Refining Leadership: Attempt 2

Let me recapture the last week's attempt to refine leadership. We said that leadership practice requires two criteria to be met

Part I: Understand large open system ( of which the operating system is a part) to chose the 'mountain' ( that will enable the operating system to influence the open system in a sustained manner)
Part II: Enable the 'large operating system' to scale the mountain so that system elements follow appropriate course/path in a self-sustained manner ( which includes the ability to course-correct in a cohesive manner) irrespective of the changing circumstances( which may include the change of the mountain)

I know the definition is still too long and complicated. We need to achieve the simplicity without sacrificing the salient 'complexity' inherent in the definition. So let us explore the dissonances, three of part I and three of part II.

One, a CEO of a company selling ball bearing, exclusively to automobile industry, has to understand a large open system involved, as well as a CEO working in a General Motors. What is the difference? Intuitively, one can sense the difference. But we need to capture this difference in exact words.

Two, a senior executive heading an important support department like training or finance faces a different set of open systems to decide the mountain, while a senior executive of a SBU facing a customer faces different set of open systems to decide the mountain to scale. What is the difference in complexity? Once again, we can easily sense the difference, but we cannot define it.

Three, many executives lack the skill of first part. They follow 'me-too' strategies which can be replicated easily and therefore cannot be sustained. Or they just believe that 'hard work' alone can help them scale the mountain. In both cases, the leadership has suffered, although few analysts point it out.

Four, the second part assumes that the leader understands the current operating system 'realisitically' to determine what needs to be done. An entrepreneur often fails in understanding his/her realistic limitations as well as his/her team, while an executive often fails to understand the 'power' he or she realistically can muster to carry out the 'milestone actions' to reach the mountain.Does the executive need more 'leadership capability' because of this additional 'skill'? A leader practicing in a social arena needs this skill even more. Is this an important differentiator therefore?

Five, the ability to self-sustain the course to reach the action is often taken as an ability of the leader to develop his/her team which can function without him/her. We have seen many well intentioned initiatives suffer when the 'hero' leader leaves the team without developing his/her team sufficiently. Even best of the teams in the companies suffer from this malady; many small companies remain 'small' because of this lack. Should creating sustainable teams and organisations be an inherent task of a leader? The answer seems to be yes here.

Six, many strategies ( arrived after understanding the open system) are impractical to implement because they require many system elements to converge with the 'goal'. Mostly leaders are completely ignorant of how to achieve this. For instance, very few executives know how 'vision and values' can help many system elements to converge. Many leaders do not spend enough time in strengthening system elements, because 'action' is more preached than 'action plus thought'.

So here we are with six observations. Some are creating convergence, some divergence. But we are definitely few steps ahead of last week. Do you agree or disagree?

Refining Leadership further

Having defined leadership practice as a practice to influence open system in a sustained manner, i have been trying to find chinks in the definition. Is there a reason to refine?

One of my friend argues that we should not define leadership because we may fall in the pit of claiming that there is only 'one' definition of leadership. On the other hand knowledge cannot be built until one defines something 'precisely'. Not defining precisely makes it easier to claim 'anything and everything' as leadership, which is happening right now. So let us take the risk of defining leadership for the sake of creating knowledge.

If Leadership practice is influencing open system in a sustained manner, then influencing a 'close relationship' can also be termed as leadership. However we do not want to term ' managing relationship' as a leadership practice.

In order to arrive at a definition of leadership, let us say add one more criteria: that the system should be influenced by 'multiple' systems. But even a close relationship with spouse is influenced by multiple systems like finance, kids, friends and so on. This criteria is not enough to define leadership.

Let us add another criteria: System should be large. How do we define 'largeness'? Largeness can be defined by physical boundary, such as eco system. Eco systems are difficult to study simply because of their largeness. How does one define 'largeness' in a virtual system? We need to explore the definition of 'largeness'.

Largeness alone does not seem enough to differentiate leadership practice though. A freelance entrepreneur ( such as a doctor working in a clinic, or a photographer working in entertainment industry) also must understand the large system ( of which he is part of) to find how can he influence it in a sustained manner. What differentiates a freelance entrepreneur with an executive who is managing a large organisation?

It is the latter's ability to influence the 'internal open' system to execute the 'strategy' that he has deciphered from understanding the 'external open' system.

In other words, a leadership practice requires both the abilities: one, to understand the 'external open' system well enough to 'decide' what is required to influence, and two, the ability to 'execute' that decision by influencing the 'internal open' system.

'Execution' requires consensus of the direction to take. Imagine what Gandhiji could have gone through to develop a consensus that independence to India should be pursued by following the path of 'non-violence'.

Consensus is also required to create 'enough variety' in the system. 'Variety' is the ability to understand the requisite variables in the environment and respond appropriately. If variety is not enough, each person in an organisation may follow different path, halting the progress of an organisation in a specific direction. If too much time is required to generate the consensus though, the opportunity window may close. How to trade off? This is perhaps a bigger dilemma of a leader.

Let us explore this further in the next write up. Please feel free to share or pick holes in the argument.

Building leadership in companies

Leadership is a much misunderstood concept in corporate world. We are further confused with the different versions.

Trainers add to the confusion by 'labelling' many of their programs as 'leadership development programs'. They go a step further by claiming that leadership can be practiced at any level: junior, middle or senior. This is the Western view of human development: you can do anything if you have the willingness and drive to achieve it. This view creates heroic individuals who may perform heroic acts, but can also create deputees who cannot even think for themselves.

The confusion is fed by reluctance of researchers who refuse to define leadership. Researchers interview and study CEO's and political leaders, decipher common traits and behaviour, and claim to discover the common denominator of a leader without defining leadership. In their quest to define leadership traits, they may even forget that many of the CEO's and leaders they interviewed may have been 'adminstrators'.

Rudolph Giuliani's resurrecation of New York after 9/11 is one such example. Reviving a city/institution after such a tragedy requires extraordinary capabilities to bring together all stakeholders, chalk out an action plan and execute it. But is this leadership?

Is 'removing terrorism' same as 'removing terrorist'? Is countering the practice of anti dowry same as passing the 'anti-dowry' law in the parliament? Is instituting 'secured transport' in a city after 11 pm same as instituting police practices to catch criminals in the city?

If you observe closely the similarity in the second and first act, you will understand the concept of leadership. The first act requires understanding of ' interrelated systems', while the second requires understanding of 'linear systems'. The first act requires a far difficult juxtaposition of different initiatives and weaving amongst different stakeholders, while the second requires a 'one dimension action' against the dissidents. The first act requires dealing with dynamic complexity while the second act is dealing with static complexity.

In short, the first act requires the ability to deal with 'Systems'. ( please do not confuse system with department or process. It is a word which has precise definition, derived from a practice called Systems thinking.)More so it requires an ability to understand and deal with open systems and that too multiple systems at one time.

This is where we have a definition of leadership. Leadership practice is an ability to influence open system(s) in a sustained manner. Sustained manner means not just one time action; but an action which can be sustained after the initial trigger is off.

This definition tells us where leadership cannot be practiced. If, for instance, not a single system is 'kept' open at a junior level in a company, one may not be able to practice leadership at a junior position in that company. You will also realise that one may not be able to 'practice' leadership even at senior positions in certain organisations at certain times. For instance, in difficult times, one may just need to bring someone to 'rectify' the situation, such as Louis Gestener did when he was brought to revive IBM. Louis Gestener also had a wisdom to relinquish the position because he intuitively understood what constitutes leadership.

With a precise definition of leadership, HR can develop leaders and then also provide them the 'practice ground' to practice leadership. HR will know whom to expect to practice leadership and what it needs to do in an orgnisation to help them practice leadership. HR will set realistic expectations. HR will invest more carefully in training and developing the right people, instead of trying to practice it all levels.

Four steps to make learning effective

If learning is considered as a corrective step by an organisation ( based on my last week's definition of learning and development) to fill the gaps in competencies, we can exactly specify what can be done to make the learning effective and efficient. This is one of the benefit of defining vague terms like 'learning and development' in a precise manner. I suggest four steps that can make learning effective in an organisation.

First step is to diagnose the 'gaps' effectively. If, for instance, HR is told to fill the gap in team building, HR should avoid the temptation of conducting the 'one size all' team building program. Instead HR should meet the affected group and find 'the exact reason' that prevents 'team from gelling' together. It should ask tough questions to the affected group: why suddenly the team has got affected, find if new member joining the team has changed the equation, or if the team environment has been spoilt due to 'competition' arising from the impending appraisal time, or if new team member has been promoted as module leader, and so on. Very often HR avoids conducting the diagnosis which spells doom to the learning program right at the start. At the end of step one, the specific objectives of 'learning program' should be clearly spelt out.

Second step is designing the 'training program' to teach team building. Both the trainers and HR have a role to play in this stage. While trainer's role is to add games and ideas to increase the participation, HR's role is to bring context to the training lesson. For instance, a training program on interviewing skills should specifically bring the context of 'whether the interviewee is a fresher or an experienced professional'. By using mix of games, directed learning, and carefully drafted case studies ( studies based on organisational context) the training program can be made both enjoyable and instructing. Often the participatory aspect of design is overstressed at the cost of building requisite competency. The popularity of outbound programs is one of the offshoot of this trend. They are very enjoyable and fun, but fail to build any competency.

Third step is the offshot of the second step. It is designing the feedback form for the participants. Instead of the generic feedback form that asks for the content and quality, the feedback should specifically find if the objective of training program has been achieved or not. The feedback should specifically measure if the 'content and context' of the lessons have been understood by the participant. If necessary, a test may also be designed to ensure that the participants have learnt the requisite content and context.

Fourth step is ensuring that the participants are able to use the content+context in an appropriate situation. For instance, can the participants use the interviewing skills. This is the critical step in which the participants learn to apply the content in a specific situation and either fail or succeed in the application. It is here some support has to be provided either in the form of mentoring or on web. In case of interviewing skill, a company can keep a senior interviewer with the trainee interviewer to find how the trainee was applying the interviewing skill.

All these four steps need to be used to ensure that learning gaps are filled competently. Even if a learning program fails, one knows one has failed. Failure itself becomes a feedback to question everything. I know of a company who questioned the learning objective itself of their program on delegation.

Misunderstanding of data and knowledge can derail training

Training function is now called as Learning and development. It is my hypothesis that the new name is more apt because it balances both the organisational and individual needs.While learning can be organisation-centric, development can be individual- centric. Both are required to create a sustainable learning institution. Both are complementary to each other.

Learning is needed because organisational requirement drives the needs to teach individuals the gaps in technology, managerial or other competencies, while development is needed to align individual's goals to organisational goals. Learning effectiveness is higher if it is corrective while development effectiveness is higher if it is preventive. Organisation can use 'development' goals if it can anticipate issues that will crop up, while it can use learning goals to rectify the situation quickly.

Both learning and development can be problem centric or solution centric depending on the saliency of the situation. Both learning and development however have one feature in common: they are effective when they follow the path of data > information > knowledge.

Very often learning in an organisation stops at data stage, because training is downloaded without any 'context'. For instance a training program in presentation is conducted without bringing the context of inhouse team presentation,client presentation or presentation outside the team. All three contexts require different set of variables to learn. The same is true for programs in communications, delegation, time management and or interviewing skill.

Worse still, organisation provides little support for moving the learning into knowledge stage. If information is 'data with context', knowledge is 'information with action'. For instance, when a presentation is made to a boss/senior management, it is necessary to understand the 'background context' within which the presentation is being made: the expectations of boss, the possible questions of boss, the perception that boss carries about the issue at hand and the 'time' in which that presentation is being asked to made. All this determines whether the presentation will be effective or not. Without bringing the variables involved in 'situational action', one cannot make an effective presentation. This is the last stage of knowledge.

Surprisingly, very few training departments support this stage, hoping that individuals will cross this stage by themselves. They measure effectiveness of training program by asking a feedback from the participants immediately at the end of the program. This feedback, at the best, can capture if the participant have understood the 'contextual data'.

Some training departments capture the participant feedback after a delay of some period, say 3 months. This also fails to capture the real feedback, because participants can never say that 'training program was not useful'. They assume that it is their responsibility to apply the knowledge. When they fail, they wrongly ascribe this to their lack of effort. Training department never knows the effectiveness of their program.

If, however the path of data to knowledge is known and monitored, both types of training ( whether it is learning or development) can be made effective.

Does L&D really develop executives?

Last friday, I saw Marathi play Jawai Mazaa Bhala. It was a play depicting the transition of a relationship between a father and his daughter when she decides to marry. During the transition the father goes through the intense phase of seperation from his child whom he has nurtured while the grown-up daughter shows the rebellious streak of independence that is so reminiscent of a cub fighting for its independence. Both fight the transition. At the end both grow after they go through the fights and disputes on small matters, resolve the anger caused by repressed hurt, and negotiate the altercations sparked by emotional outbursts. The process of transition was captured beautifully by the director. Man goes through various transitions in personal life: from being a single to a married life, from being a husband to a father, from being a child of his/her father to being 'parent' to his/her aged father.

In corporate life, an executive also goes through various transitions: the transition from a performer to a manager, transition from relocation to another geography or to another company and above all the transition to the senior managerial position. None of these transitions are easy, and like the father, no executive has help in negotiating these transitions. I know of an executive who was summarily asked to report to another office ( and that too in another function) in 10 days.

No one can understand the uncertainity through which the executive passes during this transition. He/She cannot even ask for help from anyone because he/she does not understand the feeling of inadequacy that grips him/her. A family may help, out of ignorance,by providing him the much needed respite. If however she is unlucky, the sparks she throws in the family can lead to more unintended consequences. Many careers therefore get stalled if these transitions are not negotiated smartly. Some even get derailed.

Transitions can be facilitated when one can anticipate them. But more importantly, one can also cross utilise the learnings from a transition in a personal life to enable transition in corporate life. But surprisingly, Learning and development (L&D) does not cross utilise the learnings and neither do they help their executives in enabling these transitions. L&D is supposed to be responsible for developing their executives, but fails to utilise this crucial phase. L&D surprisingly ignores this transition phase completely. If your company's L&D is however helping you, you are a lucky one. Most others are simply unlucky.

The making of vision

In the Times of India of 16 September 2007, I read a column of Swaminathan Aiyar about the reforms in Bollywood. This is a brilliant example of how visions are created or how visions are executed.

Imagine someone in Bollywood having a vision of making 'successful serious cinema' 15 years back, say in 1992. I am talking about making movies like Khosla ka Ghosla or Life in metro. It would have looked like a dream of an exuberant impractical youngster who does not know anything of cinema industry. A empathatic viewer would have even lauded the ability of 'youth' to do the impossible. But a systems thinker would have told us that such a dream required too many things to be done which are way beyond the control of any person.

For instance, it would have needed the deregulation of Indian TV which brought in many actors, directors and producers in the forefront: a critical mass of good youngsters who are willing to experiment and have nothing to lose. It would have required liberalisation in capital markets for the capital market to provide finance to new ideas. It would have required deregulation of cinema halls which allowed 3 lakhs of Hindi speaking population in Karnataka to afford a Hindi movie or 1.21 lakhs population of Bengali in Delhi to enjoy the movie in Bengali. Each of these three different huge systems were required to make Khosla ka Ghosla possible.

Which youth can make such a vision happen? As you would have realised, even money or resources alone, howesover large, cannot influence such large systems. Any amount of hard work, commitment, dedication cannot turn a vision into a reality. When we see some of the individuals achieving their visions over a long time, we could applaud their ability to patiently wait for the 'systems to change', and perhaps bear the hardship for a long time. We could call them committed, hardworking, and passionate individuals. But are these individuals visionaries?

A visionary individual, according to systems thinker, is an individual who can see the interplay of these large systems and can 'plant' the saplings in these systems, and watch them grow. Based on their growth or withering, he then plans the course so as to convert the vision into reality. He has the ability to know which systems require what leverage and then muster the resources to influence those leverage points. Alternatively, he should forsee the choke points in a system and initiate efforts to de-bottleneck them. And above all, like a farmer, he has to wait for the right time to do the right thing and hope things will coalesce to convert the sapling into a fullfledged tree which can bear fruits.

Are MDP programs a pipe dream?

I was going through a design of a MDP program for Project managers. After going through the entire design of a 4-day program, I understood that we want project managers to 'bat like Tendulkar, bowl like Kapil Dev, field like Yuvraj, and lead like Ganguly'.

When I verified this 'design' of MDP with my trainer friends, I was surprised to note that all MDP programs are designed on this premise: the premise that we want our managers to be all rounders. We want all rounders. Although we know that the world is full of specialist, we still dream in having our managers as 'all rounders'.We want either square pegs or round holes.

When I pondered over our requirement of manager, I realised that Managers are also unique human beings; each peculiar in his/her style, responses, strengths and blind spots. Each of the manager is different; but when we want to develop our managers we want them to be 'similar'. And precisely because they cannot be homogenous, they demand the most impossible from the MDP program participant: change and twist himself or herself into a role model.

Instead, if we concentrate in enabling our participant managers retain their uniqueness and practice 'managership', we might be better off. We make two mistakes. We believe that all managers are moulded into one 'ideal'. However this is not true. Like a cricket team requires different kind of leader at different times, we also need different kind of managers in our organisations for different teams as well as different times. Then we make the second mistake: twisting every person into the 'ideal' manager. Both objectives are difficult to attain. When will companies learn to have realistic expectations from their managers?

Career management and HR

I gave a talk on my book 'The five myths of career building' ( published by Macmillan) to NIPM, Mumbai last month. The audience was HR managers and executives.

I had planned to cover at least 3 myths of career building during my two hour talk. However, I could cover only one myth: the myth of how employees use goals to build their career. Many participants shared their experiences of how goals mislead more than direct, how they are retrofitted to the past actions, how seemingly 'goalless' actions lead to a channelised path which later may be explained as well directed, how goals are meant for uni-skilled individuals, and how multi-skilled individuals in corporate world find this strategy of goal setting ineffective to build their careers. At the end the participants decided to have a one full day long talk at a future date, instead of hurrying up the 'talk'.

The host at the end summed up career managment's relevance to HR in a very insightful manner. He said " Career management is all about sustaining performance over a long period of life. And if HR is all about enabling employees generating and sustaining performance, how can HR not get involved in career management?"


Career management, as I have discovered, is about managing the interactions between work-life, personal- life and people-life. An organisation therefore has to 'enable' employees to manage their work-life while also helping employees negotiate the intended and unintended impact of people-life and personal-life on their work-life.

In earlier days, the organisational life and personal life had clear cut boundary. Today that boundary has got blurred due to many changes: advent of email and mobile means that even a holiday of employee can be intruded under emergency situations, 'globalised working' of 24/7 at different timings mean that one has to talk with a client at 11 pm IST, women working alongside with men means that lot of personal chores have to be finished during office hours and so on. All our lives are collapsing into one 'whole' , and therefore even career management is about managing the 'whole'.

Should CEO's salary be capped?

The Prime Minister's call to India Inc to trim salaries of top executives has got thumbs down from industry, even as CPM celebrated it as a validation of its critique of Manmohanomics.

Salaries are a product of demand dynamics, said Sunil Bharti Mittal, the just-elected head of the corporate club, the Confederation of Indian Industries. A head hunter pointed out that CEO compensation in India is nowhere the global standards. If the median pay of US CEO’s is $6.5 million per annum, Indian CEO’s only earn about $0.5 million per annum. Head hunters say that it is a seller’s market.


This brings us to the real question. “Is there a skill shortage at the top that is influencing the price of CEO?” Mittal categorically claims that there is shortage of skill at the top level and more specifically in the service sector, which is why pay packages of senior executives are high.

But if you look at an organization with an eye of an HR researcher, who is from organisational behavior lineage, this claim may not be justifiable.


If you look at an organization from inside, it comprises of hard architecture ( 3 S -strategy, structure and systems) and soft architecture ( that enables people to coordinate, prioritise, and decide). As hard architecture alone cannot alone respond to internal and external demands, organization needs soft architecture to absorb the ‘residual variety’.

If the ‘residual variety’ to be absorbed is high, then you require more integrators (euphemistically called as managers whom we hire at middle level, senior level and very senior level) to absorb this variety. It is senior level’s responsibility to design this hard architecture or adopt/adapt the right one.

If they do not adapt/adopt right architecture, then the entire ‘residual variety’ has to be absorbed by the soft architecture. For instance, take the example of Japanese. They ‘simplified’ the ‘complex’ manufacturing system (the Toyota way) so well that they could afford a flat ‘managerial structure’, because the entire variety was absorbed by the ‘first level’.

On the other hand, senior management in India (who are brought up on the staple diet of western management principles) do not spend time on designing the right hard architecture of the organization. Instead, they are more than likely to ‘pass’ the entire burden of ‘residual variety management’ to the soft architecture. They hire more middle managers to absorb the residual variety who essentially become ‘highly paid coordinators’. They work ‘overtime’ to sit in meetings to tie loose ends. They have to say ‘yes’ to all decisions, because people below do not have the ‘bandwidth’ to take those decisions. And naturally, because they work so long and so hard, often at the cost of their personal time, they justify higher salaries. Because they themselves are senior management, there is no one who can ‘challenge’ this logic.

This virtuous or vicious cycle (depending on which side you belong) is then nurtured and fostered by everyone. Juniors pass up all the decisions to the higher ups assuming that they do not know enough. Seniors keep on taking those decisions to justify their higher salaries. As juniors do not develop because of ‘passing up’, seniors feel even more righteous in not allowing juniors to take those decisions.

Board and shareholders want one head to be responsible. They therefore want ‘accountability’. This further nurtures centralised decision taking. New Systems are installed to establish this control. For instance, instead of ERP enabling front line people to absorb the residual variety, senior people use ERP to develop dashboards to get even more control over their first level. The cycle continues to be nurtured.

If you closely watch these top-heavy organizations you will find other symptoms: hero worshipping fosters high handed behavior of few, front line people feel more and more disempowered thus making the organization prone to slow reaction time, band-aid solutions that allow seniors to save face or produce immediate results are in demand, serious long term initiatives are run by mavericks in small divisions far away from central office, politics is nurtured because some decisions are bound to look ‘partisan’ even when taken in the best interest of the organisation.

When this soft architecture still cannot absorb the residual variety, the organization loses slowly and surely, like what is happening in the auto industry, or is taken over by another organization. Because everyone in the industry is facing the same ‘issues’, organization does not see any solution to this problem. When Jim Collins in his research of Good to great found that only 12 organisations managed to perform well over 75 years, and the leaders of these organizations were not the usual types, he found it intriguing. An organisational researcher would not be too surprised.

Surprisingly, designing hard architecture is not supposed to be a job of a leader even today. We love to have leaders who are flamboyant speakers who look great. We believe that leaders are those who take ‘quick action’ instead of deliberating on it. When our seniors take ten hours to meet us for ten minutes for an important meeting, we justify that they are very busy. When our seniors lack of timely decision delays our project, we take the blame on ourselves. Unwittingly, we foster this vicious cycle. This allows us to blame ministers and others for the ills and fortunes of our industry.

And if we belong to HR, whose job is to bring this to the light of all, we blame that HR is not getting its due respect.

How understanding career-development will be useful for organisations

After the book release of 'The five great myths of career building', one of the friend asked me how this will be useful for organisations.

One of the immediate area of application seems to be leadership development. The concept of leadership is so 'loosely' used in management research and books, and that too by well known researchers, that one is surprised.

If you look at a typical organisation, you will realise that individuals play two distinct functions. One is that of a doer ( programmer, salesman, accountant) and another is an integrator. Integrator integrates the doers to produce a 'marketable' and sustainable output. At the worst, an integrator can be a coordinator, at the best he is , what we all like to believe, a leader. The choice is not completely in the hands of the 'person' who is performing that function; it is also the design of the job position. If a job position is designed like a coordinator, a person will have very little lattitude to become a 'leader'.

But unmindful to this, organisations have 'leadership development programmes' for all managers. Even though some managers cannot perform a bigger role than coordinators, the organisation expects them to be a leader. Every manager is put through the leadership development program, and then expected to display 'leadership' qualities. When most of them cannot do so, they are blamed for not taking the initiative, for not thinking out of the box. Managers also stop taking 'leadership development' seriously. They attend these programs only when they are at exotic locations or when they are at Harvard.

Managers are expected to learn from these programs and become leaders. Some companies become even more aggressive. They run competency tests, identify the gaps to become a leader, and conduct programs to fill the gaps. Although we know that no 'leader' is a perfect person, every manager is 'moulded' to become a perfect leader. Some twist themselves to change, some just show that they have learnt. No one can question the wisdom of a company which is spending huge amounts on 'developing them'.

One way to come out of the this conundrum is to understand human development, or what i call career development. Every individual has a different trajectory of development. An individual may or may not be able to develop the required leadership qualities in a given timeline. Luckily, organisations also require 'leadership' qualities on a wide range of spectrum, because each job position of manager is different. Organistions can therefore easily assimilate them.

Training managers need to focus on operational development

Training managers, not so surprisingly, focus on developing the leaders ( which are supposed to be managers), while ignoring the development of their operational staff who actually do the work.

I guess that this 'studied ignorance' could be happening out of two reasons; one accidental and another deliberate. Accidental reason is that developing operational executives is boring because they only 'do' the work. That is 'content download' and can be delegated to the juniors. On the other hand, leadership development is interesting and involves direct interaction with superiors and managers who ultimately 'navigate' the company.

Therefore, in a learning and development plan of an organisation, you will not find any mention of how operational executives should be developed.

On the other hand, operational staff are the staff who do the actual work, whether the work is of programming, selling, or support work like quality control. Because they require expertise to do their work, development of this expertise is a constant 'challenge' for them. More so, when the expertise sharing is not easy.

Imagine a new batsman like Wasim Jaffer entering in a cricket team. Do you think other established batsman help him/share their experience and wisdom? In 4 out of 5 cases, the answer is no. Manoj Prabhakar has mentioned in his interviews his difficulty in learning from seniors when he entered the team. Experts, by their nature, face a constant dilemma: Am i competing or collaborating? Without resolving this paradox, no sharing of expertise can happen.

I have seen organisations have excellent salesman and non-performing salesman. Do excellent saleman share their experience with non performing salesman? You know the answer. Some companies 'actively' evoke competition, while some do it 'subtely'. Every company talks about the team work, but no one shares their pearls of wisdom so easily. Mckinsey, a company of management consultants, also faced this dilemma. And a software company also faces this dilemma.

Until one carefully answers the difficult questions, and resolves them through policies, direct and indirect incentives, a company cannot develop the expertise of operational staff on which the 'work' essentially depends.

This is just the first challenge in developing the operational capability of an organisation. There are others. Did you encounter any?