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.

Share Offering

When Saurabh Kochhar of Foodpanda approached mentor Praveen Sinha to put together a business plan, the latter's advice was 'epic'. He suggested that after creating a business plan, scale it down by 20%. Consider it "God's share," for hoping things go well, said Sinha.

Back to Your Roots

"Understanding where you are from help you better understand where you want to go."
                          - US Ambassador to India Richard Verma, describing his recent visit to his hometown in Punjab. 

The Awareness Framework

Awareness precedes choice and choice precedes results. - Robin Sharma

When Paul O'Neill arrived as CEO at Alcoa, he didn't hold his troops to criteria that CEOs commonly use, such as profit margins, sales growth rates, or share appreciation. His singular standard: time lost to employee injuries. By focusing on just one  highly impactful habit, O’Neill managed to create change at different levels of awareness within the organization, the company's annual net income went up by five times and its market capitalization rose by $27 billion.

The Awareness Framework can help us understand the deeper and wide ranging implications of the focus on safety:

1. Task Awareness: Empowered employees began to offer suggestions and accidents were immediately brought to the attention of executives. As a result, the accident rate declined — ultimately to about 5% of the national average.

2. Situational Awareness:  Workers realizing that the management was keen to examine and improve every inefficient and dangerous manufacturing process, increased  communication among employees. Line workers offered suggestions to improve efficiency, and the company underwent a renaissance.

3. Emergent Awareness: Employees started recommending business improvements that otherwise would have remained out of sight. One day, a low-level employee made a suggestion that quickly worked its way to the general manager. Within a year, profits on the product doubled. By creating patterns of better communication, a chain reaction started that lifted profits.

4.  Self Awareness:  ''Paul came in and got us to do things we never thought we could do,'' says L. Richard Milner, head of Alcoa's automotive unit. The safety habit influenced every part of the employees’ lives - how they worked, ate, played, lived, spent, and communicated. Employees’ thoughts, feelings and  beliefs and their attitudes and reactions to changes in the environment improved. Their attitudes to people around  having a different point of view also took a turn for the better. Hard-core, ladder-climbing, capitalist executives turned into soft, feel-good samaritans, adept at identifying, co-opting, and shaping behavior patterns to increase profits.

By creating awareness around safety, O'Neill unleashed a pattern with the power to start a chain reaction. A reaction that improved a host of processes in the organization, created a employee-friendly environment, aligned people to the company’s goals and increased profits.

------------------------------------×---------------------------------

Want a Business coach to clarify/create/action the awareness process?
Contact Coach Uday

Analyse Your Business

Raghoo Potini shared some key insights from the Book "Flash Foresight" By Danil Burrus, which I thought was a great framework for analyzing one's business. 

"A flash foresight is a classic eureka! moment, like Newton's discovery of gravity after watching an apple fall from a tree . Actually the Flash Foresight triggered by the application of one or more of seven simple principles covered in the book .Let me cover two big ones.

TRIGGER #1: START WITH CERTAINTY: There are two distinct kinds of change that we can use to find certainty:1. Cyclic change2. Linear change
Cyclic change: provides us with all sorts of certainty .When it is autumn, you can predict that, within six months, it will be spring. Humanity has identified more than 300 distinct cycles that allow us to predict the future accurately. 
Linear change: A simple example of linear change is your age. Your life progresses in one direction. No matter how well you take care of your health, you are not going to start aging backward. Linear change is where the real action is, precisely because it is not a repeating pattern and therefore creates entirely new circumstances and opportunities. 

Hard trends and soft trends: A hard trend is something that will happen; it is a future fact. A soft trend is something that might happen; it is a future maybe. Here's an example about Hard trend and soft trend. The 78 million Baby Boomers are now flooding health care system in the US. Again, notice where the hard trend is, and where it isn't. The increasing numbers of Boomers who will need medical care as they get older is a hard trend, because those numbers are fixed and cannot be changed. But the projected shortage of doctors and nurses to provide that care is a soft trend, because it is something we can change if we see it and decide to act on it.Action:  

Make a list of all the cyclic changes that are affecting your business. Make a list of the linear changes that will have an impact on your life. Make a list of all the hard trends that are taking place in your industry, so you know what you can be certain about. Make a list of all the soft trends that are taking place in your industry, so you can see what you can change or influence. Ask yourself, "What do I know will happen in the next few weeks, months, and years? And how can I innovate to take advantage of what I now know for certain about the future?"

To anticipate the world ahead, Lets see some hard trends in technology space .To anticipate the world ahead, Lets see some hard trends in technology space .

Dematerialization. As technology improves, we are reducing the amount of material it takes to build the tools we use. For example, laptops are getting smaller, lighter, and more portable, even as they become more powerful.   Virtualization. This means taking things we currently do physically and shifting the medium so that we can now do them purely in a virtual world. Using software, we can now test airplanes, spaceships, and nuclear bombs without actually building them. Virtualization has transformed the world of business. Amazon is a virtual bookstore, and eBay is a virtual yard sale.   Mobility. With the advance of wireless technology, we are rapidly becoming untethered from everything. Our mainframe computers became desktops, then laptops, then palmtops, then cell phones.   Product intelligence: Imagine you're driving down the road, and a light blinks on your dashboard: One of your tires is about to go flat. Your GPS speaks up: "Service station with an air hose in three miles; take the next exit." How does your car know this? It's intelligent. It has smart tires, and it's networked.   Convergence. Filling stations and convenience stores converged in the 1980s; in the '90s, so did coffee shops and bookstores. Today, telecommunications, consumer electronics, and information technology are all converging. Products are converging, too. The modern smartphone is an e-mail device, a camera, a video camera, a music player, a GPS device, and more. Action: Ask yourself, What problems will my company be facing in the next few weeks, months, and years? What problems will our customers be facing?" Then look for creative ways to solve those problems before they happen.

TRIGGER #2: ANTICIPATE: When a competitor offers lower prices, you are forced to change how you do business. Being preactive means putting yourself into opportunity mode, looking at problems before they occur, and then preventing them from happening in the first place. It means, instead of reacting to change that happens from the outside in, creating change from the inside out.

These five technology trends all the result of three interlocking hard trends. The first digital accelerator is processing power. The second digital accelerator is the growth of bandwidth, the third digital accelerator, storage."

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 

A Coachee's Improvement Log Page #1

After every coaching session, my coaching clients write a log of the awareness created, clarity, and learning during that session.They also commit to actions they will take as a result of the new knowledge, which serves as an action review template for the next session. Reproduced below, with the client's permission,  is page # 1 from a coachee's session log. His priority was to improve his Customer Service for which I employed the learning methodology of See, Plan, Do, Check and Fix model (see visual). The process was not linear and I went with the flow of the client's thought processes. 

SESSION COACHING OUTCOMES

Session #1                   Date: XX/XX/2011

My Awareness-Action Cycle

• I need to properly encourage staff members and middlemen to find out ways to improve sales and after-sales services. 
• I need to give more attention to incoming inquiries, attend them in an improved manner and do something positive to generate good business.
• There are areas which need my personal attention.
• Marketing should be given more time and attention.

Next Steps

1. What : To discuss with staff  

    Action: Ways to improve sales

    By when: This week

2. What: Reports

    Action: Improve management reports and implementation

    By When: Today

3. What: Follow-up personally

    Action: Attend sales inquiries personally

    By When: This week

4. What: TimeManagement

    Action: Find ways to save time

    By When: Immediate

How clear are you about your 2011 goals?

 A recent  issue of the Economic Times, had an article, "India Inc Has A Dream For 2011", in which prominent captains of the industry spoke of their personal and business goals.

Having just completed a workshop on "The Effective Manager" for a client, of which effective goal setting was part, I was curious to analyze the goals for their "SMARTness". SMART, as many of you  may know, is an acronym for Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Timebound. How well had the captains of industry fared when it came to setting SMART goals for 2011? I decided to analyze the goals of two of them - Vijay Thadani, CEO of NIIT and Venugopal Dhoot, Chairman of the Videocon group of industries. Here is what they had said:

Vijay Thadani: "I sincerely want to reduce the schoolgoer's burden and make their bags lighter by a tenth. Our school solutions division, NIIT eguru, which works with 15,000 schools, could help children carry tablets instead of books, and we can achieve this through customised offerings. My second resolution is to reach 20m more learners this year and take the count to 50m as NIIT turns 30 this year. Cutting across verticals, from corporates schools, colleges individuals and the government, I want to double the target which took the company three decades to cover."

Venugopal Dhoot: "I see 2011 ushering in social well-being  and economic prosperity for the aam Indian. Poised to become the world's fastest growing economy, the coming decade will see the rise and rise of India towards becoming a superpower in its own right. Not through just material power, but through 'soft power', that is, the ability to influence and impact the world through its unique culture, values, policies, and institutions. In such a context my New Year resolution will be to do my bit, both at personal and industry level, to drive this 2020 vision forward."

For the purpose of analysis, I decided to score them on each of the SMART parameters on a scale of 1-10, where 1 was very vague, and 10 very specific. Here is how the fared:

Score             Name	Specific	Measurable	Action oriented	Relevant	Timebound
	Who What Where Why When	How much? How often? How many?		How important is it to your business?	By When?
Vijay Thadani	10/10	10/10	10/10	10/10	10/10
V.N Dhoot	2/10	3/10	3/10	5/10	6/10

Here's my rationale for my scoring:

Specific: Vijay Thadani (VT) 10/10, Venugopal Dhoot (VD) 2/10
VT: We see that VT has covered all the important bases for this parameter - What (reduce the school goers burden, double the target), Why (make their bags lighter), Where (in 15,000 schools and across verticals), When (by the end of the year).
VD: He has resolved to "do his bit" - vague enough to get a score of 2/10.

Measurable: VT 10/10, VD 3/10
VT: VT's resolution answers the How much? question specifically (make school goers bags lighter by a tenth, reach out to 20m more learners, double the target achieved in 3 decades),
VD: VD's resolution to "do his bit" is just a resolution and no more. How can such a subjective target be measured? He therefore scores 3/10 on this parameter.

Action-oriented: VT 10/10, VD 3/10
VT: His resolutions on this parameter are totally action oriented because they are both specific and measurable. He talks about cutting across verticals, from corporates, schools, colleges, individuals and government to double his target.
VD: He wants to drive forward the 2020 vision of making India a superpower in its own right by influencing its ability to influence and impact the world through its unique culture, values, policies, and institutions by doing "his bit both at the personal and industry level".  How action-oriented can that be?

Relevant: VT 10/10, VD 5/10
VT: NIIT is in the business of training and education and his resolutions aimed at the school goer and other verticals are entirely relevant to his business.
VD: Here I have been a little more generous with my scoring by giving VD 5/10 - the only reason being that in the broad sweep of his resolution, he also talks somewhere about doing his bit to help India impact the world through its institutions. One presumes by institutions he means his own group of companies.


Time-bound: VT 10/10, VD 6/10
VT: Clearly all his 2011 goals, except for the doubling of sales, are aimed for achievement by end of 2011 hence a 10/10.
VD: The saving grace is that the resolution is at least time bound - by 2020 (for whatever it is worth), and hence in this parameter VD gets the highest score of 6/10!

All of us make New Year resolutions and many of us make them more as a ritual, only to forget all about them a few days into January. If one is serious about acting on one's resolutions, it helps to set SMART goals. For then we can :

1. focus our attention and action, 
2. mobilize our energies towards their achievement, 
3. increase our persistence, and 
4. encourage development of workable strategies 

towards the successful  attainment of our goals.

And by the way, any guesses about who between Vijay Thadani and Venugopal Dhoot is better placed to achieve his goals for 2011?

The importance of social media to organizations

Yesterday was at a seminar hosted by SHRM on Social Networking is changing the way people manage their careers and organizations. The panelists; Mahesh Murty of Pinstorm, and Rajeev Dingra of WatConsult, expressed balanced views on both the upside and downside of the use, as well as the non-use, of social networking within organizations.

Mahesh described his company's use of two metrics, the Desirability Index (DI) and the Engagement Matrix. The first metric, the DI, was directly proportional to the number of times the company's name appeared in search results, and therefore indicated a prospective employee's interest in it. By inference, it served as a barometer to the company's popularity as an employer. An event like the publishing of a book Employees First Customers Second by Vineet Nayar, the CEO of HCL, propelled the DI of the company northwards, indicating its rise in rankings as an employer of choice.

On the other hand, the second metric, the EI, tracked and analyzed what people were talking about the company on various social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Social media have the power to transmit any view, either good or bad, extremely fast across the globe and therefore a company needs to be highly alert to what kind of conversations are going on about it. Prompt action in such matters as adverse reports about the company's products or services can help avert disastrous consequences. Obviously, both these metrics are critical in a company's recruitment efforts as well as, sales growth, and need to be monitred closely.

Rajiv on the other hand made the important point about how employers need to track what their employees are talking about the company on the social media networks.  Most importantly, Rajiv explained, used the right way, these networks can serve to alert employers about the gripes and complaints their employees are making on various company related matters. Employers responding promptly and sensitively to such feedback would be seen as caring employers, making social media powerful culture building tools..

A lively interaction with the audience by both panelists followed, which made the event even more interesting.