Learning to be a CEO

“No one is born a CEO, this is an acquired skill”, says Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston. Furthermore he says, you learn the skills on the job.
So what are the key skills in the journey to learning to be a CEO? The journey has three stages to it:
Stage 1: Followership
This stage calls for reflection on one's personal values and belief systems and attempt to bring about congruence between them and those of the immediate boss and the organization.
This stage can very often call for great soul-searching and can be quite tortuous.

Stage 2: Managership
This stage calls for learning  new execution skills - trusting others to deliver just as well as you, building collaborative teams and learning to balance between giving too much control and too much leeway to team members

Stage 3: Leadership
As a CEO one has to graduate from managing people to managing ideas. Not only does one need come up with one's own Ideas that inspire people,  but also to encourage your people to think and to come up with ideas of their own. This means learning the key skills of empathy and listening.

Success is a Greedy Mistress

Success is a greedy demanding mistress. To begin with, she makes small demands - all she is looking for is your passion to be in the game to woo her. But as you gain wins and with It the heart of success, her demands become increasingly greedy - winning not just for the sake of winning,  but for all that it brings in its train - money, fame and status.

This is what I call ‘The Greed of Success’.

Take the example of the Aizawl football club which won this year's I-league championship. To start with, they just wanted to see the best way they play the tournament and lose less. But with time and wins over the giants of football, they became more confident. They started thinking they could finish as the runners-up and ended up winners of the championship and winning the prize money off Rs 1 cr! After the win, Captain Alfred Jaryan said - they don't play for money - ‘money can come in the way of true performance’. ‘We just put our heads down and try to achieve as much as we can’.

Let us pray Dame Success doesn't claim another victim.

How to Become An Expert at Anything

Cricketer AB De Villiers is one of the best strikers of the ball. Asked whether the new rule about reduced bat sizes will affect his game, De Villier’s responded; “I know what makes me good, and it's not a bat. I think I have a natural hitting ability...it's a combination of self-belief, talent and hard work. It's the 10,000 hour rule”.

This rule of ‘deliberate practice’, was first postulated by Bloom and Anders Ericsson. Deliberate practice is not only about practicing what you already know, but also about what you are uncomfortable doing?

Read more about it in this article from The Harvard Business Review, The Making of am Expert.
http://bit.ly/2qGIWSg

What is Learning Ability?

So you thought the knowledge of homeopathy and the practice of yoga is beneficial only for keeping people healthy? Rajiv Bajaj  has different ideas.
A key principle in homeopathy is that the cause of all disease is endogenous (unlike allopathy which attributes the environment also as a cause). Applying this thought to his organisation, Bajaj surmised that all organisational problems were rooted within the system.
Similarly, ultimate success in yogic postures lies in their steadiness and balance. Bajaj applied this same thought to the brand positioning of his motorcycles. Bajaj believes application of ideas and concepts from one body of knowledge to another results in the generation of a new language for addressing challenges and issues.

Learning ability therefore lies in how creatively and effectively you are are able to apply and transfer ideas and concepts of knowledge in one field, to the resolution of issues in another.

Read the whole story here:
http://bit.ly/2q4BnUW

Learning Agility in Today's Times

According to the book The Knowledge Illusion, we think we know a lot but individually know very little. Reason?  We treat knowledge in the minds of others as if it were our own. This may have it's downside as the knowledge of others may not be trustworthy.
But when Indigo Airlines flights were delayed due to a problem faced by flight crews, the CEO turned to his friend Rajiv Bajaj for help. Bajaj suggested a shopfloor technique which solved the problem.
Learning agility in today's times is about the speed with which the right knowledge is accessed, from the right source at the right time.
http://bit.ly/2q6HMCg

To Reflect is to Transform

One of the greatest powers humans have and other living creatures don't, is the power of reflection. It is reflection on the meaning of things,  seeking patterns and design in situations that has made the human race great.

Reflection centred on sorrow transformed a prince into the founder of Buddhism.

Reflection centred on the futility of war transformed a mighty, ruthless king to embrace Buddhism and spread the message of peace.

Reflection centred on life during a health breakdown, made the hard working editor and publisher of a popular magazine to realise that success has a third metric - and it is not money and power.

Reflection centred on the evils of colonialism on being evicted from a first class coach by an  Englishman, prompted Gandhiji to come up with the idea of Ahimsa or nonviolence to fight racism and colonialism. And to set him apart from human beings and become a Mahatma.

Reflection centred on the priorities of the human hierarchy of needs triggered by coming face-to face-to with poverty, made Bill Gates realise treating malaria was more important than connectivity. And the world's richest man turned philanthropist.

Reflection centred on  innovation has made people like Elon Musk and companies like Google and 3M come with ground-breaking products.

Yes, it makes sense to harness the power of reflection!

Following Your Heart

Do you have this burning desire that you are destined for more? Harsha Bhogle, who graduated as a chemical engineer and has a degree from IIM Ahmedabad, followed his passion for  cricket. He chose to become a cricket commentator, find success and manage to make a comfortable living out of his passion.

But for all those who choose to listen to the voice within and follow it fearlessly,  there are wise words of advice from successful banker-turned successful author Amish Triphati. “You must use your heart  to decide the destination but”, he warns, “... use your mind to plot the journey”.

Success and Leaving a Legacy

The four goals of life according to Stephen Covey are; To live, To love, To learn and To leave a legacy.  And Naryana Murthy of Infosys who has loved his work and lived a full life, has learnt well from his rich experiences. Moreover, he has knack of simplifying complex ideas.

So success to Murthy is “the ability to put a smile on the face of people when I enter a room”, and  his enduring legacy,  he hopes, would be “a commitment to human decency”.

Right Metrics Key to Organization Success

“I don't know how keen we are to have problem solvers in government. The assessment is on who has spent maximum funds rather than who has solved a problem or achieved something. How can a bureaucrat innovate or disrupt amidst such a straight-jacketed approach to them?” Comment made by Aruna Sundarajan, secretary in the electronics and IT ministry at candid talks on performance and functioning, top bureaucrats had with the Government.

Leadership learning: Choosing right measures and assessing wisely is key to the success of a performance-driven company.

Persistence

Yesterday I watched Anant Mahdevan's film Gor Hari Dastan on TV. It is about a freedom fighter and his 30 year struggle to be recognised by the government as one. In his long quest, he comes up against suspicion, bureaucracy, red tape and apathy. The running around takes a huge part of his time and tells on his relationships. Asked why he does not by give up his fight, he says,  "Ladna toh maine kabka chhod diya. Haar nahi mani' (I have given up the fight a long time ago. I have just not accepted defeat).

What a powerful statement this!  It speaks of a quiet determination, gentle persistence and a steely will to not surrender one's purpose.

What Great Work is About

When composing music for a Mani Ratnam film, composer AR Rahman sends melody elements that reflect feelings...like love, passion and so on, to Ratnam for his approval.  When asked how he decides that Ratnam will like a particular tune,  AR says, “It's not about him liking a tune.  When I compose something,  I have to like it first. I have be proud of it and feel, ‘Ah, this is beautiful’ or ‘This chord progression is nice’... If it emotionally moves me, then I am sure he will like it as well.”

And that tells me a lot about what great work is all about!

The Age of 'Planted Facts'

Economist John Keynes was quoted as saying, “When the facts change, I change my mind.“ Which  sounds as a statement distinctly lacking intellectual honesty. Turned out what he actually said was,  “When my information changes,  I alter my conclusions.”

There is a subtle, but important difference between, “the facts” and ”the conclusions”. The former refers to some objective change, that is, or should be, apparent to all: the latter to the speaker's knowledge of relevant facts.
But in times rich with ‘planted facts’, how is one to reliably distinguish between objective and subjective facts? 

We do live in difficult times!

Why Are You Saying 'yes' When You Mean 'No'?

Paul Coelho puts it well, “When you say yes to others, make sure you are not saying ‘no’ to yourself.“ And that is what I have been prone to doing for the longest time imaginable! Every once in a while, I find, there is a ‘yes’ on my lips, when actually there's a ‘no’ in my heart. As a result, I end up kicking and cursing myself for not being strong enough to say what I actually feel. But something actor Kalki Koechlin said, shows me a way out of this uncomfortable situation. “Saying ‘no’ every once in a while” says the actor “acts like a detox. Let the world not take you for granted.” 

Detoxed! Yesssss, that's it, that is exactly how I'd feel after I steel myself and actually say the 'n' word!  

Bye bye remorse, bye, bye curses. 

Hello 'feel good', hello 'feel strong'!

Dealing with Failure

Olympic gold medal winner Abhinav Bindra narrowly lost a position on the podium at Rio. Tremors due to epilepsy, diagnosed in 2014, had  caused him to drop and break the sight of his rifle, minutes from the event. But he refuses to blame either his broken rifle, or his neurological condition for the loss. “An athlete is not scared of failure or of doing badly,” he says, “an athlete Is scared of regret. And I have no regrets because I put my best into it.”

My Take: To deal with failure is to move from regret to reflection and from paralysis to analysis.

What's your take?

The Art of Giving

Money and power have been conventionally treated as metrics of success. But Arianna Huffington,  co-founder of the Huffington Post has an interesting and useful take on it. She says a third metric needs to be added.  The third metric comprises of four pillars; wellbeing, wisdom, wonder and giving. Given the conventional importance accorded to money,  does giving necessarily have to be by way of money? I don't believe so, and here's a story to illustrate what I am saying.

When animal rights crusader and minister,  Maneka Gandhi was thirty and looking for funds to get an ambulance for her newly set-up animal hospital, she wanted to approach her ‘personal hero’ Ratan Tata for funds but didn't want to approach him directly. She was advised to speak to a certain Mrs Moolgaonkar, whose husband was held in high regard by Ratan Tata. By a happy coincidence,  it turned out the lady knew Maneka from a brief interaction they had six months ago. “Remember,”  she told Maneka, “you helped me pick up my bag in an aircraft and put it in the overhead bin? That was me, because of that, I will speak to Mr. Tata.” She kept her word, and Maneka got her ambulance.

Maneka may not necessarily have meant it as doing a good deed, but just coming from a position of helping someone who could do with some assistance. 

Giving then, does not necessity have to be by way of money, it can also be by way of our time, our knowledge, our space, or use our network to facilitate someone in need. Or it could even be a small courteous gestures such as helping someone with heavy bags. What is important is to have a willingness to give. Because, then the heart finds its ways.

The bonus? The universe returns the deed in many unexpected ways.

Resolving Dilemmas

There comes a stage in our life when we pause to ask ourselves, what is better - material fulfilment, or spiritual fulfilment?

To me, dealing with this dilemma is much the same as the way we might deal with our challenge of work-life balance - which is to choose to either: integrate, harmonize, treat them as continuum, or just make a choice between the two. I have come to the conclusion that it need not be the last, viz. an either or situation.

My first glimpse of a resolution to the dilemma came from something that Arianna Huffington, co-founder of Huffington Post said. She told Forbes magazine that while tend to think of success along two metrics - money and power, we need to add a third. “To live a life we truly want and deserve, and not just the lives settle for,” Huffington said, “we need a THIRD metric of success that goes beyond the two. The third metric consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving.”

To me, adding the third metric is a possible resolution to the dilemma of having to choose between material and spiritual fulfilment. Instead of treating the two as as an either/or choice,  what if we think of ways to either integrate,  harmonise, or treat them as a continuum?

Any thoughts?

Your Words Reflect Your Attitude

Today's ETPanache has a story which talks of Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s tendency to resorting to catch phrases. Cook prone to the catchphrase “mother of all” and Pichai “early days”. The article suggests the two go in for a ‘vocabulary’ upgrade. But I see it differently.

To me, it is a reflection of their attitudes and the culture of the organisation they head. After all, words are merely a vehicle for our thoughts, an articulation of a perspective. Analysing the catchphrases through this lens, suggests to me the following about the two:

Tim Cook: Looks at situations in an exaggerated fashion. Not to say it’s bad - after all Steve Jobs always thought in grand terms. And succeeded.

Sundar Pichai: Looks a situation as “work in progress”. To me that indicates a need to get it right, of perfection.
Have I got it right,  I have no idea, I will when I start coaching them : )

So how would you assess the two personalities, based on their tendency to use their favourite catchphrases?

The Common Factor Between the Successful and The Unsuccessful

Whenever you see an article with the title  (Number) Successful People on What Success Really Means, the answer is obvious. It's not the billions in your bank account which counts for success - it is things other than money. But I have always wondered, why hasn't someone asked the same question of Unsuccessful people?

I believe the common factor among both the successful and unsuccessful set of people, would be a sense of inadequacy - of not being complete. The expression of this inadequacy varies at different stages of our life. The solution lies in knowing and understanding that happiness is a goal with shifting goal posts. Very few of us will have found the right answers to deal with this challenge in our lifetime.

Have You?

Coffee, Saris and VR - The Art and Science of Enhancing Customer Experience

According to research 90% of customer experience decision makers said that a good experience was critical to their success and 89% of companies expected to compete mostly on the basis of customer experience in 2016.

What are businesses doing to enhance customer experience?

Gautam Sinha, the founder of Nappa Dori, creates and sells designer leather goods. As his brand grows, he has grown to believe that  “it’s not just about selling a bag anymore,” but all about "enhancing user experience". “My vision hasn't changed," he asserts, "but the customer experience I want to share keeps evolving". In his search for new ways to create novel customer experiences, Sinha has created a design space called Cafe Dori. The place serves coffee and dessert and also has a collection of designer magazines and stationery - all designed to compel the customer to stay and interact longer with his products. “It’s all a part of enhancing user experience," affirms Sinha, "... I think it’s very important when you are not just trying to sell a brand but an experience to the customer."

Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky's evolving understanding of customer needs and expectations has made him go beyond offering rooms and music to travel experiences. He is now focusing on selling ’Trips’, a new future that allows an Airbnb user to get a local feel - from truffle hunting in Italy to learning how to drape a sari in 20 different ways in India.

PVR Cinemas, who, says CEO Gautam Dutta,“...are always on the lookout for what more we can offer (our customers),” is all set to launch Virtual Reality Lounges. The lounges will allow film buffs to experience a new dimension of entertainment while they wait for their film to begin. The VR Lounge will provide games as well as a library of adventurous immersive and interactive content curated from different genres.  

In my own case, my bid to enhance my client experience has evolved from being a consultant (offering solutions) and trainer (building skills), to finding my voice in coaching. This discovery came from my understanding that the best client experiences came - not from offering solutions, but assisting them to find their own.

Conclusion
As we engage more closely with our customers and understand their needs, expectations and relationship with the product in all its dimensions, our vision of the business does not change, but what does is the form and content of our intent  (how to do), which evolves and gets reshaped in critical ways.

How has your way of understanding of customer needs and expectations changed, and how has it transformed the way you deal with your customers?

Evolving your Leadership Style

“When people say they have cracked the code to success, it feels so wrong because there could be many right ways of doing it”, says actor Sushant Singh Rajput.

That's exactly how I feel about leadership. Googling for ‘leadership’ presents you with millions of styles, models, options, processes, perspectives and experiences on the topic - which one do you make your own?

My take - there is no single right way of leading people,  each of us has to discover his  own style.

Tip: Open image page on leadership style. Choose a framework that you feel is closest to your preferred style. Use the Plan, Do, Check, Act process, experiment, reflect, improve and know that you need keep on evolving your very own leadership style.

Let me know how it works for you.