Managers and Leaders

“Our leaders have to be admired for their thought leadership and not just competence.”
This is the quote from Mr. Subroto Bagchi’s interview in Economic Times (Nov 30, 2007)

This resonates so well with what Amita and me often discuss about.

Both of us have seen Indian and Global managers at very senior positions.
These are not the celebrity leaders, but these are the managers who are responsible for growing businesses and leading people. These managers, especially in large organisation have to be good leaders. It is not easy for people to join and connect with faceless organisation. For people, their managers are the face of the organisation and most of the time people join or leave their managers. In such cases managers carry enormous responsibility to provide not just the business competency but good people leadership.

This is where the leadership style and approach differ.

I have seen many competent professionals. They are good at their function and their job. But when it comes to leading people (there is a difference between managing and leading people), they fall awfully short.

I have personally worked with entrepreneurs, professional managers and good leaders. I have worked in corporate sector, have worked in social sector. I have seen different type of people. I have seen the difference between leaders and manager. The ability to inspire, create vision and walk on the chosen path – is the the most important aspect to be successful in being a leader – be it in corporate life or in social sector.

To be a successful leader one needs to have both the capabilities – competency and inspiring people. Just the competency can not take you too far. I have seen some entrepreneurs who had vision (later on I realised that they had only dreams), ability to inspire people but did not have competency in business areas. They simply couldn’t succeed. Some entrepreneurs I have seen who were competent in business areas but did not have the vision. Their businesses did not grow beyond a point. Good professionals did not like to stick around such people for long and hence business did not grow.

When it comes to professional managers leading the people, most manager think that managing people is good enough. They focus on giving right job description, right work to the people under them. They give pep talks so that people can deliver the numbers. The most professional managers follow M-B-O (management by objectives) process to get work done. They think by setting up the objectives people deliver the desired results. It is true to some extent. But it is not the entire truth.
People mostly look up to their managers for direction and inspiration. People like to work for such leaders. The inspired and motivated people tend to give much more than set objectives. They help create more vibrancy in the group. They help create happy and creative atmosphere. In this age of Knowledge economy, the dependency is on people than just the processes.

The good leaders provide this important ingredient – inspiration and vision (thought leadership) – which is so vital for growth than just the straight jacketed MBO or task oriented process.

(Reproduced from my old blog (2007) on different blog site)

Partnering for Success

Why do upstart / small/ medium ISVs find it difficult to establish partnership in new regions ….

ISVs find it difficult to get mindshare of resellers or SI partners specially when they want to expand beyond their geographical region. When you think more deeply you would find few reasons.

When the ISV is entering into new region, a lot of work is needed to be done for the market development. Someone has to do this work – either ISV or the local partner. If partner decides to go ahead with the market development, question is how to get returns on the investments. The traditional partnership model in IT industry works on commission basis. If that is the only form of return the considerations for investment are driven by many factors :

• Cost of the ISV solution and the % margin,
• The absolute value of the margin
• Volume of sales per month
• Potential total gross profit in a given period.

Most of the time the Potential margin itself is not justifiable to make any significant investment. When it is a decent amount, the time frame may take much longer to get the returns.

Such scenario is not new to ISV vendors and hence ISV sticks to selling directly to the customers till the time it reaches certain threshold. When ISV is looking to grow beyond its geographical region (in new territories), setting up office or appointing a sales person is too costly a proposition. And given the above considerations it is difficult to excite the partner to work on purely commission basis and earn decent returns.

What is the alternative ?

Well, ISV can try some age old method of paying the retainer-ship fee to one of the partners in the new region for initial period. I am aware of the question as to how would it work for the ISVs. Well, by paying retainer-ship fee, ISV can insist on performing the tasks of :

• Reaching out to key customers,
• Creating awareness of its products and solution
• Getting the feedback from the customers
• Getting the market feedback (about competition, pricing, solution providers, influencers etc).
• Participate in local relevant events (by paying the participation fees of the event)

It is possible to measure the efforts through weekly activity reports and reviews. The key here is to treat the partner as your extended sales team. You are hiring a sales person on time sharing basis.

The cost of this retainer-ship would vary from 20% to 50% of the cost of one local sales person / local small office. To begin with, this activity can be done only short period 3 to 6 months.

In this process, ISVs get crucial tasks done - market development activities, prospect database and also loyalty and interest of channel partner in the new market.

ISV can build from here. This phase helps it to take further decision about :

• Continue or discontinue this arrangement,
• Enter into the market with direct office
• Put more trust in channel partner
• Focus only on period

Outliers : My Views

Outliers – The story of success :  Excellent book.

Malcolm Gladwell, has connected the events that happen around us but we don’t realise the deep meaning behind them.

I really liked the message that it is not just the brightest and the best that get to be successful in life, there are more factors like opportunities, hard work, where we come from etc.  The examples of Bill Gates and Bill Joy getting an opportunity to practice and hone their skill is really appropriate. But that does not take credit away from them. The most important lesson is the 10,000 hours of practice. This was so true in case of Beatles, Joe Flom also. One can say that getting an opportunity is matter of luck but willingness to put in hard work and doing it is entirely in our hands.

Similarly I liked the example of Cris Langan – one might have very very high IQ, but that does not guarantee the success in life.  The example of Oppenheimer highlights other part of the story – you need to be able to communicate, present your story to be successful in life.

I was most impressed by the KIPP story. Not just the hardwork students were putting in and getting the resulsts but the fact that irrespective of your background you could rise in life if right environment is generated.

From the hardwork perspective, the life of Chinese rice farmer and life of !Kung bushmen of Kalahari Desert in Botswana is a striking example. How the nature and the work that we do to strive in the nature around us shapes our thinking,  our attitude towards life and how it make us successful or not in different fields.

Finally the study of PDI – Power Distance Index – shapes our communication and what effect it has on work.  It is so true that our environment and our upbringing shapes our communication and our mannerism – how we talk to elders, with people at higher position and in social context, what words do we use etc.  And when we are in the new environment those words, that mannerism takes entirely different meaning.

While everyone in the international business need to study this and adapt to the ways of communication around us, I feel the leaders and managers and all the decision makers need to learn it even more than others.

Why Some people in top management are afraid of growth?

Why Some people in top management are afraid of growth? Was the question asked recently. I tried to answer in the following way.

When they are among the Top Management they have reached the peak, they don’t know where to go next. Usually after the peak is downfall. So they are afraid of that.

When I look closely at this question, I realise there are two scenarios :

First is since you have reached the top, you can not go up further and you need to put in efforts to stay there. But then, to stay at the top you need different qualities than when you were climbing. Most people don’t know what does it mean.

Second is once you reach one peak, you need to create another peak (new challenges) to get that feeling of going up. But before you start climbing another peak, you have to get down or you have to learn new tricks. You need energy (drive) to get out of the comfort zone and recharge yourself. Either because of age or because of fear of failure many people don’t try these things and become insecure in their “Top” position.”

Mentor’s advice

I read an article in CIO magazine wherein 5 CIOs have shared what their mentors told them. One of the CIO said :

Be decisive.

“I had a wonderful mentor who told me the speed to make a decision is an important quality of an executive. When you move from being an analyst and developer—someone who expects to have all the data before making a decision—up to executive, you have to understand your gut feelings play more of a role. You reach a level where you’re being paid to rely on your experience. If you wait for every single data point, every time, you may be seen as indecisive or weak.”
-Robert Urwiler, SVP and CIO, Vail Resorts

This reminded me of one recent episode that I was watching on “Are you smarter than fifth grader”. There, the contestant was a professional poker player. He said that relying on only guts is not good nor was being overly logical. He said that when your combine logic with your guts it gives you best results. No wonder he went out with half a million doller kitty in his bag.

I am so happy to find validation for my thoughts that entrepreneurial way of decision making is so important and it pays.

Managing Your boss

We need to manage the boss in many ways. It is not in a negative context, as managing has multiple aspects. Managing a boss is part of managing our careers. In that conext we need to understand the boss as an important factor. Boss (to large extent) has a major influence on how we are perceived by his boss and by his peers. Boss has an influence on at least pace of our growth and on extent of our exposure or learning. Which means boss has control over effectiveness to be successful. So what do we do manage boss? First, one needs to understand him/her as human being – person without the title. Very often we look from the lenses of title. My experience is that look at the boss first as a professional and how he has reached that position. What is that he has and you don’t have in terms of professional qualities. That gives good insight into his/her positives and negatives. Understand boss’s scope of work, his standing among the peers and his aspirations. This is little complex work. But once you figure out this, you would understand where do you stand in this situtation. You would understand what are boss’s expectations from you to help him “win” and further his aspirations. This would also give you scope of your work, its relative importance in the organisation and thus you would get to know opportunities for your growth. You can then decide if your aspirations – growth, learning, exposure etc – can be fulfilled in the given situation. Reaching out to boss with your analysis of the situation, your expections and suggestions of how you can create a win-win situation for boss and yourself helps. It is a very interesting work.

The key question is what do you do after analysing in the above way and realising that your values, aspirations and professional thoughts do not match with your boss’s. Well, in that case we look at the organisation – the leader – boss’s boss. There is a always a possibility that your boss might be wrong in the corporate context and your thinking might be right. If this is the situation, have some patience. Find out ways to communicate with larger set of people in the organisation and stick to the values without leaving the boss.