Top 15 Symptoms of Dwindling Enterprises

'Symptoms are early reflections of vital facts
one must not neglect' - Dr V V Rao. 

1. Growth taken over by greed
2. Empowerment encroached
3. Performance pathetic and tolerant
4. Margins being cooked-up
5. Deep pockets shrinking with negative cash flow
6. Teams dysfunctional
7. Phantom synergy between top and employees
8. Relationships too much transactional
9. Constructive tension missing in totality
10. No room to Think and thinking
11. Not allowed to 'Speak your mind'
12. Dramatic 'Walking the talks'
13. Cell phones and gadgets dominant - Meetings
14. Too many Consultants around
15. CEO's snack served alone in Business reviews

Unwieldy complexity often results from business expansions, complex delegation authority or bureaucracies that unnecessarily complicate an enterprise’s operating model, leading to sluggish growth, higher costs and poor returns.

By understanding and eliminating on the symptoms cited above list(15) CEO and Enterprises will be able to simplify enterprise strategy, product lines, organization’s structures, reporting relations, and decision making to serve their core customers better. Reduction in any of these symptoms opens up opportunities for simplification in others shall lead to revive the dwindling enterprises sooner and faster.

Start loving your steps, talent, actions and your dream

Start loving your steps, talent, actions and your dream  - you will be free from the fear of failure. Dr V V Rao

If you really want to know how to live, associate with children.

If you have none of your own, borrow some.

In Indian families we give preference to girls to marry them even though we are elder as a ritual to sacrifice our yesteryear for their future years. In our family also we did the same and we found a groom who can be the best for my sister ‘Lakshmi’. When my sister gave birth to her first child a baby-boy we nicknamed him ‘Resh’ whereas his actual name is Suresh. I am always afraid of touching small babies thinking that they were so very tiny and I may probably hurt them with my rough touch.

Now I know that they are not as delicate, if handled correctly. I found great pleasure in tossing ‘Resh’ up in the air so far that I could catch him, and he always seemed to enjoy the act. As I threw him up, he would laugh, take a deep breath, and then came down, snuggle into my arms and laugh like a giggling squeezed breeze, and in fact wait in anticipation of the next throw till I got tired. At times I used to feel it was like a big workout to bring back my rhythmic heart to a controlled beat.

I was amazed with the fact that he apparently had no fear, nor my sister any fear in her mind and heart and thus never stopped me from doing that. I think it was because she instinctively knew that I loved him; therefore she trusted me. Start loving your steps, talent, actions and your dream - you will be free from the fear of failure.

Have you ever been afraid of failing at something that you decided not to even give it a try? Or has a fear of failure meant that, subconsciously, you are undermining your own efforts to avoid the possibility of a larger failure?

All of us have experienced this at one time or many times in our lives. The fear of failing can be immobilizing – it can result in our doing nothing, and thereby resist moving forward.

Each one has a different description of what stoppage is, simply because we all have different benchmarks, values, and belief systems. A failure to one person might simply be a great learning experience for someone else.

For example, say that several years ago you gave an important report to CEO of a large group of companies, and you did very poorly. The experience might have been so terrible that you carried that fear of failure to other aspects of your life and thinking. And you carry that fear even now.

Every one of us prepares to prevent failures, for that we need to read a lot, we must listen to mentors and preachers, we study the core competent subjects in depth and we interact with people who are successful in their life so that we can reduce the fear factor.

Most of us will stumble and fall in life. Doors will get slammed on our faces, and we might make some bad decisions. But imagine if Tiger Woods had given up on his dream to play golf when he was going through difficult times in his personal life.

Start by setting a few small goals. These should be goals that are slightly, but not overwhelmingly, challenging. Think of these goals as ‘early wins’ that are designed to help boost your confidence.

For example, if you have been too afraid to talk to the new department head (who has the power to give you the promotion you want), then make that your first goal. Plan to stop by his/her office during the next week to introduce your-self.

Or 

Imagine that you have dreamed of returning to school to get your MBA, but you are convinced that you are not smart enough to be accepted into business school. Set a goal to talk with a school counselor or admissions officer to see what is required for admission.

Start loving your steps, talent, actions and your dream - you will be free from the fear of failure.

How one can ‘Stay hungry and Stay foolish’ ?

Things to do, habits to fix, dreams to achieve and peace 

to discover; A life to live - Dr V V Rao

Even if you have to fail, attempt something big so that you fail spectacularly.

‘Stay hungry, Stay foolish’ is what Steve jobs advised the graduating class of Stanford University in his commencement address to the class of 2005. And that is the spirit by which all the great dream chasers have lived.

A surgeon’s goal is clear: fix what is broken.

The feedback is immediate and continual: check heart beat monitor. The intense challenge is recurring, though no surgery is the same.

The operating room itself is designed to block out distractions. And because the risk is so great, a surgeon is in a state of concentration “so intense that there is no attention left over to think about anything irrelevant or to worry about problems. Self-consciousness disappears, and the sense of time becomes distorted.” All of these features create an emotional rush for surgeon. The only time a surgeon loses that level of engagement is when he or she gets into a position of rote repetition and game becomes predictable.

Flow and status-quo is the state in which we are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that we will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it. Three steps of managing flow:

1. Collect things that command our attention
2. Process what they mean and to do about them
3. Organize the results and review as options for what we choose to and implement

Lakshmi Mittal: CEO of Arcelor Mittal, the world’s largest steel making company, Mittal is one of the richest men in the world and owns some of the planet’s most expensive homes. He started out working for his father’s business, but when “family differences” got in the way, he wasn't afraid to spread his wings and set up shop on his own. When India took home just one medal, a bronze, in the 2000 summer Olympics, this Indian tycoon made it his mission to support sport in his country, and pledged US$9 million to support 10 world-class Indian athletes. More recently, he invested £19.6 million in the Olympic Park Tower, the UK’s tallest sculpture. 

The triple beauty is that our mind keeps reminding us of things when we can’t do anything about them.

Effectiveness and execution is after all, not a subject but a self discipline. Dream chasers solve problems once. People, ‘Stay Hungry & Stay Foolish’ look at problems as generic to begin with, and try to solve them with rules that will be simple and easy to follow everyone, not just involved in the current issue.

Fujio Mitarai: Longtime CEO of Japanese camera giant Canon, a company whose fortunes were steadily declining until Mitarai took to the helm in the '90s. Concerned about retirement law and policies in Japan, he stepped up as chairman of Japan's powerful Keidanren business lobby, pushing the government to overhaul the tax system and social security, in order to "eliminate my own concerns over when I'm old." This is one unstoppable 75-year-old.

People, ‘Stay Hungry & Stay Foolish’ always rather than doing things right we must be doing right things right.

How to be a star at work: Feat without selling your soul to the gods of hubris. Stars are made, not born and they practice rigor of

• Initiative
• Networking
• Self management
• Perspective
• Follower
• Teamwork
• Leadership
• Entrepreneurial Savvy
• Show-and-tell

Wale Tinubu: Dubbed, “The King of African Oil”, Tinubu is Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Nigerian Oil and Gas giant Oando Plc. He is an outspoken advocate for investment in the Niger Delta and improving basic education in Nigeria. An ambitious entrepreneur who started out with just one leaky second-hand oil tanker, Tinubu is now the driving force behind a multi-million dollar enterprise that is one of Africa's largest energy companies.

Stephen R Covey studied 200 years’ worth of self help, popular psychology, and self-improvement writings. He believes that “Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.” People who are Hungry & Foolish they bring excellence through

• Being proactive
• Begin with the End in mind
• Put first things first
• Always think win/win scenarios
• Seek first to understand then to be understood
• Synergise
• Sharpen the saw (As my earlier post)

It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others. It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.

Jim Sinegal: Founder and CEO of Costco, the third-largest U.S. retailer, Sinegal has proven year after year that his recipe for selling high volumes of a small variety of goods to members only is an unbeatable one. Sinegal has a habit of treating his employees extremely well, and stated many times that customer satisfaction is more important to him than pleasing shareholders. He spends 40 weeks of the year on the road, checking up on Costco's 582 stores around the world, wandering the aisles and making sure shoppers are happy and employees are not going anywhere.

Harvey Mackay has always been a “can-do” guy. After college, Mackay took an entry level job at a local envelope company and worked up into sales. Three years later, he bought a different small envelop company and turned into a $100 million business. His best selling business book sold over 4 million copies and in 35 languages.

He says people who ‘Stay Hungry & Stay Foolish’ may spend their most productive time staring at the walls: “if you discover one of your executives looking at the wall instead filling out a report, go over and congratulate him or her… they are thinking. It’s the hardest, most valuable task any person performs.

People, ‘Stay Hungry & Stay Foolish’ follow their intuition and you can define intuition as the way we translate our experience into action. Intuition is not some magical power or extraordinary mental attribute that some have and others don’t. Improved intuition comes from recognition of this unconscious routine and accumulation of real-world experience.

Seventeen Years-old Phoenix boy, who receives a letter from Dalai Lama, who instructs the teenager to go to India and fulfill his destiny as the reincarnation of an ancient Tibetan Warrior.   The boy agrees and begins a twelve year journey to becoming a monk. This decision is not expected guided by an internal compass. Many times we make decisions to change the course of our lives by following a hunch stemming only from passion, a direction not based in real-world experience but one satisfies some unfulfilled need.

Each of the stories may be different but at another level they are all same. The dream chasers took a leap of faith. Then struggled and strive for years.

The following is another dream chaser who ‘Stay Hungry & Stay Foolish’.

Tim Cook: When Steve Jobs resigned last year, he left some very big shoes to fill, but Tim Cook had had practice. Filling in for Jobs when he was at his most ill, Cook’s 14 years at Apple came to fruition when he was officially named CEO in August 2011. He may not have the charisma of his predecessor, but this soft-spoken Alabama boy works like a dog. He is said to begin sending emails before his morning jog at 4:30 a.m., and flew to China with no return ticket to sort out manufacturing issues. 

The spirit of “SME”

Be early, you can make your mistakes while it is cheap!

Whether we have recession or the economy is booming, Subject Matter Expertise (SME) is the key to our success. If we cannot keep upgrading our SME, we are not going to weather the storm and in good times we cannot take advantage of the available talents.

We need to spend energy on effectively learning and evaluating our own skills and SME, however, without appropriate measurement methods, these efforts can be useless. SME is a collection of knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics that define effective performance for a job. SME is important and relevant way for executing the objectives that need to be developed both personally and professionally so as to be able to capitalize on our performance in life.

It was during that time the great naturalist Charles Darwin put forward his theories on “The survival of the fittest” and “The origin of species be means of natural selection”. His theory of evolution” shook the whole world. It was his SME that gave strength to Darwin to stick to his stand when the whole community was against him. It was because of the quality of SME that he did not deter from his stand. Time proved him right.

Throughout history, almost every culture has had art, pottery, sculpture, poetry, dance and music as a personal SME. The desire to master SME is not limited by era, nationality, creed, sex and nationality. When we realize SME needs to become a habit an activity we integrate into our dreams and we

1. Continually recognizing what is vital for us and we are not dim, or even inaccurate, view of what is really important to us.
2. Our believes firmed up with willpower, action with heart and a sincere desire to serve the world
3. Able to see the current reality more clearly and not to be stuck because we keep pretending “All is well”.
4. We are acutely aware of our ignorance, incompetence and development areas.
5. We are able pursue emotional development to attain full potential of ourselves and SME.

David Ogilvy had three guidelines which he claims inevitably lead to success: Work twice as hard as other people; Work on jobs you enjoy most; Keep working and learning; do not even think about retirement His book Ogilvy on Advertising is a general commentary on advertising In early 2004, Adweek magazine asked people in the business ‘Which individuals - alive or dead - made you consider pursuing a career in advertising?’ and Ogilvy topped the list. The same result came when students of advertising were surveyed. His best-selling book Confessions of an Advertising Man is one of the most popular and famous books on advertising.

As an example, it is the beautiful house that you seek to own at the end, not the brick laying and cementing work. But, you need to remind yourself that, all the brick laying and cementing work is part of what makes that beautiful house in the end. Every little bit you are learning (SME) now counts toward realizing that end vision. It is just easy to lose sight of that because you are caught up in the daily micro-tasks that keep coming, one after another.

The problem starts when your SME starts slipping away from you. So keep going back to your SME (both physically and mentally). Surround yourself with things that reminds you of your end goal, it could be some vision board, pictures of others who have achieved the same goal, objects that represent the goal, etc.

Finally Subject Matter Expertise (SME) will eventually help achieving your dream to become a reality.

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