No time for beauty; but time for duty will make you stately

'Success in life to be determined by our contributions' - Dr V V Rao

According to unseen archives, the ballerina expressed a dying with that Anna Pavlova remains be returned to Russia after fall of communism. So, the dancer condemned by Soviet officials as ‘The darling of wicked capitalist audiences’.

Anna’s image was one of fragile genius, a woman whose gossamer body and delicate beauty enchanted millions of people around the world and revolutionized ballet. In fact, Anna was a hard worker who made a virtue of physical weaknesses. “Success depends in very large measure upon individual initiative and exertion, and can’t be achieved except by dint of hard work. It was a grueling schedule.

She spent most of her life on trains and in hotels and actually invented and early version of the modern pointed shoe to make toe-work less taxing when she danced. 

According to one story, the doctors offered to save her life with an operation that would have damaged her ribs and left her unable to dance. Anna Pavlova chose instead to die on Jan 23^rd, 1931. Before dying, she performed some of the movements from ‘The dying Swan’, which she had danced more than 4,000 times.

Jay W. Forrester of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published a pioneering article in the Harvard Business Review, 1958, which established a model of time’s impact on the performance of an organization. Using ‘industrial dynamics’ a technique originally developed to direct shipboard fire-control systems Forester tracked the effects of time delays and decision within a simple and representative business system consisting of a factory, its warehouse, a distributor, and a retailer. 

The numbers are the delays measured in weeks in the flow of information and product from one level in the system to another. In this example, the orders accumulate at the retailer for three weeks, are in the mail for one half a week, are delayed  at the distributor for two weeks, go back in the mail for another half a week, and need eight weeks for processing at the factory and its warehouse. The finished product then begins its journey back to the retailer. The complete cycle takes 19 weeks.

The customer does not often see a 19-week cycle. That is because inventories are held at various levels-to deceive the customer into thinking that responsiveness of this system is much faster than 19 weeks.

Underlying the operations of every company working like its spine is a system. For example, what does it take for an aeroplane manufacturer to receive an order, process the order, produce the plane, deliver it and collect?

What are the steps that bank goes through in processing transactions, coordinating with branch operators, collaborating with branches, and delivering timely and accurate cash decisions?

How does an automobile manufacturer design a new vehicle made up of thousands of different component parts and manage the daily flow of orders and shipments with suppliers and assembly plants?

In fact, what Honda and other variety-driven companies pioneered and made structural changes in their operations that enabled them to execute their processes much faster than before.

A basic test of management’s understanding of the systematic nature of its business is whether or not it is caught in the organized effort loop. All businesses must do a good amount of organized effort for future to be sure they are ready to make the value.

What is that I am driving you through these examples and narrations?

The unknown inventories, process effectiveness, customer awareness and delivery to the requirements come only from a deadly hard work not by any means of short cuts.

Every strategist, whether in business or war or industry or other arenas, understands the value of organized, coordinated effort. Any modern railroad bridge is an excellent example of the value of organized effort, because it demonstrates quite simply and clearly how thousands of tons of weight borne by comparatively small group of steel bars and beams. 

What was in it for me!

765 - Anniversary

Stats-765

What is 765 ways to win

Best five - 765

What was in it for me - 765

Theme - 765

Thank you

Look inside Mirrors and don't look at Mirages

 

'Do not look at mirage and look inside mirror' - Dr V V Rao 

Marriage Ceremony: Last month I was invited for a friend’s son’s marriage ceremony. Welcome lounge decorated with white lilies, red roses and petals of irises with an artistic mind. Enchanting of classical tunes blended with a romantic rock music inviting the hearts of young to get married early and at the same time hearts of elder’s were going through a faded memory lane of their marriage music. Hosts were greeting, welcoming, feeding and taunting with relatives and friends. It looked like “All is well & awesome”. Suddenly clouds making noises with lightening we realized that ceremony was passing through a thunderstorm and heavy rain this was due to the cyclone ‘Phailin’ just crossed land shores of  India.

Now at actual scenes of mirages started, ceremony hall was leaking at many places, the place became wet and dirty in few minutes, guests were discussing seriously about

“Construction quality of the ceremony hall”,

“Inappropriate looting of business men”,

 “Yelling and murmuring about why did hired this hall”,

“Criticizing about how money was being wasted”,

“Talking about ceremony mismanagement”, and

So on and on and on………..

Slowly guests were squeezed to places where they were self protected from chilled droplets of rain. Mostly none were interested to bother about the marriage except parents of the bride and bridegroom. In span of 15-20 minutes the whole place was full of water and it looked like a flooded situation.

Then I saw a cute girl aged around 10 years was shouting at the guests “Help me”, “help me” with a towel in her hand, she was trying and protecting bridegroom from those Big drops which were coming at great a speed due to natural gravitational force. After that eventful shouting from the girl, complete scenario changed to a full scale help to each other, willfully everyone got into act and enjoyed the rest of the ceremony.

People started looking at the Mirrors and not at the Mirages.

In the present business and financial climate, many of us are striving to ensure our survival by measures such as energetically promoting our own subject matter expertise, technical innovation, carrying widespread leadership excellence and shutting down non-value added strategic objectives which are no more valid in this political and global environment. To cope with the future situation, as individuals we must perform variety of improvements such as:

1. Unite and manage teams and team work

2. Guide, help peers and educate yourself to improve your exceptional competence of problem solving

3. Eliminate non-value added objectives and work on excellence

4. Ruthlessly reduce all types of costs

5. Guarantee yourself productivity of every minute

6. Create reward and joyful moments

Mirages: If we want to do all of this we cannot be looking at mirages and brush away the reality and say that its someone else’s fault, blaming on colleagues, friends, bosses, wife and kids and on their shortcomings. We cannot be self-negating and convince ourselves that we cannot possibly solve it because we lack talent and self-confidence, we cannot be like an ostrich with its head in the sand and we think that the existing situation cannot be possibly be improved than maintain the status-quo.

Mirrors: We always must act with a specific objective in mind, actively churn out problems to tackle and get to grips with them positively and decisively, making light of difficulties.

Andrew Carnegie, once the steel king of the world, said that no matter what business you are in, it is important always to do your utmost to become the best. When at the age of twelve, he was employed as a winder in a spinning mills, he tried to become world’s number one winder. Then when he was delivering telegrams, he strove to become the world’s best telegram delivery boy. Whatever his job, he always worked with his reality and he reached the position he desired to.

Good problem solvers have their own objectives and they set these objectives little out of reach of the present abilities and have a burning passion to solve them permanently. To be able to do that objectively, one needs to avoid looking at the mirage, rather concentrate on the reflection in the mirror - at the glaring facts even though one may be tempted to look on the other side and imagine things are not as bad as they seem. No matter how much one wants to postpone facing the unpleasant facts, truth is, the problems needs to be solved and for that, one has to come face to face with the mirrors, acknowledge them  and then work on solutions.

Mavericks do not stumble upon!

Knowledge for Mavericks

No one recognized the voice on the audio file. The woman who had been the night word processing supervisor at the time of the murder had been downsized, her job function taken over by a temporary employee. It took three weeks to trace her to St. Paul, Minnesota. It took another week to learn that she had been killed when her right front tire disintegrated on the interstate one icy night.

Human resources kept only paper files on temporary workers. But the relevant ones were ‘old’ by now, and the HR director said they had definitely been shipped to storage on the south side of the city. Paper files kept for two months after an employee left then sent to the warehouse.

Someone went to the south side with the detective to look for the files. The warehouse was in an old industrial district. Red brick factories, long since abandoned, lines the deserted streets. Parking lots were guarded by rusty chain-link fences, empty except for the weeds pushing up through the asphalt. A brick smokestack its factory demolished long ago, stood alone and silent. The names of forgotten companies crumbled on worn marbles slabs above the boarded-up doorways. High on the buildings hung faded for rent signs, visible from the elevated railway that divided the district from the rest of the city.

Inside the warehouse was lit by harsh overhead fluorescent bulbs emitting a low constant hum. Along the side high bare walls stood five rows of mismatched drawer-filing cabinets. A filing clerk leaned against the counter, eating meat and rice out of a takeout container. He was tall, pale man, with black stringy hair that fell over his collar.

The clerk made detective fill out a request in pencil for records, then studied the form closely for several moments. After looking at request form clerk said ‘Nope,’ they were recycled. We only keep records like this for six months. [Bernd H. Schmitt narrated this story.]

What does the morale we shall draw?

One point this grim little story makes is that it’s not enough simply to have files without any knowledge. One has to see the knowledge required from these files. When persons makes knowledge available for others to use through a store and reuse method, which means making our intelligence being used for Mavericks Winning.

Human life flourishes only when the individuals rise above their selfish and sectarian interests and discharge their duties as integral units of the society. But we critically lack the consciousness and have become increasingly selfish. We have compromised a lot on habits such as ‘Find good in others’, ‘Walk the talk’ and ‘Finish, what we start’.

We do not cherish a potential Vision and unaware about the true talents hidden reside in us such as ‘Plan the best reality’, ‘Get more off our-self’ and ‘Mavericks wins’. This made us puppets in the hands of ‘Fear of failure’, ‘Get tired’ and ‘Adopt shoddy short cuts’. But the most important pit falls of this lack of ‘self-awareness’ is our inner belief to WIN. 

How can we do it better?

Knowledge is the marvelous inspiration to humanity. Evolution created us with equal brains, but it is the utilization of brain and day-to-day added knowledge which make all the difference. Knowledge brings confidence to face this competitive world. It is the knowledge which makes all the difference between floating and sinking of a person’s fortunes.

One must have a quest for knowledge, to learn, to question which is the mother of all inventions and leads to mind blowing discoveries. A knowledgeable person can face the challenges in their life in a tactful manner than a lay person. Not only in the world of science, the worth and power of knowledge cannot be underestimated in any other sphere whether it is stock market or sports. Share markets provide an excellent opportunity for investors who have proper knowledge of the game earn good profits but many investors who have incomplete knowledge lose big bucks. The investors who have sufficient and complete knowledge have earned huge dividends.

I think knowledge will make hell of a difference in our chase.

Samuel Smiles has rightly said ‘Knowledge is power’. Knowledge is something which a thief cannot steal, rather it enhances by sharing with others and every Mavericks Wins with Knowledge.

Heroes in our minds

Be a hero

Most of the stupendous leaders do possess neither prominent physical appearance nor vigorous personality. What distinguishes them is the clarity of thought and persuasiveness of their dreams, the depth of their dedication, and the extent of their candidness to continually learning more. They do not ‘have the answer,’ yet they seem to instill self-belief in those around them that, together, ‘we can learn whatever we need to learn in order to achieve the outcome we truly craving.’

Leaders work to build up conceptual and communication skills. Some other leaders strive to pay attention to and be glad about others and their dreams. Some use other approaches. But all are committed to working on their own growth, to ‘struggling to become a human being.’ [Roger Saillant]

Each leader think in a different way, truly valuable leaders seem to come to a shared approval of the power of holding Vision and concurrently looking deeply and honestly at current certainty. People who are truly leading seem rarely to think themselves in that way. Their focus is habitually on what needs to be done, larger ideas in which they are operating. There is always the hazard, especially for those in leadership positions, of becoming ‘heroes in their minds.’ [Bryan Smith]

James Hargreaves led a simple existence, working in the cottage industry that spinning was in the first half of the eighteenth century. His whole family was involved in spinning and weaving. In the Hargreaves’s home, fiber was spun into thread, and thread woven into cloth. In 1764, he built a machine to be operated by one person, which would spin several threads at once. Initially, it had eight spindles, but Hargreaves saw that the machine could handle many more. Hargreaves’s machines nick named after his wife Jenny, was an instant hit with the merchants and entrepreneurs.  Inevitably, others involved in the industry saw the development as a threat to their employment. In 1768, as spinning mills multiplied, Hargreaves’s neighbors attacked his house and destroyed his machines. Hargreaves took his family to Nottingham, where he founded a smaller version of the spinning mill that transformed the industry, one of the major stepping stones in the Industrial Revolution.

‘As businesses, we must be the change we want to see in the world. This will mean that most everything is up for change: our products, our process, our business models, how we manage and lead, and how we are with one another. It is not likely that we can change just bits and pieces and shift the whole’ [Roger Saillant]

It is easy to get lost in thinking about big issues such as climate change, corruption, to feel and think that there is nothing we can do, and may be even that there is nothing anyone can do. Yet big issues are not just big and they are very much right here. We are the carriers of the whole change, leadership and our own dreams to accomplish.

The building block process inside IBM: In response to a highly dynamic IT market place, IBM has defined as reference architecture for each of its product lines, categorized by major market segments. At the highest level, this architecture defines the target market, the competition, and life span of the product platform. At the design level, engineers carefully isolate product functionality and define standard interfacing.

In our real life when we come across complex scenarios and situations as a leader we need to isolate, recognize and keep our Vision intact within our thoughts and deeds to move forward. 

At each small success we should not become our own heroes in our minds.  

Top 22 steps - Risk HOTO

I personally believe that the following procedures and actions would be very effective in making one more productive and better prepared to visualize risk and manage uncertainties: Hand Over risk Take Over new journey - HOTO

1. Dismantle fixed performance contracts. Negotiate better scope and terms. Nothing is standard and nothing is permanent unless parties to the contract, decision and agreement agree that the conditions are standard and fixed. Changes can always be made that suit the parties and result in more effective agreement.

2. New self rules for evaluation: Determine certain rules which when followed daily and routinely - make your working, progress, tasks, and actions more effective and productive.

3. Revise action planning rules.

4. Revise concepts formation rules.

5. Define and establish new performance indicators. Performance indicators are an effective methodology that confirm progress in the right direction and also act as precursor for impending risks, changes in plan and actions required. They reaffirm progress as well as help anticipate and thus manage risks more effectively.

6. Redesign information gathering methods.

7. Redesign what you want to do.

8. Analyze cost. It is an important parameter of any project.

9. Revise forecasting methods.

10. Revise working style and culture.

11. Frame new financial monitoring rules.

12. Work on network of people.

13. Devolve decision authority.

14. Change rules for capital expenditure.

15. Create new governance and internal framework.

16. Reorganize operating hierarchy level.

17. Create self belief affirmations.

18. Create new customer segment.

19. Set up service level agreements.

20. Create rules for assimilating new venture.

21. Communicate about the new model.

22. Formulate quality assurance of the new venture.

Change the way you work to perform better under uncertainty and do it by implementing and practicing new ideas, ways, techniques, and then thinking about changes you could make. Focus on your areas of limited knowledge and expand it in a manner that makes you more effective, efficient and productive at managing risks and uncertainties. 

IBM focused on innovation- in 1932 IBM committed 6 percent of its revenue to R&D and created a corporate research laboratory. DuPont also increased its investment in R&D to about 93% in the span of nine years from 1930 to 1939. In 1930, P&G enlisted college educated women to do door-to-door market research survey and this helped P&G for effective marketing strategy. 

GE capitalized on government spending across range of new federal programs. Chrysler adopted new advertising strategies to launch new model (Plymouth with elimination of vibration and noise) of cars. Asihi, a Japanese company focused on distribution and mass-marketing channels to come out from the recession. 

McDonald accelerated the opening of new stores with a pace of about 300 every year. Some companies shifted from products to service business and so on... All of the above examples show that during crisis and uncertainties, we need to adopt brave and promising strategies and decisions that can bring back normalcy and success through new sustainable actions. The old one-size-fits-all will not be adequate. 

The best leaders supplement their shaping bets with options that let them course quickly and effectively. The best way during crisis and uncertainty is to undertake an emergency room surgery, carving away the old habits and amputating ineffective practices.