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.