We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Abrar Ansari a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Abrar thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Looking back at the decisions you made early in your career, particularly whether to join a firm or start your own, do you feel you made the right choice for that stage of your career?

The summer after my graduation, I found an internship with a subsidiary of a global pharmaceutical giant. This North American branch was a chemical lab specializing in the analysis of organic and inorganic compounds. The company had 18 positions open for interns, and hired me to work in the field services department as an industrial hygiene technician.

These technicians were tasked with monitoring the removal of hazardous materials during construction and renovation, demolition, and decontamination. Some of the dangerous materials we had to work with included asbestos, lead, Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), and other heavy metals.

The district manager informed me that only two of the 18 interns would make it to full-time positions after the summer. It was clear to me that to get one of those coveted positions, I had to give it all I had, and more!

On the very first day of my field monitoring assignment, I got stuck in traffic. I did not reach the office until after the team had left for their field assignment. The district manager, known for her iron fist management style, called me into her office and gave me the third degree. By the time she finished, I was literally in tears. As a punitive measure, I was pulled off the field assignment and made to do clerical activities.

Demoted even before I started, I felt rejected. For the next two weeks, as the field teams returned to the office, I was tasked with photocopying and filing their paperwork. Each technician had up to five different types of forms, along with their daily field logs, and each package would typically have about 20 pages. With 17 interns and 20 full-time field consultants, I had to collate and file about 740 pages daily. It took me about a week to get to learn the ins and outs of the document filing process.

Being stuck in the office, however, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It led me to pick up on the inner workings of the company: the office politics, management style, power dynamics, and the relationship challenges between management and field employees.

When I finally got sent back to the field, because all the other interns were assigned other projects, they made me the designated floater. As a result of floating from project to project, I received the most diversified internship experience and exposure that the others did not. I met senior consultants and got an earful from them about their problems with scheduling and overtime, forced weekend work, scarcity of field equipment, and pay and bonus issues. I also gained valuable experience and learned about the clients’ working styles, needs, and contractual preferences. While I adapted to the daily grind of fieldwork, my systems thinking mindset kicked in. I started noticing the patterns, relationships, and causal loops between different elements within the organization.

I slowly began synthesizing the various processes I witnessed to find better ways of managing the complaints I heard from senior consultants. Before the end of the internship, I presented my plan to the district manager: a color-coded document management system, with templates for reporting and my analysis to improve relationships with the field consultants. At the end of the Summer, not only was I given the full-time position, they promoted me to Field Services Supervisor. I was only 23 at the time.

In retrospect, had I not been late, I would not have learned about the company’s system of governance and operations. Nor had the opportunity it provided; the ability to see the multiple moving parts of the organization’s policies, and to comprehend how each department fits into the larger purpose of the company.

Abrar, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started my career in the field of industrial hygiene (IH). A field of study dedicated to the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, and control of hazards at workplaces safeguarding people from injury and illness, to preserve their wellbeing. It is a field that seldom gets much recognition and is often misunderstood. An IH is trained to be mindful of the hazards round them, not just for protecting themselves but others around them. This phase of my career really honed my ability to understand the alignment of my intent with my actions.

My career then took a turn towards management systems design and development. A field that forces its practitioners to understand the dynamics between policies, protocols, processes, and procedures by which an organization ensures the fulfillment of tasks required to achieve its objectives. As a result, I became good at understanding complex systems and the interconnectivity of parts the system was made up of.

The winds of change in my profession further nudged me towards information technology (IT) commercialization. IT systems, when deployed and leveraged correctly facilitate the flow of information to where it is critically needed, helping organizations in their journey of growth and innovation. I found myself gaining expertise in understanding how to identify, capture, store, and report data to support organizational decision-making.

I was then given the opportunity to bring all my above skills together as a partner of a global sustaianbility consultancy. Here I helped global fortune 500 enterprises design and develop integrated purpose-oriented programs to manage Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) program and initiatives.

Given my career growth and past experiences a few things became very apparent as I engaged with organizational leaders; not very many of them understood their organizational psyche, very few deployed systems thinking practices when faced with challenges, and hardly any ever truly leveraged information in a meaningful way to induce transparency and give authority to the workforce allowing them to make balanced well-thought-out decisions.

The scope of diversified yet interconnected experiences of my career journey has brought me to a place where I am lucky to leverage all that I have learned over the years into one practice. In my book I called this practice: Management by Intent. As an author, mentor, and coach, I now have a small consulting practice helping leaders realize the impact of their sustainability commitments to fuel the greater good in society.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

My fifth grade soccer coach was a good leader. He would often tell us that soccer was a mind, body, and soul exercise. I never quite understood that until later in life. Not being an “A” player, I often found myself outside the field running up and down the sidelines following the team. That activity allowed me to develop a good outside-in perspective of the players. I became good at figuring out the players’ strengths, position preferences, and technical skills. Being a bench warmer, also gave me the opportunity to watch the coach maneuver players in the field to achieve balance and win games. I picked up on the coach’s peculiar way of counseling the boys on their vulnerabilities and shortcomings. He would never insult them or demean them. He would always paint this awesome picture of how victory would look like, if they follow his guidance.

I have always carried those lessons forward with me. The ability to metaphorically sit on the sidelines and observe; to understand people, their skillsets, their dreams, and aspirations, all are necessary components of putting successful teams together. Knowing your team at a personal level, making them part of something bigger than them, enabling them with the right resources to accomplish their goals and objectives, are all major factors for contributing to someone else’s life journey. A good leader enables a transformational and meaningful journey for others.

Good leaders who are self-aware of their impact and how their perspective affects their teams, are a rare breed. Such leaders are acutely aware of their own biases and limitations. Their teams are confident of their capabilities, diverse in experiences, knowledgeable about their short-comings, and can respectfully withstand decent and difference of option.

We are in dire need for such leaders and their teams who bring ingenuity and innovation to solve problems like climate change, social inequity, and environmental degradation. Putting motivated diverse teams together, aligning their intentions to focused on the greater good for all is what leadership means today. Our leaders today must uplift people’s spirits collectively to help them move forward to solve today’s great challenges.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I remember one time I got called in to pitch our capabilities to the executive board of a company who was about to hand over a big contract to a competitor. This was a very high-profile project with stakeholders spanning from the VPs of Operations and Sustainability, and their CFO, to each of the facility managers including their heads of production, quality, process safety and asset integrity. My team had a good understanding of the requirements and the client’s operational culture. We did not have all the expertise to fulfill all aspects of the project, though. I knew who the competitor was and was well aware of their capabilities. Because I wanted to uphold the high reputation we had in the industry, I put all my cards on the table for the client to see; I highlight the weakest aspect of my team and presented a game plan to remedy the gap we had in our skillset.

Some senior members of my team objected to me being so honest and up front with the client. They wanted to draw the client’s attention on our strengths, rather than our weakness.

We won the work, not because of our ability to deliver, but on our honesty. Later on the CEO told me that the competitor had the same weakness, but they choose not to disclose it the way we did. We later went on to do millions of dollars’ worth of business with the client as we became their consultancy of choice and a trusted partner.

Reputation building is not a PR stunt. It is a genuine attempt to build relationships based on honesty and trust.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://managementbyintent.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063945433273
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abraransari/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsrN-XPl2cwgW93IGaALZFA