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.