Book Summary | Just Listen

Book Title: Just Listen

Author – Mark Goulston

Many a times, we make an opinion based on the title of the book. I also thought that Just Listen would be another book on self-help on improving the listening skills. After reading the book once and glancing across the notes on the four large sessions of the book, I conclude this book is not about just listening but its more about building teams, working with different people and overall framework for individual and organisation development. Communication, Collaboration and clarity is required while interaction with teams, framework is required to listen, understand and motivate to handle different people. Just listen is an book, which provides an comprehensive toolkit with examples and introspections for reaching anyone, getting through anyone, building buy in and channelizing for putting things across.  The key summaries on the each of the sessions and the takeaways are as below;

Section – I : The secret of reaching anyone

The secrete of reaching anyone is the magic of using words who resist to listen to willing to do anything. The core of communication is the persuasion cycle: To take the people from the beginning to the end of the persuasion cycle, one need to speak with them in a manner that convinces them. All encouragement involves moving people through the steps called "Persuasion Cycle:

• -          From Resisting to listening
• -          From Listening to consideration
• -          From Consideration to willing to do
• -          From willing to do to doing
• -          From doing to glad they did and continuing to do

Words has power to encourage and discourage to motivate and like. Use of the right words and right tone develop comfortability to continue what needs to be achieved.  

Section – II : The Nine core rules for getting through to anyone

The Nine core rules for getting though anyone

• 1.      Move yourself from “OF F#@& to OK :  Releasing yourself from the stress to get emotions under control. The technique is to release of anger or stress from The reaction phase to Release phase to recentre phase to refocus phase to reengage phase.
• 2.      Rewire yourself to listen :  Perceiving is believing, Misperceiving is deceiving. Based on the first impression or perception on what we hear and see we make fictitious creation about the person which may be prejudice. To understand the person, we need to rewire the open communication with open mind to access the real person’s needs.
• 3.      Make the other person Feel “Felt”: Putting yourself into the other persons shoes to understand the feeling.
• 4.      Be more interested than interesting : Using positive affirmation while listening to mark open-up for communication
• 5.      Make people feel Valuable : use of body language and human needs for respect, recognition and belonging. It helps in improve engagement, cooperation, collaboration and communication
• 6.      Help people to exhale emotionally and mentally: use emotions and positive affirmation as key to listen. Allow people to vent and get as much off of their chest as they feel is possible, without you interrupting or being judgmental.
• 7.      Check your dissonance at the door: When you have disagreement don’t hesitate to take feedback from the co-workers, friends and relatives.
• 8.      When all seems lost – Bare your neck: Don’t give-up
• 9.      Steer clear of toxic people : There are different type of people – Needy People, Bullies, Takers, Narcissists, Psychopaths.

Section – III : 12 Quick and easy ways to achieve buy-in and get through

• 1.      The impossibility questions: About asking the right question to move from listening to consideration.
• 2.      The magic paradox : shifting from nobody understand to you understand for gaining the trust to cooperate for solutions.
• 3.      The empathy jolt : application of empathy and willingness to work towards solutions using relationship.
• 4.      The reverse play empathy jolt: using empathy to change the behaviour to avoid problems.
• 5.      Do you really believe that : building confidence
• 6.      The power of Hmmm : making feel comfortable and active listening
• 7.      The stipulation gambit : Neutralizing the weak points.
• 8.      From transaction to transformation:  Use right words and affirmations for sales pitch to build ideas and interest for future success either negotiating or relating to the scenarios. Transactional communications don't create traction in a relationship because they're impersonal and shallow. 
• 9.      Side by Side: shared and communication by asking open questions.
• 10.  What would you say: putting the right question to open up
• 11.  Fill in the blanks
• 12. The power thank you and power apology:  Power of thank you is for something specific, Acknowledging the efforts and difference that has made. Apology  consists of the 4 R's: Remorse, Restitution, Rehabilitation, and Requesting forgiveness.

Sector – IV: Putting it all together: Fast fixes for seven challenging situations

·         The team from Hell

o   Make feel happy – Make feel needed – Make feel important – Secret out in the open

·         Climbing the ladder   

·         The narcissist at the table

·         Stranger in the town

o   Visibility | Credibility | profitability stages

·         The human explosion

·         Getting through to yourself

·         Six degrees of separation

o   Create one to one situations , Make virtual allies, reach the gatekeepers,

Book Summary | The Innovation Zone : How Great Companies Re-Innovate for Amazing Success

The Innovation Zone : How Great Companies Re-Innovate for Amazing Success

Author : Thomas M Koulpoulos

Innovation is one of the most searched word today and widely used word in day to day activity in corporates. From the top to the bottom, everyone is asked to innovate to add value.  The book touches about the innovation zone for business model innovations to crowd sourcing for innovations as there is no single approach to innovation and innovation approaches depends upon the organizations priority, cultures, and people.  Innovation at the organisation level needs systems and solutions as Innovation and creativity are processes and one can learn and improve them.

The thought provoking paragraph in the book is: From Steve Jobs to Bill Ford, innovation has become a mantra for organizations that are thriving as well as those that are striving. But it is questionable if most of us can really define innovation or describe how to create it. Can innovation actually be taught? Can innovation become a core competency? Are there rules you can follow to emulate the leading innovators and to create your own Innovation Zone?.

Summarizing the thoughts:

• Innovation cannot exist in the absence of value that is recognized and rewarded

•            The Obstacles for innovations are : Believing that Innovation will Just Happen | Telling everyone to ‘think outside the box’ and call it a day | Laying the responsibility on the shoulders of Innovation team or Technologist | Criticizing the ideas | Viewing Different and new as Bad | Analyzing ideas into Financial and legal mind-set | Afraid to fail | Innovating only when you need to | Leaving it up to the innovators | Encouraging everyone to drop any and all ideas in suggestion box
• 
  
•     Building Innovative culture: Dedicated function | Incentives for inventors.| Internal exit | Metrics |Leadership

•     The companies that sustain growth and margin best are the companies that focus on innovations that build on their core competency by innovating their business model.

•    Leadership plays a crucial role in building an Innovation Zone. The role operates chiefly in four areas: ■ Separating core competencies from the core business model ■ Building and reinforcing a culture of innovation ■ Counterbalancing entrenchment in past success ■ Creating an organizational structure that facilitates innovation

•     Leaders need to put in place five elements for a culture of innovation to thrive: ■ Visibly committed leadership ■ Defined area of responsibility ■ Rewards ■ Customer involvement ■ Mentoring and training

•  The velocity of innovation is measured and improved by using a model called the innovation chain. Four stages determine the velocity of an innovation chain: ■ Internal awareness ■ Internal responsiveness ■ External responsiveness ■ External awareness

The book has examples of Innovation zones and success stories of few companies, makes it interesting read.

Book Summary | 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea

Title :  10-10-10 : A life Transforming Idea
Author : Suzy Welch

Ten Ten Ten !! has different connotation based on the situation.
Ten Ten Ten - A Life Transforming Idea, after reading this book, my thoughts is that this book teaches an new method or process that could be practiced for decision making. This method of decision making considers short term, medium term and long term perceptive of the decision.

Decision making is an art. The decision taken at that time based on that situation probably would be the right decision. However any analysis post taking decision may be wrong. But life or work continuous and problem needs never solutions. There are many decision making techniques such as cost analysis, decision tree, Pareto analysis etc. But this book propose a new idea of decision making process - 10 - 10 - 10.

The book has nine chapters - 
1. 10-10-10  in the light of the day
2. The science behind the sytem
3.  Value equation of 10-10-10
4.  Happily Every after
5. In work, dignity
6. You can get there from here
7. Teach your children well
8. Lean on me
9. The mistleto Dart


10-10-10 is taking decision differently, proactively by delebrately considering the consequence in the immediate present, near team and distant future. In Ten Minutes.... Ten Months .... and Ten Years with a road map of clarity and courage.  Every 10-10-10 process starts with a question or dilemma, or crisis or problem. The first 10 basically stands for "Right Now"  as in one minute, one hour or one week. The second 10 represents that point in the foreseeable future when the initial reaction to your decision has passed but its consequence continues to play out in ways you can reasonably predict. And the third 10 stands for a time in future that is so far off that its particulars are entirely vague.

Bottom-line:
This idea of 10-10-10 is for lifting people up, not breaking them more. May be another way to look at things before concluding. I found the first chapter is all about the idea, and rest of the chapters are about dragging with some examples which are not interesting.

A one time read !!

Give it a thought | Measure for Measurement - Performance Measurement

For many traveling in air is fun and few it is nightmare as they have to pass through cumbersome process with last minute frisking. Last week, After I completed my engagement earlier than the schedule. I reached airport early, thinking, if lucky  I could catch an earlier flight to my destination. Before clearing the security authorisation, I just checked the customer care for possibility for earlier flight. The customer care executive in all politeness informed that could be done, but at the boarding counter. I found that there were 3 flights available for my destination. I enquired for availability accommodating  in the earlier flights and are there seats available.  The executive checked and informed me that there are seats available, however I need to pay extra as they have to reschedule.  The cost of rescheduling to earlier flight was higher than my scheduled and I thought it is better to fly as per the scheduled time rather than catch an early flight. Inside the airport one can always access laptop and work..

This incident reminded me the Goldratts thought on process improvements using three measurements throughput, inventory and operational expenses. And the famous quote “Tell me how you measure me, and I will tell you how I will behave”. Today many of the airlines are measured on the basis of ‘ON TIME’. Thats the measurement.  We measure many things at many places. So measurement becomes very important. 

I just thought ‘occupancy rate’ was the measurement parameter, then they would have accommodated me in their earlier flight. Occupancy rate and on time performance was the monitored for every flight, then it would have been Performance Measurement. This performance measure has an direct link to THROUGHPUT, INVENTORY AND OPERATIONAL EXPENSES. 
If this was the performance measure, There would have special announcement in the airports to occupy the earlier available flights who have already cleared check-in and waiting for their flights.

I was the last to enter the flight. I saw the sign of relief on the face of cabin crew. Before closing the doors, the cabin crew checked her watch and announced that the flight will be departure at the X standard time. I casually enquired how do they know on which standard is the watch calibrated Indian Standard Time (IST) or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), EST, etc. There was no response.…
Operational definition of Measure is important for clarity and uniform deployment across the levels.    

Bottom-line:

Measurement aligned to performance  measurement is vital.

Book Summary | The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

Book Title: The Checklist Manifesto : How to get things right 
Author: Atul Gawande 

Today we live in a complex world with many systems and process interacting with each other. We knowingly or unknowingly use checklist as an integral part of our daily activities, from birth at hospital to graveyard. Check list is one of the widely used and basic Quality Control Tool. The author has shared examples of application of checklists in wide industry from airline, construction, investments, hospitality, hotels and into health care. This book will not help anyone to develop a checklist, but provides great insights on checklist and disciplined process for following will help to achieve or gets things right. 

Today we use checklist for many activities, just to ensure that we have completed the activity. Fifteen years ago, Israeli scientists published a report about patient care in ICU. It was observed that in a day, on an average 178 individual actions are required ranging from administering a drug to suctioning the lung. Every activity posed risks. On an average 2 errors per patient per day was recorded. With many diseases can health care accept 2 errors per day ?  Can this be reduced? Can checklist become useful …?

Before the world war II, Boeing developed a plane that could carry five times as many bombs as the army requested. It could fly faster than previous bomber using four engines.  During the trial it crashed. The crash of the airplane made Boeing into bankruptcy. An investigation revealed that nothing mechanical had gone wrong. The crash had been due to pilot error due to pilot has to attend to the four engines, each with its own oil fuel mix, the retractable landing gear, the wing flaps, electric trim tabs and regulated hydraulic controls. It was too much airplane for one man to fly. 
The US army purchased few Boeing and tried to  overcome this, they came up with an ingeniously simple approach; they created a pilot’s checklist. Using a checklist for take-off to safe landing. With checklist in hand the pilots went to fly the model 299 without any accident. Because flying the behemoth, the army gained decisive air advantage in the world war, enabling its devastating bombing camping across Germany. Checklist seem to provide protection against such failures. They remind us of the minimum necessary steps and make them explicit.

In 2001, critical care specialist Peter Pronovost decided to give a doctors checklist in Johns Hopkins Hospital.  Following the checklist resulted in line infection rate to zero from eleven percent within ten days.

There are good checklists and bad Checklists.

Bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use; they are impractical. They are made by desk jockeys with no awareness of the situations in which they are to be deployed. They treat the people using the tools as dumb and try to spell out every single step. They turn people’s brains off rather than turn them on.

Good checklists, on the other hand are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything--a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps--the ones that even the highly skilled professional using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical.” 

You must decide whether you want a DO-CONFIRM checklist or a READ-DO checklist. With a DO-CONFIRM checklist, he said, team members perform their jobs from memory and experience, often separately. But then they stop. They pause to run the checklist and confirm that everything that was supposed to be done was done. With a READ-DO checklist, on the other hand, people carry out the tasks as they check them off—it’s more like a recipe. So for any new checklist created from scratch, you have to pick the type that makes the most sense for the situation.” 

The best example of application of checklist is crash landing of the airplane in the icy Hudson riven 2009. They followed the protocols for such situations.

Ticking the boxes is not the ultimate goal of the checklist. Embracing a culture of team work and discipline is. What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline. Discipline is hard--harder than trustworthiness and skill and perhaps even than selflessness. We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures. We can't even keep from snacking between meals. We are not built for discipline. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at.

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 Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World's Most Disruptive Company

Book Title: The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World's Most Disruptive Company

Author: John Rossman

 

Amazon.com was in the business of internet bookseller to a global company revolutionizing and disrupting multiple industries, including retail, publishing, logistics, devices, apparel, and cloud computing. The Amazon Way, introduces the unique corporate culture of the world’s largest Internet retailer, with a focus on the fourteen leadership principles that have guided and shaped its decisions and its distinctive leadership culture. I found this book interesting with easy flow on each of the principles with some examples. . Amazon is one of the globally admired companies. The book just reflects on the 14 principles of leadership that build a great organisation. The crux of these 14 principles 

1.    Obsess over the Customer

·         Customer don't actually like to talk to customer service reps, they'd rather resolve the problem themselves

·         Amazon is focused on Free Cash Flow - cash the company is able to generate after maintaining its base assets

·         Price, Selection and Availability - the holy trinity (The three pillars of Amazon)

·         If you are competitor focused, you have to wait until there is an competitor doing something, Being customer focused allows you to be more pioneering.

2.     Take Ownership of Results

·         Successful companies have very low turnover rate at the top.

·         Maintain an atmosphere of urgency is crucial

·         Breakdown of dependency is a leadership failure.

·         The highest level of customer service is impossible to achieve without a high degree of accountability and honesty and a willingness to be direct, open, and honest - especially when things are not going well.

3.    Invent & Simplify         

·         Simple is the key to easy, fast, intuitive and low cost.

·         Good process eliminates bureaucracy and exposes under performers.

4.    Leaders are right - a lot          

·         Clarity is vital for culture of learning, growth and accountability

·         Plans are nothing, Planning is everything  

·         Writing down ideas in complete sentences and complete paragraph will force a deeper clarity of thinking

5.    Hire & Develop the Best        

·         Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others

6.    Insist on highest standard    

·         Service level Agreements

7.    Think Big           

·         Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy  

·         Free Cash Flow - The secret of thinking Big

8.    Have a bias for action

·         Value calculated risk taking

9.    Practice Frugality        

·         Frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and innovation

10. Be Vocal, Self – Critical         

·         "Hubris"- The excessive pride that destroys the hero        

11. Earn the Trust  

·         True collaboration is only possible in a atmosphere of Trust  

·         Two-Pizza Team is about trusting a small fraction within an organization to operate independently and with agility

12. Dive Deep          

·         Leadership is responsible for the entire life cycle of a project and its outcome.

·         Five Whys is an iterative question-asking technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships

13. Have backbone - Disagree & Commit       

·         once decision is made, commit to it whole heartedly

14. Deliver Results  

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.