MoMs (Mothers of Management) have already taught us how to ACE (Approachable, Connected & Empathetic) the art of Management
Will you fill up for your Akka (sister)’, asked my first boss to a 11-year-old me in our home kitchen in the year 1990, the very next day after the wedding of my older sister. Growing up in 80s and 90s in India when there were only announcements and advertisements asking girls to be treated as equals to boys to create awareness about gender equality, here’s a lady suggesting the reverse. Puzzled not knowing what it meant I enquired, ‘Amma (mother), I didn’t understand?’. She explained, ‘I am asking you so that you can assist in managing the children at home and other household chores, now that your sister isn’t staying with us.’ I call her my first boss as that apparently turned out to be my first job offer. Amma used to operate a day care center for children at our home. My childhood was spent in a buzzing 2 bed home amongst 12–15 children of different age groups most of the times during weekdays. We were a family of 6 and each member in our family had our roles to play. My Appa (father) who worked with the Reserve Bank of India (the Central bank of India), also played his part in supporting with the chores by leading the deep cleaning of our home with us children during weekends, shopping groceries, peeling, and cutting vegetables and sometimes he cooked too. My brothers used to drop and pick up children from school, plan activities for them at home. We were taught to earn our pocket expenses. Perks were in the form of meeting relatives during weekends and trips during vacations. Amma and my sister were much like Tendulkar-Sehwag combination in the world of cricket. Amma used to radiate energy and lead from the front most of the times and my sister was completely coordinated and in sync with her, while Appa offered the stability and restraint very much like Dravid in the team. In her conversation with me, Amma was talking to the 12th man of the team as a replacement for a top performer as after my sister’s wedding we were short of one player in the team.
More than a decade later when I did business management studies, I realized Amma who had studied only till grade 10 in Tamil language from the little town of Kumbakonam in the South of India when she got married, made us breathe and live Henri Fayol’s principles of management everyday much earlier in life during our growing years. The little introduction that I shared earlier about my family perhaps was reflective enough of the 14 principles of management defined by Mr. Fayol of Division of Work, Balancing Authority and Responsibility, Discipline, Unity of Command, Unity of Direction, Subordination of Individual Interests to the General Interest, Remuneration, Centralization, Scalar Chain, Order, Equity, Stability of Tenure of Personnel, Initiative and Esprit De Corps. Haven’t mothers aced these several centuries ago? Managing an enterprise called Home. Many of them not even formally trained or coached for on management. Yes, I refer to Home as an enterprise as it involves asset management, managing income and expenses, quality management, product management, value management, crisis management, conflict management, time management, team management, talent development and much more. My key reference in this context is my Amma and I felt the key differentiators which made her (and of course all mothers of the universe) ACE the game of management are being — Approachable, Connected & Empathetic
Before explaining values/principles of ACE — Approachable, Connected & Empathetic, let’s see it in the context of business. Aren’t these precisely the values that brands focus on, to establish their credibility with end customers? Hence shouldn’t these values then be reflected in the complete chain of management in organizations and not only with end customers? It would be unfair to expect an employee who can’t see his/her manager approachable, do not connect them or find empathy to drive these values for the brand.
Approachable — To be approachable you need to walk several miles of trust
I don’t need to emphasize on how comfortable we felt in approaching mothers in toughest of situations in life, as a kid or as an adult. If you try to reflect on, why was it so, you will realize that we had the hope that they would understand and guide or provide the confidence to come out of the crisis or at least listen to us without judging
While many organizations try to open the channels of communication with employees, yet there are many employees who do not necessarily open to their managers for the fear of being judged as a failure in case of not being able to manage a crisis, inefficient for seeking guidance, not being loyal if they have to talk about dissatisfaction in present job, and so on.
Connected — Connect is not something established only over good times, it’s most needed and tested during toughest hours.
The connect with mothers are comforting. She will stay connected and be invested when you are unwell, stay up with you while you are preparing for exams/tests till late night, works her way to instill discipline patiently in a way that you would respect and eventually agree even if there is initial resistance from your end.
How connected are you with your team at work? Do you know when they are unwell or when they pretend to be. Why does an employee sometimes have to lie about being sick, etc for taking their allotted paid leaves and why does a manager look at them in an incriminating way for that. The ability and smartness of a manager is not identifying if a team member had lied to her/him on the reason to take the leave but to respect the personal time an organization has awarded as part of the employment. There were days when I used to lie to Amma of being unwell and not wanting to go to school. She knew exactly that I am alright but probably needed a break and allowed me to do so. When an employee is often working late, as a manager have you investigated the reason and worked to ease the situation? Have you shown the same concern your mother showed when you stayed up late during exams/tests, to morally be with you, assuring that it is a phase of assessment and not forever.
Empathetic — Empathy, often the skipped high investment-high return route to Judgement
While my mother was passionate about entrepreneurship, she also knew my passion learning culinary art post my high school. I wanted to pursue it from a specific National Institute which meant probably going to another city separating from her. But she realized that as much she would miss my presence, the existing city didn’t provide me that option and me pursuing it was for our collectively good. My respect for her and our home just grew since then. After completing my course, I eventually returned to her and home with much more learnings. Mothers are epitome of empathy, and I am sure each of us have our own experience of how they have empathized with us when we needed it the most. Did she succeed in her journey of entrepreneurship and me of culinary art? Let’s keep that for another story.
Why does an employee not inform their manager if she/he chooses to look for another job? Looking for better prospects in another role or job is our reality. Even CEOs of company do that. Then why do we look at it as taboo topic to be discussed with managers. A manager’s worst fear is employee attrition, and most often it comes as an unpleasant surprise. Address the elephant. If the current organization is unable to do adequate justice to the aspirations and talent of an individual, do not try to bind them. Put yourself in their situation and treat them accordingly. By guiding them well and letting them go you lose a bright employee, but you and the organization would most likely gain lot of respect. If they find a better world out then maybe that was indeed good for them and you need to up your game to provide that to others in the organization, else the respect would be magnetic enough to get them back to you, if you were indeed the best for them.
Finally, while we spoke about Henri Fayol seen as the Father of Management, Mary Parker Follett who is known as the Mother of Management for her contribution to Management studies, had explained management as ‘the art of getting things done through people’. With all due respect to the wonderful lady, I think the universal MoMs a.k.a. Mothers of Management would have probably liked to define management instead as ‘the art of getting things done t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ with people’.
