Losing relevance - a few thoughts

Losing relevance - a few thoughts

Aniruddha Sarkar

17 October 2022, 8-30 PM

When we kids played a few games 'Ekka Dokka', 'Chor Chor', 'Pintu Pintu', 'Dariya Banda', and a few more games, what was common to us?

We did not have any coach to tell us the rules of each game.

When I made a mistake, the other mates would explain the rules.

That was collective coaching!

And, I could pick up the game quickly enough.

When we had a dispute on who won and who lost a particular game, after initial hiccups, we would say 'Shod Bodh' meaning, let's forget this last match and repeat fresh.

That was a collective settlement of a dispute with the intent to reset and restart!

There was no scorer. We would individually keep track of scores. A few points' mismatches here and there did not matter. The winning side would be magnanimous in foregoing their lead to keep up the spirit of the losing side.

That was an encouragement to a weak opponent!

There was trust that the mutual scorekeeping was fine and acceptable to both sides!

There used to be a few conflicts with the neighbours for either smashing their window panes or hitting some temporary thatched cow sheds with a ball.

Then the whole group used to be united in offering an unconditional apology and would behave like a courteous lot. However, if any neighbour asked who had thrown the ball, nobody would leak out the name/(s).

That was solidarity!

Like these, we subconsciously built a few virtues of commodiare-ship which we never realized till we attended school.

Now, we faced a new paradigm shift.

A class monitor used to be identified by the class teacher.

That boy/ girl generally was studious and a high performer.

From a collective leadership regime, we gradually entered into a command and control regime.

The friendships were less than natural.

We did not decide, who would be the class monitor. The teacher decided.

What were his/ her credentials?

Good marks in internal assessments.

And, obedient, attentive, and disciplined behaviour.

Was the student a good pal to the whole class? Generally not. But who cares.

An atmosphere of divide and rule set in. The students who were backbenchers used to get a few punishments for not maintaining decorum as reported by the monitor to the class teacher.

In college and university, the experiences were along the same line. One has to belong to either X group, Y group, or Z group, and so on.

If you are non-aligned, you shall face the heat of being excluded from a few things.

This culture even surfaces in a few corporate sector organizations having legacies.

A few of them decided on their top-notch leaders based on whether the person played golf or not.

And, they would prefer recruiting junior management executives from a few elite families having royal blood connections!

Thus, the collective spontaneous leadership that we learned from our childhood friends was lost on the way!

Today, we are relying on digital footprints to decide who is good, bad, or ugly as a leader.

A major factor may be, how one conducts a conference call.

How one interacts with a customer over long-distance phone calls across time zones.

How one controls remote teams over a complex multi-cultural set-up.

If you analyze, we all are now perceived as digital shadows of ourselves.

The real person is missing.

We are now hostage to our digital selves.

We are far removed from the wisdom of collective leadership learned in our childhood.

And, again, we are no more counted on our natural strengths and natural competencies.

We are judged by the trail of digital footprints we have left in the recent past.

Are we missing out on the natural leader within?

Are the people, encircling the top person, the best performers?

Do they possess the right kind of decision-making capabilities?

Is there an environment of healthy collective debate to address mega issues?

Dear Reader, please judge yourself.

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