Great Leadership: Beware of These Nine I’s

I wrote earlier about Nine I’s and Great Leadership. The post received a very good response (on twitter, in blogosphere and in comments) and that led me to further think about Nine I’s that leaders should be careful and conscious about. These are personal traits of a leader that have a direct impact on a team/organization’s performance. Here they go:

• Ignorance: A leader cannot afford to be ignorant. Lack of knowledge can be your biggest bottleneck. Leaders are expected to solve important problems for which sufficient knowledge is at the core.
• Inaction: This simply means ‘lack of action where some is expected or appropriate’. People expect leaders to take actions in the right direction. Actions that change people. Actions that have an impact.
• Ineffective: Leadership delivers performance. Results that matter. Ineffectual means ‘not producing any or the desired effect’. When leaders lack ability to cope with a role or situation, they become ineffectual.
• Inattentive: Leaders have to be mindful. Attentive to people. To details. To the upcoming trends. Being attentive also means that a leader listens actively. A leader who does not pay attention to things eventually becomes ineffectual. 
• Incapable: Capability is as much about strength and power, as it is about qualification and capacity. A leader needs to have strong personal traits, strength to deal with difficulties and power to take right decisions.
• Impolite: Leaders, as they ascend in their positions, become more polite and humble. It is said that success should go to your heart and not head. When it goes into head, leaders become impolite and rude. Would you work with a rude leader?
• Inconclusive: When dealing with people and customers, leaders face many issues. The key is to resolve those issues conclusively. A leader has to be conclusive in thoughts, words and deeds. Inconclusive leader creates chaos.
• Inconsistent: Leaders who are inconsistent in their behavior, or who have self-contradictory elements, never generate trust. People look for continuity in character and integrity in actions. Consistency is the key in building trust.  
• Indifferent: With indifference, leaders cease to be leaders. They have no particular interest, concern or sympathy. Indifference is the first step to mediocrity. Effective leaders are concerned, they take work personally and really care about things.

Have a Wonderful Wednesday!

Tip: For a better understanding and correlation, read this post along with my earlier post Nine I’s and Great Leadership. As a further reference, you can also download 25 Things Managers and Leaders Should Never Do [PDF]

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Also: Thanks to Amit Agarwal (India’s first Professional Blogger at award winning Digital Inspiration blog) for listing QAspire Blog in Directory of Top Indian Blogs under ‘HR/Management/Business’ category.

Training Middle Managers On People Management Basics

Here is a simple idea: Whenever you have a new manager (project manager/departmental leader) joining in your organization, put him/her through a simple  training program on how to manage people. Train existing managers as well.

The premise: Most project managers/team leaders get work done through team. I have also seen that a lot of people become managers because of their seniority in technical positions. But we know that managing people is far more than just technical skills. Most managers fail because they don’t know how people are managed.

Here are a few things (bare minimum) that MUST be included in the training:

1. Leadership basics, traits and core expectations from a leader
2. Setting a vision (for their projects/initiatives) and long-term thinking
3. Fundamentals of dealing with people (and best practices therein)
4. The art of effective delegation and empowerment
5. Communication skills (oral and written), listening and non-verbal communication
6. How to connect with people (team members, peers and clients)
7. Leading with confidence
8. Presentation skills
9. Awareness about identifying and influencing impact of their actions on others
10. How to coach and mentor people
11. Kindness, care, humility and compassion at workplace
12. A primer on vision and values of the organization and how it translates into real actions.
13. Personal effectiveness and self-management
14. Managing meetings
15. Managing conflicts and understanding differences in personality types
16. Basic fact finding and interviewing skills
17. Expectations Management at all levels
18. (You can add more depending on your organization’s context)

Two critical points:

• Include a lot of real-life examples/stories for each of the above to make it interesting. To complement this effort, give them the URL’s of some of the best leadership blogs out there. Share other useful resources like free presentations, eBooks, podcasts and videos that would help them get into a leadership mindset.
• To ensure that this training translates into meaningful actions, it is crucial to have a ‘leadership development program’ that continuously organizes trainings, inducts new people/aspiring leaders, conduct brainstorming and discussion sessions, seek feedbacks from people periodically to maintain the momentum and mature over a period of time.

I wrote in my book #QUALITYtweet that middle managers are the glue that joins the strategies at the top with actions at the bottom. Induction training like these are a small investment that go a long way in setting the precedence and ensuring that you find right channels to effectively transfer your strategy/values to all layers within the organization. It has a direct impact on overall employee morale’ and your effectiveness as an organization.

Have a Fantastic Friday!

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Download your copy of the 25 Things Managers and Leaders Should Never Do [PDF]. Read it, share it with your friends, or with anyone who is an aspiring leader.

Explore more articles tagged under “Leadership” at QAspire Blog.

Training and Development – A Holistic View

In manufacturing world, improving quality of raw material was the first step to improve quality of final product. Then came manufacturing process and efficiency of assembly lines.

Ditto with knowledge world, except that raw material here is not plastic beans, but a knowledge worker’s brain. Consider that with range of other softer aspects like motivation, creativity, commitment, alignment, ability, personal preferences and general human behaviors, the equation gets even more complex.

Apart from mentoring and managing people, training plays a direct and important role in improving quality. Most organizations have a limited view on training as a means of “delivering” knowledge from the trainer to trainees. Trainings are least effective when they are “one-way” affairs. In my view, people learn the most when they are involved in stimulating conversations, when their thinking is ignited by right questions and when they are a part of defining something.

Does your training strategy also include the following (a few ideas)?

• Managers coaching people (and learning themselves in the process)
• Tapping passion of your people by aligning trainings with their core skills.
• Building internal focus groups and periodic discussions that promote stimulating conversations.
• Self learning, sharing through blogs, sites and other free resources (Good news is that now, a lot of great learning is FREE – here is just one example. Okay, here is another.)
• Internal assimilation of organizational knowledge in form of portals. Key is to ensure participation. (Some companies in India even attach participation with employee performance)
• Identify training needs from people’s aspirations, their performance and feedbacks from projects.
• Extend training from core technology to address topics like management, leadership, quality consciousness, cultural alignment and personal effectiveness.
• Design training program that helps people in thinking differently and innovating better ways to work.

The basic outcome of training is improvement in knowledge content of people. But, it just starts there. The broader goal of training is to establish knowledge, spread ideas, align people and induce behavioral change in organization. Training should help people grow - not just the content in their brains, but they as individuals.

It is important to take a holistic view on training within your organization. You have to choose between treating training as an ‘activity’ or as a ‘strategic initiative’.

I wish you a great start into the week.

QAspire Blog Makes it to Top150 Management/Leadership Blogs

… and I am very proud and happy about it. Jurgen Appelo (over at NOOP.NL), whom I have been reading since last couple of years, has compiled a list of Top 150 Management and Leadership Blogs. QAspire Blog ranks 89 amongst these, when mere inclusion in the list is an honor in itself.

There are several tipping points in a blog’s career, those moments that clearly take it into the next league. This is an important milestone and an indication of growing popularity of this blog. This makes all the effort so far – totally worth it.

Thank you Jurgen – for taking an initiative to compile this list based on Google, Twitter Grader, Alexa and Technorati ratings.

Bonus Reading:

• Utpal shares 20 tips on being and staying ‘upbeat’ – simple things, but often forgotten.
• You should also check out this brilliant list of 7 things people keep saying to us – by the GREAT Nicholas Bate.
• Check out “Carnival of Leadership Development”, if you haven’t already, for some great reading on leadership subjects. My post ‘3 Lessons in Building Great Relationships with Customers’ was a part of this carnival.

Have a GREAT day ahead!

P.S: Thanks to my friends Nicholas Bate and Kurt Harden for congratulating me via their blog posts - this only raises expectations and pushes me to do it better! BIG THANKS!

Quick Thought on Leadership and Subordination to a Cause

If you are a manager or leader, you are very likely to have followers whom we commonly refer to as ‘subordinates.’ In an organizational context, subordination refers to a lower position in the hierarchy. A leader is placed at a higher rank and subordinates are at a lower rank. That is the common perception, and also a reality in many organizations even today.

Key question that leaders need to ask themselves - “If people are subordinates, what are they subordinating to?” In my view, people never subordinate other people. They are subordinates to a cause. In that sense, even a leader is a subordinate to a cause.

How sad it is to see that leaders treat other people as ‘their’ subordinates. They are not. Their subordination is towards a cause. The cause of successfully completing the project. The cause of building a memorable organization. The cause of building a great team.

Leaders may be the initiators of such causes. But that does not mean they treat others as ‘their’ subordinates.

It always helps to explain this to your people and align them to a cause. Role of leader is to empower people to achieve the results. Alignment of each team member to goal/results leads to a flat structure where role of a leader is that of an enabler. Leader enables people to bring their best to work. When a leader consistently enables, empowers, motivates and serves his people, he truly subordinates the cause of building a great team that delivers great results.

No one is anyone’s subordinate, but everyone is a subordinate to a cause.

Have a very productive week ahead!

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P.S: Here is a GREAT QUOTE I read over at “Talking Story” blog hosted by Rosa Say. The quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson brilliantly sums up the way one should approach every new day. Here it goes:

“Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Book Review: Lead Well and Prosper by Nick McCormick

Being a good manager (self-management and team management) is essential ingredient of success in today’s business environment. Looking at all the bad examples of poor management around, we all know what good management is not.

This week, I read a book titled Lead Well and Prosper: 15 Successful Strategies for Becoming a Good Manager by Nick McCormick. Nick was kind enough to send me a signed copy for review.

This book is a very handy tool for young managers and aspiring leaders to lead well and prosper. This book outlines 15 successful strategies for becoming a good manager. The book focuses on a simple yet profound management truth – When you are managing people, be human and treat your people well to get the most out of them.

The book is broken down into short chapters which start with a situation and a cartoon, which makes it interesting to read. If you are time-challenged, you can also read the concluding part of each chapter which has bulleted list of Do’s, Don’ts and Action Items. It just makes the ideas more practical to apply.

Here are some key ideas from the book:

“Teaching is quite often the precursor to effective delegation.”

“When do you teach? Essentially, you teach all the time. Team members will be constantly observing you. There are also more formal opportunities you should use, such as honest feedback sessions or monthly one-on-one sessions.”

“As a manager, you must maintain positive attitude. That doesn’t mean that you ignore the ugly realities. It does mean that you must work to improve things you can control, and chip away at those you can’t do without allowing them to be all-consuming.”

“When you are among your peer managers, don’t vent. Your energy is much better spent on finding creative solutions to problems”

“Most managers are ‘too busy’ because 1) They are disorganized and 2) They are working on wrong things.”

This is one of those books I would hand over to a young manager, ask him/her to read and review themselves against these key points on a periodic basis. A great tool for the beginners in management.

What NOT to do in Customer Service 7

I know I have been silent since long, thanks to hectic travel last week. I was in Helsinki (Finland) again in the past week where I met a few customers. What a learning experience it has been!

When you are in a meeting with customer, you have an opportunity to:

1. Add value to them (so much so that they pull their notepad out and start taking notes)
2. Learn about communication, what works and what doesn’t.

How you utilize these two opportunities makes a huge difference to the business.

Even my travel was a great learning experience. Here is a brief account of what happened - I was scheduled to reach Helsinki via a connecting flight from Frankfurt. I started for Frankfurt but because of bad weather at Frankfurt, the flight was diverted to Paris. Here, all the passengers were made to sit on the plane for 6 hours after landing, in anticipation that weather condition at Frankfurt will improve. Suddenly, we saw air-hostesses pulling out their baggage leaving all passengers wondering. Then we were de-planed and taken to airport. Flight was canceled and we had to stay in Paris for 1.5 days before resuming our journey. Lot of passengers reached their destinations (Chicago, Newark, Frankfurt and so on) on Monday morning; just about the time they were to start working. You can read more about this ordeal here.

Aviation is a customer service business more than anything else. Most companies have similar aircrafts, equipments and infrastructure available to them. It is only customer service that enhances quality of experience and makes an airline preferable over other.

This experience taught me some valuable lessons in what NOT to do in customer service. Here are the top 7 mistakes in customer service:

1. Not smiling enough: The cabin crew team was very serious. They had an invisible message on their forehead which said “We are not interested in you”. Customer service is fun (for both the parties) when you smile a lot. It costs nothing to wear a smile, but goes a long way in building comfort.
2. Not listening and not communicating: Cabin crew is the touch point for customers. When some of the passengers wanted to complain or express a concern, the cabin crew was inattentive. They would listen and do nothing about it. Listening to concerns and not doing anything about it is as good as not listening. Similarly, when passengers were waiting, no announcements were made. Communication was a mess.
3. Lying to your customers and not fulfilling your promises: When we were made to sit in the plane for 3 hours, the pilot announced that we will fly in another 30 minutes. An hour passed and we did not fly. A few more hours later, pilot announced that since his 16 hours of flying time is over, the flight is cancelled. They kept on giving false promises to the customers.
4. Sticking to your policy and ignoring problems faced by the customer:  Processes are tools that we use to serve our customers. Often, same processes can become a hurdle in solving customer’s immediate problems. Don’t let that happen.
5. Going inaccessible when customer wants to talk to you: You know you have made a mistake. Go out and accept it. Hiding after making mistake can magnify the situation. When you make a mistake, you should have courage to call customer and say, “I screwed it up” and immediately work on solution. Imagine the frustration of customer when they want to know something and there is no one at the other end!
6. Passing the buck to someone higher in the order: When someone started complaining to the air hostess, she immediately redirected the passenger to the pilot. Sure, there are people above you who can give comfort, but why not try doing it yourself?
7. Forgetting the basic courtesies: Smiling, saying “Thank You” and “Sorry” does not cost a dime but it shows that you care. After a customer meeting, I replaced a normal “Thank You” with “Thank you so much for your time and I really appreciate it”. The idea is to make it more beautiful.

Each travel extends some learning, but this was of a completely different sort! Learning that came a hard way.

Announcing my new book: #QUALITYtweet - 140 bite-sized ideas to deliver quality in every project

Writing a book (at least one in my lifetime) was my dream and I am glad to announce that my dream is finally coming true with my first book titled “#QUALITYtweet – 140 bite-sized ideas to deliver quality in every project”.

This book is a compilation of 140 ideas on quality management. Each idea is in form of a tweet – no longer than 140 characters. Twitter’s popularity has proven that you can indeed say a lot in 140 characters.

The inspiration for this book came from Rajesh Setty – my mentor and a very good friend. This book is a part of Rajesh Setty’s #TH!NKtweet series. I cannot thank him enough for his generosity.

The basic premise of this book is that Quality is still a very heavy subject with lot of focus on models, frameworks and theories. With limited time to read, people want short and practical insights on how quality can be managed. This is a book you can read in less than 30 minutes. You can read it over and over again, because each tweet will prompt you to think.

The foreword of #QUALITYtweet is written by Dr. Pankaj Jalote who is an accomplished author, academician and a veteran in the field of Software Quality and Processes. You can read more about him here. Many thanks to him.

I also thank Lisa Haneberg, Skip Angel, Phil Gerbyshak and Michael Wade for their kind words of advance praise. They have been great teachers for me over past few years and they continue to enlighten me. Utpal Vaishnav is a cool friend who reviewed the book with lot of love and care. I thank all my peers at Gateway TechnoLabs who have been extremely supportive and encouraging. Readers of this blog have never failed to inspire me.

The book will hit the stands on 11/11/2009, my daughter’s third birthday! Stay tuned for more updates on #QUALITYtweet in the time to come.

Spotlight: An Upbeat Interview with Rajesh Setty

Rajesh Setty is a visionary entrepreneur, author of several books including “Life Beyond Code” and an avid blogger. It is a privilege to interview Rajesh on his recently launched book “Upbeat - Cultivating the right attitude to thrive in tough times“. Upbeat is not only a book for the recessionary times, but is a great resource for some very useful ideas on career management.

[Tanmay Vora] Rajesh, it’s a pleasure interviewing you. First of all, how was “Upbeat” conceptualized? How did you come up with the idea of writing  this book?

[Rajesh Setty] Thank you Tanmay for the opportunity to have this conversation.
I had an opportunity to build my first startup during the previous recession. It was not easy. The easiest way to define what was happening then was that “nobody was buying anything from anyone and everybody was trying selling something to everyone.” If we loved bad news, then we were in luck. There was bad news everyday - on the TV, in the newspapers, on the radio and there was generally some bad news shared during any interaction with anyone - online or offline.

We learned a lot during that period as the only way to have survived running a “bootstrapped” startup was to stay Upbeat. So I wrote most of it during that journey but by the time I completed the book, that recession was over. So I packed it up and and kept it aside.  I didn’t have to wait for long as there was a another recession very soon. I unpacked the book, updated it and got it published.

[Tanmay Vora]  Why do you think this book was necessary and who all will it help?

[Rajesh Setty] There are so many opportunities for us to get bogged down today. You can find depressing news via the media - I mean all kinds of media - newspapers, blogs, websites, twitter etc. If you want to find a reason to be unhappy or down, then you will find it plenty outside.
Of course, by being in a bad mood, you can’t get much done. At best, you will find a great excuse for not accomplishing much. Take a look at this equation
Big Dreams + Brilliant Excuses = Success in a Fantasy World.

During tough times people are handed “brilliant excuses” almost everyday. If you take the bait, then you got a license for inaction.

The book is short and talks about how you can avoid getting into this trap and actually take some action during tough times - not just to survive but to thrive!

[Tanmay Vora]  What areas does this book cover?

[Rajesh Setty] There are five sections in the book:

1. The Trap: Addresses why we are in a trap today. By just knowing how we get into the trap, we might be able to avoid the trap.
2. The Discipline: The ultimate discipline is to keep a promise that we make to ourselves. This section talks about how to get into the discipline.
3. The Strategy: Uncommon problems cannot be solved by common strategies. This section will talk about why you need to “invent” a new strategy and why “common” of “current” strategies won’t work.
4. The Network: You can rarely do anything significant alone. This section talks about why “giving” (and not “getting”) is the right way to build your network.
5. The Action: Sitting on the sidelines rarely gets you trophies. This section talks about the need to take action and some immediate steps.

The second part of the book is a workbook and it ends with some suggested action steps for each of the sections mentioned above.

[Tanmay Vora]  If you had to summarize three key messages from the book to readers of this blog, what would those be?

[Rajesh Setty] Here they go:

1. You have only so much time in your day. So please focus on things that will add capacity to you and others around you to contribute more. This means you will automatically avoid focusing on bad news, gossip and unnecessary “sympathy exchanges” as that will neither add capacity to you or people around you to contribute more.
2. Relevance all the time: Recession is a time when what was working stops working (typically.) So if something has stopped working for you, the first thing to do is to see if what you were doing is still relevant. If not, it is time to change your game.
3. Spend less AND spend more. The first quick response to a recession is to cut back on everything. In the process, we tend to cut back on key investments - investments that are required for our growth. This is the time to increase those investments as you need to be growing rapidly. Spend less - meaning cut back on your expenses. Spend more - meaning increase your investments on yourself.

[Tanmay Vora]  Thank you Rajesh for your time and I am sure readers of this blog will be able to pick up some very useful insights from Upbeat to stay upbeat!

Explicit versus Tacit - Content versus Process

Difficult situations like slowdown force organizations/managers to do cost-benefit analysis. Salary you are paid is a cost and what you do in the organization for that cost generates value.

Value has two components – tangible and intangible.

Tangible value (easier to visualize) is explicit knowledge of subject (e.g. knowledge of .NET programming or software testing), revenue, efficiencies, numbers etc. This is important.

Intangible value (which is also hard to visualize) is tacit knowledge, knowledge on processes, knowledge on how to deal with typical situations/clients, attitude, different ways of doing things, workarounds etc. This is hard to visualize and measure. But impact of this value is huge.

So from organization/manager’s standpoint – it is important to see value as a sum-total of tangible and intangible value that someone brings on board while rewarding or hiring.

In this regards, I loved what Seth Godin has written in his post “What are you good at?”. He writes about explicit versus tacit knowledge. Crux is that explicit knowledge on subject can be easily learnt. Tacit knowledge only comes with experience within and outside the organizations. There are no shortcuts to acquire tacit knowledge.

Seth Godin writes:

As you consider marketing yourself for your next gig, consider the difference between process and content.

Content is domain knowledge. People you know or skills you’ve developed. Playing the piano or writing copy about furniture sales. A rolodex of movers in a given industry, or your ability to compute stress ratios in your head.
Domain knowledge is important, but it’s (often) easily learnable.

Process, on the other hand, refers to the emotional intelligence skills you have about managing projects, visualizing success, persuading other people of your point of view, dealing with multiple priorities, etc. This stuff is insanely valuable and hard to learn. Unfortunately, it’s usually overlooked by headhunters and HR folks, partly because it’s hard to accredit or check off in a database.

Knowing difference between explicit and tacit aspects of one’s knowledge is very crucial from an individual standpoint.

I can easily relate contents of this post with Tom Peter’s saying “Hard is soft. Soft is Hard.” More elaboration on this in the next post.

Have a fantastic weekend!