RANGARAJAN SRIRAMAN
FOUNDER, ATHENA INFO CONSULTING PVT LTD

Countless CEO‘s and senior executives have announced, “our people are our greatest assets” This declaration has produced cynical laughter in many companies across the globe.
Contrary to popular belief, research completed by many independent survey companies have found that effective leadership of strong teams has very low priority in most organizations. Their Managers know that they will be primarily rewarded for their individual achievements and their skills in managing things but not leading or mentoring people.
Traditionally, whether it’s within our home or organization we do not differentiate between managing things and leading people. The simple and straightforward definition between the two is:
When we manage things we do not factor the human elements such the ability of an individual to execute the task, skill level etc.
On the contrary when we lead or mentor people we do consider things like the ability of colleagues to complete the task, their productive energy, their skills etc.
Numerous leadership and mentoring programs have been developed since the birth of modern management and reputed business schools started exclusive leadership programs.
But, the fact remains that we have not been able to produce as many leaders as we would want to and meet the demands of the industry. Many family run businesses suffer because of lack of leadership in the second or third generation. Large corporations suffer from not being able to scale up due to lack of senior management bandwidth. Where are we heading? Do we as leaders know that there’s a quiet crisis that is going to explode?
Fundamental difference must be made in our approach, thinking and solving our business issues since the time we emerged from being an agri-based economy to industry and now to a knowledge industry. The challenges and complexity we face in our personal lives and relationships, in our families, in our professional lives, and in our organizations are of a different order and magnitude. Surviving, thriving, innovating, excelling and leading in this new reality require a new mindset, a new skill-set, a new toolset.
Coaching Infrastructure – Antidote to the traditional approach
Companies that don’t create a coaching infrastructure suffer from creating a leadership pipeline as the enterprises start scaling up and venture into new geographies. The art of creating a coaching infrastructure lies with the senior leaders/executive management to ensure that the organization structure is conducive to produce more leaders. The coaching infrastructure requires different approach such as the following:
• The freedom to choose individuals roles & responsibilities and not based on what organization wants
• Linking organization’s goals with individual’s aspirations
• Creating an environment which is open to new ideas and innovations
• Creating an environment that does not pose any restrictions to individual’s capabilities
What exactly does a leader who’s in charge of an organization do? How does he keep from being a micromanager, caught up in the details of running the business? What does a leader do to create leadership pipeline? What is the right approach to create second line of leaders?
There are seven essential behaviors that form the first building block of creating a coaching infrastructure:
• Assessing people’s capabilities
• Empowering people
• Expanding people’s capabilities
• Setting realistic goals for the
business
• Follow through on actions
• Rewarding the doers
• Know thy self
Note: Follow through and Follow-up may sound the same, but in reality these two words translates different meaning. The follow through culture naturally connects the leaders with colleagues whereas the follow-up is action-oriented does not create an environment to coach.
When a business isn’t going well, its leaders often think about how to change the corporate culture. They are right to recognize that the “soft” stuff – peoples beliefs and behaviors – is at least as important as hard stuff, such as Organizational Structure,if not more so. Making changes in strategy or structure by itself takes the company only so far. The hardware of computer is useless without the right software. Similarly, in an organization the hardware is insert without the software. Similarly, if an organization’s culture is not built around learning and coaching others in the system, it’s like human beings (the hardware) without the ability of knowing different beliefs, ideas and cultures (software).
This approach of creating a coaching infrastructure is practical and completely linked to measurable business results and ensures that the individual’s aspirations are met as and when the enterprise scale up.
The basic premise is simple: cultural change gets real when the leaders objective is to make their position redundant and keep delegating the mid-level executives. The approach doesn’t need a lot of work. The leaders need to change people’s behavior so that they produce results, as a key element of the coaching process. Then you reward people for producing the results .If they come up short, you provide additional coaching, withdraw rewards, give them other jobs, or let them go. When we create an environment that encourages coaching as the fundamental activity of leaders that create a culture of getting things done. This of course require senior leaders time and energy to spend on coaching to achieve positive results of coaching infrastructure.
Leaders Get The Behavior They Exhibit And Tolerate
Once you understand social software, it becomes plain that no leaders who are disengaged from the daily life of the business can possibly change or sustain its culture. Leaders get the behavior they exhibit and tolerate. Leaders change the culture of a Company by changing behavior of its colleagues. Leaders measure the change in culture by measuring the change in the personal behavior of its colleagues and the performance of the business.
For example, some leaders use regular conference calls as an operating mechanism to drive change in the culture by forcing new candor and realism into the dialogues and decision making of the company’s top leaders. The calls introduce accountability and follow-through. The leaders own behavior, including the communications with people at various levels, modeled and reinforced the beliefs and behaviors of people needed to learn and coach.
The dialogue the leader conducts in these calls develops the total company picture for all to see. Everyone has come prepared to explain what will be done in the coming month to deliver on commitments if results are lagging expectations. By discussing the entire business and having a focus on the external environment, everyone participating knows more about the trends, competition, issues, and roadblocks. If they are doing their job to help build a culture of execution, this information will cascade through the company.
Given the many things that business can’t control, from the uncertain state of the economy to the unpredictable actions of the competitors we assume that companies have intrinsic ability to pay careful attention to the one thing they can control – the quality of the people, especially those in the leadership pool. An organization’s human beings are most reliable resources for generating excellent results year after year. Their judgments, experience and capabilities make the difference between successes and failure.
Yet the same leader who exclaims that “people are our most important asset” usually do not think hard about choosing the right people for the right jobs. They and their organizations don’t have precise ideas about what the jobs require- not only today, but tomorrow – and what kind of people they need to fill those jobs. As a result, their companies don’t hire, promote, and develop the best candidates for their leadership needs.
Quite often we notice these leaders don’t pay enough attention to people because they are too busy thinking about how to make their companies bigger or more global than those of their competitors. What they are overlooking is that the quality of their people is the best competitive differentiator. The results probably won’t show up as a big acquisition. But over time, choosing the right people is what creates that sustainable competitive advantage when the enterprise scales up.
When we look at any business that’s consistently successful, we find that its leaders focus intensely and relentlessly on people selection. E.g. CISCO, EDS, HP, IBM, Whether you are the head of multibillion–dollar corporation or in charge of your first profit center, you cannot delegate the process for selecting and developing leaders. It’s a job that leaders have to love doing.
Why The Right People Arent In The Right Jobs
Common sense tells us the right people have to be in the right jobs. Yet so often they aren’t. What accounts for the mis-matches we see every day? The leaders may not know about the people they are appointing. They may pick people with whom they are comfortable, rather than others who have better skills for the job. They may not have the courage to discriminate between strong and weak performers and take the necessary actions.
Some causes of failure?
Leaders often fall in short in confronting their realities. The realities generally have to do with the behaviors of others who can affect the business outcomes. Customers and markets; Traditional industry competitors; policies of governments and regulators ; the expectations of the capital markets; and a host others players whose roles may not be obvious.
The other realities include the organizations and behaviors. People often miss the external realities because they are overly focused on internal processes, Policies and politics. And yet that doesn’t keep them from mis-judging the internal realities. Leaders overestimate their capabilities and under estimate the difficulty of achieving their goals. The ability of a leader to foresee issues before something hits the top-line and bottom-line and finally the ability of a leader not confronting the reality.
Some of the most common traits that we can notice with unsuccessful leaders are:
Filtered Information:
For all the information that exchanged in business its surprising how often people miss the critical facts that could make all the difference .They may be getting information only from people with the same point of view. This is typically the case in organizations looking at the world from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. Or the information may be distorted by people governed by their own biases and pursuing their own agendas.
Getting Wrong messages from Wrong people:
The information may be good, but its no good if the decision maker turns deaf when its presented. Leaders practice selective hearing for a variety of reasons. The most common are preconceived notions or past experiences –looking into the rearview mirror, the arrogance of success –and the refusal to confront problem because they can’t see a solution.
Wishful Thinking
Wishful thinking is the root of much of the people issues in an organization. The head of an organization thinks that the company can achieve good financial results since he or she has made a promise in the board meeting. This sort of wishful thinking does not take into account the current strengths and weakness of people, their behaviors. Any information to the contrary does not make it through the screen.
Insecurity
Fear and insecurity or embarrassment over possibly saying the wrong thing at a meeting. Or it may be a necessity in a culture of fear, where bosses punish people whose views are uncongenial. We know of some tyrants who fired people for disagreeing with them. More common and more destructive in companies that force rank their executives and where attitude is one of the criteria, people who make their superiors uncomfortable risk being downgraded to a lower performance percentile.
Emotional attachment
People can accomplish great things when they are deeply committed. The downside is that their emotional attachment in a project may blind them to its weakness. Quiet often, the mindset of organization cannot accept a new reality because its goes against all belief and culture.
Unrealistic expectations of financial results
It’s vital to create value for shareholders and business finally got the message during the nineties. They responded by making unrealistic promises which resulted in bending their business totally out of shape. In the process, companies end up loosing the market focus, not being able to be competitive.
Conclusion:
If at all the present leaders are interested in scaling up their enterprises, first they have to make their position redundant and move up the ladder. If the leaders consider “people are our greatest assets”, then they must be coaches and consultants not controllers and commands. The leaders must create an environment that gives everyone an opportunity to fulfill their aspirations. In the end, great organizations are built with strong value system, beliefs and culture which provide an equal opportunity to achieve organization goals?