Stepping up performance how?

The loser says, 'The worst is just around the corner' The winner says, 'The best is yet to come'

‘It is only he, who conquers his mind, conquers the world’ all of us read it, understand it and convey the great sermon to our followers, our friends or to our successors.

An old man used to watch stars in the evening with his five year old granddaughter, who grew automatically a habit of star gazing and she could recognize several celestial bodies after few days of time. After some weeks she amazed ‘grandpa, those stars are not in position where I had noticed earlier it seems that ‘our house is moving!’ what a natural and innocent discovery without any theory. What she had discovered herself was her own feeling and observations which may be remain in her memory for years to come in her life.

Will power can move mountains, it can work miracles. As a Chinese poet puts it beautifully

‘Reach the ninth heaven to embrace the moon,

Or five Oceans deep to capture a turtle, either is possible.

Return to merriment and triumphant songs,

Under this heaven, nothing is difficult,

Only if there is the will ascend.

The power of mind is stated to be almost omnipotent in human affairs

We are social animals. We like to live in a social structure with respect and dignity. We like to contribute and live with respect. We also like to give respect to others. By respecting people we establish a rapport with them, conveying a very significant, meaningful implication that people matter in the society. This also confirms our self-worth in the given situation. In return, the individual’s response to the situations quite often much greater than what is required to achieve a given objective. While trying to manage people many times we may face a situation of management of managers.

The basic challenges and concepts related to management of managers can be best seen through the illustration of Ford Motor Company of US which in early twenties commanded two-thirds of the automobile market. And after fifteen years, i.e. around the Second World War, Ford’s market share fell to 20 percent. The Company did not make profits during the fifteen year period. Poor performance of the Company was attributed to the absence of management, or what we may term, people management in the Company. Henry Ford’s style of managing was based on his belief that managing was his personal job; he never shared ownership or managing with anybody. His executives had to be his personal assistants, to execute the orders but never to manage.

Lord Beveridge said that the purpose of manager is to make common men to do uncommon things. The focus is to be on what one can do rather than what someone can’t do. When you engage with someone, connect with the objective of discovering their strengths, learn and appreciate that person closely and eventually, you will be surprised that your unearthing has made that person more awake of his own affirmative attributes. And what can be better than helping others discover the talents that they may have not realized they possess or the good things they are proficient of doing and thus, making it a win-win discovery for both.

Now that is what I call an ugly duckling. One day, a poor boy was selling goods from door to door to pay his way through school and was feeling hungry. He decided to ask for a meal at the next house. However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door. Instead of a meal, he asked for a drink of water. She thought he looked hungry so she brought him a large glass of milk. He drank it slowly, and then asked, ‘How much do I owe you?’ ‘You do not owe me anything,’ she replied. Years later, that young woman became critically ill and went to the big city specialists to get her rare disease tested. Dr. Arthur Ford was called in for the consultation that who recognized her at once. He went back to the consultation room determined to do his best to save her life. After a long struggle, she was cured. Dr. Kelly requested the business office to pass the final bill to him for approval. He looked at it, and then wrote something on the edge and the bill was sent to her room. She feared to open it, for she was sure it would take the rest of her life to pay for it all. Finally she looked, and something on the side of the bill caught her attention. The words read: ‘Paid in full with one glass of milk’ [www.truthorfiction.com]

Schedules are not bolts from the blue

‘Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning’ - Winston Churchill

Schedule must illustrate the start and finish dates of the initiation elements and summary elements of a goal. Initiation elements and summary elements comprise the work breakdown structure of the each individual milestone. Use Schedules for all small and big milestone that fit on a single sheet. Every single project, plan, dream being put into execution is with the singular objective of achieving success. Everybody who ever initiated a plan based on a dream must have a schedule to see that they make progress and success of their venture. Everyone wants to win, to achieve and to succeed. However, people often underestimate the importance of effective sustainable scheduling while initiating a dream to reality. You must ensure and assess:

- How you estimated your dedication and commitment?

- How you ensured that no hidden task left out in the schedule?

- Any risk not scheduled?

- How you ensured all resources are capable?

- How you predicted quantity is as per scheduled delay?

- Have you scheduled the review mechanism and self assessment?

- Have you scheduled measurements and performance indicators?

- Have you scheduled plan B for all failures/ lapses? And finally

- Have you ensured the schedules and task are aligned to your dream?

Different people will have different perceptions of what successful planning and scheduling means. Plan with scheduling for execution is a process of deciding in advance where one wants to get to the chief strategic goal, which is a part and parcel of your dream. The XV Olympiad in CALGARY involved nearly 2000 athletes from 57 countries in 129 competitive events, attracted over 15,00,000 spectators, was covered by over 5000 journalists, and was run by a staff of 600 professionals complemented by 10,000 volunteers. For those 600 responsible for organizing, planning, scheduling, coordinating, and handling the information requirements for the 16 day extravaganza, the task was overwhelming. 

The top managers of the organizing committee thus turned to a Computer Based Project Planning and Scheduling (CBPPS) system for scheduling and managing the 30,000 tasks organized into 50 projects. The goal for the CALAGRY games was to provide the best games ever, but within the budget. The philosophy employed was to let each project manager plan their own project but meet firm completion dates and budget limits. [R G Holland, ‘The XV Olympic Winter Games: A case study in project management, PM network, Nov’1989]

Top ten stumbling blocks: Why you are not taking instantaneous action?

False sense of urgency

Stumbling block 1: Two levels below

You have subconsciously decided that there is no need to make further changes, no need to push yourself to make further growth, and now you can just sit back, prop your feet up, and enjoy your current level.

Stumbling block 2: Status quo

You live in the world of illusion-change believing it as an improvement. This is ultimate nothing can be improved further is a big stumbling block as Bill Gates said “We will never make a 32 bit operating system.” Now you know where you are?

Stumbling block 3: Others mistakes

You find ways to find others mistakes like a bull in a china shop so that you can be released and relaxed in the mist of chaos and uncertainty every time you find others mistakes so that you can escape from the pain and the acceptance of your own failure.

Stumbling block 4: Past success

Your past success ‘the eye of a needle’ is stopping your new growth, harping on your past 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 your yester year’s performance which is a nano-particle.

Stumbling block 5:  Stress and stressed

You change businesses, bosses, jobs, roles; superficially you take pride in your own artificial growth. Issues remain at grass root level and you are even acutely aware of the real root issues, however you start the change process, thus complicating things and creating artificial stress scenario and give birth to ‘Fountain of Stress Drops’.

Stumbling block 6:  Let’s do tomorrow

A slow or let us do it tomorrow attitude cannot be a blessing in disguise successful people do a tremendous amount of work in a small time period. They have a long list of tasks which are completed daily and they move closer to the achievement of their goals. They focus on work that counts.

Stumbling block 7:  Lazy and less interested

In your day to day life too you come across parasites and they are very lazy and may not take any responsibility to deliver, commit and demonstrate true actions. They live on the data and information of other people’s work and expertise. They are not interested in learning, and doing because they are very lazy, steal the work of others shamelessly, claim that ‘the work was done by them’, they live on false titles.

Stumbling block 8:  Procrastinated

A place you believe is the ultimate so you remain in a jungle of complacence this happens to many. You have been enjoying a stable life at that level for a very long time and just postpone every action, task, step and dream.

Stumbling block 9:  Gut level determination

Develop gut-level determination and nerves of steel, time and life are anonymous. Both are gifts that need to be utilized optimally. When you waste one, you automatically waste the other.

Stumbling block 10: New situation

You also believe that you enrich your experience of the circumstances, situations, scenarios, and people around. Gradually, this experience helps you to create an inextinguishable contentment. If you face a new situation, environment, the need to learn and change to a new circumstance at this point, you will register it as a pain, discomfort, insecure, unsafe, unsheltered, evasive, risk and uncertainty.

Plan Less Monkey, Gutless Image, Human Less King and Queenless Hive

'Create high performance individuals through values based excellence' Dr V V Rao

Plan less monkey: A monkey which puts its paw into the narrow neck of a jug, and having seized a handful of nuts will not open its fist for fear of losing what it holds, and therefore perishes.

Gut less image: People play at generosity of spirit and all that stuff. Such generosity of spirit and sensibility are like the nobility and sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a chick being killed: she is so kind-hearted that she can’t look at blood, but enjoys eating the chicken served up with Indian spice and sauce.

Only for the purpose of securing a magnified image, the so called leader’s management and habit of winning coinciding with people’s inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations, and the expenditure those preparations and the need of obtaining advantages to compensate for that expenditure and the intoxicating culture.

Human less King: That is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, corruption, and drunkenness. And in spite of all this it is the highest class, respected by everyone. All the kings, who kills most people receives the highest rewards. ‘They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they kill and wound tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services for having killed so many people, and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they have killed the greater their achievement.

Aim Less Leader: Moment by moment the events are imperceptibly shaping itself, and at every moment of this continuous, uninterrupted shaping of events the Leader is in the midst of a most complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies, authorities, projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is continually obliged to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly conflict with one another.

Queen Less Hive: In a queen less hive no life is left though to a superficial glance it seems as much living as other hives. The bees circle round a queen less hive in the hot beams of the midday sun as gaily as around the living hives; from a distance it smells of honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the similar way. But one has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no longer any life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the smell and the sound that meet the bee keeper are not the same. There are no longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their abdomens raised, and ready to die in defense of the hive.

A lesson from great history - French invasion of Russia:

Mikhail Kutuzov (1745 – 1813) was a Field Marshal of the Russian Empire. He served as one of the finest military officers and diplomats of Russia under the reign of three Romanov Tsars: Kutuzov contributed much to the military history of Russia and is considered to have been one of the best Russian generals.

Question to the council was: ‘Are we to abandon Russia’s ancient and sacred capital without a struggle, or are we to defend it?’

There was a frown on every face and only Kutuzov’s angry grunts and occasional cough broke the silence. All eyes were gazing at him. ‘Russia’s ancient and sacred capital!’ he suddenly said, repeating question, the question is that of saving Russia. Is it better to give up Moscow without a battle, or by accepting battle to risk losing the army as ‘Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the broken crockery,’ said he, and rising slowly he moved to the table. ‘Gentlemen, I have heard your views. Some of you will not agree with me. But I,’ ‘by the authority entrusted to me by my Sovereign and country, order a retreat.’ ‘It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are running away from Moscow,’ they were told.

Under Kutuzov's command, the Russian army faced the French army at the Battle of Borodino and later counter-attacked once Napoleon retreated from Moscow, pushing the French out of the Russian land.

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.