Managing Smart People

Most people do not like to be ‘managed’ and bosses are often the subject of unsavory comments around the water coolers and at coffee corners in the offices. That being the normal case it could really be a tough act to manage smart people. And what if many people in the team are smarter than the manager himself? This is a challenge many managers face at the work places of modern organizations. Invariably the newest crop of employees are the smartest ones just as new generations know many tricks that the older did not know. This challenge has been on the rise in the last two decades as the technology and information explosion depleted the monopoly powers of those in positions of authority.

From my own experience I learned a few lessons in managing smart people.

The first thumb rule is not to manage smart people wherever practical and in extreme situations manage them the least. Smart people are capable of conducting and managing their tasks themselves or finding a way on their own. Most often they find managing by the boss as a hindrance to their autonomy, creativity and productivity. They expect less supervision and hate micro management. They have a different set of expectation from the manager. They need the manager to clear the obstacles on their way to complete the assigned tasks- be it the over indulgence from the second level manager, or frequent demands from the functional teams etc., They expect the manager to create a conducive work environment devoid of petty office politics and provide for basic amenities, facilities and technical support to do the job. They expect the manager to be available in crisis situations and guide them when they need help. They expect the manager to appreciate good work and fairly reward the team commensurate with the tasks and achievements. And they expect the manager to be open and accept when he makes a mistake. No one expect anyone to be right all the time. But no one likes dishonesty.

The second thumb rule is to identify and leverage on the smart skills of your team. It would be smart on the part of the manager to acknowledge those skills his team has and the complementary skills he himself has. Typically a professional joins an organization with a hope that his skills, at least some of them, can be utilized on the job. It would be a winning strategy for the manager to encourage and find opportunities for his team to employ some or most of their special or new skills into the job. While the value systems and the culture of an organization are to be shared by all in the company regardless of one being new or old in the system, skills and aspirations are fast changing and the work environment needs to adapt accordingly.

The third thumb rule is to balance the scale of special initiatives among different team members. It may so happen that many members in the team may have similar skills and similar aspirations while the team at any point of time has limited special initiatives to run. The best scenario for the manager is the availability of enough initiatives matching the aspirations and skills of all his team members. This may not be the case always. The manager could ask for volunteers for the initiatives to avoid any perception of favoring any given person in the team with more visible initiatives. The other way to give opportunities to many people is to nominate different team members to lead a cyclical event by rotation. Smart people are very watchful of such dynamics and they would like to see that fair opportunity is given to all.

The fourth thumb rule is to balance competition and collaboration among smart team members. No easy task! Smart people at work often tend to be competitive and some would definitely want to outsmart others in the team. Beyond a subtle point it would be futile to lecture them on the benefits of cooperation and mutual help. They have all not come from the same family and not with the same motivation to work and life. Therefore, it would make sense to create tasks and task teams in such a way that the basic requirement of success is a certain level of collaboration and mutual sharing. If the atmosphere is one of high competition such tasks would require periodic review, sharing of best practices and private counseling of those who dominate excessively and those who are too indifferent to the goings on.

In the year 2000 I was moving out of my role as the Head of Compensation and Benefits at the Corporate office of Wipro. My new role was to head HR for couple of Divisions in the IT Business Unit serving India and Middle East. I was to manage the human resources activities for a large number of employees worked in offices all over the country, customer sites and at our computer factory. We did not have enough people in the HR department to reach out to all employees in reasonable frequency. However, by then e-mail has become quite popular and every employee had e-mail ids. Therefore, we decided to reach out to employees through regular communication mailers and a weekly magazine. While I had a brief background in journalism and functional knowledge in computer I did not know how to make smart looking communication with graphics and pictures. Two young employees in my team were smart to do these things. We used to discuss the content and layout and I used to write the editorial. The execution responsibility was completely with my colleagues who took pride in releasing the magazine every Friday without fail for over one year. They enjoyed autonomy in what they did and consulted me whenever they wanted help. Between the two of them they used to alternate the ground work for upcoming issues of the weekly magazine while the logistics of releasing remained with one of them. Of course, they had their regular day job to do. But this extra job added greater element of creativity and excitement to their regular tasks.

My team did not feel the weight of management above their shoulders nor did I have to worry about ‘managing’ my team!

‘I will find a lazy person to do a difficult job. He will find an easy way to do it.’ – Bill Gates

Return on Education

Increasingly people start asking, ‘what is the return on education’? Some ask this question aloud while others quietly in their minds. This question arises more definitely in the case of higher education and professional courses. This might not have been the case 50 years ago or even 30 years ago. 

So what has really changed? That question leads to another question: is education an economic good or social good?

To get into this debate let’s have some basic definitions in place. An ‘economic good’ is a product or service which can command a price when sold. Pretty much anything we buy from a shop or online is an economic good.  A ‘social good’ or ‘common good’ is a good or service that is shared and beneficial for all or most members of a given community. Examples of social good would be clean air, clean water, literacy or public services like healthcare, law and order.

At the macro level we understand that higher education or scientific research benefits the community, society or even humanity. But the perception changes drastically at micro level. A parent who spends money on her child’s education is often guided by the ‘return on investment’ principle. The average parent asks: ‘What job or a career will my child get into after the education and how rewarding that could be in terms of economic benefits besides the social influence that the degree can command’? The gravity of this concern increases as the cost of education increases.     

Recently when I told that my son joined an MBA program in a university the immediate question my colleague asked was: ‘so what companies is he targeting to join after the course’? My mind was not prepared for an answer to this question. My friend, like many other intelligent parents, assumed that my son is doing an MBA to join a company and therefore, must be targeting the best paying or most well known companies. I didn’t have any such idea, nor does my son have such an idea. For me, education is still by and large a social good. That everyone has to earn a livelihood is incidental to education.

Having been to these economic concepts I went to Google to find what is meant by education. Here is what came up on top of the page. Education is the process of facilitating learning. Knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits of a group of people are transferred to other people through storytelling, discussion, teaching, training or research. This definition is not particularly attributed to anyone and this may not be the best definition. But for me it suffices.

This, of course, is not to indicate that all education is for charity. Education is one of the most effective drivers of economic progress both at the individual level as well as at the community or society level. The suggestion is to reduce the excessive focus on the immediate economic outcomes of education. This will open up new and multiple opportunities to the student and probably to other people around. Some of the best educational institutions in the world are not placement focused. In fact, they don’t have job placement cells. Jobs do come to the best students if they so wish. Well, the brightest don’t seek jobs; they create jobs or focus on making life better for others. In that process some of them may become millionaires or make millions happier, healthier and safer.

Much like in many other important things in life, it is difficult to make clear cut boundaries for education or for that matter the objectives of education. It is perfectly all right for each one to have his or her objectives. However, education need not be reduced only as a means of employment.

So, what is the return on education? Return on education is immeasurable. Let that remain so! Even mathematicians admit that everything cannot be measured limited quantities. So they invented a symbol for infinity.

‘The true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.’ –William Deresiewicz