A Coachee's Improvement Log Page #2

Reading through this page from a client's notes, you would be surprised at how obvious and simple some of the points noted are. This then is the power of coaching - bringing the obvious in plain view and most important, creating an awareness about the need for change.

The Continuous Improvement Process

"We should properly train ourselves for professional methods of marketing. Attend the inquiries properly, meet customers queries, educate them about plus points of our products. Follow up in a decent manner and obtain orders from clientele. Involvement of all staff is important. *Introduction of incentives is a good step in this direction.(1) Share the information about progress with staff and let them be partners in the growth.(2)"

"Action steps

1. What: Prepare the cost and price statements with all data on competitors

          Action: 

•   List incoming cost and outgoing prices
•   To change the style of marketing meetings - the results should be important.

         By When: Immediate"

*1,2: My comments: These were the 'eureka'  moments for the the client

1. Client used to give rewards randomly i.e. whenever he felt someone had done his job well. This was good leadership quality, I remarked and related an incident from the life of Alexander to reinforce my point (link http://managementnotes.blogspot.com/2011/07/7-leadership-lessons-from-alexander.html). Then I proceeded to suggest to him that linking the rewards to certain specific actions, targets and objectives would prove more effective.
2. Client was of the opinion that it made no sense to share information on sales achieved and y-on-y or q-on-q growth. I was pleasantly surprised to see he had included this point in his recap 

How the Coach Helped the "Keen to Grow" Butterfly

The Monarch butterflies are great performers - every year they travel vast distances of upto 2000 miles! During their migration they cover upto 50 miles per day and they travel at speeds of upto12 miles per hour! Now why do you think the Monarch butterflies perfom this stupendous feat? Beacuse they have been doing so for generations. But there was this one ambitous Monarch who wanted to do more. He had four burning desires;

1. To learn new skills
2. To perform better.
3. To develop himself and
4. To reflect on  what he did.

He wondered who could help him fulfil his heart-felt desires, till one day he read (he was the reading sort, as you can see) about how coaches help people who desire to excel. So he checked out the various coaches featured on Linkedin and landed up at one who he thought could help him the most.  The coach was busy, but noticing the eagerness in the eyes of the Monarch and the determined flutter of his wings, he decided to listen to what the butterfly had to say to him. The Monarch explained the purpose of his visit and began by describing about the annual migratory habits of his species, he told him how they had been doing so for generations, and how he wanted to go about it not by instinct, but in a planned and well thought out fashion. Through all this, the coach had said not word, but the Monarch noticed that he had an encouraging smile on his face as if to say 'Go on, tell me more!" 

And so the Monarch proceeded to ask the coach his first question; "I want to hover in the air like a hummingbird so that I can survey the terrain better!"

The coach smiled, and asked him,

"And how soon would you like to fly like a hummingbird?

"Who could help you with it?"

"What's your action plan?"

"When are you going to start?" 

The coach's questions had the Monarch thinking, he realized he had never really thought about his desires in this way! And so he proceeded to ask his second question, "I want to fly higher, better and more efficiently!"

And the coach responded,

"How high exactly would you like to be flying?'

"What techniques are you using at the moment to achieve that height?"

"What other techniques are there, which you haven't tried yet?"

"And what else could you do to acheive that height even faster?"

"OK. Now show me what your action plan is, how you're going to measure your progress and what you'll do when things get tough." 

With every question the coach asked him, the Monarch was beginning to think of his issues in ways he had never before done! He was starting to get clarity about his priorities! And so the Monarch proceeded to ask the coach the third question. "I want to take the next step."

And the coach said,

"So, you want to be hummingbird? Cool! What can you do now to make that happen?"

"And what else?"

"And how are you going to get those things you say you need?"

"How else?"

"When I look at a hummingbird I see feathers, and when I look at you I don't see any feathers...(silence)...To what extent are feathers neccessary?" And how are you going to solve that?"

The Monarch was now in deep thought, slowly a plan for achieving his desires was beginning to form in his mind, but he still had one more question to ask him and he proceeded to do so, "I wonder," he said, "whether butterfly-ing is all there is, and whether I functions as I should?"

And the coach replied,

"Whether this is all there is" and "Do I function as I should?" are two different questions. Which question would you like to focus on today?

"Suppose you have the answer to that question: how does that feel?

"What is the effect of having answered it?"

"What has changed?"

And finally, the pieces began to fall in place for the Monarch. He had the answers to his questions for the fulfillment of his burning desires - and he had thought all of them himself! The coach had offered him no solutions for fulfilling them, but what he had done was far more invaluable - through his powerful questions, the coach had provided, 

• a higher and deeper perspective to his thinking,
• an objectivity to his assumptions and
• clarity about his priorties for achieving his dream of excelling at all the things which he had up to now, done only by instinct. 

Going to the coach was like going to a mental gym, the ambitous Monarch had come out stronger and well-toned in his thinking and raring to go out in the woods and put his plan into action!

He said a heartfelt thank you to the coach and flitted away with a new flutter to his wings.

This piece has been inspired by the delightfully creative blog article A Butterfly goes to a coach by Sandro DaSilva.

Hi-5s to Your Business Improvement

Every day, newspapers and TV news channels in India keep telling us of the dark clouds of political uncertainty in West Asia and North Africa, unemployment in the US and the Greek debt. And then there are the ominous whispers that more news – bad of course – on the debt front from Italy and Spain. Are things really that bad? Is it all gloom and doom?

The Economic Times recently surveyed 22 CEOs of large businesses to rank 10 issues on a ‘headache scale’ of 1 to 10, where 1 stood for the ‘least headache’ and 10 for the ‘worst headache’. The most important conclusion of the study was that in India, consumer demand would continue, that top line growth would remain intact and that we can weather a global crisis. This will come as good news to all those business leaders who may have started to grow jittery, hearing all the global bad news. So then, what does Indian business need to worry about - if at all? It is the high input costs which could end up hurting their profits. And it is this situation of shrinking margins that is likely to give business heads, especially from the SME sectors, sleepless nights. And sleepless nights, as we all know, can lead to rash decisions. So what should they do to deal sensibly with the current situation?

In my experience of working with owner-managed businesses I have noticed that most, if not all of them, are so deeply operationally involved in the day-to-day managing of their businesses that they rarely give time and thought to put in place a long-term directional view of their businesses. Renny Thomas, of McKinsey & Co attributes this neglect to the fact that up until recently, India was in a period where lack of a meticulously planned strategy did not matter as much since the growth areas were obvious. But with increasing competition from Chinese and other foreign competitors, coupled with shrinking margins, business heads have realized that it is no longer enough to go with the flow. It’s time to move beyond the present and start planning the future with purpose and intent and desired results in mind.   

So where do you begin? Here are five ways to kick-off your change process:


1. Assess Your Company’s Current Status: Put everything on the table, both the good and the bad. Include areas of the business you are proud of and problems you wish would just go away. Address issues relating to staff, products and services, location, profitability, and new business development.

Hi-Fives to Your Business Success



2. Review The Past: Look carefully at your past marketing efforts, successes, and failures. If you are running a marketing program but cannot justify its expense with increased sales, consider cancelling it or placing it on hold. Successful marketing turnarounds stop the bleeding quickly.



3.  Analyze Competitive Activity: Often, a new entry in a market will use new marketing techniques and follow new thinking to achieve sales that you didn’t know were possible. Evaluate objectively, to achieve a successful marketing turnaround, you must do what is best for your company.

3. Rethink Your Business: Keeping your learning from the earlier three steps in mind, think again, about current customers, competition, industry changes, and technology. Rethink your business model. Many successful businesses have managed to stay successful by moving with the times. They saw that the needs of their customers were changing and acted accordingly. Be flexible to adjust to new opportunities and challenges.

5. Be Quick. Act quickly on your plans to marry the short-term to the long-term. Speed and flexibility are essential in turning a company around.

And don’t give up - giving up too early may result in your falling short of the great success your business was destined for.Act consistently and diligently on the five ways and you could have success dancing on the palm of your hand!

And in case you need help; I have more than10,000 hours of Buisness coaching experience of supporting business-owners such as you. I can help you reach your business goals faster, achieve higher and become stronger! For contact details click on Contact tab above.

Over the Moon With Your I I

"When it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people: those who let it happen, those who make it happen, and those who wonder what happened."

                                                                    --John M. Richardson, Jr 

The problem of getting started with any change, whether personal or organizational, is our initial reluctance to it. The tendency is to procrastinate, even though we know the circumstances require we do something about it. We let "things happen" and when the inevitable happens, "we wonder what happened!". In my previous blog post (On Why CEO's Procrastinate. And What They Could Do About It), I had suggested an approach to overcome this reluctance to act  which was more in a business context. Thomas Pytchyl, an associate professor of psychology at Carleton University  who specializes in the study of procrastination, suggests a way all of us could employ. When Pytchyl is asked what someone should do to reduce procrastination, his most common answer is, "It's not enough to have a goal intention, you need to have an Implementation Intention too." Implementation intention, a term coined by Peter Gollwitzer, is a specific type of intentional statement that defines when and where a specific behavior will be performed. and is an easily applicable planning strategy that can help overcome procrastination by automating action control. An implementation intention supports goal intention by setting out in advance when/where and how one will achieve this goal. So instead of making yourself a "to do" list of goal intentions it is more effective to decide how, when and where you are going to accomplish each of the tasks you need to get done. 

In my opinion, the best example of this format  is John F. Kennedy made to the American congress on May 25th 1961. That's when he announced a plan to put a man on the Moon before the decade was over. Now, even though there wasn't even a plan in hand nor the technology to do so, it had to be done. The reason?  The feeling worldwide that the Soviets were way ahead in the space race. Only twenty days before Kennedy's speech, NASA had launched Alan Shepard into space, the first US man to reach space. And, unlike Yuri Gagarin more than a month earlier, Shepard didn't even orbit Earth. He was just launched like a cannonball. 

Kennedy clearly knew that getting NASA started on a project as crazy as this was to put a stimulus for action into the environment. And the stimulus? The fear of the Soviets beating them to the moon and making it a Red Moon. Remember, this was in the days of the cold war when the US-Soviet competition to beat each other in every way was at its height. So here is how Kennedy in his speech, used the "If....then, when/where and how" format to galvanize his countrymen into action:

If... (we do not) "land a man..."
Where "on the moon..." 
When "by the end of the decade..."  
Then (left unsaid) the Soviets will beat us to it and rub our collective noses into the moon dust!

The result was that on July 20th 1969, an American became the first man on the moon.

The result of Kennedy's "If...then" stimulus

 The spectacular results of Kennedy's 'moon speech' has now made it a classic example of the perfect  mission statement. His accomplishment was to set his scientists a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) with a "then" stimulus (even if not explicitly articulated) impossible to ignore.

And for You and Me...

 Considering that you and I do not have such bruising(?) imperatives as did Kennedy, let us consider an everyday example Pytchyl cites. I might have, say,  a goal intention of "flossing my teeth regularly" An implementation intention can support this goal intention by setting out in advance when/where and how we will achieve this goal. In this case, it might be "When I put the toothpaste on my toothbrush in the evening (something which is a habit for me), I will then stop and get out the floss first." Essentially what I've done in making this implementation intention is to put the cue for behavior (putting the paste on my toothbrush) into the environment, so it serves as a stimulus for my behavior. I don't have to think about or remind myself about my goal. The moment I put the paste on my brush, my behavior is cued. In time, this should become as automatic as my teeth brushing is already. My 'then' stimulus could also be, "or end up with decayed teeth or a root canal treatment." This of course would make my stimulus an imperative in the same league, or close to that of  Kennedy's in his moon speech!

Call to Action

Studies indicate that implementation intentions on getting started can help when we have an initial reluctance to get started on an aversive task.What the above examples clearly prove is you're more likely to get started when you put the stimulus for action into the environment.

So when do you intend to get started on your "moon mission"?

_____________________________________________________________________

SPEAKING OF GOALS >

A study by the American Society of Training and Development showed that:

• People who merely hear a goal, have a 10 percent chance of achieving it
• People who create a plan for a specific goal have a 50 percent chance of achieving it
• People who have a coach holding them accountable to their goal have a 95 percent chance of reaching their goal 

In other words, you can double your chances of success by being held accountable through a coaching program versus merely having a plan. A good coach can leave a positive impact on your life (and business) and help you achieve things you may not have been able to attain on your own.

Get yourself a coach. Contact uday.arur@gmail.com

 

Move Over Visioning. Enter the Future Story

Jeremy King is an English restaurateur whose interview with Vir Sanghvi appeared in a recent issue of Brunch. Asked what his principles for starting a new hotel were, Jeremy made a point which appeared to be of particular interest to me for my Visioning workshops which I conduct as a strategic coach. This was about how every hotel must have a back story. 

A back story is an essentially cinematic concept. What it means is that the events you see on screen have a background, a story that explains their provenance, even if we don't have to confront that back story in the actual plot. An example is the story actor Michael Caine created around his role as the butler in the Batman series. He fleshed out a story about how Alfred the butler was a former British commando who took up to cooking on difficult postings and who went to work for Thomas Wayne (Batman's civilian avatar) when he retired. This story helped Caine to not only understand Bruce Wayne's motivations, but also to understand Batman's world of violence. Moreover with his commando background, the butler could actually help Batman in his fight against crime. All this Caine made up because he reckoned nothing made sense with out a back story. 

Jeremy applied the same principle to the new hotel he is opening in London's Oxford Street. According to the story,  the hotel was built in the 1920s by a rich American who loved London. It was the toast of the town, Then as the American owner went back to the States and the hotel fell on bad times and was sold to a modern chain which destroyed its character and now King and his partner are renovating it to recover its lost lustre. None of this of course is true, so why bother? Because, says King, it gives the new owners, the architect, the designer, the management and the staff an idea of what the hotel should be. They don't just say, "Let's convert this office block into a hotel." They say, "What would the hotel have looked like at its peak in the 1920's?"And while designing the rooms, they ask themselves, "What would a luxury hotel built in the Jazz Age have offered to its guests?" The back story serves as reference point for everybody in the same way that Alfred's back story told Michael Caine how Alfred would react to any situation. According to King unless a hotel had a convincing back story, it failed in the long run.

Source: Philantopic

Source: Vision Ohio

 And this brings me to the connection between the back story and the 'future story' people can create for their companies. Just like a well-thought-out and crafted back story serves as a reference point for everyone involved with the project of building or renovating a hotel, a carefully crafted future story can serve as a fleshed out story of future success in companies. The individual stories help people to understand the dreams and concerns of their colleagues, and the stories lead to significant themes around which an energizing  and motivating picture of the future can be painted. The resulting one story, embodying critical themes from all the stories, helps to create an irresistible pull which acts like a compass, a battery pack, and a talking map all in one.

So instead of making people rack their brains and go thorough an exhausting day(s?) of a  Visioning exercise, move to the Future Story, it will enable your people to:

• make up stories, plausible or fantastic, to paint the future
• understand organizational issues better because they are presented in the form of a story
• sort out and describe what has happened to oneself or others, often with a richness of context and detail, and often with great relish
• envision chains and webs of causation
• build scenarios and to plan and think strategically
• resonate with the stories of others; to see another's viewpoint when presented with the stories which underlie or embody that viewpoint
• to discover themes in the events of the story
• to recognize (or select) certain elements as significant, as embodying certain meanings and to draft a road map of the future

And finally, don't forget to tell your people to give their stories a touch of the cinematic. The  gloss, and shine will illuminate the future everyone can look forward to.

To make it a shining beacon to the future.

References:

1.  http://www.co-intelligence.org/I-powerofstory.html

Decoding the Desi Dynamic

With more and more Indian executives being posted abroad - especially in booming sectors such as IT, Pharma and FMCG, Indian companies have felt an increasing need for the chosen people to be trained in the culture and the ways of the country of posting. This has meant the rise of a new breed of trainers in culture and special classes for country specific culture training to help such executives fit smoothly into their new roles.

But have we ever stopped to think about the Indian manager who is about to take up a position outside his native state? Have we ever thought of the need for training such individuals to quickly settle down into their new roles they are about to take up? Why do I say this? Hear what some expat CEOs have to say. Kwon of Samsung believes serving in India is like serving in many countries. Michael Bonham, who is the Ford India CEO supports this view. When he shifted to Delhi after spending nearly three years in Chennai, he actually thought he had shifted to a "different country."  So how does one go about learning about these countries within a country and our cultural traits and attitudes?  How does one go about decoding what the Economic Times calls the desi dynamic? Learn from the experiences of expat CEOs posted on Indian shores. Why? Because they notice things which we as Indians don't and they put a light on attitudes which we take for granted.

For many of us our attitudes and beliefs about different communities are the cultural stereotypes handed down to us from our parents and friends, (the Bong is sentimental, the North Indian is aggressive etc). And these become the drivers influencing our behavior and responses to people from these communities which can come in the growth path of executives who aspire for leadership roles. For, as Jacques Challes the Managing Director of L'Oreal puts it, "India is about the future of business." Moreover Challes believes that in India "you are constantly building" unlike his own country France, where everything is static. Since the business of business is primarily about managing people, and the Indian environment is one of constant change, where do we begin? With one of Challes observations.

Challes has observed that the power distance between the field staff and the highly educated managers at headquarters, is so big, that they are not able to communicate effectively. The loss in translation is the reason why strategies created at the top are often not executed efficiently in the field.

The Indian manager has a unique set of attitudes, knowing which, can help us grow quickly in our leadership roles

So how can managers cut this loss in translation? How can s/he improve execution of his or her painstakingly planned strategies? The learning about the desi dynamic of the expat CEO trying to settle down into his leadership role in India, holds important lessons for us. 

Yves Martinez of Legrand has discovered that its not enough to set targets and issue instructions to his managers you have to take time to convince the internal teams. "...people want to understand what they are doing, they want to take time over it." 

Benoit Lecuyer, the MD of Hager Electro believes that management in India is more personal and therefore managers have to make people the centrepiece of business and life. Instead of calling large meetings with 50 people, they should call the managers for one-to-one discussions. This  helps the manager and his senior to get to know one another better.

Kiminobu Tokuyama CEO of Nissan Motors seconds this view when he observes that Indian managers are rich with ideas and views but in business meetings, they do not express any disagreement with their bosses. "My constant effort," he says. " is to create an atmosphere of mutual respect, trust, confidence and fearlessness and thereby enable free flow of honest opinion from all."

A very important insight comes from Neil Mills, CEO of Spicejet. He calls for dealing with people as individuals and not as members of a community. He believes that there is no such thing as a common Indian culture, for instance, a person with a south Indian name could be more north Indian, because he has lived in Delhi all his life. This means one has to tailor the way instructions are given to people based on their divergent backgrounds and not as a Marwari, Tamilian, Bengali etc.

So there you have it - the desi dynamic decoded. Now to set about internalizing and validating the observations in our corporate lives and leadership roles.

Is Your Organization Future Ready?

One of the foundations of business improvement strategies is to align business activity against organizational objectives, customer requirement and business strategy. However, very often, this alignment does not exist and the reason? The teams do not know what the organizational goals and objectives are! 

Evan Apfelbaum, of the Kellog School of Management, once asked a a group at a top American consulting firm what the goal of the team was. He got eight different answers! Which was exactly my experience with the findings of a survey I carried out recently. The survey, conducted on a client’s key executives, was to gauge the organization’s ability to focus on and execute their most important goals. One of the questions in the questionnaire was, “If you know any of the top three goals of your organization, please list them..” To this, 22% said they did not know the top three goals, The rest responded as follows:

 

Goal #1

1.      It should be system driven

2.      Be the biggest ....supplier in India

3.      Number 1 in world.....

4.      Achievement of target set by..... for year

5.      Sound customer base

6.      To be #1 and capture 80-90%.... market in India

7.      Brand image

Goal #2

1.      Individual responsibility for ...  success

2.      Educate the customers

3.      Customer satisfaction through technical assistance

4.      Best customer service

5.      Sales target

Goal #3

1. No compromise on quality product
2. Stand with the competitors with good profit margins
3. Fastest and profitable subsidiary of .... India
4. Collection

This diversity of  views on the goals of the organization is one of the most common occurrences in teams that don’t perform well – if people are not focussed on that one common goal, it becomes difficult to achieve the purpose that it has been assembled for.

According to Locke and Latham, clear common goals affect individual performance through four mechanisms. First, the goals direct action and effort toward goal-related activities and away from unrelated activities. Second, they energize employees. Challenging goals lead to higher employee effort than easy goals. Third, goals affect persistence. Employees exert more effort to achieve high goals. Fourth, goals motivate employees to use their existing knowledge to attain a goal or to acquire the knowledge needed to do so.

In the case of this particular client, as a first step to bring about alignment in business activity, we recommended and executed a Visioning workshop, along with some more initiatives based on other findings of the survey.

Clear common goals that everyone understands, are critical to every organizations business success. They provide organizations with a blueprint that determines a course of action and aids them in preparing for future changes.

Is your organization future ready?

Reference: Encyclopedia of Business 2nd Edn.

From managing to leading

There are three types of work* that get done in an organization:


1. Transactional work such as administrative and order taking, which benefits individuals


2. Tactical work which is solution focused and benefits employee workgroups


3. Strategic work which is long-term in nature and is


       a. Linked to one or more business goals


       b. Solution-neutral in initial stages


       c. Requires multiple solutions or tactics to be implemented


       d. Benefits  business units and perhaps the entire enterprise

 The emphasis on each type of work shifts as executives rise to become managers and then leaders. While executives are focused on the Transactional, the emphasis of activities shift to more of the Tactical when he becomes a manager. And finally, when he rises to the leadership position, his focus move strategic activities which are long-term in nature.

The activities also define the evolution of  an executive to a leader. However in reality, and more so with entrepreneurs, the nature of activities are more often than not, restricted to the first two - the Transactional and the Tactical. Why is this so? In my experience with my clients, it is because the entrepreneur/leader does not want to move away  from the activities which he likes to do, or else finds himself comfortable doing. There is the risk of failure lurking somewhere in his mind.

Leaders could take a lesson from the leadership style of Kumaramangalam Birla. He leaves all day-to-day operations to his professional managers and focuses only on Strategic thinking and activities.Except when the occasion demands - which is when he has to prove a point, or show his people that something they believe cannot be done, can be done. As happened when Birla overruled his managers  and took the risky decision to buy Novelis for $6billion. Since the decision was his, he took it upon himself to prove to his managers that it was right. 

The Economic Times has a very interesting  account of the turnaround story

*Source: Robinson, D. G., & Robinson, J. C. (2005). Strategic business partner: Aligning people strategies with business goals. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

The evolution of a leader

There are three types of work which get done in an organization:

1. Transactional work such as; Administrative and Order taking, and which benefits individuals.
2. Tactical work which is  Solution focused and benefits employee work groups.
3. Strategic, or long term work which is:
• Linked to one or more business goals
• Solution-neutral in early stages
• Requires multiple solutions or tactics to be implemented
• benefits business units or perhaps the entire enterprise

The emphasis of an individual on each type of work shifts as he rises from an executive position to a managers position and finally becomes a leader. While executives are focused on the Transactional, the emphasis of activities shift to more of the Tactical when he becomes a manager. And finally, when he rises to the leadership position, his focus moves to strategic activities which are long-term in nature.

The activities define the evolution of  an executive to a leader. However what happens, and this is more so with entrepreneurs, the nature of activities are more often than not, restricted to the first two - the Transactional and the Tactical. Why is this so? In my experience with my clients, it is because the entrepreneur/leader does not want to move away  from the activities which he likes to do, or else finds himself comfortable doing. There is the risk of failure lurking somewhere in his mind.

Leaders could take a lesson from the leadership style of Kumaramangalam Birla. He leaves all day-to-day operations to his professional managers and focuses only on Strategic thinking and activities. Except when the occasion demands - which is when he has to prove a point, or show his people that something they believe cannot be done, can be done. As happened when Birla overruled his managers  and took the risky decision to buy Novelis for $6billion. Since the decision was his, he took it upon himself to prove to his managers that it was right. 

The Economic Times has a very interesting  account of the turnaround story

The Power of Positivity and Vision

In my earlier blog, I had talked of how critical a positive attitude was to strategy making, and had cited the case of such a display by Vivek Nair of Leela Hotels. Another great example is that of Sam Pitroda, advisor to the PM on overall conceptualisation and planning of the Public Information Infrastructure (PII).

The PII project is massive and attempts to do what no one has attempted to do before. The project will create opportunities for the people at the bottom of the pyramid by creating a vast information network that would make India's shoddy, Raj-era governance instant, transparent and ready for the 21st century! Which means connecting 250,000 panchayats by fibre,3G, Wimax and other digital links to schools and even bus-stands!

Merchants of gloom (MoG) say the challenges are severe due to the federal nature of the country's stucture, where there is severe distrust between the state and central governments; even between the states where the party in power is the same as at the centre. Then, the MoGs say, comes the problem of silo-ism between even central government departments. So, say the doom-gloom bunch, it is by no means a given that simply provided the platform, the departments and states will jump on to the PII platform.

in contrast to such cynical thinking, Pitroda's passion and positivity about the project shines through when he talks about the project. India, he says, has a huge infrastructure broadband and GIS ( geographical information system) which has the potential to zoom in on , like Google Maps, on every tree and every panchayat in India. Integrating this infrastructure with the Unique identification Database, which tags every Indian with a unique number, and tagging of every government project would create a public information system accessible to every Indian.

From the days of the rajas to the British to our modern politicians, a handful of persons has controlled information in India. "You can now," says Pitroda, "begin to democratise government, create open government in the true sense, create opportunities at the bottom of the pyramid. This is the vision."

Pitroda's masterstroke of positivity - "I would like to do it in two years."

Leadership lesson: Believe in yourself and don't let nay-sayers throw you off-course. Let your positivity shine through your every action and speech!

The strategy making game

Sumantra Ghoshal, the late management guru and academic, called strategy the most enticing subject in the management curriculum, and at the pinnacle of the organizational processes. This is so, because planning for the future is about laying strategic bets, which as Ram Charan the other management guru, the other Indian pride, defines as an activity which can:

a. change a game

b. give you access to something you would not have otherwise

c. have a very uncertain pay-off

No wonder the road to strategy-making is strewn with such challenges!

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