Why there is a LIMIT to grow?

Powerful learning proportional to direct experience

The most important and useful learning comes from direct experience. Indeed we learn eating, crawling, walking and communication through direct trial and error – through taking an action and seeing the consequences of that action; then taking a new and different action.

But what happens when we can no longer observe the consequences of our action?

When our actions have consequences beyond our learning horizon? It becomes impossible to learn from different experiences.

Example 1: A high tech company grows rapidly because of its ability to introduce new products. New products grow, revenues grow, the R&D budget grows, and the engineering and research staff grows. Eventually, this grown current technical staff becomes increasingly complex and difficult to manage. The management burden often falls on senior engineers, who in turn have less time to spend on engineering. Diverting the most experienced engineers from Engineering to Management results in longer product development times, which slows down the introduction of new products.

Here when the senior engineering staff no longer can observe the consequences of their actions learning would eventually stopped and developing cycles get elongated.

Example 2: When a professional organization, such as consultancy firm grows very rapidly when it is small, providing outstanding solutions, results, promotions and opportunities. But firm gets larger, its growth level slows perhaps it starts to saturate its market niche. Or it might reach a size when the senior consultants are no longer working and interested in doing the direct jobs.

Here too when the senior consultants no longer can observe the consequences of their actions learning would eventually stopped and solutions providing cycles gets longer and consulting organization becomes non-profitable.

Limits of growth is governed by our direct experiences and actions, we must make an effort to learn more from direct experience then and then we grow further in any field otherwise we will be “A boiled frog”.

If we place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will immediately try to jump out and it may be successful in doing that. But if we place the frog in room temperature water, now if we gradually turn on the heat source slowly the water temperature raising frog may enjoy the warmth and after some time frog will do nothing until he is unable to jump out of the pot.

Through time we generally start working on indirect things like the frog where we do not add any direct value, experience and we are not aware of the consequences of the indirect actions, which will lead us to “LIMIT OUR GROWTH”.

So we must recognize all those situations, contexts and scenarios when our actions are too distant from direct experiences we must refrain and put an effort to gain more direct experience and “NO LIMIT TO OUR GROWTH”.

A winning architect. Are you?

"Give me the strength to surrender
my strength to thy will, with love"

Wilma was the seventeenth child of poor Negro domestic help. Her left leg has suffered a form of paralysis. Specialists told her mother that years of therapeutic massage might restore the use of the leg. For the next two years, Mrs. Rudolph, on her weekly day off, made a 90 mile round trip to the clinic. The other Six days, after arriving from work and preparing the family’s supper, she carefully massaged the wasted small leg until long after Wilma had fallen asleep.

After two years of such painstaking effort, Wilma could manage to hop for short distances.  Then she graduated to braces and playing basketball. Soon she could walk without her braces…and then she started running. “Skeeter”, as she was called, proved to be the sensation than discovered by the Tennessee State University coach, Edward temple. Along with nine other girls, she was chosen to train with Temple’s crack team, the Tigerbelles. Pairing each girl with one of his Tigerbelles, Temple ordered 50 yard sprints. Wilma did worse than most. The rigorous training almost did her in mother saying “Never give up.”  

She tried harder and finally she got her reward – she made the team. Throughout the high school summers, Wilma drilled in the minute details of the Tigerbelles style. Again and again should would race 100 yards, walk back and race again. Soon, it became instinctive to take off and run so fast that she was almost floating and then strain forward to touch the finish line. She soon ranked among the four fastest Tigerbelles. She won many races. And with a little more effort, she raced to glory at the Olympics. 

In the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome Wilma Glodean Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field during a single Olympic Games. A track and field champion, she elevated women's track to a major presence in the United States. As a member of the black community, she is also regarded as a civil rights and women's rights pioneer.

The powerful sprinter emerged from the 1960 Rome Olympics as "The Tornado," the fastest woman on earth. The Italians nicknamed her La Gazzella Negra ("The Black Gazelle"); to the French she was La Perle Noire ("The Black Pearl"). She is one of the most famous Tennessee State University Tigerbelles, the name of the TSU women's track and field program.

Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani, founder of Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL). was the first Indian to be awarded the Dean’s Medal from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (USA) in recognition of his leadership in founding and building RIL into India’s largest and mostly profitable company. In his speech, he said, “Success is the outcome of the joint efforts, common dreams and sincere dedication.”

Nothing worthwhile was ever achieved without an effort and a struggle.

With a gentle execution, you can shake the world

Creating high performance individuals through gentle execution 

In defining and driving our strategic objectives and targets from dream to reality, we need to link the details in terms of ‘what we need to do in order to realize the dream’ and then convert all the “WHATs” in terms of ‘how we will be converting that dream into a reality’.

Here’s what I suggest if we are really serious about awakening our inner self so that we begin to see stellar in our life.

Barker wrote in 1993, ‘When a paradigm shifts, everyone goes back to zero’ and companies are being faced with this rule time and time again. When we move into a new age, a new race starts. Barker continues, ‘By zero, I mean that regardless of what position was with the old paradigm – number one in market share, leader in technology, best reputation – you are back at the starting line with the new paradigm. Because of this change in leverage, the practitioners of the new paradigm have a chance to not just compete with but defeat the titans of the old paradigm. [Paradigms, The business of discovering the future, J A Barker, Harper, 1993]

The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friend party but they say nothing. And if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them silently away. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

In our personal excellence scenario this is more essential to remember and we need to compete with Chasers of the Chasers and Leaders of the Leaders. Excellence not accustomed to the needs of the market/new paradigm will fail. As the old saying goes, if you’re not taking care of your customers (paradigms), someone else will be more than happy to.

Vision is far from the only characteristic of effective path for Excellence, but it’s probably the most distinctive. Without it, there is no Excellence. Poor vision, fickle minded, or a non-existent vision will cause execution to fail.

Excellence is about change and influencing others to change. It’s focused on doing things differently because it’s all about implementing change for the great cause and not just for survival. Our human mind works through pictures. Every great accomplishment from climbing Everest, the most stunning inventions of the world began with a series of pictures set in the imagination of their creators. All great excellence began with visualization and they begin within the mind first. All progress is nothing more than an invisible dream made visible. So make time to close our eyes and waken our inner self and awaken the Winner.

People who possess empathy, humility and kindheartedness are signs of execution strength – not weakness. Execution which lack discipline will model the wrong behaviors and will inevitably spread too thin results.

Example for “Execution is a systematic process of rigor”:

In 1992, the pump divisions of Ingersoll-Rand and Dresser Industries merged to form the Ingersoll-Dresser Pump Company. This new venture produces pumps for such diverse industrial applications as petroleum refineries, water treatment facilities, and Navy battleships. President and CEO explained the importance of focusing improvement efforts (how?) and on performance drivers to customer value (What?).

The key to focusing a new organizational culture on strategic improvement is to establish performance drivers that are critical to the success of business readily understood by employees worldwide, and supported by literally thousands of initiatives. At Ingersoll-Dresser Pumps, they have determined that three performance drivers are essential to their ultimate success as a world class performer. They are responsiveness, availability, and delivery. First they want their employees to develop a keen sense of the need to improve the quality of their responses, not only to external, but to internal customers as well. Second, they know that a large measure of their success depends upon having certain products and spare parts available for immediate delivery or within few weeks of the customer’s order. 

Finally, they know that customers all over world depend upon the integrity of delivery schedules to complete planning. Making deliveries on time, every time, will help to differentiate performance from that of the competition and give them that much-needed special edge to secure the next order. 

Response, availability, and delivery are the performance drivers that they are communicating to our associates all over the world with the expectation that their improvement activities will be prioritized to focus on these critical areas.

Ingersoll Rand is a $14 billion global diversified industrial company, driven by employees who are proud to offer products and solutions people use every day to create a positive impact in their world. Driven by a 100-year-old tradition of technological innovation, Ingersoll Rand enables companies and their customers to create progress.

Ingersoll-Rand plc is a global diversified industrial company founded in 1871. The Ingersoll Rand name came into use in 1905 through the combination of Ingersoll-Sergeant Drill Company and Rand Drill Company. Ingersoll-Rand was replaced by Quanta Services in June 2009 on the S&P 500 index. However, Ingersoll-Rand is currently listed on the S&P 500 index (as one of only fifteen companies incorporated outside the U.S.) as it replaced Pactiv in November 2010. It’s corporate headquarters are in the Airside Business Park in Swords, Fingal, County Dublin & Ireland.

Working on WHATs and HOWs will help us to focus on requirements of a new or existing scenarios and challenges in any paradigm. Execution is a systematic process of rigor with a bed of roses

People who do not love their country are losing the best part of their life.

"Namaste India": Bringing all points of focus together
every day to accomplish our Independence. - Dr. V. V. Rao 

Here’s what I suggest we do on 66^th Independence Year celebration (INDIA) if we are really serious about awakening our inner leader so that we begin to see stellar in our life.

A recap on elements of leadership in a simple way.

“My way or the highway” leadership styles don’t play well in any organization, will result in a fractured culture, and ultimately a non-productive organization.

Leaders who tend to be more concerned about survival than growth won’t do well over the long-run.

Vision is far from the only characteristic of effective leaders, but it’s probably the most distinctive. Without it, there is no leadership. Poor vision, fickle minded, or a non-existent vision will cause leaders to fail. This is like the blind lead the blind.

Real leaders are accountable. They don’t blame others don’t claim credit for the success of their team.

Leaders who consistently fail are not leaders, while past performance is not always a certain indicator of future events. Leaders who lack performance and commitment always tend to hop organizations.

Leader who possesses empathy, humility and kindheartedness are signs of leadership strength – not weakness.

Leaders who lack discipline will model the wrong behaviors and will inevitably spread themselves too thin.

Leaders not accustomed to the needs of the market will fail. As the old saying goes, if you’re not taking care of your customers, someone else will be more than happy to.

Leadership is about change and influencing others to change. It’s focused on doing things differently because it’s all about implementing change for the great cause and not just for survival.

Leadership has little to do with charisma, the almost magical ability of some people to attract others. Charisma can be helpful, and it can hurt, as we have seen in recent years, when charismatic leaders led their organizations astray.

A leader who lacks character or integrity will not endure the test of time.

Now we are familiar with some of the apt qualities of leaders. Like the individual preferences, our leadership style is our preferred way of acting in a “leader-like” way.

All of us are capable of acting in many ways. 

The shyest among us will jump up in a burning organization and country and yell, “FIRE?” Still, there are ways we prefer to act as leaders, and when the chips are down, we are all the more likely to revert to our preferred ways. Those ways constitute our organization and greatly country.

Our human mind works through pictures. Every great accomplishment from climbing Everest, the most stunning inventions of the world began with a series of pictures set in the imagination of their creators. All great achievements began with visualization and they begin within the mind first. All progress is nothing more than an invisible dream made visible. So make time to close our eyes and waken our inner self and awaken the LEADER to save our country from corruption and scams.

We can do it by Voting and Electing a good leader.

Someone said “Show me a country, a company, or an organization that is doing well and I will show you a good Leader”

Sense of urgency - Hollow to Halo

Sense of urgency is the impetus to winning while false
sense of urgency is the pebble in the shoe. – Dr. V. V. Rao.

It is human tendency to look for comfort- both physical and mental.

In this process, we always want to make sure that our new situation does not hurt us.

Thus almost all our decisions have a status-quo choice—a choice that means maintaining and keeping our current status.

The stark reality is that most of us prefer to make that choice—even if it no longer helps our genuine interests. This phenomena of ‘Keeping-status’ plays a pivotal role in stopping us from making the right new decision or choice. Under this status-quo situation we choose to make the choice which in turn is least likely to cause a change and cause any pinch of pain.

In our constant push for the ‘comfort zone’ we will ensure that the new circumstances does not upset us and we do not want to bite the bullet; sometimes to such great extent that it is hard to tell whether the change has even taken place. This inability to be flexible creates a lot of stress; in colloquial terms ‘emotional melodrama’ explodes when a situation forces us to make a choice.

Ultimately, we may choose to close our eyes to any new opportunities in this flat ride of ‘keeping the status-quo’ as a first choice.

The belief is that ‘longevity is excellent’. On the contrary, longevity and tradition are not always accurate predictors of excellence inertia. Habits, marketing prowess, market monopoly and the fear of change can all be the real reasons why we have not tried something new.

In one study, people who saw a painting described as having been painted in 1905 found it far more pleasing to look at than people who saw the same painting described as created in 2013. Every decision we make leads us to face pain and/or pleasure at some point of time.

To give a simple example, we want the benefits of innovation and change, without having to go through the hurdles of the change process. We expect other to draw our dream path, thus that irrevocable desire for an ideal rather picture perfect situation. In this process, we sabotage the purpose of our lives. Our desire to change must exceed the desire to maintain our status-quo. There is no other way out except moving from ‘Hollow to Halo’.

WalMarthas grown three times faster than the retail discount industry as a whole [Competing against TIME by George Stalk, JR. Thomas M. Hout ]. It has a return on capital that is more than twice of the industry.

Atlas Doorcan fill an order out-of-stock door in three to four weeks, one-third the industry average. Customers reward Atlas Door’s representative by buying doors often at 20 percent premium. Atlas Door grown three times faster than industry. Wilson Art decorative laminates grown three times faster than overall demand, and the profitability four times greater than the average competitor because of the responsiveness and sense of urgency they practice with their customers.

Thomasvillefurniture has a quick-ship program. The average industry response for an out-of-stock delivery is 30 days and the closest competitor’s average delivery time is more than 90 days, Thomasville grown four times faster than the industry.

Average loan disbursement require 90 to 120 days while HDFC and ICICI take 15 days and the demand for home loans has grown 100 percent year on year because of the responsiveness and sense of urgency they practice with their processes. 

In a nutshell companies and people are obtaining remarkable results by focusing on their sense of urgency.

Your Forced realism and solid execution shall keep you up there in elite class

Bla Bla will not work

A brilliant idea, excellent product and/or service can put you on the excellent map of the competitive world, but only solid execution can keep you up there in elite class.

You have to be able to deliver on your dream and plan. Unfortunately majority of us are not very good at execution and you will agree with me.

You want to stay in execution; you do every bit of business that comes along. You want to keep your dream afloat, you do not care what the neighbors and friends have to say about what you do. You must face the reality and forced realism for that one idea, that one product or service which is going to make your dream into a reality. If we do not work with realism and facts we will realize that still waters run deep.

“Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.” - Peter F. Drucker

 “It is no use saying ‘we are doing our best.’ You have to succeed in doing what is necessary.” - Winston Churchill

Throughout history, people have had difficulty in distinguishing reality from illusion. Reality is what happens, whereas illusion is what we would like to happen. Wishful thinking is a well-worn expression. Momentum is still another element: we tend to assume that things keep moving the same direction and pace but reality is different for example. The world now faces a discontinuity of historic proportions, as Nature shows her hand by imposing a new energy and/or environment reality.

Toyota Recall – Cars:The recalls, which span cars manufactured over the last decade, also raise the question of how widespread Toyota’s quality control problems had become in a period of breakneck growth for the company. From 2000 to 2008, its global unit sales grew by more than 50 percent, helping Toyota overtake General Motors as the world’s largest automaker. But even Toyota’s own executives admit the rapid growth may have come at the expense of the company’s once-stellar reputation for quality.

Three separate but related recalls of automobiles by Toyota Motor Corporation occurred at the end of 2009 and start of 2010. The first recall, on November 2, 2009, was to correct a possible incursion of an incorrect or out-of-place front driver's side floor mat into the foot pedal well, which can cause pedal entrapment. The second recall in January 21, 2010, began after some crashes were shown not to have been caused by floor mat incursion. The original action was initiated by Toyota in their Defect Information Report, dated October 5, 2009, amended January 27, 2010. Following the floor mat and accelerator pedal recalls, Toyota also issued a separate recall for hybrid anti-lock brake software in February 2010.

As of January 28, 2010, Toyota had announced recalls of approximately 5.2 million vehicles for the pedal entrapment/floor mat problem, and an additional 2.3 million vehicles for the accelerator pedal problem. Approximately 1.7 million vehicles are subject to both. Certain related Lexus and Pontiac models were also affected. The next day, Toyota widened the recall to include 1.8 million vehicles in Europe and 75,000 in China. By then, the worldwide total number of cars recalled by Toyota stood at 9 million. Sales of multiple recalled models were suspended for several weeks as a result of the accelerator pedal recall, with the vehicles awaiting replacement parts. [1. www. nytimes. com, 2011 Jan 27; 2. en. wikipedia. org / wiki / 2009–2011_Toyota_vehicle_recalls]

Toyota realized the reality and took action to stay in business. While executing your dream and making your dream into a reality, you need to become more realistic by accepting the true facts of a situation, facts of your actions, results of your actions and also sharpen and converge on the actual scenarios, situations and issues. You must learn to accept, acknowledge, recognize and act on the consequences of the reality. Mould the situation towards your goals, plans and schedules on a day to day basis improve your capability and bandwidth to deal with the external environment. This is the only way to face reality and to deal with it.

Your intent, chief purpose and leadership has the capacity to frame plans and to carry them out in the face of all difficulties which means ‘knowing what to do’ and ‘getting things done,’ by persuading others to do what is really expected, despite difficulties, discouragements, hard hurdles and show stoppers. If you try to use human influence strategies and tactics of how to get other people to do what you want, to work better, to be more motivated, to like you and each other- while your character is fundamentally flawed, marked by duplicity and insincerity-then in the long run you cannot be successful.

For example,we believe that we do not need to know the laws that apply to the job we do. If I am a supervisor on a project construction site, why should it be my accountability to know all laws and statutory requirements? Is it not what the legal department is being paid for? But the truth is that it should become part of what a project supervisor must have known. It is the only way for me to execute my job better and to protect my colleagues and myself from violations of the law.

Our duplicity will breed distrust, and everything we do-even using the so-called human relations techniques- will be perceived as manipulative. It simply makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the practices; if there is less or no trust due to our bad habits, there will be no foundation for our permanent success.

A good winner is one whose thoughts are pure and there is complete harmony in actions, words and deeds. A man who says what he thinks, does what he thinks, is always trusted; that indeed is the man who can lead others.

Fear of future: A bird in hand is worth two in the bush

No shoddy short cuts please!

Fear of future and insecurity drive us to do ‘Shoddy Short Cuts’. The future is not real. One of the biggest stumbling blocks to living a full life is to spend a huge amount of time worrying and thinking about the future. We fear an unknown future which makes it impossible to live today. This is especially true for those dreaming for themselves. Fear of the future can be overwhelming; in fact fear can easily push us towards easy shoddy short cuts because all the time we are haunted by

What if - I fail?

What if - no customers show up?

What if I run out of money?

What if I do not have kids?

What if? …

The cure for fear of the future is to keep reminding oneself to live in the present moment as much as possible. To fully focus and keep our senses on what is happening right now. The present moment in our life is a reality and a valuable gift to us from the time we came in to this world and to our existence. The present needs to be appreciated, caressed and cared for. It is possible to break this vicious cycle of fear based on unreal projections, speculation of worst situations and scenarios of things that might happen.

Who can do the thinking of current moment?

That is you!

Be aware what is happening to you.

The fear of future keeps us trapped in time - it dwells on the past or future. As long as our attention is in the past or future, we are not experiencing things as they are, we are seeing them through the results of the past and our fears for the future. At times we can be so caught up in our self imagination about future and the scenarios and skit plays that we fail to even notice the present. We fear the unknown for the dangers it may bring. We fear uncertainty not knowing whether or not we will find what we are after this moment is all that exists. This fleeting instant is the only reality. The past is gone forever the future is not yet born and remains to be seen.

A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd. He must first make a solitary decision. He cannot drift along with the crowd, nor can he pay attention to the crowd’s response to his leading. He must remain focused, and be willing to stand alone. He must give himself to the few who are cooperating with him not the masses, who are looking on. Finally, even if he yearns for the crowd’s applause, that cannot be his goal. His goal must be to lead his orchestra without any fear.

It is the inner voice within our heads that comments, often critically, on everything we do. It thinks, ‘I did that well, people will approve of me’, or ‘If only I had said it differently about my love she would not have got upset’. It is the voice that speculates on the future, ‘Should I make that telephone call...what if...?’ It wonders what other people are thinking and how they will react. It is the voice of fear, the voice of the ego-mind - the part of us that believes that only through what happens to us in the world around can we be at peace within.