Over the last 15 years, Raj has been working successfully in a product engineering company. He has grown up the ranks – starting as a trainee to now managing a product line. He works in the Indian software centre of a large corporation, enabling his colleagues in other parts of the world.
Till a couple of years ago, Raj has been working with customers from US and Europe primarily. They have liked Raj’s commitment to adhering to the systems and processes. Raj has worked both in the classic waterfall model and the agile way of delivering.
He’s known to ensure that the team gets the clarity of requirement to execute their job. When the team finds ambiguity, he has been able to push back the customer to either quickly provide the details or defer the requirement. His customers in US and Europe understand that well. They love Raj’s implementation of Requirement and Change Management process. They want the product to be in line with what they envisaged and not what the team assumed, after all!
Raj (assisted by his team) provides the customer with the estimates for every drop/ release. Should the team run into unforeseen challenges – he is quick to keep the customer updated and is generally able to get the customer to increase the time to deliver the requirement. He does not want to cut out on reviews and testing. The customer’s adore Raj for his no short-cuts to quality approach, and they are willing to pay the price – a little reduction in completed requirements or an increased timeline.
Now, Raj’s product line has started to get customers from the core Asian market (China, India…) . They respect Raj and his team as leaders in the domain. They are willing to learn and understand the various features. Raj and team are happy that they have moved from the back seat to the front-seat with these customers.
However the agony for Raj and his team comes from the following:
– The customers do not formally sign-off the requirements and want them to get started with development.
– The customers are willing to change the requirements dynamically, as they learn more about the base product, and want the team to act immediately on it.
– These customers treat deadlines as sacrosanct. So any attempt to explain a need for change is pretty much ruled out.
– They also have aggressive timelines compared to the other customers (which are not negotiable).
– To top it all they find the customer and their in-country team switch to local language during calls (even though they have all agreed that English is the medium of communication). So the team is bothered about what exactly is the customer perception.
Put yourself in Raj’s shoes and let us know what you would do/would not do under these circumstances, to stay successful?
9 Responses
An interesting “angle”! There is usually an emphasis on empathy among team members for better team work and self-organization. Would teams truly consider the manager/leader also as part of the team? Needs some mindset change. I think Emotional Intelligence training/coaching should bring out this aspect – that EI (Empathy being part of it) does not draw boundaries of applicability! Enjoyed reading a refreshingly different blog…
Thanks, Shiv. Yes, completely agree with your point on EI’s role in this regard. Gopal
Nice angle! And nice twist in the title of the blog!
Good perspective, which is normally missed.
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Nice article, Gopal.
We all know one filed where downwards empathy is hardly ever seen, but upward empathy is expected and demanded. Politics.
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Nice article, Gopal! Very good insight. Practicing Empathy needs an effort as it needs seeing the world from the perspective of the another person. It is all the more difficult when you do not see everything that the other person sees. I remember one instance in my life when a manager reporting to me was promoted to senior manager’s post and moved away from me on a new, higher level assignment. After a few days she came to meet me and I enquired how she was doing on the new role. She said, “Milind now I know the kind of pressure you faced from above. You never passed that onto us and kept us shielded. Now I know how difficult your role and life is. I am trying to be like you!” So, the true empathy comes out of having experienced similar situations yourself.
So, Milind is the message “a little empathy is better than a late empathy”?
Gopal,
Nice blog.
This is a very valid and necessary perspective that everyone should have.
Somehow, in most organizations, just like ‘agile’ is considered as something for the teams and team members, these may be labeled as management and only for managers – as part of the leadership development plans.
Some ways how I have contextualized this in some situations:
• At an individual contributor level: connecting to empathy as a key skill for design thinking [observing and understanding users]
• At a team level: the togetherness and one-team idea [teams making commitments, the huddles in cricket and other sports etc], to use daily standups, for example, to recalibrate oneself after sensing how the others feel on that day or in a particular situation
• For managers: understanding and doing what they can, to make their managers successful, particularly when the complaint is that my manager does not understand me or my needs