Yes.. when you are bored by too much of technical study, you need break. After doing Graduation in engineering, after doing Masters in engineering, almost 5-6 years of equations, formulas & machines, you can work in pure technical atmosphere of refinery or a Plant or Engineering departments.
But, if you want to take a break from all these & you want to take your own decisions on your future role, you come up with some extraordinary lines,....
“Working with machines is easy but working with humans is difficult”.....so you got people management role.. which no one anyway wanted 😁...
, & after few months in the role... you start thinking that have I made right choice, as no one wanted such unconventional-risky profiles.
Yes.. working with people, gives you tremendous learnings & life long friends. As a team, we managed some of the most difficult redeployment of manpower assignments, a win-win for organisation & employees, maintained relations with unions which were backed by strongest political parties.
You realise that there has been deep divide & mistrust between management cadre & non-management cadre. Different washrooms, different canteens, different groups, different treatment, different policies.
In one such interaction, at a very crucial moment during negotiations, I was asked that if you want discussion to proceed further, have breakfast with us in our canteen. Yes, it wasn’t Easy, the distrust was for years within, it was tough call, next day morning, I was in non-management canteen. I can’t change the different treatment defined for management & non-management, but just being in non-management canteen & washroom, I did something which opened up candid discussion about situation.
In one of the situation, i was asked to join informal garden meeting of 30-40 non-management staff, mind you, these meetings are normally to curse line managers & policies 😁..basically yourself. You feel that you are called for your own ragging, again, your choice, your decision. Went there, allowed everyone to vent out, understood situation better.
The leader of the group plays a crucial role in all these, when you win trust of him-her, by becoming true advisor-coach, you start earning respect. I have explained Crisil reports to those guys who had never read English News Paper, who doesn’t know accounting, but they understand your good intentions, they understand that no one ever shared so much information, no one explained, they realise that no point resisting, no point in remaining foolish world of false promises, by those whose interest is there in misguiding.
It becomes complex when size of mis-guided people is large, say 1000 in a factory, political interference, labour courts, high courts get involved, one has to think about bringing things on track for business first by making alternate arrangements, along with discussions, need to think ways of bringing positive political influence also. The back up to business continuity if one can manage, half situation is already managed. And again business continuity problem is managed as quickly as possible like with zero gap, you can solve the problem with long term perspective.
When your team’s integrity & character is not questioned by anyone, when your intentions are for win-win solution, when your intentions are to help survive organisation & industry, the other side gets message. Similar negotiation with vendors when you manage large services, land-property lease negotiations & SOR. Similar negotiation when you are dealing with distribution channel stakeholders also. Everywhere win-win solution takes everyone forward.