Quick Reads from kwench

The case of the bonsai manager

(lessons for managers on intuition)

By R.Gopalakrishnan

Publisher: Penguin/Portfolio Date of Publication: 2007 ISBN: 978-014-306-3926 Number of Pages: 338

About the Author(s) It would be hard to find an Indian professional who has not heard of R.Gopalakrishnan, a stalwart of the Indian corporate world. With over 4 decades of managerial experience at Unilever and then Tata Sons, he has worked in India, UK and Saudi Arabia, apart from travelling all across the world on business engagements. An engineer from IIT, an alumni of Harvard Business School and a former president of the All India Management Association, he is currently Executive Director at Tata Sons, one of Indias largest conglomerates. He lives in Mumbai with his wife and three children.

Central Idea
When all else is equal among talented professionals racing to the finishing post, a managers power of intuition could well mark the difference between good and great results. Nurturing and listening to your intuition is counter-rational, and yet, if leveraged in the right manner, it could enable managers to take leaps-of-faith that can pave the way for legendary results. When rationality, analysis, facts and information have run their course; intuition and gut-feel take over and help the manager make decisions. Managers that dont draw on their natual resources to leverage intiuition tend to become stunted like bonsais. The theme of this book operates in the overlap between nature and management. While intuition is a natual gift, this book shows how one can develop, nurture and enhance their natural intuitiveness at the workplace, and thus optimise their and their teams - potential.

Key concepts
1. For intuition to be kick-started and thrive, three factors need to combine: a. Context: having an open-mind and positive disposition towards the context in which one is operating is a prerequisite to our intuition helping us go beyond the obvious b. Motivation: the desire to succeed and a healthy dose of self-doubt and anxiety could help managers draw on intuition as an added tool for decision-making, especially in unfamiliar or high-pressure situations c. Self-awareness: to push through decisions based on intuition, a manager needs the highest degree of self-awareness. In other words, he will need to back himself in the face of management doubt 2. Different circuitry in the brain enables analytical and intuitive thought processes. Most humans have the ability to leverage both, but often one is more dominant than the other based on the context and situation. Some people become naturally pre-disposed to being overly-analytical or overly-intuitive. As the two are complementary, leader-managers need to develop both. 3. Understanding the BRIM (Brains Remote Implicit Memory): R stands for Remote: the part of memory that reaches deep within the inner recesses of the mind, recording emotions and experiences from infancy onwards. These buried memories often form the basis for instinctive knowledge in unfamiliar situations. I stands for Implicit the ability to hold processes which transform into habits and skills over time in our memory. This implicit memory basically puts us in auto-pilot mode for performing familiar tasks even in unfamiliar situations. To nurture intuition, we must operate with the BRIM. Professionals working in high-pressure or unpredictable situations such as doctors, soldiers, sports persons and even customer service representatives tend to rely on their BRIM to make quick decisions by sizing up the situation and responding according to the need of the moment. They operate on instinct not on detailed technical analyses of the situation. Yet, when properly leveraged, analysis and instinct make a powerful combination. 4. While grappling with a problem, it helps to open up the issue by focussing not just on the problem itself but on the surrounds the broader and larger picture and context. This helps us to instinctively make new connections between a wider set of variables, and could lead to insight or aha moments than when we solely rely on the immediate context of the problem for solutions. 5. The BRIM can be enriched through practice (doing the same thing over and over again till the process is perfected) and immersion (a true and deep involvement in an experience or emotion so that it enters the Remote memory and stays there). 6. In the animal kingdom, animals under threat learn to adapt when the survival instinct kicks in. Similarly, managers tend to discover inner reserves of resources, insight and ability from their BRIM when faced with threats or the need for quick decisions. Facing new and unfamiliar situations regularly turn managers into survivors who thrive in any situation 7. The intellectual space in which managers function is critical in keeping them alert, staying inspired and connecting the dots. If the space in which managers function is restrictive or repetitive, they tend to become bonsai managers. A managers space is determined by his industry, role, work relationships and challenges and barriers to growth in his particular context. The broader the experiences, the more intellectually rewarding the space becomes and the more a manager grows. That is why companies seeking to develop their managers tend to disturb their equilibrium by rotating their roles, domains, functions and geographies periodically rather than keeping them in the same space and maintaining status quo. 8. While facts and concepts taught in classrooms propagate explicit knowledge, stories bring alive our ability to connect the dots and form new patterns of thinking, because they teach us something new by engaging us emotionally. Managers must be exposed to stories and

anecdotes about leadership and management to open up their ability to contemplate, reflect and build tacit knowledge. 9. Socialisation propagates tacit knowledge. When leaders engage with managers and share stories and anecdotes, they are actually passing on tacit knowledge that the manager can internalise for future use. Tacit knowledge is intangible and can be perceived in many ways. It is rife with symbolism and comes from a very personal space or experience. Tacit knowledge is felt and emotionally absorbed by the recipient. The effective transfer of implicit and tacit knowledge keeps a community (or organisation) evolving and moving forward. 10. Coaching is another way to take learning to a new level beyond textbook knowledge. It implies an instructional as well as an emotional relationship between the coach and coached. It leverages the natural talents and intellect of the coached by giving them a rich and motivating space full of implicit knowledge to learn from. 11. Succession planning is all about developing talent and building future leaders. It involves a 3-tier approach by senior leaders: protecting, nurturing and pacing the future leader. a. Protecting is all about bringing one up to speed with all the available explicit knowledge about the organisation and its context, delivered through induction programs etc. b. Nurturing is about creating a mentoring environment; situations that aid and enhance the creative and thinking process, as well as developing the tacit knowledge through socialising, coaching etc. c. Pacing refers to setting progressively complex challenges thrown at the managers to prepare for the future leadership role, by leveraging the explicit and implicit knowledge collected along the way. A manager confronts many unexpected bends while going up the leadership ladder and textbook knowledge is inadequate to deal with them effectively. Having the insight, wisdom and experience of senior leaders to draw upon is a powerful tool to negotiate the bends and move ahead successfully. Those who do not understand how to instinctively draw upon tacit knowledge and gut-feel will tend to fail at these bends and drop off the leadership ladder. 12. Extracting the collective intuition of the group is important to tap into the aggregate wisdom. Management can achieve this by: a. Encouraging several options to be generated among the group: this implies diverse thought processes and BRIMs being tapped. b. Listening to the outliers. Alpha-arguers tend to sway group opinion to truly tap diverse implicit knowledge, we must go beyond the opinion of experts to those with divergent points-of-view or perspectives. For example, frontline such as sales staff, who develop a good intuition about what will work and what wont. c. Developing the ability to aggregate group intuitive wisdom into something meaningful. d. Knowing when to encourage managers to break out of the line and think differently. 13. Scarcity and abundance of resources affects group behaviour. Scarcity can foster cooperation to meet the common goal effectively and to everybodys satisfaction. Abundance fosters competition, where one of many tends to corner access to the resources. Leaders can create an environment of desirable deficit in order to nurture, enhance and leverage the natural group instinct to co-operate and share knowledge in order to achieve a shared ambition. 14. Change is painful and risky. Managers must learn to intuitively rock the boat without sinking it to deal with change productively. Transformational change comes when managers leverage instinct to:

a. Understand and crack the code of change: the unstated code collectively used by the group to protect itself from change b. Rearrange the existing pieces: continuous renewals by using existing resources in new and different ways may be less painful than large upheavals that call for altogether new resources c. Slow down to reach quicker: change takes time and a leader must instinctively match the pace of change with the code of change to suit the character of his team. 15. Efficiency is a function of understanding set processes. But efficiency does not equal effectiveness. The straightest and shortest path may be most efficient but not necessarily the most effective. A manager must instinctively know when a particular strategy may be efficient and not effective and vice-versa. A leader uses feelers to sense the environment and mood, he listens to infra-sound the silent signals around him, and he doesnt get overwhelmed by his own power to force change.

Key takeaways
1. Managers tend to favour rationality and analysis over their gut feel and instinct. Yet, these are not contradictory but complementary skills in the modern environment. 2. Top performers operate from the BRIM. They focus on possibilities and not solely predictions to make decisions, and often reach into their unconscious mind to come up with ideas and new directions. 3. A stunted or bonsai - manager works at a level well below his potential. He does not actively seek or embrace change, works within a comfort zone and is not inspired to think beyond the obvious. The more one stays in this state, the harder it is to rekindle ones instinct and motivation. 4. Explicit knowledge is what we know we know, and can be transferred in a classroom format. Implicit or tacit knowledge is what we dont consciously know we know, and can be transferred only informally through socialisation. It is important for managers and leaders to share their tacit knowledge generously through stories and anecdotes. It is not facts and figures but stories and anecdotes about the patterns of life that intrigue, engage and inspire us to move in new directions. 5. Trust, respect, commitment and faith are critical elements of the coach-coachee relationship for the true transfer of tacit knowledge. A manager eager to learn chooses his own mentor(s) and coach(es) within the organisation and learns by immersing, listening, contemplating, reflecting and absorbing their knowledge and responses. A bonsai manager is typically unmotivated to draw on this resource to learn and grow. 6. Leaders can identify successors by spending time observing high-potentials and not relying merely on HR data and systems. They nurture successors by providing high-potentials access to a large pool of tacit knowledge and an environment in which to build their BRIM and instinct, as well as optimising touch-time reflective and contemplative conversations, sharing stories and bonding informally. 7. Leaders must develop feelers inwards and outwards to stay in touch with the environment and sense change or other subtle messages instinctively. From spontaneous visits to the farthest outposts to regular networking within the industry, a good manager develops effective antennae that instinctively warn him of change and enable him to focus on the right things at the right time. 8. Immersion, openness, contemplation and reflection (ImOpCoRe) are central to developing ones intuition. Things that cannot be taught in a training program or classroom can be learnt with ImOpCoRE and by leveraging ones BRIM.