Saturday, March 31, 2012

Human and animals….

During  training programmes, to break the ice, we ask participants to introduce themselves in a special way. Sometimes we ask to take some time to understand the next person and introduce him to other participants; sometimes we ask to relate themselves with one animal and so on… Relating with certain animal is interesting. Participants relate themselves to different animals and sometimes particular species of the animal.

It is more interesting to understand why they relate to particular animal. Dog, Cat, Tiger, Elephant, Monkey are the animals which score more in relating. Fox, Wolf are rarely related by the participants. One participant related to the Tiger, but specifically to “White Tiger”. He mentioned that he has rare skill sets and likes to identify himself as different.

In realty, animals are more honest than human beings. Cat will never behave like fox or fox will never behave like elephant or vice versa. They are real and show the real characteristics. Dog is loyal, cat is sustainable, tiger is fearless, elephant is brainy, and monkey is always busy. When you see the human being he has everything in him. Human being will never be real and will exhibit all the traits of different animals.   

Human beings have a brain, so s/he thinks like elephant, but not always. Sometimes s/he will make stupid mistakes and make the mess. Not necessary they will use their brain.  Dog is known for his loyalty to his master, human being will also show the loyalty to his/her owner, or boss, but not necessary always. Tiger or lion are fearless. Human being will be fearless as per the situation. Absence of courage is the fear. Human being takes the stand as per the situation. He has to create the courage and confidence. Elephants, foxes or wolfs stay in group, human also stay in group, we call it “team”.  Elephants are more like a team, however foxes and wolfs are groups without any values. But these animals are predictable. You don’t predict when human being will behave like fox or elephant. Their behaviour is always erratic.

So what is the bottom-line?

You can always learn from animals. There are lots of stories on these learning like Jataka’s stories. The best way to bring out the best behavior learned from animal.

There is elephant, dog, tiger, cat, donkey and many more…. And off course each one has unique good behaviour which we can actually learn…

But behave… you have the choice of good one and bad one…

Friday, March 23, 2012

Leaders selling insurance policies!

Have you seen factory of making leaders? I have seen the board of one management institute on Mumbai –Pune highway. In Pune, there are lots of so-called management institutes who claim that they make leaders for industries. These institute offers post graduate management courses to students who have lot of money and their fathers don’t know what to do with that money.  Surprisingly, there are few institutes which do not pay the salaries of their employees on time. There are few institutes who are run by the people who don’t know what management means. Still most of these institutes manage their (paid) ranking published by some magazines and economics periodicals. These periodicals carry survey for the ranking. Institutes pay for the advertorials (paid advertisements published in a format of articles) and they get the space in rankings. Top institutes never participate in such surveys because they don’t need such acknowledgement.

And these institutes claim that they make leaders for the industries. In spite of providing such ready-made leaders to the industries, industries do not benefit much from these leaders. These leaders either sell banking products like credit cards or insurance policies or perform the job of clerk in industry. They either change the job or forced to change the job within a year.

During 2007-2009, you must have seen lot of retail and banking companies hiring candidates from these institutes. Normally the hiring was on the payroll of DSAs or contractors of these companies. I was working with Media Company and we used to hire candidates for sales, either selling advertisement (for advertisement department) or products (Circulations or selling of the product). We used to receive the resumes of candidate who were working with banking and insurance sector from all above institutes. They would tell us the reason of high pressure and undignified jobs. How the Leader can sell the insurance policy or sell the banking product to the customer?

During this period I also came to know the bitter truth of such institutes and malpractices in which they involve. Every institute claims 100% placement, but if somebody conducts the survey on “what happens to these students after six months”, I bet you will find surprising results.

This specific business management education system has spoiled the talent market. This also resulted in increased employee turnover because of mismatch of expectations. It is very unlikely that after such education student would get the managerial role. I have seen most of such student doing clerical jobs. For the jobs which can be handled by simple graduate, companies started hiring MBAs (PGs in from above institutes). Students perceive that they would manage people or would be manager within a year. (Fancy titles conditioned their mindJ)

Frankly speaking you need smart employees and not necessary these institutes teach smartness. Second myth is about leadership. If you hired all the leaders (!) to do day to job, failure is likely.

Thank god, most of the organizations are realizing the fact. Almost 35,000 seats in so called business schools are vacant this year and there is less demand for business management courses. This is because; industries corrected their stand on hiring such talents.

Time has come to scrap the existing business management education system and revamp the whole as per the industry expectations.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Chase the dream...

“Chase the dream, they will realized.” This is the reaction of master blaster Sachin Tendular after he scored his 100th century against Bangladesh. Sachin Tendular is a very positive person; I have never heard him speaking anything negative. There are lots of people in the world who dream and they succeed. There are also lots of people who also dream and never succeed. The irony is they see the dream and they don’t believe on their own dream.

Everybody has dreams regarding work, relationships, health and personal development. The million dollar question is what takes them to realize their dream. The problem is that they don’t chase their dream. They see the dream and they forget the dream. And they sigh “Kash….(perhaps…)”

Sachin Tendular saw the dream; he chased it till he realized it. Do we chase our dream? Do we consider, what takes to chase the dream? What are the secrets? The person who is strong against all the odds makes the difference. When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them. It is not only dreaming, but doing something to chase the dream. Expanding outside the boundaries is critical, but needed to be successful. Sachin was never the part of boundaries. His balls were out of the boundaries.  

How dream Works
Prominent psychologists stated in most of their research that the majority of our behavior comes about unconsciously and automatically. An estimate of the proportions: 5 percent conscious, planned behavior opposite 95 percent unconscious, automatic behavior. This does not only count for “simple” automatic behavior but also for complex, intelligent proceedings.

We read automatically, we respond to e-mails and phone calls automatically, we think automatically and we even learn new automatisms automatically. You have no idea whether you stopped for red lights, gave right of way or overtook other cars. Everything happened automatically. If we conditioned our dreams in right way, they work automatically. The part of the brain does not recognize the difference between reality and dream and it assumes that dream is a reality. The mind acts accordingly.  

Every action of Sachin Tendular was automatics. You just see his actions on playing ground. Many times, he went back in pavilion, with poor score. It was the natural phenomenon and any common person would have been done the same thing. He never carried the status of his image and he was always automatic and natural.

And it worked most of the time, during critical matches and when he scored 100th century.

We “condition” ourselves, as it were, to be successful. A bear in the road is no longer a disaster; it becomes a trigger to automatically produce the solutions we came up with ahead of time.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

BHAG


BHAG is impossible but attainable goal statement.

Frankly speaking, I was not aware what “BHAG” means till 2007. When I was involved in implementing Balanced Scorecard in my previous organization, I came to know this terminology during one initial workshop on Balanced Scorecard. Off course, Balanced Scorecard has not directly related to BHAG, but has some connection.  I like it very much and read more about the same.  This terminology was first used by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. They encourage organizations to develop a “big, hairy, audacious goal” (BHAG, pronounced bee-hag)a bold strategic vision statement that has powerful emotional appeal. Balanced Scorecard is also based on the strong vision.

BHAGs help infuse work with meaning by articulating the goals of the organization in a way that connects emotionally with peoples’ values.

The term itself connotes that the goals are very ambitious for the world and are questionable but not impossible. However people in the organization should be connected to the statement. Sometimes this may create confusion among employees. They may perceive the goals unattainable and the whole purpose of the BHAG goals may defeat.  

In one organization, the BHAG goals were translated into 5- years plan, however people were not aware about the logic of deciding these goals. Company hired consultants. Consultants did their job. They did market research and analysis; put the data in big presentations; however different business heads were not convinced on their Goals. Managing Director was pushy, however whole exercise went wrong. It could not work. In such scenario, such BHAG statements may extravagant, containing little relevance or meaning for people.

The BHAG should be more strategic and emotionally compelling to people. It helps to align employees towards business. Typical BHAG applies whole organization and has 10-20 year long ambition. It requires thinking beyond the current capabilities and hence it is very difficult to connect all the demographics of the organization.  

Just imagine Bill Gate’s dream “A computer in every home.”  If Bill Gate would not have been given the clear vision statement, would Microsoft have been there today.  Generally people don’t dislike work; companies need to help them to understand mutual objectives. They will drive themselves to unbelievable excellence, as rightly said by Bim Black.

In 1990, Wal- Mart had seen the same dream and they become 125 billion -company by 2000.  During 1900, Henry Ford dreamt to “democratize the automobile.” However there are certain companies, which were totally focus towards crushing their competitor as Nike farmed the BHAG statement in 1960. Their BHAG goal was “to crush the Adidas.”(!)

Primarily all these Goals were perceived impossible by the external world, but internally they sensitize all the resources towards their Goals. In most of the cases, they succeeded.  

Leadership is to provide this BHAG vision to the organization and employees at large. And hence leadership means also dreaming big and translating the impossible dream in achievable goals.

Friday, March 02, 2012

Potential within you…


Potential & creativity is hidden within human being.
Explore that...
The creator gathered together all of creation and potential and said, “I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it. It is the realization that... they create their own reality.”

The eagle said, “Give it to me I will take it to the moon”

The Creator said, “No. One day they will go there and find it.”

The salmon said, “I will take it to the bottom of the ocean.”

“No they will go there too.”

The buffalo said, “I will bury it on the great plains.”

The Creator said, “They will cut into the skin of the earth and find it even there.

Then the Grandmother mole, who lives in the breast of Mother Earth, and who has no physical eyes but sees with spiritual eyes, said, “Put it inside them.”

And the Creator said, “It is done.”

The whole creativity, innovation and potential are within human being and still we do not recognize the same. Why some people are very successful. One marketing director of training company visited me last week. She was referring her owner who is also a transformational and motivational speaker. He is only 12th, but he transformed himself that he is one of the great speakers. There are so many people around us and sometimes we wonder how and why they are successful and great.

In another example, one of the friends was not confident to take higher role and the reason was fear to fail. He is still struggling to get good opportunities.

First things first we should believe on ourselves. Why the people are successful? They are successful because their strong and fundamental belief on themselves.

We should ask certain questions ourselves time to time. Just challenge your assumption on following:

Are we aware about our potential?  Most of the people are unaware about their potential and what they have. Get some time out from your busy schedule and get the feedback from your colleagues, friends and family members. Use the methodology of appreciative enquiry. Identify your achievement and just look back what behaviours have you exhibited to achieve these achievements. Make a list of these strength and behaviours and work out your plan to develop further.

Are we confident about ourselves?  Fear drives you away from the success. Some people have the fear of failure but there are people who have fear to the success; fear of being successful. You should not be worry about the fear. Fear is the natural phenomenon. But the question is how you overcome the fear. We should be confident about ourselves to overcome the fear. When I go on the stage for the presentation, my palms still get wet, but within a second I overcome the fear.
  
If you answer these two fundamental questions, it will easy to prepare for taking a take off towards successful life.

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