Lessons from Grandma

This article has been over a decade in the making. Ever since I started working, I realized that my grandmother was the most efficient and effective managers I had ever known. In my entire HR journey, whenever I would be frustrated with a workplace issue, I could always reflect and identify one of her behaviors that would be the perfect solution to that problem. This is an attempt to share a few things that my grandma embodied in the way she lived her life – which have workplace implications.

i.                    Work is the best form of engagement: My grandma was always busy doing something, or learning to do something. She cooked, she embroidered, she kept her home sparkling clean, she read, she sang, she connected with neighbors, she prayed – morning to evening, as days became decades. This was perhaps a default state in the lives of many women of her generation, but she did it with a firm sense of ownership. She believed that it was important to do all things ‘well’, which meant doing them with attention, care and expertise, giving it the best you could. She believed that while we cannot always choose the things we have to do, we can always choose to do them well. And she believed the latter to be the more important choice. When we do something well, it makes us happy and builds engagement.

This can be a very useful trait at the workplace. For many employees, they may not have chosen the work they do, the company, the manager, or the client, and there are always issues. However, rather than worrying about that ideal role / company / client / manager, focussing on doing the existing tasks well can actually improve engagement for employees. This is possible when the employee takes accountability for doing his/her role well, and that accountability generally brings with it the support of others in the ecosystem. In this approach, engagement is an active process where employees choose to improve work conditions around them, and that in turn leads to colleagues and managers supporting them and making things happen.

 ii.                  You are your own quality control: My grandma was a perfectionist. She always wanted to do things well – which meant being your own critic. Even when all neighbours and relatives would appreciate her brilliant cooking, she would accept the praise but softly exclaim that such and such ingredient could have made the dish better, or the sweets could have been softer. When she stitched, it wasn’t just enough to create beautiful patterns, but every stitch had to be the same size as the other. For her, it was easy to keep improving quality standards – one needed to have a vision, or a certain concept, find ways to execute that, and actually do it. We will always know whether our current efforts are better than earlier ones, and that’s what really matters. She had never read Dr. Carol Dweck’s The Growth Mindset, but would have immediately seen the merits of its approach.

In the work world, maintaining quality standards for work is perhaps the single most important responsibility managers face. This is managed through a combination of goal setting, review processes, meetings, training programs, motivating their team and taking timely corrective actions. Sadly, one of the modern expressions of technology is that of increased control – be it on the websites we visit or wristbands tracking our movement. It is possible, however, for employees to create high quality work with less supervision – by providing quality standards, necessary skills and empowerment to take decisions. Some models of self-managed teams, or project-based distributed work imbibe these principles, but remain niche in scope. Embedding continuous productivity improvement as a value for the self and one’s work can go a long way in improving work standards, as employees are often capable of reviewing their own efforts and results.

 iii.                Curiosity is your teacher for life: My grandma had studied only till Class 7 in the vernacular (Bengali) medium; at the time, this was considered sufficient education for women. It was one of her rare regrets (and she didn’t have many), but she never let formal education get in the way of her learning. She would try to learn what she wanted to know from all kinds of sources she could find – by reading about it, or watching the news or asking someone about it. She always believed in minimizing the gap between knowing and doing – if she learnt something, she would quickly find a way to put it in practice. Even at the age of 90, she would ask me about new recipes in our weekly chats, and actually try them out – dishes like lemon rice, or hummus or cookies!

In organisations, many managers spend a lot of time with HR discussing how to get their employees to learn, as if there was an inherent problem that needs solutions with external resources. Most HR managers groan in their hearts and offer similar solutions – be it a training program, finding a coach, assigning a project and so on. Budgets are allocated, programs designed, hotels booked (at least in pre-covid days), feedback forms filled, and yet, as the dust settles, it is difficult to sometimes ascertain what has really changed. The desire to learn is really an internal journey and it is best ignited and nurtured by giving employees freedom to learn by experimenting. Curiosity in employees can be supported by enabling conversations, creating connections with experts in the field, a culture of discussion and exchange of ideas across departments or grades, which can then be leveraged by interested individuals to keep adding to their mental models, thus enabling learning. Minimizing penalties for failed experiments – be it verbal reprimands or penalties during career decisions also go a long way.

iv.                Connecting the dots: My grandmother had one of the sharpest minds I’ve seen. It was impossible to pull the wool over her eyes! She would suspect things that others may not have revealed, pose sharp questions, and conclude the truth from the respondent’s voice and expressions, no matter what the actual verbal answer was. She was good at finding out who had a new partner, who was having financial trouble, who was happy or lonely, all while chatting about completely inconspicuous stuff. At the same time, she made it a habit to connect with people, be kind to them, maintain relationships – by remembering birthdays, or calling them up – and she had tremendous acceptance and kindness for anyone in her network or circle. Regular connect helped her join the dots between the person’s life context, their dilemmas and journey, all with a light touch!

 At the workplace there are some managers who find it difficult to trust their teams, and hence constantly keep a check on them or ask for updates. Others believe their teams are trustworthy, but sometimes check in too late, believing that no news is good news, when it may be the reverse. At times, the information shared by the teams may be misleading, or important information shared late, leading to delayed course correction in critical projects. Additionally, wrong decisions could be being made because the employee said something and the manager passed it on verbatim, without fitting it into the context of all the other information he has. Regular connect, formal and informal is an essential tool in any manager’s arsenal, as it can help them discern a more accurate version of on-ground realities. This entails spending time regularly with their teams and colleagues, gathering context through conversation, developing trust with regular check ins, and then applying it to business decisions.

 v.                  Being relevant means letting go: My grandmother was a curious combination of traditional and modern ideas. Throughout my life, I saw her observe and assimilate concepts that were completely alien to her beliefs, and yet retain a unique perspective that was hers alone. She learnt to be amused (after initially being scandalized) at me calling my husband by name - unthinkable in her times! She had to accept her daughter-in-law being non-traditional in following rituals that were important to her. Her grandson sported waist-long hair and she laughed! And yet, she always had so many stories to share which helped us understand her life and values. I watched her gradually transform from having stubborn firm beliefs to accepting differences as long as they caused no harm and made people happy, most of it after the age of 75!

 This process of reinvention is not easy at the workplace, and the fear of change is a very real one. It keeps employees in roles and organizations even when they don’t learn anything new anymore. It distances leadership from their teams when there is limited tolerance or audience for newer ideas. It keeps managers from not learning from best practices or competitors, because tradition requires processes to happen a certain way. There is concern that if one thing is changed, maybe too many things will and competitive advantages will be lost. As long as the core principles are understood and communicated, people and organizations can assimilate so much more positive change which can help them remain relevant.

 Conclusion

I must clarify here that the examples above are by no means an attempt to question HR or managerial practices – I do firmly believe that organizations have a responsibility to facilitate learning, make workplaces engaging, help people succeed in their roles and support leaders to create more inclusive organizations. At the same time, it is possible for the individual – be it employees and managers – to be more effective simply by choosing a certain set of values and priorities, just as my grandmother had. I suspect that many individuals who are successful choose this, and perhaps this is among the best kept secrets in HR. If that is true, then the need to find and retain more individuals like my grandma by successful organizations should be a top priority one!