Execution is your job and put your money where your mouth is

No one else can do your job, to see through that your dream become a reality, you need to put effort on that. You need to sacrifice the complacence  you need to devote time on your dream, you need to commit your time, effort, skills, capability, money to fulfill your dream, and you need to break your habits, utilize practices & enhance your skills & competency continually. The following questions will help direct effective focus on how you are performing:

Every day look into your dream board and ask yourself “am I doing justification to my dream and am I doing the right things at the right time?”

“Universe on a rubber band”, String theorist Ashok Sen won $3 millions international physics award for expanding the understanding of what is possible. Indian scientist was digging into the deepest mysteries of the universe from a little known research institute in a remote corner of rural state of Uttar Pradesh-India. What is the string theory? “One of the question that always puzzled human kind is, what are we, and everything around us, made of,” Modern science has responded by dividing matter into its smallest particles: Molecules, atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks and so on. According to string theory, if we could examine these particles with even greater precision – that is currently beyond our technological capacity- we would find that matter ultimately consists of tiny, vibrating loops, like infinitely thin rubber bands. Away from the big city life, Mr. Sen achieved the best and got more out of self in a bigger way than any others who were having excellent facilities and infrastructures. [August’2012 India Today]

All type of execution is your job starting from planning, problem solving, innovation, operations execution and even the best practices of evolution. 

Get more out of your self

There is only one life to live and many dreams to achieve. Time is passing by fast and there is so much to see, do and achieve in life that one must desire to make the best of every opportunity and the time at hand to get more out of oneself. Your behavior is the key to help you understand how you can get more value from your time, efforts, actions and team. And don’t forget to follow through with yourself and the extent to which ideas, thoughts, actions and efforts are being driven consistently as per plan towards your goals, never sidelining the constancy of purpose while making necessary course corrections along the way to stay focused and determined to make your dreams happen, to succeed and excel. The following are the 18 keys to get more out of your-self and I will be taking you through in my next 18 blogs for that keep following me at www.765ways2win.com

1. Execution is your job and put your money where your mouth is
2. Set clear goals and keep your nose to the grindstone
3. Winners put their shoulder to the wheel for an effective planning
4. Organize your-self head and shoulders above everyone      
5. Bring daily rhythm with one-track mind
6. Organizing and maintaining a balanced life is necessary for blue blood too
7. In a nutshell right first time and every time is must  
8. Be cool as cucumber and you have things to do
9. Performing consistently and cut the mustard
10. Button your lip and you have habits to break
11. Chicken feed is also important to control costs
12. You have a life to live and don’t live through the grapevine
13. You have to value each minute of your life to perform on your dream
14. You have happiness to find peace and a wild goose chase does not work
15. Build internal feedback mechanism with a red letter day
16. Learn to recognize, deal with unreasonable tasks and excuses
17. High-level thinking is too broad & take it with a grain of salt
18. Follow through and get things done as if ants are in your pants

Method & Tool for Walk the Talk

There is only one definite way to ‘Walk your talk’ and that is to remind yourself and your heart about your purpose in life.

Method

Be with your belief, truth and translate your values to bring a cultural shift for building credibility. Start with small steps, dig yourself into real issues of the world and cut all your habits to demonstrate factual ‘Walk the talk’. Walking the talk becomes a reality when habits are fixed and followed daily, steadily, without rushing from one act to another without any linkage or progress. Habits are nothing but small not rushed acts made in the form of daily actions that become a habit which is linked with the personality and catches people’s attention as a person of character, who walks the talk.

Tool

Intellectual views on ‘Walk the Talk’:

1.   I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece. I challenge you to join the ranks of those people, who live what they teach, who walk their talk. - Tony Robbins

2.   Walking your talk is a great way to motivate yourself. No one likes to live a lie. Be honest with yourself, and you will find the motivation to do what you advise. - Vince Poscente

3.    May your life speak more loudly than your lips. - William Ellery Channing

4.    Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. - Mahatma Gandhi

5.    Talking isn't doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds - William Shakespeare

6.   Your children will see what you're all about by what you live rather than what you say. - Wayne Dyer

7.    Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.’ - Dr. Seuss

8.   The best way to predict the future is to give a promise and then to carry it out. - Hannah Arendt

9.    Fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate; Talkers are no good doers: be assured we come to use our hands and not our tongues. - Shakespeare's Richard III

10. ‘Well done is better than well said’. - Benjamin Franklin

This is my last blog on "Walk the Talk", Thank you very much for your comments and feedback. While writing I was re-calibrating with my inner-self and I was learning every moment continually.

Stick to your choice

Your choice

To accomplish our dreams one of the 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.

“To thy own self, be true, and it must follow, as the night and the day, thou canst not then be false to any man” (William Shakespeare, 1564-1616). 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 can't force you to make a choice that you believe is wrong.  Look at the choices you've made in your past and observe how much you have or haven't lived by those principles. Be conscious every day of the decisions you make, however big or small and how close they bring you to being 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

A hungry wolf killed a sheep and wore its skin to get to the flock of sheep and kill some more. The sheep all thought that the wolf was also one of them and they lost their life. To accomplish your dream be with your gut level original choice.

I was reading “Achal Bakeri rescued Symphony by zeroing in on the products and tactics that were the company’s original recipe for success”, [ Forbes India, Aug’2012] Achal Bakeri narrated to Samar Srivastava as: Here is how it happened. In 1987 we moved into a new house in Ahmadabad, India, parts of which could not be air conditioned as it had high ceilings and long passages. Our architects suggested that we install air cooling. Till then we had never used air cooler. The performance was great but the product was an eyesore and we had to camouflage it.  That gave me an idea: Why can’t I make a better air cooler?  The next year I introduced my first cooler in the market under the Symphony brand name. I made sure it looked exactly like a wind air conditioner. By 1994 it became the national brand and we had our IPO. With lot of reasons of financial market and customer expectations we diversified into many more products such as washing machines, water heaters, flour mills, water purifiers and exhaust fans. None of these products succeeded. The reasons were different for each product category. First a lot of money went into development. Second, money went into marketing. As none of these products succeeded, there was a financial strain. The other thing that happened was that we took eye off the ball in the air cooler business, so the innovation was stopped with that result the range could not be expanded. As a result, by 2001 we had completely eroded our net worth and we became Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction Company.

That’s when I had two options – to shut shop or to revive the Company and stuck to the original choice of “Air cooler”. So we decided to focus and exited from all the other product lines. Between 2002 to 2008, our net margins doubled from 10 to 20 percent. Our most significant turning point came in 2008. We got an opportunity to acquire a majority stake in a Mexican company. Later we cooled a 200,000 square foot hall. This is something no one is doing on an organized scale in India. This is a virgin market. The potential is huge and we are currently talking to Walmart to air cool their super centers in Central America.

We have come a long way since our BIFR days. Today our market cap is at Rs. 800 crore, we are world’s largest air cooling company. Today, when we meet people from the markets, they ask me why I don’t get into other categories. But this time history is not going to repeat itself.  

Achal Bakeri’s Symphony stuck to the original good choice and instincts that steered them from being a sick company to a largest air cooler world player. 

Stick to your original choice

SYM

To accomplish our dreams one of the 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.

“To thy own self, be true, and it must follow, as the night and the day, thou canst not then be false to any man” (William Shakespeare, 1564-1616). 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 can't force you to make a choice that you believe is wrong.  Look at the choices you've made in your past and observe how much you have or haven't lived by those principles. Be conscious every day of the decisions you make, however big or small and how close they bring you to being 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

A hungry wolf killed a sheep and wore its skin to get to the flock of sheep and kill some more. The sheep all thought that the wolf was also one of them and they lost their life. To accomplish your dream be with your gut level original choice.

I was reading “Achal Bakeri rescued Symphony by zeroing in on the products and tactics that were the company’s original recipe for success”, [ Forbes India, Aug’2012] Achal Bakeri narrated to Samar Srivastava as: Here is how it happened. In 1987 we moved into a new house in Ahmadabad, India, parts of which could not be air conditioned as it had high ceilings and long passages. Our architects suggested that we install air cooling. Till then we had never used air cooler. The performance was great but the product was an eyesore and we had to camouflage it.  That gave me an idea: Why can’t I make a better air cooler?  The next year I introduced my first cooler in the market under the Symphony brand name. I made sure it looked exactly like a wind air conditioner. By 1994 it became the national brand and we had our IPO. With lot of reasons of financial market and customer expectations we diversified into many more products such as washing machines, water heaters, flour mills, water purifiers and exhaust fans. None of these products succeeded. The reasons were different for each product category. First a lot of money went into development. Second, money went into marketing. As none of these products succeeded, there was a financial strain. The other thing that happened was that we took eye off the ball in the air cooler business, so the innovation was stopped with that result the range could not be expanded. As a result, by 2001 we had completely eroded our net worth and we became Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction Company.

That’s when I had two options – to shut shop or to revive the Company and stuck to the original choice of “Air cooler”. So we decided to focus and exited from all the other product lines. Between 2002 to 2008, our net margins doubled from 10 to 20 percent. Our most significant turning point came in 2008. We got an opportunity to acquire a majority stake in a Mexican company. Later we cooled a 200,000 square foot hall. This is something no one is doing on an organized scale in India. This is a virgin market. The potential is huge and we are currently talking to Walmart to air cool their super centers in Central America.

We have come a long way since our BIFR days. Today our market cap is at Rs. 800 crore, we are world’s largest air cooling company. Today, when we meet people from the markets, they ask me why I don’t get into other categories. But this time history is not going to repeat itself.  

Achal Bakeri’s Symphony stuck to the original good choice and instincts that steered them from being a sick company to a largest air cooler world player. 

Use every possible knowledge and wisdom to build your credibility

Build your wisdom

Good leaders, mentors and teachers preach us many life learning, best practices, pitfalls, dos and don’ts. We must learn quickly and not waste time implementing them. If you want to test them before you implement it, you may have to wait for a life time.  You can find a lot of knowledge and experience readily available by reading the vast repository of information in the form of books. You might probably be able to remember some learning someone taught you and instantly apply it to your own daily actions and thus help you improve, achieve and win.  If your preaching and practicing do not match, society can easily smell the rat without any cat.

Da La Rue, the world’s largest commercial banknote printer. The firm devises 100 or so new banknotes each year as well as around 2000 “design concepts” – a security feature, say, or a new image for a big-denomination bill. It has helped produce more than 150 currencies and won design awards. “Trust creates a high entry barrier into the industry. “Few firms can do what we do and those that can, have a long history and established relationships.” Says Tim Cobbold, Da La, Rue CEO. The business was founded in 1813. This is one of the best examples of walking the talk for almost 200 years. [Economist July’2012]

Yes, we do a lot of actions, to lead the people, organization, business and personal life. However, effective communication based on knowledge brings that element of credibility to the actions. All national and international preachers of all regions use the “knowledge” of their life time learning in to their preaching the real time lessons to the future generations of mankind.

A company that can successfully assemble and sell 11 million personal computers a year 1999 using 40,000 possible configurations is clearly one that has learned something about knowledge management. Each configuration is used average only about 275 times each year, Dell has captured the knowledge of its talented engineers in the process used to custom assemble PCs en masse. This advantage provides Dell with a 25 % share of the US PC market. By integrating the entire value chain with its knowledge management system, Dell has given itself an edge in the intensely competitive market [M T Hansen, N Nohria and T Tierney, “What’s your strategy for managing knowledge?” HBR, 1999].

 If, you want the age of the horse the best way to find out is to take a look at the horse’s teeth and mouth. So rather than asking the seller of the horse, about the beast’s condition, all you need to do is to get it straight from the horse’s mouth. Knowledge and wisdom are only the tools that can build your credibility.

Measure results to build trust

Measure performance

Data, metrics, measures, assessments, evaluations, scorecards, progress reports, report cards… Many of us have been faced with a host of measurement opportunities. Seems like some of the performance measurements are moving targets that we seldom hit. Some measurement processes come and go like a fog. I recall hearing this maxim years ago: “What gets measured gets done.” It has been attributed to Peter Drucker, Tom Peters, Edwards Deming, Lord Kelvin and others.
We can learn some lessons from renowned stalwarts.
Cisco systems once the invincible momentum stock adored by Wall Street, came crashing down just as we were headed towards the 21^st century. Problems started when Cisco announced a $2.2 billion inventory write-off – Wall Street severely punished the stock as a result. With all its experience, why didn't Cisco see the problems coming? Cisco made a common mistake: it projected the past into the future. Past demand had been vigorous, but the customers were requiring less and less of the firm’s products. And financing was cheap-it was no problem for a company like Cisco to find capital to finance ongoing operations even though the horizon looked invisible and unclear because of wrong measurements and forecasting. Cisco failed to see the slowdown in customer demand. Cisco missed this important point and inaccurately forecast-ed the new demand. [J Weber, “Management Lessons from the Bust” Business Week, Aug’2001]

We need to measure all types of results, for that measurement have to be correct, focused and realistic, so that we can take appropriate action while doing “Walking the talk”, which results into trust for our future steps.

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