This document discusses running an agile Fortune 500 company and effective leadership approaches. It argues that leaders should analyze flaws in trying to convince and influence employees, and instead focus on rational discussion. Effective leadership involves asking questions, explaining options with rationale, and allowing consensus to emerge from critical thinking. Leaders do not and cannot truly convince people, but can clarify and explain to facilitate rational decision making. The focus should be on critical and rational discussion over tactics like persuasion.

1. *
“Running an Agile Fortune 500 Company”
Aditya Yadav, aditya.yadav@gmail.com
in.linkedin.com/in/adityayadav76

2. * A Typical Global Company
* Fortune 500/1000
* 200 Divisions
* 40 Countries
* 25000 Employees
*

3. *
@ Acme Inc.

4. * Original Question “How do we persuade
convince and influence employees? And how do
we train our Leaders to do so?”
* The Correct Question - “Lets analyze the flaws
with that approach and if required redefine
leadership.”
*

5. *
And The Philosophy Behind The Answer

6. * BJ Fogg @ Stanford - Behavior Designers can use the triad of (i) Motivation, (ii)
Ability, and (iii) Triggers to get users to perform behaviors that Designers seek
* The General Concept of Leadership in the World Today - Effective leaders know how to
encourage others to willingly, even enthusiastically, support their ideas and initiatives.
No matter what your job responsibilities may be, the ability to establish rapport
quickly, communicate your ideas successfully, and convince others to have confidence
in you will decrease your frustration and enable you to achieve your goals.
* Daniel Pink identifies the three personal qualities and four essential skills necessary to
move people.
* In the past, society understood a “salesperson” as a coin-operated, automatic
employee, but today, salespeople are in the business of persuading, influencing, and
convincing.
* Today, selling isn’t about agitating, irritating, pocket-picking, or smooth-talking. It’s
about persistence, empathy, and sharing of information.
* Effective salespeople are good at assuming someone else’s perspective
(Attunement), staying afloat despite plenty of rejection (Buoyancy), and helping others
to see situations in new ways or identifying problems they didn’t realize they had
(Clarity).
*

7. * Information Asymmetry
* Everyone else is a Lab Rat
* You know best and hence have to convince, influence and
persuade others into doing what you think is right and
needed to be done
* And finally the assumption that “You can convince people”
* The reality – nobody has convinced anyone ever
* Look around yourself-
countries, parliaments, politicians, office, employees, collea
gues, family, relationships & partners. Tell me if that
statement is wrong
* If someone (thinks he has and ) claims to have convinced his
girlfriend about something, let me know how it turned out ;-)
*

8. * A Customer : Could be any random person you
meet, you don’t know his background, where he is
coming from, how he thinks, what he knows, and
whether or not he will buy your product/service.
* Employee : Lets just say - You wouldn’t hire your
customers as defined above as your employees
normally.
*** This presentation is not about Sales (or
Customers), its about Leadership (and Employees)
*

9. * Everyone in the world is becoming increasingly rational
* If your employees are not (reasonably) rational I’m not sure why you hired them!!!
* Information is increasingly symmetric. Most of the times others know more than you can imagine
* Leaders are away from ground realities. Your plumbers, architects, welders, engineers and managers
know better
* Put 10 MIT, Harvard and Yale grads in a locked room to decide on an issue and come back after a
fortnight. There will still be no consensus.
* Everyone thinks they are smarter than the other person and everyone else in the world
* You or no Leader can ever convince anyone.
* Irrational people can give in to you in a transactional setting, temporally and you “could” make lots of
money
* You can force, coerce, con people but you cannot convince anyone
* The only exception is when you have Rational & Critical Thinkers on all sides and then your best bet is
to explain and not attempt to convince, influence or persuade them (The latter is for irrational people –
where if you can’t convince them by reason/explanation convince them by tact –J )
*** Lets not talk about Manufacturing, lets talk about Knowledge work i.e. Gold Collar workers. They know
so much about so many things that everytime you try a tactic with them they are smiling ( and probably
complying) and inside their head thinking “my boss is a moron, I love my job!”
*

10. * R’ber we are not talking about dealing with some unknown customers. We are talking about
employees
* An Organizational Leader
* Is a Critical Thinker
* A Rational Decision Maker
* He asks Questions
* He explains and suggests Options and Perspectives with rationale
* He sets a Broad Direction
* Decisions and Consensus Emerge as Rational Critical Thinking Prevails
* If it doesn’t a leader can sometimes take a calculated risk and act like a Command & Control
manager and veto and decide and ask everyone to comply for the purpose of the bigger goal. And
why shouldn’t he do that?
* That’s leadership.
*

11. * Leadership is nothing of that mentioned in the “So Far” slide
* Leaders don’t try tactics like convincing … , leaders explain. Rational thinkers converge and convince
themselves out of their (mostly) own free will.
* If people are irrational Leaders have to resort to personal skills, charisma, appearance, charm, and
things like convincing, influencing and persuading. If a majority of people are rational then all you
have to do is explain things, clarify, arrive at a consensus and collectively set a direction
* Usually forcing decisions as a last resort even, is mostly not a problem if enough has been explained
earlier. Most problems with managers are when they thrust unilateral decisions on everyone everytime
without any rational or reasonable or enough explanation preceding them.
* Leaders who are incapable of giving a broad rational explanation resort to going around
convincing, influencing and persuading people. The latter is an oxymoron. And if they are doing that
them something is seriously wrong that needs to be fixed.
* Refer: To my decks on Leadership Mindset & Leadership Decisions
*** If you don’t understand where I’m coming from. I will make it explicit. I’m trying to say Leadership is
mostly a Science and I’m trying to minimize the attribution to art or genetics or attributes like charm in
leadership. I’m saying leadership can be learnt and taught. I’m emphasizing the need for Critical and
Rational Thinking. I’m sometimes questioning the kind of people that are hired. I’m also saying that one
can be from an ivy league college but that doesn’t imply they are Critical and Rational thinkers.
*

12. * Now coming back to Customers and Sales. This presentation would be
incomplete without discussing that. So here’s the Closure!!!
* B2C Customers are becoming increasingly rational, predictable and
their behavior can be modelled
* B2B Customers have always been reasonably rational
* Rule: when you explain (maybe simplify) the options and the
customer makes the choice. The customer experience in the
relationship is about 4x-5x more than when you Sell (!!!) [Legacy
definition of selling]
* Conclusion: Don’t ever try to convince, influence or persuade. Rather
explain, help understand, educate and leave it that. That maximizes
(i) Profitable Customer Relationships (ii) Customer Experience (iii)
Eventually Sales itself and (iv) Reputation and (v) Profitability
*

13. Aditya!!!
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