HOW LONG CAN GATEKEEPERS ‘SLEEP’?

“Good Morning” I wished the receptionist as I entered the corporate office after due entries in the register maintained by the security guard.

The smart young lady acknowledged by nodding her head as she was on telephone. Raising her head, she smiled and asked “yes sir, please tell me…”

“Well, I have an appointment with Mr. Harish @ 10.30.” It was 10.25 AM to be precise.

“Ok. Please be seated. Let me check.”

As I was waiting, she picked her mobile again and started talking loudly “the movie is a trash. very disappointing.” One could guess that the talk was not official but a gossip. After about fifteen minutes she closed her conversation and picked up the intercom and checked with the official “yes sir. he has come.” Mr. Harish came out to the lobby with a smile, shook hands and said “So, you are late by twenty minutes………”. Without giving an answer I just glanced at the receptionist, smiled and moved on. She possibly understood the meaning of my smile.

Gate keeping has been a much-debated job from the time the heaven and the hell were conceived. The concept has evolved over hundreds of years. Though the credit of the technical usage of the term is attributed to Kurt Lewin, the term has taken several manifestations depending on the metaphorical context and its relevance to a given situation. So much so, it is in much broader use presently encompassing several facets of activity in organizations. Concurrently, the type and scope of work they do has also broadened their wavelength.

There are several gatekeepers to an organization who communicate the living profile of the organization to their clients every time they interact with them on a professional platform. They guard the entry points of the opinion pathways and thought architectures of the organization they represent. They occupy several entry points - in policy articulation, program implementation, business designs – in sales, marketing, customer services, public relations, HR services and like that. They are unbranded ambassadors of the value profile of an organization. Their contribution to the value profile may be direct or indirect, visible or invisible, revenue generative or not – but is significant. Their awareness, alertness, agility, knowledge, skills, communicability, negotiating skills, advocacy, branding and several other skills project the brand of the organization they represent. Hence, they need to be awake, cannot afford to ‘sleep’ long, nor should they be allowed to, if the organization really looks for sustained stability of the existing value profile or for that matter growth.

A futuristic organization needs to be sensitive to this challenge, however difficult it be, as these concept guards keep a hawk’s eye on market dynamics, client responses, customer satisfaction and quality references -which would help in understanding and developing response systems both for short term and long terms sustainability and growth.

Organizations of all kinds have such gatekeepers and in various functional domains. It is important for the organizations to identify such gatekeepers so that focused attention could be given to nurture their specific skills.

In many work environments, a mere certification or qualification, held by those who are appointed to such seats of gravitation, may not be of any help. Making them “value-profile managers” of the organization and preparing them for “Future readiness” does indeed call for careful planning and execution.

Gatekeepers are responsible for both: “What comes in” and “what goes out”. They facilitate convergence and divergence of ideas for improving results. Their authenticity is critical to the brand of the organization.

Customers might often correlate the profile of the organization with the profile of the gatekeeper with whom they are engaged. The poverty of authentic knowledge and skills of the gatekeeper might encourage the customer to return even before an entry.

In sales, selling a book is not selling a soap, and selling a soap is not selling a cake and selling a drug is entirely a different ball game. What matters is not the product or the service, but the idea behind it, the mind behind it, the people behind it and the energy that has gone into it. The gatekeepers in each field of activity need to ensure how these core skills are practiced in the areas under their charge.

Gatekeepers in some professions also play the role of ‘intellectual guards’ in transmission of information, ideas, concepts and secured practices. In some fields of activity, there could be several layers of gatekeeping depending on the sensitivity of the work and thus calling for continuous enrichment of the skills of the people involved in the job. Oftentimes, such skills might need periodic audit 

and re-engineering or rehabilitation.

Gatekeepers could successfully evolve as change managers of the organization and often help in ‘driving changes’ cohesively in the holistic infrastructure of the organizational dynamics. The degree of their contribution may vary, but they are essentially a part of the wheel of change. It is important for the organization to ensure the retention of these ‘drivers of change’ with suitable rewards.

While in the current scenario of global competitiveness, learning has become unavoidable to all kinds of organizations and at all levels of organizations, the gatekeepers indeed face the question: “How long they can ‘sleep?’– On the contrary,  they need to be awake overtime for competitive and continuous learning!

And ‘gatekeeping’ to a world of Netizens is entirely a different sport – it calls for innovative ‘out of window’ thinking. Hopefully most organizations would be learning them online and of course, day in and day out!