Managerial Duels

Managerial duels

A week and a half ago, the “я-ИТ-ы” community for digital executives held IT Night on Ivan Kupala. Alongside the main professional programme, the event featured a wide range of parallel activities, each offering different ways to take part.

As I have written before, I enjoy the Managerial Duels track. During the main programme, the community presented its various activities, including the duels. As their chief ambassador, I was asked to briefly explain what taking part in them had given me (see photo).

Before I spoke, others had already shared various thoughts on what people can gain from managerial duels. One benefit I would particularly emphasise is the chance to try out a role that does not come naturally to you. I took that opportunity in Sunday’s duels, but I will write about that in a future post.

Here, I would like to repeat the points I made on stage:

• Managerial duels feel easy and straightforward until you face an opponent with roughly the same level of expertise as you – or perhaps even more. At that point, the ease and simplicity somehow disappear.
• It has become fashionable to talk about fragmented, short-attention-span thinking as though it were something only other people suffered from. In reality, that is not quite true. In the heat of a verbal battle, with arguments flying back and forth, it is extremely difficult to stay focused on all the information generated in just a few minutes of negotiation. I have already written about how time slows down during a duel and seems to stretch on forever.

Unfortunately, the strict time limit on my talk prevented me from covering the other roles in a duel: the judges and the seconds. These are entirely different activities that require a different set of skills.