When your boss comes visiting, that is not great news, most
of the time. When you are a young 23 year old responsible for your team that
your boss is coming to check on progress, that is not great either. And when
your boss himself is 60, a very respected retired civil servant, it is rather
challenging. And when he is still very passionate, driven, committed and
tireless, when he needs only 6 hours sleep, has massive appetite for detail and
a workaholic, and cannot stand the sight of anyone smoking (I was a regular smoker then), nothing
can be more disastrous.
That is exactly how I felt when the late Anil Shah, our CEO,
announced that he is coming to ‘visit’ our programme area and spend 3 days. I
was the newly anointed team leader of
the district team. I had a multi-disciplinary team of about 12 working on
various land and water resource management projects in the drought stricken
district of Surendranagar in Gujarat, India. It was the mid-80’s and while I
felt quite capable, having secured a masters in rural management, ’managing’ a boss like Anilbhai (as he was fondly
referred to) was something that they didn’t teach me.
Anilbhai had many qualities that you would look for in a
leader. He had charisma, presence, gravitas. He had fabulous networks, was
influential and had vast knowledge about
government’s rural development programmes and policies. He was a voracious
reader and kept himself abreast with the latest thinking in national and
international development. We kept wondering how he got his energy for a
60-year old to work 16 hours (oh yes – the concept of ‘work-life balance’ was
not yet in vogue). He even had looks of an ageing yet immensely popular
Bollywood star.
Preparing for his visit meant a lot of hard work. All project
updates had to be ready with all kinds of details. We never could be prepared
enough for the questions he would ask. We had to update ourselves on any
changes in the district administration, else we would expose our lack of
interaction with them. We could expect questions on issues of culture, or
barriers to progress. We had to pretty much prepare for anything. But more
importantly, he would ask us about what we had ‘learnt’ from our experience of
interacting with the local communities. We thought we knew enough. I had a
masters, after all, a decent academic qualification. Yet, to our annoyance, he
wanted us to tell him what we had ‘learnt’ – how could a bunch of arrogant,
English speaking, city bred youngsters expect to learn from the rural folk ? At
that stage in one’s life, these questions didn’t make much sense.
Well, he arrived, we went through the grind, there were
tough questions and we as usual felt under prepared. We failed woefully on his
question of learning. His next question was – how much time do you spend in the
villages in talking to the community ? Now that, for us, was not work. Work was
going and implementing projects and coming back – simple ! He asked us if we
stayed overnight in the villages to ‘learn’ about them – we couldn’t get that around
in our heads either. Learning by living in the villages ? Nah….we were better
off coming to our little homes for a nice hot meal, crowding around the only
telly we had amongst us and watching the late the latest episodes of the
popular soap opera. Plus, there were no toilets in the villages, so we couldn’t
be ‘bothered’ to stay there overnight.
I think Anilbhai realised that he had to ‘demonstrate’ what
he meant by learning. So, off we went to one of the villages, which was one of
our ‘success stories’. We wanted to show him the best. We had organised a
village meeting as we knew they will say nice things about us and our work. All
project records were ready. People were waiting in the courtyard of the village
leader’s house. He came in and greeted them graciously – but then said that
before he had the meeting, he would like to go around and meet people in their
homes to understand some of the issues they were dealing with. That struck us
as being odd – after all, we had taken the trouble of organising this meeting,
yet he wanted to go around and visit homes. But we had no option. In those
days, you didn’t challenge those you are meant to respect – end of story !
So, we set off, walking with him. He asked questions on
crops, cropping cycles, livestock, productivity, jobs, migration, politics. We
gave half-baked non-convincing answers. So he decided that it was best for him
to just ask the households directly. Even the local community was amused. ‘What
can we tell you about us ? There is nothing to tell. It is pretty
straightforward. And you are a ‘mota
manas’ (translated crudely from Gujarati as ‘important man’) and you know
everything’. With his characteristic smile, he set off, down the dusty village
lanes, popping into houses at random after a respectful greeting. He would sit
down, open his diary, patiently ask questions with curiosity, carefully note
down the answers. We had no idea why he was subjecting himself to such an
ordeal.
The afternoon sun was blazing hot, the lanes were dusty, we had often to
make way for cattle strolling by, side stepping the dung laid all over. But
Anilbhai carried on. What we did notice though was that in each household, he
would request the male member, who was invariably the person welcoming us, to
ask their women to join the conversation, and he would then direct his
questions to the women as he was convinced he would get a very different
perspective – on farming, on cattle, on children, on the local economy, on
public services – and generally, on life !
At the end of his walking around for a couple of hours, he
came back to the village leader’s house, a wide smile of satisfaction that he
had ‘learnt something’. Equipped with that new information, he started a
conversation with those who were still around. He validated some of the
information he had collected to ensure he had got it right, talked to them on
their collective understanding, and asked them questions on solutions.
I had the privilege of many such interactions with Anilbhai
over a 3-year period. There were some key lessons that he was passing on to us
as youngsters :
·
Learning
never ends : As a retired senior civil servant with four decades of
experience, having interacted with some of the most influential people during
his time, it would have been very easy for Anilbhai to sit back and bask in the
glory of his incredible career reputation. But he chose otherwise. There was
this insatiable energy and enthusiasm for learning. He would get into deep
conversations with communities and families in the villages he visited. Shorn
of the grandeur of his government position, he felt much more enabled and
comfortable to do so. He never hesitated to ask a question. He took detailed
notes. He would constantly be accessing research papers (these were
pre-internet days) to enhance his knowledge or meet with people who are experts
in their field. It was amazing to see how he left no stone unturned to keep
learning. And he did that to almost the very end of his life.
·
Trust the
inexperience : Being the CEO and founder of a fledging organisation is in
itself a risk. To manage that, he recruited a team of experienced hands, some
retired, to ensure that his organisation had the right technical skills. But in
the 3 field programme teams, he recruited mostly youngsters. Of the nearly 40
staff in the 3 district teams, perhaps only about 10 were over 35. And there
was a time when all the 3 district teams were led by those in the mid-twenties,
all relatively inexperienced – my close friends Shankar and Apoorva being two
of them, and I being the third. I am still amazed at the boldness of his
decision at such a foundational stage in the life of an organisation, given our
relative inexperience and lack of a track record, to trust us with running
team, managing staff and sizeable budgets !
·
There is
no alternative to hard work : Anilbhai made no apologies for the need to
work hard. For him, there was no substitute. Work was worship. He was respectful of those with experience and
expertise – and as someone who had both, it still didn’t matter when it came to
himself. He kept a punishing schedule complemented by a disciplined lifestyle.
He saw no other way to lead from the front – at a time when leadership was
mostly about being directive. Having worked his entire professional life in the
government, he wanted to ensure that he was offering his best to the
not-for-profits sector.
As young people, we tried in vain to keep up to his
standards – we did succeed, at times, if you could read the rather enigmatic
smile that he had when he was pleased with something.
