NeerSpires: What’s in it for me?
And the problem with asking that
“What’s in it for me?”
Isn’t this the driver for most of the decisions that we make? This question narrows down the gamut of opportunities that one can pursue.
When I was made a team leader for the first time, I realised that the interests of the team have to be taken into consideration first before “appearing” pleasing to the management. I used to be an extremely meek and timid person and was shy to talk even to the person seated next to me in my team. Well, a team lead cannot be meek, timid or shy. I remember going into a management meeting where the entire leadership team was participating (starting from the team leads, to the middle management and senior management). The meeting was being chaired by the Managing Director (MD) of the company. The meeting was to talk about the self-assessment scores of each team for an upcoming CMM assessment. Our organisation had defined certain processes to follow the CMM best practices. Since I was unable to map the work that my team was doing to the processes and activities that were defined, my team’s scores were extremely poor. In fact, I asked another team lead whose team also did similar work about how he was able to achieve a better score and he said that he just complied. Which means that if there was a question asked about certain standards being present or not, even if the standards were not relevant to the work that was done by the team, he just created a ‘standards document’ on the shared drive, show that to the assessor and put a tick mark against that question.
Well, I was not going to “just comply”. So, while every team presented their good-looking assessment scores in front of the MD, I decided to speak up. I suggested to the MD — “It might be good if someone from the Quality Assurance team could spend some time with my team to understand the work that we do and advise us on how to follow the documented processes as we are struggling a bit”. Everybody in the room was shocked to see this girl, who never spoke, say something like this in front of the MD of the organisation. What made the meek, timid and shy girl speak up in front of such a distinguished audience and deign to suggest something to the MD?
“What’s the worst that can happen?” I remember thinking that as I spoke up. The worst could have been me being replaced by some other person to lead the team as the MD could have considered my team’s bad scores to mean that I am incapable. Well, that was something that I could deal with. So, I spoke my mind. And nothing happened during the meeting.
The next day, there was an announcement from the MD. They were introducing the concept of Quality Representatives (QRs). The QRs were from the Quality Assurance team and would sit with every team to understand the work that was being done and advise the teams on how to implement the processes. When the QR came to our team, he spent some time understanding the work that we did. He quickly realised that the protocols had not incorporated aspects that were required for our kind of work. They went back and reworked the process bank, and eventually life became better for our team and other similar teams.
Instead, if I had thought of “What’s in it for me” before reacting, the outcome might have been something very different. I would have realised that there are chances of me losing my position as a team lead and seeing nothing in it for me, would not spoken up. And had I kept quiet, not only would my team have struggled, but many other teams would have too. There was a possibility that this gap in the process would have been identified much later, when an external assessor would have come to assess our organisation.
When my daughter was in 9th standard, she told me about the Model United Nations Debate that was being organised in her school. She was very keen to participate, but at the same time, quite nervous as she had no idea what happens in such debates and whether she would be able to debate the topics that would form part of the MUN. She approached me and said that she would volunteer as part of the logistics team for the MUN that year so that she can watch the proceedings and can be better prepared for it next year. I asked her why she did not want to participate as a delegate as that would also give her the same learning opportunity. She said she didn’t feel confident enough. On asking, “What’s the worst that can happen”, she expressed her fear of being the worst prepared delegate and of not being able to speak a single word, let alone debate. I told her that she could deal with that and it would not harm her in any way. She would not be worse off than where she was at that point in time! She could put herself into the shoes of a delegate and experience the proceedings of the MUN conference. If the end goal was to be prepared to participate as a delegate in future, and she had an opportunity to do it right now, why waste the opportunity? .
With this in mind, she went ahead and participated as a delegate that year. She may not have been able to contribute in any way to the proceedings during that MUN, but she learnt how the best MUNners debated and prepared herself better for the next year. Not only that, she developed high levels of self confidence in public speaking, eventually going on to win the Debate Competitions at the District Level. Meanwhile, a “What’s in it for me” question would have worried her about her poor performance at the MUN and she may never have gathered the confidence to participate as a delegate for many years to come.
I would like to end with a quote by Brian Tracy that encapsulates the essence of this article -
Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, “What’s in it for me?”
