Leadership

Last night participated in a tweet chat on leadership.  The topic "leadership is a prerequisite or responsibility" intrigued me a lot and set me thinking.

For me,  leadership is neither a prerequisite nor a responsibility. It is an opportunity, yes, you got it right an opportunity to help people in discovering their hidden greatness.

Each and everyone of us has greatness hidden deep inside. What we need is a trigger to discover that. Role of the leader is to help these people in discovering it.

Obviously, results matter, so leader has to create an environment in which this greatness of people is aligned to the organisational goals.

This way leader creates a truly engaged and aligned organisation. Leader becomes an enabler not a pusher or executed. People execute, people deliver, people achieve and then celebrate.

Don't think that I am again pushing for servant leadership. These are all theories which may work for you. But, we all are at the ground where dirt hits the road. We have to deliver performance. It is only possible through an engaged workforce,  which has discovered it's own greatness.

At the end of the day, it is people's business.

Do Mukhi

Kyon log haath apna hai kheench letey, kyon muh apna hai mor letey

jo aapse samney itney ghuley miley hain hotey

peeth peeche aapki buraiyan, hathkali kyonhai kartey

jab aap kisi musibat mein hai par letey, kya maza aata hai dusre ke dukh mein sukh paakey

kyon nahin dil se uske gum mein shareek ho jatey

sab upari dikhawa hai, kitna chal chalawa hai

aaj ka yug jo tezi se hai badhta ja raha, insaan ko machine bana raha

hum subah kaam pe jaatey hain, wahan vyasta ho jaatey hain

aur shaam ko ghar aa apney kaamo mei lag jatey hain

kisi ke liye samay kahan nikal paatey hain

lekin agar kisi ke baarey mei kuch pata hai chal jata

jhut se aisa dhindhora pit jata

ki sab ko sunane sunnaane mei bada maza aata

kam hi us bandey ke baarey mei kuch soch paatey

aaj ki sadi ke log itney paraye hai ho gaye, ki do mukhi hai ban gaye.............

Leadership Crisis in 2015

World is facing a serious leadership crisis in 2015. This is hardly surprising due to lack of focus on creating a sustained pipeline of leaders for both public as well as corporate domains. When I say leaders, it means leaders who have followers and not the supervisors who have reportees as defined by org charts.

Crisis is much bigger than we think it to be. As humanity, we have failed to take action on:

1. Global Warming- There has been quite a lot of energy spent on arranging the conferences, but hardly any change on ground
2. Violence - Continues unabated in middle east, Africa and other places of the world
3. Global economy- It is currently designed to fulfill greed of few, rather than universal development
4. Discrimination based on gender, cast, creed and religion
5. Over emphasis on communication as developmental goal. Basis science and research seem to have taken a back seat
6. Hunger
7. Diseases like cancer

List can go on, what is to be noted is that world today is lacking leadership to tackle these issues in systematic way, one by one. 

Leaders have to serve, they can't be sitting in ivory towers and preparing tons of waste paper in the name of strategic plans. These plans are useless unless they marry the dirt on the ground. Universal suffrage has been reality for such a long time now in most of the world, why are people not allowed to change their destiny? Because, public leaders don't allow them to.

Same hold true for corporate leaders. 

1. Focus today is on meeting quarterly targets (QSQT - not quamat se quamat tak, but quarter se quarter tak), what about sustained growth for future? 
2. How do we create completely disruptive business models (like ford, apple, nokia etc)? 
3. How do we improve efficiency in all areas of working? Why should customer be paying for our inefficiencies?
4. How do we improve employee engagement so that to make her enjoy the work rather then doing a job ( Do punch ek lunch)
5. How do we integrate with universities to tailor make the curriculum to fit our needs and not the needs of institutes?
6. How do we serve customer (BTW customer is not "Kashto -se-mar")

One can go on as long as she wants. Point is we need to act immediately so that humanity benefits. Greed is not going to take us forward, universal development is only solution. 

Corporate and government leaders need to serve and not command. They need to get to bottom of the issues, superficial solutions are not helping.

My solution would be to:

1. Mandatory working at shopfloor/ public facilities for future leaders

2. Public service to be part of graduate level studies

3. Selection of leaders by followers not by superiors even in corporate world

As always would love to hear from you, remember diversity of view would make debate even better quality