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Big Picture, Pride, Passion and Process

“If you want to be happy for a year, win the lottery. If you want to be happy for a lifetime, love what you do.”

–Unknown

So, let us help Shukla—and you—understand this very first soft skill some more. In the previous chapter, we have defined soft skills as the skills you need to succeed in your environment. For this, you must first be able to be cognizant of and relate to the environment. An essential ingredient of this is to know the ecosystem you are in, the big picture of which you are a part and your role and contribution to this big picture. In this chapter, we first discuss what is meant by ‘the big picture’ and how this would enable you to relate to the environment better. We follow this up with a discussion of pride in your work and how the right level of pride is closely tied to seeing the big picture. This right level of pride would automatically create a ‘fire within’—a burning desire and a passion in you to do your best, resulting in your success and that of the organization as well. This fire within, along with the vital glue of systematic processes, will enable you to have a vision and align that vision to that of the organization and thus, relate to the environment even better. This will naturally lead us into the next chapter on vision.

The elements described in this chapter, right from the ‘big picture’ to the ‘fire within’, are such basic blocks in soft skills-building that we will keep returning to them in future chapters.

2.1 What Is the ‘Big Picture’?

Let us take a simple example of putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Also let us assume that it is a fairly large puzzle that several of you are putting together (Figure 2.1).

 

Fig. 2.1 Knowing the big picture

The first step would be to know the final picture your entire team or organization is aiming for. You will probably look at the picture on the cover of the puzzle box. That will give you important information as to what type of picture it is (natural scenery, people, vehicle parts, etc.). You will also assimilate other facts about the picture like the different shades of colours in the different parts of the picture (like the sky, trees, major characters, etc.). You will then use these facts to arrive at a plan of how you will distribute the work (and the pieces) among the team members. For example, you can distribute the jigsaw pieces amongst all of you by handing out the pieces that look like those corresponding to the sky (blue colour) and the clouds (white/grey colour) to one person, those that look like the pieces corresponding to a tree (brown/green colour) to another person and the other pieces to a third person. Thus, you have arrived at a plan to divide the work amongst all of you, with a clear understanding of the roles to be played by each. Each of you work in a focused manner attempting to solve a narrower problem than the original jigsaw puzzle. All of you are working towards a common goal. While doing so, if you do find pieces of the puzzle that you cannot use, you will not have any hesitation in passing on the pieces to the other team members. Likewise, other team members would not hesitate to pass the pieces that you need on to you that they have. There are no territorial fights like ‘these are my pieces’ or ‘these are your pieces, get them out of here!’

Since we defined soft skills as what is needed to relate to and succeed in the environment, is it not obvious that knowing the big picture is indeed the first step in effective soft skills? Most people fail in relating to their environment because they simply don’t see the big picture and become extremely self-centred (see Box 2.1).

2.2 Why Should You See the Big Picture?

Makes you share a common vision with other members of the group: When everyone sees the same big picture, there is a shared vision, a common goal that everyone aims for. The barriers of communication reduce and there is likely to be a better receptiveness for your views and perhaps of the way you express your views.

Makes you less self-centred: Again, taking the jigsaw example, once you know the big picture, there is no longer the ‘hoarding’ of pieces or information. When you find a piece that does not belong to the part you are solving, there is no hesitation in giving the piece away to others.

Helps articulate ‘your’ requirements to elicit better co-operation from the team: Taking the analogy further, you would be in a better position to tell your team-mates ‘Hey, if you find any light blue colour pieces, please give them to me.’

An obvious by-product of all the above points is that the team, as a whole, becomes more effective and efficient. There is very little reinventing the wheel, very high shared vision and, thus, the entire team is acting as a laser beam targeted on the ultimate goal without any territorial fights. Everyone relates to the environment, succeeds in the environment and helps others succeed in the environment.

2.3 What Happens When You Don’t See the Big Picture?

We will continue to use the example of the jigsaw puzzle. We did a small experiment that made people put together jigsaw puzzles individually but with the pieces face down (i.e., not seeing the full picture). As you can guess, it took several times longer for an individual to put together the jigsaw. The trying of pieces was no longer based on natural factors like colour that relate directly to the final picture. Rather, the pieces were tried based on the shapes of the contours and whether one side of the piece was straight or not. Such parameters that do not link directly to the final picture are not only unnatural but are also error-prone. Furthermore, when you are solving the puzzle in a team, this approach will lead to a conflict of several team members trying to grab the same piece saying ‘Hey, I need a piece rounded on the left and straight on the right—who has it now?!’. of course, the others are not interested in taking an inventory of their pieces to see whether they have that piece that is rounded on the left and straight on the right. Even if they did have such a piece, since they don’t know they don’t need the piece, they are likely to hold it back ‘Just in case I need it for my own part of the puzzle.’

There will be an increased communication overhead: When the team members don’t see the big picture, there is no clear division of labour. Hence, communication overheads increase substantially. You will be digging into the pile of pieces ‘owned’ by somebody else very often.

You may be perceived as too myopic and egoistic: When your team members want to get important information from you, you may not be able (or willing) to give it to them as you may be more engrossed in solving ‘your problem’.

You may win the battle but lose the war: Since you are busy solving ‘your problem’, you often lose track of the bigger problem of which your problem is a smaller part. This may result in a lot of effort focused towards ‘local optimization’ (i.e. Solving your problem faster), while compromising a ‘global optimization’ (i.e. Achieving the overall objective in a more efficient way).

You may get into a ‘not invented here’ (‘NIH’ ) syndrome: Since there is no shared common vision, each person ends up reinventing the wheel for every little component. Each person’s style is unique and after some time it becomes a battle of politics as to whose approach or style is better. In the process, the over-reaching goal gets compromised.

2.4 Pride in Work

Closely coupled with seeing the big picture is taking pride in your work, in your contribution to the big picture. In every organization and in every project, there are different types of activities that need to be carried out. Not all are equally ‘glamorous’ or considered prestigious. But it is required that all the jobs be done and the glamorous parts will not receive their sheen unless the not-so-glamorous ones are also completed.

In order for a person to stand up and communicate effectively with the team, he should feel good about what he is doing and carry a sense of pride about it. This sense of pride will come only if he can see how his contribution completes the big picture.

In a globally distributed team, this sense of pride is even more important. In these days of BPOs and outsourcing, there is a common perception that the outsourced activities are all ‘low-tech’. If this perception is allowed to continue, it is not good either for the people working in the outsourcing location or for the people in the outsourced location. For the people in the outsourced location, this perception will lead to de-motivation and as a self-fulfilling prophecy that makes them believe that their work is not useful. Thus, the work quality is likely to suffer. They can never really further the cause of healthy respect from the outsourcing location. This in turn can make the outsourcing location give less strategic work to the outsourced team, widening the gap even further.

In Figure 2.2(a), at one end was the first person who saw nothing but his immediate and self-centred wants. Obviously, he was neither enjoying his job nor relishing his contribution to the final goal. The second person, in Figure 2.2(b), had a clearer perspective of what he was doing and perhaps derived better satisfaction from his job, albeit doing his job mechanically and being narrowly task oriented. Still, he would not have been able to articulate his contribution and hence would not have been very successful in relating to his environment. The third person, in Figure 2.2(c) not only saw the big picture, but was also able to visualize his role and contribution to the big picture. This made him see the factory being built and he started feeling proud of the fact that the factory would outlive him and that he had been part of leaving something behind for the society. This would certainly make him a more satisfied individual who would relish his contributions and hence, be able to communicate with the rest of the team in a non-threatening and enjoyable way.

 

Fig. 2.2

This sense of pride leads to a fire within that will propel one’s contribution much further. We discuss this in the next section.

2.5 Passion—The Fire Within

The sense of pride discussed above is closely linked to passion or the ‘fire within’. When you see the big picture and understand your role in creating the big picture and take pride in it, you will be automatically filled with a lot of passion and motivation. This motivation will surely light a fire within that will act as fuel for you to feel good about yourself and you will be able to display better self-confidence and thus relate to the environment better.

How do you identify such a passion or ‘fire within’? You will feel, see and display a visible excitement for your work. Whatever you do, you will no longer consider it drudgery; you will no longer consider yourself a mere cog in the wheel, someone who moves files around. You will realize that everything you do has a purpose and that this overarching purpose will propel you forward. No doubt, in any job you will see challenges, obstacles that look insurmountable. But, with this passion, with the fire within glowing brightly, you will see every challenge as an opportunity. You will not get disheartened by obstacles, but at the same time, you will not be foolhardy to ignore the perils of the challenges. Your clear sense of direction towards the big picture will lead you to identify alternative strategies to overcome the obstacles. The most important result of this passion is that you will always strive for excellence and nothing but the very best. You will never get satisfied with work of average quality; you will never make do with ‘just-sufficient quality’; you will never resort to compromises because good is the opposite of best and best is your benchmark. You will also be able to identify ‘the best’ as what is best for the bigger cause, rather than what is best to achieve narrow goals of self-interest. In short, your passion is one for results, results of the team. It unleashes a totally positive attitude towards your work, your career and your workplace.

2.6 A Delicate Balancing Act

We have been discussing pride in work, fire within and passion. This chapter would not be complete if we do not mention a couple of possible dangers in these attitudes, especially in the context of multi-location teams that is typical of the IT / ITeS arena.

Rather than treating pride as a one-off attitude, it is important to realize that there is a spectrum or continuum of attitudes about your work and where you stand in this continuum.

A typical multi-location IT team has many diverse functions, like software development, testing, maintenance, documentation and so on. Some of these jobs are considered more glamorous than others. For example, software development is considered ‘more cool’ than say, maintenance. Obviously, this is a misconception; a successful product requires good developers, good testers and people who are good at all the other aspects like maintenance and documentation. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link. At the end of the day if a product fails, for whatever reason, the entire team suffers.

A second fuel to this fire of ‘cool work’ vs ‘grunt work’ is that different jobs demand different backgrounds. For example, a person doing software development may come from a prestigious college with a flashy computer science degree, whereas a person doing documentation may come from an arts background. There may be huge disparity between the pay scales of the two jobs, the perceived background reputation of the people doing the two jobs and the levels of visibility for the two job functions. For example, while the software developer may have visibility to the customers and the senior management, the person doing the documentation may not be in the forefront or limelight. This can lead to a perception of one job being more important than the other and thus, undermining the less visible job function. If the people performing such less visible—but by no means less important—functions themselves feel that their work is indeed less important and inferior, they are setting themselves up for failure. This is the inferiority end of the continuum in Figure 2.3.

 

Fig. 2.3 The continuum of inferiority to arrogance

The people performing the more ‘cool’ job function may tend to dominate the others and this is certainly not going to foster good teamwork. One possible reaction of the affected party would be to say, ‘Okay, I think my job is good and I am proud of it, but you are more powerful and I guess I will accept what you say—maybe I don’t have a choice.’ This part of the continuum, being submissive, is slightly better than the inferiority end. Another possible reaction, without being offensive could be ‘I know my job is good and I am proud of it, but I don’t have to waste my energy in trying to convince you nor am I forced to agree with you’. This is the modesty part of the continuum.

What we have been advocating in this chapter is pride and passion, that come after modesty in the continuum. The line between pride and modesty is sometimes very blurred, especially for the Indian culture. There is a certain philosophical modesty that is ingrained in traditional Indian culture. It is sometimes considered blasphemous and impolite to take credit for anything. While continuous bragging about what one has achieved is obviously painfully boring and not well appreciated, it is equally inappropriate not to take credit for something that one has actually earned and deserved. For example, if you have gone beyond the call of duty and covered extra ground to achieve something, you should not simply keep quiet and assume (or hope) that someone will take note on their own. No one really will, at least not immediately. Given the pace at which things happen, either someone else will accomplish what you did a little later and take credit for it promptly, making your work and effort redundant, or worse, someone will take credit for what you did, making you a loser.

As Agatha Christie said in her famous thriller Witness for the Prosecution, ‘Justice must not only be done, but also seen to be done’. You should not feel that pride and modesty are the opposite of each other. Some amount of modesty is required, but that need not be at the cost of someone else taking the credit for what you have done.

The line between pride and modesty is not the only thin line. The pride that one has and the passion and the fire that it stirs within should not be at the cost of pooh-poohing the other members of the team. Perhaps they come from a different background and perhaps they perform a different job function, but they are by no means unimportant for the final product. The pride in performing one’s job should not be assumed to be a license to trample over and hurt other job functions and be arrogant, nor should any one job function be glorified at the expense of any other job function. Once a person truly knows the big picture and realizes his contribution to the big picture, he would be able to get a better appreciation of the contribution made by the other people as well. The pride will not just be in his work, but in the final outcome; he would see his job as building the factory and not breaking stones; he would see his job not as being a show of independent strength, but as a cohesive force to inter-dependently lead to the final factory. There is a thin line between pride and arrogance and the real winners will know where the line is.

One way to achieve a good balance in the pride continuum is to celebrate the achievements of the team. Even if the achievement is yours personally, surely others would have contributed to it in some way. By announcing the achievement and by acknowledging the contributions of others in the accomplishments, you will not only be able to make people take notice of your work, but they will also appreciate your being a team player.

2.7 The Glue that Holds All these Together: Process

In this chapter, we have discussed three related concepts that are the vital starting point for soft skills—seeing the big picture, pride in work and the fire within. We would like to conclude this chapter by pointing out the interesting inter-dependency of these factors and the important glue that holds these three factors together.

Knowing the big picture makes sure that there is clear results-orientation. If you don’t know the big picture, but are extremely passionate about what you do, then the situation is one of:

You not only need to know what the big picture is, but you also need some discipline and process to get there. Process is another word for the method, the procedure, the practical routine that you evolve by suitably combining these three elements. A good process not only connects you to the big picture at all times, it also regulates and makes use of your pride and passion in a synergetic manner, to achieve the end goals. Sometimes in large corporations like MNO (Snapshot 2.1) some steps in the process are defined and ‘operationalized’ by the company itself, based on its policies and you will have to abide by them. Process is the essential glue that interprets and connects the destination to a route. While passion and pride are essential for innovation and better self-expression, undirected (and uncontrolled) passion and pride without a proper process will just lead to a Tower of Babel syndrome.

Sometimes, people go to the extremes of following the laid-down process, without understanding the rationale behind the process. Then, it is likely that decisions and actions don’t have a worthwhile contribution to the big picture.

Hence, all the elements we have discussed in this chapter have to be combined and shaped together.

A key part of this glue—process—is to ensure there is

When this interdependence is appreciated, people find the right place to be in on the pride continuum and this develops a healthy relationship among the team members. This will lead you into developing a common shared vision. That is the topic for the next chapter.

 

Fig. 2.4(a) Attitude without knowing the Big Picture and roles

 

Fig. 2.4(b) Attitude knowing the Big Picture and roles