Inability to distinguish between the vital and trivial will rock the boat

Vital & Trivial

Prioritize the vital action rather than spend time and energy on the trivial issues, setback, shortfall and you will make good progress. One should not prepare to win a life time dream with a cloak and dagger way.

A real sense of urgency backed up with the capability to prioritize your goals, and actions to succeed in life. One also must be able to distinguish between the vital and trivial details.

Many a times, people waste a lot of their energy and time on the trivial details and in the bargain lose focus of what was vital and had to be done and thereby delay the progress which results in setback in progress and probably enthusiasm in taking the issue, thought and idea to its logical conclusion and success.

Unless we use systematic tools for prioritizing task and activities, we may end up arriving at some wrong decision and prioritization. The following tools - used independently and / or in combination, would therefore positively be helpful in effective prioritizing:

1.       Cost-Benefit analysis

2.      Force Field analysis

3.      Risk Priority Number analysis

4.      Return on Investment analysis

5.      Critical Path analysis

6.      Pareto analysis

Vital and trivial distinction can be based on the some more of the following causes

·         Reduction of risk

·         Avoidance of loss

·         A means of entry to new arena

·         A means of obtaining more money, wealth and fame

·         Removal of competitive environments

·         Obtaining new ideas

·         Obtaining talented people and talents

A true story:

At 12:16 a.m. Aug 28, 1991 a car subway train on the Lexington line beneath New York City jumped the track and crashed in the subway tunnel. When such an emergency occurs, the New York City transit author immediately appointed a project master to oversee the handling of disaster rescue and repair activities to bring the normalcy. The prioritization of phases to accomplish the project were

Phase 1: Respond to injury-get people out of danger, provide needed medical care, remove bodies and ensure that no victims remain in the debris.

Phase 2: Secure the area-simultaneously with phase-1, eliminate other threats to life and property by disconnecting power, providing emergency lighting and ventilation, stopping other trains from entering the area, keeping non-relevant pedestrian and vehicular activities.

Phase 3: Initiate command facilities-concurrent with phase 1 and 2 set up, activate command and coordination structure for all emergency activities.

Phase 4: Remove debris-collect and remove the elements and debris of the accident which would hinder rescue, clean-up, or repair.

Phase 5: Remove damaged equipment-use cranes and other to remove heavy items movement and large equipment removal, cutting the steel frames.

Phase 6: Facility repair,

Phase 7: Test the facilities and

Phase 8: Clean up. As work progressed through the next three days trains began running again.

[S Nacco, ‘PM in Crisis Management at NYCTA: Recovery from a major subway accident,’ PM Network, Feb’1992]

Normalized conclusion:Once you start recognizing, practicing and distinguishing difference between vital and trial parts of a plan, activities it will be a good feather in your cap. That will lead to a higher success rate of all your dreams.

Follow the path of highest enjoyment and blow the lid off

Path of enjoyment

The easiest and most loving ways to complete a dream is to give yourself alternatives for what you want to do. On the other hand, try and give yourself the flexibility over what to do, it becomes like a big adventure.

You get to decide what you like to do best, and you can do it. It excites you because you have an element of choice.

This is the path of highest enjoyment – doing what makes you feel happiest at the moment. When you do so, you automatically become productive and proud about yourself and feel good about the work you have accomplished.

Following the path of enjoyment is an apple of your mind’s eye.

We have heard about when we do not attach ourselves so passionately to the action and it results into a failure you were not attached because you were not enjoying. That is pretty clear. Yet we do expect in our lives greatest results. We are convinced that we reap only what we sow.

Early priorities: Thomas Edison founded GE in the year 1878. When the 45 year old Welch became CEO in 1981, the US economy was in a recession. To leverage performance in GE’s diverse portfolio of businesses, the new CEO challenges each to be ‘better than the best’ and announced for a radical change over in the next five years. But as GE managers struggled to build #1 and #2 positions in a recessionary environment and global Japan’s industrial pressure during that time GE freed up $ 11 billion by selling more than 200 businesses also made 370 acquisitions investing more than $21 billion. Internally Welch’s insistence that GE become more ‘lean and agile’ resulted in highly disciplined de-staffing process. As he continued to chip away at bureaucracy, Welch next scrapped GE’s laborious strategic planning system and corporate planning. The budgeting process was re-installed by scrapping the just internal documenting process and he instituted a comparison with external similar industries. In the span of 8 years he de-staffed 59,000 salaried and 64,000 hourly positions.

The second stage: By the late 1980s, most of the GE restructuring was complete and now major work on rebuilding process started. Both management operating system and supporting management hardware instituted.

Best practices: Welch’s relentless pursuit of ideas to increase productivity resulted in the birth of related movement called ‘Best Practices’. Simple principle of ‘How can we learn from the other companies that are achieving higher productivity than GE?’. For example one of the auditors explained: ‘When I started 10 years ago, the first thing I did was count the $5,000 in the petty cash box. Today, we look at $5 million in inventory on the floor, searching for process improvements that will bring it down.’ Then he focused on ‘Developing leaders’, ‘Going global’, ‘Boundary less behavior’, ‘Achieving the impossible’, and ‘Service business from 15% to 75%’ from 1981 to 1999 with his relentless initiatives, changes, and improvements built the confidence back in the company.

The Six Sigma Quality Initiative:When a 1995 company survey showed that GE employees were dissatisfied with the quality of its products, processes and services. GE adopted the Six sigma model at the annual general meeting, Welch announced that in the first two years of Six sigma, GE had saved $750 million and the DNA of the organization towards quality and productivity has been institutionalized. Jack Welch glowed with pride at GE Annual Meeting in 1999. For the first time GE revenue exceeded $100 billion, operating margin was all time high of 16.7%, and earnings per share had increased over 14%, the fortune poll of US corporate executives had voted GE the country’s ‘Most admired company’ for the second year running, and the Financial Times had named it the ‘Most Respected Company in the world’ in the year 2000 Jack Welch retired at the age of 64 years.[ Strategic Management, Gregory G Dess, G T Lumpkin, Marilyn L Taylor ]

For about 20 years, Jack Welch managed the company from a level of survival to a $100 billion company. It was only possible because he was enjoying and loving what he was doing year on year, he was open to new practices, ideas, talents, techniques and robust behaviors. He finished most of the initiatives, targets, aspirations and developments he had started and more importantly he was able to leave behind so many valuable lessons for the future generations.

Concluding reminder: Finish what you start

We always feel better looking at inferior people and snug as a bug in a rug

Snug as a bug

‘I am perfectly capable of deciding what is best for me, my family and my career.

I do not need outside guidance.’ Sounds like a rebellious early teenager. It is actually our complacency talking in the head.

We like living in our safe and secure place; a place with no personal and professional growth or no force pushing us to make positive changes in our life.

A place we believe is the ultimate so we remain in a jungle of complacence this happens to all of us. We have been enjoying a stable life at that level for a very long time. Our superiority complex makes us compare ourselves to an inferior person and become complacent. This can easily happen at any level, the trap is still the same and the script is almost always going to be similar. We have subconsciously decided that there is no need to make further changes, no need to push ourselves to make further growth, and now we can just sit back, prop our feet up, and enjoy our current level and ignore our weak link and live with complacency.

Michael Jordan, one of the world’s best basketball player, has a winning attitude. In high school, he was out from his school team obviously that did not comfort him. He missed more than 9000 shots in his career. He lost almost 300 games, at least 26 times he missed the winning shot in the final games, however he never stopped shooting the baskets and winning the games for the team and for himself. We have to watch what we are doing closely while we are grinding anything on a grindstone. And the only way you can do that is by keeping your nose to the grindstone. Simply we cannot be successful without real hard work.

Taking Usain Bolt as an example, Usain Bolt did not happen in a day. It has taken tons of hard work, dedication and pain at every moment of journey to reach that level of excellence. He broke his own personal records again and again.

‘You have got to understand with great clarity what you can do better than any other company in the world,’ as per author Jim Collins.

Star Bucks CEO Howard Schultz realized this just before he directed company resources in what may have been a disastrous direction. Schultz envisioned Starbucks as the internet coffeehouse of the world. You would be able to order specialty coffees, cappuccino machines, even pots and pans. But before he tried to move the aroma of freshly brewed latte to the internet, he considered his next important action. According to one writer, ‘It is as if he woke up one morning, rubbed his eyes, sipped a strong Sumatran brew, and said to himself, ‘Wait a minute, I sell coffee!’

The internal true ‘sense of urgency’ took him to revenue about $2.4 billion within two years of business started in the year 2001, [J. Creswell, ‘Remedies for an Economic Hangover,’ Fortune, June’2001] and he showed us the path for ‘Hollow to Halo’.

In Hardwood Groves

The same leaves over and over again!

They fall from giving shade above

To make one texture of faded brown

And fit the earth like a leather glove

Before the leaves can mount again

To fill the trees with another shade

They must go down into the dark decayed

They must be pierced by flowers and put

Beneath the feet of dancing flowers…

We always feel better looking at inferior people and deviate from our winning path.

Greed and over ambition is a dead loss

 

Shoddy Short Cuts

Greed for the unearned is bad, but if you only want what you deserve, that too is greed, because when you do not get what you deserve, you feel a righteous sense of indignation. A company had 1000 units order and planning, but boss wanted more 2000+ units, which is double. When the company increased capacity and resources, competitor cropped up and eaten away the potential orders. End of the year company left with lot of inventory and huge wasteful resources and a huge loss, which is like killing the goose that lays golden eggs. Greed is ‘an overwhelming desire to have more of something such as money than is actually needed.’ We want more because we aspire for a better quality of life, and we do not want to worry about not having. I make use of my skills, time and energy to get what I need and wanted. However, if I satisfy that motivation in an immoral or illegal way, or when I place that above any other things that are more valuable in my life such as family and my faith, then I am in deep trouble. While money and power tends to become the prime mover for almost everything we do today, it nevertheless should not be regarded as god as some of us would.

Marcus Licinius Crassus (115 BC - 53 BC): While Marcus Crassus was still a young man, he became obsessed with wealth which became the main feature of his character. He rented land and bought slaves just to trade them later on at a better price. An inexhaustible source of enrichment for Crassus was offered by Rome's difficulty in providing housing for everyone. Ancient Rome was overcrowded and buildings extremely exposed to fire which was one of the most frequent causes for having entire neighborhoods destroyed. But this situation was favorable for speculation. Crassus had organized teams of firefighters, saving the houses from fire and then he bought the burned houses for a small price and after some repairs, he rented them. Greed proved fatal to him as Crassus got killed during a disastrous military campaign when he wanted to conquer the Kingdom of Parthia, famous for its wealth.

 

No short cuts please

The Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908):Although she started her ‘career’ as the whore of the Chinese Emperor, meanwhile she managed to become ‘de facto’ the head of this large Asian country for nearly 50 years. She became famous for the 3,000 boxes of jewelry she owned and used the money of the Chinese Navy to build a marble boat where she was dining using 150 gold chop sticks.

Imelda Marcos (1929):Tagalog wife of President Ferdinand Marcos, is suspected of having stolen, along with her husband over 5 billion dollars of Philippines wealth. When she and her husband were deposed from power in 1986, authorities found in Imelda's lockers in Malacañang (presidential palace) over 3000 pairs of shoes, size 37. Imelda's extravagance was beyond any acceptable limit. During an expedition to purchase real estate in New York, she decided to buy the Empire State Building, but eventually gave up. Evaluated at about $750 million, the building did not exceed her financial possibilities, but she said it was an acquisition too glaring. Instead, she spent fifty-one to get Crown Building and sixty million for Herald Center and two other apartments in Manhattan.

William H. Vanderbilt (1821-1884):Vanderbilt was an American rich man of the nineteenth century who was perhaps the richest and most powerful man of his times. He controlled the largest rail network in the world and became famous with his famous words: ‘The public be damned! I only care about my property.’ Let us not become history while pursuing greed and do not enter into shoddy short cuts to earn more money, power, which is a limitless desire to have more of something. It is however critical, that one does not equate success and wealth with greed. As Mother Teresa once said, ‘If you cannot feed a hundred people, then feed one.’ People without means contribute generously of their time and skills every day, yet others do not. Greed does not discriminate between rich and poor. There are many ways in which greed rears its ugly head every day.

Check your gut and thoughts

Check - 765

No matter how upset you get about the actions or behaviors of others, it will not change anything. The only person you have control over is yourself, and if you are so busy being upset over the behavior of someone else then you have just given that person power over you. Another person cannot make you upset without your consent. Check your gut and thoughts when this happens to see what you are focusing on. Each time you allow another person to get under your skin, you are choosing to give up control over your life. You need to decide what you are willing to do to get what you want. Allowing people to put you down only makes life harder on yourself. When we walk or run we have to go around curves and over ups or downs and it is quite round about, do not always try to please others rather speak your mind.

In a business unit performance review of CEO, the division presents growth in a single digit almost nearer to two digit figure and everyone in the room applaud while the top management nods about the performance and you know that there is lot that can be done in that division. You know with your gut but you do not want to speak because your comments may lead to conclusion that you are not a team player. It is true that speaking your mind definitely scares people out at first instance, that is the risk, and only you can do that if you are willing to take that risk. Most do not speak their mind and rather become a part of the game again and again so that it does not hurt us.

Speak Your Mind is not an albatross around your neck

One of the winning habit

The winning habit that one needs to develop is to confidently, without getting intimidated by people, circumstances and consequences be able to speak one’s mind. In the current environment, we need to set boundaries. By setting clear boundaries of our values, we are enabling ourselves to find the balance it will actually provide energy to each aspect of our lives. Setting boundaries in our heart and mind will enable us to speak our mind and get the important things done.

The wonderful thing about character and integrity is that they are intimately related and also one of the few things in life that no one will ever be able to forcefully take away from you. Your good choices are your own. Even though someone can take your life, they cannot force you to make a choice that you believe is wrong. Look at the choices you have made in your past and observe how much you have or have not lived by those principles. Be conscious every day of the decisions you make, however big or small and how close they bring you to be the person you really want to become. Remember ‘...until a person can say deeply and honestly, I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday, that person cannot say, I choose otherwise.’ Stephen R. Covey.

Without offending others, it may seem practically difficult to exercise your right to be able to speak your mind under certain circumstances. Therefore, one tends to maintain silence or keep mum even though you feel deeply about the situation, about expressing your perspective, which you believe can definitely improve or help the said situation, circumstances and problems. However, for fear of sounding outrageous or expressing a practically impossible solution, advise and perspective, considering those around have chosen to express in contradiction of your own thoughts and beliefs, in order to please others, you would rather allow a popular belief to decide the outcome of a situation or a given problem at hand. Good leaders elucidate their opinions even when in those hardest moments of life and they will not go all around Robin Hood’s barn.

M K Gandhi wrote a letter to the new Governor of Bengal, with respect to releasing the political prisoners. ‘Nature cure clinic, 6, Todiwala Road, Poona 10th March’1946.

Dear friend,

Your predecessors Mr. Casey left for you a legacy and told me that you would have to deal yourself with remaining political prisoners or detenus of Bengal. I have no desire to worry you in the beginning stage of your career but the letter I have just received from important prisoners or detenus in Dum Dum jail encourages me to do so. The letter speaks for itself. I simply say by the way of comment that it is a tragedy or, may I say, even a disgrace to keep these people in jail without trial, even on suspicion however strong that may be. I plead for courageous wholesale release.

Yours sincerely,

M K Gandhi.

This is one of the best examples of those that stand their ground without offending others and winning.

They find ways to find others mistakes like a bull in a china shop

Finger pointing

So that they can be released and procrastinate in the mist of chaos and uncertainty every time they find others mistakes so that they can escape from the pain and the acceptance of their own failure. The easier way is to point fingers at others and play the blame game. These people are very much visible with egoistic messages and, communication thinking that whole issue and/or problem is because of all other functions, people, situations and they think that they are smart in the whole world and always harping on past glory, which no one had witnessed. Most of the time they abuse others, unhappy, cynical, egoistic, self praising, and shrinking ownership when it comes to self delivery, and non-value added nature. The important issue is that they procrastinate on their personal growth as well.

During my consulting experience, I have found myself in this scenario at various companies and also I found myself in the scenario of ‘finding mistakes’ with different people at different layers with all type of companies (big, small, national, international) and with many dignitaries. Let me narrate a brief story: An engineering company hired me to improve the situation of order position and to improve customer focus. I started analyzing issues, complaints, responses to complaints, corrections and prevention. At that stage, I must have come across at least fifty top people who are responsible in the ladder of leadership team and I realized that each one playing the blame game, that too very tactfully. Customer service function was saying ‘If engineering function made products with more reliability these issues should have been stopped’. I wanted to draw attention to the issues that directly related to Customer service were about 15%. The engineering function was commenting on customer service function ‘If they could have serviced timely we must have been spared’. The BIG ‘IF’ factor and the dependent factor to blame each one and each team was efficient to dust off the failures on other functions. The story goes on, I met the human resources, accounting, billing, manufacturing and marketing functions. Nothing surprised me. Everyone was pointing out others mistakes so that they could all appear flawless at their end. No one was ready to take the pain; most were not even ready to face the problem and accept responsibility. The matter of fact is that most of the complaints were not attended fully, some were never responded to in time and a candid cover story was maintained which said ‘the customer is just exaggerating, we need to educate them. That is the main root cause’. Eventually after prolonged discussion based on real facts and figures, we could start the process of improvement.

Similarly, in our daily lives, when we face any challenges or failures and we choose to escape from the reality or ignore the reality, it stops our growth in professionally and personally. We stop growing as a human being. One of the least talked about prerequisites for success is strong sense of urgency. Without it, we sabotage ourselves and our dreams. With it, we can handle mistakes with perspective, and have the ability to admit them, benefit from them and correct them with real sense of urgency.

Our past success ‘the eye of a needle’ is stopping our new growth

A machine tools company was facing an issue worth of 5 Crore(INR) and the turnover of the company was about 125 Crore(INR). One of my friends joined this company as a production engineer and later due to his good work; he was promoted to the production head position and eventually he became plant head. The 5 Crores(INR) issue cropped, which was a big challenging and competitive issue. Now he has to resolve the issue. At that time he called me as a consultant to resolve the issue. From a cost point of view, issue was not that big deal; however the issue had a repetitive ripple effect. If not attended to, the company may have to go through a big financial crisis. However, this gentleman still believed that his past performance would help him to resolve the issue. He conveniently stated that ‘When I was a production engineer there were no quality issues, and we were managing all issues single handed. I do not know why people cannot prevent these issues.’ By stating this and believing it, he does not own up to the current burning issue and neither showed any sense of urgency to resolve the issue. He was trying to find a scapegoat and an escape point from the reality and accountability.

Harping on the past your success will only tickle your funny bone; this is like someone is sitting down on a basket of eggs. We always try to be complacent by bringing our yester year’s performance such as ‘we won the village tournament’; ‘we played an important role in municipality politics’ so now I am relaxing. I had worked hard all my life, it is time to sit back and relax. The biggest trap of them all – sense of completeness and achievement. M K Gandhiji brought freedom to India as a country at about 60 years of his age. He worked tirelessly on the vital issues of a nation, which were not directly related to him. In India, Anna Hazare, a social activist was doing the same in the hope of a better future and better nation for the next generation. They have shown a sense of urgency to bring freedom and justice to the future generations not harping on the past success. Past is history, future is tomorrow, but our today determines our tomorrow. 

The reality is in front of you, so do not run away; show a real sense of urgency and work to win today. It is not a Nano technology; they are simple and basic principles. Often, we fail to recognize that our past success is stopping our growth; our complacency leads us to retreat into a safe haven within – where one feels happy and at peace. Learning to accept changes must be constant and thereby taking actions that warrant us to leave our safe heaven far behind and accept challenges, learn, improve and constantly push one’s limits of achievement, success and happiness.