The Task Manager v/s People's Manager

In my last article, The Stressbuster Formula, we got a macro view of the evolution of Tushar & Rutwik's life. 

Let's visit a sub part of their life that deals with the transition they made from college to the Industry and their growth to mid management.

Here is a recap of their early life evolution from my previous article:

Rutwik grew up in a protected and sheltered environment in a colony. His father was a well paid government executive and mother, a housewife. In his early years he played board games like Ludo, Snake & Ladder and also liked to play outdoor games like cricket & football as a consistent team player and performer, always striving and feeling pressured to perform better with every iteration. He was an obedient kid, never expressing his personal opinion and was programmed to be consistent in his studies too. His usual vacations would be visiting his native place, where all his cousin's would gather, creating an inevitable comparision that fueled competitiveness within him to be the best in the rat race. This competitiveness was supported by his parents of being the topper in the race of academics only. He was also always taught to listen to elders, display people pleasing behaviour and he became adept at it. So much so that it was what the society expected of him that drove him. He was one of those rare ideal kids, who every stereotypical parent looked upto and compared their children to. 

Tushar on the other hand grew up in a more flexible environment. His father had an agency business and his mother again a housewife, who was enterprising with a knack for creativity. In his early days he played games like finding differences between two similar looking pictures and solving different puzzles. He played outdoor games like cricket and football as a player who had hunger for experimentation, had leadership and ownership qualities, trying to learn and do something unique each time. He was a street smart kid, who managed his academics getting average marks. His usual vacations were similar to that of Rutwik, where the inevitable comparisions happened fueling competitiveness. But it was his beloved grandmother who always encouraged him to be unique and focus on holistic development. He was taught to be self dependent in a semi controlled environment. He was taught to be respectful to people, was encouraged to have an independent opinion and yet respect diverse perspectives of people. 

From this backdrop, here is how the story evolved post their graduation from college:

Rutwik on completion of his Engineering in Computer Science had a sweet problem of choosing between taking up his first job either with an IT service based company or an IT product based company. 

His sweet problem was further compounded by the fact that the service based IT company was offering a significantly better pay than the product based IT company.

He too made the choice that most freshers would by accepting the offer made by service based IT company. Having a full 30 days gap after graduation and the date of joining also being the studious student he was, he enrolled for a crash course in programming to be better equipped for the job. 

On joining the company there was a month's training, in which he fared in the top quartile, thanks to the earlier usage of the 30 day crash course on programming attended by him. He was immediately assigned to an on going project in the telecom space. Rutwik started performing well, due to his superior technical skills, was quickly noticed by his supervisors and was soon considered dependable. 

In a couple of years time he was promoted due to his Individual capacity of setting new records in individual productivity, having built up a reputation for high ability and work ethics. By the end of the fourth year, he had been promoted a couple of times, in his capacity of an individual performer, he was now being considered to lead a project along with a team of 6 for the first time. 

The decision making group comprised of his 3 supervisors along with his HR manager who voted 3 is to 1, in favour of Rutwik. Where all the supervisors voted in favour of Rutwik being elected the team lead, citing his extraordinary technical superiority, the HR manager voted against Rutwik, citing his lack of management and interpersonal skills. Finally the majority prevailed and with due respect to the HR manager's opinion, the decision making group decided to send Rutwik for an executive MBA program to a premier B-School. Rutwik was informed about the good news and happily accepted the promotion with the opportunity to pursue Executive MBA Program. 

He started with his new role including the Executive MBA Program and not to forget the high expectation of his superiors. 

Fast forward 2 years later, Rutwik's team performance was decent and he had cleared his Executive MBA Program with flying colours. His Superiors were happy, and their expectations from Rutwik had risen .

Meanwhile for Rutwik the last two years had been tough with no time for anything other than work & studies. Though he cleared all his MBA papers theoretically, the program hardly helped him with practicality. He was having a tough time managing people and secretly wished to go back to being the outstanding individual performer that he was. His approach to managing people was control centric and task oriented, with a problem in holding people accountable, when they did not reach targets they had committed to. His response to such occurances was a preaching on morals to the offender which fell on deaf ears and often went unheard. He had to personally make up for the shortfall of the team under him, by putting in extra hours of work. He often felt like bringing the subject up in his meetings with his superiors, but his beliefs and values refrained him from doing so. He continued dragging the increasing load of the team and meeting set expectations. 

He thought taking education and further training with the popular, conventional mid management courses would help him better but these courses taught a lot of theory and never the application or implementation of it. He finally thought changing jobs would change the situation, which he did after mustering a lot of courage, but found that things were no different, as here too he was expected to deliver as a People's Manager. Infact he felt worse as he was now just another manager and no one knew of his glorious individual record. He lingered on, till one day he was finally invited by Tushar to start on their own venture.

Tushar on the other hand completed his Engineering in Computer Science too and got two offers, one from an established IT service based company and another from an IT product based company that was a Start Up. The pay equation for him was even more complicated to choose from as the IT service based company offered him a decent package and the start up offered a small salary in hand, but promised to offer handsome stock options on completion of various employment milestones at the company based on his performance. 

Tushar being the experimental person, chose adventure & embraced uncertainty of the startup over the predictability, comfort and significantly higher in hand pay of the established service based company. 

He was asked to join immediately after completion of his college. Since it was a start-up, there was no formal training system in place and his training happened on the job. He started by understanding the business of the company and the importance of the company's product to its customer. The company was into designing the order placement & billing system for quick service restaurants (QSRs). He was assigned to the front-end development team. He spent a week and realised that to design a good front-end for the QSR billing, he would need a first hand understanding of what a person taking orders at a typical QSR wants in the system, to make his workflow smooth. He started learning the same by spending time at various QSRs after work, talking to the order takers, shift managers and even customers to understand their perspective. He did this over a period of two month across 12-15 QSR outlets across the town making elaborate notes of all the information he received. After every such session he would go back home studying what he had recorded, comparing it to what he already had drawn as insights from previous iterations, reinforcing, modifying or discarding his insights. Finally by the end of the two months, he abstracted all his insights from multiple interactions and started making significant contributions to the product design meetings, which was noticed and appreciated by the Founders. 

However, his active contribution to the product design meetings did not sit well with his immediate Supervisor, as he did not see any great work coming from Tushar's side on the technical front and saw his contribution to the product design meetings as acting over smart and superseding his authority. Tushar however was completely engrossed so passionately, he did not even notice this. As per the philosophy that he had developed, it was imperative to understand a need and strategise accordingly to create something that could create an impact. Over time his understanding started being visible in his technical contribution and by the end of the year it was visible to all the people who mattered to the company. But his radical rise only made his superior uncomfortable. It was appraisal time and Tushar's supervisor decided to get even with him by overlooking him and not giving even a decent hike with absolutely no change in his designation too. 

He felt dejected, but staying dejected was not in his nature. He took a short break and started again with renewed enthusiasm. The company was doing great, they had the commercial launch of their product and were doing brisk business. Tushar's inputs had made just the difference they needed to crack sales and the Founders were appreciative of his contribution, but they were not aware of what had happened in the appraisal season. As time passed and a post analysis happened, things became clearer. They noticed the tiff between Tushar & his Supervisor. They wanted to settle things peacefully as both the resources were critical, Tushar, for his out of the box thinking and his Supervisor for his task mastery. They immediately implemented an amicable solution, by shifting Tushar to the product team. Tushar now felt more confident and worked with double the intensity. He was soon suggesting enhancements to the product that kept improving sales.

A year later, Tushar was being discussed to lead a team of 5 business analysts. The discussion group comprised of product head and head HR. All agreed unanimously on the impact Tushar had created with his out of the box thinking. The product head, who came from a conventional background had serious concerns about Tushar's lack of conventional experience. The HR head, who was unconventional and observant had seen a glimpse of inspirational leadership in Tushar during various extracurricular activities. They were unable to reach a consensus and reached out to the co founders for their inputs. The co founders did not have the mental block of conventional experience, but were cautious to not make an error of promoting someone too early to a managerial position and decided to check on Tushar for his interpersonal skills based on which they decided to take a call. They had an informal conversation with Tushar, without informing him the motive of the conversation. In the conversation it was revealed, Tushar had taken up leadership roles since childhood like captaining his cricket team, serving as a school captain. Even during his college he took up leadership roles of leading various teams like sponsorship, marketing & event management in college fests and various activities conducted by societies he was attached with. What the co-founders found most interesting was Tushar had a robust experience of abstraction algorithm in place that he implemented, to learn from every learning cycle and improve on every successive leadership opportunity he got. It was a part of his meticulous nature. Post the discussion they decided to promote him. Infact they were so impressed that they also decided to groom him for a senior leadership role. The decision to promote him came as a surprise to Tushar, he was elated but also understood with great power comes great responsibility. He took up his new role seriously. He decided to serve more as a mentor who would delegate. The first thing he did was he took his team out for dinner to a QSR and arranged for them to take orders for an hour. The outing fueled his team with passion and empathy and they now viewed their role in a totally different light, they now started seeing themselves as problem solvers instead of business analysts. He had his share of challenges as people learnt at their own pace, but decided to be patient and showed great empathy by imagining himself in the shoes of his reportees. He had his share of people who would not live up to their commitment, but this situation was not new to him, he had encountered and resolved such instances in the past during his leadership stints. He understood unaccountability lay in his inability to activate the inner score card of his reportee than in the reportee. Whenever someone was unaccountable, he would brainstorm on figuring out what is it that ticked the person and how could he activate the person's inner score card. Sometimes it took longer, but he always was able to do so. His reportees held him in high regards and stayed in touch even after leaving the Organization. Over the next 5 years, he went on to head the Product team. Just when he was being considered to lead the company he decided to start his own venture with his buddy Rutwik.

The moral of the story is we are free to choose, but are not free from the consequences of our choices and the choices we make are dependent on the way our Subconscious has been programmed. Be it choosing between competing to just prove oneself & win or to learn from our mistakes to do better or immediate vs delayed gratification or control vs delegation or only focusing on improving individual performance vs developing interpersonal skills to manage people. Another key lesson lies in the fact that one does not become an effective manager by doing a course but by practising and improving on his leadership with an effective experience abstraction algorithm over multiple learning cycles.

The sequel: The Blueprint

Disclaimer - "This article is purely fictional. Any resemblance to anything or any person real, living or dead, is purely coincidental."