Openness

A lot can be interpreted on the word "Openness" at the work place. Doors seem open but one cannot really enter. Eyes, ears and the mouth don't seem to exhibit their nature of work at work!

One gets exposed to several unique people at work. Work place provides learning experience that cannot be obtained elsewhere.

There is an inherent confidence and authority that one's position gives the person at work place. This also places a "mask" and turns issues that need attention as areas that can be deliberately overlooked.

Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson, in her lecture titled "Can Complex Organizations Learn" discusses this topic in detail and uses the term "psychological safety" which people resort to at work place where no questions are asked, no problems get solved and no feedback is taken and addressed and everything appears simple.

Several of Professor Amy Edmondson's articles can be found for further reading at the site for Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.

People will not be able to develop a healthy outlook towards their organization in such a work atmosphere. They slowly tend to attend to themselves and their own well being rather than develop the broader outlook towards their organization.

What is better - self centered employees or those employees who can risk their own self interest and work towards the greater good of their organization with openness?

How can organizations truly adopt openness and transform for the better?

Do Web 2.0 technologies help build the confidence and trust among employees to embrace openness?

General Managers

General managers have a very crucial role in keeping the spirit of their organization alive! High tech organizations such as software organizations success/ failure is very linked to the general managers leadership capabilities. Their role is not about driving others verbally but about laying a solid foundation for their organization so that their people drive themselves to play their roles with focus and vibrance.

When general managers fail to prepare to lead well in a software organization:

Project managers become meeting schedulers,

Developers become coders and bug hiders,

Customer support becomes chit chat time with pervasive negativity,

Testing becomes a boring routine,

Training becomes a process of making people sit in a class room without outcomes,

Sales have no place to go and no idea what to sell!

Points to ponder:

How do leaders prepare to lead their groups?

How does the soul of the organization demonstrate its spirit?

Time For Break For Leaders

Leaders/ facilitators in organizations can formulate their exit criteria at the right time. When I say right time, I mean the time to self reflect/ follow an exit criteria.

The right times occur several times during the life cycle of projects. These are times that the roles of leaders / facilitators are questioned and challenged about their approaches to leadership.

The questions and challenges occur when the teams are in chaos or in complete order. This is quite a paradox.

I would think, that during chaos, the leader does not quit from the work ahead. He/she addresses the challenges and questions, brings order to group by serving the group in several possible capacities.

When the group is in complete order (believe it - these times do happen within the life cycles of the project), the time is certainly ripe for the leader to move on to focus on something new or refreshing!

Some key points to ponder:
1. Who determines the exit criteria of a leader?

2. What could be the criteria to determine exit readiness?

3. Is it beneficial to link job roles to sessions/ stages of a project life cycle?

Pride And Accomplishment

Why is it that the majority of the people working for big and small businesses in the field of information systems in this decade are not proud and feel accomplished? This has to do with two main issues on the surface. Commoditization and globalization. There is also another issue that is not discussed much. It is about leadership.

Somehow, organizations and their leaders keep "inspiration and motivation" low in their list of things to attend to. Many ineffective words, deeds and rankism mask the sense of purpose to the individual professional while working for his/ her organization. It becomes the sole responsibility of the individuals to motivate themselves.

Leaders have a responsibility to enable their people feel the sense of a higher purpose on a daily basis whether it is serving a customer or changing the world. It is "the finer element" that the people and their work matters in the bigger scheme of things. Repeated negativity enforced that people and "IT does not matter" [Reference 1] by people "who do not know that they don't know" [Reference 2] is certainly a wrong doing to the people.

Leaders of businesses such as Apple, Starbucks, Amazon, Netflix, Google and Chipotle must have something in common and may be similar with their people and their products.

Reference 0:
Full of Beans: How a Classically Trained Chef Reinvented Fast Food at
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2415

Reference 1:
IT does not matter by Nichollas Carr at www.nicholasgcarr.com/articles/matter.html

Reference 2:
Why IT does matter at
hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3637.html

Leadership roles in a global setting

It is quite common for everyone to admire a favorite actor/ actress. I have nothing to criticize on this aspect. In fact, I admire people who strive to have role models and play dream roles at work. A mundane job at hand becomes work when people have ideals and dreams. So the debate is certainly not on the efforts of the leader to play his/ her role.

What is hilarious is when a senior executive secretly seems to play his favorite actor's role at the meeting table in his/her office setting with a mix of fellow team members from different parts of the globe.

Imagine the show - it is a cinema with local flavors being watched by a global audience with an amateur director at the center! Some of the audience are quite familiar with the gimmicks/ gestures while others have no clue as to why the leader talks/acts a certain way. The audience are quite confused and wonder if their actions have caused this display!

Many leaders in the global setting of the IS profession believe they are in the knowledge industry and don't pay much attention to their tone and mannerisms.

Points to ponder:

How can a leader translate his/ her gestures from a local setting to a global setting?

How about the leader paying some attention to his/ her own gestures.

Any training/ expectations in this context?