How I work is how I live: Making deliberate choices that I can defend, demonstrating respect for time, space and energy (mine and others’), weaving my work with the threads of care and connection.
My HR advisory work is tuned to best serve organisations where decision-makers prioritise dignity and high expectations because they believe that culture has a straight path to profits. This means, if you believe you are a leader who:
- Walks the thin lines between self-assuredness and curiosity; knowing your mind and stubbornness; systems focus and being human.
- Are adept at asking for help, understanding the shape that help comes in, use it
- Are comfortable ceding control of People culture, policies, guidelines & workstreams; with a clear checks-and-balances system that shares accountability with the person (me, in this instance) trying to affect changes
- Can articulate your current/ evolving culture in simple, understandable terms. You have clarity on what has changed and why. You have your hands on the wheels of this change
- You lead the necessary shifts in ways of being, and answer a lot of “Why”s
- You have systems thinking, and champion new systems, changes in systems and cascade these further
- You have clear reasons for hiring. You don’t allow behaviours such as, hiring this week and making a “strategic decision to downsize” two weeks later
- You have respect baked into performance related exits: Exits don’t come as a surprise. People are given a chance to improve. You don’t make choices such as firing by email or mass video calls, withholding payables or other unethical behaviour
- You are emotionally regulated and can have difficult conversations without shouting matches or passive aggressive diffidence.
90% of organisations use the paved paths of progress for good reason. Preconditions are set and adhering to those allow the organisations to get ahead. For the 10% who who play by their own rules, have a reliable inner compass, manufacture their own fairness & morality, find it easier to get off the gravel and take the scenic route, and often ask “Why do we have to follow a centuries old practice” and equally often ask “Why not”, I find most cultural resonance with.
I enjoy working with people who have enough time and mental space to allow nuance in. To hold a few contradictions – be ambitious but not at the cost of burning up the planet and its inhabitants. Thrive, but also embed that in the thriving of your teams, your communities. Individualism cheek-by-jowl with collectivism every Wednesday, because, why not.
I appreciate the soothing nature of routines over manufactured crises to feel relevant in. I also love a good “throw away the playbook and get all in” test of first principles and coded systems.
Monica Pillai 