Footprints on the Mountainside

Recently, I helped conduct a training programme aimed at looking at existing entrepreneurship and building on it in a team of managers in a leading bank. What struck me was the extreme efficiency of the team. They were performing at peak, yet there was little excitement in the group.

As the programme evolved, and we looked at different ways of understanding the preferences and choices of the team, it became increasingly clear that there were dreams and highly charged emotions bottled up in the group. Their perception of their working boundaries was of one that didn’t allow for mistakes, and their mode of operations was SAFE. While thier high efficiency ensured sustained performance, the monotony was literally strangling the life-giving forces in this vertical.

An incredible point in this programme came toward the end, where one of their seniors visited briefly, and during one of his conversations with the group, put it bluntly - “business is about going with your gut. There aren’t always logical explanations and guarantees. Sometimes you do things because you want to do them.”

Looking at this guy as he spoke was an experience of freshness, lightness and excitement about the work. There was none of the heavy air of confinement and no second-guesses about results. Just a happy acceptance of sheer temptation of certain exciting possibilities and a willingness to invest image and effort into making them work.

Unsaid at that time, I registered what I found different about this happy man who actually had far more responsibilities than the others - this was a businessman, not a manager.

I extend this philosophy to all I do in my life - if it doesn’t excite me, my investment of effort is not going to satisfy me, no matter what it is. Some things I may do out of necessity, but it is important not to lose track of priorities - it is the excitement where my focus needs to be.

When I work with small businesses, it is one of the greatest challenges to find such engagement. The fear of failure suffocates and overcomes all the charm of getting into it in the first place. The key is to know that failure will happen, but it is the opportunity that we need to keep our sights on.

Ownership isn’t only about owning responsibility and protecting. Ownership is also the commitment to take things ahead because it is the owner’s dream.

This post could be considered the ultimate guide to professional excellence, or any relationship for that matter. Why do I call professional excellence a relationship? Because it is. What you do, is important, but it is how people see it that matters - that’s how it is about relationship.

1. Get over your obsession with presenting perfection already. For one, it is too open to interpretation, and thus too vague in terms of what needs to be done. Instead, get obsessed with initiative. Attempts to be perfect block most of our initiative and leave us anxious. Learn to accept that you are doing what you think is best, and if it doesn’t turn out to be so, you then know that for sure, rather than imagining consequences and fearing them. <— this is not as easy as it sounds.
2. Embrace the goals you have committed to. This means, don’t take the lazy man’s way just because what seems best looks tough. Doesn’t matter if it is finding the strength to run an extra mile for your weight loss goal, or doing extra research to bring in thought provoking perspectives for that corporate presentation. It is about adopting the goal in your heart, and making the effort to stand by it through tough terrain.
3. Don’t panic. It is those who try who fail, or succeed. Know that you have tried, and respect yourself for it, even if things fail, because failures when accepted and learned from bring great strength and sure knowledge of what to avoid.
4. Acknowledge the people you are with. This doesn’t mean mindless agreement. It is simply acknowledging that they see things in a certain way, or feel strongly about certain things, regardless of whether you agree or don’t. Accept that they have their own stands which are as valid for them, as they are for you.
5. Throw those approvals and disapprovals out. They do more harm than good, because you end up constantly judging people rather than understanding them.
6. Standing up in the face of all for what you believe in takes courage, but is counter-productive, if it means that you end up deciding for everyone (or attempting to). It helps to present your stand on it, and your feelings about it. “Let us throw away the current policy on tea breaks - people are getting lazy” may not be as effective as “I see the tea breaks disrupting our schedule, and few of us seem to want tea at that time. Can we re-look at them and see if we can come up with something that suits us better? I suggest….”
7. Contribute, don’t dictate.
8. Don’t just agree, act. Agreement is passivity. Action is what causes positive change.
9. Try and be sensitive to the state of being of the person you are with. A colleague who looks harassed has a concern you could perhaps help him with, rather than as him to review your latest invention.
10. Blame alienates and frustrates - even blaming yourself. Learn to see the person as a whole that is much more than a specific action.

Not as simple as it looks.

Just back from a training programme for Prolite Autoglow. This company manufactures emergency signs. A family run concern, it is now expanding into a limited company and the family wishes to include their original staff on this journey. Needless to say, its a big shift. The organization has a strong hierarchy, even though there is great warmth.

As a facilitator, it was a challenge for me to get people to see beyond their roles. Yet, the flexibility with which the participants adapted to the training programme, and their willingness to experiment, once they realized its value had me humbled.

As a professional, this was the greatest change I had witnessed from the start of a programme to the end. It served to reinforce my belief that as long as there is a will, change will happen and it will be for the better.

The group began with a very strong sense of roles and definite boundaries between the “labour” and the “elite”. The people lower down the ladder were not used to providing inputs and contributing to the progress of a task, while they excelled at following directions exactly as told. The ones higher up the ladder were not very experimental in their approach and very often the first option to occur to a “leader” was the one the team followed without exploring possibilities.

It was difficult to get people to explore their potential beyond what they were used to doing. Yet, with the coming change in the organization, their roles were headed toward a change.

We experimented with discussions in small groups, examining contributions and their relation with the satisfaction derived from success and a variety of approaches. By the end of the next day, the group was functioning far smoother, and had got used to being aware of how they functioned, resulting in escalating change and eagerness to take their new learnings even further.

In India, the corporate scenario rarely uses outbound training as a genuine organizational intervention and objectives are mostly “fun and excitement” with little, if any focus on objectives beyond that. This programme was a low budget programme conducted with an objective to help employees function more “professionally” than their usual family run scenario. It was a low budget programme and a leap of faith. This difference is what contributes to results.

It is the intention that leads to results, and I am very happy for this group, for they have gained something of far greater value than many of the 5 star programmes with jaded participants eager only for their dose of adrenaline and organizers who would like to justify training budgets while keeping employees relaxed and unchallenged.

Just returning from another programme for Patni Computers. It went well. Far better than we expected actually, considering the size and difficulty in managing the group we had experienced the last time.

It was a two day thing. We had gone in expecting a recreation programme, but when we spoke with their representative, we discovered that there were specific expectations from the programme and it would be need to give it a training slant to the proceedings.

It was a difficult call for me to make, as it being a fun programme, participant expectations would not be toward learning. Particularly considering that some of the senior members seemed determined to take the whole thing as a joke. Honestly, I have no clue how we managed it, but somewhere down the line, we figured that fun and learning are not mutually exclusive, and then we took off into true experiential mode. I had a blast, and from the feedback we received, so did the participants.

And it was productive. For a quick two day thing with limited time, we managed to go through quite a bit in terms of behavioural learnings.

And I learnt a new lesson. An unruly but enthusiastic group may be difficult to handle, but once channelized, the potential for learning, even amidst chaos is huge as compared with a obedient but cold group in terms of energy.

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And another one. I’m on a paid review roll. This one rocks. If you own any kind of business or service that you are trying to promote, this one is fun and useful. It is the Brand Strength Test - provided by Branding.

You have to answer 12 questions related with your brand identity and you then get scores based on how well different aspects fare. For example, see the above screen shot. Those are my results. You are also offered an hour long free consultation.

Other areas of the site relate with important aspects of improving your brand identity and promoting your business. Paid, of course.

I liked the perky feel of the site. Very well designed - obviously, these guys know how to make an impact. But a flash site…… I wanted to see what happens when I don’t have flash. I got a blankish page with some links, and a small notice (that is also there in the flash page) to click here if the page is blank. Me did it, and went to a bizarre orange and white page with the same information, which clashes horribly with the previous and following pages to the text version. Oh my eyes hurt! I wonder why that one page is sitting there in those garish colours.

On the whole, a colourful experience. I love the purple of the site, and hate the orange of the solo page (normally I like orange, but not orange and white combination immediately after purple - thank you. I liked the flash version for its perkiness and the text only version for its readibility (except that page), and the test was fun and brought my attention to aspects of my business I need to consider, even while answering the questions and the results made them even more clear.

However, I discovered nothing at all that I didn’t know in this experience, so I wonder what I will gain if I were to pay them.