Humility-Arrogance Relational Matrix (HARM): Individual-Institution Culture Model

In human interactions as well as human-organization interactions we encounter, all the time, individuals and institutions displaying diverse traits, each at different points of a respective spectrum. For example, we may encounter individuals who are optimistic or pessimistic or at some point in optimism-pessimism spectrum. Similar positioning could be true of institutions as well; institutions that would never abandon growth path despite adversities and those that immediately downsize at the first sign of demand recession. The number of such traits on which individuals and institutions can be so classified are many. However, two traits that govern the relationships within and between individuals as well as institutions are extremely critical to individual and institutional development.  

The two traits that are particularly important in this context are humility and arrogance. These two traits are the visible or felt expressions of how individuals and institutions think or behave with and among each other. While these are fairly commonplace words, they are also commonly misunderstood; it is, therefore, worthwhile to recall their essence. Humility is the endearing way of thinking and behaving that comes from considering that one is not necessarily better, smarter or more important than other people, whether one actually is or not.  Arrogance, in direct contrast, is the insulting way of thinking and behaving that comes from believing that one is better, smarter or more important than other people, whether one actually is or not. Like all positive and pristine traits, humility is hard to ingrain while like all negative and crude traits, arrogance is easy to embrace.

Fusion, diffusion

Ironically, behaviour and action patterns that are so dissimilar as humility and arrogance are built on common foundations. Perceptions of knowledge, capability, competence and accomplishment usually drive one’s own as well as others’ belief of what one is. It is human nature to continuously evaluate oneself and others on these aspects, and position oneself to be superior or inferior vis-à-vis others. It is easy to feel egoistic (which is just a step away from arrogance) in the context of one’s superiority and feel defeatist (which is just a step away from worthlessness) in awareness of one’s inferiority. In contrast, it requires a special kind of personality disposition to be humble in spite of superiority and strong in spite of inferiority. This challenge is compounded as one receives continuous feedback, direct and indirect as well as genuine and timeserving, from one’s network.

These traits are independent of scaling in competence. For example, a teacher is naturally required to be highly knowledgeable compared to the students. That does not bestow any right to be arrogant on the part of the teacher because that differential capability is the fundamental basis of such teacher-student relationship. On the other hand, a great teacher remains humble by believing that he or she needs to learn more to teach better, and even accepts the occasional brilliant repartees and queries from the students. Similarly, a manager or a specialist by virtue of his or her experience ought to know more than his or her staff but, by no means, it is an unnatural accomplishment that should make the manager or a specialist even a wee bit arrogant. On the other hand, a great manager or specialist always looks to expand his or her frontiers of knowledge besides welcoming the fresh thoughts of youngsters.

Trending, branding

Institutions have a different set of influencers. Their competence is reflected in terms of their market share and profitability. As a result of their achievements on these two dimensions, they trend as performers, and as performers they get branded too. Most start-ups and young firms achieve this by being capable as well as humble. However, with positive trending and branding, they keep acquiring scale. Most institutions as they grow in scale face an inflection point, unique in each case, from which point they start behaving and acting less vulnerable and more invincible. Akin to the individual recount earlier, this also represents a humility-arrogance tipping point. Scale often leads to distance; between employees and the management, within employees, and more importantly between organizations and their customers.

At and from such an inflection point, an institution starts believing that it knows what is right –for itself as well as its employees and customers. The level of functional specialization and sophistication of data analytics may well sustain the institutions on performance journey but radically alter how they are perceived in terms of their relative humility and arrogance. For example, an increment letter that arrives in the mail box of each employee of a one-lakh employee strong company as immediately as the day after performance year close, despite its efficiency, would be perceived to be shockingly impersonal (which is a step or two away from arrogance). If in that organization, the increment letter, duly signed by a CXO, is personally handed over by the manager to each employee (even if with a few days of delay), the act would reflect continuing institutional care (which is a shade or two closer to humility).  

Interlays, interplays

Adding complexity to the situation is that humility and arrogance are capable of being faked. An individual or institution may be intrinsically arrogant but may make it appear as aggression (which is considered a surrogate for competitiveness!). Others may cultivate humility as a means to an end, notwithstanding not so modest views of themselves. Some individuals or institutions may take humility to the extremes of perpetual silence and acceptance leading to doubts on intrinsic capability (also, as surrogates of passive aggression). Others may alternate between flashes of arrogance and swathes of humility to reconcile their inner contradictions. Given that human nature is not perfect, having humility inside and faking aggression outside or vice versa is hardly an appropriate state of individual or institutional thought and action.

The ideal ecosystem would comprise interactions on three dimensions; between individuals, between individuals and institutions and between institutions. In terms of levels of endowments or competencies, the players can never be equal but the relationships can certainly be equitable. Individual level collaboration, between the competent and not-so-component, is the foundation of building humility in organizational ecosystem. Collaboration between individuals and institutions, howsoever seemingly giver an institution is and receiver an individual is, constitutes the foundation of social ecosystem. Collaboration across any value chain constitutes the foundation of industrial ecosystem. An Original Equipment Manufacturer(OEM) could be endowed with better marketing and financial power than a small component maker but the former ought to be cognizant of the essentiality (and not the optionality) of the component maker to the OEM.

Gross, subtle

When concepts such as humility and arrogance are discussed, the focus tends to be on the visibly gross or misleadingly subtle aspects of the concepts. Just as being silent is not being humble, being in an agreeing or obsequious mode does not constitute humility. Similarly proposing or communicating an alternative way of thought or action does not reflect lack of humility (let alone display of arrogance). Humility is the ability to convey what is correct and appropriate to context and content in a manner that does not reflect superiority, and in a manner that the recipient is inspired to absorb the context. Humility is the ability to learn as much as possible and relevant from other individuals and institutions. In the ultimate analysis, humility is the ability share, spread and enhance knowledge in a collaborative and inspirational manner.

In a similar manner, arrogance does not mean only insulting way of thought, expression or action. Arrogance can be very subtle too. When sales executives in a retail store of iconic brands chat amongst themselves for minutes without connecting with customers it is nothing but subtle institutional arrogance. When members of organizations, private or public, provide inadequate responses or take inordinate time to serve stakeholders that too is institutional arrogance. In several cases, the line between individual and institutional arrogance is rather thin. Humility needs to be a key anchor of family and organizational culture to be able to nurture humility and eliminate arrogance even when they are in the respective subtlest forms,

Off harm’s way, through HARM model

While we have all grown to accept humility as a rare sparkle and arrogance as a common inevitability of high-stress life, we need to take a break, and recognize the insidiously harmful effects of lack of humility or exertion of arrogance, gross or subtle, on enhancing stress levels in the society. We should aim to develop greater and more perceptive understanding of these commonly misunderstood concepts and reflect on them through a Humility-Arrogance Relational Matrix (HARM).  Fundamentally, being humble knowing one’s limitations is a source of strength but being humble with all the awareness of one’s competences is an even greater source of strength. Similarly, forsaking ego despite the weaknesses of others is a source of strength but eschewing ego despite the awareness of one’s superiority is an even greater source of strength.

Four combinations are possible. Individuals can be humble but institutions can be arrogant – especially commercially and rapidly successful organizations; it requires individuals to persevere even as it behoves key decision makers to launch a culture journey in institutions. Individuals can be arrogant but institutions, especially service oriented and non-governmental organizations can be humble; it requires individuals to reflect and remediate even as the organizations persevere on their path. Both individuals and institutions can be arrogant – this could be a concomitant of a despotic culture which smothers creativity and demands servility; mercifully such combinations are few but unless they are transformed the overall national ecosystem can be destroyed. In the virtuous grid, the individual as well as the institution would be competent and capable; such individuals and institutions would paradoxically render a great service to the nation by being less modest about their uniqueness and imbibing other individuals and institutions with their implicit drivers of humility.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on April 10, 2016     

Ratio Analysis: A Relevant Tool for Emotional Fitness (Too!)

Ratio Analysis is known to students and practitioners of business, more particularly of finance, as a simple but insightful approach to measure and comparatively benchmark the state of business and operations of a firm. There are basically four ways of constructing ratios, classified as (i) coverage ratios, which are measures of a company’s ability to satisfy or meet particular obligations, (ii) return ratios, which are measures of the net benefit relative to the resources expended, (iii) turnover ratios, which are measures of the gross benefit, relative to the resources expended, and (iv) a component percentage, which is the ratio of a component of an item to the item. Wise leaders would never look at absolute numbers as indicative of performance, good or bad; ratios are vital ways to assess performance in relevant perspectives.

Specifically with reference to a company’s operating and financial performance, there are six types of ratios which constitute an essential analytical framework. These are (1) liquidity ratios, which provide information on a company’s ability to meet its short term or immediate obligations, (2) profitability ratios, which provide information on the amount of income from each rupee of sales, (3) activity ratios, which provide information on a company’s ability to manage its resources or assets efficiently, (4) leverage ratios, which provide information on the ability of a company to satisfy the fixed financing obligations, (5) investor ratios, which describe a company’s ability to satisfy shareholders investing in stock of the company, and (6) return on investment ratios, which provide information on the profits, relative to the assets deployed to produce the profits.

Universality

There is probably no analytical tool in business that is as universal as ratio analysis. Contrary to popular fixation that it is a finance oriented tool, it can be used to describe the state of affairs in respect of any type of functional performance (for example, number of exiting employees to total number of employees in an organization) or any type of physical performance (for example, units exported to total units sold). There can also be crossover ratios covering physical and financial numbers (for example, value added in rupees per employee). There are probably no absolute prescriptive levels for ratios, they being influenced by the age and market standing of the company, nature of industry, quality of management, nature of investors and the state of economy. They are, however, extremely useful as comparisons with other firms in same, similar or differentiated industries and as trends over time. Interestingly, ratio analysis can be applied to an individual’s operating and financial performance as well, equally effectively.

As an example of applicability to an individual, liquidity ratios are very insightful. Given the relatively non-liquid or volatile nature of investments that individuals tend to make, measures like quick ratios (current assets less money tied up in equities and bonds to current liabilities) are more helpful and cautionary. Similarly, those steeped in equity and investment culture must deploy profitability ratios consistently across their sectors of investment to judge their relative performance. They can utilize leverage ratios to assess their short term and long term financial viability. They can also follow a physical framework in terms of hours spent on social networking to hours spent on studies etc. The purpose of the blog post is, however, different; it seeks to adapt and apply the insightful framework of ratio analysis to analyse, judge and improve one’s emotional well-being.

Emotionalism

While emotions are a perfectly normal part of human life (even all life, considering how birds and animals are also emotive), emotionalism is an overwhelming and controlling state of mind and heart. Emotionalism may be defined as a strong or excessive appeal to emotions, either all by oneself or by one to another. It would include unwarranted expression or display of emotions in day to day settings. Emotions themselves are several but one can consider nine emotions (Nava Rasas as per Hindu fine art tradition) as core or root emotions. With certain liberty for the purposes of this post, these are tweaked and expanded as synonyms-like feelings as follows: love (also, affection or collaboration), happiness (also, optimism or energy), compassion (also, caring or pity), anger (excitement or revulsion), fear (also, anxiety or disquiet), disgust (also, revulsion or irritation), courage (also, adventurism or risk taking), wonder (also, surprise or fulfilment), serenity (also, equanimity and sobriety).

Positive leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela exemplified positive emotions such as love, happiness, compassion, courage, surprise and serenity while negative leaders like dictators feed on negative emotions like anger, fear, disgust and courage (of a different kind, though). The occurrence of emotions is not only related to personality types but the circumstances faced by the personalities. An emotionally driven person is not only overwhelmed by the above core emotions in varying degrees but also tries to dominate others through his dominant emotions. The way to avoid emotionalism is by seeking an emotional balance. This, of course, varies widely between individuals. That said, certain emotional ratios are relevant to understand one’s own emotional health better and work towards a healthy emotional balance. Six emotional ratios are presented below.

Emotional liquidity

Happiness is the most fulfilling emotion. Some people are spontaneously happy while some are happy only upon accomplishing their goals. A basal naturally spontaneous happiness level, superimposed by a variable happiness level related to goal accomplishment, is the best state. Alongside the asset of happiness, the liability of unhappiness or sadness also exists. Happiness tends to be short-lived while sadness tends to be long lasting. For example, a person who loses out on an exciting promotion is likely to be saddened (with respect to the specific promotion goal) till the next annual performance review cycle while he could still make continuous achievements, and hence derive continuous happiness, all though the year. An emotionally liquid individual has assets of happiness, optimism and energy that are several times over the sad liability of unfulfilled goals. An emotionally liquid person is one who is an energetic and optimistic seeker of happiness.

Emotional viability

Life is difficult and challenging, especially if one sets for himself or herself higher order goals that are not easily achievable. Usually, aspiration or goal motivates one to attempt achievement. Yet, one is beset by fear of failure or anxiety of slippage vis-à-vis the goals. The counteracting force for this fear is courage, peppered by a bit of adventurism and risk taking. The ratio of one’s courage to one’s fear has to be a significant number for one to be emotionally viable. Additionally, another ratio reinforces one’s emotional viability; it is the ratio of one’s affectionate emotions to one’s revulsion hot points. An ability to naturally be loving, affectionate and collaborative overcomes the tendency to be repelled by negatively surprising or irritatingly disgusting developments that one encounters. The former, if endowed in a person in a rich measure, helps him or her to achieve and sustain emotional viability. 

Emotional turnover

Everyday activities bring their own joys and disappointments even as most daily chores tend to be emotion-neutral. That said, just as one saves money for anticipated and unanticipated expenses, one must accumulate an inventory of happiness that can compensate for sharp spikes in unhappiness. Happiness needs to be viewed not as a momentary pleasure but an accumulation of good moments and memories that keeps one’s ship of life well protected when buffeted by sudden storms. Ideally, at any point of time one should be in a position to have happiness that outlasts disappointments of two quarters. It is more particularly true for corporate executives who battle the assessment rigour of corporate quarterly performance by the Street every quarter and also for the layman who is perplexed by loss of market capitalization or spike in inflation every quarter!   

Emotional leverage

Amongst all financial leverage ratios, debt-equity ratio is the most meaningful and popular indicator of financial health and stability of a firm. Investors and financial institutions provide capital to companies to develop as equity and debt respectively. The higher the proportion of debt the higher the leverage. Individuals have their own emotional debt-equity ratio as well. The broader society encourages individual development through two instruments - trust and goodwill. Trust is situational and contextual and, much like debt, needs periodic servicing, Defaults could lead to poor rating of individuals. In contrast, an individual in his or her lifetime can gain goodwill through successive positive actions. Much like equity or risk capital, goodwill remains undented despite occasional minor issues. Like debt-equity ratio being ideal at 1:1 for optimal leverage, an equal proportion of trust and goodwill bestows serenity on an individual.

Emotional return

Businesses cannot be expected to provide usurious returns continuously; eventually firms converge towards an industry average rate of return. The businesses are measured by earnings per share (EPS) and by return on total investment (ROI). In a loose sense, earnings are nothing but revenues less expenditure. The nine emotions comprise the positive emotions (PEs) of love, happiness, compassion and serenity, and non-positive or negative emotions of surprise, anger and disgust (NEs). The difference of PEs over NEs represents the net positive emotion (NPE) of an individual. This is modified with multiplication by the emotional viability index (EVI) of courage divided by fear (C/F). An EVI which is a natural number greater than 1 enhances the NPE of an individual. The net emotional return for an individual thus is a clear arithmetic of differently classified emotions as discussed herein.

Reservoir and dam

We have seen that emotions are complex feelings and spontaneous expressions at play but also have an intriguing and inspiring arithmetic. Emotional ratio analysis as outlined in this blog post is a tool for every individual to understand his or her own emotional profile and to achieve favourable emotional ratios. For that to happen, we need to understand two other characteristics of emotions as follows.

The first is that contrary to a common misunderstanding, emotions are not transient or fleeting feelings and expressions that are triggered by isolated events. Emotions tend to accumulate and are triggered into flow by individual triggers. Emotional reservoirs are a fact of life for every individual, however much one may deny. It is this characteristic that would enable one draw up emotional statements for a period and also as at the end of a period, much like income statement and balance sheet, respectively. While this being subjective, the analogy helps one semi-quantify one’s emotional income and expenditure as well as emotional assets and liabilities.

The second is that while all emotions are like rivers flowing into, and as, reservoirs of different capacities depending on one’s emotional propensities, there is one emotion - serenity - that would act as a dam to all the other eight emotions. With age, experience, maturity and wisdom, one is able to build higher heights of serenity that can check the inevitable build-up of emotional reservoirs that happens over time. Serenity discriminates in terms of moderating any overflow of emotions. Serenity is the master emotion that one needs to develop to be able to achieve an enhanced NPE. Serenity is also the quintessential ultimate emotion that arises from a healthy fusion of one’s body, mind, heart and soul.    

Posted by Dr CB Rao on April 25, 2015 

The Absolute Power of Relative Silence: A Simple Sensory Model of Connected Leadership

Leadership has attracted, and continues to attract, huge interest. Every time a leader speaks or acts, there are possibilities of a new “leadership” “thought” or “claim” emerging. When Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, addressed a letter to Microsoft a couple of days ago on the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of Microsoft (Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft on April 4, 1975), there were expectations of new leadership hints, bridging his past and current roles at Microsoft and the current and future roles at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, his current philanthropic preoccupation. Bill Gates, however, only made a succinct review of how he and Paul Allen started Microsoft with the initial bold goal of a computer on every desk and in every home and the role played by Microsoft in the revolutionary transformation of the computing scene over the last four decades (with its operating system). He also said that what matters most now is what Microsoft does next in terms of making the power of technology accessible to everyone, and every device.

There are instances like Microsoft (and Apple, Sony, Toyota, Ford, Infosys and several other corporations) where the growth of an idea from a small start-up to a large institution reflects leadership by and of its own. Importantly, in all such cases, the founders remain at the helm, at least till the firms reach their respective critical scale and scope. Thereafter, it is left to their scions or professionals to continue to steer the corporation in the manners they deem fit. In such cases, the styles tend to be differently effective despite varying leadership attributes but also take one of the three approaches: (i) be somewhat non-adaptive to the emerging environmental changes (as was the case with Steve Ballmer who succeeded Bill Gates), (ii) be proactively adaptive to craft a role in the changing environment (as seems to be the case with Satya Nadella who succeeded Steve Ballmer), or (iii) be creatively different in building on the legacy of the great founders (as seems to be the case with Tim Cook who succeed Steve Jobs, after his untimely demise).

Impatient, inaccurate

Clearly, growth of great institutions offers great leadership lessons. Academic leadership gurus, however, have their own leadership theories which are force-fitted on to existing visible institutional leadership successes. Such theories and models talk of leadership styles (participative, facilitative, authoritarian, transactional, transformative etc.,) and leadership competencies (visionary, strategic, interpersonal, communication, decision making, risk taking etc.,). There is no evidence of leaders during their active and transformational phases of their leadership roles taking time to sit with academic researchers to define their specific institutional leadership styles. While leaders like Jack Welsh may have been very articulate about their leadership styles while in harness, the motivations for that seem to be developing in terms of developing personalized leadership and mentoring businesses thereafter. Biographical studies also seem to be off mark in distilling and describing the true leadership styles.

Biographical renderings can provide valuable insights provided they are thoroughly researched by the biographer, deeply collaborated by the leader and his peers, and evidentially corroborated by events and developments. If not, they can be misleading and in the case of multiple biographies of the same leader even controversial and contradictory in parts. For example, the authorized version, titled ‘Steve Jobs’ by Walter Isaacson which was published in 2011, after Jobs’ demise is criticized by Apple executives as not being representative of Steve while the more recent follow-on unauthorized version, titled ‘Becoming Steve Jobs’ by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli published in 2015 won praise of Apple executives for being authentic. Amidst the impatience and inaccuracy, the opportunity for capturing helpful leadership insights and developing a leadership model based on proven institutional track record remains unfulfilled. Part of the reason could be because the deep leadership knowledge of a successful leader could be a source of competitive advantage of the firm, which cannot be disclosed prematurely. It could also be that true leaders recognize the collective institutional nature of leadership, and refrain from individualizing it to themselves.

Connected leadership

Leadership is all about staying connected - with all the stakeholders (employees, investors, vendors, governments, public included) and in multiple ways (physical, virtual, direct, diplomatic, objective, emotional, and so on). Being connected is an essential component of communication, collaboration, coaching and influencing. Different leaders have different ways of getting connected - from reaching out to getting reached out to. The different competencies that leaders possess enable them connect to their constituencies in different ways of such a connection spectrum. I have in an earlier blogpost titled “Five Great Indian Leaders: One Singular Leadership Ethic”, Strategy Musings, January 23, 2011 discussed how multifarious leadership competencies are fused under the quintessential Indian leadership model of intellect-driven work ethic (http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2011/01/five-great-indian-leaders-one-singular.html). Reviewing the blogpost again after a gap of four years and also studying further works on Indian and global leaders, I am of the view that staying connected is an important aspect of high calibre leadership.

Competencies play a major part in staying connected. Those leaders with high competencies, of which ability to stay humble is one, tend to reach out and be reached out to. In her convocation address at IIM Calcutta, Indra Nooyi, Chairperson of global food and beverage giant Pepsico attributed her being in the CEO position to being in a state of perpetual learning and to staying connected to her parental roots. She also advocated giving back to society even as one learns and earns. Giving back to stakeholders takes different forms depending on how close or distant they are to the leaders. Among all stakeholders, employees are the most important ones for leaders to connect with.  While there are different ways of connecting, including through platforms offered by communications specialists, the leadership connection especially to or with employees, occurs through day to day leadership interactions. While social and emotional connect is increasingly recognized as being as important as technical or professional connection, this blog post proposes a sensory connection platform to serve as a distinctive leadership model.

Sensory leadership model

For accomplished leaders, interpersonal connection in organizations, of which leadership connection is an important one, takes place through the six sensory functions of a human being, in a somewhat metaphorical sense. These are the six powers of sight, speech, hearing, smell, taste and touch by which a living being exchanges information with the world around. While these may not be applicable to life as a leader in an identical manner, they play a notable role with subtle variations of interpretation. The six point sensory postulates for a connected leadership model may be defined as below.

Look around but observe sharp

An ability to see is the most important human faculty even though the other sensory functions are also very important. For successful leaders, the ability to see is accompanied by a keenness to observe. Observation brings care and watchfulness to the rather normal ability to see. From the ability to read body language of others in meetings and interactions to the wisdom to sight a risk or an opportunity in the world, the power of observation can help make a leader truly perceptive. This is one of the founding planks of a leader’s ability to envision a new future state as well as improve the current state.  

Talk less but mean more 

Great leaders are effective communicators. Effective communication is not a function of the oratory level or time as is commonly understood; rather it is one that is thematic, purposeful and meaningful to the audience, and the task at hand. Effective communicators, over time, develop the ability to convey a message beyond what words may purport to. At one level, this is a function of the cumulative connect a leader has with the team; at another level it is also a function of the mastery over subject, the sincerity of purpose and the empathy with the audience that a leader demonstrates, almost as his or her second nature.

Hear well but listen intense

Everyone may have the ability to hear but only a few would have the habit of really listening. Hearing is the process of receiving sound through the ear. It could, at its worst, be just a mechanical process of interpreting vibrations of eardrum into sounds and words. Listening, on the other hand, is the process of hearing with care and a preparedness to register the message, and act on it after due processing. Listening is an interpersonal skill required for good communication and collaboration. At leadership level, where knowledge and experience as well as position and power result in a certain level of presumptuousness on the part of leaders, listening skills could make all the difference between an empathetic and responsive leader and an indifferent and desultory leader.   

Smell a whiff, ahead of the fragrance

Developments in the organization or in the environment are never definitive while in the making. Perceptive leaders are able to detect the early signs as they waft through. These could be as simple as internal employees gradually failing to greet each other in an organization or external agencies taking longer to appraise a project put forth by the organization. Successful leaders are adept at understanding the socio-economic changes before they become trends and then turn on into movements. This requires that leaders have good social sensitivity, emotional intelligence and economic aptitude, regardless of their functional specializations. Leaders in emerging technologies and businesses as also in cyclical businesses must have this early recognition faculty.

Taste the sample to savour the universe

An organizational ecosystem or an environmental envelope is a huge canvas which can never be tracked or understood in its entirety. The head of a conglomerate, or even a large specialized business, would not be able to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies until they are fully implemented; waiting until then would be too late. An ability to define meaningful pilot projects or undertake sampling dipsticks to assess likely total strategic effectiveness is an essential component of successful strategic implementations. Regional product launches, segmented change projects, specific leadership evaluations, and laboratory/field simulations are some of the methods to assess whether planned universal strategies would be actually successful.

Lead the mind but touch the heart

Organizations need logical and rational thoughts and actions to be effective. Leaders must develop plans and execute actions that stand the test of logic and rationality. In short, leaders must lead through mind. Yet, there are matters of organization where appeal to heart is equally essential. In aspects of business turnaround which call for sacrifices for better times, in matters of leadership transformations which disturb stable networks and in phases of start-up with natural uncertainty leaders need to appeal to the heart for teams to stay together and scale all difficulties. Teams in mountaineering and other expeditions overcome most challenging conditions through emotional bonding as much as through professional skill.

Relative silence, absolute power

Bill Gates has been relatively silent for over 7 years since he gave up formal executive leadership of Microsoft in 2008. Steve Ballmer, who succeeded him as the executive head, is known for his thumping leadership style. Satya Nadella, on the contrary, was not known to be anything other than a quiet protagonist of the cloud platform. Yet, a quiet Satya Nadella could seamlessly take over from a dramatic Steve Ballmer, and also steer a significant directional change. Bill Gates’ simple letter continues to have its solid impact. While leadership cannot be totally silent and uncommunicative, in most cases, rather than self-proclamations three aspects communicate leadership – firstly, results speak for themselves; secondly, institutions stand as expressive legacies; and thirdly, processes provide communicative continuums. Successful leaders, and even powerful leaders, tend to be relatively silent, rather than banal, about their leadership.

While relative silence, as an intriguing but appropriate leadership trait, has powerful value, the mystery of what real and practical leadership is all about needs to be decoded. This can happen only when leaders, at the peaks of their success as well as at the nadirs of their failure speak up openly, in dialogue with management experts, academic researchers and objective biographers, on the drivers of success and failure. Those who are reluctant to open up for reasons of either humility or competitive risk should keep making leadership notes on a periodic basis which can be opened up at appropriate times. Only then the disproportionate cacophony generated by limited leadership theories can be replaced by more meaningful, realistic and authentic leadership models. This blog post has discussed a model of connected sensory leadership where power flows from silence and simplicity, relatively speaking! More such theories can emerge from open and shared leadership notes.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on March 11, 2015   

Twin Track Travel in Life: Aligned Harmony or Oscillating Freeze?

Choice is a wonderful and important thing in life. Classical economic theory brought out the many imperfections of lack of choice through its analysis on monopoly. Governments, societies and individuals believe that choice and competition are in the best interests of consumer. In the ordinary course of life, an individual is beset with choices. One has to open an Education page of any Indian newspaper to see how the students are wooed by multiple options in education, from specializations to countries. Even a simple thing as dining in restaurant is not easy given the multiple individual and combo options that are made available. On a serious note, however, the individual has a right to, and responsibility in, making prudent choices so that the individual and those dependent on the individual benefit from the choice made.

My earlier blog post (Strategy Musings, February 28, 2015) titled “Deliberation, Information, Decisiveness and Implementation (DIDI) Model: A Logical Pathway to Progress in Multi-Option Life” (http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2015/02/deliberationinformation-decisiveness.html) articulated a model to progress in life. It suggested that individuals need to understand the true meaning and the essential relevance of deliberation, information, decisiveness and implementation as the four components of an accelerated journey of progress in life.  The post also observed that despite the logic of such an approach requiring high deliberation based on quality information and quick decision making followed up by quick implementation, even intellectually capable people tend to vacillate or freeze in life because of digressions they encounter in their paths of progress.   

Choice or chance?

In today’s world where information is overwhelming, and either certification or branding is common, there is apparently scope for perfect (or near perfect) choice. This need not necessarily be true. On may choose a good educational institution for study but the class to which one may be assigned could be random while the quality of teachers and friends could be even more random, with positive or negative results relative to others. One may choose an international travel plan with thorough research on the likely weather conditions but it could be beyond one’s choice as to whether an airlines management would or would not cancel flights for a particular level of storm. In life, choice and chance arguably play unpredictable roles, influencing the journey on path of progress.

Many times, a chance occurrence can cause dramatic transformations in the life of an individual or even nations. Nothing illustrates this better than the treatment meted out to M K Gandhi in rail travel at Pietermaritzburg station, South Africa on June 7, 1893 that transformed Gandhi’s life goal and eventually changed the course of history for India. In our lives, we do meet persons or pass through institutions that offer game changing opportunities. In some cases, well laid plans including established career options turn out to be adversarial. Chance in all such cases has to be coupled with choice to be able to overcome the adversity or utilize the opportunity provided by chance. When chance is met with by choice, the individual has to be resolute and diligent to embark on the new path with determination.

One step but long track

In several cases, the step one takes at the junction-in-time of chance and choice tends to have far reaching consequences. What appears to be one small step would roll out to become a long track. Perseverance and patience are the key; even if the track turns out to be different from what one envisaged, it would make sense to wait for the next time-junction of chance and choice rather than make hasty changes. In life, the same goal can be reached in multiple ways, and the fact of being compromised on a route that is not entirely of one’s choice need not deter one from switching tracks at a more appropriate time. Well thought out or opportunistic switches from one career to the other, or between work and education help one reach the desired goals, despite false starts. 

Equally, not being patient and persevering could make people lose whatever value that is inherent in a path. Traders in commodities and stocks who are impatient tend to end up losing the corpus let alone making money. Yet, sophisticated algorithms and predictive tools provide a false sense of security for shorting the future. Emotional stability and contextual equanimity are two oars one has in navigating the choppy waters of progress. This requires that being reflective and introspective as well as being thoughtful and mindful is essential whether or not one is on a preferred track. Action or implementation is physical and tangible while thinking or deliberation is virtual and fleeting.

The tracks

An individual has two important tracks to move on; the first is the implementation track which is real, physical and tangible, whether one likes it or not. The other is the deliberation track that is virtual, mental and emotional, whether one desires it or not. As considered in the earlier blog, deliberation track makes one get on to the implementation track. However, the deliberation track keeps on working even when one is on the implementation track. It is up to the competency and maturity of the individual to use the deliberation track to the advantage of the implementation track. The deliberation track has to constantly evaluate if the implementation track is taking the individual closer to the goal or a momentum change within the track or even a track change is required, and if so the appropriate timing in each case.

Mahatma Gandhi said “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony” He also said, “A man is but a product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes”. Albert Einstein said “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. These quotes by the greatest of leaders in humanity and science respectively teach us that the power of positive thought can help one achieve one’s life goals; probably even set the goals right. It is, therefore, of utmost importance that one gains mastery over the internal and intrinsic deliberation track. Whether one accomplishes that through the practice of meditation and concentration or continuous self-correction is something for the individual to mull over and follow.

Twin tracks

The above leads us to conclude that in the best way forward, the deliberation track is in harmony with the implementation track either acting as the way forwarder or course corrector. However, the deliberation track can be inhibitory, digressive, and sometimes even regressive. Consumer psychology is full of anecdotes wherein wayward consumer thought processes make for randomly repetitive purchasing behaviour of consumers. After a dish is ordered in the restaurant, the one ordered on the other table looks interesting. After a Samsung Galaxy is bought, Apple iPhone beckons for the next purchase. After one flight route is booked, another may look to be safer and surer. Deliberative waywardness may cause only minor dislocation in matters like these but could cause untold harm in more serious matters of life like education, career and family.

Dilemmas are not new to human life. Wanting to have everything is also a part of human life. The classic expression of “to be or not to be” by Prince Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet leads the pack on dilemmas. The human being desires to have the best of everything, at times illogically and at times greedily. The idioms “running with the hare and hunting with the hound” and “having the cake and eating it too” are strikingly descriptive of this innate characteristic of a human being. The culture of human evolution and the challenge of progress, however, require that the human being prioritizes what he wants and work towards achieving it. The ability to appreciate choice and chance on one hand and deliberation and decisiveness on the other hand is an essential part of the practice of human progress. 

  

Interfaces

There are four ways the twin tracks of thought and action can interface. These are Aligned Harmony, Delayed Delivery, Random Digression, and Oscillating Freeze.

The most effective one obviously is Aligned Harmony in which thought and action are harmoniously aligned to the goal. Some of the best inspirational missions of individuals like Mahatma Gandhi’s independence movement or Nelson Mandela’s anti-apartheid movement and technological missions of organizations, be it NASA Man on the Moon Mission or ISRO’s Mangalyaan Mission (India’s Mars Orbiter Mission) are accomplished under the Aligned Harmony format. This corresponds with a high deliberation-quick decision format.

Delayed Delivery is beset by nagging doubts on whether the route pursued is the right one but at the same time is handicapped by lack of alternatives. This erodes confidence and commitment in the route pursued. This corresponds with low deliberation-slow decision format.  Lack of deliberation and consequent facile decision making lead to tardy progress without commitment or belief.

Random Digression occurs when an uncontrolled deliberation track derails the individual to switch on to disruptively alternative action tracks. A researcher constantly in search of alternative hypotheses or research methodologies even while progressing on one hypothesis is subject to random digression. Achievement of goals can be highly sub-optimal for such individuals, relative to time and effort spent. This corresponds with high deliberation-slow decision syndrome.

And finally, Oscillating Freeze occurs when an individual (or organization) iterates himself (or itself) before accomplishing even the first milestone in each case. In this case, even as action track moves forward the thought track moves backwards. A student who does engineering course wishing all the time that he should have done medicine or a professional who has chosen a particular job wishing all the time that he should have joined the other firm. Such people freeze in their tracks every now and then as their heart and soul are not in what they are deployed on.

Individuals as well as organizations who appreciate and achieve aligned harmony between thought (or deliberation) and action (or decisiveness) understand the eclectic fusion of chance and choice in life, and the interdependence of thought and action, and therefore are made for sustainable success in a complex and confusing multi-option world.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on March 1, 2015          

     

Kites Don’t Fly by Themselves: Sankranthi Thoughts for Careers to Fly!

Today, January 15 is Makara Sankranthi (also called Pongal), a farm and rural oriented festival that is celebrated in an inclusive manner by all sections of the Hindu society in all regions of India. It is also one of the few Hindu festivals that falls on either January 14 or 15 each year consistently. It is a harvest festival celebrated with great gusto and many expectations of good times in the traditionally agrarian Indian economy. The day, celebrated as Solar festival, also marks the transition of Sun into Makara Rasi (Zodiac sign of Capricon), marking the beginning of Uttarayana punya kaalam (or good, holy period). It is actually the second day of a three (in some regions, four) day festival, which connotes the much hoped for transition of families into a better period, most of the expectations being boosted by agricultural harvest starting to come to hand.

Like most Hindu festivals, Sankranthi is a socially and economically inclusive festival knitting together rural and urban communities, bringing respect to livestock especially bulls and cows, the rural storytellers (Haridasulu), spreading joys to children through new clothes, bringing out kolam skills of womenfolk with a unique focus on ‘gobbillu’, and bringing a truly festive and feasting ambience into the families. The making of Pongal is a particular highlight of Sankranthi. The festival is also marked by a variety of games and sports, some of them controversial and are not necessarily respectful of livestock or people safety. Amongst these, kite flying is a particularly favourite pastime for the festival, and the season. No wonder that Amitabh Bachchan, the brand ambassador of the State of Gujarat is seen participating in the kite festival. Kites, however, have many lessons to teach us as this blog post seeks to analyze.

From fun to fear

Kites are some of the simplest of manmade inventions that are designed and manufactured to fly in appropriate wind conditions. Originally small hard papers or card boards of square or triangular shapes, reinforced and ribbed by slim, flexible wooden reapers on all sides and across, with a paper tail and controlled by an attached spool of thread, modern day kites have assumed multiple shapes, colours and styles. From a fun pastime, kite flying has now become a competitive community pastime, with seasons like Sankranthi making skies an awesome mosaic of flying kites of all shapes and hues. As with most competitive pastimes, kite flying also has become a victim of aggressive behaviour. Flying kites in residential areas has become a threat to individual and bird safety while flying kites with maanza (threads covered with ground glass) has become real and imminent danger to human and bird life, in any area.

The first lesson of kite flying is that when competitive modernity overwhelms cautious tradition, the result is an unbridled stoking of competitive intensity and aggressive ruthlessness in a society. Be it work or exercise, sport or game, moderation is the key to universal joy out of routine activities. Resources can buy us more sophisticated kites and longer, stronger threads for kites; however, somewhere along the line one loses the basic togetherness of the pastime which is obliterated by a ‘win at any cost’ drive.  Professional and personal life needs to be lived joyously despite the competitiveness of various ‘career flying tools’ like marque institutions, custom degrees and choice specializations that money and efforts can secure. Who wins in the New India with individual career kites is of lesser relevance than painting the global sky with the India Tricolour in a fun-filled manner, collectively.

Nature as ally

One may design a beautiful or aerodynamic kite but without wind a kite cannot just fly! Yet when winds are gusty and turbulent, the design does play a part in the kite sustaining itself and even riding over the storms. There are clearly some natural conditions that make kite flying a joy, for example, open grounds, vast parks, long beaches etc. A windy day is a must but a light breeze may also be helped by appropriate kite-friendly hill terrains. Design and nature make perfect allies but one should never forget that without supporting nature a kite would never fly. It is, of course, for the designs to make the kites as the tethered flying objects with appropriate aerodynamic lift, leveraging various materials and shapes.

Design as a long term sustainable endeavour has to ally with, rather than fight the nature. From the movement of allopathic medicine from chemically derived synthetic drugs to protein derived biologics, and from genetically guided personalized medicine to stem cell based regenerative medicine, it is clear that allying with nature provides more sustainable solutions. Exploitation of natural resources or impacting beach fronts and hillsides with constructions even if they are calamity resistant are known to have caused profound ecological imbalances. Careers, likewise, get established in the right way when set up to meet appropriate environmental/business conditions. The careers take flight with beneficial organizational lift. Design of careers, at the same time, has to be robust enough to withstand or take advantage of the turbulence. A savvy finance executive knows how to garner fund inflows as much as how to hedge outflows, for example.

Launchers and flyers

While there can be kite flying by just a single person, kite flying becomes optimal when a ‘launcher’ and ‘flyer’ join together to determine the right distance between the kite (in the hands of the launcher) and the spool (in the hands of the flyer), and also the right angle and the right glide with which the kite can be launched. The launcher and flyer are collaborators in the game of kite flying with the shared objective of acting as per the wind direction. They are willing to reimagine themselves in each other’s position if the wind reverses its direction. They join and enjoy the fun of running with kite, lowering and re-launching the kite as required. They support each other in the ups and downs of kite’s trajectory using their resilience to supplement the ups and downs of wind energy.

Ideally in life, just as kites require launchers and flyers, all careers also require launchers and flyers. The recruiting panel, more specifically the human resources experts, are the launchers while the managers are the flyers. Sharp identification of talent, right placement and right launch of a career with the right glide path are essential components of a right launch pad for a successful and sustainable career. The flyer who holds the threaded spool needs to understand the kite (the aspiring employee) as much as the wind (the business environment). The kite may be (and need to be) designed and made with the best of design tools, material composition and manufacturing aids but the operating skills of the launchers and flyers determine the heights to which a kite can fly.   

  

Thread of accountability

The kite is flown with a very fine balance of freedom and control. If the individual were to let go of the kite, it may fly higher initially but will quickly drift to hostile terrains (trees or hills, for example) and eventually destroy itself. On the other hand, a kite which is held always tightly will never soar to the heights which it can rightfully soar to. In some case, tight handling of thread may damage the hands of the flyer himself! The thread and the holder are the enabler in wind conditions that are right, and also are the protector in wind conditions that are hostile. The one who runs with the kite, constantly assessing the winds and the heights and the topography, enjoys kite flying with safety and fulfillment.  In fact, under certain circumstances like wind not being there, the holder himself feels accountable and responsible to generate wind flow for the kite by running vigorously, and keep the kite flying.

The thread of accountability and empowerment in organizations and career development has a lot to benefit by mimicking the above analogy. The manager (the flyer) should have a fine understanding of the individual and his or her competencies (the kite and its design), the business conditions (the atmospheric conditions) and the flexibility the organization provides for career progression (the length and strength of the thread). The strategic skill of the manager lies in understanding all the dynamics and providing the employee with the right balance of empowerment and accountability. Like with kites that fly to greater heights, mutual ownership and timely readjustments are an essential part of careers soaring to greater highs.

Kites don’t fly; no ‘kite-flying’!     

One of the principal features of successful flying of kites is a readiness to quickly judge the relative wind velocity and letting the kite fly. Hesitant and repetitive testing of winds perpetuates a low level kite flight as the conditions tend to be ever-dynamic. From high winds to no-breeze through mild breeze, there is both challenge and opportunity to keep a kite flying. Organizational kite-flying of a different nature, of testing the waters through speculative intent and expression, can never let careers fly. In fact, ‘kite-flying’ which also connotes testing a thought for response based on which it is executed or disavowed is probably a legitimate practice in political discourses challenged by extreme plurality. Kite-flying of that nature in purposeful organizations can, however, render them, and the team members political and disoriented.

Kites are great to experience, simple to make, easy to fly and attractive to watch. Likewise, employee careers in organizations are a joy to individuals and beneficial to organizations. But like kites, careers cannot fly by themselves. As this blog post proposes, careers need to be seen as vehicles for joy and fulfillment in life but with needed appreciation and competencies. Careers need to be competitive for business growth but should not be supportive of self-destructive aggression. Careers, like kites, are enabled to fly by a host of natural considerations, design aspects, collaborative skills and managerial skills. The key for managers and employees is to appreciate the fulfillment that could accrue from a fine operating skill marked by a judicious balance of accountability and empowerment. Indian business like the Indian environment has lot of natural energy and business drift that can help careers fly, and firms scale greater heights.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on January 15, 2015