The Thief of Time

The recent crisis of the euro was exacerbated by the German government's dithering, and the decline of the American industry exemplified by the bankruptcy of GM, was due in part to executives' penchant for delaying decisions. Closer home, I used to coach a client who had a yen for delaying decisions - postponing important decisions on one pretext or another. The perplexing thing about procrastination is that although it seems to involve avoiding unpleasant tasks, indulging in it generally doesn't make people happy. And that made me wonder what caused people (including me) sit on important - and not so important, decisions.

Until recently that is, when I chanced on this review of the book "The Thief of Time" edited by Chrisoula Andreou and Mark D.White in the New Yorker.

Many explanations have been offered as to why we willingly defer something even though we expect the delay to make us worse off. The one with which most contributors to the book agree is to do with our relationship with time. Procrastinators are able to make rational choices when they are thinking of the future, but, as the present gets closer, short-term considerations overwhelm their long-term goals.

Another is ignorance - a case of "the planning fallacy". Procrastinators fail to take into account the time it has taken them to complete similar projects in the past and partly because they rely on everything going smoothly without any accidents or problems.

Both the above cannot be the whole story and a fuller explanation offered by the essayists is to do with our attitudes. General McClellan, a Union army general during the American Civil War and 'one of the greatest procrastinators of all time(!)", is a perfect example of this. Union General-in-Chief Henry Halleck writing about him said, "there is an immobility here that exceeds all that any man can conceive of. It requires the lever of Archimedes to move this inert mass." McClellan's "immobility" highlights several classic reasons we procrastinate. The general seemed to have been unsure he could do anything and was always cribbing to Lincoln about the lack of resources - whether troops or arms. Procrastinators, create conditions that make success impossible, a reflex that creates a vicious cycle and often succumb to perfectionism.

So how do we overcome ourselves of procrastination? The book suggests the use of External Aids (perhaps a coach who holds you accountable?) and the use of Reframing - dividing projects into smaller, more defined tasks.

Or perhaps you could do a variation on the the even more radical method employed by Victor Hugo. He would write naked and tell his valet to hide his clothes so that he'd be unable to go outside when he was supposed to be writing!

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!

Importance of Core Values

In a recent issue of the Corporate Dossier , Ed Cohen, the ex-chief Learning Officer at Satyam Computer Services reveals an interesting factor behind the downfall of the founder and Satyam, and its founder Byrraju Ramlinga Raju - the absence of defined core values. Since its inception in 1987, Raju had outlined the purpose of Satyam Computers as 'AICS Delight' (an acronym for Associates, Investors, Customers and Society at large) and this certainly seems to have worked for him in the golden years of Satyam's growth. He won several awards and honours including the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for Services in 1999, Dataquest IT Man of the Year in 2000, CNBC's Asian Business Leader - Corporate Citizen of the Year award in 2002 and E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2007.

But, according to Cohen, AICS wasn't enough and the company needed core values. Reason - the articulating of core values would create a conscious choice with a deliberate choice around the core values. The lack of core values coming down from the top, resulted in their being defined from the middle and bottom line and these core values defined at the lower levels, stood the company in good stead when the crisis hit. So even though Raju and Satyam were synonymous in the minds of his employees, when the failure happened and the initial shock had subsided, everyone responded with 'How can we save this? How can we pull it together? We have responsibility to our customers, employees investors, even to society.'

In this crisis situation, the 'AICS delight' mission statement would not have helped - the delight had gone out of the window with the scam revelations. It was only the core values defined at the lower levels (Cohen does not tell us what they were), that the risk of the company going bust was mitigated. People started planning scenarios of various possible arising situations and drafted a 30/60/90 days start-stop-continue plan.

A company's resiliency is sorely tested during a time of crisis and Cohen talks about the 'heart' the people of the organisation showed during the crisis. One of the 'heart' factors was surely the core values.

Leadership lesson: A company's core values shape the culture and define the character of a company. They guide the behaviour of it's employees and the way decisions get made.

Have you defined the core values of your company? And if you have, are you making sure they govern your own, as well as the actions and behaviours of your employees?

The Leader's Call

One day Mullah Nasrullah and his friend went to an eating place to feast on fish. They ordered two pieces of fried fish from the ‘fresh catch of the day’ menu and when the order arrived, Mullah Nasrullah immediately picked up the larger piece and put it on his plate.

His friend was shocked and exclaimed, “Mullah, how indecent of you, don’t you know it is considered bad manners to do that?”

“Alright,” Nasrullah responded, “what would you have done?”

“Taken the smaller piece” said his friend.

“Well, here you are!” said Nasrullah dropping the other piece on to his friend’s plate.

What Mullahji had done was to take an intelligent call on his friend’s “socially appropriate” response to cleverly have the larger piece of fish for himself.

Entrepreneurs too have to take an intelligent call, but of a different kind – when to be hands on and plunge into the day-to-day operations, and when hands off and trusting their managers to deliver.

An interesting example, and one entrepreneurs can learn from, is of the the way Kumarmanagalam Birla dealt with his ambition of taking over Novelis, a company 4 times larger than his, and the how, having bought it over, he dealt with the subsequent turnaround.

The Economic Times has a very interesting article on it.

http://tinyurl.com/3y99y5l

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!

Read more...

What triggers emotions?

Emotions are our guidance system. Nature developed our emotions over millions of years of evolution. As a result, our emotions have the potential to serve us today as a guidance system. Our emotions let us know when any natural human need is not being met. For example, when we feel lonely, our need for connection with other people is unmet. When we feel afraid, our need for safety is unmet. When we feel rejected, it is our need for acceptance that is unmet.

What triggers emotions? Let us take the case of anger, management of which happens to be the problem with many of us today. According to Daniel Goleman, who popularized the concept of Emotional intelligence, “A universal trigger for anger is the sense of being endangered. Endangerment can be signaled not just by an outright physical threat but also, as is more often the case, by a symbolic threat to self-esteem or dignity being treated unjustly or rudely, being insulted or demeaned, being frustrated in pursuing an important goal.”

I have noticed my anger gets triggered mostly on getting a call at awkward moments from telemarketers, or the times when I have had to deal with service providers with an automatic voice service. You know the kind which tells you in an infuriatingly polite voice, “press 1 for billing, press 2 for credit card enquiries.... “and so on. What I desperately want to hear is a human voice which the taped voice never tells you how! So finally when after several attempts, I finally manage to get some executive on the line, s/he becomes a target of my anger and frustration. Far from resolving the issue, I have realized that were I to exhibit some restraint, the outcome of the conversation would be far more positive and more in my favor.

How have I been able to tame my anger? Having to work on anger management issues of some of my coachees (successfully, I may add!) I became aware of my own failings in this (and other) departments and decided to research the topic of Emotional Intelligence. EI, I learnt, is about our ability to understand o of others. EI has four dimensions to it:
1. Self-Awareness.
2. Self-Control.
3. Social-Awareness.
4. Relationship Management.

Self awareness is the foundation. Without self-awareness, we cannot be aware of our emotions. We cannot manage emotions we are not aware of, so our emotions will tend to be out of control. Out of control emotions impair our ability to experience empathy and to connect with others - just as they did mine in my interactions with the service provider executives. When our emotions are out of control, our relationships suffer – we do not have social awareness or the ability for social management.

Self-awareness – through my self-realization while coaching, facilitated both empathy and self-control. Empathy and self-control combined to make for effective relationship management.

How does EQ affect individuals and their careers?
The Centre for Creative Leadership, a well known institution in the US, has looked at why careers get plateaued or derailed and has found that, of the four top reasons, three are related to EQ and not IQ. These are:-
• Failure to adapt effectively to change
• Poor team leadership
• Inability to make decisions
• Difficulty in working with others

If you recognise any or all of these in you or your managers, then perhaps it's time to look at your EQ!

The advantages of being a coach

One of the good things about being a coach is that it constantly gives me an opportunity to review and work on my undesirable habits. While coaching clients, I need to listen to the coachee with attention, thought and intent so as to understand from his language the sources of his energy and passion. But there are also times when I may notice a habit which could come in the way of his success, but before I bring it to his notice, I tend to stop myself and reflect - am I a victim of it too?

Coaching sessions set me thinking

Quite, in fact, like the story told about Gandhiji. It seems a lady once approached him and asked Gandhiji to advise her young son about overcoming his fondness for sweets. Gandhiji looked thoughtful and then requested the lady to come to again the following week whence he would advise her son. The following week when the woman turned up with her son, Gandhiji took the child aside and explained to him all about the ill effects of being addicted to sweets. At this, the lady enquired curiously, “Bapu, why did you not tell him the same thing the last time we met you?”

“Because,” he replied, “Till last week, I too loved sweets, I worked on myself during all of the week to get rid of the habit, so that I could advise your son with honesty!”

Just as in the case of Gandhiji, I too have had to work on several of my own habits so that I could coach clients to work on theirs with some degree of integrity. As a result, I am now more in control of my temper; I tend to be a better listener, and I have become a lot more empathetic. And just in case you don’t believe me, all the above happen to be the observations of my wife!

All these improvements are encouraging imrovements in my Emotional Intelligence(EI), a topic on which have been spending a lot of time researching

Namaste!

I always knew that our Indian greeting "Namaste" had profound sentiments attached to it. The definition or meaning that I came across on this American (!) site
Center for Access to the Power Within:
has given this understanding a lot more profoundity. It says:

"Namaste
I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides.
I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth and of peace. And when you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us."

What a truly meaningful greeting!

The King of Good Times and Bad!

"Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it." --Dwight D. Eisenhower

Eisenhower was a WWII General, known to be one of the greatest assets the Allies had. The Allies had to first beat Germany, to contain Japan until this task was finished, and then force Japan into surrendering. During these tough and crucial times, it was Eisenhower’s diplomacy and tact that held the Allies together and brought the victory.

And,it was tough and crucial times that the Kolkata Knight Riders – owned by Shah Rukh Khan - and the Bangalore Royal Challengers – owned by Vijay Mallya, went through when both their team failed to qualify for the semis. So how did the two deal with the situation?

Mallya reacted by blaming his captain Dravid and sacking Charu Sharma, his manager, for selecting a team of their – not his – choice. For good measure, he also blamed the media.

On the other hand Shah Rukh declared to the press that he was undaunted by his team’s lack of success, and that the failures of this year would be the pillars of success for his IPL team next year. Two distinct contrasts in leadership styles and behaviour.

Leadership StylesFrom Mahatma Gandhi to Ratan Tata, and Medha Patkar to Lalu Prasad Yadav, there are as many leadership styles as there are leaders. Fortunately, business people and psychologists have developed useful, shorthand ways of describing the main leadership styles that can help aspiring leaders to understand and adapt their own styles and leadership impact.

In his book Primal Leadership, Goleman introduces six leadership styles:

1. Visionary Leadership
2. Coaching style
3. Affiliative Leadership
4. Democratic Leadership
5. Pacesetting Leadership
6. Commanding Leadership

According to Daniel Goleman, good leaders are effective because they create resonance. They are tuned in to other people’s feelings and move them in a positive emotional direction. They speak authentically about their own values, direction and priorities and resonate with the emotions of their people. Under the guidance of an effective leader, people feel a mutual comfort level. Studies have shown that resonance comes easily to people with a high degree of emotional intelligence.

Based on the Goleman model, Mallya would appear to have a combination of a Pacesetting and Commanding styles of leadership. People with this style have a strong urge to achieve, are low on empathy and collaboration, impatient, numbers driven and tend to micromanage. These traits may have helped Mallya in his corporate battles such as the long drawn out one with Kishore Chhabria, for management control of Shaw Wallace. Have they let him down in the management of his IPL team? If Emotional intelligence is about using ones emotions intelligently, could more intelligent management of his emotions arising out of his leadership style attributes - impatience and lack of empathy – have helped him lead his team better during such crucial and sensitive times? Would that have also reinforced his image as a chilled out King of Good Times?

On the other hand, Shah Rukh’s response to his team’s failure was to pep up the spirit of his team by sending each of them an SMS saying, “the beauty of failure is that it brings people together…. So, let’s stick this out together…” [emphasis mine]

So what is Shah Rukh’s leadership style? He would appear to have a combination of the traits of a Visionary, Coaching, Affiliative and Democratic leader who inspires, is empathetic, and moves his people towards shared dreams. When failure strikes – unlike Mallya - he does not blame them, he uses ‘we’ [we are in this together] unlike ‘you’ [you are to blame] in his communication. As he says in his SMS, “….right now, all of us have become part of a failed script… A bad IPL script…. Let’s try and keep our characters worthy of still looking back at this story and remembering it as a special story becos we all worked very hard at this….” Could this explain, to an extent, the grand way the KKR team rode out of the IPL? As the Indian Express reported, “Sourav Ganguly finally decided to stamp his class with a match-turning 86-run knock that turned out to be the most sensational of comeback efforts in the tournament so far.”

Or, Do We Require Change of Our Thinking?

Are we seeing an evolution in the nature of the game of cricket as we know it? The IPL has all the elements of big league football - dugouts, cheerleaders, big money et al. Why, they even share the same name – Premier league. So is Mallya’s behaviour in keeping with that of a typical football team owner? Remember how the Chelsea football team owner, Roman Abramovich, sacked the manager of his team just days after their recent defeat to Man U? With a role model such as this, is Mallya’s behaviour justified?

Again, as Harsha Bhogle observes in The Indian Express , the corporatisation of cricket and profitability, image and return on investment become key criteria, can Mallya’s behaviour be seen as demanding accountability from his ‘employees’? After all, having shelled out a bomb for each of them, he would be perfectly within his rights to demand results of them!

What do you think?

Vikram Pandit, who took over as CEO of the deeply troubled Citi Bank in December, has been under pressure to declare which parts of Citi be jettisoned in order to make it profitable again. Pandit has been accused of being indecisive and ruminative, but considering the labyrinthine business of Citi, getting a handle on the business is bound to take time – leave alone coming up with an effective turnaround strategy. Though all of us may not have the kind of task Pandit has ahead of him, how can we get more value added productivity into our days?
In Are You Spending Time the Right Way, executive coach Melissa Raffoni outlines a three-step process for using your time more strategically. In summary she asks you to:
Break your responsibilities into strategic and tactical categories such as growth and improvement, managing people, and administration.
Determine how much of your time should be devoted to each category. “To answer,” she writes, “factor in the competing claims on your time: the activities that enable you to generate the most leverage, the company’s strategic priorities, and the short-term needs of your supervisors, direct reports, and customers.”
Make sure your conclusions align with the mission of our superiors and the company overall. Do you and your boss see eye-to-eye on where your commitments should be?
With this information in hand, Raffoni suggests you conduct an audit of how you actually spent your own time last week by looking at your calendar. Are your time commitments strategic? If not, learn how to box time and delegate to get the most out of your schedule, she says.

A recent article compares studies on groups of monkeys with corporate culture.

"The office and the jungle are surprisingly similar," says the report. "Both are ruled by stringent hierarchies, they are grounded in the need for co-operation, and complicated by the drive to compete.


"Add in the risk of hostile takeovers, a marketplace of favours and favourites, brazen opportunism and a long-held tradition of brown-nosing, and you can't tell the savannah from a forest of cubicles."

The magazine sets out five "rules of the jungle" that would apply equally in the office:
1. Don't take credit for work done cooperatively.
2. Stay on your boss's good side.
3. Don't bear grudges.
4. Be a team player.
5. Be a good boss by carefully balancing control, leadership and motivation.

Types of Leaders

Reading the review of Fidel Castro's autobiography - My Life in today's papers, I realised that successful leaders need to display two attributes Inspirational and Foundational. Some leaders may display both, while some one or the other. For instance Castro posseses both attributes while his alter ego Che Guevara was more of an inspirational leader, and less of a foundational one.

Castro as an inspirational leader - the book review reads - helped Che in fomenting revolution throughout Latin America and is now the exemplar of left-of-centre, anti US regimes.

As a builder, Castro built a complex, endurable and successful Cuban revolution through his qualities of acuity, an intellectual expansiveness, an almost pedantic attention to detail and, not the least, a generosity of spirit that allows accommodation.

So who is a better, more successful leader? Someone like Castro who displays both the attributes of being Inspirational as well as Foundational, or someone like Che who was inspirational, but not foundational? I believe Che - if he had lived and were to head a state - would have required a team which had foundational skills. A team of capable implementers inspired by Che would have been successful. But how about someone who has more of Foundational qualities - can someone other than the leader provide the inspiration for the team to be successful?

In the final analysis, I believe, it is easier for an inspirational leader to assemble a team of doers to lay the foundation for his vision, but slightly more difficult for a foundational leader to hire inspirational skills.

The Revival

It has been more than a year and half since I last posted on my blog and the reason for the revival lies in a recent meeting I had with a client.

At the meeting, I suggested that at the beginning of every month he describe to me five new things he has learnt in the past month. This, I said to him, would be a great way for him to anchor new learnings. As an afterthought, I said I too would share my learning with him. Easier said than done, I realised, because I do not have the habit of noting my thoughts and insights - and worse, promptly forget them the next day.

Hence the revival of my blog - to pen my insights.

Business Theories and Strategy Execution

For many companies, the month of April is the start of the new sales year. Hours, days, and months, of analyses, debates and heated discussions would have gone into the making of the marketing plan. Then would have begun the whirlwind tours of all the regions for the intensive briefing sessions, and finally now, the countdown started for the execution of the year’s plans.

According to the Webster’s Dictionary, the definition of the verb “execute” is “to carry out fully; to put completely into effect.” This sounds simple enough, but as most marketing managers would agree - exceedingly difficult to achieve! This is because, while marketing plans look wonderful on paper, the rub comes in their execution.

When you add personalities, politics and processes into the mix, the most brilliant marketing plans can grind to a screeching halt.

Read more: http://www.arurbizcoach.com/Bizmantras/bizmantras_april_06.htm

A good leadership practice!

Gudi Padva, or the arrival of the new year, was celebrated throughout Maharashtra on the 30th March.
On this day, in each home, the traditional gudi is put up -- a long bamboo stick, to which is attached a new silk cloth, a garland and a dangling neem twig. A silver or a metal pot is inverted onto this arrangement.
The gudi symbolises victory. It also indicates a wish for an individual to prosper materially and spiritually.
Some of the special sweets served on Gudi Padva are Puran Poli and Shrikhand.
and Aambe Dal and Sunth Paak. But the interesting thing is that before you start gorging yourself on the sweets, you are supposed to have a small portion of Neem leaves mixed with sugar and lightly roasted with ghee. The confection has a bitter sweet taste - much like life, which is a mix of bitter and sweet experiences! That also is the idea behind the ritual.

I think business leaders should take a portion of the neem confection everyday - just to remind themselves that their job entails taking pleasant, as well as unpleasant decisions. Something many leaders seem loath to do.

Sleep over this!

Researchers these days, seem bent on overturning our fondly held beliefs and practices! If you ever spent many hours agonising over the pros and cons of an important decision, you are now told to sleep over it or better still try getting yourself distracted! However for simple choices, such as between different towels, conscious thought will produce better results!

These are the findings of Professor Ap Dijksterhuis of the University of Amsterdam. Suggesting an explaination for the behaviour, the good professor says that out subconscious mind can deal with more facts and figures than our conscious mind. With easier choices, our brain has less information to process, and can make better decisions after giving a few minutes of thought.