Non-Commitment, the new (or rather old?) Management Disease

Non-Commitment!

These days, I hear / feel / see this disease that seems to have plagued management of my organization.

Just to elaborate the point, Lets take a few examples… (of course the names are indicative and not real)

1. Rajesh is in a new responsibility of handling a few freshers below him. He has a few years of experience. At the start of development of new project, he is been consulted about the dates and plans. But, as it always turns out, there were requirement gaps and whole new additional functionality clarifications comes later in the project increasing his workload. Since, Rajesh has already committed on the delivery date to his seniors, he, along with his team, even-though-grudgingly, toiled through the weeks till the delivery to provide a feature complete module
2. Many people join the offshore IT services organization like mine in hope of going to another country (and possibly earn some extra money). Nameet was no exception. He was a brilliant programmer and a highly team-person, the one who gets gelled into the team nicely. But, to his misfortune, for all the commitments he made for completion and quality the work, he never got any commitments from the organization about his career progress. All he got was promises. There was no one (senior) who stood on the promises which were made. [All the years of staying the organization had also taught the seniors to not promise anything in writing!] … Well, outcome was obvious, my organization lost a good programmer and team person.
3. Sanjay, being in the organization for quite some time, had learnt a thing or two about how management works. He wanted a transfer and he started the process of talking to seniors around 3 month prior to when he really desired to get transfer. [Update: There is slang term for this, CYA.. go look yourself up if you do not know what that means]. When he was asked to work on some proposals, he committed for the work and did not care if that meant staying up till 3AM every other day for 15 days. But seniors, despite 3 months lead time, were not ready to provide any commitment on transfer for Sanjay. Neither was any response (positive or negative) provided in written communication. So much for soft-skills training that my organization mandates to everyone.
4. Everyone has likes and dislikes about jobs. Hari did not like maintenance work. He, being the bright and self-confident person, wants something bleeding edge. So when he was moved into maintenance project with low activity, he asked for change of project. Seniors, agreed after series of “discussions” but did not provide any commitments on when it will happen.

As I am trying to highlight, all these incidents involve different teams and different people but the theme is unmistakable. Juniors, are been asked for commitments and are providing commitment and are living upto it, even if that means lot of hard work and weekends, nights lost. But seniors, when it comes to reciprocating the deal, are consistently evading it!

I would venture to say, that a leader should provide a clear indications to his/her subordinates, about the responsibilities and time-lines to complete them. But he/she should not evade his/her own responsibility to provide clear time-lines / risk mitigation when it comes to fulfilling the subordinates aspirations. At the same time both need to attack their responsibilities with transparency to other party to boost the confidence!

I can clearly see few big benefits by not evading responsibilities:

1. Juniors are not in dark about when things will happen and if they do not happen, what are their options.
2. Seniors would be more esteemed personalities in their juniors eyes. At least, they would not be back biting A**holes.
3. Overall team spirit goes high when Seniors and Juniors join hands and transparently act on issues.