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.

Those who are in touch with me know that I have a keen interest in human behaviour processes and am actively pursuing my self-development journey with ISABS.

Its Summer, and its time for the National Event being held in Goa. After a lot of anxiety about being able to complete my logs and get them approved in time, I have finally been cleared two days before I am supposed to leave.

Needless to say, this is an exercise in pressure to be planning a trip to Goa two days before departure in the holiday season. Keeping fingers crossed and hoping for the best.

This time, I will be doing my Phase B of the Professional Development Programme. This is going to take two weeks, and hopefully I will be emerging on the other end intact and wiser.

I am a little anxious about my ability to cope with the intensity of the process work and can hardly believe that I made it this long. Seems yesterday that I attended my first Human Processes Lab. Time certainly flies when you are celebrating it.

Will keep ya’ll posted on proceedings and my condition

In every organization, we have the odd success story of a person who rose through the ranks like a comet. As a trainer, the most popular question we get asked is how people can be made to perform at full potential.

Unfortunately, there is no answer that can be an instant solution - do this, and every person in your organization will be a genius. It just doesn’t exist.

Read more… »

I am just back from another ISABS lab. This is the second time I did my ALHP. This event was very special and very different in many ways.

This was a low budget initiative aimed at making ISABS and the T-Group processes accessible to sections of society that cannot afford the high budget programmes that usually happen in resorts and are willing to live in basic comfort.

This was completely different from previous experiences for me. Normally, participants live in comfortable air-con rooms on a twin or triple sharing basis, with separate areas for dining and laboratories. Here, the entire community was accommodated in four dormitories, which also doubled as labs and one of the dormitories was used as the dining room as well.

All through the duration of the community, there was a constant churning of participants among the group. You sleep with some of them, meet different people at meal times, attend your lab groups with still another set of them, prefer some of them for company in the evenings……. a constant shuffle of people you’re with, but no such thing as an isolated space for anyone.

I had been very apprehensive about this lack of space, but got so swept in the flow, that I don’t remember what exactly it was that I had been apprehensive about.

Ok, the food could have been better, the fans could have worked, and small comforts could have been missed by some, but the phenomenal community feeling was….. indescribable. People had just knitted together so close, that we had turned into one big family.

It was also an amazing experience to have such a large representation of people from the NGO sector in the community, and a valuable insight into perspectives we had never really been very close to.

I may write more about this eventually.