THE “PERFORMANCE PAIN” OF THE PALANQUIN BEARERS

That was indeed an excellent cultural show.

On one side of the stage, there was a well decorated palanquin and the bearers carrying the same with grace and grandeur. They moved gently so that the goddess of power seated in the palanquin does not have any discomfort in her journey to discharge her duties.

On the other side, a team of palanquin bearers carried the palanquin seated with a monster whom they had never seen and they carried it with a sense of arrogance, pomposity and display of ego (They were after all paid and trained to do so -it was just a matter of livelihood for them)

After a few encounters between the ‘goddess of power’ and ‘the lesser god’ (my apologies for using this phrase because it may be violative of the equity among gods), the goddess of power used all her intellect and weapons to destroy that monster. Thereafter, the palanquin bearers of the goddess returned with a sense of pride and joy -for having been the carriers of the victor rather than the victim. The palanquin bearers of the ‘monster’ stood silently knowing not what to do – till their HR manager walked into the stage and gave a pink slip to some and a golden handshake to a few others because the ‘project’ was over!

When Sushmita asked me “Have you ever had the experience of being a palanquin bearer to someone who didn’t deserve to sit in the palanquin?” – I walked away with a smile, saying - “sometimes it is a part of the game”.

She continued – “But what about the performance pain you suffered?”

In organizational structures, no one cares about ‘performance pains’. They are most often like the tales of unknown soldiers.

Prateek was heading the organization as CEO for the last seven years and enjoyed unlimited power from the founder of the company. Things changed only last year, when founder nominated one of his young relatives to who Prateek should report. While the self-esteem of Prateek did suffer initially, what was more evident was the new take over had absolutely no idea of the business and its process except that he wanted to control things by making interventions to show his power.

Singhvi was heading an educational institute which had a big name. He was a leading educator with nearly three decades of leadership in education. But when the founder of the school nominated his daughter-in-law as the vice-chairperson from whom he should take instructions, he was in a fix whether to continue or leave. Given his family situations, he had to work and making changes at this stage of life wasn’t easy.

A leading coach of a state team with international expertise of the game lost all his pride, commitment and workmanship when he was asked to comply with the directions of a newly recruited bureaucrat.

Evidences exist where years of glorious performance of companies have suffered massive disasters in short term when employees with proven track record suffer ‘performance pains’ under people or projects. And finally they are shown the doors for failure someone else or some conceptual disaster. People matter.

While a good synergy of the young and the old, expert and innovative ideas, old and the modern infuses energy into the system, it is important that the culture of carrying a palanquin in an organizational set up must be eliminated through well-articulated HR strategies.

Those who carried the palanquin of the ‘monster’ were just employees designated and trained to do a job in a stipulated way and do not have any ethical relationship with the ‘values’ of the person or the project on the palanquin. Oftentimes, they suffered ‘the pain of performance’ knowing fully well the consequences because they had to live with a job or the task.

There are no HR scales to measure ‘the performance pain’ of the people while adequate tools are used to measure ‘the performance profile’ of the people.

This cultural show has been staged in several organizations. the goddess of power needs to be more merciful to the palanquin bearers of her victim!