In one of the TED talks, James Surowiecki shares: “If army ants are wandering around and they get lost, they start to follow a simple rule: Just do what the ant in front of you does. The ants eventually end up in a circle. There’s this famous example of one that was 1,200 feet long […]
Gross definition of quality is externally oriented – meeting and exceeding customer expectations, satisfying their implicit and explicit requirements, the degree of excellence, and conformance to specifications. They all refer to something outside of us. At a subtle level, quality stems from what is inside of us. More than deliverance to others, it is deliverance […]
Benjamin Zander’s book “The Art of Possibility” starts with this story: A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying, SITUATION HOPELESS. STOP. NO ONE WEARS SHOES. The other writes back triumphantly, GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY. STOP. THEY HAVE NO […]
For the first time, I participated in a Twitter Chat (#IndiaHRChat) on the topic “Personal Branding for HR Professionals“. People from diverse backgrounds shared their views on personal branding in presence of special guest Mr. Anand Pillai, Chief Learning Officer of Reliance Industries. It was fun to share my insights on personal branding and they […]
I just completed reading Scott Belsky’s (Twitter: @scottbelsky) book “Making Ideas Happen – Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality”. It is a fantastic book for those who have great ideas but struggle to give those ideas a life. This book bridges gap between the spark of an idea and all that goes into turning […]
In a competitive world obsessed with goals, people recommend that we should periodically review our performance. Performance appraisals in organizations are almost a necessary evil. The problem with focusing excessively on our ‘performance’ is that performance is always judged by others, by some external entity. When you constantly try to align yourself to external expectations, […]
How often do we, as professionals and managers, get sucked into the whirlwind of status reports, new-initiatives-everyday, number crunching, endless meetings and presentations? Sometimes, the best management is to do simple and obvious things more effectively. In this context, I enjoyed reading an insightful post titled “Finding more time for real management” at Business Strategy […]
“Nobody rises to low expectations.” ~ Calvin Lloyd One of the most important qualities of a leader is to believe that they can do better. People respond to expectations and the only way to grow people is to consistently raise the bar of expectations. If a team is not doing great, it is either because […]
W. Edwards Deming, the pioneer and guru in quality revolution wrote the following paragraph when commenting on Peter Senge’s book “The Fifth Discipline” and it instantly struck the chord. Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of […]