Is Ego necessary for managers?

Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, in a recent interview, said when he visited Poona for a music concert, ” This is a creative field. One must have a huge ego to stick to their kind of music.”

Ego is a state of mind which claims " I am alone right". This state is needed when you are engaged in areas which work on subjective evaluation. Artists in music, painting and entertainment are evaluated subjectively. Therefore, in order to stick to one's type of music, it is necessary to have this ego so that one can continue on its path despite other's adverse opinions and even market 'feedback'. The ego is necessary for these artists because evaluation is based on sensorial discrimination, and therefore subjective. That is why you will find popular music as varied as Michael Jackson and Ravi Shankar. Infact, having ego is dire need of artists.

Ego is also needed when one is moving into unventured territory. For instance, cutting edge entrepreneurs also need Ego as they venture in unknown territory. Imagine the conviction that Larry Page or Sergie Brin of Google needed to work on the idea of search engine, when the market of search engine was dominated by Portal kings like Yahoo. This conviction has to be supported by "EGO". Without ego, these entrepreneurs may quickly change their direction when they face the first gust of wind!

In corporate world though, the dynamics is different. 'I am right' is often a wrong receipe because 'collaboration' among different specialists is more important to get the work done. As 'ends' are more important than 'means', management is often guided by what is more appropriate in a given situation than what is right in a situation. Due to the corporate dynamics, Ego is likely to result into grandiose and unrealistic actions. Confidence may also border towards arrogance causing reportees to shut of their mouth resulting into lack of critical inputs on the table. State of ego is therefore generally more harmful in corporate world. One can however think of some situations in corporate world, where it may be a necessity, although such situations could be very small in number.

Leadership at Infosys

I read a book 'Leadership at Infosys' which has recently arrived in the market. I expected usual mix of homilies, grandiose intentions and pat on the back claims. I was surprised.

The book talks about the different dimensions of leadership that is followed at Infosys to develop internal leaders. Process followed to identify and develop leaders is naturally not elaborated in any specific details, but the book scores high on the quality of take-away that emerges from the different dimensions such as content leadership ( which is thought leadership), entrepreneurial leadership, Talent leadership and others.

In every conceivable domain of leadership, there is a lot of material written in books, papers and research directions. Everything looks right from a particular angle; it requires rigorous thought and courage to arrive at meaningful actionable conclusions. Thought is needed to separate good intentions from useful one's, nice looking ideas from practical ideas to arrive at a specific 'stand'. Courage is to take that 'stand' and use it to commit to Action. This is where most falter. Infosys has managed to cross both these hurdles.

For instance, its view on Empowerment is both practical and insightful. It's stand on Employee engagement is bold. Its practice of content leadership is different and thoughtful. Irrespective of whether the view is agreeable or not ( for instance, content leadership is not well defined), authors have not flinched from taking a firm view. That is very refreshing and surprising.

Being a student of leadership process development, i have just one objection, so to say. It has not defined leadership clearly. One is therefore not clear what it means by leadership behaviour versus managership behaviour, just to take an example. Either this is a purposeful omission , or this could be a oversight that has emerged because of nature of ownership. For a company ( not a researcher), it is safer to avoid controversy that will invite too much of attention.