#23-From my unlocked diaries: Kite flying and leadership lessons – Part 2

Quick recap from my last week’s article about leadership lessons from kite flying.

1.   A passion to perform against all obstacles

2.   Heightened intuition

Two more this week.

3.   Relentless planning and execution

As a kid my kite flying started as a casual, fun activity with a simple kite and an ordinary thread. I was happy even if my kite was ‘in-flight’ for a few minutes. But that soon grew into a full blown ‘craze’.  Every time I stepped on to the terrace (refer earlier blog), this pastime soon became a passion. What followed was a deep desire - to get better and excel at kite flying.       

For achieving excellence and to pursue this craze, I had to develop the expertise - to fly different kites (big, small, with / without tail etc.) and also compete with other kites, to cut them. Standards were high and I was often challenged by others from the nearby terraces. So, this taught me the fundamentals of Planning and Execution. How?

The Kite was always a ‘bought-out’ item (many shops during the season would sell it). So, I decided to focus on aspects that I could control, which were:

-      Thread quality (strong & sharp – No 10 brand)

-      Sutra (the main thread that balances the kite); and

-      Art of kite duel (which comes with regular practice)

The Planning and Execution in making the ‘Maanja’ thread (sharp thread used to fly kites to compete) was rather un-sophisticated but needed lot of planning, hard work and focus along with my friends. 

Saving about 100 rupees over several weeks (by making sacrifices in other spends), I procured key ingredients like - ‘Mara Vajra’ (glue like thing), No. 10 thread and colour to prepare the Maanja thread. We also adopted a few austerity measures. An empty Asian Paints 2 litre tin served as our vessel to boil the glue concoction, fired by fallen twigs. All this in our make-shift ‘kitchen’ located behind a large rain tree!   

The Maanja thread had to be glazed with glass powder, to make it razor sharp. We had a home-grown solution to obtain glass powder – an empty ‘Bournvita’ glass jar! This was nicely hand powdered and kept ready while the Mara Vajra cooked in the Asian Paints tin, with mix of our favourite colour – olive green (also called as ‘military green’ – very popular and known to be lethal). 

The final process – applying Varja (glue) on the thread immediately followed by glass powder glazing, and then drying and rolling. Quality testing was done by just feeling the sharp thread on the cheeks, to check its lethality!

Wasn’t that elaborate?

Leadership is not about having a passion & vision. You will need to get your hands dirty in the beginning, to learn the trade. 

A deep passion (similar to kites) often drives you to Plan and Execute meticulously, get a first-hand feel of everything yourself, especially if you are in an un-explored market/territory (like start-up), new venture or in a situation when there too many unknown variables, and the information flow from the rest of the organisation may not be reliable. 

Of-course you may still fail in flying your kite / venture, but at least you know what went into making the key inputs for your product / service, like a kite in this case, and what improvements you can make in the future?

A passion ‘led’ Planning and Execution has a high tolerance for failures, as compared to merely an ability of the leader to - Plan & Execute

4. Achieving balance & being grounded

On the terrace, flying kites I had everything – perfect wind, great / new kite, razor sharp Maanja thread and also a ‘helper’ friend to support me with the thread reel. But there were days I would struggle, even to get the kite off the ground. When I finally succeeded, it became a challenge to control it – Guess why?

The kite had - no balance; due to its faulty aero dynamics. Initially I would give up too soon, get angry, curse the wind, kite or sometimes even the kite-maker. But gradually I learnt to have patience and develop the art of ‘enquiry’. 

You never really know a new kite’s aero dynamics and which way it’s going to lean. After a few back and forth, I learnt the art of tying a simple ‘weight’ to one of the sides, to ensure it is balanced. Sometimes, it just needs to be grounded better at the bottom, so I tied a tail. 

Similarly, leadership is not all bravado, chest-thumping and need to ‘know it all’. It is often - trial and error and learnt on the job. You need to experiment with small pilots to gauge the organisation, its culture and dynamics and not give up too soon, especially when you are a new leader or starting off new in an organisation. 

A leader will encounter bumps along the way in any organisation with co-ordination across departments or just people dynamics. Leader needs to apply the right balance, at the right time and in right proportion to keep things on course for the organisation to succeed. 

Sometimes, things do go south merely due to the leader’s self-centric approach or ego. Hence, it helps the leaders to practice high degree of self-awareness, learn to decode the feedback the organisation is trying to give him/her and remain grounded – for the organisation to be flying high. 

Will be back next week with two more lessons!

Balu

July 3, 2020

[email protected]