While working in corporate world for about 15 years, I never realized the real issues that plague our organizations. But from the time I have stepped out of corporate ladder race and have got an opportunity to see the circus as a third person, there have been lot of eye openers for me.

1. Blind leading Blind: Sorry State of Managers in Organizations
While working in corporate world for about 15 years, I never realized the real issues that
plague our organizations. But from the time I have stepped out of corporate ladder race
and have got an opportunity to see the circus as a third person, there have been lot of
eye openers for me.
One of these is the sorry state of managers in an organization; the complete muddled
understanding of this role within companies and they way people manning this position
end up acting like a speed-breaker instead of accelerator for the team. Interesting part is
that this is the state of things from top to bottom in an organization with very few
accidental exceptions.
Lets for a second think of how managers become managers.
A person joins as a rookie in a company mostly as an individual contributor. As this
person keeps on performing as an individual contributor and keeps meeting his/her
targets year on year, he/she one day gets to lead a team of other individual contributors.
Now a person has become manager. Suddenly their prime task becomes to get work
done through others. Instead of just doing work themselves, they need to help their
team members to meet their individual targets. This changes the world for a manager
but seldom they are able to take true cognizance of this change and shift gears
accordingly.

2. It is no rocket science to understand what is wrong in the process that I have very
simplistically outlined above.
1. First lacuna: Performing as an individual contributor has made a person manager.
There is no assessment and segregation of performance from potential. It is like
making a scientist an administrator because they have done lot of inventions! This is
like making a person judge because he has won a cycle race. It may not look absurd
to you as you are in the system but it does defy logic.
2. Even after making a person a manger, he/she is never told how to manage
themselves and their teams. Most of the companies have no formal process of
training workforce on nuances of managing teams and working through other
people. Somehow everyone optimistically believes that either one naturally knows
and will learn on the job. After all they have seem their managers manage all the
time! It is like expecting someone with a B.Com to naturally know Engineering or
expect them to learn it from others on the job!
3. To succeed they try and do more of what they were doing earlier. They keep
thinking that what made them successful needs to be continued so as to be more
successful. So in a way, they still keep behaving as individual contributors rather
then helping their teams. For example, in sales even after becoming manager, one
still keeps meeting clients, thinking that they need to hands on approach as this
what made them succeed in past. In-fact they increase the frequency even more so
as succeed faster! But doing more of the same will not produce better results.
4. Managers do not understand their own personality and what impact does it has on
others at the workplace. Devoid of self awareness, they also become incapable of
appreciating the different personalities that people have in their team. instead of
synergies this creates perfect ground for conflicts. New Managers try hard and deals
with everyone in their team with the same yardstick. The same is happening with
their own reporting managers also. So it becomes nearly impossible to see the
futility of their own act and every one keeps dissipating their energy on
interpersonal issues and conflicts.
This is what I call blind leads blind syndrome. And what is going to happen when these
newly appointed mangers start working is repetition of history; all mistakes done by
manager's managers are going to be repeated by current managers and who in turn will
end up influencing the future managers in their teams. It sort of becomes a vicious circle.
No body in the organizations wants to or seems to be capable of breaking it. Everyone
knows about it in private but no one wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room for
one reason or another.

3. Is is difficult to change the situation? Is this challenge unsurmountable? Like most of the
things in life, the problem is big but the solutions is simple. Infact, I think one the main
reasons such fundamental flaws in organizations never get rectified is because these
solutions are simple and not jazzy or capital intensive and hence can not be projected as
dramatically as other (futile) interventions.
Organizations need to de-construct the role of mangers and re-construct them as
facilitators. Managerial positions should not be looked up as the only way one can get
promoted within an organization. People capabilities are vital for being managers, which
in turn are a function of both skills and innate behaviors. Organizations need to
scientifically understand both, before moving people in different roles. An alignment has
be created between potential and requirements of the role. Then a well thought out
grooming program and tools needs to be provided to the identified managers. Doing a
half a day or one day training program is even more useless than doing nothing.
And at-last I would like to say that no two organizations will require same competencies
for being manager. Each organization has to objectively understand and keep re-
evaluating the competencies, especially the innate behavioral competencies, that are
required for being a successful facilitator for a team.
Vinaya Bansal
Co-Founder
http://predictivestrategygroup.com