In my first job, I got to see Leadership at its best and worst. I joined an engineering company. I was not an engineer. I was and am a woman. I was the first woman to be hired in an executive rank. Being young, and rearing to go, I got stuck in the grind of the machine tool company. My first shock was to learn how not to learn. People would ensure that work was done at the pace and place they wanted.

People would ensure that my lack of engineering background meant that I was half-baked. People would ensure being a woman in a male tech culture meant you remained ignorant enough to do the trivial leftovers. When you are fresh out of the university, you are feeling your way through. You do not really know that is this the way things are in practical life or is there another life out there.

To make things less boring, an engine with the Japanese collaboration had to be launched. I was given the glamorous role of copying and editing, collecting reports, but at least it was better than just following up people on their attendance in the meeting.

To cut the story short, the engine was launched and it was a great failure. That started a series of investigations and analysis on what went wrong. Multiple meetings were held and that started the classic passing-the-buck cycle.

The board blamed the head, the head blamed the team, etc. Every meeting to find out what went wrong started with a scapegoat and ended without a solution. To make matters worse the Japanese team scheduled a visit to Pakistan to study the great failure. Everyone was on the edge. Everyone was preparing how to evade, avoid, dodge,........

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