Hi I want to talk about my book “ If you feel good, you work good” Relationships lead to results. This is the story of Citicorp Overseas software Limited, an organisation that was an outlier of its times. This story, I believe is highly relevant to organisations and leadership of today.

Let us look at the world around us. We live in times of chaos and the pandemic has amplified an already Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. It maybe this pandemic and tomorrow it maybe something else. We can’t control what the world throws at us. However, we can respond to that with the strengths that we hold.

The focus we adopt becomes our reality. The common instinct when we are in the midst of a crisis is to adopt a perspective that offers a very deterministic path with a clear map to what we believe is the “solution” to all “problems”. Hence most leaders operate from the machine metaphor which gives a false sense of stability, certainty, simple and clear solutions to problems in a world that is in fact just the opposite – (VUCA) volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous!

If our worldview is that organisations are living organisms then our response will be to strengthen our core. Citicorp Overseas Software Limited (COSL) was an outlier company during its times. COSL believed that relationships at work was its core strength that helped the organisation transform an adversity into an opportunity. When the world becomes more VUCA, COSL leveraged the strength of relationships not only to get results , overcome the situation but also to transform itself.

I believe the success of COSL laid in its culture can be stated in this one short sentence “if you feel good, you work good”. People feel good when they have interesting and challenging work, when they have great relationships with colleagues and when they experience their organisation as their “home”. When people feel good, a relationship contract gets established with the organisation and people deliver their side of the contract through great results.

This books tells that story and also offers new perspectives on how relationships can lead to results in today’s world.