The Creativity Suite. Episode 167: Fresh Eyes and the need to transform.
Interview with Manikandan Narasimhan, Director of Information Technology at Franklin Templeton India.
‘Staying fresh is difficult.’
These were the words that Manikandan Narasimhan started our conversation with. Manikandan is a global technology and transformation executive with more than two decades of leadership experience in the financial services and technology sectors. He is currently associated with Franklin Templeton India, where he leads large-scale global technology and digital transformation initiatives. We met in Chennai, India to speak about how to handle change.
One of his responsibilities is to help the employees of Franklin Templeton at the Corporate Centre in India become more innovative. With his decades long experience in developing innovation, I asked him for a concrete thing they had done to help keep an organisation flexible and nimble.
He told me about a project called ‘Fresh Eyes’ where the innovation team would get employee details who had recently joined and worked for between 6 to 12 months in their new role.
Long enough to understand how things work, but short enough to still have ideas about things that really could improve.
By surveys and interviews they query these employees about processes, procedures and habits that they think should be changed, improved or exchanged for something better.
But Manikandan also told me that it works both ways.
By interviewing them about what they thought was not working, they could also identify things that the new employees had not yet understood about the way their new organisation works.
‘Fresh Eyes’ was both about getting new perspectives on the workplace – but also about getting the new hires to look at their new job with fresh eyes.
Every organisation and every person will at some point get stuck and plateau in their ability to grow and develop. Manikandan calls this “mental cocooning”
Now cocooning can be a good thing – if it means you focus on self-development in order to transform to something better.
But it can also be a bad thing, if you close yourself up from the rest of the world.
When you – your organisation or yourself – feel stuck, ask yourself: “Am I getting ready to transform, or am I just stuck?”
The answer will define what you need to do next.
If you are stuck you might need a fresh pair of eyes to help you see things from a new perspective.
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