Tough Calls - Enhancer or Limiter?

As the Telangana issue heats up again and makes life difficult in Hyderabad, I wonder, when Chidambaram announced agreement for formation of Telangana, was Govt taking the easy way out, that point of time?  With KCR on an hunger strike immediately after the death of a strong leader YSR? At least that is the overlaying thought, now that the issue continues to burn unabated.

This situation begets a question. As a leader which strategy would you adopt? Which strategy serves you in the long run? Bite the bullet and taking tough calls or win the popularity game by taking the easy and popular way out? Or even do a Narashima Rao by putting off taking any decision?

In the boom times, when the careers/roles in an organisation shorten to escape facing the impact a decision taken, what is the right thing to do from a career point of view? This is more so in the new economy companies as these have trailblazing growth rates which result in the employees having a similarly faster career growth rate. Many of the Old economy companies still have a middle to senior level employee putting in respectable years in the same role. So as the roles/careers in an organisation shorten, managers tend to escape the visibility of the impact of the decision and this can lead to the 'make it easy now" situation. These situations test the mettle of a manager. A crossroad situation... Let us explore the options in detail.

Option 1. Leader takes the role responsibility and decides to take a long term horizon of the decision impact. This might  call for some tough act. What say for the managers who are ready to take tough calls? Calls which in the short run would lead to tough situations. And with shorter tenures, the results of the tough calls having a longer horizon, the stint proves to be sub par. Impacting annual appraisals etc. So essentially, the decision might create value in the long run, but will surely not have a substantial short term impact.

Option 2. Popularity and soft situation is on your mind as a leader. So out goes the bullet biting. So the decision tends to be something which saves the day for today. Consequence of the decision might lead to future chaos, but then there would be someone else to clean the mess. The beauty here is that the cleaner of the mess too tends to get 'full credit' for cleaning the mess!! And everyone benefits, only the organisation loses.

You might say there would be more options which would be a mix of the above situations, but then I started off by laying the baseline to a crisis situation of Telangana. I am taking about similar situations in an organisations which are essentially not so frequent and also not so drastic as the T situation. However, what is important is the reaction of a leader to situation. And all kind of situations would have responses from leaders which essentially can be categorized into the ones I mentioned above.

So, how can an organisation foster the culture of tough yet right kind of decisions for the longer good of the organisations/employees and reward the manager doing so? A huge challenge.

While we do see some sporadic recognition for Narashima Rao (I do not come back to this example due to my sharing the birth state with him), but at least in some areas, he epitomised the tough call manager. While we are all glowing with glee on how the Indian economy has arrived at the World stage, the beginning were a tough call. Tough call taken by the then PM Narashima Rao and implemented by now PM Manmohan Singh. So what happens of him? How many still remember him? Some intellectuals do, but the masses have no memory of him. A few structures named after him (mostly in his home state AP). Else he is cleaned out from history. We have as a country not treated the tough calls manager well.

Ratan Tata took over the reins during one of the most testing times for the Tata group. So what was his style? Bite the bullet? You bet. Did he succeed? You bet. One of the most respected in the World. But then his name is Tata. He owns the empire. Or does he? I think he epitomises the true long-term-tough-calls-guy working silently despite media snubs early in his career. 

Let us also look at some short term popularity winning decision types. TN politicians? Anyone else? The issue with these leaders is you might have a short term great memory of the person but it fizzles out badly once the impact is felt. 

Most of the organisations which do well, tend to inculcate this culture of Leadership ready to take tough calls if the situation demands. Any organisation which fosters this culture would need to start with the corner office, which is where most of the tough calls start. The supporting functions like HR, Finance would need to have systems which reward the right decisions, whether short term or long term, tough or soft. The appraisal systems need to take that into account. The tenure of managers in a role need to have that span to facilitate the decision making. And if the tough calls are rewarded and the entire organisation sees it, the culture would be to do what is right, even if it is a tough call. Last but not the least, the organisation should have a system wherein if the leader can be recalled from a new role, to take care of the impact of the decisions taken in the previous one, if it is proved that the call was a suboptimal one taken consciously.