Thought Leadership across Indian software organizations

Well saw this movie two weeks back called 'Invictus' which was apparently an Oscar nominee too.It had a powerful star cast in the form of Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon.The movie had nothing substantial to show but what exactly is thought leadership.We hear this term much too often in leadership congregations and management seminars.Let us take a closer look at what thought leadership is.Wikipedia defines it as 'A thought leader is a futurist or person who is recognized for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights'.This definition is shallow as it misses out on 'execution' as an important facet of any thought leader.This is precisely what Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan dare to bring out in their phenomenal book 'Execution'.Now with the complete definition of a thought leader let us jet set to how we scrutinize thought leadership in our Indian IT industry.


In the recent past we have had our share of charismatic thought leaders like Narayan Murthy, Nandan Nilekani,Azeem Premji,Subroto Baghchi,Ashok Sutta,Jerry Rao,Shiv Nadar and last but not the least Anand Mahindra in the software industry in India.If we do a similar study what Jim Collins did in his book 'Good to Great'.Let us try to identify a common pattern which is prevalent in the case of all the above thought leaders.If we see these leaders one of the traits or characteristics that I see through them is the fact that all of them nurtured a dream and believed in their dream more than anything else in the world despite of hostile criticisms.Another trait that all of them had was that they treated their organizations as their babies and kept the organization above every single mandate.Third trait that I can visibly see across these leaders is they appreciated change and wanted to adapt as quickly as possible with the changing world as Friedman describes in 'The World is Flat'.One of the most prominent traits I see across these leaders was they were eventually able to create a perfect balance between customers and employees.the only thing that they gave impetus was the fact that the customer is above all and the organization's health depends on the customer's happiness.


Despite of such gargantuan approaches I still see thought leadership as a forgotten chapter in today's IT scenario in India.What could be the reason for that.Are we to blame our software culture that creates chasms between different product entity groups.What are these chasms?

In the above diagram we can see the organizational structure of a typical software organization in India.As you can clearly see there is a disconnect between every layer of hierarchy.This chasm or the gap could be attributed to be one of the reasons which leads to in-articulation. In my opinion every singular person in every level is not only competing with every other person in that bracket but also with people from every other level.It is because of this basic human trait that all the entities collectively fail to realize their organizational goals.If I talk about a typical service based organization in India I'd say   there are different software groups catering to different clients.The clients could be as indifferent as possible.Now you define domains in these scenarios and take in people who have had earlier stints with similar domains(which is necessarily not followed due to resource crunch).A team generally consists of some developers,some module leads,a project lead a manager and there is a delivery manager to whom a lot of managers report to.In this set up to inculcate standards like six sigma,CMM there is a need to build process chains across the teams.In other words people in a team are supposed to follow processes.These byzantine processes sometimes prove frustrating from the standpoint of a developer who has to take up the tedious task of developing an application based on strict guidelines and rigid requirements.There might be situations where a little amount of innovative approach from the developer can change the way the client works.In India such changes are perceived with cynicism.In such situations from a module lead to a manager fails to act as a thought leader and misses out on the greater purpose of the application software.A manager by virtue of his experience tries to apply management theories in quantum scenarios resulting in chaos.A faulty assumption in the software industry is that if you recruit more resources you can get the job done faster which has been proven wrong by Richard Brooks an IBM manager.He observed that a delayed project would delay further on the addition of resources.He empirically proved it in his famous essay 'The Mythical man-month'.
 Generally in an academic set up, there is a professor who is made the mentor of a group of n students.he mentors them through the entire course taking note of their weaknesses and strengths.He assigns them tasks based on their competencies.He makes sure the students excel in whatever they do.Now coming back to a typical service based organization,how much of that can we actually correlate to a project manager's role.How many leaders is he nurturing in the course of time.I do not see any appreciable synergy in this direction.It is quite a stand alone life.People in a team come to work and after completing their work leave.They completely disassociate themselves from the organizational growth much contrary to what their Objective speaks out in their resume.They miss out on evolution.Sometimes in the absence of a thought leader,a group of developers might consider themselves quite aloof.This situation on a repeated note can transform a happy going kid from the next block to a firece rat who wants to avenge himself on either his manager or colleague or senior management.When he cannot do that he leaves the organization searching for nirvana.Recollecting back on what we just said is that an absence of thought leadership can only create rats in the system.These rats ar diferent organizational levels create this disconnect
When a company is started,the start up team has very little seed funding at their disposal and it becomes absolutely essential for them to make a succesful product which would be received succesfully by the consumers.The passion and the poise are noteworthy.every single individual from a developer to a sales guy to an HR becomes a stakeholder in the product development lifecycle.The singularity approach dissolves and a unified model comes into play.All the people involved in a startup breathe in to one single dream-of making the organization succesful.These startups in the subsequent years of their lives go on to become organizations like Google and HP in some cases.The big question is why do the subsequent genre of employees lack that passion or drive to excel in succesful product development.The reason is as obvious as it can get to be as per Sherlock Holmes-a lack of thought leadership.In  defense circles they say that in order to become a good leader you would have to work harder than your batallion in all dimensions.Let us now try to fit this concept into our Indian software industry.Once a developer moves ahead in the ladder to becoming a manager,the only thing he does is associated with people management.I know project management can be tedious when it comes to delivering products in time and managing resources but not always.It is observant that a manager completely isolates himself from technology.He tries to walk the team through the entire project management lifecycle detatching himself from technology completely which is weird.In most of the cases he would not know anything more than the designing phase.I believe a manager should set an example for his team by working real hard.He should be a good reason for his team to perform more.He should show passion for the product he is working on.Instead we have a manager here who tries to micro manage his team.He can be found sneaking into his team member's desktop to see if the guy is doing anything other than work.He is always concerned about attrition.Insecurity looms high in his team as far as resource crunch is concerned.Can we think of him as a future thought leader.I believe not.Do we see his team nurturing the idea of thought leadership-perhaps no.This is another illustration why thought leadership is not quite dominant inside an Indian Software firm.
         Accountability is another trait-thought leadership is associated with.I'd try to explain this with the help of  story.Back in 1979 when Indian government was going to launch SLV-3 in space.The project director of the project was Dr A.P.J . Abdul Kalam and the chairman of the project was professor Satish Dhawan.There was a technical glitch and project failed.At that instant it was the project director's errorneous management which led to a huge waste of money,resources and time.Kalam would have been held resposible for the failure.Instead prof Satish Dhawan took the entire responsiblity on his head.He said it was his faulty decisions which led to the failure of the project.Much later Kalam still recollects this incident as a brilliant example of accountability.Do we have such thought leaders in our Indian software industry who are ready to hold themselves accountable.I do not think today's managers reflect this character trait any longer.Every project failure is followed by a lot of mud slinging in the team.What we must understand that whenever the captain of a ship boards people in his ship,his prerogative is to do anything for the well being of his ship's passengers.If need be,he can even go down and sacrifice his life for them.The thing to understand is as managers we are accountable for our team's actions and inactions.To err is human but to accept it and work on it is divine.Accountability makes us a part of the company's culture and raises our stakes high in the eyes of the customer and the team.
        Another factor which contributes to the lack of thought leadership in Indian software companies is the lack of knowledge related to the entire supply chain management of software deployed.When I say this I mean developers or people at the bottom of the pyramid are not at all aware of the business side of things.In most of the cases in the initial phases of product development,the product or application software is divided into modules.There are a lot of teams which handle these individual modules which subsequently are integrated and a full build of an application is created.Now this build or the finished product is subsequently deployed in the customer's environment based on his needs.The customers can be completely indifferent ranging from a healthcare organization to a travel company to a retail shop.The business side of the software is the entire process of identifying all the aspects of the customer's business and then design transcendental software which can take care of all his requirements.When I say this I try hard to look inside the Indian software industry and find the practice of bridging the gap between the developers and customers absymally small.How many developers are aware of the entire picture when it comes to creating software for a customer.In other words we are inculcating zombie culture inside our organizations.Now with absolutely no sense of business,can these people in the lower strata of the pyramid become thought leaders.Even if they enter management by virtue of experience,would they be able to take prompt business decisions with partial insight to business.This inability can also lead to lack of innovations.innovations depend purely on market gaps and without understanding them,new products can't be created.In other words visionary ideas would boil only if developers get a proper glance of the business side of things.
  Likewise I can cite a few more examples which show it is high time we start synergizing on thought leadership as an important characteristic of an organization.We need leaders and visionaries.We do not need managers.Thought leadership is also mandatory as it diminishes the disconnect between the levels of the organizational pyramid creating an entirely new ecosystem with tremendous growth potential.