What does prevent us to express timely?

The value of “life aspects” is only when we nourish its value when it is with us. The “life aspects” could be like health, wealth, knowledge, profession, relationship etc. When something is lost, we realize the value of it or associate it with more memories.

In personal life, we use to take the people relationship as granted, especially with people in our close circles. We tend to value people after we lost them or they moved away from us. After losing, either regret about the inability to nurture the relationship or start valuing by way of praising the positive side of the personalities (as nostalgia rituals!!). Even in professional life, we use to appreciate or endorse the qualities of the person during a farewell session as a routine. The person could have enjoyed the association more with us, if he/she had been endorsed or acknowledged or appreciated for his personality when he/ she were with us.

As life is too short and uncertainty, what does prevent us from nurturing the relationship and expressing timely? We may list work pressure, lack of time, ego etc, but more than anything else, it just needs a deep awareness of the fact of life.

As someone quoted, “Sometimes the words we leave unspoken are the most important ones that should have been said” is much more valid for the relationship especially with our close circles.

Factors enabling the harmony at the workplace

As discussed last week, in personal and professional life, maintaining harmony with our daily interesting people is must have peace of mind, quality of work, in turn growth and happiness.

Irrespective of the difference of opinion or conflict with others, still harmony can be maintained.If we observe highly successful and matured people, we can notice some of the practices while interacting with others.

 Easily approachable 
 Connecting others with care
 Consistency in behavior
 Giving self first 
 Respecting and not approaching with fixed perception
 Be helpful, friendly and firm 

Maintaining harmony with others is a conscious choice for growth and happiness, which is possible with practice.

The given video link demonstrates the improvement in the relationship between boss and subordinate with the above factors…

Hope you enjoy it…

https://goo.gl/Jn361N

Why do we struggle to keep harmony with others?

   As discussed last week, in personal and professional life, maintaining harmony with our daily interacting people is must to have peace of mind, quality of work, in turn growth and happiness.

   However, in reality, we struggle to maintain harmony with others.Rather than looking the reason from the other’s point of view,let us look it from within us. One of the expectation or condition, we set ourselves to maintain harmony with others is not accepting others if they differ from our thought process or opinion. This is strongly conditioned in our mind.

    However, the nature reveals that no creation is same as others, each is unique.No two people can have same likings and thought process.We tend to mix people and issue together. Let us accept people, especially those are influencing our life on a daily basis .Accept them as such ,separate the intellectual part from the people part .Once if we accept the people as such , then we are open to see other good qualities of those people. It may be difficult for most of us to practice this, but this awareness is required to improve the quality of relationship.

    Let us the discuss the factors will enable improved harmony next week.

Why should maintain harmony with others?

   The most impactful people in our life are the ones with whom we are interacting more on a daily basis. They could be family members, boss, colleagues, peers, and subordinates as we spend most of the time with them only.

       The quality of relationship or harmony with them is important.When there is disharmony in any of the elements, it would affect your peace of mind that would affect your quality of work. Just imagine that your harmony with your boss is strained, will you able to do quality of work? Likewise, your harmony at domestic will affect your quality of work. Quality of work determines your growth and happiness.

    

     Hence, for your own sake, of happiness and growth, you need to maintain a high level of harmony with others who are interacting with you most of your lifetime.But in reality, there is some misconception about maintaining harmony and there are some factors affecting the harmony.Let us discuss next week!!

The best boss I ever had

One of the phrases we might have said or heard from others is “the best boss, I ever had “. In our career, so many bosses might have crossed our life and contributed to our growth, but we may count only a few of them as best bosses. How we do  we distinguish the best and good boss?

Even though there are multiple factors attribute to admire as  good boss, one distinguishing factor for  best boss is the one who had identified hidden unique talent within you  and created  opportunity to exhibit.I.e. The one who had brought out the potential of you, which you  never thought about. That could be turning point in  your professional growth.

Just list out all the bosses you had and identify the best boss. He would be fitting into the above definition.

Having realized this  insight, the next question you need to ask yourself is , for how many people you are the best boss? Have you identified the uniqueness of your team member and shown new possibilities to them?

Being a good boss is natural and given, but being the best boss for someone is your choice, it needs extraordinary compassion, effort from your end.Let us strive for best boss for someone.

When does Professional Growth Stop?

    Irrespective of your educational background, the profession you are choosing, one factor determines your growth is competency.When we say competency, it is a combination of attitude, skill and knowledge about the profession or job.

     In your career ladder, each position calls for different competency, it needs to be identified, developed, and demonstrated.For example, in your career ladder, competency requirement during entry stage, and say at trainee level is different from when you enter the middle management level. Similarly, the competency requirement is different when you enter in the senior leadership level.

    Simply put it, as you know, communication skill is one of the competency throughout your career. However, the degree of competency is different at each position say entry level, managerial level and senior management level. It requires continuous effort to improve your communication skill competency to move upward.

     So if you desire to move up in your career ladder, continuous effort is required to improve your competency by identifying the gap w.r.to job position.When you stop developing competency, your growth stops or stagnates. We are here to grow, hence focus on competency development!

Be aware of your mental state for positive results

             As human beings, we are undergoing a different set of emotions or mental state in every minute. . The mental state can be positive  state like being in happy, high energy level, highly enthusiasm, etc. or the  mental state could be  limiting state like being sad, angry, worry, laziness etc. Actually, those mental states drive the quality of behavior or action at any point of time.

            When we are in a positive state, our words, tone and actions will be positive whereas in limiting state, our actions leads into more chaos or unproductive. So be aware of in which state you are in at any point of time and change your state before taking any actions or communicating to others.

           One  way  to change state instantly is by changing physiology or body language. For example, imagine that you are in deep thinking or in a sad mood and you are receiving a phone call from your well-wisher or friend. You are quickly changing your state to a positive state of happiness. Actually, during that moment, you are changing your physiology or body language that enables you to switch the state. It is possible to change the state instantly with little focus on awareness and practice. 

          The point is when you are taking any important decision or even talking to someone, aware of your state and change into a positive state. The result or response also will be positive. 

Building confidence with small success

In business or professional environment, the biggest challenge is selling our idea or believing that the idea will work.That is building a confidence within us and to others.

Building confidence in self-levels:

This cannot be built  only through external stimuli like reading books, listening motivational lectures, etc. as they build confidence momentarily and short lived. Real confidence will be built deeply at conscious level only by doing and experiencing small success.

              For example, if you want to improve your confidence on public speaking skills, you cannot immediately do it in a large crowd. Instead, you consciously experiment in a small group, take action, and taste the success. Your subconscious mind registers the successful event. Next time, when you are speaking in larger groups, your mind pushes you with positive reinforcement of earlier success and you may do well. Again, the mind registers this event as positive reinforcement. This way only, you can improve your confidence in public speaking.

Building confidence at team level:

             Similarly, if you want to  build confidence to your team  about any new initiative ,they need to see it and believe  it .Hence   experiment  the iniatives in a small way , be focused, take action, achieve and celebrate it .This  positive reinforcement   of success will give confidence to your team for taking higher level  initiatives .
              Building confidence is one of the leadership qualities  and it is time consuming,but more powerful once it is built . Hence, the action plan is to identify the area in which you have low confidence level, take small action, taste the success and this small success will help you to achieve more!

One degree +

Very good video on emphasizing the importance of stretching the effort. We use to think, only in sports, the difference between winner and loser is only to the extent of microseconds, but actually, in all aspects of life, like career advancement, winning deals in business, relationship, the extra step or effort or stretch makes a big difference.

Hope you enjoy this video even though you might have watched earlier.

https://goo.gl/OA7rBP

Invisible traits of successful people

     A lot of books have been written about highly successful people  and  a lot of researches have  been done to understand the DNA  of being successful in any field like  business, sports, media or in politics .Most of those analysis  use to point out more about  the external  traits like hard work,persistence, people skill, communication skill and decision making ability etc.

    Those are all known to the external world and anyone can take that as benchmark to follow and replicate. In this process, a few may succeed to some extent only. When we observe the highly successful people, we can realize the most important cause for the phenomenal growth or success, but not visible to external world is their quality of thinking, continuously striving to learn more about the field and challenging their thought process for the next level. 

      We could see some people with extraordinary talent stagnate at some point due to stopping their curiosity intend in their field of work. The point is irrespective of your profession, age, talent, continuous striving or curious to learn more  about your business or profession matters a lot on your sustained growth.

    When asked about his phenomenal success, Steve jobs said, “much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.” It is purely the outcome of continuous thinking, challenging and striving for excellence

Mastering the stroke

There was a rich man who loved art as well as birds. He asked an artist  to draw  a kingfisher bird which must be breathtaking, unique and natural.He offered  to pay  a huge price if it is breakthrough.The artist  accepted the challenge and informed the rich man to wait for three  months.After three months, the rich man  went to  the artist ‘ s studio, but nothing was completed. The painter requested for another three months and rich person agreed.After three more   months passed ,again the rich person visited the studio and asked for artwork.

The artist drew out his brushes and with ease, he instantly made a picture within two  minutes. The rich man  was very much happy with the quality of artwork, as it was more than his visualization. Suddenly he became angry and shouted at the painter ” You have cheated me  for last six  months.This artwork took only two minutes to draw, but why have you made me wait for six  months?”

Without saying anything, the artist opened up his shelf and showed hundreds of scrap drawings of kingfisher birds.

What we see from successful people’s delivery performance as natural, behind that passion and hard work reside.Mastering is all about expending time, persistence, and patience.

How do you respond to feedback?

Feedback from well-wishers, matured people are generally are genuine and for continuous improvement only. However, in reality, our mind responds to feedback in different ways and this response makes a difference in the performance. Generally, we respond to feedback in  three ways. 

For example, your boss or colleague or even your customer is pointing out some gap in your behavior or performance, you may choose any one of the below responses and that response determines  your further growth from the feedback.

Taking too personally:
 Feeling guilty and becoming sad about the feedback. The consequence may be your self-esteem may go down and you may be cribbing about the feedback. No Improvements on the corrective action or forward thinking and in turn, no progress in performance. 

Defending to  the feedback giver: 

Defending your position with justification to feedback giver. Likely, you may win the argument as well, but you may lose the sight of the truth of feedback. No improvements on the corrective action or forward thinking and in turn, no progress in performance.

Analyzing the feedback with rational approach:

 Listening and seeking further clarity from the feedback giver. Getting into introspecting. In this process, your mind tends to analyze the fact and accept the need for corrective action for growth. 

The point is that the choice of response you are choosing to feedback determines the progress, Feedback does not. 

Just be aware of your response! 

Real entrepreneurial attitude

       Recently I had an opportunity to meet a very old businessperson, who has successfully built his organization and gained a very good reputation in the industry. His third generations have also stepped into the business and they are actively managing the business. Despite his ageing and health issues, he is having a habit of coming to office regularly and involving himself in important decisions.

     On seeing his passion and hard work, with curiosity, I asked, “Sir, Having created a big empire and developed the team to manage the business, are you not still happy with the growth? Why do you trouble yourself at this age? He profoundly replied, “It is not the question of happiness. I am already happy with my accomplishments, as I know where I came from, but not satisfied. My thinking is always on how to create more wealth to my employees and how to create more employment opportunities to many people.”

     I am amazed with his thought processes and witnessed the person of self-realization. The God chooses the right people for right purpose based on the thought, intention, enables right action and result!.Real growth and fulfillment is when we make our life for others. 

Real entrepreneurial attitude!

Process disruption

    In personal and business front, sometimes, we get upset with the pace of growth.We expect different results while we do the same kind of activities or adhere to the same business processes.For continuous growth progress, what is required is continuous process disruption.

   When we say process disruption, it is not going away from the fundamental process adherence which would be disaster even for survival or existing growth .Process disruption is challenging the existing mindset or process which is producing the current result and continuously inculcate new thinking, new process for high level growth. .If we do the same thing, we get same result .If we change the process, at least we can expect different results.

     You might have seen some organizations exist more than decades with same line of products from inception to now, but had grown multifold, not because of diversified product line, but due to process disruption or continuous innovation in how they manage the business processes.

    In Business, challenging the existing process and continuously upgrade the business process, you can expect different result or high growth.

   In personal front, by continuously challenging your thinking process, you can solicit new opportunities and growth. 

    The point is that if you want great result, your process is also need to be different. You cannot expect major changes in your result with the same level of process. Continuous process disruption is only way for sustainable growth!

Becoming an optimist

       One of the important characteristics of optimist is the ability to bounce back from any setbacks quickly. What makes a person as optimist  or pessimist is how he /she is interpreting the events and registering in the minds. The best part is that the quality of interpretation can be improved through conscious response to events.

       When some failure or setback happens, the mind interprets the events in three aspects viz taking personally, giving too much permanency to event outcome, and    encompassing all to the event.

       For example, two people attended a job interview and both of them were rejected. The pessimist  considers the setback as too personal and say, “I failed “and whereas the optimist, considers the setback as not personal and use to  say as “The interview was tough”

        Pessimist considers this setback as “this setback is going to continue and I will fail ever in interviews” and whereas optimist considers this “This time I failed, next time I will be through"

        Pessimist  considers this setback as a loss to the whole of his life and everything is over. Whereas optimist considers this setback as standalone , just as I failed in the interview, but I am good in other aspects like relationship, health, skill etc.

The point is that how we are  interpreting the event and internalizing makes a difference in becoming optimist or a pessimist. Eventually this mindset would drive the thoughts, behaviors  and attitudes towards any incident in life.
Just be aware of your thought process when confronting setbacks and becoming optimist is a choice by learning.

Life is all about the experience of it

Three friends went inside the forest and they lost the direction to reach back to their home village. They tried to find their way out, but none of them agreed to go one path together.

The first man said, “I use to listen to my intuition, hence I will go left direction to reach home” and he left.

The second man said, “Logically, we have to follow through our past, hence I will follow the same path as we reached “and he left to follow the old path.

The third man says himself “why should we explore different options when we are not sure, so let me climb up the tall tree and take a better look around, I will find the shortest path to my home “and he did so and found the path, went ahead, reached the destination. He thought the other people are not brilliant and smart enough like him.

Eventually other friends also reached the home, but with different experiences on the way. The first person met new people, made them as friends, with their help, he reached home. The second person had to fight a pack of wild animals and managed to reach home, but he learned how to survive in the forest.
In essence, all had reached the destination, but with different experience. Our life is also like that, we may take different decision in life which leads to different paths, at the end, what matters is the experience and perspectives we gain from the life. Let us enjoy the experience whatever the path we choose!

The last lecture –Book

This book is from a person, Randy Pausch, American professor of computer science, who died due to pancreatic cancer at the age of 47. As he learned of the diagnosis that he had cancer and was given  3 to 6 months of good health, he delivered a lecture titled “The last lecture: Really achieving your childhood dreams in 2007 at Carnegie Mellon University which became a popular  video worldwide. Subsequently, he co-authored a book called “The last lecture” on the same theme, which became bestseller. 

In this book, he covered broadly three topics, with the intention of giving his messages to his children 

1.His childhood dreams and achievement
2.Helping others to achieve their dreams
3.How to lead a life 

Like other bestselling books, the contents, language and flow are  good.What is really  inspiring is the person’s humor, optimism, positive perspective about life 
 even after knowing his end.He is outlining the value of time, relationship as life span is short and uncertain.Recommend to read this book if you can…

Also, given the link of his last lecture video before writing the book 

goo.gl/LwPWLH

Hope you like it.

Life decisions with long term perspectives

If we look at any great organization’s history, they had many struggles to deliver consistent results, but still they are existing today and making an impact is due to their decision making in crucial times based on long-term perspective. Similarly, if we observe  any successful married  couples, they could be your parents, they might have faced many struggles in their lifetime, but still they made a difference as role models, it could be due to  their decision making in important stages of life  was based on  long term perspective.

One of the profound management principles of Toyota, which says, “Base your management decisions on long term philosophy, even at the cost of short term benefits.”

Sometimes, we are tempted for short-term benefits in career switch or job switch decision making which cost our potential to make an impact on long term.

Most of the relationship issues arise when one of them takes a call considering short-term pain or gain foregoing the long-term happiness.

In fact, in the stock market, those who stay long term make more money than short-term traders do, even though there is so much of hype and temptation about short term trading.

Look around any achievements, impacts, inventions; it could be made possible due to long-term perspective of the person involved, even at the cost of short-term temptations or benefits.

Just be aware of your life decisions whether they are for short-term gains or avoiding short-term pains or they are for long-term impact and happiness. 

Why do some people struggle for career growth and others not?

    A real fulfillment comes only through career growth. Career growth means an opportunity to make an impact for others through leveraging our potential, position, and competency. Some time we worry too much about the delay in recognition or promotion etc. According to me, those are all temporary in nature and most of the time, it is beyond your control. Whereas career growth is long term, more meaningful to measure and it is predominately influenced by you.

    At any  given point of time, considering your qualification, years of service and perceived potential, look at your career graph, if is well with your expectation, it is fine, if it is not, definitely the reason may  not be due to others  like your organization, boss, colleagues etc..

    In any modern performance management system, two underlying factors are deciding our career growth. One is what you are delivering against the expectation and second is how you are delivering. To put differently, it is a combination of your result and relationship. Those factors are purely under your influence.

To give more perspective, created a video and if you are interested, Pl view and subscribe for more videos on career growth.

https://goo.gl/7uKUqJ

Influence the change where we can

“Change the changeable, accept the unchangeable and remove yourself from the unacceptable”- Denis Wiatley

          Most of us are aware of that change eventually brings growth. However, when we think about change, naturally we expect others to change. The frustration of defeat effort, strain in a relationship starts from the moment when we expect and attempt to make changes where we do not have much influence.

        For example, as a business owner, we expect change in external environment like policy reforms, tax concessions, consistent order flow from customer, periodic price revision etc. Do we have real influence on those areas? Instead, we have more influence on the internal environment wherein we can organize ourselves with lean cost structure, flexible system to cope with uncertainties, dynamic team with single-minded focus etc. Channelizing our effort where we have more influence will bring competitive advantage rather than spending energy where we do not have much influence.

       Recently I read  about an Indian CEO ‘s  case study on how he  consistently made a profit  for more than 8 years .During the recession period also, while his competitions were reacting with a price cut to manage the adverse environment, he delivered  healthy profitability. Clearly, his thought process was on “influencing the change where he had control” and his proactive approach   on cost, line up of new products, development of winning team culture in the organization made his organization to manage the tough times.


      Similarly, on individual front, when we attempt to bring change in others like colleagues, spouse, children, and relatives etc., most of the time, we end up with disappointment or frustration. Instead, change our mindset on acceptance, being flexible etc., which is always in our influence of change!

Why do people succeed?

Interesting short video on why people succeed .It is based on 7 years research & 500 interviews by Richard St.John ,a self-described average guy who found success doing what he loved. He distills the lessons of success into 8 words and 3 minutes video.

Hope you find it useful ..

the link is given below

  https://goo.gl/E2XfFS

Why do we fight in meetings?

     In  a professional environment, meetings are a regular part of the day to day routines. A study indicates that 55 % of the meeting ends without any agreement and action plan. Sometimes, the meeting's discussion leads into emotional outburst or a frustration  of inconclusiveness. The presence of mature leader  with very good facilitation skill able to conduct the meeting  without fighting or emotional outburst.

     What could be the reason for fighting in our workplace, particularly in meetings? Recently  came across an article in HBR on this subject and  would like to add my perspectives  on the root cause and smart leader’s solutions approach to the problem.

     Even though we may say the cause for the fight may be time sensitive targets, resource issues like money, material, manpower etc.Those are common in any organizations  and at  surface level, they seem to be the  root cause of fighting, but the real root cause resides at human factors and this needs to be dealt with human psychology perspective.

The major causes from human perspective are

1.Insecurity feeling
2.The inclination to take control  or power

Insecurity feeling:

Somebody in the forum feels insecure about themselves. They feel that they are exposed to their level of knowledge or  skill sets  or  the way the dealing the issues in the past or uncertainty about the proposed changes, etc.To overcome this insecurity feeling or  manage the situation, they use to get into arguments instead of discussing, get  into diversion of discussion agenda  instead of straight dialogue and emotionally step into  fighting mode with verbal attack. 

The inclination to take control or power:

Somebody in the forum inclines towards to take control or power of the situation or workplace. Taking power is nothing wrong as long as it is organizational centered rather than self-centered or egocentric. They get into arguments to prove their point, dictate others instead of listening, and finally get into fighting mode if they feel unable to convince or control the forum.

Solutions approach :

Both are acceptable from a human perspective as we are not perfect in all aspects and this is quite natural. This awareness is required for leaders or facilitators .With this awareness only, a few matured leaders take the following approach to deal with the human causes

1. Understanding the individual or team’s strength / weakness 

2. Good at diverting the personal level clashes to offline meeting, even if requires, personally involved to sort it out in the offline

3. The mindset of “Move forward" given the fact of strength and weakness, always propose third dimension to the problem

The matured person in the forum makes a difference in the quality of meetings.Getting that maturity may be difficult for all,but possible with just awareness of self and others .

Your belief is important for success

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ― Henry Ford

 What do you think the prime reason for you to learn to drive a two-wheeler or four wheeler? You may answer that need, desire, affordability, skills, etc., But the prime reason for the achievement is that you believed that you could drive. That belief only brought all other resources to make it happened.

          Let us refer any success stories in business, sports, media, politics  or any historical events, we may realize that underlying reason for the success is that someone believed that it could be possible. For example, Mahatma Gandhi strongly believed that through Ahimsa, he would bring freedom even though he did not have strengths and resources at an early stage. Eventually momentum gained and the rest is history. The reason is that he strongly believed he could.
Similarly, in your business or even professional life, your belief about success or growth is more important rather than anything else. Today you may not have sufficient resources, knowledge, skill sets, or strategy to reach the desired state. Nevertheless, your strong belief will drive you towards attracting the desired actions.

          It is said that anything happens twice, once in our mind and then in reality. If you strongly believe that you can turn around your business, you will. If you strongly believe that you can be extraordinary performer in your job, you will. If you strongly believe you can be a role model to your child or to your team, you will. Everything begins with your mindset or belief. 

         Relook your beliefs about your quality of performance, quality of relationship, quality of leadership and expand your mindset, you are going closer to new possibilities.

Why should I develop my team?

In one of my recent management seminars to senior leadership team, one participant asked the following question, which I think, is powerful and thought provoking.

 He questioned, “Why should I develop my  team  by teaching all my  years of learnings and spending    time to guide them? If I equip them, will not be a threat to my position?”.

My response to this is as follows

1.Assume that you are not developing your  team and not preparing any  successor for you. When management  considers you for elevation or  different growth  opportunities, they think twice about existing  positions as there is no right successor. Management  may want to keep you in the same position till they find an alternative. Who will be the loser?

2.Assume that if you are not  developing your team, you will continue to do the same job forever and how will you equip yourself for new learning’s and new growth?

3.In today’s scenario, real talent will find its own way. If you are  not  taking care of your people development and growth, eventually  your smart team member  find his own way to grow  either in your existing organization or in the new organization. You will be just witnessing their growth.

4.By law of nature, you will grow only by helping others to grow. In the short term,  you may feel, you are not getting what you deserve, but in the long term, your growth depends on  winning mindset, accepting the change, helping others, seeing the big opportunities in the world!!.

Hence, in all dimensions, as a leader of your team, you should develop your team.

Would like to hear your perspective on this question!!

Dealing with setbacks

       In business or professional environment or in sports, when something goes wrong, the most affected person will be those who are headed the business or organization or function or team . Simply, the captain of the team. The challenge for the captain is to bring back the confidence of all stakeholders through quick actions and more than that managing self emotionally to overcome the setback.
       When we go through the successful peoples life stories, some common patterns emerge in their thought process and approach in dealing with setbacks

1.They use to feel gifted to lead a team either as captain or as owner of the business. They see the position as a responsibility. They internally feel and believe that if they are blessed with such privilege, they will also be blessed with to overcome any setback. It is more about taking the setback as  part of the divine play to make him strong

2.They strongly believe that failures are acceptable. This reflection protects them from self –sabotaging and think a way forward 

3.They deeply spend time with themselves to introspect the causes and mistakes they did. They  critically evaluate the assumptions, decision making process, management style  behaviors etc.  

4.They are quick to come out with an alternate plan and put into action

5.Single minded focus on execution till seeing the result 


It is not a problem falling down. How quickly we bounce back and strong reveal our true inherent strength.

Relooking at problems

     A rich man had many domestic related problems. To get solutions to his problems, he approached a saint and prayed for relief from his problems. The saint was quietly listening to the person‘s problem. The saint asked him to go out and pick up a pebble and he did so. The saint asked him to keep the pebble closer to eyes and look at the things around him. The seeker did so and replied he could not see anything else in his surroundings since the pebble obstructed everything. The saint had asked the seeker  to keep the pebble away from his eye and look again. Now the seeker  replied that he could able to see the pebble as well as other objects in the environment.

    The saint responded to the seeker, “Your problems are also like pebbles. When you look the problem very close and thinking on the same all the time, you could not see other good things in life. When you keep the problem away from you and look at the problem at different perspective, you can solve  problem as well as you can enjoy other things as well".

    In our life span, we may come across the problems in every moment, which may be tiny, insignificant and time specific. It depends on how we are looking at from a different perspective. If we introspect, most of the problems, we magnify as big and create panic within ourself. Just think about  a problem which you faced a year ago and how you responded to it and  realize the relevance or significance of that problem today.

It just requires  awareness on problems as they are part of life and how we look at problems makes a difference to our surroundings and us.

Business model with compassion and profitability

   Inspiring video about a person who started from scratch after retirement and built a great , profitable organization with more compassion to poor people. It talks about Vision, Values, Business model, Spirituality, Possibilities, and Compassion.

   Moreover, while most of us striving for operational excellence through lean system thinking in manufacturing segment, they had been practicing lean operation/ service management and brought efficiency. Actually, that efficiency made their service more affordable and competitive .One key insight leadership is all about vision and execution.

Thought that it is very  inspiring , learning experience and hence  sharing the link below

https://t.co/2HnW47rN81

Hope you enjoy this video…

Response to adversity

“Everyone goes through adversity in life, but what matters is how you learn from it”—Lou Holtz

       Everyone  goes through adversity in life at some point of time. What makes the difference between average and successful people is the interpretation or learning from such adversity  or  experiences. The way we are looking  at our experiences and taking further action only determines the growth.

       We may come across situations  wherein  our decision results in heavy financial loss or damages the reputation among peers or customers, etc.. Now  we  have three choices  which decide our  ability to overcome the adversity.

Choice of response 1:

    Feeling guilty and becoming sad about the  decision and the result. The consequence may be your self esteem may go down and you may be cribbing. Self pity will be increasing and no corrective or forward thinking will take place 

Choice of response 2:

    Start defending your position with justification. You tend to build logics to justify your  decision  or stand and in this process, you  refuse  to look at the truth. No learning takes place to improve further.

Choice of response 3:

     Take pause ,reflect on the decision making process and the analyse the impact .This may lead you to find more truth about mistakes done . Your mind tends to analyze the fact and accept the need for corrective action for growth. 

The choice response that you are choosing to any  adversity  or experiences  determines the further growth. Hence, be aware of your response to any adversity. 

The shift from “whom” to “what”

“Accept responsibility .Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else”.-- Les Brown

       Whenever we face any problem both family and professional environment, most of us  tend to blame the environment and cite the root cause of the problem as parents, friends, society, teachers, boss, colleagues, school, college or something else other than self. In this process, temporarily we may feel comfortable.The moment we blame and push the responsibility to others, the mind never attempts to find  alternatives  to overcome the problem.

       What is needed in that moment is a slight shift in mindset towards taking personal responsibility.When we accept personal responsibility for the outcome of the event, we tend to find out the solution. Moreover, we will not have the habit of blaming and complaining others. In addition, when we take personal responsibility, we take control of the situation. This mindset is one of the qualities of leadership. 

        For example, in an organization, when the problem comes in, most of the time, tendency to shift the focus on WHOM, the moment we shift the focus on people, we close our thinking process to solutions approach. Instead, when we shift the focus on “what,” mind cools down to think of solutions.

       It may be difficult for some people having this mindset naturally, but it is possible with AWARENESS and your life will be more rewarding as you are perceived  as a solution provider than problem creator.
        
        Hence, the key is to  accept the personal responsibility of life events, which is the first step towards achieving Growth!

Change @ Individual level

An interesting poem whose author is unknown, but thanks to his profound thought process

“When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world, 
I found difficult to change the world, so I tried to change the nation
When I found, I could not change the nation, I began to focus on my town
I could not change the town, and as an older man, I tried to change my family 
I could not change my family, as an old man, I realized, I can change myself
And suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself,
I could have made an impact on  my family,
My family and I could have made an impact on our town,
My town impact could have changed the nation and in turn, the world”

This reflects our attitude towards change either in organizational or  in a family environment.We assume that the change has to happen first at organizational level or higher positional level  and feel that as individuals we do  not have much influence or control. Instead the change  can be initiated at individual level  or functional level, which will trigger changes at the organizational level.

For example, you could have noticed that one person with the good thought process, intention may change the quality of discussion or perspectives in meetings. He changed his thought process first and could able to trigger to the entire gathering. 

Small, continuous change in our practices at the individual level or functional level  will have a ripple effect on the organization’s culture. Others can able to realize the change and always you can be the influence of change wherever you are! .

Executing an Idea

“Ideas are easy. It's the execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.” - Sue Grafton

      Have you ever come across an excellent idea which you believed would  transform you or your career or your business to the next level? But at the same time, you are inhibited with the laziness, fear of failure, fear of criticism from others, fear of success or exposure (some people have  fear of success or exposure!!!!), Skeptical about the idea worthiness etc..Later point of time, you became to know that the same idea or similar one  was implemented by someone  and you started  feeling guilty of not executing.

      The reason as stated above, most of the time, we are blocked with doubts, fear of any kind, more importance to other’s opinion etc..This is primarily due to a decision dilemma about the execution of ideas.

How to overcome this dilemma as from my personal experience  

1. Spiritual perspective:

Since you only get the idea initially, that means, it is with SOME PURPOSE. Believe it and start to execute the idea

2. Emotional perspective:

Visualize the pain you will be undergoing when someone is executing a similar idea at a later stage. To avoid the pain, start to execute the idea.

3. Rational perspective:

Think about best and worst things may happen if the idea is executed and your capacity to handle the consequence.

Once you evaluate from the above perspectives, either you come to conclusion to execute or not. In both cases, you would be happy, as you are free from guiltiness. Your peace of mind is important .
Happy living!

Environment Influences

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people are not used to an environment where excellence is expected”. Steve Jobs

    As you may aware that Koi fish is belonging to the ornamental fish category and generally used for decorative purposes in outdoor ponds. This fish has the ability to survive and adapt to any climate.The interesting characteristic is that it grows in accordance to where it lives. For example, if we keep the Koi fish in the bowl, it grows few centimeters length, and if it is in a larger tank, it grows to twice that length or in a pond, it grows to one foot or place it a large lake and it may grow over a meter long. To sum up, its growth depends on which environment it lives.**

     I think, this applies to human being as well. Our growth or ability to leverage the potential depends on which atmosphere or environment, we are living. The most influencing environments could be home and  professional environment. Home environment helps the child to pick up the right values and beliefs.
Especially in a professional environment, the learning ability and growth potential depends on the organization we work for and the leaders / managers we work with. The organizational environment enhances the person's potential and allows them to stretch. 

     To sum up, if leaders / managers create a learning environment wherein the individual learning experience, exposure can be maximized. Likewise, the parent is influencing the child to take on the values and beliefs from home environment. If it is so, is it not a responsibility for seniors to create a positive environment and facilitate the development of people?

**source: 50 stories &snippets for conference & workshop presentations by David Williams

Leadership Insight

You may be aware of E. Sreedharan, a man behind in modern metro rail transportation system in  India and popularly known as “Metro Man".His contribution as technocrats who modernized the country’s railway transportation to global standards. It could be Konkan rail lines which is known as one of the engineering excellence, or could be a modern metro rail  in Delhi. While most of us  were skeptical about metro solutions, the success of Delhi metro paved way for metro solutions in more than 20 cities in India.

Under his leadership, Delhi metro lines were completed before the due date and budget. His project management practices are  case studies  for aspiring project managers and business school students.

On understanding his background, now the leadership insight from him. 

Whenever a query asked about his lifetime achievement, everyone expects the answer could be some of his best work, like Konkan, Pamban bridge, or metro line etc. But he used to reply, “The important achievement in my life is I could able to instill the confidence to my engineers that enabled them to work competently”.

According to me, this is a very profound statement on leadership  and it is required in every organization that looks for transformation. As a leader of  an organization or our team, our primary  responsibility is showing the possibilities for the team, instill the confidence and backup them in any circumstances. People come from different background, level of competency  and confidence level and leader’s  job is to enhance the hope, positivity and confidence in them to deliver the best!.That is leadership.

Happy to see your comments on this leadership insight.

Prolonging Good times

In our life journey, everyone goes through good and tough times either in business and or in a professional environment. Most of us have a  tendency to enjoy too much during the good times and to get down too much during tough times. This mindset reflects our lack of maturity in understanding the nature of life, lack of clarity in dealing the life gift and uncertainties.

We may come across matured people who take any situation without much reaction and respond it in a positive way. According to them, all the situations are good time and they are good at the art of prolonging the good times or success forever.

The secret could be their mindset during good and tough times.

Mindset during good times:

• Not believing in permanence
• Looking for adversity soon and preparing themselves
• No overconfidence about their abilities and good times
• Surrendering all success to divine and free from self-pride
• Not arrogance with others 
• Continuously upgrading themselves

Mindset during tough times:

• Not believing in permanence and expecting turnaround soon
• Faith in divine  
• Continuously doing what they have been doing 

Getting into that level of mindset may not be easy for all. But striving for that level is all about maturity . The earlier we reach maturity; more it improves the quality  of life irrespective of good or bad times!

Infinite Vision (Book)

The inspiring book is all about the explaining the path of How Aravind Eye Care Hospital became the world’s greatest business case for compassion.

Authors: Pavithra K Mehta / Suchitra Shenoy

Context:

Dr.Govindappa Venkataswamy founded Aravind eye clinic with 11 beds  in 1976 after his retirement  in his hometown  in South India  .He had only one vision “To give sight for all” who has curable blind diseases with highest quality and affordable cost .Today Aravind eye care had treated more than 32 million patients and performed more than 4 million surgeries . In India, 5 % of the eye surgeries are being done by Aravind. 

Today Aravind eye care case study is mandatory reading for every MBA student at Harvard business school.

Started in a small way by a visionary person become the world greatest business case for compassion.

Excerpts from the book:

Aravind surgeons average 2000 cataract surgeries a year, against the Indian average of 400 surgeries and the US average of under 200.The efficiencies that enable to provide the lowest cost, highest quality eye care systems in the world.----

This is a model that demonstrates the power of integrating innovation with empathy, business principles with service and outer transformation with inner change. -----

To understand the Aravind model –one must look into the heart and the mind of the visionary surgeon who set it all into motion. ----

Recommend this book who would like to understand the power of vision and the leader’s compassion towards the humanity.It is inspiring to learn the process of how one person from the village made it happen in a span of 30 + years.

Also for manufacturing professionals, it is inspiring to learn how  they applied LEAN SYSTEM THINKING in their process to improve the efficiency  and made it  best cost in the world.

Overall, Inspiring book from an Indian background.

Dignity (Real Incident)

Recently ,I  was  waiting in Bangalore railway station to return to Chennai  and the time was around  10.30 pm .A young  boy was selling tea and he approached me to sell  it to me . As I did not have the appetite to have tea during that late hour and  politely refused.But, he  started requesting me to buy a cup. On looking his appearance and  his effort on persuading, I just started conversing with him.

In less than a minute , I gathered information  that  he was  studying  8th standard in nearby Government  school and his ambition was to become a  police officer  in life. During the chatting, he was insisting me to buy a cup of tea .As I wanted  to help him in a small way ( also I wasted his business time !!) ,I gave Rs 10 to him and said not inclined to  buy tea .He refused to accept  the offer  and said “please buy a cup of tea and offer me money  as charge for it".

I was touched by his dignity, bought the tea and paid Rs 10. He returned   the change Rs 2 to me and I told him  to keep that with him. This time , he is very firm, smiley  and politely replied , “I earn my money through my service , not  by other means” and  lifted his tea carrier and moved from that place.

I stunned  with his dignity,  attitude , clarity of thoughts , firmness at this young age.

After this incident, the  following questions  were lingering in the mind  

1.Who had taught him “receiving anything with dignity  and not accept anything free”. ?
2.Where did he learn the persuasion skill  to sell his product to strangers?
3.What kind of determination, he has about his aspiration despite the current  family situation?
4.Is it not a “Divine GIFT” in living with dignity, positive approach about life  despite all the temporary shortcomings?


Pl write your comments 

Iceberg Principle

      One of the management principles used for problem solving approach in organizational environment is iceberg principle .The same principle can be applied for personal excellence.

      The iceberg principle* says that the majority of our efforts are invisible to the eye just as the majority of the ice mass of an iceberg is underwater, so is the majority of the hard work it takes to deliver good results in any endeavor.
As most of us aware, that before Edison invented the concept of light bulb, there were various versions of the light bulb, but without practical, affordable, durable and inexpensive for home illumination. Edison experimented with six thousands materials and finally succeeded. The inventor knew that his invention was going to change the lifestyle and this drove his relentless experimentation. He did not care how much experimentation, he should conduct. He kept on going until he had an inexpensive, long lasting electrical bulb. What external world knows only the outcome, not much aware of the hard work gone into that.This is iceberg principle.


       How do we make it useful to our lives? It is good way to remind ourselves that the most accomplishment happens in life after series of hard work and effort.We need to show up every day with our best effort and this small shift in mindset make a big difference in our lives.Even sometimes our work does not produce immediate results,we need not get disappointed.It is better to keep working towards the purpose or goal than to give room for inner doubts, rejections, and disappointments. Historically that is how great accomplishment done and great people demonstrated..!.

* source courtesy : The Excellence Habit ..Vlad Zachary

Building Trust

  “The ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust is the key professional and personal competency of our time – Stephen Covey

Building trust is important for personal,professional and business growth.

What is meant by Trust?

 It is others in your relationship,should believe that you are genuine,your product or service is genuine,or you are capable of doing something worthy,your product or service is worthy.

How Trust can be built? 

Trust  can be built based on “Consistent action and delivery” over a period of time. It is not one time effort or performance. Generally, based on our past consistent behavior or actions, others come to form perception, that is trust.

For example, in a professional environment, if you are consistent in keeping up your commitment  every time, others start trusting you as “committed”.Alternatively, if you commit something and everytime you show up with excuse, others form perception that you are "not dependable". This way only, you build the perception   about you to others.

Similarly, in business, your customers build the trust about your product or service based on the consistent performance of your product or quality of service, how your organization responds to customers.

Hence, building trust is not one time effort, it is CONSISTENT EFFORT and if you would like to preserve the relationship with team, customers, family members or advance your professional growth, do any good thing consistently over a period of time and build trust as this helps your growth !!!

Managing Expectation -Part 9

As we had discussed some of the insights and problems in managing the expectation of others, both in professional and personal life, now we discuss the solutions, approach to manage the expectation as it is difficult to fulfill the expectation always. 

Solution approach to manage the expectation:

1. Taking responsibility  to improve the competency
2. Improving  communication skill / feedback, giving and receiving 
3. Deciding  the choice and accepting consequences

Having discussed first two solutions approach, we discuss the third solutions approach

Deciding the choice and accepting the consequences:

It is very difficult to fulfill all the expectation of others, even though others are related to us in one way or another. To some extent, we can take effort to improve our competency, communication, and interpersonal capabilities to manage the expectation. Most importantly, we can decide the priority in life or decide which relationship we would like to preserve most. Based on the choice or decision, we manage the expectation. However, we need to accept the consequence once the choice or decision taken.

For example, you come across better career advancement opportunity, but you are rejecting the opportunities to fulfill the expectation of your family members. That is your choice and it may be good for you. Once you decide the choice, accept any consequence of career growth. The problem arises only when you are not accepting the consequence and internally feeling guilty about your choice. 

Ultimately, you need to decide which is important to you, which relationship you want to preserve most, take a decision, and accept the consequence happily. This mindset is required for balanced growth and happy life.

Managing Expectation part 8

As we had discussed some of the insights and problems in managing the expectation of others, both in professional and personal life, now we discuss the solutions, approach to manage the expectation as it is difficult to fulfill the expectation always. 

Solution approach to manage the expectation:

1. Taking responsibility  to improve the competency
2. Improving  communication skill / feedback, giving and receiving 
3. Deciding  the choice and accepting consequences

Improving communication skill / feedback, giving and receiving:

      In professional life, we are struggling to meet the expectation of others or others are not up to our expectation is probably due to our inability to express our requirement very clearly… Expressing our requirements clearly is the art of communication and developing this skill is a life long effort as we need to deal with different people, with different situation and we are at different level of maturity.

      One technique we can use in a professional environment is PURPOSEFUL COMMUNICATION. when we ask for any details from team, we can go one step further by explaining why we need the data, when exactly we need, how this data would be useful .By explaining this in detail, we respect others as individual  and there is likely  less chance for  misunderstanding the expectation.

      Also developing the skill of giving the right feedback at the right time to others when things are not going as per our expectation helps to correct the situation as well as to improve the relationship. Similarly, we can develop the EGO free attitude for asking feedback from others when we are not clear on the communication or expectation of others.