Mumbai Floods and Leadership

“Are you ok” asked the caller. I could not recognize who that was. The warmth in the voice told me that the caller knew me and was concerned for me. I said “Yea, I am ok”. The phone disconnected. My mind started wandering in different directions. This could be a financial fraudster or a secret service organization monitoring me. Before I could figure out, there was another call “Are you ok”. After that my phone was ringing continuously. One after another, there were 21 more “Are you ok” calls. By the end of 21 calls, I was fully aware that Mumbai was flooded and all my well-wishers wanted to check whether I was ok.

This experience led to a set of leadership lessons. Here they are

Data driven Leadership

Foundation of Leadership is belief. Foundation of belief is data. I switched on the Television. It was flooded with the news of flood in Mumbai. Flood happens every year in Mumbai then why there was so much hue and cry. I saw some news channels showing visuals of water logging which resembled flood of 2005. I had a doubt on the authenticity of the news. Then I saw a news channel reporting the situation with date, time and rain quantity for each area. That was good enough proof to make me belief of flooding in Mumbai. I started believing the channel. The belief came from the data driven approach of the channel.

People driven Leadership

I was under stress because I was planning to travel to Mumbai the next day. The authenticity of flood information was further strengthened when BMC issued a notice to all its employees that they will not go home till the time situation is normal. Chief Minister visited the command center and addressed people that situation will be normal in few hours. News channel started the debate on the topic. Anchor mentioned that political leaders were not available for the debate because they were on the streets helping the people. Leaders need to be available for people whenever needed. That is how political leaders win elections, year after year.

Result driven Leadership

The debate continued. Anchor was annoyed and wanted to fix accountability for the floods. She wanted justice for people who were stranded on the streets for 3 to 5 hours. She was not convinced that Leaders were doing heroic service by being with the people. Leaders were responsible for ensuring that a flood like situation never happens to the city. They failed to do their duty and had no right to be the Leaders. Underlying argument was loud and clear that Leadership must be result driven. The logic was influencing my opinion.

Conclusion

In spite of all the warnings, I decided to fly back to Mumbai. The data was against the decision. All sensible people were against the decision. I checked the news at 4 am in the morning. The same debate was going on. I checked google maps. Google maps told me that it will take 39 minutes to reach home from the airport. Intuition told me to go ahead.

As soon as I left for the airport, I got a message that my flight to Mumbai got delayed by 3 hours.  I reached airport. Airlines offered me to board an earlier flight which I happily boarded. I was in Mumbai as planned. I took a taxi to home. I could not believe my eyes that there was no water on the streets. The same usual traffic was there. Results speak for themselves.

I asked my wife that which type of Leadership is better. She told me that I should worry about her not Leadership. It is my duty to ensure that she is safe at all times. Also I must be there with her whenever she needs me. She even told me how many times I was not there when she needed me. Data kills at time.

Combos are in fashion for a reason.

This is the Author's personal point of view and is not influenced by any person or organization. Image Credit to The Leap