Leadership Lessons ( Part 2)

This is the assimilation of thoughts and ideas discussed during our leadership seminars conducted by Dr. Debashis Chatterjee(12th Nov 07 - 15th Nov 07)



Concepts Discussed

• Approach to problem solving
• Sight and Insight
• Architecture of value creation
• Politics and you
• Incremental change and leadership
  

Nov 14th 07

The big question now is, what should we do so as to improvise this understanding?
Sir said that one should try to move away from analysis and towards synthesis. The different between these two lies in the fact that analysis is of facts whereas synthesis is based on facts and felts. This is extremely imperative because all the facts based analysis is being taken over by computers, which makes you replaceable.

Rather than just breaking down a problem into smaller components and finding the root cause, those who can design an opportunity away from the core problem would sustain much longer and would create a special demand for them.

One should graduate from a critical to an empathetic mindset. Whenever we think, a protein is created in mind and this is called a thought and the source is called the thought protein. A very interesting fact brought out at this point was that even heart has neurons and can thus think. This means that there is a mind of the heart and this fact should be kept in mind while taking decisions.

“The resource of the leader is engrained in his courage”

There is a huge difference between sight and insight. The leader brings to the table the non apparent insights which are much more valuable than what meets the eye.
We discussed in details our approach to the problems. Sir gave a classic example of the SRCC principal, who caught the problem and not the people and discovered the potential in those youngsters rather than just ridiculing them for their actions. We can summarize this by saying that

“Leaders distance the person & the problem and create the architecture of value creation”

With this thought also came the importance of commitment and the sense of responsibility which an individual should feel. Sir also took the contemporary idea of hopping jobs in a few years to show that your demand is still intact in the market. But he also mentioned that one should be extremely committed to the organization, no matter how long his stint is in the company. One example that strikes me in this context is of Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Group. He and his brand is one entity. One should never forget that every business is a promise.

Every Business rests on 3 pillars:

1. Knowledge
2. Action
3. Context

A leadership mindset is nurtured only when one tries to make a conscious effort towards acquiring all the three.
While creating a context, one should be careful that that context should last for a long time to come. Create a context that is flexible enough and which can be defined again and has a meaning in the future as well.

Nov 15th 2007

Today, the session started with the discussion of the Jack Thomas case and it surprised us all with so many insights about human behavior. The ones that I could capture are as follows:

• Politics comes from the perception of power and it starts even if there are 3 people in an organization
• Capabilities, if not utilized in the right direction, goes in manipulation of truth and circumstances
• You might not participate in politics but you should always keep your ears open and understand it completely
• Human mind does not see everything, but a mirror does. Sir gave the example of Rajat Gupta in this context and told us that the true reason for his success was his ability to help others succeed. I think attaining this kind of selflessness is difficult but we can relate this to our parents. We are so close to them, trust them, depend on them, because of their selfless nature.

We did a small exercise on identifying the people that we think are leaders in different realms of life. The most exciting and the most difficult part was that we had to mention the qualities of these leaders that attract us. Interestingly, what came out was that our disposition in some or the other way was driven by those values and thus we relate to them so much.

“Incrimental Change is the greatest enemy of leadership”

While Kaizen talks about incremental improvement, we saw an example of how this philosophy can be fatal as well. Sir showed us a clipping of a frog in a water flask. When boiling water is poured over him, he jumps out immediately. But if the flask is heated from its bottom and the temperature of water inside increases slowly, the frog does not react and rather adapts to the new situation. We also keep doing wrong things in small increments and after a while forget the actual amplitude of the wrong deeds. In such a case a radical change has to be carried out so as to bring us back on the right track. Sir also mentioned the premium that has to be paid for this adaptive change.
Another fascinating example of the adaptive capacity of human beings was of the tennis court. I thoroughly enjoyed this example and learnt how the conviction of a person can help another person find tough things easy.
Sir ended the course by weaving together the most important moments from the movie “Dead Poet’s Society” in which Robin Williams does something extraordinary in one of the strictest institutions of the country. He enables his students to think for and by themselves. It is like they take their destiny in their own hands and then decide to move forward.