It is one of those major conferences that everyone goes to, in
order to post on social media and show off their networking capabilities. The
Corporate Guru, Vysampayna is going to be present to deliver his
experiences in working with the epic story teller, Ved Wise. Zoom links are being tested, mic
and podium are being adjusted, people are already yawning and looking to get
their next coffee.
A rather chirpy organizer of the conference, Jay M Jay
comes in and ushers in the great Vysampayna for the epic story telling.
"It is my pleasure to welcome you all to this amazing once in
a lifetime conference. Please welcome, The Corporate Guru, Vysampayna." Applause Applause.
Vysampayna takes the stage.
Vy: “Such a kick to be here. By the way, Jay, we should all pledge towards better sustainability and environment friendly practices. I noticed that the welcome drinks are given in plastic glasses . Let us be conscious about being more sustainable in the next chapter of this conference. We have been a culture where sustainability has always been important along with story telling. Long time ago, there was a get together by a king where he set out to kill all snakes of the world, just to satisfy his ego, but then we had good storytellers then too who spoke to him about the importance of sustainability initiatives. They spoke about mythical powers of snakes to affect fertility and general health and prosperity. It was one of the most effective nudges towards being an environment friendly population, albeit based on fear."
“ I am going to tell you a story that my mentor documented from his experience. His documentation techniques were rather unconventional. A strange looking old school gentleman, Ganesh, was appointed for taking down notes and was engaged in a competition with Ved to see if Ganesh could type faster than Ved could story-tell. To be honest, if you ask me, they should have just used chatGPT to summarize."
(In the audience, someone whispers to his friend
in the next seat “Hey I just read the other day in the art of storytelling that
you are not supposed to start a story by saying “I am gonna tell you a story”.
Is it not true anymore?")
Back to Vysampayna:
“ This is a story about Corporate Culture. This is a story which talks about the spectrum between right and wrong and the code of conduct that prevails in corporates of all times.
This happenned long ago in the Grand Bharat Consulting org when there was a major leadership crisis. An all-powerful corporate that
didn’t have a rightful owner stepped up! The only eligible candidate, Dev Brat had a contractual obligation due to which he could not be the CEO nor identify
heirs to the CEO chair. All he could do was support the CEO who decides to run
the company. He was a board member whose vote was a yes for whoever was the
CEO. My mentor Ved Wise was
brought in to consult and literally create the next layer of leaders for the
corporate. He seeded the leadership team and left them with their mentors for their
growth plans such that when the time was right, the best man (or woman or
other) could run the company."
"What the company lacked in leadership, it made up for in drama."
"When the identified leaders grew, there was a conflict as to who should
become the CEO. Out of the chosen three, the first one , Dhrit R was literally blind in his
hunger for power. He put himself over others. The second one, Pandu was
qualified but he had other aspirations in life- of a more relaxed lifestyle. The
third, Vidur who was the most rational of all had not completed the CEO
certification which was mandatory those days to be the CEO. Since he was the
most sensible he came up with a competency matrix and proposed that Pandu
should be the CEO. (The competency matrix had an entry for behavioral assessment
which indicated how blind/ignorant a person was towards servant leadership and Dhrit
failed here. Dhrit never stopped complaining about Vidur’s anti
diversity stance using this example) Thus Pandu became the CEO and the rest
is history”
Vy continues: “As I continue this story, you will see numerous examples of leaders who stay at the abstract layer vs leaders who actually face hard choices and take action. You will see examples of thriving in ambiguity and unpredictability . You will see examples of good leaders and advisors/sponsors/mentors who are important in keeping the leaders grounded, focused and detached."
“Back to the story - While there were these leadership changes, the company itself was impacted with no growth. At one point, things became fairly stable and Pandu was able to make some progress in the sales and revenue and expand business, Dhrit was angry about losing his chair and didn’t waste any time, he mentored 100 next in line with Duryodhan as their leader. Pandu on the other hand delegated the next level creation entirely to his partner who brought in special coaches for creating the leaders with Yudhi S as the first in line in terms of seniority among all the candidates.
Pandu started questioning his purpose and since he
could not find his Why, he announced his retirement to pursue a spiritual way
of life and stepped down as CEO and vanished into thin air. The automatic
choice for the CEO position was Dhrit until the next level became ready.
All the next level candidates were sent to residential leadership training under the CTO and Engineering head, Dron Achari. Dron wanted everyone in the organization to be fullstack, but they chose their skill and chose to deep dive. Front end developers didn’t want to train on back-end technologies and neither wanted to gain the skill set of QA automation. Everyone wanted Devops.
While this debate between generalization and specialization was going on in the
entire organization, the Engineering
head was quite impressed with a candidate, Arjun, who demonstrated laser
sharp focus towards his goals. A true successor as the CTO, he thought. One of
the basic tenets he believed in for any transformation that was consulted for, was
Security and other Non functional requirements. Rumour has it that he stripped an extremely competent engineering
genius, EK Lavya of his talent and certifications and possible CTO next level
status with an IP infringement suit since his skills were acquired through remote
learning without the actual knowledge and permissions of the trainer and
therefore his certifications were fake. ( EK Lavya’s talent was unmatched and would have given Arjun a
run for his money . It is still yet to be determined if it was true dedication
to the tenet or to his favorite candidate that prompted this action from Dron)"
To Be Continued...
Next Eposide: https://deepthig.blogspot.com/2023/11/corporate-kshetra-episode-2.html
Comments