Book Summary | The VUCA Company - Suhayl Abidi, Manoj Joshi

Book Title: The VUCA Company
Authors : Suhayl Abidi, Manoj Joshi
Publication: Jaico


Don't read success stories, you will get only message. Read failures stories, you will get some ideas for success - A P J Abdul Kalam.

Aristotle famously said, that the gods first send 40 years of prosperity to whoever they intended to destroy. It is well proven from the history of men that success leads to complacency which leads to decline. That is why one must be most alert and watchful at the peak of success. The successful organizations sows its own seeds of destruction. The VUCA ( Volatility, Uncertainty, Complex and Ambiguity) are the jargon's that is widely used in the Management when business is in stress due to many factors.  The authors of this book have considered Indian companies which experienced failures post liberalization due to VUCA. The best part of the book, is the author has provided key insight on how companies can learn from these organizations failures to over come complacency. 

Although the word VUCA was defined by the Americans during the war and much conceptualized by the management professionals, The author has used Indian companies which underwent downside in the business and analyzed why these companies need to face turbulent times as well as closeout. Today the average life of S&P index companies has drastically reduced over the years.  Leaders  must be absolutely clear that the reasons that helped to succeed in the past will not guaranty the future success as the business context has changed.  In a vuca world, the faster the world changes, the more firmly the organization should be anchored to its vision. 

#Resilience and agility cannot be taught but can be learnt. Behavioral changes, rather than just acquiring new companies and skills must be emphasized. 

# Failure ! The fear of failure is a world wide phenomenon, experiencing it is inevitable and running away from it is only human. It is said that if you want to learn about success, talk to a successful person, but if you want to learn about failures, talk to a very successful person.

# Leadership involves the readiness to make decisions, the courage to take risks the willingness to collaborate and to support others to support creativity and the ability to speak ones mind. 

# In the VUCA world, resilience and adaptability are the two attributes that distinguish leaders from mere mangers. 

# When you stop learning, we stop developing and we stop growing. Thats the end of a leader.

# If you do only what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you wont fail. You'll just stagnate and thats failure by erosion. 

# Ignorance and arrogance unforgivable to anyone or any organization.

# The path of success lies in the understanding the relevant trends, figuring out how your strengths and resources can capitalize on them and staking our a leadership position. 

# 3 C's are most important - Culture | Code of conduct |Control. 
culture is critical. it is important to remain committed to your organisations mission, to define core values and to act with integrity in accordance with those values. 
Arrogance leads to over confidence. Not only leaders become arrogant, but organization culture too starts taking the same he as dissentters are slowly eased out and debates disappear. overconfidence isn't a personality trait or a moral failing, but a natural consequence of success that affects almost every one . As we grow older and more experienced, we overrate the accuracy of our judgments. 

# Success can be achieved in two ways. One is like climbing a ladder. It is fast, but a ladder can be unstable and you can fall from where you started from. The other is climbing a mountain, where you experience descent as well as plateau on your way to the peak. 

# The causes of failure can be classified into 1. Human or behavioral 2. Systemic or organisational. 
The behavioral causes - Arrogance or Hubris :- Most failures are self inflicted wounds that are allowed to fester and ultimately poison the leader and his organisation. Hubris, the sin of overweening pride or arrogance is invariably the basic condition that undermines societies and individuals. 
According to Tim Irwin, in his book derailed, he charter the highs and lows of Six CEO's there are 4 qualities that are tied to failures - Authenticity | Self Management | Humility |Courage 

Derailed leaders progress through 5 stages - A failure of self / other awareness | Hubris : Pride before the fall | Missed early warning signals | Rationalizing | Derailment 

# Assumptions, beliefs, mindsets and blind-spots. 
- Successful people are more prone to assumptions as they start believing that they have somehow discovered the formula for success. 
- poor leaders are hired due to poor competency framework 

Failure is not a catastrophe, but failure to learn certainly can be, some of the case studies shared in the book is from the organisation such as Kodak, Motorala, Lehman Brothers, Jain Irrigation, Venky's chicken, Suzlon, King Fisher Airlines, Nokia etc. 

# KODAK - The success had blinded the company into denial that digital photography would replace the film roll. Kodak fits the classic profile of a twentieth century corporate dinosaur. 

# Motorola - The arrogance of technological superiority is deeply ingrained in culture and iridium went forward single mindedly concentrating on satellite design and launch, brushing aside the challenges in marketing and sales. 


# Lehman Brothers - Single minded goal to be no.1, he had little time and consideration for his clients and stakeholders

# Jain irrigation core lesson - Early success had blinded us and we thought we could do no wrong. Diversifying into unknown areas without required management bandwidth and eyeing disproportionate growth using debt is not sustainable. 

Book Review | The enemies of excellence by Greg Salciccioli

Book Title: The enemies of excellence

Author: Greg Salciccioli 

Blindness is widespread today as disgraced leaders sit in the wreckage of their own actions, stunned at their own capacity for deviance. Leadership Excellence is a journey and in the journey there will be hurdles. Some of the failures are due to unforeseen conditions and few due to personal conditions.  The world is beautiful when you are successful and the world is more meaningful when there is a purpose attached to living. Everyone is susceptible to self-sabotage—especially in the presence of success. This book is on about being a morally strong a leader,  has to overcome seven core risks which one needs checked and worked on in order to excel.  By identifying and learning to recognize each risk, leaders can stop creating misery for themselves and the people who rely on them emotionally and financially. The Enemies of Excellence can affect anyone—from the corner office to the conference room, and from the classroom to the living room.

Managing personal life is a struggle for every leader. We all have flaws that blind us. If left unattended and unexamined, they will eventually destroy us. One of my own tragic flaws was anger, which affected everything in my life. The book narrates the seven core enemies classified into common and disastrous for excellence. The first three Egotism, Life Mismanagement, Bad Habits are commonly found in most of the leaders. Timely feedback, due-diligence and awareness on these can be controlled through willpower. Indulgence, Broken relationships, Isolation and Self-sabotage are the lethal for excellence. All these seven core risks occurs when being successful or enjoying success is at top of the mind resulting in mismanagement.  Therefore it is needed to be grounded and do a self-check to ensure that success is not captured in mind and body.

The first three Enemies of Excellence. As egotism is allowed to exist, it breeds arrogance, and arrogance in turn builds ignorance. People become ignorant of the other Enemies that are active in their life and leadership. The second Enemy ensures that the balance between work and life is ignored and allowed to break down. As work-life balance breaks down, bad habits accumulate. This third Enemy opens the door to the dark side of Indulgence.

Egotists make people feel expendable. Ego-driven leaders not only harm themselves and others—they destabilize and potentially destroy organizations. To avoid the enemy of an egocentric focus, we need to not only determine to avoid egotism but to understand the benefits of altruism. Altruism has great advantages over egotism.

Life Mismanagement: a situation due to egotism is disorganized or controlled badly. This may be in the personal life or corporate life, may be due to habits or addicts. Due to external environment or internal pressure. Enemy of Life Mismanagement can’t stand against a person who establishes their priorities and drives towards them each day. Life mismanagement is basically due to centrally decision making and controls. Decentralization and Delegation of controls is advantages over Life Mismanagement.

Bad Habits: Patterned behaviour regarded as detrimental to one’s physical or mental health, which is often linked to lack of self-control. Everyone has a bad habit. Some are more obvious than others. The primary reason that we are overrun by the Enemy of Bad Habits has to do with intentional versus reactionary living. The first step in choosing intentional leadership lies in a simple but powerful best practice.

Indulgence: Indulgence means yielding to your desires, resulting in excess that undermines your success. Indulgence dismantles the conscience piece by piece until the alarms of moderation or morality are silenced. With the alarm system disabled, all kinds of destructive behaviour can be explored.

Isolation: An ideal mind is a devils workshop, Isolation will lead to power for destruction. The enemy of Isolation will plan of attack is to divide and conquer. He wants us to leave the presence of others and go it alone, to be the maverick who ends up masterminding his own demise.

Self-Sabotage: Self-sabotage is any behaviour, thought, emotion or action that holds you back from getting what you consciously want. Moreover, it’s the conflict that exists between conscious desires and unconscious wants that manifest in self-sabotage patterns.  Self-sabotage patterns because we are unable to manage our emotions effectively.

Book Review | Why We Work - Barry Schwartz

What if the human beings had an option to choose, energy without consuming any food then will there be the need to work and earn? Today we are in the smart technology world and motivating the Gen - Z workforce is really a challenge.  We are deep into a destructive foray regarding our conception of workforce motivation. We created an idea two centuries ago that people hate work and do it only for money and other extrinsic rewards. This human invention (which is what an idea is) is not a widespread food ingredient but a ubiquitous workplace element. It does cause heartache, disgruntlement, disengagement and low productivity. The science is in: It’s not human nature to hate work and treating workers as if they do causes damage to them and to business.

The industrial revolution had workers to do their job where in they lived in it, even if they hated their jobs. Understanding individual psychology and the attitude the person brings to a job is important, but so too is understanding how to create an environment in which people motivate themselves

Organisations have layers and segments. One of the interesting scrutiny on the engagement level, we find the bottom of the pyramid highly engaged. The reason behind this is they are able to empathises and relate their work to the cause.  You don't need to be working for an organization that saves lives to find meaning and purpose in what you do. You just need to be doing work that makes peoples' lives better.

The author narrates that we are in the legacy of FALSE RATIONALE on the job and work of “carrot and stick” approach that dominated the efforts in the work place. As long as the people were paid for what they did, it didn’t matter very much what their job entailed. Many believe that only certain kind of jobs permit people to find a meaning, engagement, discretion and autonomy and opportunity to learn and grow WHEN WORK IS GOOD. Job crafting needs to aimed of how the job could be linked to a meaningful purpose that meets the challenge demanding empathy, good listening and accomplishing the goals. People who see their work as “job” enjoy little discretion and experience minimal engagement or meaning. People with job see work as necessity of life, they work for pay, and they would switch jobs to earn more money.  People who see their work as a “career” generally enjoy more discretion and more engaged.  When we loose confidence that people have the will to do the right thing and we turn to incentives, we find that we get what we pay for. Therefore a decision has to be taken on HOW GOOD Work GOES BAD: Rules and Incentives over Integrity. It’s because of human nature.  Human nature as a battle between metaphors and THE TECHNOLOGY of IDEAS to drive behaviours. No matter what ideas people appeal to when they explain their lack of food, their bellies remain empty. The idea technology that dominates our age is a fiction; it is ideology. THE FUTURE OF WORK: DESIGNING HUMAN NATURE.

The book narrates, that it is not incentive that trigger the work. It is finding out a meaningful purpose on how our work is linked to the purpose. If we can craft our purpose to the job, the work becomes meaningful and joy. The book is very narrative of examples on being meaningful

Book Review | Eat that Frog - Brain Tracy

“ You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself”.  We tend to Procrastinate some activities to the next day or next month or years together. At some point of time, even we reflect on the consequence and feel sorry for procrastinating the activity. This we have experienced and this book provides key ideas and tools to stop procrastinating and getting things done. The book has 21 chapters and at the end of each chapter the author has beautiful summarized the key things to be done in two points.  Your ability to select the most important task at each moment , and then to get started on that task and to get it done both quickly and well, will probably have more of an impact on your success than any other quality or skill you can develop. 

Successful, effective people are those who launch directly into their major task and then discipline themselves to work steadily and single minded until those tasks are complete. The habit of setting priorities, overcoming procrastination and getting on with your most important task is a mental and physical skill.  Decision, Discipline and Determination are the three key qualities to develop the habits of focus and concentration.  

Chapter – 1 :  Set the Table ( Set the Goal )

Decide what you want | Write down the Goal  | Set a deadline | Make a list of everything that you think needed to achieve the goal | Plan it | take action on your plan | monitor and update to meet the goal

Chapter -2 : Plan every day in Advance ( Plan )

Apply six P formula – “ Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance”

Prepare Master List , Monthly list, weekly list . Apply 10/90 Rule – This rule says that the first 10 percent of time that you spend planning and organizing your work before you begin will say you as much as 90 percent of the time in getting the job done once you get started.

Chapter -3 : Apply 80/20 Rule ( Prioritise)

Prioritize key goals, activities and responsibilities and act

Chapter-4 : Consider the consequences ( Risks)

Long term thinking improves short term decision making | Future intent influences and often determines present actions | There will never be enough time to do everything you have to do

Successful  people are thoese who are willing to delay gratification and make sacrifices in the short term so that they can enjoy far greater rewards in the long term. Think continually about the potential consequences of your choices, decisions and behaviours is one of the very best way to determine your true priorities in your work and personal life.

Ask these three questions

What are my highest value activities |What can I and only I do that if done well will make a real difference | What is the most valuable use of my time right now

Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least

Chapter-5 : Practice Creative Procrastination ( )

You can get your time and your life under control only to the degree to which you discontinue lower value activities

Zero based thinking

Chapter -6 : Use ABCDE Method

A – define something that is very important and something that must do. B – task that you should do. (The rule is that you should never do a B task when A is left undone) C- task something that is nice to do but for which there are no consequence at all. D – tasks that can be delegated & E – task that can be eliminated

Chapter -7 : Focus on Key Results areas

The key result area of management are Planning, Organising, Staffing, Delegating, Supervising, Measuring and Reporting.

Your weakest key result area sets the height at which you use all other skills and abilities |Introspect : What one skill, If I developed and did it in an excellent fashion, would have the greatest positive impact on my career ?

Chapter -8 : Apply the law of Three

Determine the most important three tasks /goals in each area where needs to be worked

Chapter -9 : Prepare thoroughly before you begin

Chapter – 10: Take it one oil Barrel at a time

“By the yard its hard; but inch by inch, anything’s a cinch !

Chapter – 11: Upgrade your key skills

Three steps to mastery

Read in your field for at least one hour every day | Take every course and seminar available on the key skills that can help | Listen to audio programs.

Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field

Chapter – 12 : Leverage your special Talent

Successful people are invariably those who have taken the time to identify what they do well and most enjoy

Chapter – 13: Identify your key constraints

Determine one constraint, internal or external that sets the speed.

Chapter – 14: Put the pressure on yourself

Set deadlines and subdeadlines for every task and activity.  Write down every step of a major job or project before your begin.

Chapter – 15: Maximize your personal powers

Chapter -16: Motivate yourself into action

Control your inner dialogue and developing a positive mental attitude is important. Tips for developing positive mental attitude

First – Optimists looks for the good in the every situations | Second – Optimistic always seek the valuable lesson in every setback or difficulty | Third – Optimistic always looks for the solution to every problem | Fourth – Optimistic think and talk continually about their goals

Chapter – 17 : Get out of the Technological Time sinks

Use technology for betterment rather than getting addicted. Use technology to improve the quality of your communication.

Chapter – 18: Slice and Dice the Task

Swiss Cheese your tasks

Chapter – 19 : Create large chunks of time

Schedule your time | use time planner |

Chapter -20: Develop a sense of urgency

Get into flow | Trigger high performance in yourself |build up a sense of momentum | Do it Now

Chapter – 21: Single handle every Task

Self Discipline is the Key

Book Review | First, Break All the Rules

Book Title: First, Break All the Rules

Author: Marcus Buckingham

Employee engagement surveys provides the key pulse about the employees perception to the organisations. Every organisation believes that its the employees that are the key resources which enables the organisation to achieve its vision. The book is a product of 25 years of research by the Gallup Organization, of which Buckingham and Coffman are a part where in the research is summarized in seven chapters. The books ignites the mind to enable greater managerial skills to identify, retain and develop talents.

The key summary are

1. Measurement is important

In the employee engagement survey typically has 12 Questions; understanding Q12 with employee is very important. Q1 and Q2 help an employee to understand basic work expectations & offerings. Q3 to Q6 address the self-esteem and individual performance and recognition. Q7 to Q10 describes right fit for the job and Q11 & Q12 indicates career progression

2. Wisdom is required

Hiring needs to be based on talent, skill and abilities and not simply on experience. While developing someone, it should be based on right role rather than position in organisation chart.

3. Select Right Talent:

identify the Striving Talent, thinking talent and relating talent. Use these talents to motivate.

4. Define the deliverable:

Allow the person to find his own route to achieve the deliverable. Assign the deliverable based on persons strength aligned to organisation strategy & objectives.

5. Focus on Strengths:

Great managers have the ability to describe in details, the unique talent of their people and use the three dimensions of thinking such Striving, Thinking and Relating to build relationship. The best manager treat each person as he would like to be treated. Great managers spend their majority of time with their best and productive people. Excellent teams are built on individual excellence.

6. Right Fit

Great managers scrutinize roles and people to yield right fits. Great managers provide feedback through dialogues.

7. Interview skills:

The purpose of interview to identify the strength and behaviour to match the job.

Bottom-line:

Talent is the multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield. The time you spend with your best is, quite simply, your most productive time.