Start with Why: Next Natural Step

Once the soul is written, the next natural step is to anoint the team. For this, I recommend to 'Start with Why' ~ Simon Sinek (https://www.startwithwhy.com/) of The Golden Circle fame. Here is his TED Talk : How great leaders inspire action http://go.ted.com/bb6g

I use 'The Golden Circle' from Start with Why (ISBN-13: 978-1591846444) to set perimeter on my efforts to build high performance, for the inception of excellence and to naturally align all around in the discipline of getting things done. Here I strongly recommend Execution: The discipline of getting things done ~  Lawrence Bossidy and Ram Charan (ISBN-13: 978-0609610572).

As leader one must be able to inspire people to act. Quoting Simon, "The golden circle finds order and predictability in human behavior. Put simply, it helps us understand why we do what we do. It’s for the leader (the Senior Manager) to be the guardian of this Why, enabling the team to align and bond around that belief."

This human quest of being curious is the key. Everyone on the team is curious - curious to know why they are there, what are they suppose to do, how it is to be done, where is the goal, how big is the reward, why is the purpose.

This is how I apply the principle:

I Connect with each and every individual on my team,

I Communicate with passion, with enthusiasm - the reason, I answer their WHYs, I answer why it is so important deliver excellence, what are our differentiators, and how to achieve them. I tell them "It's not luck (yes, I am referring to E. M Goldratt - I recommend to read both The Goal & It's not luck whenever you are missing the link in that Critical Chain.)."

I Cross-train staff to open them up to newer advanced tools, processes and technologies.

I Cultivate values, trust, energy in them.

I Conclude achievements and

I Celebrate with everyone on the floor.

Always remember and use these 6 C's to create your team viz Connect, Communicate, Cross-train, Cultivate, Conclude and Celebrate.

As a leader do not just sign off on a plan. Always ask an explanation, and drill down until the answers are clear on execution.

Quoting Execution - "Dialogue is the core of culture and the basic unit of work. Good judgments come from practice and experience". The building blocks of execution culture are defined with utmost clarity by Ram & Lawrence. I am quoting them as follows:

• Know your people and your business: Show up & connect personally. Show up on conference calls, prefer video (skype, gtalk, OCS etc.), Listen first & Talk next.
• Insist of realism: Regularly do SWOT Analysis - with Direct Reports, Skip-levels, be it Directors, Sr. Managers, Technical Team. Introduce these tools to your ground work-force (even Band X/Zero)
•  Set clear goals and priorities: Involve people, focus on max 4 priorities, always set time-bound goals. Set measurement scale. Speak Simple.
• Follow through: Take a walk, wander around, see your people on the floor, walk across the assembly line, take clues from MBWA - Management by Wandering Around (Tom Peters). Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo1ZWvtX_ZM Narrative: http://tompeters.com/blogs/toms_videos/docs/Excellence_MBWA.pdf .
• Reward the doers: Always reward in public with applause. Speak with passion about the good work and how it adds to the discipline.
• Expand people’s capabilities: Carefully choose people on the team, craft the structure and invest to build capabilities. Provide a fertile environment and people will grow. Encourage tools like wiki to share and collaborate. Induce automation for mundane tasks.
• Know yourself: This is of utmost importance. Teams you build, culture you establish, achievements you make are all replica of yourself. Be-Aware - it's the first life-skill. Refer to my blog: http://hirdug.blogspot.in/2012/05/life-skill-1-be-aware-be-aware-now.html. Be Authentic & contain your ego.

Establishing high performance, building a culture of execution, driving excellence is always done with people. 

Thus, 

Be Human...Always

You can follow me on twitter: @hirdug 

This post was first published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/start-why-next-natural-step-hirdesh-gupta

Top 10 TED Talks on my index

 Quite recently, I became aware of TED talks and soon my mornings began to start afresh with a TED Talk. Today morning at 6 a.m, I finished watching 200th TED Talk. This is when I thought of indexing.  Here is my index of top 10 TED Talks :).

These are the ones, that have influenced my consciousness & my thought process in big way. In future post, I will talk more on these talks and many other TED talks that keep influencing me and many other. Till then, visit www.ted.com and enjoy the joy of listening to great talks and presenters.

1. Sir Ken Robinson  How schools kill creativity http://go.ted.com/bb6R

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. 

In his words "kids will take a chance. If they don't know, they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong. I don't mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original -- if you're not prepared to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this. We stigmatize mistakes."

2. Shawn Achor : The happy secret to better work  http://go.ted.com/bb6j

We believe that we should work to be happy, but could that be backwards? In this fast-moving and entertaining talk, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that actually happiness inspires productivity.

3. Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action http://go.ted.com/bb6g

Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers. Simon is an immensely passionate speaker. I use his "Golden Circle" to build my  strongly knitted team.

4. Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend -   - http://go.ted.com/bb6K

Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.

5. Amy Cuddy:  Your body language shapes who you are http://go.ted.com/bb6W

Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” -- standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident -- can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success.

6. Susan Cain:  The power of introverts http://go.ted.com/bb6q

In a culture where being social and outgoing are prized above all else, it can be difficult, even shameful, to be an introvert. But, as Susan Cain argues in this passionate talk, introverts bring extraordinary talents and abilities to the world, and should be encouraged and celebrated.

7. Guy Kawasaki  The art of innovation:  http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/The-art-of-innovation-Guy-Kawas

Guy Kawasaki is a special advisor to the Motorola business unit of Google. He is also the author of APE, What the Plus!, Enchantment, and nine other books. In Top 10 format talk he talks in detail on art of innovation through very interesting frame. Hugely passionate talk keeps you bound. "Great Products polarize people & Perfect your Pitch"

 8. Richard St. John : 8 secrets of success  http://go.ted.com/bbE9

 

Why do people succeed? Is it because they're smart? Or are they just lucky? Neither. Analyst Richard St. John condenses years of interviews into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success.

9. Angela Lee Duckworth:  The key to success? Grit  http://go.ted.com/bbLx

Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of “grit” as a predictor of success.

10. Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory http://go.ted.com/bbLe

Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy — and our own self-awareness

Step Zero: Writing the Soul of your own High Performance Team

Every time, I talk on building a high performance team, people are curious. And all want to know if there is an stone carved step by step guide to build on, or if there is a secret sauce at a store nearby they can buy and add to team, or what's the first step to begin with. On all these curious questions, more often than not I briefly smile, and I say, "There is no guide, no secret sauce or the first step, but there is Step Zero, and that's the biggest leap of faith one can take. The journey begins with actually writing the soul of your own High Performance Team."

The soul of your High Performance Team is true-copy of thyself, it's not a shadow (a darker shade which vanishes when times are dark) and it's also not a reflection (mirror images are vice-versa). One has to personally write the soul and publish to all the world around, for every one to acknowledge it's presence & bring it to life.

The soul of my High Performance Teams is written around the central idea to - "enjoy the joy of togetherness" and the "view" each individual has of another in the team.

Once the soul is written, rest is not Utopian to achieve. Publish the soul to each & every individual and frame all other expectations around it. Building a high performing team is different from carving a high performing leader, it is different from hive-mind thought process, it's collaborative incremental effort, bit like building each muscle in the body.

I have kept this post short on purpose to establish the simplicity & importance of writing the soul. In future post on the series, I will talk in detail on many other aspects of High Performance Team building methods (not sequential steps :) )

Couple of those are published in presentation at slide-share: Anthem - Raise the Bar  http://www.slideshare.net/HirdeshGupta/anthem-raise-the-bar


This post was first published on my LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/step-zero-writing-soul-your-own-high-performance-team-hirdesh-gupta

Wishing the World a Very Happy & Spectacular 2015 ahead.

Wishing the World a Very Happy & Spectacular 2015 ahead.   

May Lord continue to shower happiness, joy & delight.  

In 2015 - Be Awesome. Engage & Enjoy to have immense fun.

Life Skill #3: Be happy, have Fun...

Life Skill #3: Be happy, have fun. It's a natural life skill, that's how humans have actually survived 'natural selection'.

Who doesn't wants to be happy or have fun ? Will it be a life if there is no fun ? Then how come it becomes so difficult ? For some it's damn easy and for others it's next to impossible why ? Well, I am not answering any of these question. This is something higher than the intent of the blog.

Anyways - for yourself & for everybody else on the team, know - the performance scales up multifold with happiness quotient rising. It rigs up the adrenaline, it attaches meaning to everything and works up to cope up with stress & confusion.

Remember happiness is viral, it spreads. It's not the successor of success, it is what leads to success.

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum point and I will move the entire world

-in draft-
-truly yours

Life Skill #2: Listen

Are you sure, you listen ? Is listening for sure a Life Skill ? Yes, my friend, listening is much dearer life skill, it is actually a survival skill, it will keep you alive in the time of natural selection.

The act of listening is referred primarily in two intents: listening for yourself and listening for others.

Listening for yourself is something related to 'sniff & scurry' (of 'Who Moved My Cheese' fame) wherein one  should listen with ears to ground (on the rails) for the sound of the train. It doesn't matter if one is in the tunnel or not; whether one can see the light at the end of tunnel or not - one needs to keep checking the rails. That's how you survive - you know the sound, listen to it, place thy ears firmly on the rails & listen

Listening for other is bit different. It's actually paired with the act of 'talk'. This is something related to latest blog of 'Tom Peters' - titled 'Time to revamp leadership training'. He is brave. He says - 'Leaders do People'  and to accomplish this - Leaders must listen, Leaders must become aggressive listener. Simply put -  "The goal: Become a full-fledged "professional listener." "

Over many years, I have met many organizational leaders, however I know only few who actually listen - and 'coz they listen they 'do' people. They bring out wonderful 'Wow' each time they interact (listen followed by talk)

The art of listening is not mastered in day or few. It takes patience (actually courage) to be on a chair & listen.

It will take effort to purposefully stop in between and listen to the thoughts of peer, even thyself or the surroundings. Practice the habit by reading a lot of stuff of wider spectrum, visiting places, get into situations, attend interviews, participate in fresher hiring drives over weekends, attend lectures, listen to audio books, stop watching TV - visuals interfere with listening, stop discussion and just listen, play with kids who talk a lot, solve without uttering a single word, use power of silence, improve vocab and use proverbs (this require command on language & literature both).

Doesn't matter where you are, who you are - stop talking; listen for a while, listen to the air, enjoy the fragrance, listen to sound of your soul; connect to thyself. Connect to Life Skill #1: Be Aware