"Leading Kissflow Way - Launching a Leadership Building Practice"

It was one of those regular Monday evenings as I was wrapping up my work that? I caught up with Swami K who heads our DevOps function. During our conversation, he presented some interesting ideas on team management which he practices within his team.? On my way back home the conversation with Swami kept running through my mind. I wanted to explore these practices in depth and thought that these would be helpful for other people managers in the organization. I also realized that there must be others at Kissflow with similar ideas that we could benefit from. I shared this with my manager when I reached office the next morning and thus was birthed the idea of “Leading the Kissflow Way”? - a fortnightly meeting of all leads and above (all the way up to the CEO) where managers leading teams effectively share some of their unique practices (not ideas but what has actually been practiced over time).

As a company, we have invested significantly in learning from those outsides on how to build high-performing + happy teams. While this is critical for us to continue, we have inadvertently minimized the value of learning from those doing great work inside the Kissflow community. "Leading the Kissflow Way" thus is meant to shine a spotlight on the leaders amongst us who are building great teams in their own unique way. This would also be a great opportunity for us to hear ideas that work in our specific context and thus avoid the typical issue of hearing / reading great ideas but unable to put it to practice consistently.

With over 130 people in this category, we were able to make it convenient by having a tightly designed presentation for 30-35 mins and 10 mins of Q&A post that. 45 mins every 2 weeks makes it convenient to plan, both for participants as well as the presenters and organizers. This is run at 6 p.m IST? to enable folks across geos to participate.

We also ensure that all relevant collateral including the presentation deck is shared post the meeting so that folks can dig deeper and apply it without having to reinvent the wheel.

Quite importantly this also aligns with some of our core principles when it comes to creating new practices /initiatives:

1. Be Strategic instead of Tactical - clarity on the higher/broader goal/problem we are addressing
2. Co-create instead of Instruct - work with the stakeholders right from the ideation phase and involve them every step of the way, make them feel a part of the overall program.
3. Be Consistent instead of one-off - the impact is created through the momentum gained of a series of sessions and not by one time or randomly conducted events (however high investment and well executed they are). Seemingly simple initiatives/practices can have outsized impact through this.

I was excited to see how a simple conversation gave birth to something much bigger in which I carry the responsibility to unearth nuggets from across the organization. I will share key insights from each session as they happen.

I would love to hear of specific practices that you have in your organizations that help build the leadership and people management muscle. Do share in the comments / as a message.?