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!