Leaders and Perspectives

Leaders evolve and in this journey one tends to gain a variety of perspectives. These perspectives should not remain forever and make the Leader adopt a one-style-fits-all approach

Take a look at some of the iconic brands in the business of automobiles, electronics, wrist watches or running shoes. How did they stand the test of time and become “best from the rest”? While there could be many contributing reasons, the most significant factor is their capacity to re-invent themselves.

Likewise, successful Leaders are those who have the uncanny ability to constantly re-invent themselves.

We recently conducted a study on the transformation of Managers into effective Leaders. It was observed that the ability to change, alter or re-frame perspectives was the key to re-invention of a Leader. Let me dwell more on this rather intriguing subject – PERSPECTIVES. The dictionary defines Perspective as “a way of regarding situations

or facts and judging their relative importance” and Thesaurus refers to it as “angle, attitude, broad view, outlook, frame of reference..."

Leaders evolve and in this journey one tends to gain a variety of perspectives. These perspectives should not remain forever and make the Leader adopt a one-style-fits-all approach. The challenge is to re-visit these perspectives depending on the context of your role, your organisation or maybe even the environment. Let me share a few instances that substantiate the importance of I know of a CEO who had this problem of “batch parity” when it comes to either hiring or promotion of talent. The CEO had spent over 20 years in a large MNC and taken over reins in a hi-growth Indian family owned organisation. He came from a school of thought that practiced batch parity and was deeply influenced by this outdated practice. In his new environment, the culture was different, it was all about performance and result orientation. The belief was that anyone who was “ready to take risks and deliver” was the right person. After undergoing many conflicts and confusion, the CEO realised that there was only one way – he had to shred his past learnings and think anew. He shifted his perspective – we need people who are ready to perform and that batches do not matter. A year later the same CEO further brought in a new dimension to the company’s talent development strategy. Until then the selection of entry level talent was from premier Institutes or B-Schools. The new CEO decided to seek talent from Tier-2 Institutes. His new perspective was that there is a lot of “hidden” talent in such institutes and that one should not be biased towards ivy-league schools.

Another example from a Client organisation. A focus group study in a reputed MNC revealed that the organisation was not transparent on Compensation matters. It was kept “confidential” and hush-hush. There have been no dialogue or open forum discussions on compensation. The Managers found it as a lack of transparency and did not really buy-in to the philosophy of its intended pay-for-performance culture. The Leadership team decided to openly communicate the company’s compensation policies. In a video conference the Leadership team explained in detail its overall compensation strategy. In a subsequent employee satisfaction survey, this organisation was rated high on openness and transparency!

I know of a CEO who regularly tours the marketplace and each time he came back with newer and fresher insights on its customers, competitors and competitors. Yet another Business Leader had this habit of taking out each of his team members for lunch every fortnight and he brought back loads of feedback on subjects ranging from product innovation to our workplaces are getting to be more and more global and diverse. Leaders need to open up and first develop “diversity in thought” as a starting point to address business, people and environment issues. Such efforts will become winning ways of winning leaders. I am reminded of the thousand year old story of the “Blindmen and the Elephant." Each man saw the elephant as something different, while each of them were right in parts, none was wholly right. There is never just one way to look at something – there are always different meanings, perceptions and The moments of truth on perspectives is best captured in the hoardings we see as we alight at the Indian airports these days “Be the change you want to see in the world “!