Acid test for leaders – a good night’s sleep!


How do we figure out if we are leading people as opposed to getting in their way ? Reason for the question is – if we can’t figure it out , we can’t change our course and do better .

Yet, being critical of oneself is the hardest thing to do – definitely the case for me,but also for many people I know .

I had a lot of discussion on the tactics of leadership with friends this week and I thought I will jot it down here , mostly for me to fix my own flaws as an aspiring leader .

My way of looking at this is rather tactical – And borderline selfish – I just try everything possible to stack the deck in my favor by doing a few things

1. Leadership thingy is mostly about people – not process . So the trick to being an effective leader is to carefully create the team you can lead well .

2. I need to be sure of one of two things at least – either I should get a clear direction of what is expected of my team AND/OR I should be empowered to figure out what needs to be done and get the minimum resources (people , time, money etc) to get things done . If these conditions are not met , I happily say NO to the assignment .

3. Try everything you can to get out of your team’s way once you set the goal . This is the hardest part for me – one way or other I always seem to get in the way – with good intentions, but with less than optimal results . If I am the smartest guy in the room over and over – it clearly shows I didn’t hire well , and hence I should worry -A LOT.

4. If/when my team has a hierarchy – then one of my big priorities is to make sure the managers get out of their people’s way too at the earliest . It is easy to delegate responsibility – the hard part is to delegate authority .

5. Encourage debate over elegance in meetings . It kills me to sit in meetings where everyone is asked to shut off phones etc and someone speaks with a set of slides and says this is a report out of past, and this is what we are going to do going forward . Such meetings absolutely kill me – and I prefer emails for such discussions . If people meet on phone or in person – they should be willing to challenge and be challenged . If not – don’t go to that meeting . I don’t go to many such meetings – and if I do, I get out the soonest I can.

6. Watch out for the team and build a culture where they watch out for you and each other .This perhaps I should have put higher on the list . If people won’t watch out for each other – it is hard to be a good team . This doesn’t happen in large teams – and hence my preference for small teams working together for short duration and then dispersing to form other teams . In almost all cases – small action is better than grand strategies .

But all things said , I have an acid test for leadership . The comfort I like the most in my life is to get a good night’s sleep . So if I don’t get that – I usually know something is not quite right .

Finally , celebrate success at every possible point . Negativity is easy – takes no effort and it takes a lot to get out of it . Celebrating small successes along the way keeps everyone closely knit – and it helps get a good night’s sleep .

What can corporate peeps learn from chimpanzees ?


Let me tell you a story

A scientist wanted to test how well Chimpanzees take care of each other and devised an experiment to test his hypothesis .

He put a little chimp and his mother into a huge tall glass jar . And then he started pouring water into it . As the water level rose to the little chimp’s nose , the mother picked it up and held it close to her chest . As water kept climbing up – she put the kid on her head . The scientist was fascinated , and decided to see what happens next . And throughout the process, the little chimp tries hard to escape from the top of the jar

As water level continued to rise – the mother stood on its tip toes . But as soon as it reached her nose – she dropped the chimp and stood on it to reach the top of the jar to escape .

End of story – and it is just a story , no actual animal was harmed in this fictional story .

In our professional life – at times we are the little chimp and at other times we are the mother chimp . The only thing that doesn’t change is the allegoric water level that keeps rising .

Will the mother chimp in us wait till the water is at nose level before we decide to put our life ahead of the little chimp under our care ? And when we are in the role of little chimp – are we always that helpless and do we need constant protection ? Clearly not a black and white problem

Sadly – there several managers will not wait till water reaches their nose level . At the first sign of trouble – some times even when there is no actual trouble – they will throw the people under them down and step on them . To those managers , all I can say is that they are not always playing the role of the chimp mother . There are times when they could end up as the little chimp and the tables will get turned against them too .

We can’t change how such managers work given the flow of decision making in most organizations . But we can choose whether to work for a manager who will give us as many opportunities as they possibly can till their own existence is endangered .

Not everyone has the option of finding a new manager when the existing one is clearly not the one you want to work for . This means we need to be patient and see if we can make it work over time . However , it will be pretty naive to not keep your skills up to date so that in worst case you can always find a manager in another team that you can trust . Skills alone will not find you the next job – you need to build a network too that you can tap into .

Hopefully you have that network already . The best time to start building that network was the day you got into kindergarten . The second best day is today . So please get started . Even if you never anticipate being in the little chimp situation – you will do the world a lot of good by being a good mother chimp to the unfortunate little chimps amongst us .

Always remember – even in the best case scenario, if water level reaches the nose level of the mother chimp – the little chimp has no chance from that point . So – wherever possible – work with the mother chimps to see if you can stop or slow down the water level from rising .

When will we reach that “Ek Din” , India ?


There might not be a lot of Indians who have not hummed these lines a few times in their lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NizrBxg1wvQ 

But I seriously doubt India has the political maturity yet to see that dream come true. 

Many Indians have rather  romantic notions along the lines of “politicians must wear khadi like Mahatma Gandhi did”, ” politicians should not have any personal comforts” and so on. If a politician is seen wearing an Armani suit – he is immediately thought of as a bad guy. If a politician is driving around in a BMW , she must have had questionable past, and so on. 

Today morning, I saw this article in Times of India. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/compare-my-house-with-sheila-dikshits-arvind-kejriwal/articleshow/28345884.cms The newly elected Chief Minister of Delhi is planning to move to a duplex flat close to his office – and that is government issue. Before election, he had apparently said that he would denounce official residence and stay in his own home. His own home apparently is in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh. Big question – is it better that he spends a few hours commuting to work every day? or should he stay in the government housing next door to work and use that commute time for actual work? Should he sacrifice efficiency for better optics? The fact that he had to say he will denounce use of government housing itself shows what kind of promises politicians have to make to get elected in India. 

The popular trend in India is for young people to become full time politicians straight from student life. You join a party in school or college, and then work your way up from there. This would be pretty good IF these people would get out of school , do a job or start a small business, and then come to full time politics. Instead, they start to wear khadi from college to identify themselves as politicians. And once they hold office – they won’t let go. What is the rationale for Rahul Gandhi being the Chair person of National Students Union of India ? Is he a student ? Was he active in student politics?

Mahatma Gandhi wanted a self sufficient India – and he also wanted a non violent way of getting the message across. He was shrewd enough to know that if Indians denounced western apparel, it would be an economic pinch to Britain as well. He wanted Congress leaders to wear clothes that they knit themselves. That is not the spirit of khadi any more – now it is a mere uniform that has lost all symbolic meaning. Look at someone like Shashi Tharoor – who is an accomplished diplomat and author. Now he walks around wearing a congress colored shawl around his neck to identify himself as a politician. Why is that necessary ? Who are these people trying to impress so hard ? 

Then there is Dr.Manmohan Singh. He grew up as a world famous apolitical economist before being tapped by Congress PM Narasimha Rao for political office. India went through a lot of progress (relative to its own past) under his leadership . Yet, he failed in Loksabha elections from Delhi, Every time he held office, he had to brought in as a representative of Assam legislature in Rajyasabha. If that is not political immaturity of the country, I wonder what is . 

And now he is relinquishing power to Nehru family’s heir apparent, Rahul Gandhi – who is a career politician. His claim to fame is strictly his family name. He entered politics around 2004 and just 9 years later, he is now the PM candidate for Congress. India has a billion plus strong population – and the venerable elders of congress fell over each other to throw Singh under the bus and get Rahul Gandhi projected as PM. Very mature indeed. 

And on his way out, Dr Singh tried his best to show his opponent Narendra Modi in as bad a light as he could have – by associating him to the Gujarat massacre. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Modi-will-be-disastrous-for-country-as-PM-Manmohan/articleshow/28352899.cms  What the PM conveniently forgot to say was that his own party and its leader were responsible for an even bigger massacre of Sikhs in 1984. Talk about kettle calling the pot black .To give credit where it is due – Modi, despite his awful record during the Gujarat riots, did rebuild Gujarat significantly since then. And he was cleared by the Supreme Court.  If he sets aside his extreme hindutva agenda, he might make a decent PM for India. 

Rahul Gandhi has been trying incredibly hard to show a different face to traditional congress politics. He was instrumental in getting Lokpal bill passed by the parliament – despite in a rather watered down form. He also tried to reverse the Maharashtra government decision on Adarsh flats scam. http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2014-01-02/india/45797859_1_adarsh-housing-society-prithviraj-chavan-maharashtra-government . But his is an uphill task – even if he has the best of intentions, it is a large party with lot of powerful leaders who might find it hard to change their ways. 

Is AAP the new bright future for Indian politics? I sure hope so, but I am no longer holding my breath for a few reasons.

First is the tactical question of whether they can scale the organization across India quickly for the upcoming parliament elections. With social media and traditional media help – may be AAP can pull off a miracle and get enough people interested and enough funds raised to compete, but it remains to be seen. But when quantity increases at breakneck speed – quality almost always suffers. The last thing India needs is AAP becoming another BJP or Congress.

Second, while I applaud the social and political outlook of AAP – I am in utter dismay of their economic policy. One of the first things AAP did when they came to power in Delhi was to announce a 50% subsidy for utilities. http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kejriwals-new-year-gift-to-delhi-50-power-subsidy/article5522873.ece

Last but not least, while it is good to audit the past acts of Congress and BJP and the executive – AAP runs the risk of being a reactionary government. My worry is that all the energy and time will be spent in figuring out who did what wrongs in the past that they won’t have enough time during their time in office to do something good that is forward looking.

While definitely a populist measure, I have a bad feeling that AAP might take India back to its pre-economic reforms days in a hurry. It took 20 years to negate the effects of past uses of subsidy, and interfering with free markets seem to be a really bad idea. I hope their economic policy is not strictly about subsidizing everything. Next generation in India is already heavily burdened by past economic policy mistakes – no more actions should be taken that will break their (economic) backs. 

But all said and done, AAP is the best thing that happened in Indian political scene since independence. I wish them the very best in showing the country how to govern well.

Constitutionally, India is a sovereign socialist republic. Parliament needs to debate whether socialism is the right model for India for the times we live in now. Socialist policies have held India back for several decades before Rao government started to liberalize it . What India needs is not just progressive economic policies – it needs the social policies to go with it. Vast segments of population does not have access to education even today. Where is the political will to change it ? Kerala proved that 100% literacy is attainable for a state. Why are the other states not doing the same ? India does not have a common or unified civil code either – in fact, most of the laws are not updated for a modern society. What about the rights of women ? When will the LGBT community get equal rights ?

Politics everywhere is local – especially so in India. There are so many regional parties in India, and that makes the central government run by an alliance which generally has no common agenda. It is a brittle marriage of convenience. Regional parties have little to no reason to do something that is outside the scope of their states. Election season has always been horse trading season in India for politicians. 

The solution is with the voting citizens of India . They should start getting more active in the political process. At a minimum – try to go out and vote on election day. Don’t vote just for your favorite party – vote for the actual candidate you like to be represented by. And hold them responsible once they are elected. Don’t get influenced by the khadi uniforms. And don’t penalize someone for their success – if a candidate ran a successful business or held a high paying job, don’t hold it against him. If anything – they might be less corrupt if they already have enough kept aside to live off. Encourage non career politicians to run for office – new ideas are always in short supply when it is the same people who get elected time and again. 

I hope that “Ek Din” is not too far in future – Jai Hind !