Striking a Balance!

The first phase of the organisational restructuring was over.

The charts had been redrawn, reporting lines rearranged and designations distributed with the solemnity of military medals. Some people had been promoted. Some had been transferred. Others had discovered that their years of contribution could be summarised in one carefully chosen phrase: “Needs further development.”

Our office at Sprint RPG wore a sombre look.

Conversations had become quieter. People who normally argued loudly over sales forecasts were whispering near the coffee machine. Performers had been rewarded. The rest were trying to understand whether they had performed badly or merely failed to perform in the correct political direction.

Management called it restructuring. Employees called it many other things, mostly after office hours.

For me, the tension had passed. I was moving to New Delhi and taking on a new role. I had no complaints. In corporate life, receiving a new designation without losing your parking space is often considered a successful transition.

My colleague Srini, however, was deeply disturbed.

I had great respect for him. He was an excellent salesperson—persistent, intelligent and capable of building relationships in markets where even collecting a cheque required the patience of a monk and the instincts of a detective.

That evening, we sat at a bistro bar while he poured out his frustration. “Does Vinod have any sense of realism?” he asked.

Vinod was our boss.

“He expects me to reconcile the entire regional account and reduce receivable ageing to less than thirty days—in two months! Milind, we should confront Mr. Goenka and tell him what is happening. These people at the top should expect only what they themselves can deliver. Vinod must strike a balance between what is desirable and what is possible.”

I could only sympathise. In most organisations, the distance between what is desirable and what is possible is filled with PowerPoint slides.

Srini continued.

“I tried everything. We had reviews every quarter. Every time, I explained the situation. Not once did he say my performance was unacceptable. And now I am told that my performance is average and that I must wait longer before moving into the zonal band. It is killing me.”

His words remained with me for the rest of the week.

He was at least partially right. Our appraisal process was flawed. An annual appraisal should not arrive like the climax of a suspense film when the quarterly reviews have been presented as a family comedy.

Unless something extraordinary has happened, the final performance rating should not be dramatically different from the feedback given throughout the year.

Yet this happens regularly. For eleven months, an employee is told, “Good work. Keep going.” In the twelfth month, the same employee is informed, “You have not demonstrated sufficient strategic impact.”

This is usually the moment when the employee discovers that “keep going” meant “continue walking towards the edge.”

Clearly, other motives were operating beneath the language of balance.

Perhaps there was a fixed promotion quota. Perhaps the salary budget had tightened. Perhaps someone else had stronger sponsorship. Or perhaps the organisation had simply decided that disappointment builds character—particularly when it reduces payroll costs.

The Conflict Between Quality and Completion

I knew Srini’s style of working. He was a perfectionist.

In many ways, he was like me, although I say this without intending to congratulate myself in public. We believed in focusing deeply on the means. Get the process right, understand the customer, build the relationship and the results will eventually follow.

Management often taught the reverse philosophy: “Never mind the means. Deliver the results.”

This philosophy works beautifully until the means produce a legal notice, a customer revolt or an internal investigation. At that point, management usually announces that integrity has always been one of the organisation’s core values.

Throughout our careers, we live with the tension between getting things right and getting things done.

Move too quickly and the work may be careless. Wait for perfection and the work may never leave the desk.

A sloppy manager makes decisions before understanding the problem. A perfectionist manager continues studying the problem until the problem retires. Both can damage an organisation.

The first creates chaos at speed. The second creates excellence in theory.

Striking a balance is therefore essential. Unfortunately, balance is one of those words that sounds simple only when used by people who are not currently balancing anything.

Perfection Has Different Standards

The standards we apply naturally change with the nature of the work.

A casual blog post does not require the same precision as a bridge design. A promotional email need not be examined like a pharmaceutical formula. A retailer deciding where to display a new collection cannot wait for six months of consumer research while the festive season walks out of the store.

Even this article will be imperfect. I may proofread it, change a few sentences and remove one or two unnecessary words. Then I will publish it, only to discover the next morning that an awkward sentence survived every correction and is now smiling proudly at the reader.

That is the nature of creative work. No matter how hard we try, something can always be improved.

A programmer releases software and immediately finds another bug. A musician completes a recording and later wishes one note had been softer. An architect sees the finished building and quietly notices a line that nobody else can see. A hairstylist finishes a haircut while the customer studies the mirror as if evaluating a merger.

Perfection is rarely a destination. It is usually a moving target carrying a clipboard.

The Retailer’s Version of Balance

Retail provides a particularly visible example.

A retailer must balance inventory with demand. Too little stock, and customers complain that nothing is available. Too much stock, and the accountant begins to look at the warehouse as a crime scene.

Suppose a menswear store wants to introduce a new range of premium linen shirts. The buyer may want more colours, better finishing and wider size availability. The finance team wants fewer pieces. The sales team wants everything immediately. The customer wants the exact shade displayed online, but at half the price and with complimentary alteration.

Waiting for perfect information may mean missing the season. Ordering too aggressively may create shelves full of expensive optimism.

The right decision is rarely perfect. It is informed, timely and adjustable.

The same applies to store design. A retailer can spend months perfecting customer flow, lighting, fixtures and product placement. But customers have a habit of behaving differently from diagrams. They enter through the wrong side, ignore the premium display and ask the salesman for the discounted shirt hidden behind a pillar.

Reality is the most experienced retail consultant. It also refuses to submit reports.

Good management therefore requires action, observation and correction—not endless planning in search of certainty.

Leadership Must Examine the Obstacles

The true test of leadership is not merely asking, “Did you achieve the target?” It is also asking, “What stood in the way?”

Targets matter. Results matter. Businesses cannot survive on sincerity alone. A salesperson cannot endlessly explain poor collections by describing how difficult the market is. At some point, money must arrive.

But leadership becomes lazy when it looks only at the final number. What if payments were delayed because billing errors remained unresolved? What if a sales region inherited old disputes? What if credit was extended to customers under pressure from senior management? What if the employee repeatedly raised concerns but received no support?

An appraisal without context is not an assessment. It is arithmetic wearing a tie.

A good leader separates excuses from genuine obstacles. That requires conversation, attention and courage. It is much easier to examine a spreadsheet than to examine the decisions that produced it.

Sometimes the cracks in employee performance are really cracks in leadership. But organisations often repair the employee because replacing the wall is inconvenient.

The Myth of Objective Appraisal

Performance systems are designed to appear scientific.

There are rating scales, weightages, competency frameworks and calibration meetings. Someone creates a nine-box grid, and suddenly human complexity becomes manageable because every employee can be placed inside a coloured square.

Yet behind the apparent mathematics lie judgement, memory, politics and preference.

The manager who speaks confidently during the calibration meeting may secure a better rating for the team. The quieter manager may discover that modesty is an expensive leadership style.

An employee may be praised for collaboration all year but denied promotion for lacking visibility. Another may be rewarded for visibility despite leaving collaboration to everybody else.

The system is balanced in the same way a circus bicycle is balanced: technically, yes—but nobody should relax. True balance requires timely feedback. An employee should not discover weaknesses at the end of the year when there is no time left to correct them. Quarterly conversations must be honest, not ceremonial.

A manager who avoids difficult feedback for nine months and then delivers a poor annual rating is not being decisive. He is merely postponing discomfort until it becomes someone else’s crisis.

Knowing When to Let Go

Those of us who care deeply about our work face another challenge: knowing when to release it.

When is the analysis sufficient? When is the proposal ready? When is the product good enough to enter the market? When is the article ready to be published?

There is no universal answer.

The decision depends on consequences. Where failure risks safety, legality or serious harm, standards must be uncompromising. Where the work is reversible and learning is possible, speed becomes more valuable.

A useful question is not, “Is this perfect?” It is, “Is this responsible, useful and ready for the next step?” That small change in language can save us from both carelessness and paralysis.

We must learn to distinguish excellence from fear. Sometimes we keep polishing because quality demands it. Sometimes we keep polishing because publication exposes us to judgement.

Perfectionism can be a noble pursuit. It can also be fear wearing expensive spectacles.

Balance Is Not a Final Achievement

I still struggle with this balance.

There are things I have released too early and later regretted. There are other things I refined for so long that their moment passed.

There are people I could not satisfy, no matter how carefully I worked. There were also people I tried too hard to satisfy when I should have trusted my own judgement.

Perhaps balance is not something we finally achieve. It is something we continuously correct.

Like walking, it depends on countless small adjustments. A perfectly rigid person cannot walk. A perfectly rigid organisation cannot evolve either.

Srini wanted his boss to balance expectations with reality. His boss probably wanted Srini to balance effort with results. Senior management wanted everyone to balance performance with cost. And the organisation wanted all of us to remain motivated while ensuring that promotions remained financially manageable.

Everyone wanted balance.

Naturally, everyone wanted someone else to create it. Evolution begins when we stop treating balance as a slogan and start practising it as an honest conversation.

We must ask more of ourselves—but not demand the impossible without support. We must value quality—but not worship perfection until action becomes impossible. We must measure results—but also understand the conditions under which they were produced.

And we must accept that every decision will contain some imperfection. The goal is not to eliminate every flaw. The goal is to know which flaws we can live with, which ones we must correct and which ones are trying to teach us something.

That may be the closest we ever come to striking a balance!