The Hindu Business Line : All about initiative

By mid-career, executives begin to make more of an impact on the external world, than they did as juniors. Training now focuses on identifying the impact and bringing about mindset shifts that can make this impact possible.

So what impact would a top management team make, assuming all its constituents are working at peak levels? This would be to set new industry benchmarks, and ensure continuous growth and innovation take place in this team.

It becomes a crucible for leadership... a magnet that attracts peak performers from other companies and industries, and constantly increases shareholder value. What kind of impact would a functional team, say an R&D team performing at peak levels, make? In some areas it could regularly come up with patentable products or processes and become a talent pool and industry benchmark.

To achieve such an impact what would the team and the individuals in it require? Usually, such impacts are created more through mindset shifts rather than through just learning new skills. Two key focus areas that create maximum impact are team interactions and quantum innovation.

Generative teaming

In many teams, the skill that is needed is alignment and independent thinking. And these can't be taught, but have to be `realised'. This is possibly the greatest challenge for mid-career training — to create `realisations' that lead to a change in behaviour.

In one top management team this writer worked with, the CEO was such a powerful personality that even when he gave just an opinion, it was taken as the gospel truth and the others in the top management team would stop thinking! This led to frustration both in the team members and in the leader. The leader wanted them to think independently and take initiative on their own, and when they didn't, he got frustrated.

The team, on the other hand, thought that the leader, who expressed his opinions so forcefully, was closed to their ideas or suggestions. And this frustrated them and made them feel powerless. The team needed to realise its dynamics at a gut level and not just at thinking level.

We designed an intervention to bring home to the team the impact of their internal dynamics on a task. They were set a task that required a lot of independent thinking and alignment. In the planning stage, the leader expressed his opinions as usual and the team went along even when a number of members thought differently. The resulting implementation was a total disaster.

Strong emotions were generated and in the debrief that followed, a number of simmering issues surfaced. The leader realised how his strong opinions tended to paralyse team thinking, the team realised that the leader was only expressing his opinions and was really quite open to being challenged. This was an eye opener and brought about a mindset shift in both the leader and the team. By the next task, they had established a team charter of working together.

They would first spend conscious time in just generating ideas and only then begin the stage of evaluating ideas. Now, whenever the leader expressed his opinions strongly or tended to shoot something down, the team reminded him that they were in idea-exploration mode and not yet in evaluation or selection mode. To his credit, the CEO immediately stopped judging and by task three, was actively seeking inputs from the others and listening to them. The team today is performing at much higher levels and is well on its way to realising its intrinsic potential. The members feel `released', empowered and in control.

Quantum innovation

With the WTO coming in, Indian companies will find themselves up against global players with deep pockets, who, unlike in the past, will have a more level playing field. The threat from China with its cheap products is very real. Strategy thinkers like Clayton Christensen write that third-world companies will only be able to compete through innovative products and processes that nullify the MNCs' deep pocket advantage. Intellectually we all understand this. But how can this be translated to actual rubber-meets-the-road innovation? How do we make innovation happen by design?

Training for innovation, again, begins with creating a mindset shift in participants. Participants go through activities where they learn that it is not scarcity of resources, but scarcity of ideas that prevents them from achieving quantum results. Quantum is a mindset. When you think quantum, you find ways to achieve it. The challenge is to get people to think quantum.

Workshops act as a trigger here; when people are creative and empowered, the next step is to make that quantum happen at work before dilution sets in. A plan is made out, resources and manpower committed and the conditions are now created for innovation. A mid-management team from a large manufacturing company followed this route and ended up saving for the company a whopping Rs 500 crore.

To sum up, mid-career training is impact oriented, results based and focuses more on bringing about mindset shifts rather than on just adding new skills.

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