CHAPTER 11

As a Suzerain to a Group, What are My Prime Concerns?

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. As an individual Suzerain, identify the four areas to be focused upon, while moving a team forward.
2. As a Suzerain in an organization oversee the three areas of focus to be covered to ensure the organizations effectiveness.

Four Point Focus for Suzerains

Let there be a collection of individuals in which a suzerain has emerged. What are the primary areas of work, in which he must perform so as to successfully fulfil his responsibilities as a suzerain? How would a suzerain interact with the members of the group in those areas of work?

In order to answer this let us relate it in some way to the necessary and sufficient conditions we reckoned earlier in the book.

Identifying a Need (An Agenda and Its Components)

The earliest point at which a suzerain could possibly play a role would be the task perceiving a reason for a group of people to come together—identifying an agenda. It is about ‘defining’ that agenda which if pursued to completion can fulfil some need or goal of a (proposed or existing) group of individuals. Consider a group of frogs swimming in a trough of water which is slowly being heated up by a flame from below. In such situations, the frogs do not sense that something is amiss and they do not take any action. Pretty much like how the present generation of humans is totally oblivious to impending environmental danger (the idea definitely comes from Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth). It takes a special person to conceive an agenda for some group of individuals that they must do something about it. The process of conceiving an agenda for a perceived group of people is the first of the possible tasks of a suzerain. Al Gore, for instance, conceived that creating a documentary would possibly help mitigate the environmental problems in some way. Therefore, he thought of a group of people who would all contribute towards conceiving, creating, marketing, selling and using that documentary. And the project had been rather successfully implemented. His first task of achieving the end was in identifying the agenda: ‘to create a documentary to bring awareness of the situation’.

Define a Group

Having thought of an agenda, the suzerain would then try to identify a particular set of people who can come together and address the need as a team. This would also include the task of conceiving a suitable organization in the group so that there will be smoothness in functioning as a team. A typical example for this would be the efforts of the illustrious Indian thinker Chanakya who dates back to the 3rd or 4th century BC. The agenda he identified was this: ‘little warring fiefdoms or Kingdoms were causing great misery to the common man besides leaving the subcontinent vulnerable to attack by terrorizing foreign armies. It would be best if the whole of India were united under one rule’. In pursuit of this agenda, the first thing he did was to look for an individual with a high sense of self-worth who would be the spearhead for his campaign. He found Chandragupta Maurya—who incidentally was not from the traditional warrior class. He also identified an important minister from the court of a vanquished king who could be the prime minister and an able advisor to Chandragupta. He also thought of a strong army that would take the agenda forward—and it is a very good example of team formation.

Transmitting the Agenda

Simultaneously, while attempting to put a team together, the suzerainhopeful would do his part in communicating to the members of his proposed group about the agenda they must take on and the details thereof. This would be an exercise in creating awareness by illuminating the intellect of the prospective followers. For example, Chanakya had to put in great efforts to convince people, including Chandragupta, the prime minister, and hoards of soldiers that the agenda was worth the effort. By transmitting that agenda he created awareness on the other side. An agenda in the mind of a suzerain must therefore go out there and light up the minds of those who must form the group that will take up that agenda. When any entrepreneur wants to set up a new venture he must take steps to communicate to the people who would be stakeholders along with him. In this case, of course, there are precedents that will assist him and make it easy for him to say ‘you will be the manager’ or ‘you will be our promoter’ etc … and by the mere use of the terms like investor, clerk and supervisor the others will understand what he wishes to say. However, it may not be all that easy for a social worker for an instance, who wishes to get a group of tribal people to come together to build a school for their children; communicating with people who are not familiar with what a school is, will take extra effort from the worker. But that is the challenge in this task—education—letting other minds to know about the agenda in requisite detail.

Motivating Individuals of the Group to Act

The next natural step would be for the suzerain to motivate the members of the intended group to take action. Transferring the agenda into others’ minds is one thing but overcoming the various forces that impede action is another. This opposition may come mostly from within the prospective group members themselves as also their personal weakness. He must ‘inspire’ them to act, put in the enthusiasm, bring a spring in their steps, create minds that are clear about the aims; these minds must eventually have all the reasons in the world to give why they must be up and about, pursuing the agenda—to their own satisfaction. The drive to ‘do’ must be initiated where it is non-existent and must be sustained where there is a slackening.

Truly speaking, the sequence of the above four steps need not be strictly maintained. A latter step could precede the earlier and/or several may take place simultaneously. But, invariably, these ingredients must be covered in the actions a suzerain must undertake.

Four Steps for Pre-existing Organizations

Do also note that so far the four aspects have been dealt from an entrepreneurship perspective. That is, the approach amounts to initiating a group and creating action where it was not there earlier. What about organizations that already exist … ? Here too the same tasks also need to be taken charge of. The suzerain of such an organization must be seized, and must ensure execution of all four tasks in the context of his organization.

Firstly

He would be involved in reading the present situation and finding out as to what are the challenges faced by the organization. For this, he must be clear on what is the agenda of the group originally and he must constantly review its relevance to the present situation. A good suzerain cannot afford to ‘not be aware’ of the agenda of his group—or of its relevance to the present moment.

Secondly

He would need to have his eyes focused on the people that constitute the organization. He may want to strengthen the team/group by reduction, transformation, development/training, new induction, adaptation, etc.

Thirdly

Decisions having been taken, he would use his communication skills to ensure that all individuals understand the purpose of the organization and the challenges that confront it. He would explain how with success in their endeavours, benefits would accrue in accordance with the agenda.

Fourth

He would also use the means available to get the members of the organization to work with highest possible levels of motivation and in accordance with the general plan. He will ensure that the work output is done by a team rather than that of a collection of individuals. He would thus ensure that organizational goals (agenda related) are realized in the best possible way.

To summarize, an aspirant for success in suzerainty must focus on the following areas and ensure that he scores highly on most:

1. Keep track of the agenda.
2. Get a good team behind the agenda.
3. Communicate effectively to the team about the primary agenda and the other developments.
4. Motivate people to ‘work’ seeing things in positive light.

Failing to Communicate Agenda Related Information

There are suzerains who sometimes merely focus on the step 4 and do not bother about step 3, thus operating on a need-to-know basis. This could have advantages some times, but is generally avoided in the interests of increased transparency and sprouting leadership in followers. Without a clear view of the agenda, team work may not happen—they will be just a collection of individuals instead. Such an approach is not likely to produce great organizations; they have inherent weaknesses. The tendency to hide the agenda from the team does not account for true leadership—this shall be dealt with in due course in the book. In any case if effective suzerainty is also about getting a motivated group of people to do extraordinary work, then the suzerain must take all these four factors into account.

It can be seen that the tasks listed above are linked with the three necessary and sufficient conditions for suzerainty; namely, (a) agenda (b) group (c) action. Looking at it this way will help a person have a simplified perception about suzerainty and help him develop confidence by paying attention to these major areas.

The Team Perspective Has a Three Point Focus

So far we have been seeing how these issues appeared from the point of view of individuals aspiring to be suzerains—or good suzerains rather. The same can be considered from the point of view of an organization too… what does an organization want?

When a group is brought together and a team comes into operation; there is a system and structure that usually comes into place amongst the members of the team. The term ‘organization’ is mostly used to describe this. Everyone gets powers and responsibilities and they are held responsible for carrying out those responsibilities with the help of the powers.

Considering the ‘organization’ as a unit; if it has succeeded in its functioning then it has done three things successfully.

1. It has found success in carrying forward its mission/agenda.
2. The team continues to be strong.
3. The members of the team are content and meeting their aims and requirements.

The role of the suzerain would therefore be responsible to ensure that these three things happen. He will focus his attention on the following:

1. The task of taking care of the people that constitute the organization— that is … . the stake holders.
2. Fulfilment of the mission, the organization takes forward in society—the agenda.
3. The task of taking care of the organization’s own integrity and sustenance.

Note, here that the sequence is changed and this is deliberately done… It is recommended by the wise that ‘people are more important than work, just as people are more important than the laws that are made to regulate them … ’ the point is that if people are truly taken care of, then the work gets done any way … .

Therefore, seen from an organization perspective, for a suzerain to best serve the interests of the organization to which he belongs, he must list his tasks under these three headings and successfully tackle them … we shall see more of this in the subsequent chapters.

Case Studies

1. Take up cases of entrepreneurs and revolutionaries and study how they took care of the four steps for effective suzerain action.
2. Take cases of companies that lost out or wound up. Analyse how they fared on the four performance areas of suzerains and the three prime concerns of the companies.

Exercises

1. Prepare an entrepreneurial plan for a minor project involving 10 to 15 workers keeping the four steps for effective suzerainty as focus. (max 2000 words)
2. Analyse the current functioning of the suzerains of a team/company/party of choice using the four steps for effective suzerainty.
3. Take the case of an existing company; using the concept of role play, as CEO of the company, draft a presentation for the directors of the company detailing how you would take care of the three prime concerns of a company. (max 1000 words)
4. Make a comparative study of the advantages and disadvantages of adopting a ‘transparency’ policy and a ‘need-to-know’ basis policy. List the priority areas where one or the other is more preferable. (e.g., technological secrets, company vision, company mission, promotion policy, etc.)