Reading The Outliers sparked so many infinite loops of thought and still does, that seem to get tangled once in a while, that I just have to streamline them somehow.
Gladwell led me to that dim beacon of light that actually turned out almost blinding on approach. ‘Ah! That’s actually true’ was all I could utter as I read through the cultural legacies that prevail in all situations. And of course, I couldn’t help but notice it being the cause of so many problems that I’ve come across.
It’s a Small World and we work in global teams, so it really is high time we acknowledge all these differences instilled in us by birth/growth. There are so many Indians working with Americans, Europeans and so on – people who follow different notions of power distances. People communicate with the disadvantage of the missing non-verbal part, that perceptions take on a higher role, which almost always end up wrong. We are generally low-power distance people that instantly almost bow down to anybody who takes a lead. We follow! Easily at that. Another term that Gladwell used – Trasmitter/Receiver orientation – ah, don’t we see that all the time? How many of us actually take accountability for the mails that we draft, so that it actually conveys the intended message to the receiver, by putting ourselves in their place? Or how many of us have had to sit through received mails trying to decode what the person’s message is. Though Gladwell generalises this as a behaviour specific to geographies, I’ve always seen this to be an effort that cuts across indolence and is specific to individuals.
To get through, we have to identify and acknowledge these traits in individuals. We train people in so many things – behavioural, domain, technical competencies, etc. But these apparently little things that have had a greater effect on business, as I’ve experienced first-hand are priorities to be addressed. Our teams have be be taught to view the other communities as peers and not bend subservient, but to hold on with confidence to their own points of view and not waver from them without constructive arguments. The final duty to make the others understand lies with us, as transmitters. Also the best managers bequeath a part of themselves to their juniors that they create even better managers. I believe these are the legacies we should be passing on to our own generations.
Anilicious 