Distributed Leadership – The Un-Blocked Chain of Empowered Leaders

Do you want to test your Leadership skills?

Let me give you a small assignment.

You need to lead a Bicycling expedition, covering a total of 220 odd Kilometers in two days. A century on each day. For regular cyclists, this is not a big task. What makes it more challenging is, more than 50% of cyclists are first-timers and have not cycled even 80-100 kilometers in a day to date. Although you have prior experience leading a small team on the same terrain.

We just concluded this challenge on the 16th and 17th of June.

Last year, we had a group of 19 Cyclists. The number increased to 34.

Prima facie looks like a simple and straightforward task. Isn’t it? But think again. Planning, organizing, and executing as per the plan, ensuring your team doesn't get drained out is certainly a herculean task.

“ Give me Six Hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” - Mr. Abraham Linclon. ?

How true it is. The preparation itself took us more than two months. Bicycling for two continuous days and clocking back-to-back centuries on a Hot and Sunny Day was certainly a daunting task. One has to be prepared mentally and physically. I must say, the expedition was an excellent demonstration of Distributed Leadership qualities by all involved. The Prominent ones to highlight include:

• Shared Responsibility: Various tasks, right from deciding the Journey Route, Jersey Design, Support vehicle arrangement, overnight halt, Hydration, and food points, Bicycle repairing toolkits, advance money collection, Budget, and controlling, were owned by respective individuals with pride. If this is not enough, minor activities, but of utmost importance such as name plates with emergency contact numbers, Self-declarations forms (In case of any unforeseen incident happens), Gifts and Medals for the achievers, and Banners on the Support vehicle also were covered up. Considering more than 50% newcomers, our Captain @Mohan Kulkarni made sure that they got sufficient practice and hence arranged multiple practice rides (more than 50 KM, including descent, and climbs). This gave the much-needed confidence and boost to the new joiners.
• Decentralized Decision Making: Individuals owning specific tasks had complete autonomy and authority to make the decision within their scope of work. This resulted in having much-needed agility, faster decision-making, and innovation (Yes !!!)
• Empowerment and Autonomy: Autonomy to make decisions encouraged individuals to take responsibility for their work, fostered a sense of ownership, and promoted accountability.
• Collaboration and teamwork: Effective collaboration is the key in Distributed Leadership. Especially important when you are working with a diversified group, but with a common goal. We were no different. While there were some Pro Cyclists in our group, there were also the first-timer, determined souls. In Project Management, they say. Anticipate the unanticipated, and we had some unanticipated elements like punctured tyres, and broken Chains. Effective utilization of the skills and excellent collaboration helped all of us to cope with these situations.
• Continuous learning, development, and Improvement: No one is perfect, especially when you are in unknown terrain.

Effective Leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience. - Mr. Colin Powell. ?

• This was our third year of the “Cyco Wari”, and every expedition gave us new experiences, new challenges, and hence new learning opportunities.
• Clear communication: Just like Effective Collaboration, effective communication plays a vital role. One of the catalysts for our successful expedition, I would say, was clear communication from respective task owners to all. Be it preparation rides, things to carry, Do’s and Don’ts, (even the sleeping patterns in the prior week were not left out of communication).
• Shared vision and values: What separates a Magnet from Iron is its intrinsic molecule structure. Despite coming from diverse backgrounds, and handling distributed responsibilities, the one magnetizing phenomenon sticking all of us together was the shared vision and values. Everyone was positively motivated to conquer the mission together.

End result was phenomenal. With zero casualties, and almost sticking to the schedule, at the end of the day, everyone was having a sense of achievement reflecting on their smiling faces.

kudos to the leadership team - Mohan Kulkarni , Prasad Gosavi , Ravindra Deshmukh , Sachin Thakre , ABHIJIT KULKARNI , @Prashant Kitture, Sandeep Deshpande , Rajesh Katti , Yogesh Bang

This was our third year of "Pune to Pandharpur Cyco Wari "

Happy Devshayani Aashadhi to one and all !!