Dreamers OR Implementors

Dreamers & Implementers
An organisation needs a mix of people who do and people who think to successfully ride the good times and the bad
DEVDUTT PATTANAIK

IN INDIAN FOLKLORE, THERE ARE
four characters. There is Shekchilli, Gangu Teli, Mitt Ka Madhav (some say Gobar ka Ganesh) and Raja Bhoj. These four characters most aptly describe the kind of people we have in our organisation.
Shekchilli is a dreamer. One day he gets a pot of milk from his master. He dreams of turning the milk into curds, churning it for butter and selling it, making some money and using that money to buy more milk and making more butter. And in time making and selling so much butter that he would not have to work. As he dreams of the possibilities, he stumbles and falls on the road. The pot of milk in his hand breaks and out pours all the milk into the ground.
Gangu Teli does not dream at all. He likes
to implement things. He calls himself a ‘realist’ and focuses on practical things like doing the task and measuring its effectiveness and efficiency. That’s what the world should be doing. He has a disdain for dreamers. His name Teli suggests that he is an oil presser. Just as an oil presser uses force to push oil out of oilseeds, Gangu Teli uses pressure to get work out of his team. Carrots, he says, are dreams; sticks, he insists, are reality. The story goes that when the wall of the king’s mountain-fort kept co lapsing, the astrolog recommended the sacr
fice of a woman and her newborn to appease the gods the mountain. The only person whose wife and child were available for sacrifice – either voluntarily or under pressure, we will never know — was Gangu Teli. He is the frontlinse warrior; he knows. When times are bad, he will be called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice. The buck stops with him as he stands in the market. He is therefore most valued in the immediate term. Since he knows that, he often suffers from an inflated self-importance.
Mitti ka Madhav (also known by some as Gobar ka Ganesh) is neither a dreamer like Shekchilli nor an implementer like Gangu Teli. He is what you want him to be. On his own, he is neither. He is a reactive member of the team, doing whatever pleases you, with no mind or opinion of his own.
And finally, there is Raja Bhoj, the ideal leader, a dreamer as well as implementer. If a 2x2 matrix of dreamers and implementers is created, then Raja Bhoj sits in the top right hand box while Mitti ka Madhav sits on the bottom left hand box. Raja Bhoj knows when it is time to dream and when it is time to implement.
When the recession hit, Mr. Pyne realised, to his horror, that his organisation is full of Gangu-Telis and Mitti ka Madhavs. And he had to admit that it was his own fault. For six years the going was good. The demand for the copper pipes he made was greater than the supply. So he hired a number of executives who thought tactically and could sell. “No dreamers for me,” he told his HR department, “I want people who implement.” Mr. Pyne had had his experience with dreamers. They sat all day, made presentations to him, never moved out of air-conditioned offices, and imagined the market. He had to pay them a fat salary but there was no output that he could implement or measure. It was a waste of time. “All this strategy nonsense is good for other companies. Not more me,” he said. So he created an organisation where it was all about tasks and measurements. Creativity was not celebrated. “Lets just copy what the competitor does,” he said, “Why waste time thinking ourselves?” Things went well for a long time. Growth in quarter after quarter. Bigger offices, more people, more sales and good profits. Then came the recession.
All the businesses showed a de-growth suddenly. No one wanted copper pipes. Pipes sold were being returned. Payments were not being made. The salesmen were frustrated. Everyone shrugged their shoulders helplessly and hung their head in shame. Mr. Pyne looked around and realised there was no idea he could copy to get out of the situation. Everyone was in the same boat. Almost everyone. There was one small company, belonging to one Mr. Raut, that was doing reasonably well. Their salesmen were not complaining and no one in his team feared losing a job. Mr. Pyne called on Mr. Raut, who was kind to share his secret. “You see when the going was good, I imagined a time when things would not be so. Every boom is followed by a bust. So I created a small team to imagine a situation where there is no demand for copper pipes. How would we survive then? They came with many ideas and I invested a small proportion of my profits to experiment with them. Most of them failed. But two ideas that they came up with are proving to be viable in these trying times.”
Mr. Pyne realised that Mr. Raut was a Raja Bhoj who had created a team of Shekchillis. Together they had dreamt of bust even in boom times. And this had enabled them to survive the bust. If only, he had functioned like that. But then, he was no Raja Bhoj. He had taken pride in being Gangu Teli and now that the fort had collapsed, it was time for him to make the dreaded sacrifice of all that he dearly loved.