Best Advice: 'Focus on people's strengths,' says Netapp India's Ravi Chhabria

What was the problem that you were grappling with? 

It was a problem early in my career, but it remains relevant even today. I had been promoted to Group Manager just as my company [at the time] was pivoting to enabling infrastructure that we today refer to as internal cloud. Early customers were driving the change. I was in the biggest job of my career [then], the company was also in transition, and I felt ill-equipped to manage a team through everything that was going on. This was compounded by the fact that I was leading a group of very capable managers, most of whom had been my peers just weeks earlier.

Who did you approach for advice and why? 

I reached out to my then boss Andy Ingram [who was Vice President for Solaris at Sun at that time]. He was a great judge of people and a wonderful mentor.

What was the advice you received? 

He had two pieces of advice: The first, focus on what is important, on what makes a difference. The second, I treasure to this day—in the realm of managing people and teams, understand and focus on people’s strengths. Generally speaking, developing strengths has a higher return than a focus on fixing weaknesses.

How effective was it in resolving the problem? 

It allowed me to engage the group on a prioritised set of objectives, and pull away from the distraction of repairing what I thought was broken. Instead, it allowed me to align the team on what was important, and focus on building on [team members’] strengths relevant to our objectives. It was an early lesson in the power of individuals, on the power of teams aligned by a focus on results. It’s the alignment of individual strengths that drives results. Early wins, even small ones, energised the team and we were able to build momentum.