Leadership Interoperability
Edition #007
Introduction
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Dr. Annapurni Subramaniam is one of India’s most celebrated Astrophysicists. She is the Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, India.
In this episode, she talks about importance of decadal vision - some of the outcomes of this vision cannot be seen immediately but has a big transformational change and impact well into the future, the importance of leadership interoperability in space projects across different missions, mentors who have inspired her etc.
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How Paul Graham Went From Painter to YCombinator Founder
Paul Graham is one of the most influential and inspiring Silicon Valley investor, entrepreneur and thought leader.
This video is pure gold where David Perell outlines how Paul Graham found success circumventing convention. He also talks about how a combination of Paul Graham’s natural and his seemingly opposing interests helped him build his career.
Leadership Interoperability
As we were reflecting on our conversation with Dr.Annapurni Subramaniam, one terminology that got our attention was ‘Leadership Interoperability’. She was talking about a variety of space missions she has been a part of and different roles that she played in many of them - in some missions she was leading a team, in others she was a part of a larger team across countries and space institutions, in a few others she played the role of an individual team member etc.
Sometimes, senior leaders get stuck in their head with an inner need to lead everything due to their designation or position. They often find it difficult to be led by others in certain areas where they may not have the best skill set. Great leaders know when to lead and when to be led.
In an organization, there are a host of projects or programs, where there may be some people who are peers or subordinates who may be in a better position to lead and truly add value to them. As a senior leader, the ability to have a sense of this and allow or give those people an opportunity to lead specific projects or programs proactively, differentiates the truly world-class leaders from others. This requires a very different mindset and DNA.
One way to evaluate a leader’s interoperability mindset, is to look at all the initiatives of an organization and observe if the best folks are leading them or is it being led by people because of their designation or work experience. Also, trying to understand what are the mix of projects and programs where senior leaders are leading them and the ones where they are a part of the team being led by somebody else. The one thing critical is to start appreciating and believing that positions or number of years of work experience or designations don’t lead to an entitlement mindset.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
a. Facing brutal reality and looking at things honestly when building a business is often hard and difficult.
b. ‘Great people’ when they often develop a sense of entitlement mentality and start demanding unreasonable things, the decline of an organization and its culture is imminent.
c. Often, the timeline of a vision and its impact is not apparent immediately. It is important to set up a kind of decadal vision for yourself and also for the organization you work for. This can make a big difference in both impact and outcome over time.
d. Great leaders have the ability to think and act humbly, with phenomenal ‘interoperability’ mindset, when it comes to their roles and contribution in projects or programs.