Today we’d like to introduce you to Abrar Ansari.
Hi Abrar, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Every time I am asked for my story, I begin to ponder my life’s journey. The one thing that gets reinforced each time is that I was never in control of my destiny. Frankly speaking, I can confidently say that, no one really is! For the most part, we get to where we are randomly floating on our own circumstances and riding the waves of events as they unfold in front of us. On this journey, life has a funny way of putting us in situations that often demand action. It is not what we do in the heat of the moment that charts our trajectory; it is what our perspective was, as we reacted to a situation. These individualized perspectives and reactions are what define each voyage.
Our journey doesn’t have to be tied to a specific destination either. In fact, the more places we stop along the way the more diversified our outlook in life becomes. This diversity allows us the ability to examine, evaluate and course correct allowing us to attain wisdom. The process starts with introspection. It requires acute awareness of not just why we are doing something and what’s in it for us, but also how it is going to impact others around us. We are impactful beings. What we do in life matters. Our actions have consequences, regardless of how small the impact. It is like throwing a small pebble in still water. The effect of the ripples is far reaching, isn’t it?
Understanding the repercussions of our actions on ourselves, on others and on our environment, demands emotional intelligence, empathy, and compassion. Knowing ourselves, our psyche, how we think and make decisions then becomes a necessary first step in understanding our impact.
For leaders, the ripple effect of their perspectives and reactions is amplified, where the impact is deeper and the ripples reach further. People who make decisions and influence others, in the heat of the moment and without aligning intent with action; are seldom mindful of the consequences of their actions nor aware of the impacts of their decisions on everything around them. There are many examples of these types of leaders around us.
Given the times we are living in, we now look to leaders to be more aware and introspective. We need them to be balanced in their reactions and have a wider perspective. There is a dire need for leaders to have the emotional, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of their psyche balanced; to produce meaningful change tied to the greater good of society.
My career journey started in the field of industrial hygiene (IH). A field of study dedicated to the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, and control of hazards at workplaces safeguarding people from injury and illness, to preserve their wellbeing. It is a field that seldom gets much recognition and is often misunderstood. An IH is trained to be mindful of the hazards round them, not just for protecting themselves but others around them. This phase of my profession really honed my ability to understand the alignment of my intent with my actions.
My job then took a turn towards management systems design and deployment. A field that forces its practitioners to understand the dynamics between policies, protocols, processes, and procedures by which an organization ensures the fulfillment of tasks required to achieve its objectives. As a result, I became good at understanding complex systems and the interconnectivity within those systems.
The winds of change then nudged me towards information technology (IT) commercialization. IT systems, when deployed and leveraged effectively, can facilitate the flow of information to where it is critically needed; in helping organizations on their journey of growth and innovation. I found myself gaining expertise in understanding how to identify, capture, store, and report data to support organizational decision-making. Further opportunities allowed me to bring all my skills together when I became a partner for a global sustainability consultancy. Here I helped global enterprises design and develop integrated purpose-oriented programs to manage Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) programs and initiatives.
A few key points became apparent as I grew and advanced in my career, and got to engage with organizational leaders; not many understood their organization’s psyche, few had utilized systems thinking when faced with challenges, and even fewer, truly leveraged information in a meaningful way to induce transparency and give authority to their workforce; in allowing them to make balanced well-thought-out decisions.
After close to 3 decades of diversified yet interconnected experiences, my journey has brought me to a place where I am lucky to leverage all that I have learned over the years into one practice. In my book, I called this practice: Management by Intent. As an author, mentor, and coach, I now have a small consulting practice helping leaders realize the impact of their ESG commitments to fuel the greater good in society.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
While it may be true that having purpose fuels our goals and aspirations; I believe it is one’s intentions that put things in motion. Intent-driven individuals are more resilient. They have the wherewithal to sustain disruptions and yet maintain due course. When they get knocked down, they get up dust off themselves and carry on. Understanding intent then becomes a prerequisite for deciphering our sense of direction. In my book, I define “Intent” as having the awareness of our inner emotional, behavioral and cognitive systems and how they interactively function within us.
I have had a few challenges along the way. Some made sense and some just weren’t understood by me until later in life. One such event happened in fifth grade, which has left a deep impression on me in multiple ways.
It was in fifth grade that I was first introduced to leadership decision-making. It was towards the end of the season one day during practice, our soccer coach decided to assign Edward and I as team captains. We had not yet seen the coach giving the reign of the team to players like us. You see, both Edward and I, we’re not your typical A class players. We were squarely mediocre! So, having us as team leads, even if it were for one practice game, was an interesting experiment by our coach. It sure did changed the way I looked at my leadership capabilities and the consequences of making decisions.
The coach would often tell us that soccer was a mind, body, and soul exercise. I never quite understood that until later in life. But sitting on the bench for most of the games that season, I had developed a good outside-in perspective of the players. I knew the players’ strengths, position preferences, and technical skills. I had watched the coach maneuver players in the field to achieve balance and win games. I had heard him coach and council the boys on their vulnerabilities and shortcomings. I knew the players well. I won the coin toss that day and picked my team first. To everyone’s surprise, I did not select the current captain for my team. You see, Hamid, the current captain, was always the first pick for all games. Many idolized him because of his talent; all the stardom had gotten to his head. He was arrogant and cocky and constantly belittled players like Edward and me. Suddenly, hear I was, with an opportunity to do something about it. I made an intentional decision not to select Hamid for my team that day. I opted for a more balanced and grounded team; as a result, my team was better coordinated. Hamid made quite a scene about not being on my team that day. He called me names, and he pushed and shoved me at every chance he got during the game. As the game progressed and we kept scoring, he got agitated, frustrated and angry. We ended the game with 7-0 victory.
The thrill of victory elated me, but only briefly. The agony of being bullied by Hamid for the rest of my school year was debilitating. I got pushed around, punched, and thrown on the ground more than a few times that season by Hamid, whenever he found me alone. In hindsight and as painful as it was, the bullying was a small price to pay for the lesson that I learned in selecting the right individuals, coordinating, and motivating them and seeing them through to victory.
Throughout my journey, I have always carried such lessons with me. The ability to sit on the sidelines and observe; to understand people, their skillsets, their dreams, and aspirations. All are necessary components of putting successful teams together. Knowing your team at a personal level, making them part of something bigger than them, enabling them with the right resources to accomplish their goals and objectives, are all major factors for contributing to someone else’s journey. A good leader enables a transformational and meaningful journey for others.
I have learned that an effective and balanced leader who is aware of their impact and how their perspective affects their teams is what many organizations are seeking. Such leaders are acutely aware of their own biases and limitations, yet able to confidently build talented teams which are diverse in experiences, knowledge, and their own perspectives. These types of teams bring ingenuity and innovation that is needed to solve problems like climate change, social inequity, environmental degradation, and other unforeseen circumstances. Putting motivated diverse teams together, aligning their intentions to focused on the greater good for all is what leadership means today. Our leaders today must uplift people’s spirits collectively to help them move forward to solve today’s great challenges.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Our clients, when they engage us, may use different words to describe what they are trying to achieve. But regardless of their choice of words, if the end goal is to create a balanced approach to designing and deploying purpose-drive programs tied to business growth and employee engagement, ASI is a great partner to team up with.
To us, a balanced business, is akin to resiliency and sustainability – a purpose-driven business philosophy that emphasizes growth and profitability through intentional business practices providing long-term value for stakeholders without compromising people, the planet, or the economy. Organizations that engage with us, are passionate about either preventing harm or promoting good through the products and services they offer. We normally start with understanding what that strategy and roadmap looks like for them.
Given the times we live in, sound business strategy needs to have the society’s greater good in mind as the critical starting point. Without understanding how an organization fuels that greater good and how it contributes to creating social, environmental and governance transparencies, the journey gets hijacked by short-term financial gains. At ASI our team can work with you to define, refine and deploy a holistic strategic framework; one tied to the greater good but with business operational realities in mind.
Over the years of helping our clients integrate the tactical with the strategic, we have recognized that a well-defined strategy, aligns programs and initiatives with business priorities and imperatives.
That alignment, requires answering the following questions:
Strategically –
1) What is driving the program or the initiative?
2) What function owns responsibility and how is the program structured?
3) What are immediate short-term objectives?
Operationally –
1) How does the program integrate with strategic business priorities?
2) Is the program designed in alignment with business operational imperatives?
3) Are the right things being measured ? (metrics, scorecards, assurance, etc.)
The answers to such questions help in better:
1) Understanding and analyzing the business models that drive a program’s transformative change cycle,
2) Communicating the competitive advantages to management, leadership, and other key stakeholders,
3) Exploring why collaborative and collective efforts matter to bring in system-level change,
4) Examining the broader environmental, social, governance landscape in which the program operates in, and
5) Facilitating transparency in highlighting organizational impact to issues of material significance, to build trust with all stakeholders.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
When asked to define the significance of human life in relation to the cosmos, a wise teacher replied that it was the recognition of the interdependencies of the smaller elements in life that give meaning to the bigger universe around us. Risk can only be understood and mitigated by looking at ourselves from the outside in, not the inside out. Just like you can only define the majesty of a mountain by looking at it from afar or scaling it to the top, or you can explain the vastness of an ocean by sailing through it or diving into its depths.
Intrinsic to the notion of risk taking is the idea of systems thinking, where you must see the whole of any person, system, or situation, to be able to see where and what the impact may come from. In other words, one has to understand all the parts that make up the whole. It is this type of systemic thinking that allows a person to have the ability to identify interdependencies, and relationships and therefore anticipate potential cause and effects.
Risk for me, is defined as the probability and magnitude of harm or loss to us or our systems, including the natural systems of our planet and galaxy. At times these impacts may even be unexpected or unforeseen; and since risk is inherent in everything we do, our success lies in our ability to not just proactively identify potential failures and preemptively contain them, but also recognize potential opportunities for improvement and meaningfully embrace them. Ideally, this ability of preemptively anticipating, recognizing, and evaluating, the consequences of our decisions should define our risk universe, is my perspective. But far too many of us fall short of this. In our race to amass material wealth, fame, and power, we have muddied our boundaries. As a result, despite our ingenuity and advancement, we have become hyper-consumptive as a species. Currently, humans mostly consume with total disregard to the ill effects on people and systems.
It was later in life that I realized our reactiveness and proactiveness, is a direct result of our balanced psyche. In my book, I talk about how human psyche is balanced when it exhibits equal portions of courage, temperance, and wisdom to maintain dynamic equilibrium within us. This stability helps us better recognize and define our risk boundaries and aids us in taking a measured approach to whatever life throws at us.
Contact Info:
- Email: aansari.asi@gmail.com
- Website: www.managementbyintent.com
- Yelp: https://booklife.com/project/management-by-intent-the-5-principles-59335
- Other: https://speakerhub.com/speaker/abrar-ansari
