Management blues!

Management is meant to manage, but what if it mismanages or fails to manage, will it still then qualify to be called as such?  

This thought echoed through my mind as I sat through the function at the headquarters of the All India Railwaymens Federation today in New Delhi. Yes it is true that the primary function of any management is to manage, but have we been able to live up to it in railways is something that bothered me throughout the event. Having failed in the primary role of providing materials, infrastructure and manpower and also in the process succeeding in bringing the organization to the verge of bankruptcy can by no stretch of imagination be regarded as the true role of the management.

It is indeed true that the integrity and commitment of the top union guys is far superior to what the top guys in railway (mis)management have. It is also true that rank incompetence of almost the entire officer cadre of the railways in making things happen is a time proven phenomenon. What is also time proven is the inherent ability of the entire fleet of babudom in stopping things from happening. Yet I refuse to accept that management can be a body that has only a negative role, and that leads me to another string of thought, that if we are not the management, then what is the difference between us and the workers, only in salaries and perks.

During my entire tenure at the division, what we got at the PNM meetings was flak for incompetence and maybe perhaps at times appreciation for our sincerity, not delivery. Appreciation only because we tried in an environment where almost everyone has given up in sheer despair. Deeply tied in knots so complex that perhaps only a superman or the lord almighty himself can unwind. Why then should officers be accountable for results and also to be answerable to the unions and the staff when the power they wield is miniscule and often not more than what a lowly employee in the railways has?

Scrap the PNM’s and be an indistinguishable part of the whole, the whole that is constituted by the over fourteen lakh employees that the organization wields its stick over is perhaps the only wise solution for a bureaucracy that is credited with repeated suicidal attempts.

The first page!

The science of Management or the art of Leadership? While a good manager can give growth exceeding the conventional growth rates, a good leader can cross the conventional, by leaps and bounds and give stunning growth generally considered impossible by the uninitiated.

The nation however requires both, at various levels and cutting across sectors to propel it out of the state of inaction it finds itself in today. Yes it is possible to turnaround organizations, states and nations in time frames barely considered adequate even for mere planning purposes.

I am neither a manager, nor a leader, yet my team delivered a stupendous performance at both these places and that is what amazes me and also confuses me. What is important, to be a top notch manager or a leader or both. Or just to be. Perhaps just being myself without being conscious of the invisible cloak that the chair provides was the only thing that helped in what could be achieved. And this leads to another internal turmoil, whether delivery leads to self actualization or self actualization leads to delivery. Confusion reigns supreme, silently though in my own mind and that wisely brings me down to earth after the “high” of my last assignment. I need to remain firmly wedded to the ground.

My last two stints, at Madhya Pradesh Tourism for around three and a half years followed by two and a half at the Delhi division of the Northern Railways, both times as the head honcho of the organizations have been experiences beyond compare. While the first was an open territory waiting to be unleashed, the second was a closed domain that needed to be pulled out of the abyss. The important point was that both responded favourably to resuscitation attempts at the first go and that further reinforced my belief in the belief that this country is just waiting to happen.

This is not a book on how. This is a book on what really happened at both these places, the silent revolutions that my team brought about, without ruffling many feathers.

What finally resulted was amazing, even though it was fun along the way. And fun it has to be. Even the renowned Walt Disney had once said:

“It is kind of fun to do the impossible”

Dreaded Symptoms!

Sometime back I wrote about the tendency of the railway officials to invariably jump on symptoms, without any concern whatsoever about the disease that may have caused the same. Today's accident near Anantpur once again had my mind rattled on the issue. When shall we ever learn?

Learn what? That in an HR dominant organization like the railways human mistakes are bound to happen and the environment of fear that the railway babu's have created is only hastening the impending disaster. My mind has quickly travelled to the site of the acccident and I  can easily visualize the scenario there. With almost everyone who considers himself a somebody on the railways, and there is a fleet of them, trying to use his phone to find out details of what happened, not for remedying matters but to rattle out the details to his superiors when asked for, the men manning the field would be having a very tough time. All those somebody's would be trying to browbeat the others in seeking the head of the delinquent staff and offficers who would have committed the heinous mistakes leading to the accident. The ground truth and also the reason behind the staff committing mistakes while on duty would be lost in the chorous claiming the head.

Everyone out to impress the boss and in the race to bag the coveted "sycophants trophy" even at such moments when the organization and its mandarins should be seeking and facing the truth, is indeed sickening. The race also to be the first one to tell the bosses about what happened and commiserating with him on the perceived demise of commitment in the field staff is also a trait amply visible in the officers, who are regarded as rising stars in the organization, even at moments of disaster.

When shall we ever realize that almost all the so called ills of the system are no more than mere symptoms of various deep rooted malaise shrouding the officialdom. The core of the disease lies in the inability of the management, the upper crust to be more precise, to provide the right kind of leadership to the organization. Even a casual study of the bureaucratic practices of the railways would reveal the obvious, that we have adopted a conflicting variance with all that is written down in management books and case studies of repute. Moreover any organization, the upper crust of which consider ridiculing and pulling down their men as the solution to its ills is living in a fool's paradise and therein lies the tragedy of this great organization.

A rudderless organization, not led by, but headed by officials at various levels who have no vision or direction to convey to their team, but whose focus always remains fault finding and rendering unsolicited advice on all matters under the sun. "Dispense advice when asked for support" has emerged as our gurumantra. An organization based on mistrust is what we are rearing and therefore the regular recurrence of all those symptoms that jolt us out of our blissful sleep. A jolt that damages the organization more than it helps the situation.

May God help  us!     

Protocol even in death!

A very senior railway officer suddenly passed away recently due to an unexpected cardiac arrest. A very fine officer and an equally fine human being, he left many of us who knew him well, teary eyed for days.

What really disturbed me, more than the death itself, was that the top echelons of the organization (with an exception of course) remained totally unmoved even by the death of a senior officer and did not care to pay even a fleeting visit to the residence of the diseased.

Should not an organization, represented by the very top management, just be there when a soldier and that too a senior one dies? Is it asking for too much to expect the presence of the top management at the death of an officer or are there other things that are more important. If so it would be interesting to know what can be more important than the death of your own men!

I find it demeaning when I find senior officers kowtowing before the powers that be. The birthdays of men in power are occasions to witness the presence of almost all the top officials marking their attendance with amazing ease and in high spirits. Yet the absence of top officials at the death of a senior officer of their own ilk! Is it not a disgusting and demoralizing state of affairs?