The Bangalore Phoenix

Volume 15, Number 3 Article by V Kishore Kumar September, 2003

The Bangalore Phoenix :

In ‘Hands On’, V Kishore Kumar shares a learning experience in helping an employee towards self development.

The advent of PCs in the late 80s left Archana, a personal secretary, with very little to do. She started ‘helping’ others with advice and strategy, and the small office soon became a hotbed of politics and intrigue. Archana needed to be kept busy, and for her new boss, who did not need her secretarial skills, this meant finding out what else she was good at. A little research revealed that Archana was a B.Sc in Mathematics. She had an assertive and persuasive manner of speaking, and she had a working knowledge of several languages.

Kishore Kumar decided to try out an experiment to bring her out of the steno-typist mindset. He asked Archana to call up all the regular dealers, find out their previous month’s sales, and check their requirements for the following month. Although she did not see the point, she did the job thoroughly and enjoyed it. She began to learn the ropes and in a couple of weeks, she took over the daily monitoring of product movement from the factory to the godowns and the sales from godowns to customers; she started taking the views of the field staff to project further requirements and persuading the dealers to lift larger quantities of material in return for discounted prices.

From these beginnings, Archana rose to the position of Commercial Executive (Logistics and Marketing). In less then two years, her metamorphosis from a nagging steno-typist to a significant contributor was complete. The exercise in motivation worked so well that soon the VP HR began to explore the executive potential of other clerks in the organisation.

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