The Choices We Make!

”Daag achche hain,” (literally, stains are good) pronounces the detergent ad. The unusual value proposition has been hailed for its out-of-the-box thinking. 

In quite the same fashion, one finds leaders who think ‘stress is good’ or ‘hyperacidity is good’ and wear it as a badge of honour. Both stress and hyperacidity are good things to have, they seem to tell themselves, for aren't they signs that they are ‘working hard’?

Why do leaders, even when they are aware that both signs are detrimental to their health, persist in neglecting these body's warning signals?  Because the brain is our friend and supports our choices. This is what psychologists call a choice-supportive bias, a regret-minimizing process our brain uses - we chose the option, therefore it MUST be good.

‘Daag achche hain!’

Your Goals Need High-octane Fuel

The dictionary defines the word vector as “(to) direct (an aircraft in flight) to a desired point.” In life too,  one needs an appropriate vector to guide us to our desired goals. And my client B needed one.
Over the years since he had joined his father in his business, he had progressively moved into an increasingly executive role. With his father involving himself less and less in the business, he was now at the cusp of a critical decision - how should he now define his role to himself?
Enter the coach.
Over two intense coaching conversations, wide ranging at first and funneling into more focused ones, he gradually arrived at a role definition which proved a powerful vector. And that was the role of a ‘Change agent’.
This role definition has proved to be transformational, providing him clarity of action and purpose. And this has translated into more satisfying outcomes

When Work Takes on New Meaning

She is an engaging storyteller and writes from the heart. A quality she brings, along with determination and enthusiasm, to her work as the joint CEO of her husband’s family business. She manages the business administration, while her husband looks after the demand generation.
In an an initial coaching conversation, she had concluded that she was a ‘Doer’. That is how she saw herself. In the next coaching conversation,  she refined this label to ‘Enabler’.
And this translated into subtle, but dramatic gains in her way of functioning.
The dictionary defines a ‘Doer”’as a, “person who acts rather than merely talking or thinking,” and an ‘Enabler’ as “a person...that makes something possible.”
Redefining her role as an ‘Enabler Doer’ has helped her to manage her admin staff in a manner that effectively supports her husband's leading role in steering the company to success.

The Power of Story

When I asked him what his values were, he looked a bit lost. After some thought, he said the 7 Habits book had influenced him greatly. But as a coach,  I saw a difference between ‘influencing’ and ’driving’. For, values not only influence - they drive every one of our actions and define our emotional states. Experiences aligning with our values are considered reward and violation a threat.
So I had to make him think deeper.
The solution?  Tell a story, a personal experience that shaped my own life. I shared one such, and voilà, he immediately came up with five of his own values.
That's the power of the story. It has the power to shift your thinking.

Fundamentals of Building Trust

Arun Maira, erstwhile member of the Planning Commission, tells an anecdote of the Tata brand’s distinction of earning the trust of society by its values. Soon after WW II ended in 1946, the board of KraussMaffei, a large German engineering conglomerate met chairman JRD Tata and Sumant Moolgaonkar (CEO of the fledgling Telco) on the platform of the bombed out Munich station. India was under British rule,  and German and Indian companies could not any legal agreements among themselves. The Germans requested Tatas to take their jobless technicians and their families to India. They will teach you all they know; please take care of them them, is all we ask, they said. And thus Tatas learnt metal-working from the best of the best. Many years later when India gained  independence, a letter arrived at the KraussMaffei HQ. Now that we can, how much shall we pay you for the technology you have provided us, it asked. That letter has become a legend in the company of what trust means. You honour your debt, even when it's not legally binding, and even when it's not demanded of you.

Learning
Trust is not built through legal contracts between parties. It is built by doing the right thing by others always.

Communicating to Win

The internal memo Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sent out to rally his staff amid reports of uncertain future, is an object lesson on personalised leadership communication. He sets the tone by saying, :”....There’s a lot I could say, but there is only one thing I wanted to say: Thank you.” Talking next of how Twitter is still the first choice of people everywhere for news, he ends by expressing gratitude for members of his immediate team. And this is the most interesting part. Each pen sketch lists Dorsey’s observations of his team member's unique attributes such as drive, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, attention to detail etc. It ends with a humorous mention of the member's personal habit or quirk which strikes a personal chord.

A few examples:
Adam Bain - “constant use of when!!
Kayvon  - “tendency to chew on his hoodie sweater.”
Leslie - “2x talk speed.”
Omid - “how he’s changed everything he owns to a shade of blue.”
Sierra - “ability to be in two places at the same time.”
Vijaya - “secret love for McDonald’s (to the point of having a McDonald’s iPhone case).

MyLearning
Good communication, minute observation skills and a great sense of humour, can be a powerful mix for effective leadership. It can help hold teams together in a crisis and in good times, help build a culture in which trust can thrive.

Harnessing The Power of Appreciation

Does harnessing the power of recognition help boost your team performance?
Yes it does.
That's the conclusion drawn from a year-long survey conducted by journalist Janice Kaplan. 90% of people surveyed said that a grateful boss was more likely to be successful.
For instance, throughout his tenure, Doug Conant ex-CEO of the Campbell Soup Company, sent more than 30,000 handwritten thank you notes. When Conant was in hospital recovering from a serious car accident, employees across the globe reciprocated his acts of recognition by sending him get-well notes.
Showing appreciation is part of a leader's job, “...but recognising it, saying thank you, letting them know that it wasn't for nought really can go a very far way,” says Kaplan.
Source: Businessinsider

Call to Action
In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg challenged himself to write a thank-you not everyday.

Is that a challenge worth undertaking?

The Values Compass

“When I first came into the industry, I wanted my work to speak for myself and my aim was to earn a good name. Over the years,  my priorities changed and I wanted to make more money. But in the last four years, I’m back to square one. My character certificate became important for me.” - Actor Prabhudeva

Insight
Our values determine the choices we make. The priority of values tend to change as our definition of success changes. It is a good idea to revisit our values periodically to determine whether the things we do and the behaviours we exhibit are in sync with our values. Old or new.

The Secret of Learning

“I am just constantly curious and confused”, says actor Tom Hanks….”I am always pondering about this concept about how a particular force of thought gets started? “Be it history,  art,  theology and architecture...I am constantly inquisitive about how we got here and why do we behave the way we do”.

Insight
To be curious requires an open mind and to admit to being confused, a lot of courage. The two together give the mind the strength to range across a variety of bodies of knowledge to know, to learn and to grow.

What is Happiness

Happiness means different things to different people.  For instance, to Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, it means having varied experiences and not being apologetic about it.  To actress Kareena Kapoor Khan, it means caring about, and spending time with the family, while to fellow actress Kalki Koechlin it is about being resilient and maintenance of daily life.

Call To Action
Happiness is our true wealth and should be on top of every seeker's agenda. Did you know you can actually retrain your brain and learn to be happy?

Ready to Go? Complete this sentence:
Happiness to me is….

The Importance of Acknowledging Others

“it is only natural to congratulate the person who has gone past you.” believes Sunil Gavaskar. So when Sachin Tendulkar equaled his record of 34 Test centuries he sent him a crate of 34 champagne bottles. When Allan Border reached 10,000 Test runs, he sent him a  congratulatory fax. Conversely, when Gavaskar surpassed the 10,000 runs record set by Geoffrey Boycott, there was no response from Boycott. The reason - “(he) … thinks he is ½% better than me”.

Point to Ponder
Acknowledging the work of others calls for a healthy self-esteem & humility. It's also a significant marker of great Leadership.

Acting With Purpose

Ananya, daughter of Kumar Mangalam Birla, sports a tattoo - it says ‘Conquer’. Asked whether it was a mark of what she had accomplished or what her to-do plans were, she said the word meant a lot to her,“Everyone has mornings you don't feel like getting out of bed.  I see it and think,  ‘I have to conquer the day’. Whether it's to conquer a new song or venture or my fear…..”

CALL TO ACTION
‘Purpose’ is a person's sense of resolve or determination. It is a lens that helps to focus everything you do into a single point action.
What's yours?
A coach can help you do it quickly and enjoyably.

Challenging Yourself

Since 2009, Mark Zuckerberg has set himself an annual personal challenge. Starting off with a personal challenge of ‘Wear a tie every day’, he progressed to ‘Learning Mandarin’ and ‘Read a new book every two weeks’ - among others. For 2016, he has himself the personal challenge to build an AI assistant that would let him control music, lights and temperature using his voice and alert him to anything might need his attention in his daughter's room. Along the way,  he has also set himself mini challenges like changing his baby's nappy in 20 seconds.

Business Point
Setting yourself challenges which require grit, determination and perseverance, gives the drive to succeed both on personal as well as business fronts.

Picture source: Fast Company

The Virtues of Being Competitive

Author Antonio Garcia Martinez believes Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, has been wrongly portrayed in the movie Social Network. “...on the contrary, he’s actually very alpha and dominant,” says Martinez,  “He’s the sort of guy who, if you challenge him that he can't do 100 pushups,  he'll bet a million dollars that he can,  and he'll win.“
Zuckerberg also took three months off to help his wife look after his first-born. "I am a competitive guy,” he boasted, “I time myself to get and better, and I got  (nappy changing) down to 20 seconds.”

INSIGHT
Competitiveness has it’s healthy side too!

The Leader's Quest

“The way I found that works for me is I theme my days. On Monday…... I focus on management and running the company…Tuesday is focused on product. Wednesday is focused on marketing and communications and growth. Thursday is focused on developers and partnerships. Friday is focused on the company and the culture and recruiting. Saturday I take off, I hike. Sunday is reflection, feedback, strategy, and getting ready for the week.” - Jack Dorsey, CEO Twitter

#BusinessPoint
The constant quest for a wise leader is how to reduce the humongous into the doable, and the complex to the simple.

The Millennium Leader

“The golden rule of conduct is mutual toleration, seeing that we will all never think alike and we always see truths in fragments and different points of vision.” - Mahatma Gandhi

#Businesspoint
More  pronounced than the diversity of views and opinions among individuals, the diversity is even more between generations.  Leaders managing a workforce spanning generations need to be aware of, navigate through,  and manage multiple ‘truths’

Encouraging Innovation

For the 2014 April Fool prank, Google and the Pokémon Go teamed up for the Google Maps Pokémon Challenge, in which players had to comb the globe virtually to catch 'em all. Could the virtual game be set in real life, thought John Hanke, the inventor of the game. He took the idea forward, resulting in the worldwide runaway success.

#Businesspoint
Innovation is one part serendipity and three parts possibility mindset, persistence and creativity. Leaders needs to nurture and encourage all parts.

True Greatness

Two men landed on the moon, Armstrong and Aldrin, stepping on the moon within twenty minutes of each other. The feat is well documented and Armstrong went down in history as the first man on the moon. Yet he never capitalised on it.
Two men reached Mt. Everest - Hillary and Norgay. No one, apart from the two,  knew who was the first to do so - and they decided to keep it so. Much later Tenzing revealed in his memoirs that Hillary was the first man on Everest.

INSIGHT
Both Armstrong and Hillary could have chosen to project themselves as great heroes. That they did not, shows their true greatness.

A Window to Our Souls

The late music great David Bowie was an avid collector of art, which he kept private in his lifetime.Artist and writer Matthew Collins says, “I think he was an absolutely genuinely enthusiastic collector who didn't collect to be swanky or big himself up. He really collected because he had a use for that work and it was a personal use. He looked at those things and they changed his state of being“.

INSIGHT
We can harness our passion either for our personal pleasure, or for personal gain. How we use it, reveals who we are & the manner in which we value it..

Kaleidoscope Thinking

“A kaleidoscope is a device for seeing patterns. They’re made up of a set of fragments, but it’s a flexible set of fragments, so that if you twist it or look at it from a different angle you can see a different pattern. So, in fact, it’s not reality that it is fixed, it’s often our view of reality.
Leaders have to shake people out of their orthodoxy and get them to see that a new pattern is possible. So it’s all about seeing new possibilities.” - Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Call to Action
What new possibility do you see for yourself and your team today, that you would like to see realized?

Doing What's Right For You

Liz Wessel is a former Googler, and at 26, already the CEO of her own startup. She attributes her success to two pieces of advice she received. The first was to say yes to taking risks and trying new things, and the second;  to not chase money but happiness.

INSIGHT
Eminently good piece of advice no doubt, but not everything that works for others, may work for you. So, before accepting the thoughts of others, ask yourself:
Are they
- resonating with me?
- in alignment with my values?
- applicable to me this stage of my life?
If yes, then embrace and practice the thoughts.

What Is A True Success Metric?

“For me, a peaceful night's sleep means true success.” - Actor Jimmy Shergill

INSIGHT
Good things and bad things keep happening to us, but it's not what happens that affects us, it's how we react to it, that does. So there cannot be a better criteria of success than a good night's sleep. It proves that we have managed to win the daily wars raging inside us.

Life Transitions

“To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don't isolate.” Michael Jordan, billionaire basketball star

INSIGHT
The journey from acquiring to contributing, from taking to giving, from looking without to looking within,  is the journey from doing to being. Each of us makes the transition in different ways, at different stages in our lives.

Raise The Bar

After his first audition, a casting director told actor Sidney Poitier, “Why don’t you stop wasting people’s time and go out and become a dishwasher or something?” It was at that moment, recalls Poitier, that he decided to devote his life to acting. He wasn’t going to let someone else decide his life path. - John Mason, Expect to Win

INSIGHT
Words dig deep. Deep enough to hurt and scar, or deep enough to raise the bar on the determination to succeed.

Stories Worth Telling

“Australian Aborigines say that the big stories—the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life—are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush.”  — Robert Moss, DreamGates

Let Leadership Coach Uday help you
to SCOUT, SPOT and CAPTURE the
meaningful stories STALKING you,
and make them your OWN

Contact
uday@arurbizcoach.com

What Is Your Definition?

Using the census definition, India is 31% urban. But if we apply Ghana’s definition of urban, India is 47% urban, and if we apply Mexico’s definition, India is 65% urban.

INSIGHT
Clearly, everything in life and matters is a product of definition, whether it is our country's population, or the GDP number.
Or for that matter your definition of; happiness or failure, wealthy or poor.
So whose definition do you wish to apply - someone else's, or your own?

When Was The Last Time You Checked Your Beliefs?

Belief is like a personal guidebook to reality: it tells us not just what is factually correct but also right and good. It fundamentally informs our behaviour. It would be nice to think these guidebooks are reliable and dispassionate, but it has become clear that they are not. Beliefs are largely a product of our fallible psychology, gut feeling, the company we keep and biological differences such as how easily we scare. -  Graham Lowton,  New Scientist,

My Learning
Beliefs are born of our experiences, context and time. It is worthwhile to  evaluate the validity of our beliefs periodically.

The Digital Nomads

“The Millennials view of success isn't necessarily a house, a well paying job and a (white) picket fence. There's a huge shift towards defining success as working in terms of things that one truly believes in, and appreciating experiences over material possessions.” - Karoli Hindriks, owner Jobbatical, a site for digital job hunters on a global scale.

INSIGHT
In the 60’s and 70’s too, Western youth were looking for what they believed in. They were the drug-induced  peace-seeking nomads. In the present globally connected times the Millennial digital nomads earn their way through experiences.

It Is All About Perspective

A college freshman wrote a letter to her parents. In the beginning, she told her parents that her skull fracture was healing, the fire wasn't so bad after the janitor offered to let her stay with him, and, oh, by the way, they were expecting a baby together. Her last paragraph revealed that she had no skull fracture, no fire, no janitor, & pregnancy, but she did get a “D” in chemistry & just wanted to put the bad grades into the proper perspective. - From Influence: Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini,

INSIGHT
Success or Failure, Happy or Sad, everything is relative - a matter of perspective.

Building A 21st Century Career

According to academic and career theorist Prof. Michael Arthur, there are three types of career based investments that people can make:
1. Knowing why: Deals with how and why people derive meaning out of their work and learning.
2. Knowing how: Covers skills and expertise that will be in demand for a particular industry.
3. Knowing whom: Involves building and managing one's social network of peers.

INSIGHT
Managing a 21st century career requires being entrepreneurial - continuously seeking out opportunities to develop, renew and enhance your skills and abilities.
A coach helps to accelerate the process of discovery and growth.

Living By The Pareto Principle

"I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community….And I feel like I'm not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life.” - Mark Zuckerberg on why he wears a grey t-shirt all the time.

INSIGHT
Zuckerberg is very clear about the vital few in his life.
He believes in serving his FB community to the bare inclusion of everything else in his life. But on becoming a father in November last year, he took two months off to help his wife take care of the baby. Being a competitive person, he even invested time and effort in trying to bring his baby’s diaper changing time down to 20 seconds. He succeeded!

The Irrational Mind

In the United States, net immigration from Mexico has been at zero since 2010, but Republican primary voters still cheered Donald Trump’s promise to build a wall on the southern border as though it would solve whatever was worrying them. - A New York Times report

INSIGHT
Human beings are predictably irrational, says author and professor of psychology Dan Ariely. A wise leader is one who can channel his people's irrational emotions into productive action, by focusing not on emotions, but on behaviour. 

Power of The Story

“Retelling a story about the habits, mannerisms daily goals of successful people puts you one step closer to learning (& teaching others) how to recreate their results. Find people who have the skills you want. Study their stories, & tell their stories. We tend to teach what we need to learn, & I can't think of a better way to do it” - Annette Simmons in Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins

INSIGHT
Learning from the stories of others is the simplest way to learn. My personal collection of over 700 stories is my treasure of learning into which I dip to revive and refresh myself.

Being Authentic is a Choice

Lionel Messi announced his retirement from international football yesterday after Argentina lost again in the Copa America final. Often the lightning rod for criticism. He has been questioned about not singing his country's national anthem. “I get annoyed by the people who attack you without thinking“ he said, “I won't sing the anthem on purpose. I don't need to sing it to feel it. It reaches me. Every person feels it in their own way.”

INSIGHT
Is it brave, or is it foolish, to choose be authentic to yourself when emotionally charged situations demand a certain form of expression of behaviour?

Fostering Innovation

Leaders can foster creativity by setting goals with clear boundaries but at the same time breaking all the rules, often unspoken. Our creativity and innovation is often capped by these unspoken rules, which condition our thinking process. - Franklin Tang, CEO Philip Tang and Sons

INSIGHT
An organization's spoken rules define the ’musts’, while the unspoken ones define the ’shoulds’. Articulating the unspoken, transforms them into ’coulds’.

Why We Seek Meaning in Life

“...the human need for meaning reaches into the far recesses of our life and ensures that eventually nothing is left blank. We adorn, embellish, categorise, make ladders of hierarchy out of everything.” - Santosh Desai on LinkedIn

INSIGHT
Why is the human need for meaning so compulsive? After his experiences in a Nazi death camp, Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl realised it was essential for our spiritual survival. Frankl's theory holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.

Transitions

“There's no one fish saying, “Hey, I want everyone to be about five inches away from someone else, and we're going to have this shape”. That is physicist Dr Neil Johnson, describing transitions in nature such as in a flock of birds or a school of fish.

INSIGHT
Could the bunch of variables in our lives such as relationships, resources and contexts have a similar mysterious trigger in shaping human transitions?

Life is Lived in the Hours

“A life is lived in hours. What we do with our lives will be a function of how we spend those hours, and we only have so many … Life is full and life has space.” - Laura Vanderkam in the Busy Person’s Lies.

INSIGHT
Life is full and life has space, both statements are true. Evaluate your own time and discover how you can repurpose it to do things you find fulfilling.

The Secret of Good Relationships

The China Disneyland was inaugurated recently. One of the actions CEO Robert Iger took to push the deal, was to seek a personal relationship with China’s paramount leader, President Xi Jinping. On learning that Xi’s father, a revolutionary leader, had visited Disneyland in 1980, he pressed his staff to find a photograph. They found one which showed the President’s father, wearing a Mao suit, shaking hands with Mickey Mouse. Iger presented the photo to the leader as gift and a symbol of the partnership.

INSIGHT
Poor, peasant, privileged or president we all love to be made to feel special.

Leaving a Legacy

Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma already has an eye to posterity. He tells investors that more than 90 percent of key company meetings, decisions and events have been recorded  on video to be analysed by future generations studying his company.

INSIGHT
When we are conscious of the legacy we are leaving behind, our present becomes motivated and energised by the envisioned future.

Our Two Worlds

“We live in two worlds: one that is given and the other that is provoked by the attention we pay to it.” - Villem Flusser, Philosopher

Insight
We live in two worlds  - the subjective world and the objective. The objective world is as it exists and the subjective world is the one we create from our experiences filtered through our senses. Occasional cleaning of the filters through reflection and introspection helps remove biases and prejudices.

The Power of 'Our Story'

The entire cast of the award winning film Thithi, comprises locals of a Karnataka village. Asked how he got such incredible performances from them, the film’s director R. Reddy explained there are two approaches to dealing with non-actors:
1. Don't tell your cast anything and create a work of art that only you know.
2. Tell them everything they need to know and understand to own and deliver a performance from their ‘within’ rather than your ‘within’.

INSIGHT
When the leader shares ‘his story’ with his people, it becomes ‘their story’, which becomes the canvas for together painting the larger ‘our story’.

Stories are Mindseeds

....And stories have this simple and elegant charm about them. They create “mind seeds” for positive impact - from cave dwellings to digital walls.” - Julie Roehm, Chief Storyteller SAP

INSIGHT
Within the mindseeds created by stories, lie a flexible template ready for our experiences to be overlaid on them. The practice of periodically overlaying our different experiences on the evolving template creates deep learning, leading to lasting life lessons.

Who is 'The Customer'?

THOUGHT STUDY # 4
Marketing-software firm Hubspot wants to put its customers into a state of “delightion”. Employees are entitled to unlimited free food and vacation time. One of the founders of the company brings a teddy bear to meetings so that the idea of “the customer” they want to delight is less abstract.

THINK
What does  the term ‘customer’ imply to:
- You
- Your organization?

Finger or Figure?

THOUGHTS STUDY #3
Bing architect Craig Miller and his team run thousands of experiments a day. And whether it's a bug or a bad idea, there isn't going to be any finger pointing. “Zero blame,” emphasises Miller. “It has to be a learning culture, a culture that says ’we're going to learn from this‘.”

THINK
If an important project doesn't go the way it was meant to:
- How does your organisation treat it?
- How do you feel and act about it?
Who or what needs to change?

Problem Solving and Visualization

“I am a technology person who looks at any problem as a black box. Looking at a problem as a black box allows me not to be biased by the nature of the problem.Then we can find a solution dispassionately.” - M Jagadesh Kumar, VC JNU

Insight
Adopting or adapting visualization tools,  techniques and concepts borrowed from professional, spiritual and experiential fields, can become effective problem-solving methods. - #TheThinkingCoach
Image: litemind

The Difficulty of Being Yourself

“I fight to be myself everyday in a world where we are constantly pressurised to be someone else” - Actor Kalki Koechlin in a statement about battling sexual abuse.

Insight
Man or woman, young or old, we are all of us constantly under pressure by our relationships, our workplace culture and society to be someone else. The boundaries we draw around each situation shifts in tune with our personal goals, life phase and perceived danger to our physical, mental and spiritual well being.

On The Virtues of Being Shameless

Can being shameless be a virtue? Kunal Shah, founder Freecharge thinks so. He believes it's a trained behavior because we want to fit in. But fitting in, he says, is a very dangerous thing because success is all about not fitting in. To him, people who are shameless ask for help, are more open to taking risks and do well in life.

Insight
A lot of pain in our life is caused by the labels we use to define it. Shameless or bold, virtue or vice, failure or learning, rich or poor are all self-chosen labels. Change the label, redefine, rejuvenate and address the pain - or relapse.

Living a Life of Conviction

British star Carla Delevingne had bid goodbye to modelling to make a career in films, but has returned to it to become the face of Chanel’s eyewear. On her decision to to return to modeling,  Carla says, “Over time, I came to realise that work and getting others’ approval isn't the most important thing”.

Insight
Life is a constant struggle between wanting to fit in, approval-seeking behaviour and wanting to do one's own thing. The last requires conviction and courage.

Putting Ideas into Action

“I do use cookbooks myself. It's a myth that chefs don't. I own about 3500. Can I learn anything from all these books? Of course I can. You can use a book for ideas, but you can't learn to cook from books. That's impossible. There has be some natural flair”. - Gordon Ramsay in Humble Pie.

Insight
The process of learning new things and exploring & experimenting with ideas is lifelong. But it's only when you start executing on the ideas, that the process is complete.

Action
Is it time you considered putting the ideas in your mind into action?

It is time you contacted Coach Uday the Thinking Coach.

Hands On and Hands Off Leadership

Xiaomi cofounder Bin Lin knows how to lead by example. On a day the company launched it's latest phone, packages were to go within hours of orders coming in. With thousands of deliveries in the pipeline, the pressure was on the assembly line, which was falling short of hands. Lin, apparently, jumped in and personally packed several of the phones to ensure timely shipments. The first phone was delivered to a buyer within a record time of two hours from the flash sale closing.

Insight
Wisdom in leadership lies in not only choosing when to be a hands-on leader, but also when to be hands-off.

Charismatic Leadership

The Vijay Mallya debt saga has become the subject of case study at B-schools. The IIM-B study is focused on corporate governance. It discusses the need of organisations to balance the interests of 5 stakeholders - customers, owners, employees, suppliers & society - for consistent high performance. Learning lies in how excessive focus on ‘pampering’ customers, or the obsession in companies to meet the interest of ’owners’ can lead to disaster.

Insight
Charismatic leadership is a double-edged sword. It brings results, but proves disastrous when the leader starts feeling s/he knows best.

Celebrate Both Success and Failure

"In our culture deck, which I like to show to a new team member coming in...one of the main things we talk about is not celebrating," says Siminoff (founder of startup Ring). "I see these startups celebrating every new funding round, and the reality is that there are always bad things that are going to happen to your business. I think it's really important to keep the team realistic." - Anna Hensel in Inc.

Insight
Not celebrating is overdoing things. Both failure as well as success need to be viewed realistically, so why not celebrate ‘learning’ in failure and a ‘job well done’ in success?