The Power of Questions

Physicist Richard Feynman found the atmosphere at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton stultifying.  He found it sterile because there were no students to ask him questions - questions that would force him to rethink his beliefs and perhaps discover new theories.

#MyLearning
A leader who fosters a work culture of asking questions, opens the door to an engaging and collaborative environment for innovation and success.
Read the Forbes article below for ideas and suggestions for questions leaders can ask their people.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/hennainam/2013/07/30/why-oprah-is-worth-2-8-billion-the-power-of-questions/

Play Your Cards Right

I realised my face was never going to be my fortune,  I decided to impress ladies by tickling their palate - good food, full-bodied wine, candlelight and my storytelling powers are a lethal combination.  It has always worked. - Prahlad Kakkar, ad guru.

#MyLearning
Reminded of what Randy Pausch said, "we cannot change the cards we are dealt with, just how we play the hand."

The Right Place at the Right Time

When they first started making cars, Sir Henry Royce, and his partner, Charles Rolls, would build them near Savile Row, the London street where the city's top tailors had their establishments. They would urge their customers to have their coaches finished with trimming to match favourite suits and gowns.

Source: http://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing

Management Learning: Whether at life or work, being in the right place at the right time, with the right product, increases the chances of successful outcomes to your endeavours.

The Power of Inspiration

Some experiences in our life have the power to shape it forever. Here are two real life stories of people whose experiences in their early years left a permanent mark on their thinking and actions.

Vineet Nayar's Jalwa (charisma)

Thirty years ago, Vineet Nayar, vice chairman and CEO of HCL Technologies was a student of a new batch at XLRI. He and his batchmates had just settled in for the first day in class when 50 adivasis stormed into the classroom and ransacked it before vanishing into thin air. None of the students were hurt, but the professor, Father McGrath, lay in a pool of blood. Even as the students were recovering from their shock, Father McGrath rose to his feet and announced that it was a staged show. "I want you to write sit down and write about what you have just seen," he told them.

The event left an indelible stamp on the young Nayar. "If you want to say something say it in the Father McGrath way so that people never forget about it, or don't sat it at all,"  was the mantra he carried from the experience. Nayar had understood with blinding clarity, the power of communication and the learning went on to form the cornerstone of his leadership style. Today, whether it is the 88,000 employees of HCL Technologies, customers, vendors or the public at large, Nayar makes it a point to get his message across with energy and elan. For instance, at a recent employee conference, he shook a leg to the Bollywood number Tera Hi Jalwa with co-workers before announcing the numbers. Plus, he has eight internal networking platforms and four external ones through which he communicates to his world of employees and stakeholders. These include Meme, HCL's equivalent of  Facebook through which he interacts with 67, 000 employees and Twitter where he sends Tweets daily and has 9000 followers. Its as if Father McGrath is still maintaining a constant vigil on him!

Mashelkar's Aag (fire)

In the case of R.A. Mashelkar, former Director at National Chemical Labotatory at Pune, the inspiration came first from his mother. Mashelkar had a difficult childhood and his mother, who worked as a maidservant, could not support his college education. But she gave him the courage to face life in times of adversity and taught him how to stand tall and not give up on principles. With her inspiration,  he not only went on to to be a rank holder in the Matriculation examination, but also win many other laurels in public life. The other inspiration was his teacher, Principal Bhave. During an experiment on how to find the focal length of a convex mirror, he held the glass till the paper caught fire. Then he turned to young Mashelkar and told him that if he could focus his energies like that, he could burn anything. This two experiences became the cornerstone of his life philosophy and also his leadership style.

Among other things, Mashelkar's personal experience of ascendance from dire circumstances, shaped his thinking that there is no limit to human endurance and achievements except the limit you put on yourself. On the other hand, his experience of Professor Bhave's convex lens experiment, shaped his leadership style forever. It  convinced him of the power of concentration and focus, When he came to CSIR, which was a network of 38 laboratories, he saw that they were competing with each other and there was zero collaboration. His convex lens style of leadership led him to initiate several collaborating programmes, including one which had 19 labs working together. Mashlekar is now hailed as the man behind India’s scientific intellectual property rights (IPR) revolution, a visionary administrator, an inspirational orator and one of the most humble scientists of his times. His mantra; focus your energies and you can set the world on fire. 

Call to Action

Both Nayar and Mashelkar know who the architects of their life philosophy and leadership style are. Do you? If not, here is a set of questions to reflect on and make you to think:

• Think of all your greatest heroes and heroines, for some of us, as in the case of Mashelkar, it may be our parents, or it could be one of our teachers and it could even be an event.
• Who do you look for inspiration in your daily life?
• Who influences your work and your profession the most?
• Who is the front runner in being your role model?

I'll be happy to hear your experience!

The Theory of Coaching

At the beginning of the last century, two men raced to be the first to make it to the the South Pole - Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott.  While Amundsen used dogs to make his journey, Scott decide to make use of ponies and motorized sleds. What shaped their decisions on how to make it to the South Pole? Their different set of experiences and the ability to learn from them. Authors Sengupta and Heyden in their blog, The Leadership Lessons of the Race to the South Pole,  describe how these differences doomed Scott and handed success to Amundsen.

From his own experience as well as those of others,  Amundsen learnt that successful explorers are cautious. They remain flexible, and are ready to adapt targets and plans in light of conditions. When conditions are not right, it is better to turn back rather than rely on hope and luck. He believed that bad luck is often the result of insufficient preparation. This was his theory. 

On the other hand, Scott was a naval officer most of his life. Although he was to become synonymous with the Antarctic, his ill-fated 1911 venture was only his second polar expedition. However, despite the lack of experience of such climates, Scott was disinclined to rely others who knew similar terrain. Among the decisions which were to prove fatal for him, was the one not to use dogs for sledges, despite advice from both Amundsen and the pioneering polar explorer Fritjof Nansen. Instead, he relied on two options that had not been tested in polar conditions: ponies and motorized sledges. Neither proved well adapted. Scott's military background also played its part. Like all military men he was competitive. Since he was engaged in a race, he pressed on, despite worsening weather conditions.Scott compounded these decisions by making logistical and organizational mistakes that reflected a failure to appreciate from his previous experience just how unforgiving polar conditions are. 

When people face uncertainty, say Sengupta and Heyden, experience, the ability to learn from it, obsessive planning, and a willingness to alter course will trump determination and courage every time.

Shaping Theories from Experiences

Growth, as an American entrepreneur once famously said, means change and involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown. In The Growth Imperative, author Clay Christensen a professor at Harvard, writes of how we often admire the intuition that successful entrepreneurs seem to have stepping from the known to the unknown, and build growth businesses. When they exercise their intuition about what actions will lead to the desired results, they  really  are  employing  theories  that  give  them  a  sense  of  the  right  thing  to  do  in  various circumstances.  These  theories  were  not  there  at  birth:  They  were  learned  through  a  set  of experiences and mentors earlier in life, as did Amundsen. 

According to Christensen, what brings predictability  to  any  field  is  a  body  of  well-researched  theory—contingent  statements  of  what causes what and why. Executives often discount the value of management theory because it is associated with the word theoretical, which connotes impractical. But theory is consummately practical. The law of gravity, for example, actually is a theory—and it is useful. It allows us to predict that if we step off a cliff, we will fall. 

Even  though  most  managers  don’t  think  of  themselves  as  being  theory  driven,  they  are  in reality  voracious  consumers  of  theory.  Every  time  managers  make  plans  or  take  action,  it  is based  on  a  mental  model  in  the  back  of  their  heads  that  leads  them  to  believe  that  the  action being       taken       will       lead       to       the       desired       result. Amundsen's mental model was dogs and skis should speed his journey to the South Pole. Scott's was different - which led to his decision to use motorized sleds and ponies.  

The       problem, writes Christensen, is  managers  are  rarely  aware  of  the  theories  they  are  using—and  they  often  use  the  wrong theories  for  the  situation  they  are  in.  It  is the absence of conscious, trustworthy theories of cause and effect that makes success in building new businesses seem random. No  matter  how  well  articulated  a  concept  or  insight  might  be,  it  must  be shaped and modified, often significantly, as it gets fleshed out into a winning business plan.

Rarely  does  an  idea  for  a  new-growth  business  emerge  fully  formed  from  a manager's head. And this is where a business coach comes in. He helps clients to shape and modify his theories and construct well formed mental models.  

                                                                                         Source: Quantum Leap

Unlike the Therapist, Consultant and the Trainer, who use prescriptive processes, a Coach (both Life and Business) helps his client clarify, construct and validate theories through a 3-stage generative process.

1. Co-create descriptions, or characterizations of the phenomenon client wishes to understand.
2. Co-create classifications of the phenomenon into categories in order to highlight the most meaningful differences.
3. Co-create articulation of a theory of what causes the phenomenon to occur and why

Through this generative process, the coach helps clients avoid forming both life and management theories. The result - minimal chances of client observing one or two successes, assuming they have seen enough and proceeding impatiently to implement them.


And perhaps, end up committing mistakes such as those of Robert Scott.

Links

1. A Chapter from Christensen's The Growth Imperative
2. The Leadership Lessons of the Race to the South Pole
3. The Difference Between Coaching and Consulting. 
4. How the Coach Helped the Keen to Grow Butterfly.

On Why CEO's Procrastinate. And What They Could Do About It

And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total?

                                                                                                   - Tillie Olsen

From my years of coaching CEOs, one of the important understanding is that the first and most prominent challenge for CEOs in the pursuit of their goal is - procrastination. In other words, getting started on the key priorities that will make their biggest ideas a reality.The reason for the procrastination? The threat of uncertainty.

Timothy M. Pychyl, who specializes in the study of procrastination has an explanation for this on his blog. According to him, people when faced with a task about which they are uncertain on how to proceed, experience negative emotions and threats to self. To cope with this experience, they end up delaying the task, escaping the negative emotions and rationalizing the choices they make. I have had CEOs come up with all kinds of excuses for not implementing the tasks they had committed to. Excuses such as "I cannot think beyond a three months planning horizon" (to delay their long-term planning exercise). Or "My customers insist on speaking only to me and not my subordinates" (to avoid delegating to them). Or even rationalizations such as the executive in the cartoon below.

 What such CEOs are doing is that instead of self-regulating their behavior to stay on task such as mustering their creativity to make a plan of action, they self-regulate their emotions. Mood for them, takes precedence. While useful in the short-term in terms of mood repair or protecting self-esteem, this short-termism can have serious long-term consequences for their companies. Consequently, they end up undermining their company's, as well as their own performance.

Strategist and author Kaihan Kippendorf, is right on target when he says that most CEOs invest their energy at any one time on four initiatives:

1. Wastes of time: hard-to-execute ideas that would have little impact on their achieving their goals. 

 
2. Tactics: easy-to-execute ideas that will not significantly impact their success. 

3. Winning moves: easy-to-execute ideas with huge impact. 

4. Crazy ideas: difficult-to-execute ideas that, if you could figure out how to make them happen, would really make a difference.

Investing Time Wisely

If they have the best interests of their companies at heart, and wish to invest their time and energy more efficiently, CEOs should practice the following.

• Dump the Wastes of Time and focus energy on more productive activity.
• Execute the Tactics or the easy-to-do stuff of the second , but bear in mind that they are not strategic priorities.
• Attend to the Winning moves NOW.
• Instead of dismissing the Crazy ideas as "go to the moon" ones, spend their time figuring out how to make them feasible.

To begin practice, they should ask themselves two questions: 

( i ) If I successfully executed this initiative, what impact would it have on my ability to achieve my goals? and 

( ii ) How easy is it execute this initiative?

An an even better way; they can get themselves a Business coach who can support them to question themselves in sifting and weighing their options and estimating chances of success. And most important - remember the commitments they made to themselves!

To know more on how I can help you, check out my website http://arurbizcoach.com/

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.

7 Leadership Lessons From Alexander The Great

Alexander became king when only 20 and in an amazing eleven-year journey of conquest rode 10,00 miles, fought 70 battles without losing a single one and conquered all the way from Egypt to India – half the known world of those times. All this in a life spanning a mere 32 years! Obviously an achievement of such epic proportions could not have happened without the display of some amazing leadership qualities. What leadership qualities of Alexander made historians label him 'Great'? Here are 7 incidents from the short life of Alexander, that are illustrative of his leadership style and which we could take lessons from.

Alexander the Great Source Encyclopedia Britannica

Leadership Lesson #1: Have An action orientation

Action was what Alexander wanted from life. He hated a life of comfortable sloth. When he heard of the conquests of his father, King Philip of Macedonia, Alexander was not happy about the additional wealth and power that he would inherit, but instead was sad that there would be less left for him to conquer. Alexander often lamented to his friends that the way things were going nothing would be left for him to do once he became king!

Leadership Lesson # 2: Care for your people

Between 30,000 and 43,000 infantry and between 3,000 and 4,000 horsemen followed Alexander into Asia Minor [334 B.C.]. He had only 70 talents (Greek currency) for their pay, and no more than thirty days' provisions. Alexander was 200 talents in debt, having spent everything he had in making sure that his best men were able to provide for their families. When one of his generals asked what he had kept for himself, Alexander answered: "My hope." On hearing this, the general refused the pension that Alexander offered him, saying: "Your soldiers will be your partners in that."

Lesson # 3: Be seen caring for your people

After covering four hundred miles in eleven days in the battle against King Darius, Alexander and his soldiers were nearly dead from thirst. Some Macedonian scouts had brought back a few bags of water from a distant river, and they offered Alexander a helmet-full. Although his mouth was so dry that he nearly was choking, he gave back the helmet with his thanks and explained: "There is not enough for everyone, and if I drink, the others will faint." When his men saw this, they spurred their horses forward and shouted for him to lead them. With such a king, they said, they would defy any hardships.

Leadership Lesson # 4: Dare to innovate!

In the city of Gordium, Alexander accepted the challenge of the Gordian knot. A very intricate knot tied together the yoke of an ancient chariot, and there was a legend that whoever could undo the knot would become the master of the world. Alexander pulled out his sword and chopped through the Gordian knot, instead of involving himself in its mysterious entanglements.

Lesson # 5: Lead by personal example

One day, Alexander fell behind the rest of his army because his old teacher, Lysimachus could not keep up. Night found Alexander in a very dangerous position: far behind his army and without any fire to combat the cold. He noticed some enemy campfires, so he ran over to one, killed two soldiers with his knife, then carried back a burning stick to his men. This was typical of Alexander -- he was always encouraging his men by a personal example of readiness to work and face danger.

Lesson # 6: Live your values

One night at Gaugamela, the armies of Alexander and Darius, King of Persia, came in sight of each other. The noise and campfires of the vast barbarian camp were so frightening that some of Alexander's generals advised a night attack because it would be too dangerous to take on such a huge force in daylight. But Alexander replied: "I will not steal victory."

Lesson # 7: Reward your people

Another time, one of the common soldiers was driving a mule that carried some of Alexander's treasure. The mule was too exhausted to go on, so the soldier put the load on his own shoulders. Alexander saw the man staggering along, and he asked what was the matter. The soldier told him that the mule was too tired to carry the load, and that he was about at the end of his endurance too. "Don't give up now," said Alexander, "but carry what you have there to the end of the journey, then take it to your own tent, to keep for yourself."

Parting Thought

These incidents offer us an understanding of why Alexander truly deserved the title of 'The Great'. But was his epic achievement a result only of his remarkable leadership skills and courage? In the words of a fellow Greek – Euripedes, 'Courage is nothing if the gods withhold their aid'. Can one say the same of leadership skills too?

Was Alexander truly a Leadership ka Sikander or was he a Muqqadar ka Sikander - the most favoured child of God?

"I am Anna Hazare" True or False?

A recent survey  of India's youth conducted by by MTV, showed that over 50% of them were OK with paying bribes to succeed in life. Surprisingly, Anna Hazare's recent campaign against corruption had struck a cord with the very same youth, and they had come out on to the streets in large numbers! So what explains this strange contradiction?

Maybe some kind of an answer may be found in yesterday's Economic Times. In the issue's Blinkers off cartoon by Salam, one executive is telling another, "I can't say for sure what is important...self-respect, integrity or being on the right side of the boss...?" The cartoon aptly sums up the dilemmas and the challenges  of  the youth viz., if self-respect and integrity be part of one's values set, to what extent would one be of willing to sacrifice them at the altar of career success?

 These were also the kind of dilemmas expressed by the young participants at my recent workshop on Goal setting. One of the activities required participants to identify their personal values and the importance of  identifying and living our values in our life. After my presentation one of them asked, "If the value of my time to my company is Rs 3000.00 per day, and I have the option to pay a tout Rs 1000.00 and get a ticket (or a form etc.) delivered at home instead of waiting in a queue to buy one, what should I choose to do? And that's the dilemma most of us face - should I forgo my value of not paying a bribe  and settle for the 'efficient' and 'cost-effective' option of saving my time and pay a bribe? Or do I stick by my values and principles no matter what it costs?

In reply to the participant's question, I cited the example of how Narayana Murthy of Infosys handled such a situation.There were several incidents when Infosys was asked to grease palms to get its work done. in 1996, the company refused to pay a bribe of Rs 4 lakh to buy the land where their Bangalore office was built. Instead, it paid Rs 40 lakh extra, about 40% more than the amount other companies had paid to build offices in that locality. Over the years, Infosys' clean image became a benchmark in India Inc.

So if one chooses to strictly  live by one's values then no price would be too high to protect them. The choice of course is a difficult one for most of us. But for those who choose to tread the difficult path - it can be life of fulfillment.

And success?

What separates winners from losers?

What separates a winner from a loser? Does success mean owning things? How does it feel when you are doing what you like to do best? What does love mean?

Hear Paul Newman and Piper Lawrie talk about all these issues in this clip from the movie The Hustler. You could then reflect on, and interpret their conversation  within the framework of your own experience.