Nomdeplume

"We need to some how finish it today and deliver”. This is the rhetoric usually heard from the tribe called Indian managers. It might be wise to ponder over the fact that whether we have advanced from the state of affairs when the British trained us to be obedient gumasthas. Seems like earlier we were clerks for British and now for their protestant counterparts in the new world, US of A. This plight is in spite of the fact that we have highly reputed management institutes, which churn out clones of the management tribe. The only discernable progress seems to be that instead of Mr Last names we have started calling people by their first names.
A brief look at our history also seems to suggest that we are not very good at the business of management. Our history seems to showcase only autocratic style of management, which was so the case some time before the advent of MNC's in India, where by, this autocratic core has been covered by a thin creamy layer of pseudo democratic style of management. This may be evident from the fact that how many managers are ready to take negative comments thrown over their face and react upon them objectively or how many managers are ready to take no for answer or for that matter, how may associate/sub-ordinate is ready to say an objective comment regarding the wrong policy / decision of his/her manger with out jeopardising his/her career. Though there might be factor or other business dynamics that force managers into decisions, but a case where a manager puts the facts down and convinces the client on the reason for the slippage of a deliverable is few and far between. The approach is always defensive and the pressure is absorbed and driven right down to the work force, which lose their sleep and health to meet unreasonable deadlines. Most of the time managers seem to be reactive and not proactive, even when they are proactive they seem to be way of the mark. There are two sub-sect in the Indian manager tribe, one the pragmatic type and the other the utopian one. The pragmatic ones are the ones who know that the present situation is here to stay and they optimise their priorities and achieve them. (You should be lucky enough to find one to work with). The utopian ones are those who though understand the situation try to make all the ends meet, finally ending in a marsh of nothing.
If you look carefully, the people who get elevated to the tribe are essentially highly skilled ones or ones who are impressive with their oratory skills rather than their execution ones. In either of the case, the expectation of the manager is very high, in the case of the former, it because he feels that everything can be achieved easily and he feels that everybody is on par with him. In the case of the latter, it’s usually because he commits to unreasonable deadlines due to the lack of execution knowledge.
There no panacea that seems visible at any strike-able distance. Probably the answer could be found as we gain experience and as we get more professional in our work and attitude. The need is to muster the courage to call a spade a spade. Lets all be just and fear not.

(Being at the doors steps to managerial levels let me hope that I am also not usurped into the ways of the Indian manager tribe and hope I will be able to hold on to my own. God bless.)