I know that this recommendation will fail to fully describe Manish and his impact at PayPal. The most succinct way to portray Manish is to say that he personifies Max Goodwin from the show New Amsterdam.
In 2014, PayPal hired me as Director of Program Management for a very specific task: to work as Manish’s execution partner for implementing continuous improvements across the SDLC for all 4K+ PayPal engineers. My job was to have all engineers and executives at PayPal adopt Manish’s ideas about improving enterprise systems including code management, bug management, planning, employee onboarding and the list goes on. When I started working with Manish, I was in awe of both his techno-social solutions and his way of working.
His proposed solutions, which I now understand as leverage points in systems, are very simple yet extremely effective. Manish demonstrates two leadership traits worth noting:
• First, his solutions are cross-departmental. Manish, in his mind, sees no inter-departmental boundaries. But that’s not true for most people running our organizations. So, aligning people is challenging at best. • Second, his solutions do not meet any criteria for industry best practices. To my surprise, he despises industry best practices because, as per him, industry best practices are average practices, and who wants to be average? So convincing people to embrace his solutions is difficult.
But none of these challenges deter Manish from chasing PayPal’s goals. I have shared the podium with Manish at PayPal offices in Singapore, Chennai, Austin, Bangalore, Shanghai, and San Jose on uniting people behind a shared cause. A pure, no-nonsense person, Manish speaks blunt truths with thoughtful incisiveness and clarity of thought. The way he drives change in organizations is unique. When most people seek executive sponsorship to use power to impose change on people, Manish develops grass-roots support before involving executives. To me, Manish is the definition of leadership. With no positional power, just sheer influence, Manish gets people together behind a shared cause.
I have observed Manish moving towards solving higher-order problems. I remember when he asked why people create systems in which they themselves suffer. None of the answers he got, such as incentives, people not caring, and people being averse to change, satisfied him. He relentlessly pursued his quest and concluded that it’s the lack of systems thinking. He stopped solving problems and started teaching systems thinking and helping executives develop a better understanding of the systems for which they are responsible. Most people who attend his workshop call it life-changing. His workshops have been life-changing for me. I strongly recommend Manish’s Systems Thinking workshop to everyone and recommend executives take his coaching advice. He has the power to change your understanding of the systems to which problems belong and open you to possibilities that you have not seen before.
