Habitually-Happy
Happiness: Happy Leaders are balanced -this is intuitive perception. The happiest people make the best leaders, and conversely, unhappy people don’t make good leaders - this is perceived in vast academic literature. 90% of bosses are ruthlessly inclined but are good for organizational growth—this is known truth. Organizational Balance is achievable—statement is desirable. How & how much possible is debatable.
Can money buy happiness? May be yes! Money can buy all happiness except few as some advertisement of many organizations says. Small routine products or service Happiness -You can buy perfume, a car, a holiday trip, a faithful telecom network etc. All guarantee happiness to their customers.
Do you want more money? May be yes!
Will you really recommend unhappy or imbalanced leaders for creating Organizational happiness? May be Yes! The alternative to business leaders like bitcoin for currency hasn’t yet emerged so far. The systems are yet not on automaton. No matter what spectrum we talk of - bad leadership to happy or unhappy leadership or Good leadership. Even seasoned companies struggle to strike a balance! Balance between the happiness of leaders, happiness of organization and stakeholders. The discipline to balance is still a mystery.
“One thing is certain. Clarity and Balance together creates Happiness!”
I asked one President of UK based University that how does he define Geniusness. He gave a me a quick story. He was fed up with his son inability to learn French language despite taking foreign language courses for 3 years. But within 4 month, he was very fluent in French. Later he found out that his son has got a French girlfriend 4-5 month back.
Geniusness’ doesn’t flowers unless some opportunity clicks;
or there is a reason for someone to develop oneself quick,
or there is perception of everything at stake now.
By the year 2025 millennials will make up 75% of the global workforce. Julia Rose West points out that millennials, “hold out for fulfilling work. Once they find that work, they're less likely to leave a company.” What she meant that they hold on to Organizational Balance!
Balance: This is utopians dream. A metaphor like that of sustainability prevalent among educators and philosophers as an elite topic for coffee table discussion but is yet to be focussed upon by organizations on ground. The very focus on business sustainable means that businesses are not sustainable! Organizational leaders are facing humongous challenges, more so during pandemic times. This is as if all business designs are being shaken by Covid-19 wave. Is there any organization who doesn’t want to dream big to make whole world become its customer? Like Bill Gates dreamt of one MS Windows on each desktop. How to fulfil the dream, needs geniusness. New businesses which are born during pandemic times or got a big boost are Covid-19 progenies. Will they become weak or lose corona powered breath when vaccine arrives! Or will they all be the new Normal?
Organizational Mind is subtle than Leader’s Mind. As it controls leader’s mind to large extent. An unhappy mind is always the controlled, that’s for sure. The freedom is missing in the controlled one. The controlling one is fearful and hence pass on the fear to the controlled one too. Happy mind feels good about itself, and it also allows others to feel good too. What you pass, is what you have it!
The one who in imbalanced likes to be controlled.
Imbalanced ones are unhappier upon mere imagining about what it takes to be balanced.
The one who is balanced, aims for balance around to sustain its own love for balance.
Symbiotic Balance: The agriculture sector seems to be basic need hence seems to be in balance. Logistic sector, food retailers, are in symbiotic relationship with agriculture, they survived to large extent due to relationship balance. Online services e-tailers are in symbiotic relationship with IT infrastructures and seems to be in balance and are doing good. What suffered the most was businesses that were standalone and were not in foundational symbiotic relationship with someone or something. Taxation revenue suffered be it direct or indirect due to symbiotic relationship with source of revenue. Politicians took decisions to open liquor shops over fitness gyms and Yoga ashrams or studios due to symbiotic relationship nature with guaranteed revenue sources. Daily wage earners suffered due to scarcity of physical work they do. Doctors work got 1000% enhanced due to sudden inflow of corona patient cases. IT infrastructure workers became overloaded. Education system needs to put on the online track, it hated the most in classroom. Became a torture for non-IT Symbiotic educators. Some slow-moving businesses like robots and Artificial Intelligence took front row seat demonstrating their capabilities and ways to support organizations during the pandemic. Foreign Universities are building symbiotic relationship with Indian Universities to survive during pandemic times. No flights, no students can fly out and all admissions made all top Universities and businesses feel like stuck in reverse chicken-egg problem. What to do first! To create balance!
Some businesses need Covid season to be happy. Some businesses got wiped out in this social distancing or stay-away-from-me or don’t-come-closer-to-me season. In short, inherent balance embedded in the system got shaken to roots due to symbiotic system working without an anti-virus. Did they all planned for any such kind of balance-checking-inspector. I doubt. No one can plan such pandemic interventions.
These pandemic times tests only balance. Virus has put many off-balance already!
So what are we really saying.
Dilemma: Happiness and Unhappiness are like seasons. Unhappy or Happy times do incubate and help create genius products and out of the box services. Happy leaders just make sure the empathetic or sanitized treatment of the stakeholders for longer periods in comparison to Unhappy leaders. One of the fuel of empathy can be either cash reserve of that organization at basic level or Titanic-captain-attitude (to jump out of the ship only at the last). Happy leaders’ approach towards decisions are unaffected by changing times. So what leaders do to keep up the Organizational Balance and nurture sense of Organizational happiness?
“Happy leaders necessarily create Happy Organizations”
Can they build Joyful culture, high-level interdependency strategy among structure? This meshed network, this mimicry of consciousness field, the butterfly effect, or in more recent language the BITCOIN kind of system of registers – that can allow Organization to be self-managing or kind of self-healing mode.
One top search firm once decided to be free of the managers and rely on engineers alone for self-managing the organization. If engineers can manage the whole sort of data algorithmically, can’t they manage their own firm issues!. Soon the engineers felt lost. Managers were brought back! Can employees choose their dream new projects on their own or centralized allocation of task better? Which decision of managing employee skills is better? One company gives 30% freedom for dream projects, some still give 0%. Some even eat family time over and above office time! Do systems have smart moral compass embedded to remind the employees to stay North aligned -Happiness aligned? Or tenured employees are smart enough to hack the system and make compass move freely and playfully for them atleast? How much percentage of employees are willing to heal their own organizations by voluntarily applying for salary cuts or sugegstions to bring balance quickly?
Habits: Happy leaders should keep an eye on Habits of Organization.
“Culture eats strategy daily on breakfast table”-Peter F. Drucker
This indicates that habits responds ruthlessly and yet is invisible than visible reactions. Finding and changing old habits are hard. So hard, that even if you wish to change the so insignificant right-click of mouse to switch with left-click, it can take weeks to adjust to this new self-imposed minor change. Singers knows it that if they don’t’ practice for months, the audience can notice the difference but if they don’t practice for one day, they themselves can change the notice of their mastery. Happiness and Unhappiness both are just introspection checkpoints for leaders! Does pandemic economics has transformed leaders to be egoless! Will the leaders stop going to ego massage parlours (in-groups) forever after vaccine arrival.
As it is said it takes 66 days for any habit to form. It has been not more than 7 months! Can we realize that once we come out this corona enforced lockdowns culture, all employees and leaders will be coming with new habits that will not be fragile like cobwebs but strong as cables! Can leaders realize this? The addiction to compulsive habits is the source of cyclical and seasonal unhappiness or happiness for leaders! This corona has given ample time for leaders to see capability inside geniusness of leadership style to bring happiness or unhappiness.
Habit to Sell unconsciously anything is the habitual root of Organizational Imbalance: I was standing at retail shop buying food items and I saw a poster saying “Paan Masala only for above 18 years only. Eating tobacco and paan masala can cause cancer”. I asked what does this poster means? He said, we don’t sell this to children. So, I asked if adults buy, won’t you stop them to buy as paan masala can cause cancer for adults! They said, they are adults, why should I stop them from buying if they want cancer and I can only warn them! But they are my customers. They are customers for hospitals! I am just a small retailer who earns 3000-5000 rupees a month!
Does this give us an insight of habits of Imbalanced Leaders! Are all leaders like this “small retailer” selling their products and services blindly yet knowing very-well the negative consequences but ignoring out of the dominance of unconscious habits to sell for years and feel happy about it too. Leading chip maker firm puts mercury spray coating on chips. Employees doing spray without any protection were not aware of the harm and got chronic diseases. Later on, when caught red handed took balancing action. But why they hide in first place. Can’t the visionaries envision this imbalance?
The mentality of small retailer in tough management jargon is that “The customer is always right.” Jeff Bezos, said too, “You can be competitor-focused, you can be product-focused, you can be technology-focused, you can be business-model-focused… But in my view, obsessive customer-focus is by far the most protective of Day-1 vitality.”
Small retailer or big e-tailer have somehow same mindset. Sell as much as possible and keep the count on daily basis. Let the buyer decide what to do with what they buy. Let them become habitual of that and let we as a seller cum leader enjoy our selling competencies. For anything else doctors, laws, police, and watchdogs are there to check! We shouldn’t somehow foresee everything else business model will collapse!
So, does e-tailers, retailers, wholesalers should transfer that blame on manufacturers? The ones who makes it! The manufacturers also have the same language. People love to buy, say sugar or guns. Even though doctors say it is not good for health and relationship! Steve Jobs who made i-phone or i-pad was very hard on his own kids and didn’t allowed them to use it beyond few hours a week but he doesn’t think it important to inform to customers. Pharma firms don’t talk about the generic medicines or the success of placebos experiments in cure of chronic diseases. Chemical companies don’t accept of climate change truth or river pollution. Cold drinks don’t want to talk about the decreasing water table-bed. But have consumers stopped buying what hurts self and the world! Unconsciousness is the old normal!
“Can Conscious habit formation (stopping closing of eyes to problems in front of us) be the new normal!”
Who to blame for Organizational Imbalance? Unhappiness of leaders or happiness of leaders from all sides? Where can the leader go from this cross-road, as he can’t say no to customer, he has to do something to earn bread for his family or a biannual holiday trip or feed his insatiable geniusness capabilities? If customers are always right, then is there someone who is always wrong too?
Leaders! Did you said it inside your mind? How? And why leaders can be wrong? Ford made cars but pollution he didn’t envisioned. Baby toys are cute but plastic waste pollution is not their problem.
Consumers are wrong? Did you said this? But they are the users. they are demand creator. All organization exist to serve their whims and fancies.
Be it Lord Rama or Bhagat Singh or Mahatma Gandhi or PAYTM founder of India. All made India and world better in many ways. It is a different story what happened after they are being replaced by many substitutes leading to hijacking their ways to crating imbalance in their very systems. That signifies the impact of leaders when alive. Leaders can be imbalanced at various dimensions in the eyes of the followers be it business or national or spiritual level or just a street leader but he knows how to hold on and where to let go. What survives is chaos after the balancing factor itself has been given the let go.
Idea of Balance due to happiness or unhappiness seems to an utopian dream of unconscious ones having a roller-coaster ride. Happy Leadership is a s aga of their courage practicing conscious Leadership habitually. Death is certain, similarly all leaders knows the truth of business cycle. They try to stay afloat when the big tide comes to drown their ship.
“Balance is a subtle art of hold-on & to let-go!
Imbalance is confusing between what to hold on & what to let go!”
The mind, attitude of leaders in emergency times matters. It speaks a lot of the intentions, depth of belongingness talks and decision to care! The capacity to take the punch on the face matters. The will to feel the belongingness with the fellow travellers matters! Happy leadership is not about giving bonuses or having scores of blind & dumb boot-lickers. Leaders have long realized that this ego massaging is just good for individual happiness in closed room but is dangerous for organizational long term happiness.
Recommendations- How to build Balance:
I made no sacrifices, I only made choices- Dr. Kiran Bedi
Impact of COVID-19 has proved the truth that work can happen from home and the managerial compulsive-controlling-inhumane habits was just a perceptual barrier. Impact of Covid -19 as revealed that it is not the physical presence that matters but the basic survival tendency among the weakest employee will make him work and be honest and have work ethics. In non-emergency times, unhappy elements of organizations had a habit of making their leaders as a cushy sofa to feel heaven but in pandemic times the sofa was pinchy. Few exceptional-unhappy-elements might manage still in corona times and might have to wait for higher lash for realizing the truthful bitter realities. Covid-19 has also proved that individual geniusness is a shallow element than the collective trust. It is the habitual sense of choosing one’s feeling of belongingness over other feeling w.r.t. attitude towards organizational vision for building organizational happiness.
The Balanced ones, or balanced leader will give Happy Leadership habitually. Success is just milestone. Balance is decision of how the journey should be! Happy leaders can give Happy Leadership once a while. The leaders of companies who makes designer masks and sanitized bottles might look kind to their employees now. But when the demand goes down, will the unconscious habit come back and rule their mind and ruin their newly born organizational happiness. Balanced leaders every moment choose decisions habitually that no matter what happens, they won’t wobble or let wobble around their areas of influence!
Few Choices to choose for creating Organization Happiness –
Clarity
Balance
There is no dearth of imbalanced geniuses. Happiness doesn’t guarantee balance for an individual or even an organization. A merciless choice of keeping eye on organizational habits alone can keep organizational balance. Tough times, pandemic times only test the balance of interdependencies and strength of woven net. Geniusness is the beginning. Manoeuvring Organization from the unending milestones of Happiness and Unhappiness that will come on the way of organizational growth is an art of habitually happy ones. This clarity of choosing Balance is the real flavour of all Happiness!
