Dad, you too ?

After coming from school my son was telling me about his day in the school. He was in excited state (as usual) and he said, “I will tell you a joke”
“Ok”, I said.
” There was one boy and he always used to tell lies”, he continued, without waiting for my ok, “One day his father bought a robot, who would slap anyone every time a person told a lie. So when the boy came home, his father asked him, where had he gone”.
” I had gone to school”, the boy said, and the robot slapped him.
” No.. no.. i had gone…. umm….mmm”, the robot slapped the boy few more times
“Finally the boy told the truth, that he had gone to movie”
The father was very angry and sad.
He said, ” in our days, I was very obedient and truthful boy, not like you”.
And the robot slapped the father very hard. !!!

My son started laughing and went away. I also had a hearty laugh.
But then I became serious.

I thought about this joke and realised it has a potential power both ways – to destroy the little boys’ faith in their parents and also to bring him to the reality.

It is a fact that we are no saints. We have had our share of mistakes and are not perfect. But the little kids think of their parents as the world of paradise. As they grow up they start realising the chinks in the parents’ world. It is better that they come to know about the realities of the world.

Not sure how soon their world of wonderland should be busted.

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)

Tiger and The King…. New learning

The other day I was telling a story (as usual, making it on the fly) and when I ended the story, I was surprised at the way I ended it.

Once upon a time, there was a King, one day he went for hunting in the jungle. There he saw a tiger. But the tiger was lying down and not moving, his eyes were open. King looked into Tiger’s eyes. King felt that the Tiger was asking for help. So he got down from his horse and went near the Tiger. He found one arrow pierced into Tiger’s body. He went near to him and took out the arrow and cleaned the wound. Tiger started feeling better. When Tiger tried to stand on his feet, King helped him a bit. Tiger stood up, stretched his legs and felt better. King was standing there, looking down upon the tiger, feeling proud that he helped a tiger and was happy with himself. Tiger roared and before King realised jumped upon him, putting him on the ground. King was surprised.
He said ” Hey, I saved your life and now you are going to kill me?”

” Thank you for saving and I appreciate your efforts.” The Tiger said, “saving other’s life is your Dharma (your nature, your duty), you felt good about it, you felt proud about it. You got your returns. My Dharma is to kill and eat. You did you Dharma and now I am doing my Dharma, If I don’t eat you, I would starve and I would die”.
And Tiger killed the King.

Moral this story for me is that before you decide to help someone you should know his “Dharma” or nature and be prepared to face it. Helping with just good heart is not good enough, you need to know that other person/ animal does not have the same heart as yours.

Contrast this with what my grandmother or mother or even I myself would have ended this story just 5 years back. I would have ended up telling that the Tiger and the King became friends forever etc – very similar to Lion and the Mouse story I have heard since childhood.

Obama In My House

After coming home, I was finishing some work on my laptop. My eldest son was sitting next to me generally doing nothing. He was back home, after playing and was tired, hence was just browsing the book and chit chatting with me. I was responding in mono syllables without listening to him. I was actually immersed in doing some work. He said something and I did not respond. He startled me with his next sentence :
“You are doing something that you should not be doing”. I looked up from my laptop. Now I couldn’t ignore him. It was t

My Son

ime to pay attention and understand what he was trying to say.
So I said, “Yeah, I know, I should be listening to you”.
“No”, he said, “You should read what Obama says”.
“What? Oh.. yeah I saw some news about him in today’s newspaper, I must read that”,
I was desperately trying to show that I was on top of the subject and I was miserably failing.
“No”, he continued surprise me and said further, “You should read the Reader’s Digest”.
I asked him to tell me what was it.  He insisted that I should read it and brought the RD, opened the page and gave it to me.
While pointing the 4 lines that he wanted me to read he said “Actually I don’t mean so much, but you read it”.

By now I had stopped guessing and was ready to face whatever it was.
“A study in 16 countries this year found that TV and videogames are drastically reducing playtime among kids one to 12. And parents also are wired to laptops, pagers and Back Berries”

Hmm.. a big lesson for me coming from my son.

I felt guilty of myself and proud of my son.
(RD, June09 carried an article on “8 lessons from the Obamas on Raising Kids”).

Caring for the listeners – human side of Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar

Last week, I had an opportunity to attend Pandit Hridaynath Mangeshkar’s music program once more, this time organised by Maharashtra Mandal Singapore. Listening to him on the stage takes you way above the world of music. His explanations and providing the context of the song or poem makes you truly enjoy the whole experience. He is a gifted singer and composer. Despite remaining very selective about the songs and poems he has made the world of music rich through his 60 years of contribution. He has received many awards not just from the government but from the public, peers and Shankaracharya.

This time I discovered one more noble quality in him as a human being.

It so happened that the program was to start at 5 pm, but it started at 6.10pm. This was not enough, the microphone was found to be not working the moment Panditji started talking. It was such an embarrassment. Then the interval + the sponsor felicitation took almost 40 min and as per the rules of the auditorium Panditji had to stop the program just when it was reaching its peak. This was robbing of music lovers the joy of listening to Panditji.

What I liked in the whole process was Panditji’s attitude. He expressed his grief not just at the state of the organisers, but also the fact that listeners did not get enough value from the program. He showed the sensitivity that not many artist show these days. Mostly the artist are concerned about the fees, stay, travel etc. But caring about the music lovers and thinking from their point of view is the ultimate sign of a great performer and great human being. I salute Panditji for this.

Beyound “Oracle buying Sun” … Into the “Open Source Governement”

Oracle to buy Sun Microsystems is the news getting lot of attention tonight. This is a big news in the industry as once upon a time both were poster boys of the internet boom. A lot is being written and speculated about the impact of this development. A real picture would emerge only after the dust is settled and more is known as to how Oracle deals with hardware, MySQL, middleware and Solaris. This deal has a potential to bring fundamental change in the IT industry landscape depending upon how Oracle approaches it.

While this is happening, I found the article ” An Open Source Government” even more interesting. This article is written by Jim Whitehurst of Red Hat Inc. where I work. The most interesting part that I liked is :

When information is open and individuals have the means to contribute, everyone shares in the responsibility for improvement. Informed citizens become engaged citizens. Engaged citizens contribute opinions, ideas and effort.

and

We must build the structure and culture for participation, from the highest levels of government to municipal town halls. We need to unlock the doors that stand between citizens and information. Both infrastructure and information must be open and easily accessible to all.

I found it to be very important attempt to connect the Governance, Government and Citizen through the principles of open source.

The participation by the citizens is so important to shape the nation that we want. As I am following the elections in the largest democracy of the world – India, I keep wondering how and why would more than 60% of eligible people would come out for voting.

Making people interested in participation, making it easy for them to participate and then making it affordable for the government to reach out to the citizen is a tremendous task.

Use of open source can help governments to find a way to address the last part at least, which will be a big leap. This would need a good leadership at the highest level. Hope the elections in India would bring a change for betterment.

Side effect of Trust – efficiency

Travelling on a subway/ local trains in Singapore, Hong Kong, Kolkatta, Delhi, Bejing the most common thing that you take for granted is the entry point/ checkpoint automatic doors. They come in different forms – “snap” doors or “lever” doors. Your instinct tells you to tap your pass or push the ticket through, door will open and you go through to the other side. This is the standard operating procedure at almost every subway station and every country I have visited.

Now imagine the contrast. You tap your ticket or pass on the ticket checking point and you look for door to open – either “snap” sound or the levers to push. But there is no door. It it a wide open “Pass through”. This is Tokyo.

You know what. I thought I was busy in tapping the ticket and hence might not have noticed opening of the door. And hence I moved passed the doors and looked back to check if the doors are snapping back to close. But no such thing. I was zapped. Being in a hurry I went and boarded the train. While coming out of the station I decided to keep a closer watch on the doors. Again I realised the doors were open all the time.

I was waiting for the opportunity to know it better and I got it on 3^rd day. My pass had run out of money and I tapped the pass on the entrance of the door. It beeped, flashed red light and doors closed. Oh..so there were doors. And in the instance I understood the logic.

The doors are open all the time and they close only when something goes wrong.

Wow.. I liked the logic, made for efficiency. Faster movement of people in the given time.

While I was admiring this efficient mechanism, I wondered why other cities have not implemented such logic. And that is when I felt that this mechanism or logic is not just the efficiency consideration. I felt that it reflects the social mindset as well. To me “keeping the gates open all time time, till some problem” is reflection of “trust” based society. Can you trust your citizens and design the systems just to stop the offenders? In most places we find the systems are designed keeping in mind that the people are going to cheat and checks are implemented accordingly.

Here in Tokyo I found that the system was ready to trust the people. Probably the society was trustworthy. This has helped to create so much efficiency. Trust has so many benefits.

My respect for that society grew multifold.

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.”