Working for a Tyrant Boss!

My 1st Boss was a Tyrant, 2nd one was Friendly Back Stabber, 3rd one was Heartless Task Master, 4th one Hands off Delegator and I don't want to talk about my 5th and current boss for obvious reasons!.

1st Boss: Very loud, everything he says has to be done or someone gets yelled at. He gives me my first assignment and asks me how I will to go about it!, I had no idea where to start, no idea what I should do, people tell me that I will be torn apart. I sat thinking how I will solve it for about 30 mins, could not find the answer, had to close the task on the same day, so I mustered up courage, accepted martyrdom and walked into the Lion's den, I said, "Sir, I don't know how to solve this problem". Boss smiles, sits me down, explains step by step from fundamentals... a lesson I have not forgotten till date. From then on, he was my favorite. I was awed by his practical knowledge. No one dared to challenge him, because, he was never afraid to roll up his sleeve and complete the task without any help. He was fearless and would never buckle under pressure, because he had "been there and done that".

Lesson:

• Knowledge is power!. 
• Never show resistance to do what you expect from your team members, when you lead, you lead from the front. If you expect your team to put in 16 hours to complete a task, you be ready to put 20 hours, be available to them, just in case they need anything.
• When team members come to you for help, spend time to mentor them, if you are able to help them, they will be independent soon, which will give you some spare time to add another skill and grow.
• Never be afraid of approaching your boss and saying you don't know or I need help, he cannot take your life, worst case, he can fire you, but you can always find another job...

2nd Boss: Young, soft spoken, diplomatic, understanding, he was a role model to me. I liked working for him from day 1. He made me feel comfortable, he said I have great potential!, he allowed me to fail, there was always someone else who would pitch in to help me complete my task because he could not afford a delay, don't worry he said, all is well, you'll learn to get the tasks done faster as you spend more time. When the time of the appraisal came, his rating for me was "Below Expectations", when I asked why?, he said, you are not up to the mark, there is a lot of scope for improvement!, I said, "you said it was ok!, you said, I will learn in time". I was quite surprised with his behavior, but I had no one but myself to blame, I had failed, and I was foolish to take his re-assurances literally and take it easy.

Lesson: 

• I failed because I did not work hard enough and took it easy.
• It is not ok to fail, never be carried away with re-assurances that tomorrow will be a better day, there is no tomorrow if you don't make the best use of today. Don't go to bed if you know that you are going to fail tomorrow.
• You get paid for performance, not potential.

3rd Boss: Middle aged, assertive, tough task master, very aggressive. He was an expert at delegation and empowerment. He was teaching me and throwing responsibilities at me, one at a time, watching me, when I was getting a reasonable handle of the task, he would throw one more at me. Each responsibility was adding an hour or two extra to my work hours, but I did not break. When I went to him with my problems, I always came back with solutions to my problems and a few of his problems to solve. He knew how to make people work, he was a master at chess!. One day, one of my Technical Leaders came to me with a complaint on an under-performing Team Member and that he needed a replacement. I took this matter up to my boss, he calmly said, "I don't have more people to give you, your performance appraisal depends on this Team Member's success, now go and get to work". I had no choice but to make this guy work out, I was able to turn this guy around.

Lesson:

• I learned to find my own solutions to my problems, not go running to my boss for solutions, I learned that by owning up the problem, by thinking hard and trying really hard, we can find solutions to any problem. 
• I learned multi-tasking. 
• I learned to prioritize. 
• I learned to observe how my Boss thinks and be prepared with answers ahead of time. I was careful not to make assumptions using "my bosses' thought process" as a shield.
• Learnt the difference between Aggression and Assertiveness and when to use each.
• To win, you need to set a target better than the current record.

4th Boss: Middle aged, very easy going, not quick to take decisions, was ok with whatever I said or did, never directed me. I went with my proposals for improvements, he agreed, he never challenged me. I liked this person. He was responsible for the department, but I was doing all the work, taking decisions, choosing directions and strategy. There was no real contribution from him. He used to proudly mention that he had "empowered" me, while he had actually "delegated" all tasks to me.

Lesson:

• I did not grow in this set up, I was contributing all my knowledge from my previous jobs into this one, and was not adding any more.
• I was working very hard to ensure that all was well, while someone else was walking away with the credit, it's glory and the accolades.

~o~o~o~

From my experience with all the bosses I have worked for, I hated the demanding bosses the most, but I got to learn a lot from them. They challenged me to do more, and do better, they were never satisfied with what I said or what I did. All suggestions I made were "wrong" and there was always a better "solution" that I was not aware of. Result was that, I was getting better and better and I was growing.

I have also had the opportunity to work for very capable and demanding bosses who used to insult, humiliate and waste time by conducting 8 hour meetings to punch holes in a 5 slide presentation just to demonstrate their power. I got a lot to learn from this type too, but what I learned was what "Not To Do".

Under the "not so demanding" bosses, life was stagnant, I never grew, I never learnt and I failed.

I have realized the value of my demanding bosses long after I left them, but deep inside my heart, I am grateful to all my bosses who pushed me hard, demanded more than I could deliver, it is because of them I am where I am and I do what I do...

Thank you my Tyrant Boss!.

Empowerment

Empowerment is a very important and interesting aspect of Management. An action that plays a vital role in building teams, creating ownership and accountability within people, resulting in success of the team/project/organization.

From my experience, "Empowerment" is a very loosely used word, Managers think, they can empower people by...

• making an individual or a team responsible for a certain task
• giving an individual the power to take a decision
• giving an individual the authority to take a financial decision

This is not enough and this is not all.

In my opinion, true Empowerment comes from creating

• a good feeling for the team/organization: "I FEEL GOOD" Factor
• a sense of belonging in the organization/team: "I BELONG HERE" Factor
• an awareness of the vision and imparting knowledge: "I KNOW WHAT TO DO" factor

When people are empowered in the "True Sense", they demonstrate a sense of Responsibility, Ownership and Accountability for a task/project. They demonstrate initiative. They are proactive. The war is theirs and they celebrate each victory in a battle, however small the battle is. There is energy everywhere, people help each other, share knowledge and stay late just because their colleague is having a difficulty in his/her task. People come forward to ask for more work a week ahead.

This is not all, the organization starts seeing a difference, the defects are low, the customers are happy resulting in more business. There is prosperity.

I strongly recommend to Managers, to use the following steps to achieve "true" empowerment in their teams/organizations

1. Treat people well
2. Impart Knowledge
3. Bestow responsibility

Treating People Well

This is the first and the most important step in empowerment. "Treating people well" is not always achieved by talking nicely to them or greeting them or accepting anything and everything that an employee has to say.

Managers have to encourage them, inspire them, trust them, listen to them and acknowledge their achievements.

Encouragement comes from saying kind words and being supportive when people are down. Kind words of encouragement fills team members with a strange confidence to do the "undoable". The team member does wonders with his/her task.

A word of caution:

• the maturity of the individual plays a very important role in "Treating people well". An individual with high maturity will respond positively to encouragement and kind words, the ones with low maturity will go around boasting that the Manager is his/her friend and will not hurt him even if he/she makes a mistake. Managers have to study their people's maturity and then act. I have seen admonishment, a bit of embarrassment and then saying the kind words of encouragement works with people with lower maturity levels in most cases. 
• High maturity usually results in high commitment in individuals and these kind of people work with good intentions,  managers need to be supportive and encouraging, these people feel bad, when they make a mistake, these people usually accept admonishment as a punishment for wrong doing, but they cannot and will not appreciate humiliation or embarrassment. These people will leave the company if they are subjected to humiliation.
  

Impart Knowledge

Step 2 deals with training people, providing them knowledge, tools and techniques that come handy in day to day activities.

There are two types of Managers who impart knowledge:

• Type 1: Most managers have a unique way of dealing with tasks and situations. These are techniques that they have read in books, used and perfected over time. These managers usually have better success in step 2 of empowerment as they are closer to ground realities, they know more about the project, product and processes and have a better relationship with their teams.
• Type 2: Some managers, however, go by the book. They are better "read" than the "Type 1" managers, they are loosely related to their teams, the project, the product and the processes. These Managers will have a tendency to implement a Six Sigma Technique that was successful in another company, without showing consideration to the current organization, it's maturity, it's people, it's people's maturity or the product requirement. These managers try to implement systems with "Mission Critical robustness" when it is not required, just because some "Guru" appreciated this technique. These Managers have a lower chance at success in imparting knowledge as most people in their team just don't understand what this person is saying or where he is coming from.
  

Imparting knowledge means, "showing them the way", by telling them:

• What to do
• How to do it
• How to Measure
• Take necessary Actions (based on the measurements to minimize deviations)
• How to Share Knowledge with others in the team

This is a classic Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle first stated by Deming, PLUS knowledge sharing.

Managers need not define everything by themselves, they may get their key team members to participate and define the tasks, the process, measurements and the possible actions to take when deviations occur. This way, the key players themselves will own the process and train others on the process that they defined.

Bestow Responsibility

Once the team members are trained, the Managers must share responsibility of the project along with key players in the team. An announcement must be made to let everyone know, so that other team members know whom to approach, when required. A formal announcement, makes team members proud and gives them a sense of responsibility. Their pride helps them contribute to the project objectives and goals.

Once a person is made responsible, the Manager must stand by this individual under all circumstances. Great leaders acknowledge the success of the individual and make it known to all. A failure is also handled, thru' escalation, and thru' counseling to the individual, reassuring him/her, that this happens and that it can be overcome. The counseling should be kept private.

The act of bestowing responsibility fails when the Manager resorts to "Success is mine and failure is yours" philosophy. In these cases, the person will never accept responsibility from this manager again.

Where managers go wrong is when, they call a certain team member to their office, and tell him/her that he/she is responsible for a certain process and keep the act of bestowing responsibility private. This way, the person never really accepts the responsibility, even if he/she does, he/she does not get the support from other team members to execute the responsibility. This results in frustration and disgruntlement in the employee, he/she is unable to live up to the expectation of his/her manager and the manager holds him/her responsible for the failure, while, the failure is really the Manager's, who could have turned this situation around by merely making an announcement and showing his/her support to the cause.

To Summarize, empowerment, when done properly, works wonders and helps building great teams. Great teams produce great products, great products result in great revenues for the company. The manager must acknowledge success and attribute to individuals and also standby and accept responsibility if things go wrong.

Stages in Professional Life

I read somewhere a few years ago, that professional life goes thru' the following stages...

ASSOCIATE >> INVOLVE >> SUPERVISE >> MANAGE

Initially, I read this again and again to understand more, but was unable to understand the concept. When I read each word independently, it made sense, but when I put it all together, it was more complex than the individual words. After many hours of thought, I was able to decipher the meaning of the words when read together and it all started making sense.

Here's my understanding...

My company makes creative content products. When I joined this company as a Manager, I was not having a deep understanding of how the product was made and the kind of effort that went in to deliver a product that the CEO was so proud of, the team was thrilled developing and customers loved it (the Forums section in the company website talked all about it).

How am I to get an greater understanding of these awesome products? I thought.

The only was for me was to ASSOCIATE with the product development life cycle. So, I talked to each member in the team to understand how the products were developed, I documented each stage, created a workflow, defined the quality control processes, got these documents reviewed and approved, and published this as a handbook. I was proud of this document because this helped me understand and was used in all the induction programs in the next 5 years. To achieve this, I had to ASSOCIATE with the process, I had to spend time to understand what the team was doing and not worry about how it was being done.

The next stage was INVOLVE. Another tough one. I concluded, to INVOLVE means to CONTRIBUTE. I had to make a contribution to the Product Development Lice Cycle. I did not possess the skill required to develop the product, I was supposed to Manage this team, so the skill was not important, I had planning skills, but this was only appreciated by the Management and not the team. This set me thinking again, how to I CONTRIBUTE? I looked thru my Process Handbook again to figure out how I can make that contribution. I got my answer, Quality Control, this did not need any special skill, but an eye for detail, I could do it, so I started my discussion with some of my senior team members, to understand what an error is and ways to catch it. I got started with testing each piece of creative content, each time I had a doubt on an error, I would take that up for a discussion with the senior team members and they would confirm if it was actually an error or a special effect. 500 animations later I was acting independently, logging bugs with animations and team members would accept these bugs as "bugs". From the team perspective I was CONTRIBUTING, from the management perspective, I was contributing with the production plan, schedules and status reporting.

Now that I had passed thru' the ASSOCIATE and INVOLVE stage, I moved naturally to SUPERVISE stage. I could talk the team's language, I could understand when the CEO described the new product, and could teach a bunch of new joinees how to test the product and catch defects. In short, I was able to earn some respect from the team, new team members would respect me because I had interviewed them and also trained them. I had demonstrated my potential to the management of my company.

After having gone thru' the ASSOCIATE, INVOLVE and SUPERVISE stages with multiple teams, it was time for me to MANAGE. I was managing multiple teams and processes, I was orchestrating the delivery of multiple products simultaneously...... finally, I was the MANAGER.

This is not the end....

After a few months, I realized that I was performing at the SUPERVISE stage and the MANAGE stage at the same time, I was having issues with meeting my goals and targets. I thought, I am the Manager, so why should I supervise?

I had 2 choices to solve this problem: 1) go to the management and complain that I need more resources to do the Supervise role and 2) train up one of my current resources to take on that responsibility.

I chose option 2 because, it was easier for me to elevate someone from within the team instead of hiring a new resource and have him go thru' the ASSOCIATE, INVOLVE and SUPERVISE stages. Now, I can get a resource within the team, who has already gone thru' the first two stages, so I have a ready made solution on hand. This results in one more problem, loss in productivity. To resolve this, I can hire two new resources at the bottom of the Pyramid. Each of these new resources will contribute 50% of the lost of productivity and will cost 1/3rd the cost of the more experienced resource. This is results in making up for the lost productivity completely at a net saving of 1/3rd the cost of the experienced resource.

This worked well for me as well as the company.

Every professional/employee must go thru' these stages during his/her career. This is applicable to every individual from a trainee to the CEO.