A Lesson in Motivation

It was the mid-nineties, and my initial posting in the Computers & Communications Department of the bank was full of night-outs, endless cups of coffee, and a kind of team spirit that operated in perfect resonance. My designation sounded quite grand, Project Officer. We were about a dozen officers in the department, along with a half a dozen Programmers.

Branches, big and small,  would be identified for computerisation by the Management, in consultation with the controllers and our Department Head. Once the list was finalised, a time plan would be drawn up for each branch’s migration from manual to computerised operations, depending on hardware availability, power supply, and other such practicalities. A Project Officer would then be assigned to oversee the process. Bigger branches naturally took longer to prepare their data; smaller ones wrapped up in no time.

Some urban branches were already on back-office systems and needed about a week for data preparation, while the smaller branches could manage in a couple of days.

Our Department Head would personally visit each identified branch, accompanied by the designated Project Officer, to brief the Branch Head and address the staff. These sessions were more about managing mindsets than machines, staff were, understandably, resistant to any change.

During one such visit to a large branch, my Department Head asked me what points he should highlight during his address. Eager to be helpful, I mentioned that voucher checking at the end of the day wasn’t getting completed, and there were always pending items that had to be physically verified the next day, a slow, tedious process.

At the branch, after the usual polite exchanges with the Branch Head, the staff meeting began. I sat there waiting for my boss to bring up the issues I’d mentioned. Instead, he took a completely different tack.

He began by saying that this branch, one of the largest, had been deliberately taken up last for computerisation. The reason, he explained, was to learn from the hiccups of earlier branches so that this “prestigious” one would have a smoother transition. The truth, of course, was rather different, the Branch Head had been resisting computerisation for months, convinced that the software wasn’t secure. Not that it mattered; this was bank policy, not a matter of choice.

Then came the master stroke. With the confidence of a magician revealing his final trick, he told the staff, “After computerisation, the day-end operations will be very simple. Just press a single key - hard, and all pending vouchers will automatically clear.”

I nearly fell off my chair. But there was no time to react, because just then the branch Accountant, a senior in age if not designation, took me aside and asked if we couldn’t have waited another six months before computerising the branch. I said I had no say in the schedule, and that this was already among the last to go live. Out of curiosity, I asked what difference six months would make. He smiled, eyes twinkling, and said, “I’d have retired by then.”

On our way back, I asked my Department Head why he had said the exact opposite of what I’d briefed him on. He smiled and said, “You’re young. You’ll understand over time. My job is to make people comfortable with change, not to scare them away. I’ll tell them everything you said, but only after they’ve gone live.”

Still not convinced, I asked, “Then why ask me for inputs at all?”

He laughed. “Because I’m going to another branch we computerised last week, to tell them exactly what you said!”

That day, I learnt a profound lesson in leadership, from a man who, incidentally, had also been the General Secretary of the Officers’ Association. And ever since, I’ve never underestimated the power of timing, in technology, or in truth-telling.

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