Exhibiting Leadership in Connected World!

Co-location of teams is always an important part of executing IT projects. Being Agile, this is one of the adopted principles as well.

It does help to have all team members located at a common place. It makes discussions easier, enables quicker decision making and executing projects smoothly. This also helps in developing team atmosphere.

However, the world that we live in today, is more scattered, and it requires connecting various locations across geographies which go beyond oceans. Managers and leaders get to manage teams spread across. That presents a challenge in itself.

The reasons for such a diverse presence are different. Cost obviously is the reason, but getting the right talent pool is important too. Most of the IT service organizations have teams split between Onshore, and multiple offshore development centers. The most complex set-ups specifically are product development shops, who do niche development work. They set-up offices across the globe to attract best talents. They will have multiple offices across the world, and each team will have team members spanning across different set-ups. E.g. it may consists of few developers from New York, Nashville and Mumbai. Testers could be from Chennai. Business Analysts could be from Japan. This is not always a forced choice, but many a times by design.

In such a set-up, a manager appointed for such a group will be based out of one location, so how does he manage such a scattered team. He will have different challenges to deal with, scarce choices to make but with the same set of goals/ objectives as that of any collocated teams i.e. to execute the project successfully.

Any such leader needs to be always aware of what are they missing because their teams are not co-located:

1. Unable to have adhoc connect and meetings with individuals and teams
2. Ability to empathize with people in person 
3. Unable to quickly understand sensitivities, not sure of likes and dislikes of team members
4. Team Celebrations, Off hour connects between team members

Below is some of the guidance steps, one must take in such set-ups:

Always Plan Ahead for Discussions
Set expectations upfront for project meetings. Define a clear-cut guidance on how to set-up, conduct and follow-up on these meetings.

Plan for your discussions much ahead. Think through what requires to be communicated, how it needs to be communicated.
Particularly for remote teams, it is important that the core message is re-iterated so that it is understood uniformly across all of the teams. It may be a good idea to have at least one member at each location to repeat the message.

Frequent Feedback Discussions
This is an extremely important item in today's world. Setting clear expectations for each role and each individual in the team; tracking it more often and then providing periodic feedback to the team to allow them to course-correct.
In a connected world, this becomes extremely important. It is easier for the team to mis-understand the ask, and get non-aligned to the core goals.
One needs to prepare well on what feedback to share, and how it needs to be shared. Understand the nuances of language that you will use, and what aspects will be interpreted in what way.
While practicing, I always suggest anyone to play a dual role - one himself, and the other one who will receive the feedback.

Video Connectivity
This is a must item in today's connected world. This helps add personal touch in absence of in person meetings.
Educate your teams to leverage vidoe calls and video meetings more often.

While the teams are set to get more and more scattered as the organizations continue to grow; it is important to improve the infrastructure, frequent coordination, etc.

People have voted! Now the wait for the D-day!

I am publishing this a day earlier. Election campaign is finally over in India. The entire world can only guess the size and scale. No part in the world could match the democracy exercise that India just went through. It is the largest franchise in the world. And, India, and the people of India celebrate it to the core.

This election season was as intense as it can get. Political parties and candidates have put in all their might, their energy and soul into it. They know, if they lose this time; the wait is for 5 years. So, 'make it happen, and happen this time' is the mantra that they are following. "Win at any cost" is true, if you follow the entire discourse. The sloganeering, and language has gotten only cruel, abuses have become common, lies or twisting of facts are thrown as weapons. I cannot say that the political discourse has gotten low or lowest this time, as I have seen this happening every election past many-many years. The only difference this time is real-time news coverage, and spread of the coverage; that makes this years and future elections very different from the prior ones.

In this process, media and social media is being used, misused and abused. They are being played into by each side. Media thinks that Information is being thrown and they think they are lapping into it. But is is reverse. They are made to lap onto it. You could sense optimism and pessimism in every news in how it is covered.

Anyways as the current prime minister has said, that the biggest festival of democracy is about to conclude. All the political pundits have started putting their predictions, math and statistics and formulating the various possibilities. Obviously NDA is claiming a clear majority and the other two groups (UPA and Third front) are claiming that they will secure the maximum no of seats. The intellectuals and news outlets are clearly indicating a major lead for NDA; however still short of half way mark. I predict it to be plus-minus 25 seats for BJP from the half-way mark; and NDA to secure the full majority by themselves.

Let us wait for the May 23; when the results will be out. Let the people come out as triumphant. Long live the democracy.

Let Voter do the talking!

So, the election season is on. 

There is a euphoria all across. It is all about whether, PM Modi will get a second term, or he will be replaced. Mind me, the replacement is possible in two of the three situations.  NDA does not get enough seats to form the government, and opposition is at the forefront. NDA gets enough support within and outside the current umbrella, but Modi as PM is not acceptable to the supporting parties  who are in a position to call the shots.

On campaign trail, PM Modi and his lieutenants are trying very hard to communicate to the masses on the achievements of the government. Also, tilting the balance on their favor using the other non-development factors such as security, sentiments of majority and so on.

Opposition is fragmented, have done the ties as much as possible. However, anyone can guess the situation post-election on the potential tie-ups. With respect to messaging, there is nothing new. There are lies, half baked truths, big bang promises and Modi bashing.

There is a role, Media is playing as well. They are running their own campaigns. Almost all of them clearly have some political affiliations. They are presenting the perspectives of their political bosses. It is the same topic, you would hear two different perspectives on two different channels. You will be convinced with one side if you do not hear the same story on the other channel. 

Let Voter decide, is what you would hear on most occasions. Without being sarcastic, I just wished that each one of the voters were intelligent. I do not mean that they need to be academically qualified, but there is a need of education on elections and voting to masses. Every voter needs to vote based on their needs, the priorities; and not based on caste, religious preferences, or influence or favoritism.

But that's India. We have progressed in 70 years; and improved every election. More to come in the coming years. Democracy is here to stay.