#Letting Go

I'm sure that you have been following the events of Infosys as they have unraveled over these last 4-5 days with the resignation of Vishal Sikka as CEO and MD, and Narayana Murthy's intervention, and all that has been going on. In fact, a lot of influential people that Narayana Murthy was over reaching.  Omkar Goswami wrote: "When you gotta go, you gotta go, Mr. Murthy!" Another article by G.R. Gopinath, founder of Air Deccan, one of the earliest private airlines poses this question, "Why can't we let go?" Both these articles were on the editorial page of The Economic Times. It seems that Narayana Murthy's shadow has cast a bit of tension and has resulted in so much of upheaval in Infosys and with their clients all around the world.

Dealing Decisively With Crisis

Julius Maggi must be a happy man albeit that he has been dead for many years. He was the founder of Maggi noodles, the first person to bring out this protein-rich legume meal way back in 1872 which merged with Nestlé in 1947 and Maggi became their flagship product. But it took a major beating about 6 months back in May, when they were banned across different states in India for allegedly high lead levels along with MSG.  But Maggi is back on the shelves except in some of the states that had banned it, and according to reports has been doing very well—in fact sold out in Kolkata. That's good news for all Maggi lovers.

I remember talking about it at that time and posing the question: Did they handle it right? It seemed like everybody who used Maggi noodles was willing the company to come out and handle the situation, to get on the offensive. The consumers seemed to be on the side of Maggi, and yet, they didn't do anything. It seemed like they were just underplaying the whole issue, hoping that it would go away. In fact, Paul Bulcke, who was the global CEO, came out and met the press only about 3 weeks later, and even then, it didn't seem like they were getting on the offensive at all. It seemed like they were hoping to ride out the storm and then make a comeback. There was absolutely no visibility of Maggi stepping up and saying, "We've got this under control. We are doing everything we can and you will not be disappointed." That didn't happen.

Emotional Triggers

I wonder whether you have ever been party to a meltdown at the office – a situation where, in the course of a normal discussion or brain-storming, a comment was made which was taken too seriously and the reaction that followed was totally disproportionate to what was said. Everybody is surprised; the person involved bangs down a pen, storms out of the place and leaves everybody scratching the heads.  It was a very innocuous comment; there was nothing overtly serious about it, and yet major offence was taken, in serious disproportion to the remark, at least that's what everybody thinks.

I've been in the presence of these kinds of meltdowns before and it always brings up some interesting questions. I'm sure you've experienced them as well. But what happens at these meltdowns? What is going on in the mind of this hapless colleague? Well, it's an emotional trigger that just went off. Suddenly there's a 'blast from their past,' as it were; this event, or the words, brought back emotions that were attached to an incident way back in their history.

Handle That Crisis Right

In 1872, a man by the name of Julius Maggi took over a company from his father. He was the first person to bring out a protein-rich legume meal to the market. Then he followed it up with a soup-based legume meal in 1886, about 14 years later. Julius Maggi was the founder of the company Maggi GmbH in Singen, Germany, which is still there. In 1947, this company merged with Nestlé to bring out what we have all come to know as their flagship product – Maggi noodles.

Today, Maggi noodles is under fire with it being banned across India for having more lead content and containing MSG. it brings to the fore questions about how they are handling it. The jury is still out on whether they have handled it successfully or not. But pundits have been talking about it and drawing leadership lessons from it. I thought it would be good for us to look at it very superficially, given the short time that we have, and see if there are any lessons that we could learn as this continues to unfold, because it isn't over yet.

I think crisis is the crucible in which leaders are either made or unmade, or broken. You either come up and take the heat and hold it and are able to lead during that time, or time will tell whether you are slowly pushed aside and a new person comes to handle a situation that went out of control.

MAKING COURSE CORRECTIONS

by Dr. Cecil Clements (8th January 2013)

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Welcome to the New Year 2013! It’s 8 days into the New Year and as I looked at the days that have gone by, I thought how on the 1st and 2nd, we were so excited about the New Year. 4 or 5 days later, it’s almost business as usual; back to the usual things that happen in our lives. A lot of things haven’t changed – we’re still in the same place, in the same company, we’re still doing the same job, still have the same profile. All that has really changed is that 2012 has given way to 2013.

RANDOM MUSINGS

About 15 years ago, there used to be a column that came out in the newspaper every Saturday written by Busybee, who went on to start his own newspaper, ‘The Afternoon’ that we get even today. Writing under the name Busybee, he would always start his article (and I’m quoting loosely) “Now for another Saturday and random thoughts that have come to me. These thoughts are all my own thinking and I’m putting them down.” Something like that! They would be just random thoughts – no connection between the things that he would talk about that day.

Well I feel that way today. I have random thoughts; I’ve been trying to find a thread that would connect them all and have come up with none. So I’m going to you just the way it has been with me. Trust that it would make sense to you and speak to different situations.

The Thin Dissenting Line: How do we walk it?

In 1996, an attempt was made to climb Mt. Everest, led by 2 experienced mountaineers, Rob Hall and Scott Fischer. Along with them were several guides and 8 paying clients. Many of the members actually reached the summit on May 10th. But on the descent they encountered grave danger. In fact, 5 of them including Rob Hall and Scott Fischer perished as they tried to descend the mountain during a storm.

That’s a tragedy, isn’t it, to be able to scale Mt. Everest and then perish on the way down. Many people have tried to analyze what happened and have come up with a whole lot of reasons as to why this tragedy occurred. One of the reasons was that the group ignored a critical decision rule that was created to protect them against the dangers of coming down after nightfall. Typically their final push to the summit began from a camp located at an altitude of about 26,000 feet. From that point they would climb through the night hoping to reach the summit by midday. Then they would scramble down back to camp hoping to reach the safety of their tents before sunset. This tight 18 hour schedule left very little room for error and if climbers fell behind during ascent, they would face an extremely perilous night-time descent. And yet this group was descending during the night and lost 5 people including the 2 highly talented leaders.

Managing "Transference" to deal with conflicts

I came across an article in Business Week written by Michelle Conlan of New York, almost 6 years ago, the caption of which caught my attention. It said, ‘I am a bad boss; blame my dad.’ It continues – more executives are studying family pasts to root out work place dysfunction. I was intrigued by that and thought that I should think through the issue a little bit. It seemed to be a good thing to share with you on this Tuesday call. ‘I am a bad boss; blame my dad’ basically saying that what I am today has to do with what I was yesterday. And the yesterday is impinging on my today.