Machiavellian Lessons for Millennial Managers

MHB – Personal Learning Paper                                        Debojyoti Mitra, G18016

Machiavellian Lessons for Millennial Managers

Introduction

This paper is an attempt to document my experiences with leadership and my learnings from working closely with senior industry leaders. While leadership styles are subjective and unique to every individual, there are some general rules that must be assiduously complied with. Modern day managers plying their trade in today’s fast-changing markets are faced with a whole host of challenges that have very little historical precedence and thus no straight or fair answers.

Can Niccolo Machiavelli’s insights on human behaviour guide present-day managers in navigating the current corporate quagmire? Modern scholars have applied a variety of interpretations to Machiavelli's magnum opus “The Prince” (published circa 1532). Some see the book as a sign of despair, an anguished chronicle of a fallen human being, while others find in Machiavelli a clear-eyed realist and an accurate observer of the political sphere of life.

Objective

In this paper I hope to show the relevance of some of Niccolo Machiavelli’s famous and controversial political theories to present-day corporate settings.

Literature Review

This paper presents my interpretation of Niccolo Machiavelli’s political theories documented in “The Prince”. Machiavelli’s theories have been translated into contemporary business management language by Antony Jay in his acclaimed book Management and Machiavelli (1967).

Research Methodology

I have documented my experiences at multiple organizations and work assignments in the form of 2 cases to explain the Leadership issues and the subsequent challenges faced by my team. My dominant management styles are Observer and Mediator (Enneagram) and I have an aptitude for quick learning from my surroundings.

Case 1:

In early 2015, my team comprising of six banking IT functions experts was deployed on a strategic service partnership with Misys Financial Systems for a period of 6-months. At Misys, our team was further supplemented by ten energetic young professionals, fresh out of college. Our motley crew took very little time to gel into a cohesive team and started the month-long product training program in high spirits.

A month into the assignment a new Manager was assigned to our project. This person had an assertive communication style and a proclivity to micromanage. With increased scrutiny, our team of newbies instantly felt duress. As was expected, the quality of work suffered and most of our work was rejected by the client in the end of month quality gate.