practicelearning pgsem mppo
TRANSCRIPT
Indian Institute of Management
Walking the Talk
byAnuroop Vinayak Gaonkar
PGSEM, Batch of 2005, Sec ARoll No: 2005011
TowardsManaging People and Performance in Organizations
Taught by
R. Ravi Kumar Ph. D.
Professor, IIM - Bangalore
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Copyright © 2006 by Anuroop Vinayak Gaonkar. All Rights Reserved
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Index
The Choices – A Reasoning......................................................................5
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Influencing self and others......................................................................6Influencing self and others in organizational context – The issues.......7Influencing self and others – Possible solutions............................................7
Managing collectivity related diversity.......................................8Managing collectivity related diversity – The issues...................................9Managing collectivity related diversity – Possible solutions...................10
Leading to leverage – Leading others to lead themselves.............................................................................................................11
Leading to Leverage – Leading others to lead themselves – The Issues...........................................................................................................................12Leading to Leverage – Leading others to lead themselves – Possible Solutions.....................................................................................................................13
Summary..................................................................................................................14
References.............................................................................................................15
Copyright © 2006 by Anuroop Vinayak Gaonkar. All Rights Reserved
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The Choices – A Reasoning
As it is said “there is a method in every madness”, - and madness is what
the current endeavor seems like (unless we understand the benevolent
motive behind) given the challenging goal. Hence the method that I adopted
in choosing the areas of focus for this “seemingly maddening” task of
creating a plan for putting in to practice the knowledge gained through MPPO
course is based on
1. the importance of these themes/issues in my current as well as future
professional life
2. my perception of the relevance of these focus areas to the way work
is going to evolve in future
3. the interdependence /coherence among these focus areas/issues
4. the contribution this plan could provide to help me build on my
strengths and neutralize my weaknesses
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I applied coherence and contribution criteria also, because, to achieve the
best result the focus should be high and we need to play to our strengths.
Eminent management thinker like Drucker has clearly emphasized the task of
building on strengthsi. Even in recent studies published in Wharton business
school knowledge portal it has been shown that the effective people
managers are those who built on the strengths of the people they managed ii.
The theory of core competence proposed by Prahlad and Hammel also
emphasizes the sameiii. I by tackling inter related issues that can build on my
strengths shall be able to create a more cohesive plan for the transformation
of the self, and the other individuals and hopefully the organization by
influencing changes in processes and structures.
The key issues that I am going to explore are
1. Influencing self and others
2. Managing collectivity related diversity
3. Leading to Leverage: Leading others to lead themselves
The above three issues are highly inter-related. Leadership is about making
the individuals to think or/and act in a specific desired manner. The leader
can’t be effective in this endeavor without the knowledge of diversity of
motivations and the needs of different individuals and the skills needed to
manage the self and influence the other. Apart from these as a foundation
necessary to analyze and understand these issues in more knowledgeable
and comprehensive manner I have tried to gain insight in to the issues
involved in understanding the motivations and behaviors of the self as well as
of the other individuals.
Influencing self and others
Influencing as aptly defined by Dr. Ravi Kumar is “the act of making the other
person behave in a specific way in which he/she would not have behaved and
also make other person realize that the new behavior is emerging out of
his/her own volition and not because of any compulsion imposed on
him/her”iv.
Each individual tries to influence the world around him/her to achieve what
that individual desires, whether it is a politician campaigning for votes or a
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lover trying to proposition for marriage or a child crying to be fed my its
mother or a subordinate asking superior a raise in the salary. In each of these
contexts the sources of influential power are different – it may be leader and
follower, superior and subordinate, or provider and dependent etc.
relationships.
To use influence effectively the way individuals exist and function should be
understood. The individual as others perceive is a set of behaviors and
attitudes. For the individual he/she sees himself/herself is though the concept
of self or I and the set of values that drive them.
Figure 1. An Individual
The gap in clear understanding between the individuals and the world around
them makes process of influence a difficult task.
The awareness and practice of techniques of Influence in today’s
organizational life are of critical importance because we are moving towards
more interdependent work culture, where the members of a group/team
come from diverse cultures the traditional superior subordinate relationships
are vanishing. In the age of knowledge workers the coercive power is
disappearing. Hence the way forward for one is to understand the techniques
of influence if he/she wants to achieve desired results.
Influencing self and others in organizational context – The issues
“Who am I”, if this question were to be answered without ambiguity by each
individual then that understanding would clearly specify what drives the
Copyright © 2006 by Anuroop Vinayak Gaonkar. All Rights Reserved
I
Values
Attitudes
Behaviors
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individual to act and think in specific manner. If this understanding is lacking
the individuals can’t choose the most effective method that influences their
decisions.
Other than the lack of understanding of the self, the lack of attention paid to
the actions performed and the thought processes by the self – meaning lack
of introspection creates a biased view of the self. It is more oriented towards
what “I want to be” rather than what “I am”. This causes the others to
perceive the individual differently than that individual’s image about the self.
This leads choice of non-optimal techniques for influencing when the people
come together in organizational contexts.
In organizational contexts there might be a need to exercise influence in
situations even when any of the relationships is absent. Apart from this, the
perceptions regarding the influential behavior itself may differ across cultural
boundaries. For example the extraverted American culture may seem
aggressive if they tried to do too much of “hey buddy this is great, can you
do a bit more” in more introverted eastern cultures. Similarly the thin line
between assertiveness and aggressiveness becomes even thinner with the
dash of different cultures.
Influencing self and others – Possible solutions
The key to influencing is the understanding of the self as well as the others.
In the scenario where there is no specific relationship, the person who wants
to influence has to make himself relevant to the context and to the
individual/group on whom/which he wants to have the influence by building a
shared need.
The first step in increasing my understanding is to understand how others
perceive me. I can do this with tools like 360 degree survey or personal one
to one meetings. Apart from that I also would seek to understand from the
individuals with whom I interact, the drive that influences them in their
behavior rather than focusing on the behavior itself. I would also strive to
understand the attitudes and concept of their self. In this way I can gain more
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insight in to their psyche and will be able to respond better in situations
involving interactions with these individuals.
From the other individuals I expect the same kind of curiosity to understand.
Other possible change that I look forward to in other individual is them
becoming people with knowledge of various subjects which, I hope will build
in them a more tolerant view of the world rather than I, me, myself view.
The procedural changes that I would bring in my daily routine is to start
writing a diary more regularly so that I can introspect more. I would also want
to read at least one book in two months on a different culture seeking to
understand the others better.
In Macro organizational level, I would bring in changes to
a. enable people to understand themselves better – through personality
tests like MBTI, Kiersey
b. understand each other better through techniques like Johari Window
c. increase the number of trainings that build cross cultural awareness
I would request a repository of earlier such sessions so that new member can
easily gather data about the existing members. Since the work is becoming a
more team-oriented task, I would eliminate roles that are pure informational
relays, as these tend to add complexity to communication in the team
without addition of much value. Along with this I would start tuning my
performance and reward systems to take in to account the efficiency of
performance of individuals along with the effectiveness with the assumption
that individuals who are effective interpersonally are more efficient in team
oriented tasks. These changes would help us tune ourselves in to the
organization of the future where there are mostly knowledge workers co-
operating with one another to achieve a shared goal.
Managing collectivity related diversity
The new global businesses spanning national boundaries with the help of
technology have for the first time put together “peoples” of different cultures,
nationalities and races to achieve common goals defined by the organizations
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they work for. If one considers the history as recent as 60 years one will be
amazed how these peoples who once waged war against one another are co-
operating with one another.
The above change from one extreme to the other has created new issues and
the modern day organizations grapple with these issues each day.
Managing collectivity related diversity – The issues
The diversity in the way people think, do work, communicate, perceive and
react is essentially rooted in the different cultures people come from. The
diversity also arises because of gender, race, country or religion. The people
are torn between the needs of maintaining their unique cultural, gender,
racial, national & religious identities and at the same time trying to belong to
an alien work environment created by transnational organizations where
none of these is recognized.
As the prejudice of the yore haven’t been overcome fully, the people may
also feel sidelined or left out in organizations where certain races or cultures
dominate if they don’t belong to that dominant group. There are also
preconceived notions about peoples of different nations – which however true
make one blind to changed realities. These varied perceptions regarding the
reality lead to gap in understanding communications, expectations. These
result in conflict and make performance deteriorate.
The process of building a common understanding in teams with higher
degree of diversity takes more time than the team that has more uniform
constitution. This has been my personal experience and it has been also
proved by studies in managing virtual teams. That also brings us to another
nature of such teams – that is the members of these teams are located in
geographically distant locations and sometimes for them only way to identify
one another is the voice of the team member. The most important non verbal
communication is lost. The people who use different native languages have to
communicate in a common language like English that reduces their
expressive power and sometimes causes confusion.
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The people from different cultures lay emphasis on different aspects
associated with work. If it were an American, then it is all about getting the
things done. If it were a European, then perfection and quality of life take
precedence over the finishing of the job. If you see Indian context it is about
fulfilling social obligations through work without much regard to the
professional behavior.
The organizations are becoming aware of these and trying to put in
organizational cultures which provide people working in these organizations a
set of values, expected set of behaviors and ways to demonstrate those
behaviors in work. This set of procedures even though try assimilating
diverse workforce in to the organization, it looses out on the advantage that
this diversity can bring through its different perceptions and ways of
workingv.
Managing collectivity related diversity – Possible solutions
As in the case of solving any problem the first step is to recognize the
problem exists and define the existing problem clearly. As in the case of
“Influencing Self and Others” the key aspect of managing collectivity related
to diversity, is to strive for building the greater understanding among the
team members.
The organizations have been on the right path in trying to bring in their own
culture where the people can get some pointers on what is the value system,
how can they align themselves with this value system and work for the
organizational benefit. The problem that organizations have failed to address
is increasing the awareness in its workforce about the diverse cultures and
peoples who are part of the organization. Hence I would given a change make
changes in organizational processes that teach us about the organizational
value system to incorporate in them a awareness building module that
enhances the sensitivity of individuals to different cultures that are part of
the team.
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To reduce the barriers in communication and limitations imposed by the
language, I shall use technology as aid and make better use of video-
conferencing facilities on more regular basis. If people find it hard to express
their ideas verbally, I would switch to written mode, where because of
asynchronous nature it may become easier for people to express.
In order not to loose out on the uniqueness of the knowledge and skills of
these diverse cultures I would encourage each to become better listener and
understand the “why” certain things are important and work the way they do.
The biggest problem in such situations is some people feeling marginalized –
to avoid this I would adhere stringently to organizational expectations in
setting performance expectations and rewarding the demonstrated
behaviors. This would establish a level playing ground and create a standard
scale for everybody to measure himself or herself against. To overcome “who
you know than what you know” bias I would change the way the HR
organization operates. I would encourage them to change the systems to
track competencies of people and do the job matching and then do the
recommending instead of applicants applying for the jobs. Applicants should
be able to keep their competency list updated. Then from the short listed
candidates the person may be selected through interviews. This would avoid
the bane of good candidates belonging to non-majority groups loosing out on
opportunities for growth because they don’t have the “right connections”
Thus the issue of managing collectivity is the most critical that is being faced
by the organizations of today because the external reality has changed, but
our organizations are operating under the assumptions that held them in
good stead probably during pre knowledge work days.
i Effective Executive – Peter Druckerii Knowledge at Wharton article - http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1223.cfmiii Competing for the Future – C.K.Prahlad and Gary Hammeliv PGSEM Course Material for Managing People and Performance in Organizations - Dr. R. Ravi Kumarv Harvard Business Review on Managing People (Making Differences Matter: A New Paradigm for Managing Diversity by David A. Thomas and Robin J. Ley)
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Leading to leverage – Leading others to lead themselves
Imagine an Indian soldier in the terrorist infested places like Kashmir. His
duty is to protect the innocent and at the same time kill the terrorist. He
needs to depend solely on his discretion with his knowledge to make the split
second decision to pump in bullets in to a human being – and if he is not
prepared to make this decision he is dead. This does not mean he may shoot
everybody in sight. It is on his performance – the performance of the entire
army depends. As it is the job of the leader to do the right thing the right
way most of the times, he is also a leader.
Similarly a corporate that operates within fast changing world filled with
surprises, the situation is no different than the battlefield. The situation
demands that each knowledge worker make decisions on his/her
organizations behalf and translate these decisions in to action, which means
he/she has to be a leader. Hence the topic of leading others to lead
themselves is of critical importance in today’s corporate milieu. It is of
paramount importance for me too as I am also part of this changing
landscape with duty to ensure that people I lead perform the best under
every circumstance.
The best example of this type of leadership is Krishna leading Arjuna in the
Battlefield of Kurukshetra to understand the reality of life, birth, death and
the supreme purpose of life. Krishna epitomized the teacher who tells his
students there is everything to know about something in the most lucid way
and then leaves the discretionary action of choosing the answer or the path
to follow to his student. The essence of leadership revealed in this episode is
that it is the leader’s duty to help the people he/she leads find answers and
convert delusion in to knowledge to accomplish the right goal the right way,
and in the process convert the people being led to leaders. I shall use this as
the benchmark when I further explore the issues and solutions in the
following sections.
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Leading to Leverage – Leading others to lead themselves – The Issues
The most important insight for the leader is to realize that it is his/her most
important duty to teach to the people & prepare the people he/she leads to
become leaders themselves setting in to motion the virtuous cycle of
leadership vi . It is also important to realize that my performance depends to
the performance of the people who work for me.
Once these are realized in any leadership assignment the biggest challenge
is to build the mutual trust between the leader and the led. The lack of trust
problems stem from the ego of the individuals that leader has to lead and the
ego of the leader and also due to preconceived views that each person has
about the other without any effort being made to understand each another.
As we have seen in earlier section, it is a problem if the leader does not
possess the requisite influence on the group.
The newer reality is that leader does not know everything about the
professional work of the people he/she is leading. This creates a kind of
awkward situation for the leader, as he has to operate with less than 100%
visibility and rely on more than the actual work related signals to interpret
what is happening.
The above point also brings us to the associated issue of leaders incapable of
listening to the people they lead. Unless leaders actively listen happens they
will alienate all the people and lead the organization to extinction rather than
vi The cycle of leadership – Noel M. Tichy with Nancy Cardwell
Other references1. The Leadership Engine – Noel M. Tichy with Eli Cohen2. Harvard Business Review on Managing People (Assorted articles like Necessary art of Persuation by
Jay A. Conger)3. Execution – Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan4. Principle Centered Leadership – Stephen R. Covey5. Organizational Behavior – Robbins6. Inside Chinese Business – Ming Jer Chen7. Made in Japan – Biography of Akio Morita8. Straight from the Gut – Biography of jack Welch
Copyright © 2006 by Anuroop Vinayak Gaonkar. All Rights Reserved
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to growth and glory. The leaders can not provide a mere lip service by saying
that they firmly believe in the ability of the people they lead, they have to
believe it and make sure that they work to realize the potential of their
employees. Leader should also be capable of connecting with the people in
the field of action to garner best practices and spread them fast in to the
remaining organization. He/she should be ever vigilant and lead by example.
The pace of change has become so unsettling and it does not allow leaders to
engage in slower understand the theory and then apply type of teaching. The
people they have to teach are spread all over the world. These people come
from different cultures; their needs and motivations are different. They react
differently and they work differently.
Apart from these there are people who do not have the necessary confidence
to make decisions and live with the consequence of those decisions. They will
go from pillar to post asking for decisions, which they should have made, and
destroy people’s time and delay the organizational processes. The associated
problem is that these kinds of people do not stop at one person to ask for
guidance, instead go to hundred and in the end have no conclusive action
plan to justify all the time that these people spent.
Leading to Leverage – Leading others to lead themselves – Possible Solutions
As we have seen the essence of leadership is the ability to teach individuals
to realize their self worth and leverage their ability to move everybody
forward. We have also seen set of issues that manifest themselves when
people try to lead to are being led.
To establish mutual trust through better understanding of one another I
would go back to the techniques employed in building a better rapport some
of which are listed in influencing self and other others – possible solutions.
Beyond the understanding, to maintain and grow the trust I need to be
truthful and sincere in dealing with individuals. I have to connect with these
individuals at human level than merely at professional level. As a process
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change for this purpose I plan to have lunch with a different individual each
day, rather than go out with the same group. In this manner I shall be able to
discuss something other than work.
As the mutual faith has been established I shall move forward simultaneously
with 2 different plans. The first plan will be focused on discussing with entire
group the process of leadership, as group understands and aspirations of
group members. Before the discussion I would urge them to read and
understand the leadership style, successes and shortcomings of a leader that
they consider as their idol. This would provide me insights in to what is ideal,
what is liked and what is despised. I shall also discuss what I consider the
general principles of leadership and the leadership experience that I have. In
this mutual exchange of ideas I hope to build a common understanding that
will help us establish the framework of leadership that we expect.
Once the expectations are clear, I am going to create a plan for each
individual in consultation with that individual. The plan will include project for
each of these individuals to work on and will be aligned to the day-to-day
tasks these individuals are expected to perform. I shall also ensure regular
touch points with these individuals to assess the progress in implementation
of the plan as well as the project.
Once these individuals have successfully graduated through these sessions, I
shall request selected individuals only to engage themselves in similar
teaching projects to ensure that the cycle continues. I am emphasizing
“selected individuals” because all may not have evolved their leadership
skills to necessary degree of sophistication. Since the organization that I work
encourages this mentor type of roles, I believe no major change in structure
is necessary.
Summary
The gist of what I have tried to do is to understand, contemplate, internalize
and translate my understanding in to action plan. It has made me realize
that there are several opportunities for me as an individual to improve, for
Copyright © 2006 by Anuroop Vinayak Gaonkar. All Rights Reserved
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example to become a better listener. I realize that even though leadership
requires one to make decisions it does not mean just focus on decisions and
execution and ignore to listen to divergent views. There are several
opportunities for organizations to become better by communicating their
value systems better and thus be able to manage collectivity related diversity
and achieve better results. Thus this exercise has become the starting point
of a long journey to build on my strengths and at the same time influence the
corporate world around me positively through constant learning.
References
Copyright © 2006 by Anuroop Vinayak Gaonkar. All Rights Reserved