Are you an A-Player in a C-Environment?

How does it feel like being an A-Player in a C-Environment?

It feels like this:

Out of curiosity, I used Google Lens to identify the plant, and interestingly, it turned out to be the "sacred fig".

Sacred fig, also known as the bodhi tree, is considered to have a religious significance in many religions (Buddha attained enlightenment (bodhi) while meditating underneath a sacred fig). A sacred fig can grow up to 30 metres tall. It has a number of medicinal properties, and is often used in traditional medicine for about fifty types of disorders including asthma, diabetes, and epilepsy.

An A-Player is like the sacred fig; they have the ability to attain great height, heal the organisation, and enable the organisation to achieve its "enlightenment", or the so-called "Aha moment". Unfortunately, if a sacred fig lands in a crevice, there is absolutely no way it could ever grow to even one metre tall, not to mention providing medicinal values or enabling the organisation to attain its enlightenment. This is how an A-Player in a C-Environment feels like.

How does it feel like to execute as an A-Player? One word: "Euphoric"!

A-Players don't execute based on roles and responsibilities, they execute to achieve best outcomes.

Two decades ago, I was working on a transformation initiative as a vendor. Things were bumpy; services that were supposed to be working failed without any apparent reason. It turned out that the customer's technical team was overloaded, and the code for that service was not even implemented when SIT started. My team took over and implemented the Java codes for them. Strictly speaking, that had nothing to do with our products, and it was the responsibility of the customer's technical team; nevertheless, we took it up and implemented it.

?A-players execute based on the desired outcome; there is no role boundary, technology boundary, or even customer/vendor boundary. This is what I call the "A-Team" mentality.

?Recently, I came across an article talking about MrBeast , titled: "MrBeast is asking for trouble by calling his employees 'friends of friends' instead of giving them job titles, HR experts say ".

The article stated that without clear professional boundaries and defined responsibilities, organisations are likely to degenerate into chaos and unproductivity.

However, we all know how successful MrBeast is. Does that mean all the HR experts are wrong? Not exactly, in fact, both MrBeast and the HR experts are right, they are just looking from 2 different perspectives.

What MrBeast has today are A-Players, people who would go beyond all boundaries to create the best outcome. For A-players, giving them specific roles and responsibilities would end up limiting their abilities. Just like the Special Operations Task Force (SOTF) in an army, they will do whatever is required to accomplish the mission in the best possible way.

However, problems will arise when the team gets bigger because there are just not enough A-Players to go around, similar to how you can't have the whole army consisting of solely SOTF. If you don't have A-Players, roles and responsibilities are crucial to ensure that people know what to do and what is expected of them.

A-Players will automatically rise to the occasion to make things happen.

There was a time when I was supposed to present our business rule engine and propose it as the standard rule engine for a customer. It would have sufficed to just walkthrough the standard slides and talk about the features and capabilities, but I decided that it would be better to do a demo using the customer's business rules as an illustration.

After I had implemented all the necessary business rules, another thought crossed my mind: If I could use our general interface UI to invoke those business rules, it would be an end-to-end demo that would make it easier for the customer to better appreciate its power and ease of use, so I went ahead and implemented that.

Unfortunately, I hit a brick wall -- unable to invoke the business rules and was not getting any results. It was already 2 a.m., and the demo was scheduled in the morning, so I took out my BlackBerry and sent an email to our global professional services email group for help, highlighting the urgency of the demo.

Within a few minutes, I received an SMS from my boss :"Where are u?", and I replied: "At customer's office". He immediately called me and told me to go home, and that he would talk to the customer tomorrow. I interjected and explained to him that it was me who wanted to demo it. He sighed and said: "OK, let me get someone to help you then.".

Shortly, I received a call from the US; it was the product management team. After understanding what I was trying to achieve, within 1/2 hour, he had resolved the bug for me. It turned out that the documentation was wrong; the "ID" input field was supposed to be "required", but was documented as "optional". With the help, I managed to complete the implementation and the demo was a great success.

Without help from my ex-boss and product management team, I might have had to try for another 2-3 hours to figure that out. This was a great example of not just having an A-Team, but also an A-Boss, and an A-Organisation. People automatically rose to the occasion to make things happen.

A-Players love to innovate and go beyond what is asked for.

During my university days, which was almost 3 decades ago, our team was assigned to work on a Checkers game project. The objective was to design a system to use AI to play Checkers with our professors.

The team was divided into 3 groups: The Vision Group, as the eyes of the robot, to capture moves made by the player and send it to the brain; The Brain Group, acting as the AI to calculate the next best move and send the move to the robot; The Robot Group, where based on the move instructed by the AI, will move the relevant piece accordingly using a motorised arm (if there were any captured pieces, the robot has to remove those from the board).

I was working in the Vision Group. While testing the image capturing capabilities, I came up with an interesting idea: Since we had the camera, wouldn't it be cool if we could take a picture of the player and print out a certificate? Given the short duration of the project and the number of unknowns, the team was initially sceptical about that idea, but in the end, we all decided to "Just Do It!".

Once the decision was made, everyone automatically took up additional roles. The Robot Group started calibrating the robot to find optimal coordinates to point the camera at the player; the Brain Group created the graphical design for the certificate; and the Vision Group investigated on how to send the captured image to the printer and position it correctly on the certificate. We sought help from the lab technicians for a HP printer and obtained its manual. I read through the manual to understand the protocol, and tested sending raster images to the printer.

It was a huge challenge to do that 3 decades ago, since we were using MS-DOS, and everything had to go through the command prompt; sending specific instructions to the printer via the network.?

In the end, not only did our robot win the game against our professors, we also implemented the certificate printing capability, and printed the certificates for our professors (we printed it through our 'backdoor' mechanism). This was the certificate we created 3 decades ago, printed using a B/W HP printer:

It was such a memorable experience, even the lab technicians joined in the fun and printed certificates for themselves.

Had we just focused solely on the objective of the project, we wouldn't have this wonderful memory today. This is what A-Players love -- to innovate and go beyond what is asked for.

If the team were to go back in time, I am sure we would have still made the same decision to go beyond what was expected, since doing something meaningful is more energising than spending time lazing around.

A-Players are just like the heart, they don't stop to rest, in fact, they are reinvigorated by every heartbeat.

A-Players are not defined by technical competencies; they are judged based on their desire and urge to make a difference. Even when there is no clear solution to the problem, they will still jump in to make things happen. Why? For a simple reason: The pursuit of euphoria!

To avoid being the plant in the picture, there are 2 things to take note. Firstly, you need to find your "fire and passion", know what energises you, know what gives you the drive to forsake sleep, and willingly go all out for it. For me, this means turning ideas into reality so as to make a difference. Secondly, you need to understand your environment, and where you stand within the ecosystem.

There is a popular saying in Chinese: "不在其位，不谋其政", which translates to: "If you don't hold that position, do not meddle in the affairs of that position". This is why we do not see an Education Minister publicly suggesting what weapon systems to buy; similarly, we would not hear a Defence Minister commenting on curriculum. You can make suggestions if it revolves around you and your team. However, if your suggestions are within your department but related to other teams or higher-ups, you should still be prudent about it.

There are a number of lessons in history that corroborate this point. For example, Han Xin, who was a palace guard, often proposed strategies to Xiang Yu, but was always being ignored. It was only after he was appointed as Commander-in-Chief by Liu Bang, did he manage to let his talent shine, and helped Liu Bang create the Han Dynasty. Another example is Zhuge Liang, who preferred the serenity of living in seclusion, until there was someone worthy of succouring.

Having said that, it does not mean you should just stay silent about your idea. You could do a simple litmus test to find those A-Players. Quite recently, I did just that by sending an email to my MP (Member of Parliament), conveying to him that walk-up apartments were not sheltered and thus residents were unable to enjoy the government's island-wide covered-walkway initiative. He replied promptly the next morning, explaining the challenges, and most importantly, he stated what needed to be done, as well as the approach to accomplish it. There it was, an A-Player, a person who was thinking and keen to make things happen.

We discussed on the approach, as well as the approvals required, and also the source of fundings. When more justifications were required, I even joined the team to survey the site and suggested how a small addition would increase the value of the initiative to serve a broader community.

With the funding secured, design made, and support from other affected walk-up apartment owners canvassed, the project was completed with great satisfaction to all parties. It took around 2 years from inception to completion, but it was worth the time and effort. This was what we had achieved together.

In return, I wrote an email to the then-Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong , thanking the team and his support for making this happen.

Surprisingly, he replied to me on the SAME DAY. You might think of it as a coincidence, but it was not. When he handed over the PM role, I emailed him this article thanking him for his dedication to Singapore, and once again, he replied on the SAME DAY.

It is evident that the level of responsiveness and commitment to excellence in the Singapore Government is pervasive even at the top. The success of Singapore was not by chance, but rather, a conscientious effort to make it happen. This is another example of A-Players, A-Team, and A-Government. Everyone puts in their best to create the best outcome.

Of course, there are people who just give a lot of excuses on why things can't be done. Those are the people who don't want to execute as A-Players and have no desire to accomplish extraordinary things. There is technically nothing wrong with that attitude, since everyone has different desires and things that they enjoy doing, and it is important to respect that. However, you should not waste your time on them.

Trying to change people's mentalities is simply torturous and a waste of time. It is akin to teaching algebra to a 1st-grader, in which the kid keeps insisting that x, y, z are alphabets and that only numbers can be added.

A-Players are prevalent in successful start-ups, but are often found in successful organisations too. The examples above were from established organisations. Therefore, A-team mentality is more on leadership and culture than the type of organisation. Most importantly, whether you are in an A-Environment or C-Environment, make those irrelevant and focus on enjoying your passion instead.

#SelfImprovement #Leadership #Management #Motivation #Innovation