I recently re-read a fantastic book “Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams” by Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister. The book is filled with hard-won wisdom about executing projects and managing people for highest productivity. Here is a real-life story from the book that underlines importance of the “human aspect” of our work; especially creative work that […]
As individuals, teams and organizations, how much we learn from our past is critical for our improvement and future success. Hansei (meaning self-reflection) is an important part of Japanese culture – an exercise undertaken to look at past mistakes, outline the lessons and pledge to act on those lessons. According to Wikipedia, “Han" means to […]
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 […]
There is an old Zen story about a man riding a horse, galloping frantically down a path. His friend, who is sitting by the side of the road, calls out "Where are you going?" The man replies: "I don’t know. Ask the horse!" We either lead our lives through the center of our existence or […]
One of my consistent observation is: “Indifference is the enemy of great leadership.” Indifferent leaders make a statement, “I don’t care” through their thoughts, words and actions. Indifference in leadership can manifest itself in one (or many) of the following ways: 1. They are unable to decide: In difficult situations, people look for leaders to […]
When we look back at our careers and lives, what do we remember the most? When I asked this question to some of my friends and colleagues, most of them told me vivid stories about their struggles and how they dealt with challenges to came out victorious. One of the friends nailed it when he […]
Compliance stems from our need to ensure certainty, reduce variability and adhere to a certain structure or model. Compliance may be explicit (e.g. to a certain process model like ISO) or it may be implicit (e.g. to a certain specific belief system, way of working or ideology). Focusing on compliance means that you have a […]
Improvement is never a destination, but a journey that is organic, constant and never-ending. Consider this story from Subroto Bagchi’s book “The High Performance Entrepreneur” A monk was tending to a Japanese garden and meticulously, for hours on end, he was removing dry twigs from the immaculately maintained flowering bushes. A passer-by, who was fascinated […]