DID OUR LEADERS FAIL US ~ THE 2ND WAVE!

Irrespective of one being a foreign educated CEO of the world’s largest private vaccine manufacturer, global scale Remdesivir licensee manufacturer or a Senior IAS officer part of election commission or a high office political leader ~ In the absence of a real-time pan India early monitoring system in healthcare unlike for cyclones & hurricanes, a VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity & Ambiguity) world is a continuous reality that a leader faces on a daily basis! 

What a leader faces and his options in the face of extreme adversity ~

·      A leader must be a learner: When a person achieves a high public office, he has never had the experience of being one earlier unlike many other professions. Irrespective of the grind that brings him to the top and all the working and advisory boards at his disposal, a leader in his current role is still a novice. The challenge is on immediate appointment he is projected to be all powerful and is perceived to know it all, when in reality he is at best a learner on the go. 

The first step is un-learning where a leader must cut out his personal bias in decision making and attempt to live through this dilemma of trying to get everything right for everyone every time. 

 ·      Public pressure & communication: Subordinates usually accuse the leader of low focus on priority areas or lack of necessary and obvious action for time critical problems of catastrophic nature. They jump to conclusions of what the leader must do for they oversimplify the complex challenges without adequate understanding of the obscure critical interdependencies. 

A leader must hence communicate with clarity, honesty and empathy with assurance and a broad comforting vision that things will be fine and give hope. Nothing is more catastrophic than a leader holding a negative view and passing it down to his comrades and thus seem powerless in such a situation.

·       Progress vs. perfection: A leader’s canvas is more complex than it is complicated, where there are many opinions but no clear solutions. Medicine is a complicated subject but corona management is complex. In a complex environment, the context is continually shifting and aiming for perfection in a complex environment is futile. Instead, aim for progress expecting mistakes on the go coupled with continuous course correction. 

For high-achievers in academics, in precision engineering perfectionism is key but for a leader, he must at the most attempt at a best possible outcome but not a perfect one for perfection is a mirage. 

·      Build self-complementing teams: In all situations of extremities a leader if he doubles down on his focus and goes into his cocoon, he would be accused of isolating the team and trying to solve all himself which is equally counter-productive. Rather a leader must broad base his decision for no one person knows it all and build a core execution team of complementary skill sets that self corrects itself on the go. While doing so, the leader must get himself a bird’s eye view of the situation to be able to direct the team better foreseeing the upcoming challenges.

·      It’s crude reality, but it is a number game: A leader cannot be bogged down by personal sob stories. Even for smaller situations such as a M&A transaction, ethical bankers attempt to ensure least people lose jobs and they negotiate and build those clauses. But at the end few do lose jobs and women and children are affected. Winston Churchill had sunk the allied French fleet and killed 1300 soldiers. This he did to save Britain from being attacked by the Germans through the sea route using French ships and ultimately saved millions of lives. A leader must take solace in the greater good and larger benefitting numbers than just a handful being affected, though he must try his best to minimize the impact where possible. 

The key is pragmatism for a perceived moral compunction towards a few can blind the leader from achieving greater good. A leader has tough decisions to make, which can go horribly wrong irrespective of his best efforts and intentions, yet he must make them.

·      A warrior mindset: Not all brilliant students are innovators or entrepreneurs, not all soldiers are warriors. The planner, the doer, the motivator, the innovator, the believer, the sustainer all combined is a leader and the mindset of a soldier is what makes him a warrior. Warrior is not how much strength one has in terms of weight one can lift at a point in time but his ability to navigate complexity, take in sustained stress over a longer period of time and improvise on the go in the face of adversity is what counts.

Everything that a warrior planned while sweating in practice is tested in reality in the battlefield soaked with blood and he has just as many resources. He knows survival is impossible, but he must still make progress, re-draw his objectives towards the un-obvious and attempt to emerge victorious in those objectives. 

Conclusion: A leader does not have it easy in any circumstances, given the nature and scale of the issues, he is not in control of all the varied forces but yet is accountable for all of it.

In Saragarhi (Kesari movie), 20 soldiers backed by 1 warrior won a battle against 10k well armed men even when outdone by machine, climate and time. Battle was won but all soldiers were martyred (imperfect outcome yet successful). History is full of such bravery and a leader must demonstrate it more than anyone else and in silence every-day and still be open to criticism for there is never a perfect outcome ~ that’s the leader’s dilemma in a democratic set up. 

In current pandemic circumstances given the scale & complexity and the legacy issues, a continuously adaptive and broad-based leadership is the only way forward. Let’s also acknowledge that a corporate, political or administrative leader is just as human with limited hind-sight who is trying his best to make the ecosystem respond adequately!