I tweeted sometime ago that “if a template is all you offer, you really don’t have much to offer”

Let me explain.

For the purpose of this post, the term “customer” can mean anybody you interact with – not just money-paying person seeking products/services.

Too many times, we get locked into this mode of supplying a template somebody comes to us for an answer. This could be in a business transaction or employee motivation or anything for that matter. No emotions, no empathy, no niche, no expression of desire to help. “Here, please fill up this template and send it back!” And by the way, templates don’t always come in spreadsheets. They take many forms, but usually have a rigid set of solutions around the “if-then-else” logic. But life and business hardly present us problems that can be resolved with templates or templatized mindsets.

Why is this gesture bad?

Whether it is a person-to-person transaction or a multi-million dollar deal, all of us have the need to be heard and understood. By giving somebody a template, we are basically telling them we’ve empowered ourselves to not spend any time thinking about your problem, instead try to fit it into a set of rules.

Are templates evil?

Templates are not bad. In fact, they are great. Templates are a checklist for the person providing the answers. A solution provider is supposed to be an intelligent and human, with the checklist serving the purpose of making sure s/he has covered everything, to which there is a hitherto chance of erring. Templates help standardize, maintain consistency and completeness. But standardization also means repeatable, industrialized and most importantly, emotion-less. Especially when template is not accompanied by a human emotion.

Besides, what is your role anyways?

Just think about this. If all you do is provide templates, exactly why are you required? The job of providing templates is rather mechanical and could potentially be done by another person (in the flat world, I must say – another cheaper person)

What can you do?

Take this from me. People don’t really need an expert, when all the expert does is supply templates. And even if they don’t tell on face, here is the truth: they do not value him. What can you do? You can be remarkable; you can be human by remembering a simple rule. The template is for you, try not sending the template (email is another evil, but that’s off-topic). Instead pick up the phone and ask them the same questions as if you genuinely meant to ask them. Call it value add or niche. I tend to call this emotional labor. Of course, emotional labor is not everything, rather a humble start.

Prolog

Leadership of every hue and cry has been covered in over 437, 869 book titles available on Amazon.com alone (Search for Leader). Not to speak of countless blog posts, magazine and newspaper articles on the subject.

Judging from the reams of material that has been written and from personal experience, Leadership is a tough topic and it is clear that we don’t understand it that well.  Therefore, it is seductive to boil leadership down to a set of formulae:

• Try this small exercise with me – think of any number N from 1 to 50 and search for N leadership traits and you are likely to find an article(s)/book(s) like the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,  36 traits of leaders,10 characteristics of leaders, 21 indispensable qualities of leaders …

• It is also inspiring to read about great leaders and insights drawn from their experiences.  Therefore, you get to read the leadership wisdom of people starting from Sun Tzu to Steve Jobs.

It is all about the Leader

The one unifying pattern that emerges from reading the popular leadership press is that it seems to be all about the leader and his/her skills.  There is some wisdom bandied about – on choosing the right people , making sure you eliminate the people who don’t fit your vision, etc.  But for the most part, leadership is about seeking to become the ideal leader with all the N qualities depending on whose N you believe in.  With all this talk about the Leader,  if becoming a leader seems like a Herculean task, you are not alone.

The 21st Century Leader

Having been in leadership roles for the past 18 years, i don’t think it was ever about the leader 100%. Now, in the 21st century, with the latest and greatest communication and management tools, the leader is much much less important. Only those leaders, who grasp this counter-intuitive insignificance of themselves, are going to succeed. John Chambers, The legendary CEO of Cisco recently articulated this shift:

“The CEO role at Cisco going back over the last five to 10 years has been very much ‘command and control’ and I think we do it pretty well, and if we say ‘turn right,’ 65,000 people turn right,” Chambers said.

“That’s very effective when you’re in a couple product areas or one or two major cross-functional initiatives per year. It is not an effective leadership style or organization structure if you’re moving into a lot of market adjacencies and you have a lot of major cross-functional priorities.”

This whole obsession with, who the leader is and what his/her personality is, is a vestige from the command and control era of management.  The 21st century leadership will be marked by a totally different style – which i decided to call UnLeadership.

Developing the UnLeadership Manifesto

I would like to engage the community on this blog in developing this manifesto.  The community has delivered the goods many times before including the mission impossible – can passion be taught?

Here is what i propose we should do – build a set of rules for the UnLeader and in the next pass recommend the tools that will be needed.

That would be my first one on the manifesto – 1. Instill passion in your team.

No Asshole Rule

One of my favorite authors Bob Sutton has written a fantastic book called No Asshole Rule recently.  This is a must read to understand what one should never do as a leader.  This would be my recommendation for the second rule – 2. Never be an Asshole.

Inspiration

In order to inspire you all to the task at hand, i would like you all to spend 1 hour and 16 min watching this video from Professor Randy Pausch, famously known as the Last Lecture. I will guarantee you that this will be one of the best 1 hour and 16 min you have ever spent watching a lecture. [Sadly he passed away yesterday]

Epilog

Now for the community to develop the rest of the rules – decision making, dealing with/developing expertise, empowerment, performance management (vision, goal setting, reviews etc) and any other category you want to add.  Numbered lists are seductive indeed, so let us keep our list to 10.  Most important thing to bear in mind – don’t be held hostage to existing models of leadership, let us rewrite the rules. I am also tagging bloggers that i know are passionate about leadership – Ganesh Vaideeswaran, Arun Sankaranarayanan , Ranjit Nair and Subba Muthurangan .  I am hoping other bloggers will also join in and help create the framework.

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