Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
When we grow to be business managers or managers with a team of people, we assume our responsibilities as part of the role. Each member in our team also have their own responsibilities as a part of their role. However, we come together to ensure we deliver what is expected of the team. There are a lot of overlaps and gaps that we find and we learn to course correct. However, many of us, as managers assume that our managerial responsibilities cannot be shared with our team members. For example, we are managing a team that had 4 members and we managed these people directly. We trained these 4 people directly, assigned their daily tasks, guided them and provided feedback as needed. Over time, we have a more people joining the team and the team size grows to 8. Having become more adept at handling the team directly, we extend ourselves to manage the 8 people directly. Then again, when the team becomes 12, we stretch ourselves to the point of burning ourselves out but do not utilize the senior, capable members to help manage our extended work load. This happens due to several reasons. Some of them are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
When we become project managers, we learn to plan the project and assign resources. We are told to define the various components of work needed to accomplish the project completion and detail out the components in the most unambiguous way, and get them done by using the allocated resources. Is this delegation by the project manager? Yes, it is. However, the scope is limited and the distribution of tasks is by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we grow to be business managers or managers with a team of people, we assume our responsibilities as part of the role. Each member in our team also have their own responsibilities as a part of their role. However, we come together to ensure we deliver what is expected of the team. There are a lot of overlaps and gaps that we find and we learn to course correct. However, many of us, as managers assume that our managerial responsibilities cannot be shared with our team members. For example, we are managing a team that had 4 members and we managed these people directly. We trained these 4 people directly, assigned their daily tasks, guided them and provided feedback as needed. Over time, we have a more people joining the team and the team size grows to 8. Having become more adept at handling the team directly, we extend ourselves to manage the 8 people directly. Then again, when the team becomes 12, we stretch ourselves to the point of burning ourselves out but do not utilize the senior, capable members to help manage our extended work load. This happens due to several reasons. Some of them are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
We notice that such distribution is of two kinds - one in which we are asked to do a specific task and the other where we are assigned an area of responsibility. For example, your mother may ask you to pick up some groceries, from a specific shop, on your way home from work. Over time, you may be made responsible for ensuring the house is always well stocked with groceries. Even in this example, picking up specified groceries on the way home, demands much less compared to being responsible for ensuring the groceries are always available per need. It is easier to meet expectations when you just need to pick up specified list of groceries. Managing groceries for the family demands a lot more knowledge and training. Still the expectations are less defined, creating a challenge to perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we become project managers, we learn to plan the project and assign resources. We are told to define the various components of work needed to accomplish the project completion and detail out the components in the most unambiguous way, and get them done by using the allocated resources. Is this delegation by the project manager? Yes, it is. However, the scope is limited and the distribution of tasks is by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we grow to be business managers or managers with a team of people, we assume our responsibilities as part of the role. Each member in our team also have their own responsibilities as a part of their role. However, we come together to ensure we deliver what is expected of the team. There are a lot of overlaps and gaps that we find and we learn to course correct. However, many of us, as managers assume that our managerial responsibilities cannot be shared with our team members. For example, we are managing a team that had 4 members and we managed these people directly. We trained these 4 people directly, assigned their daily tasks, guided them and provided feedback as needed. Over time, we have a more people joining the team and the team size grows to 8. Having become more adept at handling the team directly, we extend ourselves to manage the 8 people directly. Then again, when the team becomes 12, we stretch ourselves to the point of burning ourselves out but do not utilize the senior, capable members to help manage our extended work load. This happens due to several reasons. Some of them are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Delegation is something we are exposed to a lot in our life, both at work and otherwise. Even as a bunch of kids, when we set out to steal some mangoes from the farm, we divide into teams - one to watch for the security personnel, one to climb the tree and pluck out mangoes and the third to collect them. in our own family, we have seen our parents share the responsibilities and assigning smaller responsibilities to the kids for effective management of the household. When we take up our jobs, we get to know our roles and responsibilities, which are designed to contribute to the overall objective of the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We notice that such distribution is of two kinds - one in which we are asked to do a specific task and the other where we are assigned an area of responsibility. For example, your mother may ask you to pick up some groceries, from a specific shop, on your way home from work. Over time, you may be made responsible for ensuring the house is always well stocked with groceries. Even in this example, picking up specified groceries on the way home, demands much less compared to being responsible for ensuring the groceries are always available per need. It is easier to meet expectations when you just need to pick up specified list of groceries. Managing groceries for the family demands a lot more knowledge and training. Still the expectations are less defined, creating a challenge to perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we become project managers, we learn to plan the project and assign resources. We are told to define the various components of work needed to accomplish the project completion and detail out the components in the most unambiguous way, and get them done by using the allocated resources. Is this delegation by the project manager? Yes, it is. However, the scope is limited and the distribution of tasks is by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we grow to be business managers or managers with a team of people, we assume our responsibilities as part of the role. Each member in our team also have their own responsibilities as a part of their role. However, we come together to ensure we deliver what is expected of the team. There are a lot of overlaps and gaps that we find and we learn to course correct. However, many of us, as managers assume that our managerial responsibilities cannot be shared with our team members. For example, we are managing a team that had 4 members and we managed these people directly. We trained these 4 people directly, assigned their daily tasks, guided them and provided feedback as needed. Over time, we have a more people joining the team and the team size grows to 8. Having become more adept at handling the team directly, we extend ourselves to manage the 8 people directly. Then again, when the team becomes 12, we stretch ourselves to the point of burning ourselves out but do not utilize the senior, capable members to help manage our extended work load. This happens due to several reasons. Some of them are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Managing a business or leading a team requires effective delegation of responsibilities. However, we often see this not happening effectively and as a result, progress gets hampered in many fronts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Delegation is something we are exposed to a lot in our life, both at work and otherwise. Even as a bunch of kids, when we set out to steal some mangoes from the farm, we divide into teams - one to watch for the security personnel, one to climb the tree and pluck out mangoes and the third to collect them. in our own family, we have seen our parents share the responsibilities and assigning smaller responsibilities to the kids for effective management of the household. When we take up our jobs, we get to know our roles and responsibilities, which are designed to contribute to the overall objective of the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We notice that such distribution is of two kinds - one in which we are asked to do a specific task and the other where we are assigned an area of responsibility. For example, your mother may ask you to pick up some groceries, from a specific shop, on your way home from work. Over time, you may be made responsible for ensuring the house is always well stocked with groceries. Even in this example, picking up specified groceries on the way home, demands much less compared to being responsible for ensuring the groceries are always available per need. It is easier to meet expectations when you just need to pick up specified list of groceries. Managing groceries for the family demands a lot more knowledge and training. Still the expectations are less defined, creating a challenge to perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we become project managers, we learn to plan the project and assign resources. We are told to define the various components of work needed to accomplish the project completion and detail out the components in the most unambiguous way, and get them done by using the allocated resources. Is this delegation by the project manager? Yes, it is. However, the scope is limited and the distribution of tasks is by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we grow to be business managers or managers with a team of people, we assume our responsibilities as part of the role. Each member in our team also have their own responsibilities as a part of their role. However, we come together to ensure we deliver what is expected of the team. There are a lot of overlaps and gaps that we find and we learn to course correct. However, many of us, as managers assume that our managerial responsibilities cannot be shared with our team members. For example, we are managing a team that had 4 members and we managed these people directly. We trained these 4 people directly, assigned their daily tasks, guided them and provided feedback as needed. Over time, we have a more people joining the team and the team size grows to 8. Having become more adept at handling the team directly, we extend ourselves to manage the 8 people directly. Then again, when the team becomes 12, we stretch ourselves to the point of burning ourselves out but do not utilize the senior, capable members to help manage our extended work load. This happens due to several reasons. Some of them are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Remember the direction and the journey are more important than goals and achievements, in career and in life.<\/p>\n","post_title":"No Chords Without Strings","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"no-chords-without-strings","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19752","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19404,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:42:00","post_content":"\n Managing a business or leading a team requires effective delegation of responsibilities. However, we often see this not happening effectively and as a result, progress gets hampered in many fronts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Delegation is something we are exposed to a lot in our life, both at work and otherwise. Even as a bunch of kids, when we set out to steal some mangoes from the farm, we divide into teams - one to watch for the security personnel, one to climb the tree and pluck out mangoes and the third to collect them. in our own family, we have seen our parents share the responsibilities and assigning smaller responsibilities to the kids for effective management of the household. When we take up our jobs, we get to know our roles and responsibilities, which are designed to contribute to the overall objective of the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We notice that such distribution is of two kinds - one in which we are asked to do a specific task and the other where we are assigned an area of responsibility. For example, your mother may ask you to pick up some groceries, from a specific shop, on your way home from work. Over time, you may be made responsible for ensuring the house is always well stocked with groceries. Even in this example, picking up specified groceries on the way home, demands much less compared to being responsible for ensuring the groceries are always available per need. It is easier to meet expectations when you just need to pick up specified list of groceries. Managing groceries for the family demands a lot more knowledge and training. Still the expectations are less defined, creating a challenge to perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we become project managers, we learn to plan the project and assign resources. We are told to define the various components of work needed to accomplish the project completion and detail out the components in the most unambiguous way, and get them done by using the allocated resources. Is this delegation by the project manager? Yes, it is. However, the scope is limited and the distribution of tasks is by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we grow to be business managers or managers with a team of people, we assume our responsibilities as part of the role. Each member in our team also have their own responsibilities as a part of their role. However, we come together to ensure we deliver what is expected of the team. There are a lot of overlaps and gaps that we find and we learn to course correct. However, many of us, as managers assume that our managerial responsibilities cannot be shared with our team members. For example, we are managing a team that had 4 members and we managed these people directly. We trained these 4 people directly, assigned their daily tasks, guided them and provided feedback as needed. Over time, we have a more people joining the team and the team size grows to 8. Having become more adept at handling the team directly, we extend ourselves to manage the 8 people directly. Then again, when the team becomes 12, we stretch ourselves to the point of burning ourselves out but do not utilize the senior, capable members to help manage our extended work load. This happens due to several reasons. Some of them are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
Remember Yin and Yang \u262f\u262f<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember the direction and the journey are more important than goals and achievements, in career and in life.<\/p>\n","post_title":"No Chords Without Strings","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"no-chords-without-strings","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19752","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19404,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:42:00","post_content":"\n Managing a business or leading a team requires effective delegation of responsibilities. However, we often see this not happening effectively and as a result, progress gets hampered in many fronts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Delegation is something we are exposed to a lot in our life, both at work and otherwise. Even as a bunch of kids, when we set out to steal some mangoes from the farm, we divide into teams - one to watch for the security personnel, one to climb the tree and pluck out mangoes and the third to collect them. in our own family, we have seen our parents share the responsibilities and assigning smaller responsibilities to the kids for effective management of the household. When we take up our jobs, we get to know our roles and responsibilities, which are designed to contribute to the overall objective of the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We notice that such distribution is of two kinds - one in which we are asked to do a specific task and the other where we are assigned an area of responsibility. For example, your mother may ask you to pick up some groceries, from a specific shop, on your way home from work. Over time, you may be made responsible for ensuring the house is always well stocked with groceries. Even in this example, picking up specified groceries on the way home, demands much less compared to being responsible for ensuring the groceries are always available per need. It is easier to meet expectations when you just need to pick up specified list of groceries. Managing groceries for the family demands a lot more knowledge and training. Still the expectations are less defined, creating a challenge to perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we become project managers, we learn to plan the project and assign resources. We are told to define the various components of work needed to accomplish the project completion and detail out the components in the most unambiguous way, and get them done by using the allocated resources. Is this delegation by the project manager? Yes, it is. However, the scope is limited and the distribution of tasks is by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we grow to be business managers or managers with a team of people, we assume our responsibilities as part of the role. Each member in our team also have their own responsibilities as a part of their role. However, we come together to ensure we deliver what is expected of the team. There are a lot of overlaps and gaps that we find and we learn to course correct. However, many of us, as managers assume that our managerial responsibilities cannot be shared with our team members. For example, we are managing a team that had 4 members and we managed these people directly. We trained these 4 people directly, assigned their daily tasks, guided them and provided feedback as needed. Over time, we have a more people joining the team and the team size grows to 8. Having become more adept at handling the team directly, we extend ourselves to manage the 8 people directly. Then again, when the team becomes 12, we stretch ourselves to the point of burning ourselves out but do not utilize the senior, capable members to help manage our extended work load. This happens due to several reasons. Some of them are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
So, for those of you who are starting out your careers and are disillusioned with some aspects of your job responsibilities, don\u2019t despair. Don\u2019t be stressed out about having to do those tasks. Pause and reflect on your life and you will see patterns like what I have shared. You may discover some things which you see today as strings are actually not so in retrospect \u2013 they may actually be guide wires in your development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember Yin and Yang \u262f\u262f<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember the direction and the journey are more important than goals and achievements, in career and in life.<\/p>\n","post_title":"No Chords Without Strings","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"no-chords-without-strings","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19752","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19404,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:42:00","post_content":"\n Managing a business or leading a team requires effective delegation of responsibilities. However, we often see this not happening effectively and as a result, progress gets hampered in many fronts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Delegation is something we are exposed to a lot in our life, both at work and otherwise. Even as a bunch of kids, when we set out to steal some mangoes from the farm, we divide into teams - one to watch for the security personnel, one to climb the tree and pluck out mangoes and the third to collect them. in our own family, we have seen our parents share the responsibilities and assigning smaller responsibilities to the kids for effective management of the household. When we take up our jobs, we get to know our roles and responsibilities, which are designed to contribute to the overall objective of the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We notice that such distribution is of two kinds - one in which we are asked to do a specific task and the other where we are assigned an area of responsibility. For example, your mother may ask you to pick up some groceries, from a specific shop, on your way home from work. Over time, you may be made responsible for ensuring the house is always well stocked with groceries. Even in this example, picking up specified groceries on the way home, demands much less compared to being responsible for ensuring the groceries are always available per need. It is easier to meet expectations when you just need to pick up specified list of groceries. Managing groceries for the family demands a lot more knowledge and training. Still the expectations are less defined, creating a challenge to perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we become project managers, we learn to plan the project and assign resources. We are told to define the various components of work needed to accomplish the project completion and detail out the components in the most unambiguous way, and get them done by using the allocated resources. Is this delegation by the project manager? Yes, it is. However, the scope is limited and the distribution of tasks is by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we grow to be business managers or managers with a team of people, we assume our responsibilities as part of the role. Each member in our team also have their own responsibilities as a part of their role. However, we come together to ensure we deliver what is expected of the team. There are a lot of overlaps and gaps that we find and we learn to course correct. However, many of us, as managers assume that our managerial responsibilities cannot be shared with our team members. For example, we are managing a team that had 4 members and we managed these people directly. We trained these 4 people directly, assigned their daily tasks, guided them and provided feedback as needed. Over time, we have a more people joining the team and the team size grows to 8. Having become more adept at handling the team directly, we extend ourselves to manage the 8 people directly. Then again, when the team becomes 12, we stretch ourselves to the point of burning ourselves out but do not utilize the senior, capable members to help manage our extended work load. This happens due to several reasons. Some of them are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
After years of doing a variety of roles, I realized what satisfies me most. It is creating high performing technical teams and rallying around such teams to deliver world class products. Even after many decades of refinement, I do find that there are aspects of my responsibilities that I do not enjoy. However I am less stressed about doing them. They are just some more strings and I am now adept in dealing with them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, for those of you who are starting out your careers and are disillusioned with some aspects of your job responsibilities, don\u2019t despair. Don\u2019t be stressed out about having to do those tasks. Pause and reflect on your life and you will see patterns like what I have shared. You may discover some things which you see today as strings are actually not so in retrospect \u2013 they may actually be guide wires in your development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember Yin and Yang \u262f\u262f<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember the direction and the journey are more important than goals and achievements, in career and in life.<\/p>\n","post_title":"No Chords Without Strings","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"no-chords-without-strings","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19752","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19404,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:42:00","post_content":"\n Managing a business or leading a team requires effective delegation of responsibilities. However, we often see this not happening effectively and as a result, progress gets hampered in many fronts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Delegation is something we are exposed to a lot in our life, both at work and otherwise. Even as a bunch of kids, when we set out to steal some mangoes from the farm, we divide into teams - one to watch for the security personnel, one to climb the tree and pluck out mangoes and the third to collect them. in our own family, we have seen our parents share the responsibilities and assigning smaller responsibilities to the kids for effective management of the household. When we take up our jobs, we get to know our roles and responsibilities, which are designed to contribute to the overall objective of the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We notice that such distribution is of two kinds - one in which we are asked to do a specific task and the other where we are assigned an area of responsibility. For example, your mother may ask you to pick up some groceries, from a specific shop, on your way home from work. Over time, you may be made responsible for ensuring the house is always well stocked with groceries. Even in this example, picking up specified groceries on the way home, demands much less compared to being responsible for ensuring the groceries are always available per need. It is easier to meet expectations when you just need to pick up specified list of groceries. Managing groceries for the family demands a lot more knowledge and training. Still the expectations are less defined, creating a challenge to perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we become project managers, we learn to plan the project and assign resources. We are told to define the various components of work needed to accomplish the project completion and detail out the components in the most unambiguous way, and get them done by using the allocated resources. Is this delegation by the project manager? Yes, it is. However, the scope is limited and the distribution of tasks is by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we grow to be business managers or managers with a team of people, we assume our responsibilities as part of the role. Each member in our team also have their own responsibilities as a part of their role. However, we come together to ensure we deliver what is expected of the team. There are a lot of overlaps and gaps that we find and we learn to course correct. However, many of us, as managers assume that our managerial responsibilities cannot be shared with our team members. For example, we are managing a team that had 4 members and we managed these people directly. We trained these 4 people directly, assigned their daily tasks, guided them and provided feedback as needed. Over time, we have a more people joining the team and the team size grows to 8. Having become more adept at handling the team directly, we extend ourselves to manage the 8 people directly. Then again, when the team becomes 12, we stretch ourselves to the point of burning ourselves out but do not utilize the senior, capable members to help manage our extended work load. This happens due to several reasons. Some of them are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
As a common thread in all this, I noticed that while I was pursuing what I really wanted to, there were things I needed to do \u2013 the strings - , which were not of my choice. Without doing those, I would not have progressed in the path I set out. In fact, in some cases, the very same things that I disliked, made me appreciate what I was working towards even more interesting and made me more broad-based and efficient. Also, only with the exposure and experience in different aspects\/subjects, you realize what you like and what you don\u2019t, what you really enjoy and what you excel in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After years of doing a variety of roles, I realized what satisfies me most. It is creating high performing technical teams and rallying around such teams to deliver world class products. Even after many decades of refinement, I do find that there are aspects of my responsibilities that I do not enjoy. However I am less stressed about doing them. They are just some more strings and I am now adept in dealing with them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, for those of you who are starting out your careers and are disillusioned with some aspects of your job responsibilities, don\u2019t despair. Don\u2019t be stressed out about having to do those tasks. Pause and reflect on your life and you will see patterns like what I have shared. You may discover some things which you see today as strings are actually not so in retrospect \u2013 they may actually be guide wires in your development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember Yin and Yang \u262f\u262f<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember the direction and the journey are more important than goals and achievements, in career and in life.<\/p>\n","post_title":"No Chords Without Strings","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"no-chords-without-strings","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19752","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19404,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:42:00","post_content":"\n Managing a business or leading a team requires effective delegation of responsibilities. However, we often see this not happening effectively and as a result, progress gets hampered in many fronts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Delegation is something we are exposed to a lot in our life, both at work and otherwise. Even as a bunch of kids, when we set out to steal some mangoes from the farm, we divide into teams - one to watch for the security personnel, one to climb the tree and pluck out mangoes and the third to collect them. in our own family, we have seen our parents share the responsibilities and assigning smaller responsibilities to the kids for effective management of the household. When we take up our jobs, we get to know our roles and responsibilities, which are designed to contribute to the overall objective of the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We notice that such distribution is of two kinds - one in which we are asked to do a specific task and the other where we are assigned an area of responsibility. For example, your mother may ask you to pick up some groceries, from a specific shop, on your way home from work. Over time, you may be made responsible for ensuring the house is always well stocked with groceries. Even in this example, picking up specified groceries on the way home, demands much less compared to being responsible for ensuring the groceries are always available per need. It is easier to meet expectations when you just need to pick up specified list of groceries. Managing groceries for the family demands a lot more knowledge and training. Still the expectations are less defined, creating a challenge to perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we become project managers, we learn to plan the project and assign resources. We are told to define the various components of work needed to accomplish the project completion and detail out the components in the most unambiguous way, and get them done by using the allocated resources. Is this delegation by the project manager? Yes, it is. However, the scope is limited and the distribution of tasks is by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we grow to be business managers or managers with a team of people, we assume our responsibilities as part of the role. Each member in our team also have their own responsibilities as a part of their role. However, we come together to ensure we deliver what is expected of the team. There are a lot of overlaps and gaps that we find and we learn to course correct. However, many of us, as managers assume that our managerial responsibilities cannot be shared with our team members. For example, we are managing a team that had 4 members and we managed these people directly. We trained these 4 people directly, assigned their daily tasks, guided them and provided feedback as needed. Over time, we have a more people joining the team and the team size grows to 8. Having become more adept at handling the team directly, we extend ourselves to manage the 8 people directly. Then again, when the team becomes 12, we stretch ourselves to the point of burning ourselves out but do not utilize the senior, capable members to help manage our extended work load. This happens due to several reasons. Some of them are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
The third and final experience, I would like to narrate, is when I started on my first job \u2013 a campus offer in a multinational, hard to say no to. But imagine my disappointment when the I found that job was just coding to start with. Far removed from my love of electronic instrumentation engineering. But I continued - a reluctant participant in the company organized job-oriented training sessions and was completely at sea in commercial application development. Having taken up the job, I believed that I did not have a choice but to learn all that was needed to do well. So, I did. But another door did open and an opportunity to do systems and network programming showed up. I just grabbed it, really liked it and built it further from there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a common thread in all this, I noticed that while I was pursuing what I really wanted to, there were things I needed to do \u2013 the strings - , which were not of my choice. Without doing those, I would not have progressed in the path I set out. In fact, in some cases, the very same things that I disliked, made me appreciate what I was working towards even more interesting and made me more broad-based and efficient. Also, only with the exposure and experience in different aspects\/subjects, you realize what you like and what you don\u2019t, what you really enjoy and what you excel in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After years of doing a variety of roles, I realized what satisfies me most. It is creating high performing technical teams and rallying around such teams to deliver world class products. Even after many decades of refinement, I do find that there are aspects of my responsibilities that I do not enjoy. However I am less stressed about doing them. They are just some more strings and I am now adept in dealing with them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, for those of you who are starting out your careers and are disillusioned with some aspects of your job responsibilities, don\u2019t despair. Don\u2019t be stressed out about having to do those tasks. Pause and reflect on your life and you will see patterns like what I have shared. You may discover some things which you see today as strings are actually not so in retrospect \u2013 they may actually be guide wires in your development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember Yin and Yang \u262f\u262f<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember the direction and the journey are more important than goals and achievements, in career and in life.<\/p>\n","post_title":"No Chords Without Strings","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"no-chords-without-strings","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19752","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19404,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:42:00","post_content":"\n Managing a business or leading a team requires effective delegation of responsibilities. However, we often see this not happening effectively and as a result, progress gets hampered in many fronts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Delegation is something we are exposed to a lot in our life, both at work and otherwise. Even as a bunch of kids, when we set out to steal some mangoes from the farm, we divide into teams - one to watch for the security personnel, one to climb the tree and pluck out mangoes and the third to collect them. in our own family, we have seen our parents share the responsibilities and assigning smaller responsibilities to the kids for effective management of the household. When we take up our jobs, we get to know our roles and responsibilities, which are designed to contribute to the overall objective of the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We notice that such distribution is of two kinds - one in which we are asked to do a specific task and the other where we are assigned an area of responsibility. For example, your mother may ask you to pick up some groceries, from a specific shop, on your way home from work. Over time, you may be made responsible for ensuring the house is always well stocked with groceries. Even in this example, picking up specified groceries on the way home, demands much less compared to being responsible for ensuring the groceries are always available per need. It is easier to meet expectations when you just need to pick up specified list of groceries. Managing groceries for the family demands a lot more knowledge and training. Still the expectations are less defined, creating a challenge to perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we become project managers, we learn to plan the project and assign resources. We are told to define the various components of work needed to accomplish the project completion and detail out the components in the most unambiguous way, and get them done by using the allocated resources. Is this delegation by the project manager? Yes, it is. However, the scope is limited and the distribution of tasks is by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we grow to be business managers or managers with a team of people, we assume our responsibilities as part of the role. Each member in our team also have their own responsibilities as a part of their role. However, we come together to ensure we deliver what is expected of the team. There are a lot of overlaps and gaps that we find and we learn to course correct. However, many of us, as managers assume that our managerial responsibilities cannot be shared with our team members. For example, we are managing a team that had 4 members and we managed these people directly. We trained these 4 people directly, assigned their daily tasks, guided them and provided feedback as needed. Over time, we have a more people joining the team and the team size grows to 8. Having become more adept at handling the team directly, we extend ourselves to manage the 8 people directly. Then again, when the team becomes 12, we stretch ourselves to the point of burning ourselves out but do not utilize the senior, capable members to help manage our extended work load. This happens due to several reasons. Some of them are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #257 - Have some empathy","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-258-have-some-empathy","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:15","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18981","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18977,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:26:51","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 10:56:51","post_content":"\n Often we look at \u2018empathy\u2019 as an ability that is much needed in leadership roles. It is always an ability expected from people higher in the ladder towards those who are below them or at best towards peers. By focusing heavily in this manner, the need for any member to be empathetic towards leaders\/managers is not given any attention. It is as though managers (or those in supervisory position) need to be empathetic toward their team members but not expect any such empathy in return. Such imbalance seems to be an outcome of the hierarchical structures that have been the norm in most organization for ages. With the advent of the knowledge industry, those norms are breaking. A flatter organization is becoming de-facto standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through our student life, we look up to our teachers. We expect them to know the answers to every question we have on the subject. The gap in knowledge between the teacher and the student keeps reducing as we grow, but still in our declared roles as students and teachers, the looking up is mostly one way. When we get into our working career, we look up to our first bosses like we looked up to our teachers. Yes, the bosses knew more, having been there a bit earlier than us. However, at work, particularly in the knowledge industry, the challenges are new, technologies keep evolving and your boss is exploring solutions for the challenges with you, though may be more adept at doing so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not just in knowledge, even in emotional development, the gap between a team member and the leader\/manager is not significant. Very often the person in leadership could be experiencing a higher emotional stress than the team that she is managing\/leading.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often do, I was looking at such situation in sports, say cricket. Let us say you are in a team that is chasing a big total. You are the designated number 4 in the batting order. You have a good strike rate. The captain decides to promote a lower order batsman to go in at number 4, and, keep you to anchor and take the innings deep, in case the gamble doesn\u2019t work. You know you are the better rated batsman and you are keen to go in as number 4, and you are close to a personal milestone that you would like to reach. You will be very upset that your captain lacks empathy towards your needs. This in turn stops you from becoming objective and results in misunderstanding with the captain. And if the pinch hitter sent in fails, and your turn is up, you will find it extra hard to regain composure - resulting in poor return for yourself and your team. Let us say, at that juncture, you try to see the captain\u2019s point of view (which is possible if youtry to be empathetic), Your handling of the situation would be way better. Your empathy would result in helping you and your team succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being in the middle, managing the upper management, the client and the demands from the team demands a lot. Many such relationships are clinical and your manager\/leader may be struggling to meet expectations from multiple stakeholders. During these times managers\/leaders tend to lean on the team and most times team members tend to observe this as unreasonable behavior. Also, the manager\/leader is most often conditioned not to expose their pressure to the team. In such situations, if the team members understand the leader\u2019s position and are empathetic, the whole team wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually, our empathy towards our manager\/leader, helps us perform better and the outcomes are better. Lack of empathy, adds to our stress of having to do our job without full appreciation of the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I started writing down my thoughts on this topic, lots of ideas come rushing and I believe it is a critical aspect that needs to be understood by everyone and in any position. I am sure, everyone has a view on what I have shared, let us call it \u2018selective empathy\u2019. Please do share your thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"YHTAPME - Empathy, the missing angle","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"yhtapme-empathy-the-missing-angle","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:50:09","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=18977","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"9","filter":"raw"}],"next":false,"prev":false,"total_page":1},"paged":1,"column_class":"jeg_col_3o3","class":"epic_block_11"};
The second is about what I wanted to pursue in higher education and the package that came with strings attached. I chose the engineering curriculum. I was very happy that I don\u2019t have to write exams in subjects like history, geography, and biology. Even then, the curriculum required me to take subjects like thermodynamics and material sciences \u2013 most unwelcome for me! . But they were integral to my plan of pursuing further studies in electronics. So gritted my teeth and cleared those \u2018disliked subjects\u2019. As with Tamil grammar above, I have developed a lot of interest in history, geography, biology, and material sciences. Now-a-days, I read books and watch many videos on these subjects. I find myself enjoying them and keep wondering why I did not like them in my early years. I may even take a shot at developing an interest in thermodynamics and material sciences \u2013 just kidding!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The third and final experience, I would like to narrate, is when I started on my first job \u2013 a campus offer in a multinational, hard to say no to. But imagine my disappointment when the I found that job was just coding to start with. Far removed from my love of electronic instrumentation engineering. But I continued - a reluctant participant in the company organized job-oriented training sessions and was completely at sea in commercial application development. Having taken up the job, I believed that I did not have a choice but to learn all that was needed to do well. So, I did. But another door did open and an opportunity to do systems and network programming showed up. I just grabbed it, really liked it and built it further from there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a common thread in all this, I noticed that while I was pursuing what I really wanted to, there were things I needed to do \u2013 the strings - , which were not of my choice. Without doing those, I would not have progressed in the path I set out. In fact, in some cases, the very same things that I disliked, made me appreciate what I was working towards even more interesting and made me more broad-based and efficient. Also, only with the exposure and experience in different aspects\/subjects, you realize what you like and what you don\u2019t, what you really enjoy and what you excel in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After years of doing a variety of roles, I realized what satisfies me most. It is creating high performing technical teams and rallying around such teams to deliver world class products. Even after many decades of refinement, I do find that there are aspects of my responsibilities that I do not enjoy. However I am less stressed about doing them. They are just some more strings and I am now adept in dealing with them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, for those of you who are starting out your careers and are disillusioned with some aspects of your job responsibilities, don\u2019t despair. Don\u2019t be stressed out about having to do those tasks. Pause and reflect on your life and you will see patterns like what I have shared. You may discover some things which you see today as strings are actually not so in retrospect \u2013 they may actually be guide wires in your development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember Yin and Yang \u262f\u262f<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember the direction and the journey are more important than goals and achievements, in career and in life.<\/p>\n","post_title":"No Chords Without Strings","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"no-chords-without-strings","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:56:00","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19752","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"2","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19404,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:12:00","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:42:00","post_content":"\n Managing a business or leading a team requires effective delegation of responsibilities. However, we often see this not happening effectively and as a result, progress gets hampered in many fronts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Delegation is something we are exposed to a lot in our life, both at work and otherwise. Even as a bunch of kids, when we set out to steal some mangoes from the farm, we divide into teams - one to watch for the security personnel, one to climb the tree and pluck out mangoes and the third to collect them. in our own family, we have seen our parents share the responsibilities and assigning smaller responsibilities to the kids for effective management of the household. When we take up our jobs, we get to know our roles and responsibilities, which are designed to contribute to the overall objective of the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We notice that such distribution is of two kinds - one in which we are asked to do a specific task and the other where we are assigned an area of responsibility. For example, your mother may ask you to pick up some groceries, from a specific shop, on your way home from work. Over time, you may be made responsible for ensuring the house is always well stocked with groceries. Even in this example, picking up specified groceries on the way home, demands much less compared to being responsible for ensuring the groceries are always available per need. It is easier to meet expectations when you just need to pick up specified list of groceries. Managing groceries for the family demands a lot more knowledge and training. Still the expectations are less defined, creating a challenge to perform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we become project managers, we learn to plan the project and assign resources. We are told to define the various components of work needed to accomplish the project completion and detail out the components in the most unambiguous way, and get them done by using the allocated resources. Is this delegation by the project manager? Yes, it is. However, the scope is limited and the distribution of tasks is by design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we grow to be business managers or managers with a team of people, we assume our responsibilities as part of the role. Each member in our team also have their own responsibilities as a part of their role. However, we come together to ensure we deliver what is expected of the team. There are a lot of overlaps and gaps that we find and we learn to course correct. However, many of us, as managers assume that our managerial responsibilities cannot be shared with our team members. For example, we are managing a team that had 4 members and we managed these people directly. We trained these 4 people directly, assigned their daily tasks, guided them and provided feedback as needed. Over time, we have a more people joining the team and the team size grows to 8. Having become more adept at handling the team directly, we extend ourselves to manage the 8 people directly. Then again, when the team becomes 12, we stretch ourselves to the point of burning ourselves out but do not utilize the senior, capable members to help manage our extended work load. This happens due to several reasons. Some of them are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, it boils down to lack of trust, risk aversion, extreme sense of ownership, protectionist attitude, inability to mentor and groom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such apathy towards delegation, is equally harmful to all concerned. The manager shuts down self growth as well as growth of the team member, and over time, the organization will suffer. Awareness about such traits in oneself, openness to work with some one and building them up for a higher responsibility, will go a long way in cultivating effective delegation, a key skill in successful management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gopal<\/a><\/p>\n","post_title":"Delegate - for betterment","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"delegate-for-betterment","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:53:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19404","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":19408,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-11-19 13:11:02","post_date_gmt":"2021-11-19 07:41:02","post_content":"\n CleanEnv Corp, was building an eco system that will protect people from harmful pollution, by providing warning over personal devices like mobile phones, smart watches etc. One of the cofounders, Roger was an ace developer and was entrusted with the development of a mobile app, a prototype which will demonstrate the power of the solution. The prototype had to be developed in record time, with the help of few inexperienced but brilliant engineers. Successful demonstration of the product using the prototype was the key to winning the funding from a large and reputed venture fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roger, a brilliant developer, slogged and created the prototype in record time. He wrote the key portions of the software and pretty much created pseudocode for the whole app. The smart engineers in the team, followed the pseudocode to deliver a robust application, which helped the team win the funding. The next step was to develop the full scale system on the cloud with multiple data feeds from across the world, access data relevant to a specific locality and generate appropriate warning for the user. The effort was humongous and a larger team was being put together. Roger assumed the role of architect and Engineering manager. As a funded startup, CleanEnv got a good response to their recruitment drive. However, within couple of months, they noticed heavy attrition in the development team and Roger was clearly showing signs of burn out. Roger felt that the team had some good engineers but all of them needed handholding, to deliver the kind of product being built. The senior management, primarily the founding group could clearly see the big issues in development and needed to step in and help Roger manage. If you were tasked with getting the situation corrected, what would you do? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Suggested Solution:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While this situation is far too common, the best approach is for the founding team to sit together and focus on the need to decentralize control of software development. Roger is likely to come up with genuine reasons for not distributing and highlight potential risks in entrusting responsibility amongst the team member, their lack of awareness to important issues involved and the team\u2019s inability to comprehend the enormity of the challenge etc. He is doing so to make sure the development initiative is a success. However, some reassurance by citing examples of smart management by the founding team members and the inevitability of taking risks to survive may help convince Roger to take the necessary steps to delegate. High intellectual caliber and extreme sense of ownership, which are great traits, actually come in the way of making things work. Honestly, there is no quick solution to this issue. Roger will need sustained mentoring and counseling to understand and effectively delegate.<\/p>\n","post_title":"CHOW #273 - Perfectionist manager","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","post_password":"","post_name":"chow-273-perfectionist-manager","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_modified_gmt":"2024-01-24 07:51:54","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/pm-powerconsulting.com\/?p=19408","menu_order":0,"post_type":"post","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"},{"ID":18981,"post_author":"12","post_date":"2021-07-25 16:33:17","post_date_gmt":"2021-07-25 11:03:17","post_content":"\n Patrick was asked to join a new project for a healthcare company. He found out that the project is in a platform that he has good familiarity and also understands the domain very well. He was also preparing a paper as a part of his online certification course in financial management. Towards that, it would have been better for him to another ongoing development project for a bank. Though he was disappointed, he felt that working in a known platform and known domain may give him some extra work on his paper. On the way to the project initiation meeting, Patrick stops by the cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee. His attention was drawn to someone arguing over phone, which sounded personal and so Patrick ignores. With a cup of coffee in hand, Patrick walks into the project initiation meeting. The person who was on the phone in cafeteria, follows Patrick in to the room and Patrick finds out that he is the new project manager, Palani! Patrick has heard that he is a demanding manager. Soon, during the briefing, Palani shares the pressures in the project and importance of making a strong initial impression, to avoid political pressures from some of client\u2019s management folks. Patrick finds out that he has to assume a tech lead role, with a lot of work to be done upfront and fears that it will impact his paper submission.Patrick tries to convince Palani to assign him a lighter role, which Palani refuses and tries to explain the situation. Patrick is upset with the lack of empathy by Palani and finds it hard to contribute to his potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were Patrick, how would you handle the situation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Solution to the CHOW:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happens, Patrick\u2019s mind is preoccupied with his online course and tends to look at any work load as hinderances and those who want it from him, like Palani in this case, lacking in empathy. A normally congenial and empathetic person, Patrick, due to this situation is unable to show empathy towards Palani. The prejudices he quickly built towards Palani block him from being open. If he overcomes these obstacles and opens up to Palani to understand the situation, Patrick could not only help project to be a success, can also find ways to complete the paper that he very much wanted to complete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
\n
Personal Growth
December 2, 2024
No Comments
