Friday 26 August 2016

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!

Sunday 21 August 2016

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.

Wednesday 10 August 2016

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. 

Friday 5 August 2016

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

Wednesday 27 July 2016

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!

Wednesday 20 July 2016

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

Tuesday 12 July 2016

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 .