3 High-Value Tips for Leaders to Break Out of Comfort Zone

Cozy environment and excellent facilities in your cabin/cubicle can make you feel super-comfortable. It is a physical comfort zone that we create around ourselves. Our desk becomes a place where discussions happen. Where papers are pushed.

If you are someone who ‘does things’, sticking to your desk all the day long is still fine because you get paid to do the stuff.

But as a leader in business setting, where you are expected to get things done, you cannot afford to be confined by cozy comforts of the office environments.

Leaders can have a bigger impact when they focus to “Work ON the business” rather than “Work IN the business”.

Not sure what you should do to get out of the comfort trap? Try any of these 3 random strategies. They not only pull you out of your comfort zone, but can also add tremendous value to your team/organization. These have always worked for me:

• Spend more time with your customers
  • As a leader, your impact on an organization is as large as the impact you have on the customers.
  • You can only get to know the “real” problems of your customers if you spend quality time with them to build a relationship.
  • It is easy to “monitor the numbers” (sales dashboards, internal efficiencies and other metrics). Once seen, what is difficult is to connect to customers, act and take right decisions.
  • Some of the most successful business leaders were known for spending more than 50% of their time facing customers.
• See people, don’t just watch them
  • When dealing with a team, it is easy to take people at their face value.
  • You can constantly “watch” your people (i.e. track their hours, outputs, track the time they spend away from their desks etc.) and that is easy.
  • Or you can “see” your people (i.e. understand them, their motivations, their skills and treat them as humans) and put right people on the right task.
  • You double your chances of success when right people do the right job with right levels of motivation.
  • Empower people, add value to them and help them grow in their individual capacities. That is the core of leadership. Be a catalyst.
• Improve something
  • Here is the idea. In a silent moment, sit with a pen and paper. Think about “Top 3” pain areas in your team/organization.
  • Ask “Why they are a pain?”
  • Identify what needs to be done to address these pains and then execute the improvement actions. Track the progress and improve further.
  • Sure, it is a hard work first time. But structuring an area of work in form of processes, you are reducing dependencies and improving operational efficiency.

So if you are a manager or leader at any level, do a reality check this morning. If you feel stuck, pick any one of the above and get yourself moving. I can assure, you won’t regret doing any of these!

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

Photo Courtesy: DJHuber’s Flickr Photo stream

Perfection v/s. Getting Things Done

I had an interesting experience recently with one of my team members. We were to submit an important project document to client and we decided that we will first freeze the table of contents (ToC) and then move on to filling up content.

Almost a day went by and I had no update on ToC. When inquired, I found that team member was aiming at creating a perfect ToC by referring to all possible external references – without realizing that we had lost a day in pursuit of perfection when we could have done it in less time and could have perfected it as we go along documenting. In pursuit of perfection, you become your own worst critic!

There are situations on project when progress is important in right direction – in my experience, perfection is an ongoing process that actually starts after you set a right direction and make some progress therein. That is the starting point of perfection as a process. When you repeat this process over and over again, perfection gets ingrained in whatever you do – leading to excellence.

Some of the important lessons for me and my team member from this experience were:

• More you try to perfect something, more time it will take. (and you never know whether it will be perfect at the end!)
• It does not have to be perfect – just good enough will do.
• Perfection has to be a process – rather than a one-time-attempt. Perfect Incrementally.
• Sometimes a quick 90% solution is better than a 100% perfect solution that comes in when it is no longer needed.
• Focus on a few vital things – and set priorities looking at purpose and time available.
• Perfection cannot pursued be at the cost of taking actions at right time.
• Get it done once – then perfect it. Do this over and over again and perfection becomes a way of work.

I think – following two quotes aptly sum up the lessons above:

“Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.  - Lord Chesterfield:

Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. - Dr. David M. Burns”