Serendipity and Learning

Every company wants to be an Amazon or a Netflix (regency effect because of the two books which I read recently), but few are willing to actually walk the talk in making it happen. Sort of in personal life I suppose - we all want a six pack (or some other goal), but are not very willing to go through the trouble to make it happen. Or even a BHAG - like creating something unique and going to market with it.  A few months back, I had a short coaching conversation with someone. At some point, I said, “Well, I want to do this and I want to do that” and pat came the response “What are you willing to do in order to get that?”

Some years back, I was handed over charge of a new team. As always, I was taking it slow in trying to understand the team from the team members and from the stakeholders. The stakeholders had a lot of feedback, as they usually do, when a new leader takes over. And in trying to go back to the team to see their view on the same, I ran into Nitin. There was new technology lying unused. The teams response, "Only Nitin knows how to use it". There were processes that were broken. The teams response, "Nitin created this process". There were reports that were not being sent. The teams response, "Nitin used to send those reports". The list went on and on. For everything, the buck seemed to stop at Nitin. Nitin clearly was a superhero of an employee. When he was around, everything seemed to run smoothly. Walls were scaled. Crashes were prevented. The bad guys were defeated. And all was well in the world. The only problem. Nitin was no longer a member of t...