I'm only drilling on my side

I was running a program that span across various verticals; we had closely studied the business process and transitioned to India under one Umbrella, this was a big simplification exercise where different functions had to be integrated and a handshake was required to ensure there is a smooth flow.

Not all business transformations and transitions go noise free, there will definitely be some ups and down, few things will run smooth and few may not. What is important is to follow the plan while sailing on the ship. The end goal is not to roll back a process for one sub business when rest is going fine… I’m sure you too would have come across situations like this.

Some times in the top management and senior leadership there is a bureaucracy that prevails in organizations where the leaders are either afraid of change or delay decision making which impact business operations. Many a times when an agreed process exists that is planned and execution occurs you will find someone unhappy with if and starts deviating from the set process instead of working together to enable the same in his/her sub business too... It’s something similar to an example as stated in this story below.

Two men were out on the ocean in a boat.

One of them began drilling in the bottom of the boat, and the other, aghast said "What are you doing? Stop drilling!”

And the first man replied: "It's all right. I'm only drilling on my side."

13 questions .... you discover yourself

Answering the below 13 questions again and again helped me grow as a leader…

1.       Which one is worse, failing or never trying?

2.       When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done?

3.       Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?

4.       Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things?

5.       What’s something you know you do differently than most people?

6.       What one thing have you not done that you really want to do?  What’s holding you back?

7.       Are you holding onto something you need to let go of?

8.       Is it possible to know the truth without challenging it first?

9.       Do you remember that time 5 years ago when you were extremely upset?  Does it really matter now?

10.    When it is time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just go ahead and do what you know is right?

11.    If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?

12.    In 5 years from now, will you remember what you did yesterday?  What about the day before that?  Or the day before that?

13.    Decisions are being made right now.  The question is:  Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you?

Monkey see, monkey do

Monkey see, monkey do a saying that originated in Jamaica in the early 18th century. The saying refers to the learning of a process without an understanding of why it works, it’s been a while I am working in a consulting role and find it so difficult for people to try something different. There is a lot of reluctance in leaders today to take a decision, I’m surprised that people want to make popular decisions no matter they are right or wrong the focus is more to keep everyone  in a comfort zone.

Last few years there has been a lot of unrest and in the name of economy and caution people have stopped thinking; the learning process is simply stopped at every node. Unless we do things differently during a turbulent period we will not be able to raise the bar. It’s easy to talk big… the question is are you really thinking big… and if you are thinking big do you have the real capable people who can execute. I have seen in in the past in an organization two senior leaders moved in and moved out, as they got in there was a lot of optimism and upbeat enthusiasm and soon things went down the drain, we all start well but soon succumb to the situation at hand and with people around things don’t move.

I’m surprised that people quit a company and join another, while this is called as growth in career the question that haunts me is cant a person grow in the same organization, why can’t the current organization retain him/her and there is someone else who is picking him/her at a price higher than his current organization pays.

Well… what happens after that… let me illustrate this with the below story…

A group of scientists placed five monkeys in a cage, a ladder and few bananas on the top of it.  Every time the monkey went up the ladder scientists socked the other monkeys in the room with a cold shower. After sometime no monkey dared to go up the ladder regardless of the temptation.

The scientists then decided to replace one of the monkeys with a new one, the first thing the new monkey did was go up the ladder and immediately the other monkeys beat him up, after several beatings the new member learnt no to climb the ladder even though he never knew why.

The scientists then replaced one more monkey and the same thing occurred, surprisingly the first monkey was replaced too participated in beating the second monkey with the rest in the room.

The third monkey was changed and the same thing happened; now both the new monkeys in the room with rest of the two old one participated in beating the new monkey. The fourth monkey was replaced and same thing occurred again and finally the fifth monkey was replaced the same thing happened it was beaten down with the other four.

What was left was a group of five monkeys that even though never received a cold shower continued to beat up any monkey who attempted to climb the ladder.

If it was possible to ask the monkeys why they would beat up all those who attempted to climb the ladder the answer for sure will be “I DON’T KNOW … THAT’S HOW THINGS ARE DONE AROUND HERE”

Have you ever in your tenure working with your organization or business heard a similar statement, and then it’s more important to first change the thought process of the people even before attempting to climb the ladder, if not go ahead and change the entire set of pople and bring new ones in who have not gone thru the similar shower treatment. This will bring in a new paradigm. Change management is not about managing the status quo and replacing manual process with digitization or bringing in new tools, over a period of time the one who brought the tool will move on and the tool will remain, times change, process changes but the tool sticks around ….

Not sure… but I guess you too would have come across a similar situation in your career… will be happy to listen your comments and perhaps changes you brought in standing up against the tide as a leader..

The Communication Illusion

The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place, how sure are you that the other person has understood what you really wanted to say. Or is it that the other person has only heard and now it’s up to him/her to interpret further.

You would have come across few conversations where the listener and teller are on the same page, every word said and heard has been understood in the right context, this happens when the trust is high, usually communication is easy, instant, and effective when people involved in the conversation trust each other, they will listen what is been said and the mind interprets it in the right way, when people lack trust the mind start reading between lines and misinterpreting and as the trust factors goes down the communication barrier increases.

I have often come across another situation, especially happen when the team is close knit, understands each other very well, trust factor is very high and in such cases there is an assumption factor which plays a havoc, team is aware about the strategy but is disconnected due to an assumption that each of the team member knows it and not required to be explicitly discussed. Planning and Communication are two wheels of the same bike… both go hand in hand and good planning comes with good communication… how many times when the trust factor is high do we ask questions… or probe further

Let me illustrate this with an example, one of my communication trainers did quote this during our training … importance of planning and communication … this is a real incident that occurred with students of IIT Mumbai Batch of 1992.

One Night 4 college students were playing till late night and could not study for the test which was scheduled for the next day.

In the morning they thought of a plan. They made themselves look as dirty with grease and dirt. They then went up to the Dean and said that they had gone out to a wedding last night and on their return the tire of their car burst and they had to push the car all the way back and that they were in no condition to appear for the test.

So the Dean said they could have the re-test after 3 days. They thanked him and said they would be ready by that time. On the third day they appeared before the Dean.. The Dean said that as this was a Special Condition Test, all four were required to sit in separate classrooms for the test... They all agreed as they had prepared well in the last 3 days.

The Test consisted of 2 questions with a total of 100 Marks.

Q.1. Your Name............................ (2 MARKS)

Q.2. which tire burst? (98 MARKS)
a) Front Left
b) Front Right
c) Back Left
d) Back Right.....!!!

Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it

Its seven years now that I am currently working with the same company and I have a friend of mine who has so far jumped thrice, while I have sharpened my leadership skills he has sharpened his communication skills... or perhaps the way he sells himself.

We happened to catch up after a long time and spoke in length, I happened to share with him an instance where last year I did not put in best of my efforts and during my yearly appraisal my performance rating was way beyond my expectation, and this year I worked extra time, I worked hard, I did a fantastic job, I was always a part of the solution and was able to resolve the toughest and complex issues, overcame conflicts and delivered the results and my performance rating was not upto my expectations…

In return he told me the following story which helped me understand “We do a great job… we need to communicate the same in a right way for people to understand”

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: "I am blind, please help." There were only a few coins in the hat.

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, "Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?"

The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way."

I wrote: "Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it."

Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people that they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?

While we parted for the evening, he asked me when was the last time you updated your profile.. to look EFFECTIVE ... ?

Now let me ask the same question to all my readers… when was the last time you updated your CV .. to look EFFECTIVE ... ?

The Power of Words - “APPRECIATE”

September 29^th 2008, this day will be remembered in the history which introduced the practical side of what double dip in the economy actually can look like. Days in the month October sent cold shivers to many a employees losing their jobs. Overall pessimism, office gossips, organization restructuring, business slowdown, stalling projects and amidst all these it was a team of mine who had to deliver a commitment that was written down on paper to the customer. We as a small team were doing really good at the business front, aviation being a long cycle business we were on the delivery of orders that were bagged way back in 2005 and were sitting on pretty good order pipeline.

The challenge I faced was not only in my team but on the entire supply chain floor both in India and other parts of the globe when met on a call, after the initial hello instead of discussing the agenda folks spent time talking about the market crash and state of the economy and post the meetings there used to be corridor talks to know what will happen to the jobs, how secure are we, what will be the hike, appraisal etc… I questioned myself on where we will head to in this grapevine … it’s time to take action and get the folks in the team back to business and drive success. The question that bothered me is how… ? ? ? day in and day out every television channel … newspaper… blog and everything that we are exposed to talks negative and the entire business sentiment is down…

Every weekend I spend time at a local NGO that offers counseling services free of cost for students and that when an idea struck me… very next thing I picked up my cell and dialed in a long distance call to my manager sitting out at Cincinati, Ohio and discussed in length about the plan… looks like we got the ball rolling and here is what we did.. .we came up with a team building game and named it “APPRECIATE”

Even before you read about the game, spend some time reading the below passage…

A speaker was speaking about the power of positive thinking, appreciating and the power of words.

One of the audience raised his hand and said, "It's not because I say good fortune, good fortune, good fortune that will make me feel better. Nor will saying bad luck, bad luck, bad luck, make me feel worse. They're only words and, by them, have no power."

The speaker replied. "Shut up, you fool; you don't understand a thing about this."

The member of the audience was stunned, his face became red and he was about to reply, "You, son of a..." The speaker raised his hand.

"Please excuse me. I didn't mean to upset you. Please accept my most sincere apologies." The member of the audience calmed down. Some people in the hall murmured; others shuffled their feet. The speaker resumed. "There's the reply to the question you asked me. A few words made you very angry. The other words calmed you down." "Now do you understand the power of words?"

Based on the above passage was our Team building game,

The Game:

This team building event is a game that focuses on ways team members motivate each other by expressing appreciation.  The first phase of the game is to collect as many unique phrases that can be used in daily conversation to express appreciation.  The following phrases are examples:

1. Very good…

2. I am happy working with you

3. Awesome… you are amazing

4. Great going… we will surely achieve the success …

The Teams:

The event includes 11 teams led by each of the Business leaders within the organization

The Rules:

- Each Business leader will share additional information about the game with his/her team during their team meetings & will encourage active team participation.

- Each team will log into the tool & start filling out as many unique phrases of appreciation as possible.

- The tool will be closed to make entries after 15 days.

- The survey may be accessed multiple times, but teams must enter their "sub-business" when starting the survey in order to get credit for their input.

- The results will be presented in the staff meeting along with learning experiences.

The Result

Teams actively participated; we had the winning team who were able to fill in as many as 673 unique phrases of appreciation.

My intention was not the result, but in these 30 days of the market crash and recovery phase filled with negative influences of the media… my team and business leaders were busy in finding phrases of appreciation, team morale was positive because of the thought vibration they carried… overall I was able to accomplish what I had set for…

Now I have a database of close to 700 phrases to which I prefix my name and read it out at days when I am low, so do my friends and few business leaders who did participate in this game still stick to this database. I received an email from a business leader who has moved out to another organization, he wrote back to me and told… in today’s turbulent market, he still uses this database and has found a few more phrases to which he prefixes his name and reads them out loud both in first person and second person language …

Words are powerful… using an affirmation in the right way … again and again… and again… turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophesy

I suggest my readers to make their own positive affirmations and keep repeating them, while you repeat them also visualize them in your mind’s eye as thou they have already happened… you will see miracles flowing your way.