The Crucial Balance : Clouds vs trenches for leaders!

Last month, while on vacations to Marrakesh, Morocco the plan was not to plan anything for the trip. 2024 was a hectic year and we wanted to spent as much time doing nothing. One evening while walking through miles long beautiful Souks of Marrakesh, and standing in the hustle/bustle of main square, I had 2 'ahaa moments'. I scribbled them both while they were still fresh in my mind (Unlike all other lost ahaa moments :)).

Later I took some time to retrospect and research on the facts/academia behind those 2 points i scribbled. Here are some thoughts which i would like to share with you.

Ahaa moment#1 : Importance of Spending more time in clouds > firefighting in trenches.

By being on Clouds i don't mean the public cloud infrastructure or being in la-la land or distracting yourself by playing video games all night long but perhaps spending quality time Reading, Mindfulness, Sports, Active listening, staying in nothing zone or in walking aimlessly in a busy souk. An effective leadership transcends single perspective. Very few leaders excel at strategic planning, the mission/vision and 'the Why',while most excel at day to day operations, nitty gritties and getting that strategy executed. An Ideal leader, is however the one who possess the ability to be in the clouds and be able to create /visualise the strategy. They should also have skillset to navigate the trenches where things get done and understand ground reality.

Seeing the big picture from the clouds: When in trenches most of the time we are standing so near to the painting that we don't see the full picture. Looking at picture from birds point of view helps achieve:

Products over project mindset. As per stats from Deloitte, 70% of all transformation projects fail in fortune 500 organisations. Thats 900$ billion wasted in 2019 alone and increasing every year. BTW that's Combined GDP of all Scandinavian countries that year. Its astonishing how we still fail to learn from the this and the history. Being in clouds help you see beyond the golden triangle of Cost, time and quality aka project mindset(which are temporary and never achieve outcomes). Having product mindset helps encourage experimentation, foster innovation.

Better forecast & planning by anticipating the future, identify the changing market and taking calculated bets on the outcomes. It helps identify patterns, analyse data and then Pivot away from things that don't work towards that work.

On the contrary, Trenches is where all the actions happens, the Daily meetings, Hirings, forecasting, P/L etc. you know what i mean. Off course being in trenches give you some adrenaline rush, the instant gratification from getting things done, the project go lives etc. It does makes one content (I totally get it) and have the false notion of moving in the right direction. The problem is Most leaders spend most of the active time in 1 mode only aka trenches. Some of the key benefits of operating in trenches are:

It help build strong interpersonal relationships with knowledge workers at all levels hence better collaboration, open communications. understanding of operating nuances of different business units.

It also helps in understanding the ground reality and experience pain points first hands, get valuable insights into process, the challenges and workflow.

Hold on to this moment while i quickly introduce moment 2 :).

Ahaa moment#2 : Accelerated pace of change & diminishing Unique value proposition.

World is changing at a much faster pace we can ever imagine. In last 100 years world have witnessed so many technological revolutions starting from industrial age to digital revolution, 2G to 6G, IOT,AI adoption and what not.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil rightly said “We’re already smarter by the fact that we can access all of human knowledge with a few keystrokes. A kid in Africa with a smartphone has access to more intelligent information than the President of the United States did 15 years ago,”

The Rate of change of technology is so fast that by the time organisations understand the problems to solve & sometimes find solutions to them, the problems have already changed. According to a study done in 2018 the fortune 500 companies are rising and falling at the fastest pace ever. The unique value proposition (UVP) have to constantly evolve for an organization to stay relevant or vanish from business landscape. According to data, in 1965 a typical fortunate 500 company would stay relevant for ca. 33 years in S&P 500 list ( a list of top 500 companies in the world), 2018 its 18 years and estimate to be ca. 10 years by 2027.

By this pace, by the year 2050 a typical technology company would vanish from the SnP list in few quarters if not months. The point is the organisations needs to have accelerated pace of business cycles so that they can have strong UVP's. How does this happen?

This is where point #1 comes into picture. By spending more time in clouds, by tuning out to tune in, by nothing more often, stay away from trenches more often will definitely help organisations to adapt to this accelerating pace of business cycles.

An example of one visionary leader who embraced both perspectives is Steve jobs. He understood the need for both strategic and operational excellence. He insisted on the visionary designs of apple products and meticulous attention to details. As per his biography he spent a considerate amount of time in clouds via mindfulness.

In Conclusion, The true power of leadership lies in the ability to seamlessly integrate both the clouds and trenches perspectives. By embracing both the strategic vision and operational reality, leaders can create sustainable and thriving organisations which supports accelerated pace of change which is the need today.

One of the goal for me, this year is to occasionally take time off and zone out to be in the clouds, away from the hustle and bustle of trenches. Both in professional and personal aspects.

Would love to hear thoughts/ comments on this :). Do Comment.

//Love and Peace,

Chakshu Arora.

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