Leadership Management – Understanding right signals & responding accordingly !

On June 29, 2010, in Business thoughts, Strategy thoughts, by Swapnil
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Continuing from my posts about the Leadership management, here, in this article, I would like to touch base upon one interesting game that we played. The game was all about understanding how one should understand the situation when he / she gets into a new situation / team or a company.

The game, as it progresses, uncovers how the mental situation of a person is in, when he is thrown into a new situation.

Lets understand the characters and rules of the game as follows,

Leader – the person who is newly put in the situation or given a charge of a completely new team

Team – the group of people who got a new leader and they are supposed to assist him settle down

Manager – the person who has hired the leader and has promised guidance in settling the team

Now, I would go about mentioning the situation and the specific rules and objectives as follows.

 

Situation 1 & Rules

All the team members are sitting in a room. The managers comes and introduces the Leader to the team and asks the team to help.  The task that is assigned to the Leader is to identify an object in the room. In this situation an office bag of one of colleague  and the team is supposed to help him, without speaking a word.

leader-arrowThe rules of the game were simple and as follows,

  1. The manager will explain the ‘goal’ to the leader and asks the leader to take help of the team to move ahead in his goal
  2. The team was asked to observe the movement of the leader in the room and clap if the leader is moving towards the intended object and remain silent if he is moving away from the object.
  3. Most important rule was that the team members were not allowed to speak or answer any questions of the leader.  If the leader speaks and asks, they were only supposed to smile and follow rule 2.
  4. The leader does NOT know, the rule 2 & 3.

 

Very interesting scenario ! 

I would now try to write the exact discussion that happened between the leader and the team members as follows. 

 

Leader enters the room and to everyone : Hello everyone.  My name is ___ and I have been appointed as your leader here.  I just had a discussion with my manager and he has asked me to come and talk to you all. He mentioned to me that there is some object that I need to find here.  Does anyone know what is it or where is it?  Would anyone like to help me?

As per rule, all the team members look at him, keep silent and smile !  The Leader is slightly confused and goes to Team members and asks them directly.

Leader to Team member 1: Hi, what is happening? Please can you help me here. My manager has asked me to look for some object but I am unable to find. Please can you help me?

Team member 1, smiles !

Leader to Team member 2: Hi, your other colleague is not helping me. Would you be able to help me?

Team member 2, smiles !

Leader to Team member 3 & 4: Guys, you have to help me here. I am not able to understand what the other guys are trying to say. They are just smiling looking at me and its not being helpful. Can you help me here?

Team member 3 & 4 smile ! The leader then goes to the Manager.

Leader to Manager: Hi boss, I think the team is not helping me. I am asking them questions but they are unable to help or answer to me at all. This is just being plain uncooperative.  Do you have any suggestions for this?

Manager to Leader: I think there is some miscommunication. I had asked the team to help you in their own capacity so they must be trying to help you. Why don’t you go and observe for some time what they are trying to tell you.

Leader goes back to the team and asks again, whether anyone knows what he was supposed to find. However, finds no luck so goes back to manager.

Leader to Manager: Boss, I am getting frustrated here. The team does not cooperate me and I am not able to achieve my goal here. The things are so frustrating to me. You need to come and help me here.

Manager to Leader: Try to understand and observe the pattern. Find out what signals they are giving you. I am sure they are responding to you in some way so I suggest you go back and observe more.

Leader, this time goes back and listen to the sound the team is making when he is moving in some direction. Remember, the team was told to clap if the leader is moving in right direction and be silent if he is moving in some other direction.

After a while of observation, the leader goes back to the Manager.

Leader to Manager: I see some kind of pattern in their clapping. If I move to north, they keep on clapping and if I move to south, they stop clapping. What kind of trend is this? Am I missing something?

Manager to Leader: Yeah, probably you need to figure that out yourself.

So, the leader goes back to the team floor and does some more observation and this time he understands the fact that the team is clapping when is nearing to the desired object (read goal) and keeping silent when he is moving away. 

Eventually, within minutes he finds out the exact object and everyone claps !

 

Now, lets take a pause and analyze what the mental state of the Leader would have been while the entire above process.

  • The leader expected the team to cooperate with him, in the language that he understands.
  • When the leader did not understand what the team was saying (i.e., clapping, being silent, not responding), he felt a bit irritated and went to on to talk to team members directly.
  • When that too did not work out, the leader’s frustration grew and probably went to the point of breaking.
  • However, with a little bit help from Manager, when he started to understand the language of the team members, he could find his goal easily.
  • In the end, he understood that the team was actually co-operating with him every time, however he was unable to understand them. It was not other way round.
  • Leader went through a very interesting and beautiful mind transition from frustration to success !

 

Situation 2 & Rules

leader-team Situation 2 is very similar to the Situation 1, however only one key rule was changed. The managers comes and introduces the Leader to the team and asks the team to help.  The task that is assigned to the Leader is to identify an object in the room. In this situation a mobile phone kept in the corner of the room and the team is supposed to help him.

The rules of the game were simple and as follows,

  1. The manager will explain the ‘goal’ to the leader and asks the leader to take help of the team to move ahead in his goal
  2. The team was asked to observe the movement of the leader in the room and Be Silent if the leader is moving towards the intended object and clap if he is moving away from the object. Exactly opposite of Situation 1.
  3. This time, if the leader asks the question. The team members were allowed to answer directly.
  4. The leader does NOT know, the rule 2 & 3.

Now, this time the situation gets even more interesting. Keeping in mind the earlier situation that the Leader had gone through.  The story goes as follows.

The Leader enters the room and tries to understand how the team is responding to his behaviour. He first tries to follow the claps but soon understands that the claps are not taking him to any specific direction, however the silence is.  So he follows the silence and nears the object and picks up in a quick time.

While it took almost 20 mins for the first situation to be resolved i.e., the leader finding the intended object, it took the same person about 5-7 minutes to find the object second time.  Even though it was smaller and was at a relatively remote place.

So lets look at few observations in Situation 2.

  • The leader did NOT ask any team members directly. He assumed that they will not help if he asks the question verbally.
  • He tried to understand the pattern and quickly understood that the pattern is different than the first situation.
  • He was able to grab the object in a quicker time than the Situation 1.

 

Essentially, the morale of the situations are,

  • When you enter new situations. Its good to carry your experience and ideologies, but its sometimes wrong to expect others to fall in line as you need.
  • It is essential to understand how the system works before applying your working techniques or forcing anything on the team.
  • Once you understand the system, you can always get into it and achieve your goal.
  • Most importantly, people do change so never carry perceptions (especially –ve) with you for long.
  • Remember ! Behaviour could be misleading but intent is never wrong, so get to the intent and do not make judgements based on behaviour.

 

So if we consider the situations in retrospect and find out how we can relate to our real life examples of events such as moving to a new team, taking the charge of a new project, joining a new organization etc., I am sure you would be able to find few similarities.

Would you mind sharing few of them with me here?

 

Image 1 credit | Image 2 credit

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Leadership Management – Identifying true self & false persona !

On June 18, 2010, in Business thoughts, Strategy thoughts, by Swapnil
2

In my last post about the leadership management, I wrote about the negotiating skills and how we, as humans, try to play for the win/lose situations when we are negotiating for our goals. It was interesting to reflect back on us again, as humans, on what makes us perform this kind of behaviour.

This interesting aspect takes us to inspect ourselves and differentiate between what we really are and what others think of us as i.e., what we project to be.  Essentially, what we project to others is our ‘persona’, and believe me, we show plenty of them within us !

More or less, we in our professional or in the personal life, we portray various kind of personas depending on situations and we do so mostly to get our work done.  Have a look at the following personas and the kind of behaviour that is displayed by the person wearing the persona, it might help you relate back to your own behaviours.

 

Persona
Behaviour seen / bumper sticker !
typical observations
Conscientious Do the right thing … In high risk environments
Supercompetent Here, let me do it … Less risky or wants to show off
Devoted I will always be here for you … Care taker, family man / woman
Drama queen/king You would not believe the day I had … Super excitement in all things that are done
Performer The show must go on … Calling themselves practical thinkers, do not think of effects
Victim Why me ? Passive thinking, resistive nature
Critic I will tell you what is wrong … Wants to do, but points negative things first
Loner By myself … Super performer, normally thinks others do not align with me
Space out Huh… what ? Attitude !
Mr Nice Guy Sure ! Yes ! Wants to be in the right side of things always
Stoic I can take it … Tries to put a brave face but have fear inside
Hostile Out of my way … Puts too much pressure even for simple things
Self-righteous I will never … Man of principles, apparently
Rebel Not me, man ! Will do things in my own way ..
Shy I will wait for my turn … Why should I speak now, I will tell only if asked, even if its important
Chameleon Whatever you say … Flatterer, always says things, but does little

 

facemasksWhile wearing the personas itself is not a bad thing as such and we may need to wear them as the situation demands. However, what we should avoid is to have the persona overtake our actual self and make us believe in what we are not !

In case you are unable to find out what personas you have wore in the past then the following questions, given to us as a part of exercise, may help.

 

– What about specific people make you not connect with them ?

- Kind of people that you easily connect with ?

- What are some of the things that you resist in others?

- What are these things that I resist in myself ?

- Identify 5 examples of where you have demonstrated the same behaviour / action that you resist in others ?

- What are the 3/4 personas I use to,

             a) To be accepted / loved

             b) To get the job done

- When did you make your 1st appearance ?

- What are you most proud of ?

- What are you most afraid of ?

- What do you think will happen to <your name> if you are not in charge ?

- Whenever you take over, what are you always sure of getting from the environment ?

 

Think of the answers for the above questions and hopefully they will help you realize more about yourself.

As I mentioned in my last post about leadership, one of the most important aspect of leadership is to realize yourself and know more about your own behaviours, personas and intents about your own working style. Knowing about the personas help you understand what state of mind you are in and are you your real self or not, thus helps you take proper decisions in every step that may benefit you in the end.

So, try out the answers for the questions above and see what you realize about yourself !

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Leadership management – Are you negotiating to win .. at what cost ?

On May 31, 2010, in Business thoughts, Strategy thoughts, by Swapnil
10

In my last blog post where I wrote about the Leadership workshop I attended, I mentioned about two games that we played, one in group and other in pairs which effectively explains how the people perceive leadership as ‘GTD’ (get things done) only and the various styles the people apply for the same.

I promised in my last post that I will be writing more on the games and in this, I would attempt to do the same.

 

So before I start mentioning about the game, let me mention the characters in the game as follows,

Project Manager (PM) – Raj played the role of project manager

Team 1 – Myself along with 4 others

Team 2 – Rest of the 5 team members

 

negotiation1 The PM kept the team 2 inside the training room and gave few instructions to them and a goal to achieve. He also took team 1 outside the room and had a discussion and gave us a  goal to achieve as well.

The goal of the team 1 was as follows,

‘Team 1 needs to make the members of Team 2, stand up and walk 3 steps, without writing anything on paper i.e., name or signature’.

The goal of the team 2, that we were NOT made aware, was as follows,

‘Team 2 needs to get signatures of all Team 1 members without walking or standing up from their chairs’.

He gave both the teams time to think out our strategies on how to achieve ‘our’ goals whilst we were unaware of what the other party has to achieve.  We were asked to have 3 plans ready in case the first or second plan to achieve ‘our’ goal does not work out.

 

The plan we made was as follows,

1. We will request the other team to stand up and walk with us

2. We will make the other team to help us in achieving ‘our’ goal

3. We will sing national anthem so people will automatically stand up, at least if not walk towards the pseudo flag.

Obviously the other team would also have made up the plan and we assumed that they will not respond to what we request them.

So, the way the game unfolded was as follows.  We all, part of team 1, went inside the room deciding to execute the plan and saw all the team 2 members sitting on chairs in a U shape, as if waiting for us to attack. All of them had a notebook and a pen in their hands.  It was obvious that they too had made their strategy to achieve their goal.

So, as the time went on, we tried our plan 1, 2 & 3 but nothing worked. Out of the group of 5 each, few of us could take a mid way such as they stand up and walk with us while we sign for them on the paper. So both our goals could be achieved. However, few people from each team stood up to the end to ensure that they achieve their goal without compromise.

The catch of the system was no team will win unless all the members of the other do as per their goal.  Since about 2 people from each team did not manage to achieve the goal, both the teams lost eventually. Thus, none of the team ended up winning.

Now look at few facts that happened through the game that was played.

  • When the goals were explained, they were explained in such a way that the respective teams were told only ‘what’ they need to achieve, not how
  • The teams were given complete freedom of deciding the plans on how to achieve the goals
  • We were given freedom to make our own assumptions to think on how we believe the other team will react
  • Both the teams went on defensive when the first strategy did not work out and started to pull alternative plans to ensure they win
  • Finally it ended in a conflict and none of the teams won

 

negotiationsLets now look at few assumptions and what happened through the minds of teams during the game, as an honest reflection,

  • We, the team 1, when told our goal, assumed that the goal of the other team will definitely be NOT to co-operate
  • We assumed that they will never do what we will ask of them and eventually ended up making plans that hided our intention of goal behind the back of our behaviour (request, national anthem etc.)
  • We did not want to tell them our goal and understand what their goal is. Rather, we were never interested in knowing what their goal was
  • Finally, as a truth, we all believed that the only way for us to win is to ensure the other person loses !

 

So, in a nutshell, the entire negotiating strategy was based on WIN – LOSE pattern.  We made our own assumptions, without making any attempt to understand what could be our common goal be and find out a WIN – WIN formula.  In this case, could have been the fact that team 1 will sign the paper while walking along with team 2 members.

 

Interesting ?

So what are few key learning out of this game ?

What I understood was as follows,

  • Its very easy to make a WIN – LOSE negotiation strategy. You do not need to make any effort to create one !
  • NEVER ever make any assumptions that the other party will NOT co-operate with you
  • Even if you assume (some think of it as being practical, rational), do not make your strategy assuming you win at someone else’s cost
  • Be open to understand the intent and find out what the other party really wants from you
  • Also, be clear on what you can offer to the other party
  • Once understood the core intents, find a midway to ensure that both he teams WIN by co-operating each other, not trying to supersede each other

 

I am sure if you are still reading this by now, you would also have learnt few things out of this.  As usual, I am keen to learn from you so please let me know your views.

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How do you define leadership ?

On May 28, 2010, in Career thoughts, Life thoughts, Strategy thoughts, by Swapnil
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Last 4 days, I was fortunate to be part of the ‘Leadership Management Workshop’ and I must acknowledge these days have been an exhilarating, self realizing & self discovering experience.

Being in Amdocs, a company that really makes an effort of developing leadership through specialized programmes such as this one, has been of immense value to me over last 6 months as I am able to get into lot of such workshops / trainings to enhance myself.

leadership Coming back to the workshop that was conducted by Raj Mali, who calls him self a corporate mystic, was conducted over a period of 4 days and had several engaging discussions that ultimately led to the group understanding the secrets of successful corporate leadership. 

Its do have lots to write about the experience of last 4 days and I would be genuinely attempting to write few articles on my experience of last 4 days and how I have grasped, understood and learnt few things. This is obviously the first attempt to start a series of the discussions on the topic of ‘Leadership’.

Our training group of 10 was consisted of managers across various competency centres of Amdocs, some of us were new and coming from other organizations and few of them were veterans who are with the company for close to 10 years or so, thus making it one of the more diverse forums and at the same time, an interesting one.

The common pattern of the last 4 days was consistent. More focus was given on group discussions, observations, role plays and games. It was so surprising that the amount multimedia that was involved was very less. More details on the same, with genuine hope, I will be able to post in coming days on my blog.

 

In this article, I want to reflect on the very first topic that we discussed in the programme and that was a simple question,

 

“What do you think leadership means to you?”

 

On the face value of the question, it looks very simple to everyone, however what surprised me and probably others was that when this was thrown at us, we had really take a pause and think, what it really means?

Few interesting answers that came out of the discussion were,

- Leadership is all about getting things done on time within budget & costs

- Leadership means helping your team grow

- Its about people management

- Its about how you handle issues and the pressure cooker situations

- Leadership is how you motivate people to do their jobs

- Leadership is about managing the work and team

- Leadership is controlling the behaviour and emotions of self and influencing in others

- Leadership is all about setting the rules and helping the followers follow them !

and the answer I gave was “Leadership is all about taking risks and making key decisions that help you grow your team”.  

However, after the session is now complete, what I have understood about leadership is as follows,

Leadership is not a science, its an art.

Its an art on how you understand the mindset of individuals as well as groups, connect with people of various styles and patterns and still form a successful team and achieve a common goal of growth & success. However, none of the above is possible, without yourself making a conscious effort to understand yourself, your own emotions and learn to control and channelize them to create positive energy around.

 

Leadership is demonstrated by various people and they have unique style of executing leadership within the group.  Raj, very effectively classifies all the styles into 4 simple categories and had easily explained them through two games, one group and other pair.

I would like to mention about the games in next article, however, till then, I would like to know your view on what you perceive leadership as and if you have to define, how would be defining the same?

Let me know !

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A Practical Guide to Managing Innovation – By Robert Goldsmith

On January 25, 2010, in Business thoughts, Strategy thoughts, by Swapnil
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Re-publishing from Forbes.com (Original link).

 

What does innovation mean?

It used to relate mainly to products, and that’s still important. But over the last decade or so, businesses have been putting more and more emphasis on innovating new services and business models as well. In light of this, it’s time companies take another look at how they manage innovation.
Innovation is one of the least well-managed areas in most companies,says David Midgley, a marketing professor at INSEAD and author of The Innovation Manual. “This leads to wasted resources and costly mistakes. It’s not the effort that companies put into innovation that decides success. Instead it is how firms go about doing innovation that separates leaders from the rest.”

Most of the information about managing innovation available today is siloed, addressing specific issues such as technology or finance. But as the boundaries of innovation expand, more managers will need practical knowledge and tools that transcend these functional silos.

 

More than good electronics

In addition to providing this practical knowledge and the toolkit to go with it, The Innovation Manual examines what is known about innovation management and asks if it still applies today when an innovation may indeed be a product, but a product with a service attached and driven by a totally different business model than a few years before.

To illustrate this idea, Midgley uses the example of the Apple iPod. Apple has sold hundreds of millions of iPods since introducing them in 2001. But, he says, that success is not because the iPod is an innovative product as there are many similar devices. The real point behind the iPod is the service that allows the customer to easily download music and the business model that allows both Apple and the music industry to make money from those downloads.

“Apple negotiated a business model with the music industry that allowed everybody to get what they want — the music industry to get their royalties, Apple to sell downloads and the iPod itself, and the customer to be able to select the songs they want rather than putting up with the compilations the industry offered because of its previous business model,” Midgley says. “These are Apple’s real innovations – the rest is just good electronics.”

 
No longer simple

Back when innovation related only to products, it was easier for companies to manage. One group of employees designed the product and passed it on to another group who sold it. But the broader boundaries of innovation have complicated things for company managers responsible for delivering innovations to the marketplace.

Implementing an innovation today may require making major organisational changes. For example, implementing an innovative service could mean making changes to employee training programmes and company procedures. A business model innovation entails getting everyone to understand the new way of making money, or, if this is not possible, setting up a new business unit.

To understand what sort of organisational changes are required for an innovation, a manager first needs to understand what sort of challenge the innovation is going to pose. For Midgley, there are three categories of challenge – the customer, technology, and business model. Understanding which category the innovation falls into is the key to understanding what steps the company needs to take next.

“If it’s a customer challenge, then you need to orient your intelligence and services one way,” Midgley explains. “If it’s a challenge on the organisational side, then it’s another way. If it’s a breakthrough in all three then you might want to think it’s a big risk.”

The customer challenge addresses how far away this innovation is going to be from the way the customer usually thinks. For example, Nintendo designed the Wii video game console to appeal to an entirely new customer base, namely people who wouldn’t ordinarily think of playing electronic games.

“What’s interesting in the Wii is not the technology, which is fairly straightforward,” says Midgley, “and it’s not the business model, because it’s actually quite a traditional business model for the gaming world. The really innovative and creative thing is making games that appeal to the grandmothers, or to families or the people who don’t play ‘shoot-‘em-up games’ on PS3 (PlayStation 3).”

The second type, technology, asks how much of a challenge the innovation is going to be for the organisation. The PS3 posed a typical technology challenge for Sony because the company was inventing a new superprocessor for their existing game console and customer base. The business model challenge addresses how the company can get money out of the existing value chain. This is what Apple overcame with the iPod.

The beginning is the end

The ultimate goal of any innovation is to create value in the minds of the customers. Midgley identifies five key tasks the organisation needs to do to accomplish this and provides the tools for managers to use to accomplish the tasks.

The first task is organisational and involves setting the direction and fixing the rules for implementation. The second is setting up the team. Teams are key to success, so the firm needs to select the most appropriate team for the type of innovation.

Task three involves working with customers as co-creators. “You get much more mileage by working with the right customers at the right time than by suddenly popping up and saying: ‘Here’s our bright and shiny new thing, how do you like it?’” Midgley says.

Once the goal has been defined, the right team selected, and a solution defined that meets a strong customer need, the fourth task is to make the necessary organisational changes to deliver the solution. This is especially true for service or business model innovations.

The fifth task is to build momentum in the market for the solution. Managers need to design and create markets for innovations with a thorough understanding of how customers accept or reject them, which is something companies don’t always do right.

For example, the personal digital assistant (PDA) was a highly innovative product which flopped when it was first introduced by Apple, Tandy and Motorola. These companies didn’t choose the right target customer to get the market moving, nor did they understand how these customers would get best value out of the innovation. As a result, all three companies ended up emphasizing the wrong features of the product.

Palm then introduced essentially the same product but, by studying how their customers would use it, the company was able to market a feature with a strong customer appeal. In the end, their highly successful version of the PDA sold in the millions.

By Robert Goldsmith
For more on the Innovation Manual, go to: www.theinnovationmanual.com

[This article is republished courtesy of INSEAD Knowledge http://knowledge.insead.edu Copyright INSEAD 2008]

Original Forbes.com link is available here.

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