‘Their Work’ Versus ‘My Work’

When you work in an organization or within a team, you can think of it as ‘doing the work for someone’. For the company. For the manager. For the client.

Or you can think of it as ‘doing your work’. There is a big difference.

Our work is a way to express ourselves. A programmer expresses himself through code. A dancer through her dance. A writer through her words. A leader through his actions. In that sense, our work is our statement. It carries out stamp. It tells something about us.

When you say, “I am doing my work”, you make it personal. It is only when you take the work personally that you can stamp it with excellence. Thinking that you do the work for someone else, you generally do it for the sake of doing it. Simply getting through it. It does more harm to you than you can possibly think of, in a long run.

So, the next time you ship your deliverable to someone (a client, your boss, your peers), think about the statement that your work makes. The stamp it carries.

This Monday, you have a choice. To stamp your work with ‘mediocrity’ or with ‘excellence’. This choice and how it is exercised consciously everyday determines your future and the difference you will make to the organization, team and society.

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Engagement, Leadership and Power of Storytelling

Last week, I had a short conversation with one of my colleagues in HR about the all important topic of employee engagement. In an impromptu conversation, we touched upon a very important point: People love (and remember) stories, not facts.

We loved it when our grandparents wrapped important life lessons in form of stories. Vivid situations weaved in words and narrated with great zeal. The stories I heard in my childhood, and the messages therein, are still afresh in my memory. My daughter almost gets hooked when a story is narrated. We grow up on stories, so do our belief system and our world view.

For leaders, ability to communicate using stories, choosing stories in line with listener’s current context and structuring them for maximum impact are very crucial skills.

Here are a few ways you can use power of storytelling:

• As a speaker/presenter, you can use stories to capture the imagination of audience. The lessons we learn as conclusions of interesting stories make a bigger impact than getting directly to the lessons. Great presenters tell great stories, anecdotes and experiences that truly engage the audience. They make a point at the end of each story.
• As a business leader, your biggest challenge is to keep your people engaged with your mission and with their work. Inspire them with stories about the organization. Show them the future. Tell tales of triumphs and trials, of success and failures, of past and future. Stories reinforce the belief system. Stories validate people’s aspirations and empower them. Stories create alignment and hence culture. Your people, new hires and aspiring leaders are not as fascinated by numbers as they are with the stories associated with the organization. Listen to their stories as well.
• As a sales leader, you can use power of well crafted stories to project your organization. Numbers and explicit details are fine, but stories of your inception, growth, challenges, success stories (in similar context) can help you a great deal in establishing comfort and confidence with your prospective customers.

Critical Question: How can you leverage the power of storytelling to enrich your conversations, build great relationships, truly connect with people and make a difference?

Have a FANTASTIC Friday and a great weekend ahead!

Excellence: Lessons From Anupam Kher

I have believed that most good things in life are either free or inexpensive. A good walk, a great hug, a few moments spent together, a long drive, a free lecture, time spent with friends and so on.

I write this because over the weekend, I experienced some of these. Monsoon is at its best. Cool weather and Friendship Day on a Sunday!

I visited an interactive session with one of the greatest Indian actors Anupam Kher at Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA) as a part of “Face to Face with Achievers of Excellence” program. Anupam Kher needs no introduction to the Indian audience, but for the others, Anupam Kher is one of the best actors in contemporary cinema who has worked in over 400 films and 100 plays winning a number of awards including Padma Shree.

Anupam talked about excellence – as he sees it. He delivered some simple yet powerful messages on excellence while narrating the tale of his life and career. Here is a quick summary of those powerful lessons:

• Be your own enemy: We get too bogged down by comparisons and competition. On the road to excellence, you are your own benchmark. You have to be your strongest critic.
• Remain curious: We are born curious, but as we grow, we loose our sense of wonder along the way. Never stop dreaming.
• Failure is overrated: Schools and colleges sell the fear of failure. In pursuit of excellence, failures make you better. Failures bring us closer to ourselves and makes us do more. World does not stop if we fail, so do things you love doing, and if you fail, learn from it. Consistent success can sometimes become boring. Henry Ford said this, “Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.”
• Be comfortable with self: Most people spend their lives trying to become someone else. Be yourself and be comfortable with who you are. You can only excel in life when you are happy with who you are. (Read my piece on self-actualization)
• Don’t stop trying: When you see your goal clearly, the hurdles become invisible. That does not mean hurdles are not there. They just become insignificant. When faced with hurdles, don’t stop trying. Anupam shared a great quote, “When you try, you risk failure. When you don’t try, you ensure it.”
• Honesty and hard work: Once you know what you are good at, you need a lot of honesty (with self and with others) and hard work. I would add that persistence is equally important.

These lessons (and more) were nicely wrapped in powerful personal stories that engaged the audience. While all these things were known and read somewhere, a lecture like this with successful people helps a great deal in reinforcing them to your belief system.

I am inspired on this Monday morning, and you too have an upbeat start into the week.

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P.S: Jason Seiden at “Fail Spectacularly” blog has hosted the latest Carnival of Leadership Development featuring my post “5 Ways to Build Trust” Lessons from a Conversation)” along with a host of other GREAT posts on leadership and executive development. Check it out – some great ideas waiting to be explored!

Book Review: Everyone Communicates, Few Connect

A few weeks back, my friend Becky Robinson at Mountain State University gifted me with a copy of John C. Maxwell’s latest book “Everyone Communicates, Few Connect”. The book, as the title suggests, is all about establishing meaningful connections to build great relationships at work and in personal life. The book introduction says,

“Connecting is the ability to identify with people and relate with them in a way that increases your influence with them. And the ability to communicate and connect with others is a major determining factor in reaching your potential. to be successful, you must work with others. To do that at your absolute best, you must learn to connect”

It was interesting to note the difference between “communication” and “connection”. I learned that communication is about content and connection is about relevance of that content and how it is received by others. Connecting with others is more than just transactional communication. It is about seeing others as human beings, understanding them, their energies and establish a deeper connection.

I have observed that all great “performers” are great connectors too. A singer has to understand the taste of audience and sing accordingly. A trainer has to connect with participants. An actor has to truly connect with the character being played. A blogger has to connect with the readers. An organization needs to connect with the customers.

Ability to build meaningful connections is the first step towards engaging others and building an influence. Connecting with others accelerates learning and spreads the ideas.

Maxwell’s book offers useful ideas for connecting with a group, connecting one-on-one and connecting with audience. The book does not offer any ground breaking ideas – we all know that we need to connect effectively. Still, the book does a GREAT job of outlining and reinforcing the fundamentals of connecting through explanations, stories and action points at the end of each chapter.

If you are a leader, an aspiring one or a professional who wants to make a big difference, this is a great book to pick up and read.

Have a GREAT week ahead!

Great Quotes: Be a Yardstick of Quality

I love quotes because they inspire and ignite a thought process. Today, I read this brilliant quote from Steve Jobs:

“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.” ~ Steve Jobs

Loved the first part. Be a yardstick of quality. As professionals, we can only differentiate ourselves with our commitment to excel, regardless of our chosen field. Quality is a moving target. You delivered a great performance today. Tomorrow, the same performance becomes good enough. The day after, it is termed ‘mediocre”. Not because you din’t do it so well, but because someone else started doing it better than you. It is easy to get commoditized but very difficult to differentiate. Be so good that people take your performance as a yardstick to raise their game.

So, my takeaway for this Friday (and for the rest of my life) is - Be a yardstick of quality.

Have a FANTASTIC Friday and a wonderful weekend!

Final Part: 7 Things Managers & Leaders Should Never Do

I wrote earlier about “11 Things Project Managers & Leaders Should Never Do” and then continued the chain of thoughts with another post titled “7 (More) Things Project Managers & Leaders Should Never Do.

This is the final part of this series which is compiled to form a handy and portable summary “25 Things Managers & Leaders Should NEVER Do” (Download PDF)

If you are a supervisor, manager or a leader at any level, you should NEVER:

• Conduct long and unscheduled meetings. When you don’t respect your team member’s time, you loose respect too. Resist conducting unscheduled meetings when they are not needed. Even if you do, keep them short. Another mistake? Not conduct meetings at all!
• Try doing critical portions of the work by self. Yes, that may minimize the risk of failure, but your team members will not grow. Delegate and then guide them. Let them raise their game too. Act as a catalyst who helps them improve. If you do everything, you are not doing enough. You need to do more by doing less – and delegation is the way to go.
• Fail to say “No”. Not saying no when it is needed (to clients, stakeholders and bosses) can be a real killer for you, your project and your people. Saying no firmly, but politely is an art every leader has to master. Say no, so that you can say yes to more important stuff.
• Not reviewing the progress. When you don’t review the progress periodically, you loose momentum. Projects generally start on a high note – keep the momentum going by periodic reviews. Take a stock, retrospect and take corrective steps to ensure that your team is on track. Review early and often.
• Run away from fears. In fact, leaders embrace their fears. Fear is our most important emotion. We fear criticism, we fear failure and we fear risk. This should not stop us from doing stuff. It should rather help us doing stuff better. A leader has to overcome fear and help team members do the same.
• Not acknowledging what they don’t know. Leaders become integral when they know what they don’t know – and when they acknowledge it. It is not weak, but a courageous act to acknowledge what you don’t know. You will easily find someone who does. This again boils down to having humility to accept things you don’t know.
• Fail to “celebrate”. We live in an action oriented world, where doing is sometimes over emphasized. We complete one phase and quickly jump onto the another. Celebrate small wins. It gives new energy to the team and also extends an opportunity to know each other better. Celebrating is very human – do it often.

Download your own copy of the full compilation. Share it with your friends. Share it with anyone who is an aspiring leader. Revisit it after a month. After all, we all need constant reminders on what we should “NOT” do!

Thanks for all your comments and support to this series.

Taking a “Project View” of Improvement and Change Initiatives

Yesterday, over a cup of coffee, my friend asked me about my first book and what was my approach towards writing it. I said that I took “project approach”.

This lead to an immediate realization that everything we do is a project, be it loosing your weight, writing a book, painting your home, getting a degree or managing an improvement initiative. For any effort where you have goals, time line, constraints, dependencies, risks and need of resources to be managed - you have a project on your hand. Learning fundamentals of project management is essential for everybody - irrespective of whether you are a project manager or not.

All successful leaders have been great project managers too - they may not have used the formal project plan or a work breakdown structure - but who says project management is only about these essential formalities. Project management is about having a vision, drawing out a plan, leading (others or ourselves), making progress, tracking the direction, managing dependencies, overcoming constraints and most importantly - delivering results.

Here is a simple method of how you can take a “project view” for things you are working on.

• Know your goals (Vision): Lets say you want to pursue a certification in your field. Now, that’s a goal - a project for you. Name it as “Project Certification”. It is also very important to know “why” you are pursuing this goal and how will it help you advance in your life/at work/in organization. Create a list of such goals, prioritise them and take top 3 goals as projects you would work on.
• Categorize all your work under these goals (Work Breakdown): Once you have a project defined, decide on phases/activities involved in achieving this goal. For certification, you can have a phase named “Preparation” with activities like identifying the scope, body of work, spending time learning, special training needed etc. Create such phases (milestones) and have core activities in each phase.
• Create a list of actions (Plan): Now that you know the activities, draw out a basic plan. Give a tentative timeframe to each activity and you’ll know how much time it will take for you to get certified. Identify the resources you will need to get into action e.g. books, training material etc. You can use MS Excel or Google Spreadsheet to draw out these basic plans. Remember - that which does not get scheduled does not get done!
• Act on the plan (Execute): Start executing the plan - this is where the rubber meets the road. Work on the activities and keep ticking them in plan as they get done. Enjoy the process of working on these activities without getting overwhelmed by the results.
• Track these actions (Control): Periodically, track your progress. This will give you an idea of what are additional actions / resources you need.
• Celebrate (Closure): Once you achieve a phase, celebrate. Give yourself a break, relax, unwind and retrospect. What could you do better in next phase so that results are better.

I consider my blog as a project which has a calendar. Initiatives I undertake at work are all planned (and viewed) as projects. This view is very potent - because it helps me push my own goals forward. You can try it out too.

“But this is all common-sense and discipline!”, you’d say. Well, that is what project management is all about!

Have a Fantastic Friday!

Enjoy The Process

We live in a hyper-competitive world. Students are anxious about their annual results. Professionals are anxious about their next appraisal. Business owners are anxious about their bottom lines and so on. You get the point.

This anxiousness does not allow us to enjoy the process. Sure, goals are important and attaining them is even more important. Ultimately, our results drive us to do more.

My point is – if we constantly keep our goal in perspective (and get overwhelmed by it), we become less efficient. Anxiousness (and sometimes fear) kills creativity. We rush through the process to see if our efforts are delivering results. Quest for instant gratification can result in sub-optimal outcomes.

Watching television can ‘sometimes’ be good – I was recently watching an old episode of a musical reality show. I loved the viewpoint of one of the participants. The host of the show asked, “Do you think you will win this competition?” to which participant responded -

“I am not here to win the first spot, I am here to enjoy the process of being with such great mentors and learning the music. I only focus on my next performance (and its preparation) without getting anxious. I know that if I deliver great performances one after the another, the final outcome will take care of itself”.

That is a great way to look at our work.

Focusing on the moment, on task currently on our hands enables us to fully express ourselves. One of the best gifts we can give ourselves is to enjoy the work while we are doing it (being in the moment) – and expressing our skills fully. It is both gratifying and satisfying.

Think about it!

Are You An Artist? A Review of Seth Godin’s LINCHPIN

Seth Godin's Linchpin

Over last couple of weeks, I was reading and re-reading Seth Godin’s remarkable book “Linchpin”. I have been following Seth’s blog and books since last 4 years. This book has brilliant ideas that can change the way you work, how you work and most importantly, why you work.

Linchpin urges us all to be artists – to be the best we can, to take our work to such a level that it is viewed as an art. Seth says that manufacturing world required cogs – people who follow the instructions, were compliant, low-paid and replaceable. New world of work needs people who care, who are original thinkers, risk-takers, provocateurs – Linchpins, who are difficult to replace.

Linchpin is about being remarkable – being different and being original.

On being an artist – Seth says:

‘You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.”

This book also introduces us to “Lizard Brain” – a little voice inside our head that prevents us from being different. This voice convinces us to stick to old ways of doing work – because doing it differently is a risk, of failure and embarrassment. Lizard brain thrives on our strongest emotion - fear.

Organizations need more linchpins to deliver more value – and for people, their jobs are a platform to deliver value, to be generous, to express their unique skills and be an artist.

The book also made me realize that doing “emotional labor” is extremely important to be a linchpin. Emotional labor is the task of doing an important work, even when it is not easy. It is about walking that extra mile, when you don’t feel like doing it. A larger part of work involves doing things we don’t particularly love doing. But unless that is done, art cannot happen.

The book is a GREAT read (also a NY Times bestseller), because it drives important points home with brilliant examples and stories along the way. I specially liked the diagrammatic representation of ideas – making it simple and easy.  A blog post is way too short to express the profoundness of messages this book encapsulates.

Most people don’t know about their unique gifts – their art. It sometimes takes a lifetime to discover what their art really is. This prompted me to ask a question to Seth. Here is the question and Seth Godin’s response:

Tanmay: Being a Linchpin is impossible without actualizing with one’s gifts (that we are all born with). How does one discover these gifts and unwrap them for the world?

Seth Godin: To use your analogy, if you want to find gifts, you have to look under the tree. And if you don’t know which tree, look under all of them. Too many people want a promise that the effort will be instantly rewarded. It won’t. Fail frequently. That’s the only way I know.

Tanmay: Thank you so much. “Fail Frequently. Ship Early. Ship Often. Realign” that is my takeaway and probably the only way to discover your gifts.

Seth Godin: Thanks Tanmay! Keep Shipping.

Thanks Seth, for that insightful conversation through your book and your response.

Linchpin is a wake-up call – to stop being ordinary and compliant and start being remarkable. Life – as Seth says – is too short not to do something that matters!

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P.S: Check out Carnival of Management Improvement at Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog by John Hunter – fantastic collection of posts on leadership, improvement, lean and quality. Carnival includes my post “Building a Culture To Promote Differential Thinking“

Friday Reflection: The ‘Real’ Powers!

This morning when I was praying, God again appeared. HE gently put His hand on my head and said -

My Son,

Most people live with an illusion that real power is in wealth. In degrees. In material.

They spend most of their lives looking for power “somewhere out there”.

I have “gifted” each human being with great powers that lie “within” them.

The power to think. Imagine. Visualize.

To choose your battles.

To choose between mediocrity and greatness.

The power to understand, listen and relate with other human beings.

To see the best in them.

The power to read. To grasp. To learn.

The power to walk. Talk. Choose your words.

The power to change your perspectives. Shape your attitude.

To focus. To concentrate. To direct your energies.

The power to smile. The power to love others.

You can create whatever you decide to.

Ability to decide - that is your supreme strength.

So, look within. Not outside.

That is where your real powers are.

I have gifted you – will you care to unwrap these gifts?

Also read: An earlier conversation with God - “The Focus is on YOU”.

Photo by Tanmay Vora: Core of a flower at Esplanade Park, Helsinki, Finland