Success by chance?

Opportunity and Success. Malcolm Gladwell redefines these terms in his book "Outliers" via case studies. One such study involves a man named Christopher Langan. Many of us don't know who this guy is and he happens to be the smartest man in America. His IQ surpasses that of Einstein. He started talking at 6 months of age and taught himself to read when he was 3 years old. Malcolm contrasts this guy with Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is well known and much more successful than Chris.

Christopher Langan right now is a theorist while Steve Jobs was the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company that has touched the lives of many with his ideas, technology and skills. If Chris Langan’s and Steve Jobs’ stories tell us one thing it is that higher IQ does not guarantee success, opportunity does. Steve Jobs was fascinated by computers and through diligent effort he ended up at a summer job with Hewlett Packard and well now we all know how much he is accomplished. Christopher Langan, despite diligent effort, was not even able to attend college. He had to study on his own. Success is always eluded to be exclusively a matter of individual merit. Steve Jobs' story shows that apart from possessing individual merit, seizing the right opportunity at the right time is crucial for success.

The book Outliers brings to light many stories like these and the true reasons behinds one's success and another's failure. Author Malcolm Gladwell does not condone sheer luck, good karma or the hand of a spiritual being in any sense in the successes of these people. He does, however, highlight that preparation is necessary to take advantage of opportunity. The book's theme: Luck is when preparation meets opportunity, is proven repeatedly through different scenarios.

It is both an inspiration and a reality check to read these stories. It is now a constant reminder to me that to be successful it is important to possess individual merit coupled with extraordinary effort (some thousand hours worth) AND the opportunity to put talent to work. All of what we do will come in handy in another function at a later time and it will surprise us. I think this goes hand in hand with the following speech by my favorite nerd of all time: TedTalk -- Steve Jobs

Love ted.com and love Steve jobs!

Money may make the world go around but not the people.

Source: Self-Leadership and the One-Minute Manager

Self-Leadership and the One-Minute Manager is the sequel to One-Minute Manager and was therefore suggested to me by one of my blog readers. (=)) The book poses a lot of challenging steps for a person that seeks to be a self-leader. I’ll discuss some of the memorable points made, but a full summary will be lengthy and therefore defeats the point of a summary.

Steve has been promoted to a new position in which he is now managing a team.  While Steve’s boss is out, Steve fails miserably in making a presentation to a major client of his company. He is discouraged and upset at his boss for being out of town, his team for being incapable and the client for being demanding.  Steve assumes he will be fired and that his team will hate him.  Subsequently, he begins to draft a resignation letter. Surprise! Steve meets a woman at a coffee shop that empowers him to be a leader and accept responsibility for the situation. He waits on submitting his resignation and decides to go back to work. Steve informs his team, and later his boss, about the result. His fears of being fired and being hated by his team prove to be untrue. He is surprised at their reactions and realizes that he should accept that he cannot read minds.

Here, the book presents an exercise where you have to evaluate your motivating factors ranking from 1 to 10. 1 meaning that it is the most important motivating factor to 10 being the least.  Steve then asks his team to do this survey only to realize something very important: all of their answers are different. This exercise shows Steve that his team members aren’t all motivated by higher pay. Their motivating factors were as varied as their personalities but Steve didn’t take the time to learn this about them.

I wanted to prove this theory for myself so I proceeded to ask a few of my friends to take the same exercise. (Thank you to those that did!) The answers in my survey were varied as well. It surprised me how many people didn’t choose money as their first or second or even third motivating factor at work. Another surprising result was how many people chose interesting work as the number one motivator at work. As a leader of a non-profit, I knew interesting social activities were important to keep people’s interest but I didn’t expect this for the workplace. It reminded me to spend more time on this particular motivating factor going forward. It is important to recognize that motivating factors even in the best teams are different. While success is the end goal, the journey mattered more.

The other day, a friend was talking to me about how she offered her sister money for each ‘A’ she made. I asked her if money motivated her sister, her response was, “Who doesn’t want money? If someone gave me money during high school for studying I’d be a straight ‘A’ student.” I reminded her that her sister isn’t her and that she should ask her sister what motivates her and solve the problem in that manner. We all make this mistake. In the workplace or the non-profit world, we give recognition to people that excelled at their job for their talent or time. We assume the few minutes of fame are all that is needed to motivate another person. What if that person wanted ‘Sympathetic help with personal problems?’ It is our responsibility as a leader to learn each member’s motivation and apply that to our interactions. Just like we can't read their minds, our mentors/bosses can't read ours either. Therefore, we must also proactively talk about our motivating factors with our mentors/bosses so they are better aware on how to support us and challenge us.

Motivating factors survey

Apologize to me

 Source: The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

As I mentioned in my previous post, Randy had a lot to say about teams and communication. He was very methodical in his explanations and he believed that apologies are often half-hearted and insincere.

Have you ever received a half-hearted or an insincere apology? Wasn’t it worse than not having received it at all because it was insulting? Here’s an example: “I apologize for what I did, but you also need to apologize to me for what you’ve done.” That’s not giving an apology, it’s asking for one.

Randy says proper apologies have three parts:

1.     What I did was wrong.

2.     I feel badly that I hurt you

3.     How do I make this better?

These three parts of an apology have stayed with me since the time I first read this book 3-4 years ago. It takes real courage and actual remorse to complete all these parts.

It occurred to me two days ago that I’ve actually seen this work first hand and I never acknowledged it before now. In my role at the complaint department and in my current role as the Field Engineer, I have heard many woes from customers and physicians about our product. In these situations, I would apologize on behalf of the company for the negative experience that they’ve gone through, I let them know that we certainly care about their problems and that we will do our best to investigate the issue and come up with a solution. Whether their complaint actually was related to our device or not did not matter because they were venting about their experience. The conversations always went a little smoother; they were a little happier and were definitely still working with the company. I do this daily with strangers but when it comes to people in my life, it gets trickier. Arguing and winning in conflict took precedence over the apology and the relationship itself.

Of course sometimes, it’s the fault of both parties and the recipient owes you an apology but holding on to that expectation in my life only made me more agitated. Randy says, “If other people owe you an apology and your words of apology to them are proper and heartfelt, you still may not hear from them for a while. After all, what are the odds that they get to the right emotional place to apologize at the exact moment you do?” They may never apologize but what’s important is your mental peace.

Apologies keep our egos in check and remind us that we are human and capable of mistakes. It’s not a sign of weakness but that of strength. Apologizing doesn’t mean you were wrong, it just means you care about the relationship more than to be right. Communication is key to being a leader. This brings down the ego barriers and helps you lead by example. When you make space for open communication, your teammates will follow your lead. Now with this realization, I will try harder to implement this with people in my life.

Try the three steps. Practice, practice, practice and let me know what happened. 

Of Love, Life, Happiness … and Teams?

Source: The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

What better way to learn about how to live your life than from a dying cancer patient that loved his life and continued to love his life despite cancer. Due to this blog, I’ve started taking notes every time I read a book. This book has a lot of important lessons! I was categorizing them under love, life, communication and a category that came to my surprise was teams. However, its really no surprise that he did this in his book because so much of what we do involves working with others and effective communication.

Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon and he had his students work in teams in his classes but what made him special was that he really taught them how to work in a team. He made students rate their teammates on how easy it was to work with them and made these results public. He always found that the students that were hard to work with never knew that about themselves until this data was made available to them. Of course they were also defensive and hard to convince that the data was indeed accurate. More on how he dealt with that later.

Randy had the following to say about working in a team:

1. Have something to bring to the table because that will make you more welcome.
2. Start by sitting together in class
3. Meet people properly – learn to pronounce names
4. Find things you have in common
5. Try for optimal meeting conditions – during meals
6. Let everyone talk – don’t finish sentences for others
7. Check egos at the door – Give names to ideas that are representative of the idea and not the person
8. Praise each other
9. Phrase alternatives as questions – use the word instead 

These are useful instructions but what struck me was how lucky his students were to have a professor that was willing to be an unbiased enforcer. He taught and showed them proactively the advantages of working together.

Do all teams need an enforcer to function properly and be productive? Should each team have an assigned enforcer from the beginning? How do we ensure the enforcer isn’t biased? The government uses checks and balances but we also know what happens when the enforcers become biased. Things come to a standstill and teams become dysfunctional. How we do we fix this? How do we move forward and get back to productivity? History shows us that a leader has to rise. A person that rises to change the status quo is on his way to be a great leader. When this person doesn’t let the confines of their position limit their ability to make a difference, that’s when there will be growth. Friction causes leaders to emerge. Friction shows us each teammate’s true commitment to the end goal. Enforcers should be put back in their place and the team needs to get back on track with the vision.

When a student on Randy’s research team was particularly difficult to work with, this is what Randy had to say. “I know you are smart. Everyone here is smart. Smart isn’t enough. The kind of people I want on my research team are those who will help everyone else feel happy to be here.”

Are you willing to check your ego at the door? Are you willing to help others feel happy to be a part of the team? Are you ready to be a teammate first? Will you stand up in conflict and make a contribution? Have you in the past? If not, are you willing to change?

How you choose to react in situations defines the type of person you are and I hope you will react in a way that will shape you in to a great leader.

Let me know what you think. 

All About Money

Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

Leadership books often talk about the importance of management of people or personal time. They offer up best practices or give anecdotes into why gratitude or other virtuous characteristics are important to be a great leader. The book Rich Dad, Poor Dad does some of that but it mostly talks about money. The author recognizes that management/leadership comprises of three things:

• Management of cashflow

• Management of people

• Management of personal time 

There are managers that focus solely on results and there are those that focus on people but managers that are able to focus on both people and results are the successful ones. This book while teaching you about money gives you insight into people's attitudes towards money.

Leaders/managers are so close to the details of the problem/challenge faced that they are at risk of developing tunnel vision. When you look to solve the problem related to money, facts surrounding the solution are just as important as those surrounding the challenge. Insight into people's behavior about money helps us predict their actions and with practice this skill becomes a valuable tool in our arsenal to face any problem successfully.

I was raised to believe that hard work will pay off and eventually will get me to a point in life when I don’t have to worry about money. After having worked for a few years, I started to see a few glitches in this system. Taxes always come first, salary comes later. So mathematically for me to get to point A (Point A being a certain amount of money where I don’t have to worry about money), I really need to be at point B which is 1.5*A. This is disconcerting.

Money is a very real thing but we are all shy to talk about it. Money is a real thing for leaders at organizations and managers at corporations. When we gain knowledge on how money works and there by have control of it in our personal life, we will have a better grasp on how to make decisions at organizations and corporations. I can speak from personal experience that insight into people's attitudes towards money helps you fundraise, draw budgets, and get results!

This book talks about being financially intelligent. The leadership/management quality we don’t hear about often.

Before we get into what financial intelligence is, let’s actually open our minds to it.

Attitude:

Do you wake up every morning for work and return every day feeling unhappy about your salary, your work or your raise? Have you thought of changing this routine?

Albert Einstein says the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This doesn’t mean you quit your job but I hope you ponder whether this is the lifestyle you want. where happiness related to money is always in the control of your boss or government policy. 

Action:

How do you take back control? Robert says first recognize that you want to change your routine and take steps each day to take back control. Invest in education to become financially intelligent.

Financial Intelligence:

1. Financial literacy – ability to read numbers or accounting. 

What are assets? What are liabilities? Assets make money. Liabilities don’t.

2. Investment strategies – science of money making money.

Knowledge about stocks, entrepreneurship and real estate. Good investments give you income without your involvement and even when you are not putting money. Good investments help during retirement.

3. Market – supply and demand.

Knowledge on how to manage investments that you have acquired.

4. Law – tax advantages and protection from lawsuits.

How to keep taxes low legally.

It is easy to dismiss all this talk about money with the pretense of taking the moral high ground that money isn't important but pause and reflect on how many times money has affected your decisions. 

Finally it is important to note that Robert Kiyosaki is a "best-selling author" not a best-writing author or the best accountant. Credibility and success is often measured by money that is backing up the idea or the corporation. 

Manage to inspire others to manage.

Source: The One-Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard

I picked up this book as recommended by a friend thinking it was about how to manage time effectively. Well, it kind of is. It talks about how to manage others effectively so time is created for you from the efficient management. How? (Replace the words manager and employee with leader and member to apply this for leadership related situations)

First key idea -- Both the manager and the employee have to inherently care about the development of the employee. The manager agrees to give honest feedback (positive and negative) in no uncertain terms to the employee for the sake of development. Employee agrees to accept feedback.

One-Minute Goal Setting:

-- Write in less than 250 words on a piece of paper the goals. Both parties (Manager and employee) have to agree on the terms of the goals and what it means for the goals to be accomplished successfully. 

Advantages:

1. Clarity for both parties

2. A measuring tool

3. A clear representation of success

4. A ready reminder of goals

One-Minute Praising:

 -- Manager takes a minute to compliment and give immediate specific feedback to the employee. It is caring and helps both parties create a positive space that encourages progress. 

Advantages:

1. Positive feedback loop

2. Immediacy of this feedback helps employee stay on the right track

3. Consistent feedback from the manager helps build trust in the manager

4. Employee eventually becomes self-aware of his own positive actions and becomes constructive

One-Minute Reprimand:

-- Manager takes a minute to reprimand and give immediate specific feedback to the employee. The manager takes 30 seconds to express how they feel about the error made by employee, allows time for it to sink in and finally clarifies that they are upset at the erroneous behavior and not the employee themselves. 

Advantages:

1. Immediate feedback prevents repetition of this out-of-the-norm/erroneous behavior

2. Reaffirms to the employee his/her value to the company

3. This feedback loop doesn't allow negative feedback to be piled up for an year-end review that seldom leads to improvement.

Favorite example in the book:

Trainers that hope to teach a whale to jump through a hoop for a sea-world show do not go into the ocean hang a hoop in the air and wait for a whale to jump through so they can bring it in for the show. They catch a whale, bring it in and teach it through a positive feedback loop on how to achieve the final goal. The whale starts out by excelling at this task at the bottom of the pool until it can finally jump through the hoop outside of the water for the audience to see. 

As managers or leaders, we are seldom given individuals that already excel at their future goals. It is our job to train and lead them to their goals while recognizing that each individual has the potential to accomplish the set goals. The author says that in his experience this method has freed up time for him as a manager because there is clarity at every step for the employee and himself. The employee also begins to adopt these ways and becomes self-sufficient. 

For Whom Is The Leader?

http://devdutt.com/topics/leadership/for-whom-is-the-king.html

Devdutt Pattanaik has been one of my favorite authors for the past couple of years. He combines my two favorite loves: Hinduism and Leadership.

It’s a short article. My previous post has talked about the ‘why’ of an organization but this one talks about the ‘why’ of a leader. The article encourages you to reflect on your motivation for being a leader in your organization. Are you a leader in X for your own sake or is it for the sake of the members you are working for? I know there is a politically correct answer but this question is rhetorical so no need to be PC. 

I was moved by this reflection at a time of conflict in my organization. It gave me clarity at a time of need. When asked to complete a task I would instinctively, out of habit, respond with the amount of time I could contribute to that task rather than remembering that I was in a fortunate position to complete that task. The choice of words here set a standard, a culture for generations to come. It is a very altruistic stance to take: always thinking of the populace and not self but I think with practice it helps me stay focused on the goals at hand.

Leaders are instruments to carry out the vision and mission laid out in that organization. It is important to remember that the cause is more important than the individual leader. Without this ideology in practice, I’m sure we are all capable of being good managers but do we become leaders?

I was encouraged that day to take the first step to emulate Bhagwan Ram of Ayodhya, I hope you are as well. Let's fulfill our duties and complete our tasks. Let's lead the way we want to be led. Let's treat our position as a privilege and not as a burden. Let's inspire people to take our place soon. 

Favorite line: “There are kings who exist for the kingdom, and there are kingdoms that exist to prop up a king”.