Hurrah ...

I have always wondered, what governs ONE to cross over that seemingly un-conquerable boundary of physical pain.

Is it physical strength or mental steadfastness ?

Marathoners who like to touch than Finish line (42KMs.. phew! )  !!!

Coming to my own experiments.. I ve always had the dream of completing 108 Suryanamaskar's in one GO. But used to convince myself to give up after 48 / 50 !

Until today morning.. in the HOT Pondicherry Morning SUN - on the beach !

Now, I know.. its the mental strength. The body does drag along :) 92 minutes of perseverance. Last 30 minutes weren't necessarily bearable !!!

Forming Winning Teams : Activation Phase

Going through the exercise of building teams from scratch ! Team that will be the the key differentiation   ! Team that will lead innovation and execution. A team for the future, but well grounded in the present.

And I am refining my ideas of team building through this one, although this is the N'th time for me building a new team from the scratch.

And, through this process, one thing becomes very very clear to me.

You get the bodies together. That's the physical mass of the team and collect it till it reaches the critical mass. Then the job is to ACTIVATE it.

And the activation phase is truly critical. It has three parts to it.

1. Motivate : This is where the team members need to see Purpose of them working, not the tasks. And also where the team motivates back the leadership with the progress being made.

2. Enable: Mostly budgetary. Provide training, tools, equipments etc. Enable the team.

3. Empower: Purpose is set, they have the tools. And you hired intelligent people. Why get in the way ? Cultivate that sense of empowerment.

Easy recipe for an ACTIVATED team.

Bugged down by others expectations

One thing I am constantly battling for last 3-4 weeks is, scores of people coming to me and almost demanding / quizzing me a blue print for their growth in the organization.

Since I took on a new opportunity to build a new team in India, a lot of the people come to me and almost think I am sitting on a pile of coupons for free growth / promo.

There are different types though.

1.  Some who directly go down to their need. How they clearly want to grow and not growing. And should avail this opportunity ! Not interested in knowing "why they are not growing yet"

2. Some more smarter. They come try to convince me, what they bring to the table and to my team, before they slip in to what they expect

Some are genuine, want to do something new, without any expectation. And these are the people who are very very secured in their capabilities. They never have to state what they want. They focus and do their work, and their expectations get filled up on their own over the time.

But the ratio of such people with no expectation is very very minute. I am ok with this. Should not bug me down. However, there is a twist.

Quite a bit of my old team people come in and talk. Their point of view is different. They say, when I was leading them, they handed over their growth to me and focused on work. Now that I am moving out, forming something new, they feel cheated.

Especially they do not like the bit, that I am not opening my arms and taking my old team people to build the new one (which will be the easiest for me). Because I do not want to break my old team.
But the counter argument is, its a personal choice and freedom issue. People want to work in my new team, they should be able to apply and compete for it.

Sighh.. !!! No easy answer..

turning villain ..

After 16+ years of working in the company, and breaking many rules on the way (with the intent of creating better ones), I ve gotten one HR complaint filed against me today. Damn !!

Half of the HR execs found new masala to go after - inquiring what went wrong  !

The process of building a team from the scratch, needs a lot of hiring to happen. And in the current economy where most of the industry biggies are laying off people, I thought "hiring" is a good place to be. And with people internal to my existing company not getting enough opportunity to be part of growing teams, made me think I should focus on hiring internal talent instead from the market.

Now, little did I know, the HR recruiting team does not have much incentive plan around internal hiring (tongue in cheek) !! And there has been ZERO support from staffing team.

No internal marketing of the positions available, no proactive search for people who have registered in company database as looking out of change etc.

So, yes I was critical about the in-capabilities and lack of intention from the staffing team. And the person goes and files a completely diabolic case against me ! That I am scaring people of big up coming lay off and all. Not sure where he got the idea from.

Today, I m most wanted by global HR execs. Interrogation !! Some of my staff and ex-staff go through it too.

17 yrs of love ..

(to my wife on our 17th marriage anniversary)

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
With You,  sixty eight seasons
   ….and moments continuum.
  You cast a spell,  like colors in collision
   Heady  cocktail of passion and poison.

Secure in the realm of your orbiting influence
Tuck in the warm blanket of your potent omniscience.
    I am that present, too lazy to kiss the future, 
   An ocean, uninterested in returning to the shore

Your love, more generous than nature
Your forgiveness,  an eraser to all my wrong answers
O'Mon la belle dame,
  May I  remain your eternal admirer ??
————————————————————————

Acceptability

Changing businesses with their own profit and loss responsibilities, even within a big company is like joining a new company by itself.

I have heard about the nightmarish stories of people changing the org, at leadership levels, and within weeks realizing, they do not fit in at all.

Most of that time, that "fit in" is just acceptability by the existing team to the incoming leader. Especially when they see it as being "planted" by someone else even further up in the organization.

And being "planted" in these cases, is a universal strategy, often just influenced by level of comfort and creating an ecosystem which is very much against the change every one seeking in terms of new challenge. Its hypocrisy in a way. We like to talk about "change" but then we seek the "old" comfort in the new place.

And this acceptability is very annoying at ground level. For example, one complete morning I was in my new office, my calendar is full with appointments, but NO ONE showing up - every one giving some silly excuse 5 mins in to the meeting. Basically, no one really wants to meet and take it forward.

In a team outing, in the bus en-route to destination, the seat next to me remained open ! No one took it. Any sports or discussion I tried to join, it dispersed in moments !

Its a very different feeling, as it has always been the reverse so far .. The "fitting in" is  - to a large extend is "being accepted".

Management Comodity

Since long I ve been nourishing this idea in my head, that the IT industry management professional is becoming a commodity. While the true on-the-ground skills like coding, testing, troubleshooting have become very difficult to find.

The counter argument I heard from managers is, you get a lot of engineers too, may be not many who have that spark of applicability to business (not spark of brilliance - those are destiny's children !).

But then same goes back to management too - Most managers today work in the same level of creativity and spark of applicability to the business. A few 2-5% make solid, soaked transition to a brand of leadership which is again rare.

So, that was all theory on a foundation of gut-feel and 360 observation.

And now I ve good data points to prove a lot of it.

We are building a grounds up team, with new energy and new charter. I have openings for both technical leaders as well as managers.

And for  manager posts I have probably 10 people for each post who have already approached me, but for technical people, hardly a handful !!!

And, managers when approach, ask me how do they grow in this new business. The technical leads, ask what would we build ? How is it going to be different that others ?

With the industry maturing, we should pause and think, are we (the managers) managing ourselves (our expectations vs. value add) well ? Are we seeing that we are out-dating ourselves ? its a matter of just few years, I can sense the movement sweeping the industry and managers feeling the heat of  even landing a decent job !!