Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Book Review | The First 90 Days - Michael D Watkins

The people judge the first 100 days performance of the newly formed government. The first 90 days of any Government becomes critical parameter to gain confidence. Similarly when a lateral entrant on boards an organisation at a leadership position, all the eyes will be on his first 90 days. The initial 90 days of on-board becomes critical for the leader and the company. The transaction is critical to reach a breakeven point and one needs to avoid few transaction traps such as Sticking with what you know, Falling prey to the action imperative, setting unrealistic expectations, Attempting to do too much, coming in with the answer, engaging in the wrong type of learning, neglecting horizontal relationships. The transition failures happen because new leader either misunderstand the essential demands of the situation or lack the skill and flexibility to adapt to them. Leadership ultimately is about influence and leverage and needs a right steps to follow for deliver with right energy. Any changes from one profile to other has risk. Identification of the key risk and mitigation plan will accelerate to be successful initially. The initial success will also build confidence and acceptance in any new organization. To better on boarding and deliver excellently, the author suggests the steps converted into 10 chapters for a smooth transaction.

1. Prepare Yourself

2. Accelerate Your learning

3. Match your strategy to the situation

4. Secure early wins

5. Negotiate Success

6. Achieve Alignment

7. Build Your Team

8. Create Coalitions

9. Keep your balance

10. Accelerate everyone.

Chapter – 1 : Prepare Yourself

The key of effective delegation remains necessary. Build a team of competent people whom you trust, you establish goals and metrics to monitor their progress, you translate higher level goals into specific responsibilities for your direct reports, and you enforce them through process. While preparing yourself one has to find ways to overcome the following challenges with Balancing Breadth and Depth | Rethinking what you Delegate | Influence differently |Communicate more formally | Exhibit the right presence

To overcome these barriers and succeed in a joining a new company, one should focus on Four pillars of effective on boarding

Business Orientation | Stakeholder connection | Alignment of expectations | Cultural Adaptation.

Reflection checks

· What are the implications for your need to balance breadth and depth, delegate, influence, communicate and exhibit leadership presence?

· How will you orient yourself to business, identify and connect with key stakeholders, clarify expectations and adapt to the new culture? what is the right balance between adapting to the new situation and trying to alter it

· What has made you successful so far in your career? Can you succeed in your new position by relying solely on those strengths? If not, what are the critical skills you need to develop

· Are there aspects of your new job that are critical to success but that you prefer not to focus on? Why? How will you compensate for your potential blind spots?

· How can you ensure that you make the mental leap into the new position? From whom might you seek advice and counsel on this? What other activities might help you do this?

Chapter -2 : Accelerate your learning

Leaders who are on boarding into new organisation must focus on learning and adapting to the new culture | Managing learning as an investment process – Define your learning agenda - Identify the best sources of insight - Adopting structured learning methods

Reflection – Checklist

· How effectively are you at learning about new organizations? Do you sometimes fall prey to the action imperative? To coming in “the “answer? If so, how will you avoid doing this?

· What is your learning agenda? Based on what you know now, compose a list of questions to guide your early inquiries. If you have begun to form hypotheses about what is going on, what are they, and how will you test them?

· Given the questions you want to answer, who is likely to provide you with the most useful insight?

· How might you increase the efficiency of your learning process? What are some structured ways you might extract more insight for your investment of time and energy?

· What support is available to accelerate your learning and how might you best leverage?

· Given your answers to the previous questions, start to create your learning plan

Chapter -3 : Match Strategy to Situation

Use STARS Model – Start-Up | Turnaround | Accelerated Growth | Realignment | Sustaining success to match strategy to situation.

Reflection – Checklist

· What portfolio of STARS situations have you inherited? Which portion of your responsibilities are in start-up, turnaround, accelerated-growth, realignment, and sustaining success modes?

· What are the implications for the challenges and opportunities you are likely to confront and for the way you should approach accelerating your transition?

· What are the implications for your learning agenda? Do you need to understand only the technical side of the business or is it critical that you understand culture and politics well?

· What is the prevailing climate in your organisation? What psychological transformation do you need to make and how will you bring them about?

· How can you best lead change given the situations you face?

· Which of your skills and strengths are likely to be most valuable in your new situation, and which have the potential to get you into trouble

· What are the implications for the team you need to build?

Chapter -4 : Negotiate Success

Negotiate success means proactively engaging with your new boss to shape the game so that you have a fighting chance of achieving desired goals.

Don’t with boss for building positive relationships - Don’t stay away | Don’t surprise your boss |Don’t approach your boss only with problems | Don’t run down your checklist | Don’t expect your boss to change

Do’s for building positive relationships – Clarify expectations early and often | Take 100 percent responsibility for making relationship work | Negotiate timelines for diagnosis and action planning | Aim for early wins in areas important to boss | Pursue good marks from those who opinions your boss respects

Conversations framework – Situational diagnosis conversation | the expectations conversations | the resource conversation | The style conversation | The personal development conversation

Reflection – Checklist

· How effectively have your built relationships with new bosses in the past? What have you done well? Where do you need improvement?

· Create a plan for the situational conversation based on what you know now, what issues will you raise with your boss in this conversation? What do you want ot say up front? what order do you want to raise issues?

· Create a plan for the expectations conversation. How will you figure out what your new boss expects you to do?

· Create a plan for the style conversation. How will you figure out how best to work with your boss? What mode of communication does he prefer? How often should you interact? How much detail should you provide? What types of issues should you consult with him about before deciding?

· Create a plan for the resource conversation. Give what you need to do, what resources are absolutely needed? With fever resources, what would you have to forgo? If you had more resources what would the benefits? Be sure to build the building case?

· Create a plan for the personal development conversation. What are your strengths and where do you need improvement t? What kinds of assignments or projects might help you develop skills you need?

· How might you use the five conversations framework to accelerate the development of your team? Where are you in terms of having the key conversations with each of your direct reports?

Chapter – 6: Secure Early Wins

Plan your waves – Starting with Goal | Focus on Business Priorities | Identify and support behavioural Changes

Problematic behaviour pattern – Focus | Discipline |Innovation | Teamwork | Sence of Urgency

Leading change – Planning versus learning – Awareness – Diagnosis – vision – Plan – Support

Reflection checklist

· Given you agreed to business goals, what do you need to do during your transition to create momentum for achieving them?

· How do people need to behave differently to achieve these goals? Describe as vividly as you can the behaviours you need to encourage and those you need to discourage

· How do you plan to connect yourself to your new organisation? Who are the key audiences and what message would you like to convey to them? What are the best modes of engagement?

· What are the most promising focal points to get some early improvements in performance and start the process of behaviour change?

· What projects do you need to launch and who will lead them

· What predictable surprises could take you off track?

Chapter – 6: Achieve Alignment

Common Traps to avoid – Making change for change’s sake | Not adjusting for the STARS situation |Trying to restructure your way out of deeper problems | Creating structures that are too complex | Overestimating your organizations capacity to absorb change

Designing organizational Architecture - Strategic Direction | Structure | Core Processes | Skill base

Diagnosing Misalignments – Misalignments between strategic direction and skill base | Misalignment between strategic direction and core processes | Misalignment between structure and processes | Misalignment between structure and skills

Getting started – Begin with strategic direction | Look at supporting structure, processes and skills |Decide how and when you will introduce the new strategic direction | Think through the correct sequencing | Choose the loop

Reflection checklist

· What are your observations about misalignments among strategic directions, structure, process and skills? How will you dig deeper to confirm or refine your impression?

· What decisions about customers, capital, capabilities and commitments do you need to make? How and when will you make these decisions?

· What is your current assessment of the coherence of the organisations strategic directions? Of its adequacy? What are your current thoughts about changing directions?

· What are the strengths and weakness of the organisation structure? What potential structure are you thinking about?

· What are the core processes in your organisation? How well they are performing? What are your priorities for process improvement?

· What skill gaps and underutilized resources have you identified? What are your priorities for strengthening key skills bases?

Chapter -7 – Build your team

Reflections:

· What are your criteria for assessing the performance of members of your team? How are relative weightings affected by function, the extent of required teamwork, the stars portfolio and the criticality of the positions?

· How will you go about assessing your team?

· What personnel changes do you need to make? Which changes are urgent and which can wait? how ill you create backups and options?

· How will you might high priority changes? What can you do to preserve the dignity of the people affected? What help will you need with the team in the restructuring process, and where are you going to find?

Chapter -8 – Create Alliances

Defining your influence Objectives – Understand the influence landscape | win and block alliances | Map influence networks | Draw influence diagrams

Reflections:

· What are the critical alliances you need to build –both within your organisations and externally to advance your agenda?

· What agendas are other key players pursuing? Where might they align with yours and where might they come in to conflict?

· Are there opportunities to build long term broad based alliances with others? Where might you be able to leverage shorter term agreements to pursue specific objectives?

· How does influence work in the organisation? Who defers to whom on key issues or concern?

· Who is likely to support your agenda? Who is likely to oppose you? Who is persuadable?

· What are the motivations of pivotal people, the situational pressure acting on them, and their perceptions of their choices?

· What are the elements of an effective influence strategy? How should you frame your arguments? Might influence tools such as incrementalism, sequencing and action forcing events help?

Chapter – 9: Mange Yourself

· What are your greatest vulnerabilities in your new role? How do you plan to compensate for them?

· What personal disciples do you most need to develop or enhance? How will you do this? What will success look like?

· What can you gain more control over your local environment?

· What can you do to ease your family transition? What support relationships will you have to build? What are your highest priorities?

· What are your priorities for strengthening your advice and counsel network? to what extent do you need to focus on your internal network ? Your external network >? In which domain do you most need additional support – technical, cultural, political or personal?

Chapter 10 – accelerate everyone

· What are the most important transitions in your organisation and how often do they occur

· Is the organisation able to identify where and when transitions are occurring?

· Is there a common core transition, acceleration, framework, language and toolkit?

· Do leaders have the support they need, when they need it and throughout their transitions? What could be done to provide focused resources for on boarding and promotion transitions?

· Are the company’s systems for recruiting and accelerating transitions linked in appropriate way

· Should transitions acceleration be part of your organisation curriculum for developing high potential leaders?

· How might the 90 day framework be used to accelerate organisational change – for example restructuring or post acquisition integration?

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

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 )

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

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Graveyard Visit

When I was searching for a shelter, one of my friend suggested an beautiful flat in a gated community. It was fascinating to Watch from the balcony of the bedroom of that flat, to view the water fall with birds sounding the place. The interiors were providing good ambiance. The thought that strike my mind was why the owner of the flat wanted to sell such a beautiful spacious flat. Why there are no buyers and why is the owner wants to disperse the flat at a lower market value. These were some of the thoughts that lead to be inquisitive. As I walked at the rare gate to catch a cab, sharing my thoughts to the party, the broker informed that there is a graveyard belongs to a particular community nearby the vicinity. Obviously after due diligence with friends and family, we never visited that place.

Death is inevitable. Today using the technology and having a futuristic view, we are planning the birth. The date of birth is also chosen on an auspicious day, however whatever may be the circumstances and technology, till date we could not defeat the death or even plan our death.

My house was located near the church. On the backyard crossing the road was a large grave yard. When I was serving as an altar boy, I have watched a number of funeral mass. I do even remember and recollect some of the funerals of rich and poor, old and young, loved and hated ones. I recall when I was a child, far away there was a death of a community member and when the priest was performing the funeral mass there were only five people accompanying the body. In most of the other funerals, the church was filled with community members, but in this case the community was absent, the people staying nearby the church were missing. The nuns staying in the convent near the church were absent. I was in deep distress to understand what was wrong ? even in death. After a deep exploration, I could understand that the family migrated few years back from a neighbouring state and were working as a labour in one of the estates. The news of the sudden death could not reach the near and dear ones and hence only handful of people were present to show their respect. I reflect, today most of us, have migrated to build an future, leaving behind our family and friends are we be lonely in our death…

I had one Master, with whom I would debate on certain beliefs. Apart from teaching in the school, he would play the keyboard in the church. One could feel his absence when the coir would sing. He would attend all most all the funeral and lead the choir. The voice and hymns would make the atmosphere in the church as something we have lost deeply. Many a times after the seventh day rituals, he would narrate his plans on his own funeral. He would always mention, that he would like to see from the coffin as the body leaves the church to the graveyard, how many had come to pay there last homage and respect. I had listen to similar narration from my grandmother. I always wondered why so; today when I echo, people paying there last homage and respect is all about how you have respected and helped others in your life time. Life is all about struggle between the birth and death. Each individual has to overcome turbulence in order to find the purpose or float in life. When the purpose has a shared mission life is respected and when the respected life ends, people pay homage. When we are born in a hospital bed and when we move to our house, we are usually carried by our parents. But when we depart our life, we are carried by the people whom we know or who loved us. So in death we are dignified.

Life is experienced at three places, Hospital, Prison and Graveyard.

Hospital – where we are born and we visit every time when we are ill. The irony of being in hospitalized makes the difference. May be rich or poor the pain of being lonely, the stress of unhealthy and examination to share becomes unavoidable. But we humans, in hospital show our power and hierarchy on the way we get treated and visited. The poor or the rich bears the same pain, however the rich are treated with hygiene and poor is surrounded by the loved one to shower care.

Prison is another place, where the innocent is tourchered with agony of shame with loneliness and guilty of having no love.

Graveyard is the place where we ultimately rest our body. The place where someone distant or close, remember the good or bad deeds seeded in his life time. Graveyard reminds that whether you are rich or poor, your body is made of dust and detoriates to dust, still we live a life filled with ego, prejudices, envy and hatred all the time.

Graveyard or shantidama is a place of peace or rest. Most of the graveyards are surrounded by trees with memorials. Graves in the graveyard reminds the homecoming. Walking around a large graveyard is a mixed feeling, a feeling of how we lost our loved ones and memories of best times we had with them. A visit to graveyard on All Souls Day is a holy day set aside for honouring the dead. All Souls' Day commemorates the faithful departed. It is one day, in a year when the family stands near by the grave and pray for the departed soul, it is a moment when the tears of love and affection and hurt that we carry is reconciled. A day, when flowers and candles are burned on the grave in remembrance when the prayer are said in open. A day when the graveyard and graves are filled with faithful joined together in prayer.

How sad, when there are many graves that are left alone, no one to place flowers and burn candles and pray for the departed when their loved ones are preoccupied with their own needs and wants. A day, even the dead may wonder to see the love or hate when they would look forward. I too miss…….

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. | He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, | he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. | Even though I walk through the darkest valley,I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. | You prepare a table before me in the presence of

my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. | Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Book Review | Mind is your Business |

Mind is all about experience of thinking, feeling and it’s about the thoughts based on the surroundings, interactions etc. Business is all about capacity to take risk for creating a value. Who controls the business ? If it’s the promoter or the professional, then who controls the body ? is it the mind

Is the mind so important ?

Mind is your business, is all about the thoughts that needs to be liberated, controlled and exaggerated to ensure that mind and soul becomes one to enjoy the life.

Mind and brain are two different things contradicting each other. Brain is a physical thing and mind is investible thing in our head. Can the body function without brain? And what will happen if mind stops triggering thoughts are the key reflections.

The book provides the perspectives on thought through application of intellect. Having attached to the materialistic needs is what makes mind to play circus. We need to apply intellect and ensure the mind provide quality thoughts that controls our life.

Few key reflections

# Only when you get dis-identified, when you are able to be involved but not entangled only when you get misidentified, when you are able to be involved but not entangled only then it can stop.

# Having an aversion to some tell you, "this is good and that is evil, but do not think about evil", that is a full time job

# There is no subtraction or division in the mind, there is only addition and multiplication.

# It is the identification which is a lot of people have become like goats because if you practice how to be involved with life, you will slowly become more lifeless.

# Your aliveness is going down because you are committing suicide in instalments by becoming selective in your involvement. Whatever you do willingly, that is your heaven. Whatever you do unwillingly, that is your hell.

# Whether your mind is a misery or your mind is a miracle simply depends on whether you are allowing life to happen to you absolutely willingly or unwillingly

# If you truly want to unleash the power of mind, the fundamental thinking is, your intellect should not be identified with anything,

# Detachment means you have disentangled yourself from the process that you call "Body" and from the process that you call mind, because both these are accumulations from outside.

# When you call moments of bliss, moments of joy, moments of ecstasy, moments of utter peace, these were moments when you were not thinking about anything but just living

# Most of a human beings suffering is mental, and mental suffering is self created. A human being is an expert at creating suffering for himself and for others. This is because he has a discretionary mind - he choose to be any way he wants right now. He can make himself joyful or make himself miserable. You can make anything out of your mind. This choice is there at every moment.

Human life is also about suffering. We are blessed in order that we have the powerful thoughts to create beliefs. We share our suffering, what about animals and plants do they get pain, whom shall they share the pain ? A short book to reflect - a recommend read to understand mind

Saturday, October 8, 2016

PINK | Lessons

Pink is directed by Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury, written by Ritesh Shah, and produced by Rashmi Sharma and Shoojit Sircar. The key characters in the movie are played Amitabh Bachchan, Taapsee Pannu, Kirti Kulhari, Angad Bedi, Andrea Tariang, Piyush Mishra, and Dhritiman Chatterjee. The movie is a blockbuster.

The story is about an incident of molestation with a girl after the rock show when they get friendly with boys in the concert. The picturisation is on their struggle with the society and police, the suffering of being a Single Working Women and hardship for justice. In my opinion, the performance the legend Amitab Bachachan is just outstanding. The song is soul touching, in the entire storytelling, cinematography there is no boredom. The movie is directed straight by heart and A Movie Must Watch.

Physiologist defines mind-set into Fixed and Growth. The movie is directed keeping in mind the fixed mindset of the society today. Watching this movie in a Growth mind-set, ignites key thoughts on our beliefs, values systems and culture at large. Our collective mindsets and values define the society we live in. And ‘Pink’ tells us everything that’s wrong with us. And men alone aren’t to be blamed. Women stand equally guilty.

Pertinent Questions on Powerful:

People-in-power misuse their authorities to their advantage. Power is associated with arrogance. Fearing to ask the pertinent question and scared of the powerful causes dealy in lodging a complaint. As a result of this, the matter gets complicated. One has to be bold enough to fight for the cause that gave nightmares. Inner Power (self-confidence) should not be surrendered just because someone or the society looks differently. Until the truth revels, everyone has their own opinion and peruse differently.

Initiate and be intense

Although we fear for the consequences and delay to initiate matters as soon when we feel we are in danger. Instead of seeking outsider help and support, initiate things at your end and then seek help. If the cause is righteous, people will come forward for help.

No Means No.

NO” definitely doesn’t mean a concealed “Yes”. One has its own self respect and dignity to reject what he or she feels even after agreeing first. We often look for obedient and many a times we take things for granted. Say ‘No” and stick to the word, its own life.

Knowledge is power:

Get knowledge on the solve the problems. Today many of the information are available online, use right tools and techniques to obtain knowledge to solve the problems rather than depending for help. Knowledge ensures we are not dependent on others.

Friday, September 2, 2016

Management Lessons | Rustom

Rustom is a real life story of Naval Officer K.M. Nanavati and businessman Prem Ahuja. Akshay Kumar plays the lead with Ileana D'Cruz. The movie is about an extra marital affair leading to murder. The screen play, the choreography, dialogues and acting are worth watching more than 2 times. The story is directed with nice flow having right humor and seriousness.

In my opinion there are always key leanings from this movie

1. Emotional Intelligence:

The deep insight of the movie shows the important emotions and empathy. Even when the situations are bad and worst right emotions will be strength.

2. Integrity & Respect:

The Navy uniform is a display of integrity and pride for an armed personal. Integrity and pride of being an designated officer always has respect from the people.

3. Sympathy:

Sympathy can generate goodwill and an useful tool to influence. During the conflict people show sympathy based on how the person is projected in the public.

4. Selecting the friends:

Be careful in selecting and being with influential friend circle.

5. Sorry

The word sorry can make or break a relation. Being sorry for a mistake and really asking pardon repeatedly can melt the hear to forgive and forget the incident.

Bottom-line:

"More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person's level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That's true in the cancer ward, its true in the olympics, and its true in the boardroom" - Bean Becker

Monday, July 11, 2016

Gen Ender - Technology

Life in a simplest form can be described as an experience on a roller coaster ride. The experience of the ride will be of fun when others join and experience. When it is accompanied with friends, family and relatives the experience becomes memorable, the joy and happiness becomes endearing. Today equality has come to global agenda, whereas in the religious books we read that God wanted men and women to be different, yet supporting each other to make life meaningful and the world becomes more beautiful.

Today discussion on gender equality has reached both News room to Board room issue. There are pro and against groups debating the pros and cons on gender equality. Many of the well-known organisations have taken targets and goals to reduce gender gaps. Thank God for his wisdom of not discriminating the gender but providing equal talents. Every year in the academic and competitive results the noticeable trend over the years is girls outperforming boys. There are studies reported on women losing productive time at the peak of their career for upbringing their children. Organisations have provided special care of extended maternity leave, providing Creech facilities, work from home for engagement and productivity rather than losing the talent. The new aged organisations have stepped ahead though incentive for freezing the eggs scientifically so that at later stage or at the fag end of the career the women could enjoy the joy of children. The thought that strikes is the same joy and Quality Time available for upbringing the children when they are old. Today’s medical research miracle is scientific way of producing the child. This method was developed to unlucky parents who could not enjoy the joy of parenthood. The new aged companies have taken this method for incentivise for earning few more dollars of profit. Are the basic human living principles required to be compromised for few more dollars?

Couples of months it was reported in a leading newspaper of an elderly couple we may say senior citizen aged around 75 years adopting the modern methodology and bearing a new-born. The child was a boon to them and the couple were happy. There were few columns published on the daily newspaper congratulating the couples for their courage and determination for having their own child even at this age. Few more debate forestalling the future of the child as the parents themselves were old and someone is required to take care of them. The debate continued just for rating and sensualizing for a day. The unanswered thought that strikes the mind was how long the elderly couple would live and how would they take care of the child, when they themself need someone to take care of them. Was the decision good enough and ethically meaningful.

Few days back a Bollywood star was congratulated for becoming successful single parent of a baby boy. The film fraternity stood up and supported his courage of being a proud father. The scientific method of IVF and surrogacy was adopted. The proud single parent shared his happiness with grandparents kissing the child. No doubt that this is a good accomplishment for the gender equality, where in the total responsibility of taking care and bringing up the child rests with the father. On the contrary we were raised by our parents and showered love; where Mother had a soft corner and Father had a bit of rough things to teach us about life. Will a single parent be able to provide those two facets? Won’t it be unfair on the child of not treating his/her with the same kind of love which we received during our childhood?

Today we live in a technology and wired world where everything is connected to chips and smart phone are exploiting the nature and basic human needs. Will the technology show empathy and apathy to the new born adopted through technology? As the world moves into developing machines such as robots with artificial intelligence will these robots could be so matured for being emotionally aligned with human requirements on sympathy, empathy and apathy. With the world wired on Internet of things the future would be children being born on cloud….

With work ethics changing from Silent Generation to Generation Z , the Gen ender generation would be imaginative or empowered !!.

Friday, March 11, 2016

Book Review | BUSINESS INNOVATION in the 21st Century

Book Name:

BUSINESS INNOVATION in the 21st Century

Author: Pravin Gupta

Innovations have become an buzz word in corporate and innovations starts from the day business gets started. The book provides the total framework that organisations could consider to develop and implement framework for Innovation.

The summary of the book in nutshell

# Innovation depends on being creative on the spot. Innovation is applied creativity
#Thinking is classified into Process, Statistical & Innovative
# Main method of innovation are collaboration, Networking & brainstorming
# Innovation requires creativity, but creativity does not necessarily lead to innovation
# Autocratic styles of leadership, rigid bureaucracy and /or highly functional structures can hinder innovation
# Innovation is the creative application of imaginations to meet the needs of the business
# Mind mapping promotes the visualization of ideas and provides a method to expand creativity by balancing the influence of logical evaluation
# CREATES - Combine | Rearrange /Reverse |Exaggerate|Adaptation|Transform|Eliminate|Substitute
#Three basic type of innovation - Incremental | Architectural | Radical
# Innovation on Demand is a process that enables an individual, or a group of individuals, to follow a structured approach to think, discuss and arrive at a set of new ideas that are unique
# Creative thinking are Divergent / Lateral thinking & Convergent / Vertical thinking
# Seven sources of innovation - Flash of genius, Exploiting incongruity or Contradiction, Growth in demand, Changes in demographics or Perceptions and Creating new knowledge - (Drucker)
# CI-3 framework includes - 3 CI : Customer Intelligence, Customer Intimacy, Customer Innovation and 9 approaches - Brand Asset Monitoring |Customer Satisfaction & loyalty measurement | Touch-point Data Management | Customer Blending | Customer Mind mapping | Customer Ecosystem mapping | Innovation Process | Magnet Team | Product Forums
# Four basic tools exist for protecting innovations: Patents | Trademarks | copyrights | Trade Secrets
# CAISH process consist of Conceive |Assess | Invent | Secure | Harvest
# Valuation of intellectual property is calculated using blend of three methods: Cost | Income | Market

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Management Lesson | Saala Khadoos

Saala Khadoos - is an inspirational movie based on women boxing. The script is written based on the women boxing championship which won the international event. The movie is an story of a coach who identifies the talent, coaches, trains, motivates and inspires to be the boxing champion. The movie is an attempt to showcase that women can become champion and shine internationally. Although the acting, story play and music is excellent, which makes one to sit and watch probably one can estimate the sequences in the movie.

The movie as usual highlights the corruption, sexual harassment by the sports association of India. With all these hurdles there are true patriots who love the country and inspire many. A big standing ovation to all these little unknown heroes who inspire many of us.

Both Madhavan and Ritika Singh have given their best performances.

The key lessons from the movie are

1. Take Criticism as a challenge and show that Yes I CAN.

2. Visualize the success and believe

3. An right coach can identify an good Talent

4. Believe in mentor & Coach

5. Dedicate and hardwork is must to achieve success

6. Gratitude makes you humble.

7. When you are successful, there are many relations!

Bottom-line

Continuous efforts - not strength or intelligence- is the key to unlocking our potential.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

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.

Saturday, February 6, 2016

Book Review | The Wit and Wisdom of Peter F. Drucker

Book Title : The Wit and Wisdom of Peter F. Drucker
Author: Will Foret

The wit and wisdom of peter F Drucker is just like a ready recokner, where in the author has taken the key learnings of his books and summarized. I found the following points key from the book

# Focus on your strengths and cultivate a deep understanding of yourself. The fundamental thought behind it is basic; focus on your qualities and develop a profound comprehension of yourself.

# Management by Objective requires every levels of mangers to recognize their objectives for all assigned tasks they are in charge of.

# Administration inadequacy due to absence of framework; over staffing;mal-association & breakdown of data.

# Problems are due to - Really non exclusive; genuinely remarkable; generic and new bland issue# entrepreneurial propensities are Non concocted here, quality, premimum value, creaming and maximize as opposed to streamline

# organisations work best when it is decentralized

# Contradictions gives choices, animates the creative energy, and offers assistance with breaking out of assumptions

# Effectiveness over renowed master

# Employees are resources

# Focus on client; the essential capacity of business is to serve the client and the essential objective of your business is to create clients.

# Non benefits give satisfaction

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Management lessons from AIRLIFT

I remember I was studying in eight standard during the gulf war. During the start of the movie I recollected how my dad and my neighbor would grab their attention at 7:30pm to radio to know about the situation during the gulf war. I recollected while watching the movie, many of our know people would visit our neighbor who had airlifted safely during the war and thank god, people didn't had whatsup so they could show sympathy and empathy to the family, which had everything but did had penny while landing, clothes to wear only memories.

Airlift is an excellent movie on the refuge crises that happened during the Kuwait war. The story and picturisation is wonderful. The movie show cases about the helpless by the governments and leadership of one man to move Indians to India. The complete movie is just awesome and I found the following are the key inspirational lessons that can be drawn

War or Conflicts only bring misery.

United we stand and divided we fall

Every conflict gives an opportunity to showcase leadership skills

Negotiation skills are very important

Choices are inevitable

Hurdles - Internal / External needs to be challenged

Communication is important - however unless you put the feelings and pains of other, you cannot make it effective.

Leadership is all about being humble, caring, showing path, walking the path and leading the path.

Friday, April 3, 2015

Serve (NT) Lead ERSHIP !!

The ground was full with faithful, singing and praising the God with hymns. It is summer and breeze was hot and children were feeling discomfort. A huge crowd is also witnessing the events.

In the middle of the service, the priest removed his vestments and tied a cloth on his waist and went near each of the elders. The priest poured water, cleaned and wiped the legs of the selected elder siting at the alter and kissed their legs.

The event is emotional and soul touching. In today's world, we are do not have time to talk to the people, but a taking time and in front of huge crowd. The feet is washed and Kissed.

For each of the activity that the priest, I could explain to reflect the following meanings aligning to close to God. .

Tying a cloth around waist – Proactive

Washing the feet – Forgive the past

Wiping the feet – Forget the past

Kissing the feet – Be Compassion

Presenting bread – celebrate

Bottom-line:

The concept of Servant leadership came into existence on the Maundy Thursday. Every individual is a leader by his own and has an opportunity to serve …