Head and Body – Part I

Have been thinking about this topic for a few months now. The relationship between the head and body has its impact in every walk of life. The relationship between the head and the body can be seen in an organization, a family, a person – physically, intellectually, spiritually… and in so many other ways…

Trying to understand the relationship in an organization, I was able to relate to past experiences.

I had a few chances to go on consulting assignments with my earlier partner. Whenever we would take up a new assignment, my partner would insist that the MD of the client company should sit through the sessions. I always used to wonder why such a demand.

After all we have to work on the operations teams, look at improving their efficiencies, their processes etc, then why should the boss sit in all these activities. My partner used to say – “If the head of the organization is not in your team, then the project is already a failure”

Just imagine, you sit and spend so much time changing the people’s attitude and work culture, put a new system in place, emphasize the importance of following a system.

The people listen to you and start following the new system, and one fine day the boss comes and gives an overriding instruction to his people, they have to bypass a few controls and “do as the boss says”… What is the point of having the system in the first place then? Whatever work you did on the team is wasted.

Take another example – The organization has a legacy system in place which is slow and inefficient but everyone is used to it. Because of management decision, a new advanced system is installed which is more efficient but looks more complicated to use. Now, if the head of the team is not willing to use this new system, do you think the remaining team will be interested in it?

If the boss keeps telling his team not to take long leaves and goes on a vacation himself, do you think the team will listen?

On the other hand, if the boss himself is working even on a holiday because there is a deliverable due, you will see that atleast a few team members will volunteer to come.

If the boss keeps complaining about the management of the company, do you think the team will have any respect for the management?

In all the above examples, the boss is the head and his team is the body.

Lets see the relationship between our head and bodies, the head makes a decision to eat, body does the necessary actions. If the food is too hot, body sends a feedback to the brain (which is normally located inside the head) and the instruction to blow and eat carefully come back to the body.

This relationship between the head and the body is based on a constant flow of instructions and feedback. If one of them is not working properly, just imagine what could happen to our bodies.

In the same way, the head of a team has to respect the feedback received from the team. If the boss is doing something wrong, it is the team’s responsibility to flag it off, of course, there are a few things where the head knows better.

The link between the head and the body has to be a healthy one, flow of instructions has to be clear and transparent, there has to be constant feedback from the body to the head.