I scratch your back and You scratch Mine

This thought is about that part of an organization behavior, which is really a grey area – “I scratch your back and You scratch Mine” – Well, sounds like a good idea. Why Grey? Take a look.

Neeraj heads the Marketing of an FMCG organisation. The going has been good, but the latest soap introduction has not had great sales. On a deep dive, he found out that the issue was really with the Sales team which has not been able to achieve the required distribution level as per target. In the weekly review meeting, when Neeraj is questioned on the poor sales performance, he blames it on not so exciting fragrance of the new soap.

Confused? So, this is what the real story is. Ajay, the head of sales is an aggressive individual. Last time when Neeraj highlighted the inefficiency of Sales dept, Ajay made a report of how Neeraj and team had faltered on ensuring that TV advertising started on the committed date. The situation became fairly embarrassing for Neeraj when he was questioned on the poor performance in front of Ajay. Thereafter he chatted up with Ajay and started playing safe with Sales. He scratches Ajay’s back and Ajay scratches his!

Isn’t this what many of us do? Only because we are scared of the back fire, we tolerate the inefficiencies of various individuals in an organization. Have you ever tried to figure out what could be the impact of this silence? You are supporting the growth and settlement of inefficiencies within the system. Because some mistakes are not highlighted on time, the mistakes continue until they become a habit and major reason of discomfiture within all the related teams. You didn’t face any back fire and someone just got away with murder! Isn’t this how we promote mediocrity within the system? Things continue to be the way they are and so do the results. But we keep quiet!

“I Scratch your back and you scratch mine” is a positive statement. It denotes that both of us will be co operative with each other and help each other in the relevant areas. If I am absent for a week, you take care of my work and so will I, when you need leaves. Presence of this concept in any organization is fairly important and this is what makes employees love their colleagues and in turn the organisation. The problem begins when this “friendliness” starts making way for tolerance of sub standard performance.  You want to complain about an issue which is obstructing the smooth flow of your work – but how can you “cheat” your friend by highlighting his mistake? This way, you are not only harming the organization, but also the growth of the individual involved. Also, being open to a back fire also helps you as an individual grow, isn’t it? Ability to admit your mistake and improving yourself and genuine concern for your work are two key ingredients that will help you grow. If you genuinely feel that something is coming in way of your work, you must learn to tackle it with all your dedication.

By this, I do not mean that you should go on a “fault finding” mission and complain about everything that you come across. Excess of anything is bad. The point being made here is that before tolerating any problem with an individual, do not hesitate to be vocal about stating it. Also, not necessary that all complains have to be escalated, but when there is no resolution, Escalation helps. Organizationally, it also means that all of us need to be better prepared to answer some tough questions that can be put to us. This in turn will result in lesser slippages and much better work efficiency.

This article may come across as if I am promoting a blame game culture. I am promoting honesty of thought and actions to help the organization grow out of “mediocrity” and towards better future!

Looking forward to your comments on this one.

PS: You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter.

Unleashing the power of feedback

This article is about a concern that most of us go through in our careers as well as personal lives – Lack of Proper Feedback. Though all of us work in best possible way, sometimes, we do tend to get off the track – but how do we get back on track, unless someone tells us!

Sample this story. Alok and Richa worked for in the same company. Alok was heading the marketing department while Richa was sales in charge for a business unit. Both of them never got well along with each other. While Richa thought Alok was too laid back in his attitude, Alok thought Richa’s aggressiveness is just a way to impress her seniors. More often than not, these two would get into serious quarrels before every campaign break. Richa blamed Alok of informing her only at the last moment, while Alok said that Richa always tried to interfere in his domain, which he did not appreciate. Diwali campaign was about to break out and Tarun, the CEO of the company expected another spat between the two. So, he decided to resolve it himself this time. He called both of them individually and asked them what all problems they faced with each other. He jotted down everything that both of them had to say. Next he passed Richa’s feedback to Alok and vice versa saying it was a feedback from him of their work and he really thinks these are their improvement areas. Not to his surprise, the Diwali campaign had much lesser issues and working was smoother. He then called them together and told them the reality, ending with “…if only both of you started giving feedback to each other directly”.

Did you notice what can a simple feedback achieve? Feedback is a completely underrated part of work in most organizations. People continue to crib about their work areas and company, but hardly bother to give any feedback to anyone. The underlying assumption is always that “how will my feedback matter?”, but don’t we realize that every individual behaves in a certain way, because he thinks it is the right way. If its not, how will he know unless someone tell him? What we must understand and appreciate is that Everyone needs Feedback. A lot of us don’t see ourselves as others see us (reminded about Johari Window*), and so the feedback becomes really important to overcome the “Blind Spots” that we develop over a period of time. Have you realized how much impact does a smile from your spouse, a pat on the back from your Boss, delightful eyes of a customer or a look of appreciation from a colleague ;-) make? Don’t you feel irritated when your Boss doesn’t comment on the results of some work that you’ve put so much efforts in? Have you also tried telling your team members to improve in certain areas of work and seen some immediate results? It works! While a negative feedback results in improvement and performance enhancement, a positive feedback gives motivation to continue to perform even better. Also, not all feedback needs to be positive or negative. It can be just a simple indication saying the individual is on right track!

Giving / Receiving feedback isn’t easy. A lot of people don’t want to give feedback simply as they don’t want to confront each other, which could also be a probable start to the “Blame Game”. What we must understand is that we must be prepared to take the feedback in the right spirits! A lot of times we tend to believe that the person is giving negative feedback because “he doesn’t know enough”, or “she wants to me fail!”. That’s almost like moving towards the “Blind Spot” even further.  We must also learn to give feedback effectively – making sure that the other person understands the right intent behind it. If you make it sound like a complain, defensive behavior is inevitable.

The concept of feedback doesn’t apply only within the important areas of work. It can be in smaller things also. The more you give feedback, the more improvement you will see in things around. What changes would you like in a report, appreciating the new HR initiative, telling the R&D team about how the new toothpaste flavour has turned out and what could have made it better, little feedbacks can make your life easy. It’s also about leaving a comment on this blog and saying if it is in the right direction.The same is applicable even in your personal life. It’s there in telling your driver how well he drives and saves so much of your time. It’s there in asking your spouse whether he / she would like to change something about you.

PS: You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter.

* Johari window is a great psychological tool used to help people better understand their interpersonal communication and relationships. This blog  addresses only the top right hand corner of the box.

Do you spend time with yourself?

This article is an attempt to address one of our usual work issues, TIME! However, here I am taking a different approach of looking at the issue and addressing the same.

Rohit comes to office every morning checks his mailbox and quickly makes notes of the work to be delegated. He then runs to the team and asks them who’s busy with what, selects the right candidates for handling today’s work and tells them how to do it. On enquiring the status on previous tasks, the team updates him and tells him the problems they faced with them. He then makes solves the problem himself and therefore helping them understand the way it should be done. He also double checks the work done by the team yesterday and shows them the correct method to do whatever was incorrect. In the meanwhile, his Boss calls him for an urgent work. He runs, takes it down and also updates Boss with the previous tasks’ status. Boss suggests some changes. Rohit, again, runs back to the team and tells them about the new task and updates them about changes in the old one. Its 2.00 pm and it’s time for a meeting and everyone rushes for that. Rohit is relatively unprepared as he was busy the whole morning. After the meeting, Boss calls him again and asks him – “Why are you always so unprepared?”

Rohit, undoubtedly, is a hard working person. The problem that he has is that he believes in doing everything himself. What would’ve happened if he delegated tasks to his team and asked them to turn up in case they had any doubt? Couldn’t he have sent the team back every time they came with a mistake in the file, instead of trying to solve everything himself? Could he have also allocated half an hour per day for his Boss to update him with the status and take fresh downloads, instead of running to him every time a new task emerged? That would’ve helped him spend so much time with himself!  Spending time with himself would have helped him organize himself better, prepare himself for the meeting and plan for the times to come. Once this cycle started, everything would set itself in place.

Typically, this is what happens with all of us. Each working day involves Reviewing Mails, New Task Delegation and follow up of Old tasks with teams, Receiving and Updating Status of Tasks to Boss, Coordination with other Teams, Attending Regular and Ad Hoc Meetings. In the quest of doing everything ourselves, we tend to lose on the most important activity required for every working day – “Spending Time with ourselves”!  Either we spend too much time with our Bosses or our teams. Spending time with oneself is hardly considered in the never ending agenda for the day. Many times, it is considered “unproductive” to spend time with oneself and this is easily deprioritized when it comes to “taking care” of the teams and “being obedient” to the Boss. One big demerit of such close supervision is the building “dependability” of the teams on you, which hampers growth – both of your team and yourself. The same thing is true in the reverse manner, if you are spending too much time with your boss. The team becomes too dependent on you to grow, and you become too engrossed in day today affairs to look forward.

Every day is an investment. Just like we invest money to build more money for us, we need to invest our time in such a manner that we get the profit of some extra time every day. For that, we first need to identify where is our time going currently? Making our teams responsible and trusting them enough with the routine tasks is one key way. If you think the problem is with your Boss calling you too often, talk your problem out. Like I’ve previously said, if you’ll really want to spend time with yourself, you will definitely find a way to do that. In that sense, it depends on you! But it’s you who needs to identify where you want to head to. Spending time with yourself could also mean reading up articles to improve your own learning and therefore the organisational learning.

One management tip I completely believe in, is spending at least first and last 20 minutes of your day with yourself. In the first 20 minutes, we need to plan our day, prioritize things, and set yourself ready for the day. The last 20 minutes should be spent in reviewing the progress of the day – Was it according to how you had planned? What did you do today that you will not do again?

Would be nice to know if this article impacted your way of working in any way?

PS: You can also reach out to me at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter.

Expectations are good

This note is about “Expectations”. Contrary to the belief of “Not Expecting Anything”, is good, I believe in the fact that what we are, or what we become is the result of what we expect. So, the premise that I am taking is against the deep rooted cultural backdrop. Our culture teaches us not to expect too much. Expectation is almost a sin!

A typical sales situation. Madhav is a sales person. He is a happy and content kind of a person and usually, when asked about “How happy are your customers”, he replies happily stating that they are satisfied with the service level and keep giving repeat orders. On the contrary, Hari, another sales person replies that things could’ve been better if he put in a little more efforts. On the face of it, it might look like that Madhav is a much better performer than Hari, but when you look inside, you’ll realize that Hari’s customers are happier compared to that of Madhav’s. Where’s the gap?

The gap is in expectations. When you expect less or expect nothing, you might be happy and content initially, but ultimately you realize that to be moving higher up, you need to raise “expectations”. Madhav is also amongst people who tend to take things on their heart too quickly and also are not very open to feedback. He thinks that his service levels are perfect and when you highlight the issues, they tend to retaliate. Hari, knows that there’s a scope of improvement, and thus, is more open to feedback and works his way up. Do you realize how deep rooted is this problem of “low expectations”?

Expecting nothing or less are surely no way to lead to happiness. Imagine if we were content with the way banks worked – the ATMs wouldn’t be invented at all. The discomfiture of not being able to keep in touch led to the evolution of Social networking Sites. Expectations make the world progress and better, by the day. Happiness is not when expectations meet the reality, it's when you have higher expectations and you work towards making it a reality.  If you are satisfied with everything around, everything will continue to be the same. Expectations are about Moving Upwards and towards betterment.

At times I can feel a gap between what I am expecting and what others are expecting. When I express discontentment, they think of me as snob or even rude. I don't mind it because the next time I visit the place, all the things that I expected are well in place. Though I was tagged as rude, I helped some people in terms of betterment,  and I clearly do not regret that.

For me, there’s a way of defining expectation - First time its awe, next time its appreciation and the third time (onwards) , its expectation! One of the most critical things for setting higher expectations is – Exposure. It is a reality check in terms of your current status and where the world is going. Also, Exposure and Observation go hand in hand when it comes to defining Expectations. Observing what’s going on and trying to adapt the best practices is one good way of setting Expectations. A raise in the standard of your expectations makes you a better individual and somebody to be looked up to. So meeting different people, visiting different places, observing different trends, not only raises your expectations, but also makes you a better personality.

Being content with what you have can give you momentary happiness, but when you raise the bar and strive for achieving it, you experience the ultimate joy! A “higher expectation” does result in much better execution. Can we also term this as dissatisfaction. How can this dissatisfaction be channelised to generate positive energy?

Looking forward to hear your take on this.

PS: Do give me your feedback. You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter.

Demonstrating Leadership away from Limelight - the MS Dhoni Way!

I read a tweet on Sunday that Hindustan Times lead picture did not have Dhoni in the frame. Then I noticed that it was difficult to spot him even in Times of India picture. On news channels also, the pictures of the players with the cup did not have Dhoni in them.

Where is Dhoni? And I was aghast. This set me thinking.

Dhoni has won the T20 world cup, got India to the No 1 in test ranking, won the IPL and CL, and finally, after 28 years THE world cup. But who is taken around the stadium on the players’ shoulders? Sachin. Who is the stadium rooting for? Sachin. What is the mystery?

You can turn around and say that Dhoni was lucky to have been the captain at the right time. He had great senior players and talented youngsters in the team. However, fact is that he has had very different teams in all the championships that he has won. T20, Tests, IPL/CL and ODIs. He has been the glue to put the teams together, not the other way around. The fact that leaders are often considered to be lucky when the times are going good, but does someone really take note of the invisible efforts being put in by the individual. Keeping the team together and excited in one of the most important, but undermined, jobs done by a successful leader – doesn’t Dhoni just demonstrate that?

Look at Dhoni’s statements over a period of time, which are honest to say the very least. “We are not a good fielding side”, “I took some wrong decisions”, “reading the pitch wrong and playing 3 seamers”. Taking on his team mates publicly. He backs team members and takes tough decisions at the same time. Backing Piyush Chawla to the hilt or dropping Yuvraj or Raina are tough decisions taken by him. I am yet to notice bias in his decision making. He has dropped Ashwin from ODIs, despite him being a worthy team mate in CSK. More often than not, leaders with a WYSIWYG (What you see is What you get) style of working are the most criticized lot, even if it helps keeping the team aware of their strengths and weaknesses promptly. When this leader takes the blame upon himself, he is criticized for not carrying out things properly, but when the same leader blames it on his team, it is seen as a “Blame Game”. Aren’t we a bit too critical for leaders, including Dhoni?

Since becoming captain in ODIs he transformed himself from a dasher to an accumulator. With enough dashers around, he changed his role in the team for the sake of the team. As a captain his average is 52.7 vs 44.2 as a non captain, though his strike rate drops from 96.3 to 82.4. His numbers of 6s per innings go down to 0.56 from 0.95.  A number of times, a leader puts his individual performance at the back seat and adapts as the team requires him to.

I can go and on and on about Dhoni’s professional achievements as a captain. His humility as an individual (his pictures of sharing birthday cake with my colleague or pictures with my sons are some examples). Any comparisons with Ganguly and Afridi are misplaced. He definitely doesn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve. He is the real man taking “criticism” and “Failures” on his face and letting go the entire credit of the Achievements to his individual Team Members. To me, all this, and more make Dhoni a True Leader!

Then suddenly the realisation dawns on me! This is about where the limelight lies, or where it is not? So, “Do leaders shy away when it comes to being in limelight?”

We should not pity him for missing from the frame of Hindustan Times lead picture on the day nation went crazy. We should give him due credit. It is about stepping back and letting your colleagues savour the moment! This is about having confidence and absence of insecurity – a situation in which you let your team steal the limelight while you smile at the back end, content with your and your team’s performance. It is this confidence, that makes him appreciate the past. Examples are of co sharing the trophy with Kumble, or letting Ganguly lead the last few overs of his test career. It is this confidence, that still makes him thank all his seniors for the victory of his team!

I can say that true leaders only create Limelight and not necessarily be in it – Just the MS Dhoni way!

PS: As usual, would be looking forward to your feedback and opinion on this blog! You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter.

Who is a Fool?

This blog is triggered by today's date and the significance of the same. “Fool’s Day”.

At the outset, let’s take a look at the reason this day came into being: The theory goes like this: In 1564 France reformed its calendar, moving the start of the year from the end of March to January 1. Those who failed to keep up with the change, who stubbornly clung to the old calendar system and continued to celebrate the New Year during the week that fell between March 25th and April 1st, had jokes played on them. Pranksters would surreptitiously stick paper fish to their backs. The victims of this prank were thus called Poisson d’Avril, or April Fish—which, to this day, remains the French term for April Fools—and so the tradition was born.

Whilst this theory is seemingly simple (and stupid), what it does clearly tell us is “Who is a Fool?”. It is not about taking wrong decisions. It is not about  not being able to understand some obvious things. It’s about being closed to learning. It’s about thinking that you know enough and you do not need to know any further. It’s about making assumptions rather than taking the pain of finding out the reality or change.

If you are closed to the learning, I would also interpret the same as “Not Asking the Right Questions at the Right Time”!

Moving on to a real life situation. It’s a large forum and a presentation by the Department Head is going on. In one of the slides, you cannot make out the point being made. But, it’s a large forum, you don’t know if the question you’ll ask makes sense. You are afraid that you’ll be laughed at. You are collecting strength to raise your voice and ask that question. Meanwhile, a colleague of yours raises his hand and asks the same question. You Thank God. The question is appreciated by the Head and everyone in the room applauds your colleague for the same. You think even you were smart enough to think of that question. Do you realize what you really were? You were a Fool.

Consciously or unconsciously, a lot of us go through these situations. Momentary fear of being laughed at or over confidence in ourselves are two extreme situations where we actually make a fool of ourselves.  In the first situation, you keep fighting with yourself, feeling lesser confident and thereby, losing interest in the rest of the topic – missing one vital piece of information completely! In the second one, chances are, that you continue believing and working on the wrong information, a phenomenon commonly known as “living in Fool’s Paradise”.

Some thoughts to make yourself “Fool Proof”:

1.      Act Like a Child : I am sure you will agree that a child has very high level of inquisitiveness. Can we behave like a child. Ask questions which will have obvious answers and a lot of times, not so obvious! We need to decide what is more important – our public image, or our wisdom!

2.      No Age / Limit for learning – I genuinely believe that every day we learn something new, and its never ever too late to learn something. If you have doubts on some process, which you should have clarified long back, don’t hesitate, ask! Maybe this knowledge gives you a new idea to carry out your work in an efficient manner.

3.      Never Assume – It is easy for me to assume a lot of things and move on without bothering any one of you. Asking questions only help is cross verifying that everything is in place. 

4.      Speak Up – “No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions”. I completely believe in the thought. For the fear of one moment of embarrassment, you let go your lifetime of wisdom. Make the wise choice.

He, who knows, and knows that he knows, is Wise – Follow Him!

He, who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is Simple – Teach Him!

He, who knows, and knows not that he knows, is Asleep – Wake Him!

He, who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is Fool – Shun him!

Avoid being in the last category.

PS: As usual, would be looking forward to your feedback and opinion on this blog! You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter.