Think and act ‘Beyond The Obvious’

One of the finest qualities of a manager is his ability to 'Not to get emotionally dragged'. The ability of seeing things objectively will highly enhance the management quality in us.

Being in this stage, dealing with 100 different issues at the same time becomes so natural. You will never miss out on reading important mails, on mail reverts, and even attending an evening party while a crucial delivery is happening in parallel on the other end.

Keeping one or more focus in your career is extremely

important to attain this stage. You can decide the number of focus points depending on your multi tasking capability. But it is advised to start with minimum.

It can be things like;

• Achieving you project/unit/company goal in terms of revenue, number of employs
• Achieving client delivery excellence etc
• Achieving your personal goals (But make sure your personal goals are aligned with company goals)
• Achieving a high level of employee satisfaction in your team

Once you have this goal, you are all set to tackle many issues that you will come across on a day to day basis. Having set the background for the topic, let me come back to my topic - 'Think and act beyond the obvious'. Among the many of the issues that you may come across, I am interested in applying the above logic in ‘Team handling' and related issues'.

While handling the team all managers will come invariably deal with - appraisal sessions and related activities.

Going by the guidelines set by the organization without any deviation during appraisal sessions is one way of doing it. It doesn’t require much skill and can be done easily.

But being intelligent and applying logics along with the above will take it one step further and will really help the team perform in future.

At this point you should start 'Think and act beyond the obvious'. There are certain acts which falls in 'beyond the obvious' category - which I would categorize as 'Value adds' while managing. Which means, it doesnt necessarily fall in to the standard guidlines set by the organization.
To make it clear, please see the below chart.

The moment we add more dimensions to the obvious category tasks, the quality of thinking pattern in the team changes. This changes the dynamics of the team. And when team’s thinking pattern is focused and matured, it becomes collective consciousness.

Yes!.. This is the level at which a manager should operate.

It is your capability to make your team think beyond the call of their duty, that makes the difference, ultimately it will lead to a dynamic team.

As a Manager, you should know the depth of your teams capability. If you don’t know where you stand at the moment, you can’t take your ship to the next required port. This is a world that moves on theory of relativity.

The team is as good as the team's manager.

Make a smart move - Work for tomorrow, today will be taken care of

There are certain abilities which comes with your own nature, but there are certain other abilities which need to be cultivated. One of the best that I can think of at the moment is the ability to 'work for tomorrow'

Specifically from the organization perspective all it means is to move our working culture from 'fire fighting mode' and enable us to be the 'builders of tomorrow'.

If an organization is growing, definitely it is because of some people who naturally hold this ability. Imagine if all of us cultivate this.

I my view, ability to understand matter well in advance about specific scenarios and make the move to counter or resolve the probable issues or requirements proactively as much as possible holds the key to cultivating this ability. More over, there is fun in doing your job if you are in this state.

This will also enable us to be in the dream state of always being in performance based leadership.

1. Understand managers vision for the team and client and keep doing things in background in advance so that when the right time comes the data is ready or necessary steps are either already taken to tackle the situation or can be taken with immediate effect.

2. Understand what client would want. Provide solutions at least on paper for exactly what he might want in future. The ability to anticipate the issues/hardships the client might undergo in future, letting them know on a timely and professional manner in advance and to seek suggestions from them to whether you would like to give a solution for that proactively is some thing which will client's confidence to highest levels.

These kind of approach asks for lot of proactive measures which will definitely take time from your normal BAU work. But the moment you see these as investments for future, the dimension of this activity takes new shapes and will encourage

There is a joy in working this way.

Hope this blog will encourage some one other than me also to start taking proactive and timely steps towards redefining client's confidence/satisfaction and there by probability of new/repeat business as much as it is already helping me.

Start defining your's and your client's targets.. You dont need to work for every day targets any more, for, your target's will always be medium to long term. Happy working days :)