Quotes: The Power of Learning in Nano Bytes, 52 in 52 W

Quotes are a powerful way of learning.  When the quote is bundled with some insight it has a powerful ability to channelize and bring focus to what we want to convey,  learn or transfer as the message.

Over the next 52 weeks, I am publishing about 1 quote per week that can resonate in many areas at work or personal life.  Basically, it's Twitter and LinkedIn that will be the host site to share these quotes.

All quotes will be original and created by me in a poetic or literal style and distill something for the reader.   Feel free to comment, like, dislike, agree or disagree and share your thoughts. 

Have fun,  Keep Rocking !!