Tag: impact

What lives between Intention and Impact


In today’s fast changing world, we are almost always confronted by situations about which we lack past experience to engage or resolve. We try to force fit some past learning and end up either failing to get an outcome, or if lucky, achieving part success.

In a past assignment, I was managing a Travel & Destination services management company. One of our major customer accounts was the national petroleum development organisation and because of the large business quantum, we had an implant operation with a dedicated team. Our service and response levels were appreciated by the client.

In line with the commercial norms, as our contract period was coming to an end, the company released a tender for a subsequent period. Believing the client was happy with us, we submitted our competitive offer in line with what we had done during our last successful bid. When the tender was finalised, we were shocked to know that we had lost. When we asked the client company’s commercial team, we were informed that we had not complied with the technical terms of the bid. Going back to the drawing board, so to say, our analysis of the tender document revealed that there had been a small section requiring development and implementation of a Travel management Services (TMS in short) software as part of the client’s intranet, which we had not responded to.

Soon, we had the opportunity to bid against a tender released by the National Gas Company. We noticed that in this tender document too, there was a requirement of implementing a TMS software. This time we were careful enough to comply with the requirement by indicating our willingness to develop. But we again lost the tender! The winner was a competitor who already possessed a fully developed TMS module and had provided a live demonstration of the same to the client.

We had been disrupted. By a new technology, a new competitor, which together had disrupted our traditional business model. The world had shifted, the business need in the environment had changed and the earlier alignment of the latter with the competence set of our company had been lost.

A situation like the above can create a quandary for each one of us. Should we stretch our own competence and experience profile to paper over the gaps that exist because of the changed requirement? This usually is the easy and the quickest option, and thus gets chosen by most leaders and Managers. But the more sustainable and resilient pathway, a much tougher and thus rarely taken option, is to continually equip oneself with the needed competences so that the alignment between us and a world that is shifting, is not lost.

What I have frequently noticed is leadership folks, rather than confronting, resort to whining and complaining. Of how no one could have foreseen what happened, how they had planned and were equipped to handle what did not happen, and so on.

If we are not careful, we can end up in a downward spiral of negativity. I have seen leaders ending as black holes. With a huge gap between their original intention and final impact. This is largely because of a human psychology quirk. The more we talk of something we failed to do, the more important it becomes. As Noble Prize winner Daniel Kahneman said, ‘Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it’.

Ways to avoid the Black Hole:

  • Ask, “What can we do to resolve?” Wait for a positive response. We are conditioned to put effort once we commit.
  • Envision a future that was not going to happen anyway. Ask, “If things were going flawlessly, what would that look like?”

In Learning……..                                                                  Shakti Ghosal

How do you increase your influence and impact?

How do you maximise your influence and impact in a fast changing environment?

A Do-it-yourself plan.


Some years back in my work life I came across an individual who for anonymity’s sake we will call Shib.  

Shib was insecure and hankered for a leadership role as a way to get out of insecurity. At every opportunity he would showcase and ‘beat his drum’ about his past experience. He refused to accept that in the disruptive environment that the business was facing,  experiential learning was ill suited to handle the situations being confronted.. More significantly the ‘All knowing, All doing’ defensive shield that had become his second nature prevented Shib from acknowledging that he might be lacking competences needed to engage with the situations.  These two over time  became a dangerous mix for an increasingly inauthentic and damaging behaviour with the guy resorting to his positional ‘Command and Control’ power more and more as the organisational performance nosedived.

What does use of positional power lead to? Like termite it starts to eat into the existing credibility and trust structure of an organisation which takes a long time to build. Once credibility starts getting lost,  influence gets diminished and impact gets diluted.

The Shib Case study made me recall what Malcolm Forbes, the publisher of Forbes magazine, had once remarked:

“Those who enjoy responsibility usually get it, those who merely like exercising authority usually lose it”

In the increasingly uncertain and fast-changing business world of today, many of us may be falling into the ‘Shib trap’ of over- reliance on positional power without even realising it. We thus need to do a periodic dip-stick test to review our sphere of influence and efficacy of our impact. Should we notice operational zones exhibiting uncertain influence and impact, it could be time to take action.

 So what could you do to enhance your influence and increase your impact?

  • To create a coordinated effort, you and your team members need to be accountable to each other in terms of tasks, actions and time lines. Ask this question of yourself:

‘Are you willing to be accountable to your team members about your performance as you would like them to be about their performance?’

  • Do you have a Learner mindset? Are you willing to discuss with your team the skills and behaviours you are developing for your own self? Are you willing to be vulnerable about yourself and your own need and efforts to improve yourself?
  • Do you personally invest in others? When things go wrong, are you willing to take a deep breath, desist from fault-finding but rather say to the team, “I know how stressed you guys must be feeling at this juncture!”
  • Are you willing to align ‘Who you are’ with what your team members perceive about you? To gain an insight into the extent of this alignment (or not), you may wish to see how many of these questions you answer as “YES”:
  • When you give space to others, do they see you as passive?
  • When you are compassionate, do your team mates see it as weakness?
  • When you display energy, do others see you as being pushy?
  • When you take a decision, do your team members see that as controlling?

Be willing to become vulnerable by asking  your team members to tell you about what they perceive as  your top three ‘bad’ areas. These could be aspects like Arrogance, Passive, Self-opinionated, Impulsive, Indecisive, Untrustworthy, Close minded, Impatience etc. In case they feel uncomfortable  to tell you these on your face, it is okay to get this feedback anonymously.

Identify the top three negative characteristics  that you embody in the eyes of team members and stakeholders. Then ask them these two questions  for each of these characteristics.

  1. “What is that one thing I could do that would stop me showing up as arrogant ( or impatient, untrustworthy etc) ?”
  2.  “What is that which I should stop doing that makes me show up as arrogant (or impatient, untrustworthy etc.) ?”

In Learning………

Shakti Ghosal

http://www.empathinko.in