Lessons for a father - The Problem With Titles

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."

William Shakespeare used these lines in the lyrical tale of "star-cross'd" lovers called Romeo and Juliet. For many years now, the quote has been used by a lot of people for a vast variety of purposes. The meaning, however, has remained quite similar, that the (at least in the context of the play) name is meaningless and it is the person and not the name that is important.

A very unique extension of the same idea made perfect sense to me. It goes thus:

"What's in a title? That who we call the CTO

On any other day, can he not code?"

How is it that we get so bogged down by what the plate outside our office door says that we forgo an opportunity to add tangible value in people's lives? Yes we are managers, and directors and CXO's but just like anyone else we are accountable to the organization and the people that make it.

Let me take the example of our current familial state. Do you think it would be a great idea if I convince my son that I am just the person that pays the mortgage so he has a house to live in? Or, that I am the driver that takes him to and back from his daycare? May be I can convince him to accept me as the guy that reads him stories in the evening and leave the rest to the others (I hope my wife is not reading this right now; if you are, wifey-dearest, this is just an example of what I should not be doing).

The answer to all the questions above is a vehement no. My duty towards my home organization is to do what needs to be done to make sure we are happy and successful as a family. My wife right now and our son, once he grows up, will share that responsibility with me.

 

How is it then that we can run our careers like that? How many times do we hear someone we know - including ourselves - say "that is not my job". I would argue till the end of time that anything that has the capacity to change the future of the organization that we are a part of, negatively or positively, is everybody's job. I also agree that specialists should be the first choice to accomplish a task (as in you should never ask me to run the finances of our household - I can do it; but not if my wife is available for that task), but in the absence of a specialist, anyone, no matter what level of hierarchy they represent, should be accepting of the responsibility.

Like a lot of people out there, I have always craved for a great title. I wanted something that represented authority and looked cool on a business card. Thankfully our son found me appropriate for a very good position. Here is the design I am currently working with for my new business cards:

 

Lessons for a father - The Silent Treatment

I have always been blessed with good advisors and great conversations. It has been one of the most cherished features of my life. I have never had a dearth of people that I could turn to, and have a meaningful dialog with, on almost any subject. The fact that the current state of our professional success does not hold any importance in the conversations makes it even better.

Lately our son has joined that group. Something in him, perhaps his attentiveness or his listening ability, makes for a very good sounding-board. I talk about my day and he responds (as any good listener would) with the occasional "aah" and "hmm" that are proof enough that words, contexts and responses are being understood and appreciated. There are no complaints of the digressions that these conversations usually suffer from and in return his heavily vowel-ed phrases (or are those just long words?) get the "exactly" and "that is what I said" in reciprocity.

This bi-directional appreciation for being a listener and a responder seems to be leading to (at this age, all I can do is hope for it to happen) a stronger bond between father and son and we both want to continue working towards improving it.

This dependence on clear and concise communication has also created a problem for us.

It just so happens that our son decided to sleep through the night last week. For a long period he did not make a sound. The 3-4 hourly back and forth that we had become so used to gave way to anxiety and guesswork. Both me and my hardly-slept wife kept checking on our son and the audio device to make sure that both were "working as expected". To our utter disbelief there was nothing amiss either with the toddler or the technology.

That led me to take the situation to my work place: Consider a scenario where we do the unthinkable of treating a client as we would like to be treated. Communication flow was clear, concise and cordial. Everyone that should know what they were supposed to do had that information and had all the resources to meet the set goals by following the laid out guidelines. Now consider a change in our behavior. For reason(s) both justifiable and not so, we decide to cut down on the communication. The client may hear from us and even when they did, clear understanding of the present state and future plans was challenging. The client's reaction, in this case, would not be too different from what we went through last week. There will be anxiety. The trust on even the most basic things will start deteriorating, and they would probably lose sleep over something that "was not even an issue". 

It seems pertinent, therefore, in a team that comprises either of stakeholders or implementers or both, that the communication channel does not get blocked. I would go as far as to argue that in times of duress, the communication should be pushed up a notch. Knowing where things are and what everyone is responsible to do almost always leads to success. After all, sleep that lasts all night with an infant in the house, is nothing short of an accomplishment.

Lessons for a father - The Case of the Other

I read an article on LinkedIn a few days ago titled Turning 'Otherness' Into an Asset. The article is written by Marina Gorbis and underlines, quite brilliantly and succinctly, what a person-with-an-accent experiences on a regular basis. Let me add that most of the times there is no malicious intent on the part of the listener. Usually, it is just a very pronounced interest in the origin of the accent and its native culture.

Never, ever, have I felt unequal to the rest of the world because of my Indian origin. I am proud of it. On the other hand, our son has the combined strength (and drawbacks) of two very distinct cultures to deal with. In the next few years once socializing starts (either at school or out of it) some people, in jest or otherwise, might underscore the fact that he represents, partly, a different culture. His test, and ours, would be how the question/ comment is handled.

That led me to think. Has this difference in culture ever made a difference to us professionally?

In an environment that encourages and celebrates diversity the answer can be both a Yes and a No. Yes, because the "outsider's" perspective might be something that people seek. No, because in the worst case scenario the presence of this diversity might not make any difference at all.

In another environment, that looks for obvious traits like gender or religion as the definitive marks of diversity, a cultural difference (frequently, although not always, coupled with an accent) might pose a threat. There have been multiple instances in people's lives where questions like "where are you from", or "where is the accent from" or my personal favorite "you speak good English" have been asked shrouded in ignorance.

Both of us are very lucky to be a part of organizations that celebrate "difference". Not all of us are. As a parent and a leader, all of us want to raise our children in an environment that provides to them the same platform as anyone else. Opportunities, successes and failures should not be greeted by the color of the passport but the person it belongs to.

In a team, and in the world at large, I truly hope that we invite, accept and celebrate thoughts, ideas and diversity...with an accent or without it.

Lessons for a father - Repetitive Actions. Same Result. Good.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results: Albert Einstein.

I have never been a part of an argument that suggested that Einstein was not a smart man. The debate, generally, revolves around the degree of smartness. People, usually, do not find the quote that I used to begin this post hard to accept either. Same action does result in the same outcome (more often than not). The question, therefore, to ask is this: What if the intention is to get the same result?

Consider the following scenario. Our son is usually done for the day by 8 pm or so. There are no exceptions as far as the day of the week is concerned. We try and put him to sleep thereafter. Now, and as all new parents would know, there are a lot of ways of putting a child to sleep. Given the day, some might work and the others, may be even previously successful ones, might not. How easy and efficient life would become if there was one proven technique that would put all children to sleep in a jiffy? All parents would, undoubtedly, subscribe to the technique and follow it till kingdom come.

Just like the time of sleep is becoming a routine for our child, wouldn't it be great if how he slept (technique) and how long he slept for (duration; hopefully lasting more than 10 hours at night) became a habit as well?  Alas though! We are left with our daily permutations and combinations with the hope that one method would work.

All is not lost though. It seems that children, even at that small an age, can be trained to follow a routine. It remains a matter of learning for us and then implementing what we learn (we will keep you posted with our progress). This "learn and implement" act should come easily to us. We do that at work all the time. We learn new ways of solving problems/ reaching goals and try to utilize this newfound knowledge in our professional lives.

In fact, if we think about it, every piece of success usually has a semblance of repetition to it. It is just called by another name - Practice. We practice our craft and get better at it in time. Be it sport, technology, medicine or leadership, we realize quite early what would and would not work. We try and stick to things that work and with intentional repetition get good at it. I would be surprised if the good leaders in the world, no matter what their vocation of choice, did not grind their teams through repetitive tasks.

So here is a theory. Bring a group of people together. Get their buy-in on a vision.Create a definition of success. Start towards the goal as a group of individuals with individual strengths. Break the path to success into smaller goals and keep listing out things that work (group discussions, after hours bonding, openness, diversity being a few examples). Keep working towards the goal but try and repeat things that work as much as possible. Soon enough, if the theory holds, you will have something that we all crave for - a team.