The cast so far:
Dhritarashtra, VP, Strategy
Eklavya, Head, Mobility
Gandhari, Head, HR
Nakul, Analyst
Karna, Manager, Mobility
Yudhisthir, Business Head
Bhishma, CEO
Krishna, External Consultant and Facilitator
Dhritarashtra, the VP of Strategy, is unassuming, diminutive and perpetually on the move. He is quite obviously the survivor of many management purges and as a senior VP, appears to have perfected the art of survival within the enterprise. When he is available he is usually on the phone, pacing the floor near the main exit almost as if there was the possibility of a fire at any instant, in which case he could move out quickly. And usually he is unavailable, and never responds to emails. Krishna recognized that as a key factor in executive longevity - "plausible deniability".
Eklavya is the chief of mobility and just six months with the organization. He likes the non-bureaucratic character and high energy of the workplace and firmly believes that anyone with an idea can find expression in this environment. He came in from a CMMi Level 5 organization and is glad that people spend so much time on getting the business done, rather than focus on completing piles of documentation. "Not that it doesn't have its own merits", he was quick to clarify! He was in complete awe of Krishna's breadth and depth of experience, but Krishna, who understood the sinusoidal "emotional cycle of change" well, knew he had to take that worship with a pinch of salt.
Gandhari, the head of human resources, is cute and easy to get along with, as is any young head of human resources in a young organization. And like Eklavya, she is new to the organization and keen to establish her mark. From all reports, the HR department has been a beehive of activity ever since she took over. They streamlined the towering organizational hierarchy, adding many more layers in the process, by giving each original layer and number suffix. So while Manager-03 is a Manager, and Manager-02 is also a manager, hence peers, M-03 drew a higher salary. And to facilitate this new structure, they had rolled out this new performance management stack ranking system that was drawing rave reviews from the executive, but more on this later. And like all HR personnel, they were clueless about what exactly their flock did other than the fact that they were mostly expensive software engineers - extremely opinionated, difficult to please and always comparing their salaries with each other and with other software development organizations and cribbing about it to anyone who cared to listen.
Nakul, the Manager Product slash Analyst, was the strong silent type. Initially, Krishna thought that maybe it was because he came from the Hindi heartland, that maybe he was a bit inhibited speaking English. But he spoke English rather well, did his job quietly, hit all of his deadlines and kept the program leadership appraised of issues. One of those rare birds just interested in getting it done rather than showcasing every step of the process.
Karna, the Manager Mobility while from the same breed as Nakul, was a different kettle of fish altogether. He was the only Certified Scrum Master in the core group (or so he claimed). But he never volunteered his time, never accomplished a single task and never met any deadlines. It was almost as if he considered the change program's daily morning sessions a boring movie that he was forced to watch before returning to his "real work". Krishna spoke to his boss Eklavya about this and of course he had noticed. Eklavya said he will have a word when he found time that afternoon, which he did. The next morning he came back with the recommendation that they should remove Karna from the core group as he had an "attitude" problem!
Yudhisthir, the Business Head of the BU in which we were running the pilot, appeared enthusiastic about the program and its potential to change the fortunes of his unit. The unit was a flagship until a few years ago when more nimble competitors and some global players had dropped in on the scene and taken the shine away from his business. "We have to hit the numbers", he repeated for the n-th time that morning Krishna and he met for the first time. "It is all about the numbers", repeating himself as if to revalidate the fact that it was indeed a numbers game. Krishna had initially mistaken the numbers to mean "revenue & costs", but it was about "eyeballs" and "new registrations", etc,; web stats - the type of figures you obtain from common website analytics tools like AWStats, SiteMeter or Reinvigorate.
Bhishma, the CEO, was a man who obviously believed that the organization was competent enough to run itself. Not that he wasn't involved in the nitty-gritties. Krishna's guess was that Bhishma believed there was adequate competent oversight in the organization for it to take care of the routine. However, Krishna believed that this hands-off approach could be a problem in a major initiative like the one the organization was about to embark upon. Which was not something new. Almost every organization implementing Agile for the first time, underestimated both its scope and impact. The possibilities were, either the person appraising him was not adequately informed about the all-encompassing nature of the upcoming transformation, or Bhishma himself was underestimating the impact simply based on the low external facilitator budget for the Pilot phase.
Krishna, the external consultant and facilitator, was an old dog in business transformations. Having worked with well over a two hundred companies in his lifetime, including some of the biggest of Fortune 500's, transformation was old wine. Yet, agile transformations was still a comparatively new bottle. He would need to adapt and bring lessons from his considerable experiences in handling people and facilitating organizational change to bring about this latest success. He was not unduly worried, except that he often wondered when a new client would begin to see the challenges of such transformations and provide full and unbridled executive support for such an initiative.
There are more characters in the cast, of course, and I will evolve them in due course, as they appear on the scene!
Dhritarashtra, VP, Strategy
Eklavya, Head, Mobility
Gandhari, Head, HR
Nakul, Analyst
Karna, Manager, Mobility
Yudhisthir, Business Head
Bhishma, CEO
Krishna, External Consultant and Facilitator
Dhritarashtra, the VP of Strategy, is unassuming, diminutive and perpetually on the move. He is quite obviously the survivor of many management purges and as a senior VP, appears to have perfected the art of survival within the enterprise. When he is available he is usually on the phone, pacing the floor near the main exit almost as if there was the possibility of a fire at any instant, in which case he could move out quickly. And usually he is unavailable, and never responds to emails. Krishna recognized that as a key factor in executive longevity - "plausible deniability".
Eklavya is the chief of mobility and just six months with the organization. He likes the non-bureaucratic character and high energy of the workplace and firmly believes that anyone with an idea can find expression in this environment. He came in from a CMMi Level 5 organization and is glad that people spend so much time on getting the business done, rather than focus on completing piles of documentation. "Not that it doesn't have its own merits", he was quick to clarify! He was in complete awe of Krishna's breadth and depth of experience, but Krishna, who understood the sinusoidal "emotional cycle of change" well, knew he had to take that worship with a pinch of salt.
Gandhari, the head of human resources, is cute and easy to get along with, as is any young head of human resources in a young organization. And like Eklavya, she is new to the organization and keen to establish her mark. From all reports, the HR department has been a beehive of activity ever since she took over. They streamlined the towering organizational hierarchy, adding many more layers in the process, by giving each original layer and number suffix. So while Manager-03 is a Manager, and Manager-02 is also a manager, hence peers, M-03 drew a higher salary. And to facilitate this new structure, they had rolled out this new performance management stack ranking system that was drawing rave reviews from the executive, but more on this later. And like all HR personnel, they were clueless about what exactly their flock did other than the fact that they were mostly expensive software engineers - extremely opinionated, difficult to please and always comparing their salaries with each other and with other software development organizations and cribbing about it to anyone who cared to listen.
Nakul, the Manager Product slash Analyst, was the strong silent type. Initially, Krishna thought that maybe it was because he came from the Hindi heartland, that maybe he was a bit inhibited speaking English. But he spoke English rather well, did his job quietly, hit all of his deadlines and kept the program leadership appraised of issues. One of those rare birds just interested in getting it done rather than showcasing every step of the process.
Karna, the Manager Mobility while from the same breed as Nakul, was a different kettle of fish altogether. He was the only Certified Scrum Master in the core group (or so he claimed). But he never volunteered his time, never accomplished a single task and never met any deadlines. It was almost as if he considered the change program's daily morning sessions a boring movie that he was forced to watch before returning to his "real work". Krishna spoke to his boss Eklavya about this and of course he had noticed. Eklavya said he will have a word when he found time that afternoon, which he did. The next morning he came back with the recommendation that they should remove Karna from the core group as he had an "attitude" problem!
Yudhisthir, the Business Head of the BU in which we were running the pilot, appeared enthusiastic about the program and its potential to change the fortunes of his unit. The unit was a flagship until a few years ago when more nimble competitors and some global players had dropped in on the scene and taken the shine away from his business. "We have to hit the numbers", he repeated for the n-th time that morning Krishna and he met for the first time. "It is all about the numbers", repeating himself as if to revalidate the fact that it was indeed a numbers game. Krishna had initially mistaken the numbers to mean "revenue & costs", but it was about "eyeballs" and "new registrations", etc,; web stats - the type of figures you obtain from common website analytics tools like AWStats, SiteMeter or Reinvigorate.
Bhishma, the CEO, was a man who obviously believed that the organization was competent enough to run itself. Not that he wasn't involved in the nitty-gritties. Krishna's guess was that Bhishma believed there was adequate competent oversight in the organization for it to take care of the routine. However, Krishna believed that this hands-off approach could be a problem in a major initiative like the one the organization was about to embark upon. Which was not something new. Almost every organization implementing Agile for the first time, underestimated both its scope and impact. The possibilities were, either the person appraising him was not adequately informed about the all-encompassing nature of the upcoming transformation, or Bhishma himself was underestimating the impact simply based on the low external facilitator budget for the Pilot phase.
Krishna, the external consultant and facilitator, was an old dog in business transformations. Having worked with well over a two hundred companies in his lifetime, including some of the biggest of Fortune 500's, transformation was old wine. Yet, agile transformations was still a comparatively new bottle. He would need to adapt and bring lessons from his considerable experiences in handling people and facilitating organizational change to bring about this latest success. He was not unduly worried, except that he often wondered when a new client would begin to see the challenges of such transformations and provide full and unbridled executive support for such an initiative.
There are more characters in the cast, of course, and I will evolve them in due course, as they appear on the scene!
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