Top 10 Quotes from Chanakya still relevant to modern day Management and Leadership

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hanakya was an Indian teacher, philosopher, economist, jurist and royal advisor. Chanakya was the teacher of Chandragupta Maurya and he assisted Chandragupta in his rise to power. He played an important role in the establishment of the Maurya Empire.  “Artha Shastra “is one of his master piece – a bible for Business strategy and Management in ancient India.

Even after 2300 years his teaching relevant to all walk of life. Here are few of his quotes which are relevant to even modern day of management and leadership:

Risk Management

“As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it”

Clarity of Objective and then Planning

“Before you start your work, always ask yourself three questions –Why I am doing this, what the result might be and will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead”

Stick to the Plan and Goal

 

“Once you start a working on something, don't be afraid of failure and don't abandon it. People who work sincerely are the happiest”

People Management and Communication

 

“An egoist can be won over by being respected, a crazy person can be won over by allowing him to behave in an insane manner and a wise person can be won over by truth”

“All the creatures are pleased by loving words; and therefore we should address words that are pleasing to all, for there is no lack of sweet words”

“We should always speak what would please the man of whom we expect a favor,like the hunter who sings sweetly when he desires to shoot a deer”

Leading by example

 

“If a king is energetic, his subjects will be equally energetic. If he is reckless, they will not only be reckless likewise, but also eat into his works”

Selection of Employees

“A ‘trainable’ person is one who has following qualities:

1. Desire to learn
2. Effective Listening ability
3. Ability to reflect (Things from all the angles)
4. Ability to reject false views
5. Intentness on truth not on any person”

SWOT Analysis

 

“After ascertaining the relative strength or weakness of powers, place, time, revolts in rear, losses, expenses, gains and troubles, of himself and of the enemy, the conqueror should march”

Managing Opportunities

 

“The king shall lose no time when the opportunity waited for arrives”

Managing Conflicts in Project Environment

A

 serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one.” This is how Oxford

dictionary defines the ‘Conflict’.

Conflicts are natural and happen everywhere in the real life in the situations involving more than one person. Workplace and Project Teams are not exceptions to this.

We need to understand that Conflict Management and Conflict Resolution are not the same thing. In fact Conflict Resolution is the part of overall Conflict Management. There are both positive and negative outcomes of conflicts. As a leader you try to resolve conflict in case of negative outcomes by using various approaches of Conflict Resolution. However, on other hand for positive outcomes you fuel or promote the conflict which might help to encourage innovation, out of box thinking, learning, finding the core issues, challenging the status quo in the project and getting the better results.

Here are few important points to consider in order to effectively manage the conflicts in project environment:

Project Manager’s education in this subject is important:

As per a study on an average 20% of Project Managers time goes into Conflict Management and most of the time the effort spent on this is not effective due to lack of education on how to manage these situations. So, this becomes very crucial for project manager to learn the various approaches for conflict resolution and also develop the wisdom to decide on when to try to stop the conflict and when to fuel or promote the same.

Let us quickly look at the most common approaches of conflict resolution:

Avoidance

Conflict is avoided pretending that nothing has happened and this can be address later if happens again. This is in the situation where as a leader you feel that conflict is not worth your time resolving at this point of time.

Compromise

When time is short, this is the best way to deal with the situation. Here both parties bargain to achieve mutually agreed solution. Here larger points are negotiated and smaller issues are ignored with mutual agreement.

Smoothing

Here one person (or team) sacrifice his concerns in order to satisfy the concerns of other person (or team). This requires thinking creatively to resolve the problem without concessions.

Confronting

This is best approach when time is sufficient and both parties need to win.  This involves open and direct communication (mostly face to face) which leads to resolution.

Forcing

This is used when stakes are high and ‘do or die’ situation is present and quick decision must be made. Here one party wins and concerns and needs of other party is ignored.

Set up expectations with team members:

There are various phases of team building and also different phases or sub phases of project. Few situations are normal and obvious in certain phase.

For examples:

1. During Execution phase of the project, in SDLC, when a project move from Development to Testing, there is high probably of conflicts between team members of development and testing teams or later phases of project could create lot of stress to the team members especially if any last minutes changes or defects introduced.

2. During Storming phase of team building conflicts are going to happen for sure.

These are just 2 examples, however, there are many phases and situations in the project where this is normal that conflicts will surface. So setting expectations with the team members will help a lot to manage these situations.

Analyze the situation of the conflict and take action:

As a Project Manager when these situations arise, you need to analyze to understand what is normal in the current phase of the project or for the people in question and you should decide if you want to promote the conflict or stop it using approaches of conflict resolution.

Please hit the comments to provide your valuable opinion on this topic or to ask any question you might have.

Managing Global Remote Teams – Quick Tips

In the era of globalization, when many companies going global, most of us who are leaders are already managing global teams and those who are not, would certainly be doing at some point in the future . This has become one of the essential skills for all the Managers and Leaders. You cannot survive without being really good at this.

This is a detailed topic and difficult to summarize in a short post. However, let me list down some of the quick tips which I found most useful while managing my several global teams spreads across different geographies and locations on different projects: 

1. A Team charter is must

This is really important. Although this is not project charter, however I would suggest Project Manager to also highlight the objective of project in this document. This is important for team members to know the purpose why they are working on the project and how they are contributing to this objective and especially when they are spread across locations. As sense of purpose unites the team.

A team charter should clearly underline that how the decision would be made in the project. This should contains communication plan, conflict resolution process, backup plan and personal responsibilities of team members in different situations.

This charter should be prepared taking all the team members in confidence and this should be their plan which they have agreed to and own (not imposed to them)

2. Understand the cultural preferences

When you are working on the team with the people from different countries and cultures, understanding the cultural diversity and giving respect to that is important. 

For example - when I do my Project Plan and I assume less or no resource availability during Christmas week for US, Australia and UK teams, I also assume that most of the team members from team in India would not be available during week of Diwali.

Certain cultures are not very open to ask questions and while other are very forthcoming. Try to understand these and tailor your communication according to that.

3. A Daily stand up or Catch-up

I use this learning from my Agile projects. However, later I found this a must if you are managing a remote Global team irrespective of Project Management methodologies you are using (Agile or traditional). 

Find a convenient time of the day, when team members from all the locations are available. Get everyone on a phone or Video Conferencing call. Quick 30 Minutes call every day at the same time, get the status, set the priorities for the day and quickly discuss any key risks or issues. 

If you want to keep your project on track, I find this a must to do when you are managing virtual teams, otherwise you might lose your hold on project after sometime.

4. One on One sessions with team members

When you are working at the same location, you have the opportunities to walk to a team member’s desk or catch him/her over the coffee and do some informal talk which would build personal relationship.  However, in case of virtual team this is not possible. Make sure you have scheduled quick One on One sessions with the team members on agreed frequency and mode (Over call or VC).

If you have big team and it’s not possible to do One on One with everyone, do this at least with the leaders in the team and ask them to do the same with their teams.

5. Leverage the collaborative technology to maximum

I really like the screen sharing tools where one person is sharing what he is talking about and others have a common perspective. Be it video conferencing, phone conference call, content management solutions or apps like slack  for quick updates on cell phones, use the technology to maximum to collaborate (and thanks goodness ! we have so many options available now a days on these tools).

6. Daily end of day reports from team members

I found this very useful when you work with remote team in different time zones. Team members sending a quick bullet points email before leaving for the day on what they have achieved throughout the day, Whether they are facing any current issues, what they are expecting their counterparts in different time zones to focus on for their rest of the day and what they are planning to do tomorrow.

I have done this myself and found this really useful. This gives you a purpose for the day and the sense of accomplishment when you draft the work done by end of day each day. 

7. Make use of Sun Model

Assuming you already know ‘Follow the Sun Model’ where teams working in the different time zones on a same project and tasks are passed around daily between different office locations. 

When I was working out of USA and liaising with client and if they had any query or issues to resolve , I used to pass this on to my team members in India and they used to work during my night time on those (their day time 😄)  and I was ready next day when I face the client.  

8. Virtual Team Building activities

Be innovative to find ways to do this. May be you organize games over Video Conferencing or some online contests.  When a local festival celebrated in one office, you can have people in other offices join through VC. When you do award ceremonies, do not do it location wise. Do it for all the team members even though some of the team members are available on conference call or VC. 

9. Rotate team members to get some face to face time

This all depends on how much budget you have, however highly recommended. Rotate team members to visit other locations during key activities of project. 

For example - if design team in a country has to handover designs to development team which is in another country, few team members of them can visit for a short duration, do the handover and at the same time would meet the team members in the other location and build rapport.

If not possible for all the team members to do this due to budget constraints, I recommend this should be must for the Project Manager to visit all the locations and meet team members face to face at least once in the start of project. 

10. Reward team members for being responsible to others

Collaboration is so important in a virtual team and team members who are good team players, helping other team members succeed and show respect to cultural diversity and collaborate for success using all the available resources should be rewarded. 

This should be one of the key goals for their performance appraisal and evaluated appropriately by Project Manager and provided feedback on continuous basis highlight areas of improvements, if any.

If you have any questions or suggestions on how to manage a virtual global team more effectively, please feel free to comment.