Management, like everything else, has its fair share of unspoken dictats and advisories and there was a phase (which still lingers) when there were so many open doors leading into the CEO’s / MD’s office that there was a very healthy cross-ventilation!
On a serious note, accessibility means far more than just maintaining an “open-door”? policy and inviting employees in for a chat. In fact the downside of having a super-successful open-door policy may well be that one might never get any work done at all and morph from the organisational head into the complaints/ feedback box instead.
But there is, thankfully, a happy mean between that and a closed door. And walking the tightrope between the two is essential to retaining credibility as a leader. And a lot of it boils down to communication. The last that I read of Isadore Sharp, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Four Seasons, a luxury hotel chain, I was tremendously impressed with his ability to connect with people. One of his mantras is that every phone call to him or a company manager is returned promptly. Is it any wonder that he has established loyalty with both employees and customers? And the results show for themselves. Four Seasons is consistently ranked as the best Luxury hotel chain in the world and for six straight years and they have also been part of Fortune Magazine
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Isadore Sharp and Vineet both have created the approachability in their own unique way. U&I is an excellent example and it must have been very difficult to draw the approachability mean line for the CEO with 50,000 employees. A framework and this culture must motivate every manger, group manager, BU and SBU head to build the same approachability for their entire team around them that gives the feeling to everyone that "you genuinely care"….and beyond this if something comes to the CEO it may definitely be something that falls beyond the mean line and requires CEO attention… not just primarily to resolve the issue but also to bring about or build the change…
While for approachable senior managers, key is to address “how much is enough” when it comes to being approachable and may face the risk of being at the receiving end of more often a wrath of complaints and issues than ideas, there are enough employees wanting to share a magical theme or an innovative idea to feel part of the management, and a greater sense of responsibility and accountability which is what change the management is anyways driving for.
Now let’s invert this thought. What if the employees brought nothing but a stark ground reality, complaints and issues and nothing innovative, novel leave aside magical. Most of these mundane “important issues” being parochial too! However these issues with proper trust and compassion pointed out by you and proper compassion from management will drive the change that management cannot hope to achieve in a boardroom meeting anyways.
Apart from being approachable, I feel managers have to extend this a little further. If approachability to employees will be used to solve issues and complaints it is important that the managers act as internal "connectors" and external “connectors”. Connectors as described by Malcolm Gladwell in Tipping Point describes them as they will know 80% of your target market. Hence both internally and externally management if acts as connectors can solve at least 80% of the problems on the fly. This also means better workload management and hence after all, the time management due to the open door will not be a hassle after all. And extending this thought again on a lighter note, at home, in a group of my friends my mom was the "cool one" who knew when we bunked school, while the other mom’s constantly fretting what horrendous things the kids were actually upto!!!!
Only following this simple practice consciously will solve 80% of problems and will bring about a revolution in IT industry.. No need to have HR’s then.. No need to formulate policies to curb attrition rate.. I am an employee of HCL and how I wish my manager had read this article.. Resources can be replaced in technology areas etc. but I guess its difficult to replace an individual’s COMMITMENT.. If it still carries any importance in this sector..