This is an intriguing question I had throughout my career. Most of us would have seen some of our colleagues as favorites to the manager. These colleagues were preferred over us leaving us wondering as to why we aren’t the chosen ones. Personally, I have been in both in the places, blue eyed boy as well as not-that-wanted entity. It may hurt your pride as an employee when you are in the second category.
We once asked the Managing Director of one of the companies I worked for as to what is that makes him trust or distrust an employee. The answer was a deceptively quite simple one - dependability. This is a key factor most of the employees seem to ignore or at least the manager perceives so. Dependability is often confused with loyalty. Loyalty is a sense of blind faith. Today's managers however, are not focused on loyalty. They are concerned about dependability.
This answer and a few other incidents in my career got me thinking. What contributes to dependability and how can we score high on this? Let’s analyze this issue of dependability from multiple dimensions. My personal preference has always been to analyze a situation in a two-dimensional framework. This does not mean that other dimensions are not unimportant or irrelevant.
A resource is expected to have qualities like Honesty; Integrity; Technical know-how, and No-politics. As far as the manager is concerned, these qualities are basic and prerequisites to be a good resource. Once this basic foundation is set, the question arises as to whether a resource is “dependable” or not.
The dependability framework is based on two dimensions. 1. Alignment (read as organization or alignment with Manager) and 2. Execution (ability to execute, this is completely different from having the technical know-how and is more about the drive to get things done). Both these dimensions are interlinked in a way because if we are aligned, there is a good chance that we will have a higher drive to get things done. But it is not true always.
We once asked the Managing Director of one of the companies I worked for as to what is that makes him trust or distrust an employee. The answer was a deceptively quite simple one - dependability. This is a key factor most of the employees seem to ignore or at least the manager perceives so. Dependability is often confused with loyalty. Loyalty is a sense of blind faith. Today's managers however, are not focused on loyalty. They are concerned about dependability.
This answer and a few other incidents in my career got me thinking. What contributes to dependability and how can we score high on this? Let’s analyze this issue of dependability from multiple dimensions. My personal preference has always been to analyze a situation in a two-dimensional framework. This does not mean that other dimensions are not unimportant or irrelevant.
A resource is expected to have qualities like Honesty; Integrity; Technical know-how, and No-politics. As far as the manager is concerned, these qualities are basic and prerequisites to be a good resource. Once this basic foundation is set, the question arises as to whether a resource is “dependable” or not.
The dependability framework is based on two dimensions. 1. Alignment (read as organization or alignment with Manager) and 2. Execution (ability to execute, this is completely different from having the technical know-how and is more about the drive to get things done). Both these dimensions are interlinked in a way because if we are aligned, there is a good chance that we will have a higher drive to get things done. But it is not true always.
As a resource, once we cross the basic skills, we start getting evaluated in the above dimensions. Below is the interpretation of the four blocks in the above framework.
High on Organization Alignment and High on Execution: You are the star. Your managers love you and you are unstoppable. This does not mean that you do not have a mind of your own. Great executions can make a difference to a bad strategy. We take away one major requirement of a resource (it happens all the time) – effective communication. The timing and the method of communicating makes a significant difference to contain the noise levels. As a resource one needs to focus on Execution rather than spending effort on questioning the strategy. You know the famous Dell model - Selling directly to customers (though now they are changing the strategy). Whenever they entered a new market (Europe; Asia, etc) everyone said it will not work. But with their great execution skills, they made it work.
High on Organization Alignment and Low on Execution Skills: These resources are the trusted resources and are generally good to have in any organization. None of us want to be in this category but I have seen people in this block, occupying managerial roles in various organizations. Juniors may not understand this rationale, but organization needs these resources because they are the hands and feet of the organization.
Low on Organization Alignment and High on Execution Skills: A majority of the people, I have met in my career, particularly in India, belong to this category. They have wonderful execution skills and high intellectual capabilities, but many a times they are not aligned to the organization’s goals and visions. Some times significant effort from the manager is required to bring these resources to an organization’s track. Organization needs these resources, but they will always be suspects in the organization’s eyes. With guidance and direction, this large talent pool can be made into valuable assets of the organization. Most of the time, organization do not have the time to educate these resources on the organization’s philosophy. As soon as the organization finds some other resource in the top quadrant, the shelf life of these resources in the company will expire. There are quite a few examples of people landing up in this category. The most famous example is Kiran Bedi.
High on Organization Alignment and High on Execution: You are the star. Your managers love you and you are unstoppable. This does not mean that you do not have a mind of your own. Great executions can make a difference to a bad strategy. We take away one major requirement of a resource (it happens all the time) – effective communication. The timing and the method of communicating makes a significant difference to contain the noise levels. As a resource one needs to focus on Execution rather than spending effort on questioning the strategy. You know the famous Dell model - Selling directly to customers (though now they are changing the strategy). Whenever they entered a new market (Europe; Asia, etc) everyone said it will not work. But with their great execution skills, they made it work.
High on Organization Alignment and Low on Execution Skills: These resources are the trusted resources and are generally good to have in any organization. None of us want to be in this category but I have seen people in this block, occupying managerial roles in various organizations. Juniors may not understand this rationale, but organization needs these resources because they are the hands and feet of the organization.
Low on Organization Alignment and High on Execution Skills: A majority of the people, I have met in my career, particularly in India, belong to this category. They have wonderful execution skills and high intellectual capabilities, but many a times they are not aligned to the organization’s goals and visions. Some times significant effort from the manager is required to bring these resources to an organization’s track. Organization needs these resources, but they will always be suspects in the organization’s eyes. With guidance and direction, this large talent pool can be made into valuable assets of the organization. Most of the time, organization do not have the time to educate these resources on the organization’s philosophy. As soon as the organization finds some other resource in the top quadrant, the shelf life of these resources in the company will expire. There are quite a few examples of people landing up in this category. The most famous example is Kiran Bedi.
Low on Alignment and Low on Execution: This is a bad quadrant to be in. More often people from the third quadrant find themselves in this quadrant once their shelf life is over. It is written on the wall. Normally many organizations clearly manage out such employees.
Start looking at yourself and see which quadrant you will fall in. We can even make a nine blocker on it. It will only bring in more comfort for us. I prefer to face reality all the time.
