Vision, Direction and Support: The Three Facets of Today’s Successful Leadership

Vision, Direction and Support

The Three Facets of Today’s Successful Leadership

Our world is rapidly changing and we need leaders who can adapt and understand the needs of today while keeping the requirements of the future in mind. When vision, direction and support or any other zone becomes the constant pitch for leadership to play, the worthiest outcome is a team so strong that you wouldn’t know who the leader is!

Ruby Thapar

Executive and Transition Coach, Mumbai “Build a team so strong that anyone that sees doesn’t know who the boss is.” - Anonymous

This quote got me thinking - what would it take to build a team like this? Would the traits and competencies ascribed to leadership such as influence, wisdom, inspiration, passion, drive, power, knowledge, credibility, energy, foresightedness, sensitivity, charisma, perseverance, an ability to unite people, responsibility etc. suffice to build such a team? Probably not!

To my mind, leadership is a quality that is reflected through action. It is a process that is transformational. As we mature and go through different experiences and situations, our leadership abilities also change. It is not something that can be confined to a few words or sentences. Doing that would mean generalising it and taking away the distinctiveness each leader brings.

Having said that, it is important to mention here that the foundation of an effective leader is the values that drive them. If someone has those qualities, leadership will come to them naturally, irrespective of the role they play in an organisation. For instance, even a janitor can influence people and show leadership qualities, just like a CEO of an organisation does. There might be common traits that each leader would display, still we all experience and play out as leaders in our own unique way.

The Three Action Zones

It is not always possible to define a concept, a quality or a thought. The same is with the idea of leadership. So, instead of defining leadership through traits

and competencies, what if we talk about leadership in terms of action? I believe this agency of actionability would allow us to highlight leadership behaviours to meet situations creatively, wisely and appropriately.

The ‘Three Action Zones’ that most aptly describe leadership are:

l Vision

l Direction

l Support

These aspects are, by no means, exhaustive or based on any research. These are solely based on my understanding of things and how I look at the idea of leadership.

What do these individual zones mean?

Vision

A vision is like a dream. It comes to great minds at work. And when that vision is set into action, you start your journey toward success. Let me share some examples of a vision being transformed into action and the corresponding success stories.

Here is an excerpt from Amazon’s 2018 Letter to its shareholders, titled Intuition, Curiosity, and the Power of Wandering. It refers to the symphony shared visions can create in organisations.

“From very early on in Amazon’s life, we knew we wanted to create a culture of builders – people who are curious, explorers. They like to invent. Even when they’re experts, they are ‘fresh’ with a beginner’s mind. They see the way we do things as just the way we do things now. A builder’s mentality helps us approach big, hard-to-solve opportunities with a humble conviction that success can come through iteration: invent, launch, reinvent, relaunch, start over, rinse, repeat, again and again.

AWS’s millions of customers range from start-ups to large enterprises, government entities to non-profits, each looking to build better solutions for their end users. We spend a lot of time thinking about what those organisations want and what the people inside them - Developers, Development Managers, Operations Managers, CIOs, Chief Digital Officers, Chief Information Security Officers etc. - want.

Much of what we build at AWS is based on listening to customers. It’s critical to ask customers what they want, listen

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Market for Woven Sack Industry

Looks Really Promising

Dharmesh Madhusudan Kothari

Director, Navrang Machinery Pvt. Ltd., Ahmedabad

“On the market side, I do see that there are a few challenges in the current market, but these are only temporary hiccups and the industry will soon be able to overcome them all; while on the manufacturing side, I feel it’s all about making machines cost-effective, user-friendly and long-lasting,” shares Dharmesh Madhusudan Kothari, in dialogue with POLYMERS Communiqué.

Q. When it comes to engineering machines, you have quite a few achievements to your credit. What according to you has been your most inspiring milestone and why?

It would be difficult to point out any particular milestone as there have been so many of them over the years. We export our machines to over 35 countries and have pioneered developing machinery for the woven sack industry; we command a market share of more than 90 per cent in selected machines. And all of this has been possible because of having an engineering background and a strong will to do better. These two factors have continuously inspired us to stretch our limits and achieve better results in everything we do.

Q. What are your views on the three most important parameters that are vital for your machine design and operation?

In my view, the three most important parameters for machine design are user-friendliness, costeffectiveness and long shelf-life. The machines must be easy to use so that it requires the least amount of training and expertise; they should be affordable so that a larger number of companies can use them and they should last long so that the buyers get their worth for every single penny spent.

I feel building a customised machine within a strict time frame, while making it cost-effective is the biggest challenge.

Q. What new customer demands do you witness when it comes to extrusion and co-extrusion coating solutions?

Cost reduction and getting the right mix of the polymer that perfectly suits their application are the two most common customer demands. These demands mainly come from the industries like fabric, films, jute, paper etc.

Q. With the pent-up demand now settling down, how do you see the upcoming months for bag and pouch-making

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A wide range of slitting and rewinding machinery for film manufacturers A range of duplex and duplex turret machines for converters

ASHE Converting Equipment Bluestem Road, Ransomes Euro Park, Ipswich, IP3 9RR United Kingdom India office contact: Mr. Kavish Shah +91 99208 19791