As You Life It

ONE

Takes a village to raise a child – Eight lessons small towns teach you

There is something about a certain place in every person’s life. I am sure that there are many of you out there like me who look back at a specific block of time that has passed and find it stationery, like a scattered wad of color visible from the wrong end of a kaleidoscope, opening into an idyllic world of a small town whose doors waited to be kicked in by us and where each door would in turn, lead into other doors inside a never ending labyrinth called youth where time pauses and swings to the unending music in our hearts and makes us believe that we were time itself, that we were forever.

For me, it was the 90s – a generation envious of the 70s, bored with the 80s and impatient for the 21st century. When I look back today, despite a lack of something spectacular about the 90s or the small industrial town I grew up in, there was something special in that space that permeated into me and stayed.

Like every small town, ours too began with a robust signboard, while its finishing lines were a little blurred, a little disputed, because the only prospect scarier for the temporary settlers in our town of not being able to return to it someday, was that of not being able to leave it ever at all. And yet, when we left, we always yearned to get back there one day to sigh in dismay at undone strangers in our own mirrors. Our neighbors lived in modest houses with generous verandahs and large gardens, their hearts mostly choosing empathy over ambition. We kids grew up listening to never depleting bedtime stories read by patient mums or narrated by impatient grandmas. Rush hour traffic, including motorbikes ridden by rowdy youngsters, would pause on the pretext of a cigarette break, just to let a string of ducks cross the road, without scaring them off. Diets were still unheard of and families loved to have large uninhibited meals, together, seven days a week. People often got friendlier after their first drink at our neighborhood bar, unafraid of occasionally passing out after one too many, confident that someone will always lend a hand and install them into their own bed at night. Births and funerals used to be less lonely, and people would show up with generous smiles to welcome you into the world and shed real tears while bidding you goodbye. Science was still a little scanty, philosophy was still a little dated and religion was still a little tolerant in our town.

And then, like every small town dweller, we too reached that fateful day and stepped out into the real world, leaving behind our broken guitars, our heroic poetry and our idealistic martyrdom in that enclosure of the past that serves as a custodian of our myths and dreams, our heartbreaks and folklore, our love, our lust and our loss. True, peering back at the journey so far, hedging the regrets of missed turns and unmet dreams, some of which may be attributable to the limitations of our small– town paradigms, I am sure that I would not have traded my small–town childhood for any worthier alternative. The merits of growing up in small towns far outweigh the defects we inherit. Here are some of them –

To belong – In her growing up years as the daughter of a corporate gypsy, my daughter has been to eleven educational institutions across nine cities. Hers has been a typical urban childhood that comprised of learning, unlearning and relearning her tribe over and again. In contrast, my tribe is frozen for this lifetime. While I made a lot of acquaintances and also several friends in my life, curiously, as I noticed the other day, most of my thick friendships are archived in my years in my small town. In a world where geographical boundaries have become irrelevant over the past decade due to the digital thunderstorm that’s hit it and brought forth all the connectivity across all those platforms, our world but, has become a lonelier place with each passing day. Somewhere, beyond all that chatter of fake networks, we all need to belong. We all need that coveted corner in our hearts where we can stow away our memories. And we all need that one trip in our bucket list that takes us back to that bend of life where a wall stands wearing graffiti. A graffiti that bears our story.

To dream –Wait for me at this place one year from now and I shall drive back in an S–Class Merc, exclaimed my indignant best friend while boarding a bus after being thrown out of his house because he had dropped out of college. True to his word, he came back one day. Okay, he couldn’t manage his S–Class, but the 19–year–old boy I saw off a year back, came back a worldly–wise 20–year–old man who had taken his shot, learnt his lesson and returned to base camp, stronger and wiser. Every small–town boy has a Rocky Balboa inside him and a dream to slay his own Apollo Creed in the world out there. Sometimes we manage to get the better of Apollo. Sometimes we get clobbered by him. But that doesn’t stop us from dreaming. Because we know that whether we come back without our Merc like my friend, or with a World Cup like Dhoni, we will have friends waiting for us back home to cheer for us either way.

To begin – Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. While our end is opaque and our middle is what consumes us in our daily grind, life often tosses us the periodic curve ball that stops us on our tracks with existential dilemma and makes us question its meaning and sigh at the futility of it all. That’s where one needs a Page One, a beginning, to turn back to and to pick ourselves up. Today’s fast paced urban life offers you a deal of free–flowing adrenaline and easy dopamine. It however fails to give you your story and a pause to sit back and reflect on it, to map back the route you came about to become you. Most small–town folks treasure their beginnings. That’s where they settle down after their second whisky. And that’s where they fall back on for strength when life comes calling, as it often does.

To laugh –Doesn’t he resemble S’s dad, whispered my friend in my ears, loud enough for our Jesuit principal (cane in hand) to hear him, and making the four of us, who have been lined up after the school assembly for being caught smoking outside the school, burst into uncontrollable laughter. The principal is furious. He canes us mercilessly for fifteen minutes, threatening to expel us from school. Fortunately, he doesn’t. Twenty–five years later, rummaging through an old album, I remember this incident and write it on my Facebook page with an old pic. In an hour, I have triggered off a hilarious thread of comments below it, including those from a dozen ex– teachers, and (surprise, surprise) the now–octogenarian principal himself. There is something liberating about laughter. It loosens you and makes you a better human being. As life unfolds, warts and all, we all need anecdotes to stitch together and laugh about when life tends to get messy. Today, as a middle–aged man, I am ready to let go of all my trophies, but I cannot let go of the stories that make me laugh at life whenever life scowls at me.

To bounce back – Till date I cannot say if it was my love for life, my fear of death or the desire to see my family for one last time, that stopped me from jumping off the speeding Gitanjali Express train that dark July night in 1993. I, the multi–tasking self–proclaimed maverick from our school, had flunked in three papers in my second year, thanks to my new bohemian lifestyle and my new company at university. Even today I remember my dad’s heartbreaking indifference, my Ma’s crestfallen face, the sullen bird less sky that refused to let go of its rain and a scooter ride to my old school where a conversation with an old teacher and her comforting words thereafter which changed my life. Two months later, I went back to the university. Two years on, I topped it. I buried the ghost of failure, the old school way. A small–town community teaches you to embrace failure and learn from it instead of hiding it. Till date, whenever life corners me, I step back to that afternoon in our school staff room. And I know I will bounce back. The small–town way.

To remember compassion – A few days after my 8th birthday, one of my dad’s close friends passed away and the family lost its sole earning member. Even at such a young age, I remember being moved by the efforts set in motion by dad and his colleagues to handle the situation. In two months, they managed to find a job for their friend’s wife (nothing great, but something that would pay the bills, ensure continuity of their daughter’s education and give the mother–daughter duo a respectable life that was not dependent on relatives). Many years on, the lady, now retired, and an extended family member of ours, sits and weeps uncontrollably at my dad’s funeral. Like this, we have scores of relationships accumulated over the decades, with people whose ties with us have become thicker than blood. Through births and weddings and funerals, as life follows cycles, we stand by one another, bound by a common past in a common existence we shared in that small town that taught us compassion. When we see people going through tough times, we don’t judge or turn our back. We roll our sleeves and try to help.

To have tolerance – One of my favorite childhood memories is going to the church on a chilly winter morning with a friend and helping ourselves to the cakes kept on a platter for visitors. Now, while I am a Hindu, my friend happened to be a Muslim boy. Funnily our faiths never seemed to matter or come in the way of our bonding. In our growing up years, we would share our lunch boxes, lend and borrow textbooks, celebrate festivals of all faiths and occasionally also date between communities without looking behind our backs to check if some politician would approve of it or not. Maybe this gave us the adaptability to move around so effortlessly in this glocal world and the conviction to love mankind beyond the colors of religions, skins and passports.

To have perspective – Last December, while visiting Ma at Calcutta, I was sitting and having a drink with two gentlemen who had come over to see me. Strangers to one another, but acquaintances of my late father, one of them is in his early 70s while the other is touching 80. Incidentally both of them have difficulties with hearing. So, you can well imagine the conversation. When the first gentleman would broach the subject of the day’s cricket match, the other would be talking of the guest house décor he liked during his last Shimla trip. I guess you can imagine the scene where I, between rounds of Johnny Walker, would try to connect their conversation threads, in vain. And then, every few minutes, one of them would withdraw into a momentary and private silence. Understandably so. One of them recently lost his highflyer son in a tragic road accident, while the other’s only daughter had succumbed to a cruel cancer two years back. The awkwardness of the circumstances aside, the three of us managed to have a wonderful evening in our own lopsided way, laughing at our own versions of jokes we thought we heard, and occasionally stepping back to reflect on the drama of life and how insignificant each one of us is, when it comes to the larger scheme of things. We have taught ourselves, that this too shall pass. Or maybe it won’t. But we won’t give up. Or give in. We are the long run types. We are small town folks. We are the long run types. We are small town folks

TWO

Who killed Productivity?

In the past fifteen years, the world added 1.4 billion people to itself and is today rumored to have more cell phones in it than toothbrushes (seriously!). We have taught our cars to drive themselves and managed to outsource intelligence from humans to machines. Among other things, we have leant to swipe our life partners, ‘Like’ our approvals, upload our rebellions and tweet our displeasure. To borrow Thomas Friedman’s words, fifteen years ago, Facebook didn’t exist, Twitter was still a sound, the cloud was still in the sky, 4G was a parking place, LinkedIn was a prison, applications were what you sent to college, and Skype was a typo.

Indeed, mankind, especially the world of business, has moved on quite a bit since those dark ages of the 20th century. But have we really moved forward? Today, thanks to technology and a glocal world we live in, modern managers are connected 24x7 to their work and are clocking longer hours than ever before, juggling work with more work, rather than work with life. And yet, every day we hear accounts of time tested (sometimes century old) conglomerates licking dust, we read about rapidly eroding profitability of organizations, and we witness shelf lives of CEOs diminishing from a decade long, to (sometimes) less than a year.

So, what exactly went wrong?

The following, as per me, are the top ten killers of productivity in today’s world –

The erroneous circle of priorities – In most large organizations today, employees are managing each other, the CEO is managing the board, the board is micromanaging the share price, which in turn is managing the investment strategy and the stability of the organization. Two decades back, the board would empower the CEO, whose key priority would be to take care of his employees, who, when happy, would take care of the customer. And curiously, when the customer was taken care of, the share price took care of itself. Simple & Smart, wasn’t it?

The disruption overkill – By definition, disruption means cheaper, simpler or unexpected products and services bringing down gigantic corporations. In the past twenty years, the last five in particular, ‘disruption’ has become a guiding star for small, entrepreneurial start–ups and a favored buzzword for large organizations who have hailed it as the link they have been missing in order to stay relevant in an oversupplied marketplace. However, the theory of disruption is perhaps fast falling prey to its own popularity today owing to gross misunderstanding and mis– application, with enthusiasts missing the fact that successful disruptive innovators (or challengers) cannot coexist with uniform rules in a dynamic market where old world manufacturing behemoths are jostling for relevance with business models of newcomers that were unimaginable a decade ago. And the over–emphasis on embracing disruption as a rule, rather than as an alternative, has resulted in a lot of unnecessary mess at organizations who seem to be getting nowhere despite their conscious efforts at disrupting themselves. Businesses follow cycles that need to be respected, industries have distinct DNAs that needs to be remembered. By cross pollination of leaders & their ideas, you cannot transfer cheat sheets from one organization to another. What works for a rookie start up, might not work for a conglomerate.

The leadership oversupply – In the good old days, organizational structures would look like pyramids where a leader would be perched on top and have a defined line of authority below him / her, with clarity on roles and responsibilities. There would be clear instructions on goals and accountabilities, and people would mostly follow them to meet the numbers. What ails most large modern organizations is not a shortage of, but rather an oversupply of leaders. Today, thanks to an explosion of popular management literature, every employee has this burning need to be addressed as a leader. Every 25–year–old aspires to be a CEO in five years. As a result, actual workmen have become a near–extinct species in most companies. Like an exasperated ex–colleague of mine once quipped – "For every ten ‘leaders’ in a project, we get just two workers. No wonder we never finish on time!".

The entitlement baggage – While I am on the subject of leadership, let me rub it in a little more. Most modern organizations today have this shortcut to creating leaders which they call as ‘Executive Programs’. The idea is – Round up a bunch of smart MBAs, put them through some soft–ground simulations disguised as rotations and design them for success, short circuiting them into leadership positions, arming them with trophies won at these games. I think it was Taleb who once wrote something like this – Executive programs are places where people who have never worked for a day in their entire careers, lecture those who have never had a day free from work during theirs. While that’s a bit harsh, but it is also partly true. During pre–history, i.e. roughly till the late 20th century, leaders started as apprentices at the shop floor (or the sales field), worked their ass off for a couple of decades, earning their stripes from real time experience and not by pitching some fancy PPTs to one another and applauding each other to glory. To quote Yogi Berra – In theory, there’s no difference between theory & practice, but in practice, there is. Meaning – we don’t put theories into practice. We create theories out of practice.

Big Data & decision paralysis – "The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment." – Warren Bennis. The dark humor of the quote aside, what is indeed scary in today’s business world is the fast disappearing element of human connect & the unhealthy dependence on cold data to make business calls. Business is a contact sport. People do business with other people, not with computers. It is estimated that in the past fifteen years, the world has been doubling its information repository every second year over all preceding years of its existence. This adds into a dizzy amount of data out there that is dancing to grab your attention. In Barry Schwartz’s " Paradox of choice , the author describes why a large selection platter leads to decision paralysis, illustrating it with a great example that when a store scaled down it’s ‘Types of Jelly’ options from 24 to 6, keeping other terms of the sale same, it sold 10 times more jelly. Flooded with too many choices, we fall prey to decision fatigue & just don’t decide. Or, we decide as per archived past experiences, and justify the decision somehow. Warren Buffet once said – What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact". If you have worked for a large matrix MNC, you might have just remembered those back–to– back meetings on your calendars every day, places real or virtual, where everyone tries to make sense of his / her pool of data. And yet, nobody bells the bloody cat!

The Matrix – Okay, let me rub in some more on this matrix thing. I sometimes suspect that the modern day matrix organization is the brainchild of some creative genius who wanted to design a mechanism that would maximize the distance between a decision maker and the risk of the decision, by constructing a complicated truss of humans who would be expected to sit solemnly for entire days, in extremely dark and cold spaces, real or virtual, that would come to be known as ‘meeting rooms’ (real or virtual) in years to follow, their main objective in life being to aggressively cancel each other out (on non–issues), and secretly smile every time an idea (their own, or someone else’s) gets challenged and stopped from being implemented. At the end of such long days, they would be expected to walk energetically out of their offices, demonstrating a great deal of external self–worth, while unable to explain to their own selves, a sense of unease that would keep gnawing them from within. Matrix structures, which were originally designed to unearth unpleasant questions, today do just the reverse. Wary of having their own turf being attacked, matrix leaders mostly keep their hands off one another when it comes to deeper issues, thus diluting the entire concept of a matrix, which was to speed up decision making and step up on compliance.

Puzzles, mysteries, risk and uncertainty – In his 2018 keynote address at the WGS at Dubai, Malcolm Gladwell made an interesting point while explaining why we might be getting it wrong when it comes to make decisions in today’s world. Using the analogy of puzzles and mysteries, Gladwell explained that in the past when mankind had limited access to information choices, leaders would approach a problem by defining it clearly, and then decide by the rule book. This was the puzzle– method, which had a path to a solution. In today’s world however, with so much of information to sift through, problem solving has become akin to a mystery. Also explained in the Ellsberg Paradox, which nicely differentiates between risk and uncertainty. The field of statistics is based on the study of risk (known unknowns) which is an accessible human gamble. Uncertainty however means dealing with unknown unknowns, and it is almost impossible to predict uncertainty. Unfortunately, most leaders are still applying the rules of a puzzle to solve modern business challenges which are actually mysteries, & which offer no such comfort. A mystery can at best, pose questions that may or may not have straight answers because a mystery depends on a future intersection of many factors, known and unknown. A mystery cannot be answered; it can only be framed, by identifying key factors and making sense of how they have intersected in the past and might (intersect) in the future. Unfortunately, it is also not as elementary as Holmes would shrug off. To deal with mysteries, you need a seasoned sleuth with horse sense, not a geek with a gadget.

The passion hypothesis – Borrowing Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford address for context, Cal Newport has brilliantly shot holes into the passion hypothesis that has consumed the modern professional in recent years, explaining why this whole emphasis of ‘following your passion’ might not be a good idea after all. The ‘passion trap’, as Newport calls it, is what makes a young graduate believe that he / she must first identify what he/ she loves, and then ‘find’ that job in some idyllic world out there, which understandably doesn’t exist. As a result of this, employees are getting less and less engaged because they do not love the work they land up with. ‘I am looking for significance!’, wails the twenty–four–year–old, barely a year into his career, while his employer tries to excite him with flexi hours to work, beanbags to laze on, and free food to add to his already inflated waist line. Almost 70% of professionals < 25 years of age say they are unsatisfied with their work. And this is the work force we are relying on to keep the wheels of commerce moving? Something’s missing, right?

Teams and other fads (Meh) – When 2 people pull a rope, they invest 93% of their individual energy, which drops to 85% when 3 people do it & with 8 people, the individual effort slides to 49%. This phenomenon, known as the ‘Ringelmann effect’, is the tendency for individual members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases. Also known as ‘social loafing’, this explains why the hype around ‘team work above all’ might be overrated after all, especially when applied to certain cultures, or when applied to today’s MNCs where teamwork means coexistence of several cultures within a group trying to accomplish a unified result. Hence, if you’re an individual contributor who delivers best results working alone, don’t feel too bad. Maybe you are doing better than many ‘team players’ & ‘leaders’ out there who bask unfairly in the team’s glory, and sometimes hide their own faults behind their team’s results. Likewise, just because Facebook or Google embraced an ‘open–office’ concept, it doesn’t mean that you should also jump and copy them. They might be wrong after all. Or, even if it works for them, it might not work for your kind of company.

Finally, the ‘Culture thing’ – "Organizational culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner" – A Drucker gem, which was later made famous by Mark Fields, President of Ford. In the past twenty years, thanks to an over– supply of populist leadership literature that literally implores modern managers to do an over–kill on the strategy discussion, sometimes even joining the dots backwards, just so as to add them into a strategic story line, the culture creed has died a silent death. In the good old days when you would join a new organization, you would be required to report to a 50–something HR Manager who would then put you through a detailed orientation program, arranging interfaces for you with each department and letting the organization soak itself into you, and vice versa. Today, you join a workplace, introduce yourself to a machine, enroll into an online orientation module that you halfheartedly go through, and you spend a good few months fumbling and bumbling through your job before you get to even see your colleagues (sometimes, your own boss) in person. No wonder you do not develop a sense of belonging. Strategy is dynamic and fleeting, like form. Culture is static and permanent, like class. Strategy drives accountability, true. But Culture instills ownership. Isn’t it about time that we as leaders, start re–visiting culture and let strategy follow?

THREE

The DON’Ts of Sales Management

One February morning in 2001, barely three years into my sales career, I found myself being promoted from a front–line sales engineer to an Area Sales Manager. I was assigned three guys, my erstwhile peers, all senior to me in terms of age, as my ‘team’, whom I was supposed to ‘lead’. Having clocked good numbers as a front liner, my boss was convinced that it was now time for me to get into a supervisory role.

There were two problems. One – He never bothered to explain to me the nuances of the transition process of a salesman into a manager. Two – As a high performing (and a tad arrogant) upstart, I never bothered to ask, or try to learn.

I assumed that I was given my new cap for my aggressive selling skills, which was only partly true. In my new role, I straightaway stepped on the pedal and went about doing the same stuff that I had been doing till then, just with more gusto. In my eagerness to succeed at any cost, I soon ended up selling FOR my team members, who would now sit back amused, and let me bear the blows of the market, especially of some of their difficult channel accounts. Somehow, I managed to hit the targets for my unit over the next two quarters and closed the year, but I was almost burnt out. Meanwhile, my boss took a new role and moved on.

My new boss, a sales hawk in his early 40s, and who carried quite a bit of rep on him, soon understood the situation in my unit. For some reason, he had taken a liking towards me, and over the course of next two months, he spent a considerable amount of time with me, while in office, or while traveling to upcountry markets with me. On many evenings, sometimes over a drink when we were traveling and were back at the hotel after a long day, he would coach me. For some reason, he would insist that I take notes. For a young sales guy, all this came across as old world ridiculous, but I had no option but to comply. And soon, I had a brown diary containing those notes. However, since he was a nice human being and genuinely cared for me, I did (unconsciously so), imbibe some of his pointers into my working style. And by some stroke of luck (so I thought then), soon had a better control over my ‘team’ and had managed to clumsily migrate from a glorified sales engineer to an okay sales manager by the end of the year. Incidentally, I held on to this practice for a few years and my brown diary was soon filled with little nuggets collected from some of my earlier bosses.

Since those were the pre–social media days, we normally didn’t have too many means to preserve or document our learning. But somehow, my brown diary survived the test of a decade. Many years later, discovering it in an old bookshelf while moving cities, I remember having spent my in–flight time, re–reading it, and was surprised (also disappointed with myself) at how little I had managed to retain out of it. And as a result, had ended up becoming yet another rat in yet another race. Looking at my new world around me, I could spot scores of ‘managers’ getting their act totally wrong, and I was probably no exception. Reflecting on whatever little I had managed to accomplish as a sales leader over the years, I could miraculously trace all of that to some piece of wisdom that I had managed to keep on me from the brown diary, despite not consciously trying to do so. I could only manage to say a silent Thank You to the people behind the words.

Here are some of my favourites (reconstructed from short to long hand) from the jottings I had scribbled while stifling my yawns those days, sitting in some hotel room in up–country India, with one eye on a glass of rum and cola in front of me.

Never fall in the trap of Monday morning review meetings with your team where you go through an excel sheet of opportunities, where you keep asking the same questions, and keep getting the same answers (or excuses). These meetings not only make you look (& sound) stupid in front of your team, but they also kill the mojo of a team as they seem like interrogation sessions. Every Monday morning is an opportunity to establish the adrenaline flow of a sales team. Quick & informal one–to–one chats are far more effective than frequent military–style formal reviews.

Resist the urge to micromanage and direct each sub–activity of your team. Giving your team the autonomy of making their own strategy, is your sign of respect towards them. Yes, course–correct and coach as necessary, but keep your involvement largely to the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of things, leaving the ‘how’ to the team.

If you have not had a face to face meeting with the top 20 accounts of your market in the past three months – you are headed for disaster. A good sales leader should spend more time in offices of customers than in his own office, doing internal meetings.

Technology is meant to help you do your work better, not to make it more complicated. Any ‘tool’ that serves a larger purpose of internal reporting in varying combinations, instead of enhancing the top line or bottom line of the organisation, deserves to be dumped. Form your impressions through real time interface with your guys, not through the regularity of some computer–generated summary of a report. Some of the best sales guys you will see in future years, lack the discipline of meticulous reporting but are super–effective in getting results, while some of the worst sales guys are brilliant with internal pitches and fancy reports, but cannot sell to save their lives. Don’t be fooled by tools & presentations.

Never employ a threat you cannot carry out. Rather, never use threats at all. Threats make you look silly. Impotent, actually.

Never bore your team with tales of your own greatness when you were in their place. Such tales become a source of folklore & fodder for after– work jokes about you behind your back, by the boys at the bar.

Reminds me – Having a drink with the boys every evening after work, is a bad idea. Ever noticed that the boss doesn’t do it? That’s why he is the boss, and they are the boys.

If you need something to be done by your team, tell them that YOU want them to do it. Never drop names or say that your boss’s boss in Boston has asked for it. Name dropping makes you look like a spineless idiot.

If someone expresses his desire to quit and leave your team, handle it with grace and niceness. Never harass an outgoing employee. In four working decades, we often cross paths with old acquaintances more than once. Don’t burn bridges. Ex–employees can sometimes become your biggest support at unexpected junctures, especially as a source of market intelligence.

To improve the performance of a younger team member – Coach. To improve the performance of an older team member – Demonstrate. In either case – Never raise your voice.

Don’t be a sucker for fads on team building exercises. The best teams are a heterogeneous ensemble of individuals working towards a common goal, but each having his / her individuality uncramped. Never try to tame a lone wolf in your team into a collaborative team player. Let him do it his way.

Refrain from counting pennies. Refrain from micro–managing expense statements, customer–visit plans and other day–to–day things in the life of your team members. That’s the easiest way to lose your respect.

There are primarily two kinds of salespeople – those who are driven by money and those who are driven by recognition and growth. Never mix up the two, nor set the same performance metrics for them. Remember however, that the common element that shall make them respect you, is what they learn beyond their existing skills, from you. You can only command this respect; you cannot demand it.

If you have a lady in your team among the band of boys, on the face of it – tell everyone that they are all the same. But make relevant allowances while allocating targets and territories to your lady team member. A woman must face a different set of challenges than the men when she undertakes a sales career. Respect those challenges. Also, if properly harnessed, a strong lady salesperson can often bring in a wide–angle perspective to the team, besides infusing a method to the madness that sales teams are generally about.

As far as possible and permissible by the rule book, be an ‘enabler’ for your team inside the organisation, helping them to navigate red tape and bureaucratic BS. Refrain from creating roadblocks for ambitious salespeople, masquerading as a ‘management’ representative. Fight for your team inside the organisation, fight by your team in the marketplace.

Never discuss about any team member with another, especially in his absence. Snub any form of gossip in your unit and discourage one–on–one groups, blind copies in emails and so on. Never create or encourage an environment of lack of trust.

Every once in a while, roll up your sleeves and go close a sale yourself. Selling skills are like muscles that need regular workouts to stay relevant. Most salespeople stop selling within a year of graduating into management. Don’t be ‘most salespeople’. Besides earning you credibility among your boys, staying in touch with real selling keeps you abreast with market realities and challenges in a fast–changing world.

Hire people who are smarter than your existing bench (preferably, also smarter than you) so that you push up the rated average of your team. Don’t hire smart people and dumb them down to the rated average of your team. On hiring again – never hire someone for academic brilliance alone, unless you plan to open an university. On hiring, yet again – Never hire a sales guy who claims he has had a consistent high performance for the past five years, because he is most probably fibbing. The law of averages gives even the best salespeople three good years at the max, before they hit a lean year.

Life can be messy. Of all skills and qualities that make you respectable, empathy is the only one that keeps you respectable over the long run. Forget birthdays and anniversaries if you wish but remember funerals and low days in the lives of people in your team. Be by their side when tough times come calling on them, as tough times often do, for all of us.

You need not be an epitome of perfection to be a good sales manager. It’s okay to be human. If you are fair, hardworking and a person of unquestioned personal integrity, you are good. The best sales managers are ones who work with the team, while also, subtly so, managing to stay above the team.

FOUR

The Forty–Twenty conversation

In my younger days, like most Type As, I used to be one of those over–competitive types. And super concerned if someone else was getting the better grades, wearing the shinier medal, dating the prettier girl. So on.

I carried this forward as my default self into my professional life. Being a salesperson, my day job gave me ample options to look ahead, sideways and behind, to mark myself against my competition in races that I defined and invited upon myself. Whenever I would win, I would feel like Superman. When I wouldn’t, I would sulk and be miserable. I guess you get the drift.

Then I grew a little older. The arena shifted. Life conspired. And the game changed. Like most people, the world sped up around me while I myself slowed down. Like most people, I was spending