As per Wikipedia, ‘Bougainvillea’ called as ‘Bouganvilla’ in India, is a genus of thorny, ornamental wines, bushes and trees with flower-like spring leaves near its flowers. It is salt resistant, heat resistant and drought resistant and it is evergreen flowering plant is dry tropical climates. Its bright coloured flowers make it a decorative plant in many countries.
My apartment complex in Bangalore is surrounded by Bouganvilla plants. These thorny crawler plants are planted near compound walls to prevent trespassers and unwanted pests. While the flowers (actually it is the leaves, but hey, pot’ah’to, pot’ate’o) are brightly coloured, they are odourless and a little rough and feels like tissue paper.
You see this plant wherever you look. Due to its omnipresence you hardly give it a second glance and you don’t respect its flowers. It stays there like an ornamental, necessary nothing. You do not give it any attention if you were like me.
For example, you go ‘Ooh’ and ‘Aah’ when you see a beautiful rose flower. You stop to look at its
beauty, take a couple of snaps of the flower (close-ups and distant shots, if you see what I mean), take a selfie with the flower in front of your face and caption it ‘The beauty and the beast’ and immediately post it on Facebook and Instagram. Your friends will come up with comments like, ‘Who is the beauty here?’ or ‘I don’t see a beast in the picture, I see two beauties’ etc.
Not so with Bouganvilla.
I mean, you do not take selfies with a Bouganvilla plant. It is not chic.
Just like you do, I also was ignoring our apartment Bouganvilla plant on my regular morning walks. There are lot of stuff to occupy your mind on your walks you know.
Like...
The other day I was on my morning walk and was thinking about a manager whom I had worked with. This guy is all big words. ‘Ram you should delight the customer’, he will tell me grandly, ‘remember, to the customer, you are not just a consultant, you are the ambassador of our company’.
Gosh, I never looked at it that way. That solved my problem, thanks
He was well regarded in the company. With his polished talking and his good power point presentations that liberally used phrases like ‘Operational strategy’, ‘Risk avoidance plan’, ‘Innovative creativity’, ‘BWAG’ and the evergreen darling of MBAs ‘Competitive advantage’ spiced with oodles of ‘Customer delight’, he had the audience gasp in admiration in his meetings.
However, to his team members, he was an empty bag. He was of no help if you approached him with any real problems that you face. You ask him how to handle a tough and unreasonable customer and he will go like, ‘Ram it is your project and it is your customer. If the CEO has some issues with our company, as a representative of our company on the ground, it is your responsibility to resolve it. I give you all the authority to whatever you want’. He will dismiss me with a grand wave of his hand.
It was almost like he was not aware of the project governance structure.
Typical of such managers, he was very miserly when it came to giving appreciation or giving a good rating during appraisals. The members of his team were always given lower ratings than their peers. He behaved as if by giving a 4/5 rating he was doing a big favour to the reportee, while other managers were much more liberal in their ratings.
People started leaving his team and in exit interviews, pinned the responsibility on him for their decision to quit. Over a period of time, his hollowness was exposed and he was asked to leave the company.
He was all talk and no core. Colourful without the fragrance.
OMG, he WAS ‘Bouganvilla’.
You find these ‘Pseudo Managers’ in every Organizations. They will come with good pedigree with fancy qualifications. But deep down, they antagonize their customers, frustrate and depress their team members and lower the overall morale of the team. They damage the situation so much that the next manager spends a lot of time just to right the mess in the team.
Every one of us has seen such managers. Some of you ‘may be’ one.
If you are one of them ‘Pseudo Managers’, you may want to work on that.
However.....(There is always one lurking around..)
Our apartment has a swimming pool. By the side of the pool there is a ubiquitous Bouganvilla plant with bright white flowers. Today while in the pool, I was looking at the flowers and I had a revelation, an epiphany of sorts!.
I had got Bouganvilla all wrong!!.
Bouganvilla is the most under-appreciated flower in the planet.
This revelation was very distressing since it totally demolished a nice story that I had built in my mind. The cognitive dissonance was not easy to handle. I started fighting the paradigm shift in my understanding. But the arguments were too strong.
Let us look at Bouganvilla differently, shall we?
This flower has no illusions. It knows that it is not as pretty as a Tulip, as lovable as a sunflower or as fragrant as a rose. It do not have the élan or the chutzpah of a chrysanthemum or the cuteness of a Dahlia flower. Pretty bikini clad ladies in Hawaii are not going to adorn their hair with Bouganvilla as they do with colourful hibiscus. Bees and other insects are not going to come near them for their nectar, or for cross-pollination. Elderly Indian ladies are not going to use them as an offering to gods. They don’t make wedding garlands using Bouganvilla flower. Romeo is not going to woo his Juliet with a bouquet of these fragrance-less, thorny flowers.
Bouganvilla knows it ‘aukaat’ (limitations) as they say in hindi.
But it is consistent. It is evergreen. It comes to work every day, 365 days in a year, come hell or high water as it were. Temperamental flowers like the lilys and the roses of the world has the option to show up when they wish (just check our garden). Bouganvilla has no such option. Sunflower may decide to go hiding when Sun do not rise, but not our good old Bouganvilla.
It just shows up everyday, fresh (I would like to say ‘as a daisy’, but I shouldn’t) and energetic. It doesn’t care for the seasons. In a world of burgeoning change, Bouganvilla provides a sense of continuity and regularity.
Also, when other flowers do not make their appearance, by its mere presence, Bouganvilla gives a respectability to your garden.
I realized that Bouganvilla is very similar to many managers that I have worked with and whom you can see in companies across the country. These are solid, boring guys and ladies, the pillar of their local communities. They may not sophisticated, they may not have great communication skills, but they are ok with who they are. They have no illusions about their strengths, they don’t have any ambition of becoming a CEO or doing super normal things. These are normal people, who come to work every day, bandhs, rains or traffic snarls be damned.
These low key managers provide stability in normal times and provide continuity in times of chaos. CFOs may come and go but these people are the ones who ensure that books of accounts are closed by the 5th of every month and the statutory reports are filed by the end of the first week of every month. No one asks them to do these things. They just do it. They are the ones that follow up with their customers to resolve the nagging disputes and ensure money is received. Vendors follow up with them for payments. Managers bitch to them about other managers.
Each of them know that their secrets are safe.
CEOs depend on them to rollout the organizational process and reporting structures to the recently acquired company. These are people who are assigned to handle IR issues. In the initial days of mergers and acquisitions, when rumours abound, these are the people that hold the fort and calm the nerves with their sincerity and serenity.
From thinking about ‘Bouganvilla Managers’, my mind wondered if there are ‘Bouganvilla Leaders’. Of course there are. These low key leaders grow from the ranks of the company. The business landscape of India is littered with Bouganvilla leaders, who show up regularly, stand up and deliver shareholder value day in and out without much fuss or bravado. You don’t see them on TV channels pontificating on the latest economic challenges. You don’t see books written by them about how the country should be governed. You don’t see them brazening out in a press conference that ‘I am a kshatriya and I will fight and win’. They don’t get caught in the office sex scandal. They are not on twitter or other social media ranting about the politics of the country.
You may not even recognize them when they are sitting next to you in your son’s school watching sporting event. This happened to me. I turned around and found that I was sitting next to Harish Bhat, CEO of Tata Global Beverages (we are talking of 2012 here), a company that has delivered amazing shareholder returns over the last few years. This company runs Starbucks India, where each outlet is teeming with customers every time you go. How many of the customers have heard of Harish Bhat?
They deliver staggering shareholder returns, quarter after quarter, year after year. They run companies that have delivered 20 times, even 50 times shareholder returns in the last 10 years. But you don’t know them. They are low key, almost invisible. If I take Tata group as an example and ask you to name the CEO of TCS, Tata Elxsi, Tata Steel, Tata Coffee, Tata Global Beverages, Tata Chemicals, Timken India, Tata Metaliks and Trent, how many CEOs can you name?
Maybe one or two, I bet (I can name only one). But all these companies have delivered regular profits and excellent shareholder returns in the last five years. 10 years ago, had you invested in the companies they managed, you would be phenomenally wealthy by now.
Can a country have such Bouganvilla leaders, who talk less and deliver amazing leadership. Yes, of course. Take the example of Dr.Manmohan Singh, a typical Bouganvilla leader. Strong and silent, he led India for two consecutive 5 year terms delivering jaw dropping economic growth on the way.
I rest my case.
#Leadership #Self Improvement #Wisdom #Inspiration
About Me: I am an avid blogger who maintains a blog on Personal Growth. I am passionate about equity investing and an avid student of the same.
I also blog on ERP, which is my bread and butter and Personal Finance.
You can follow me on Twitter @vkrama01
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