In our day to day professional lives, we find that many a times our colleagues or our bosses just not realize the importance of a idea, thought, process change, etc. How do you really get to convince them (that is only if you are convinced) is a big questions. Few things that I tried recently and may be of help to each one of you:
Model behavior: The most important thing you can do to convert others to your ideas is to be the best model possible. Walk the walk, and do it visibly, so others can see what you’re doing. Just showing how to do it can be a powerful tool indeed. Share how important it is to you and its benefits : Show others how great it is to you, how important a part of your life this is. Talk with them about it, and tell them why you’re doing this. When people understand your motivation, they can start to get on board, or at least stop feeling so threatened. And when they see how great it is for you, how happy it makes you and all the great things it brings into your life, they’ll move closer and closer to your way. Ask for help: It is very important to recognize that you need help and don't shy at all. Make "simplifying" a team effort — not just something you’re doing, but something you’re all doing together. And make it fun! Educate other to make them a part of the change: The best way to educate others is, by your good example. But beyond that, you may want to share books and websites and blogs you’re reading, not in a way that insists that they change, but just to show what you’re interested in and how they might learn more if they’re interested. You can’t force people to read or watch, but you can make it available. In addition, talk with them about it — again, not in a pushy way but in a way that shows how excited you are and how you’d like to share what you’re learning about. If they seem put off, don’t go on and on. (I learn this from MD of my company) Realize you can’t control or change others. One of the most common frustrations comes when people try to control other people, or force them to change. You can try to control others, but there will always be a struggle, and you’ll always fail to some degree. This applies to your significant other, even to kids. We try to control them but we can’t, not really. Instead, try to influence others, encourage them, support them, help them find happiness. And let go of the need to control. It’s difficult but really essential here. Once you can release that need to control, you’ll find much more happiness.
And of course last but not the least have patience!
This is very difficult for me too but I am learning and will be able to get through one day.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Habits to cultivate in professional life
When you are working in a environment that almost similar to startup (by this I mean one person handles more than one role), you need to cultivate the following as habits:
1) Plan your day - My body is so programmed that it exactly can sense the time without a alarm system! This happens with many of you right? As soon as it is 1:00pm, you are hungry, as soon as it is 6:00am, you are awake, etc. You really do not need to look at the clock for this. Along similar lines, before you reach for office, you need to tell yourself that "Hey, these are the tasks, meeting, etc for the day and lets have timings for each one of them". Hence, every morning before you reach office, plan your day!
2) Execute your planned day - Do not try to change the planned timings at all until unless it is absolutely necessary. There is really no harm in saying "NO". Respect others timings to get respect for your schedule. Reach on time for meeting, be prepared for meeting, ask suitable questions, have discipline in the meeting and last but not the least realize that you are important in a meeting because some decisions will impact you hence be alert. Make sure that every meeting ends with a conclusive decision and a set of action items with named resources. Else the ball keeps on bouncing among people. Before the meeting, the person who runs the show should define the agenda and give enough material for one to come prepared in the meeting.
3) Task execution - All the above have been talking about meetings, now coming to task in hand. Before you execute a task (a developer to write a code), ask yourself the following:
- Who is your consumer to the task I do as in who is the end user of the task. e.g. for a corporate site, internet users are consumers (external)
- Have I heard my end users enough to identify what they want, what they do not, why they want, how they want, when they want and where do they want? If not, get answers to all the questions.
- After you get the answers, did the end user buy these answers. Get them knowing the same.
- Identify check points to inform your end consumer on what is happened till now.
- When the task is completed, inform the end user via email specifically telling the him/her what all needs to be done.
- Within the system, identify components/systems that get impacted by the task (integration points)
- Follow the same that you would have done for the end user
- Please take more time in designing rather than coding.
4) Know your role and know your KRAs - This is very important in a professional environment. Always have your role defined very clearly and know your key result areas. You will be assessed only on your KRAs. If there in less clarity, talk to your managers.
5) Get into the habit of assessing yourself to find out if you have improved and if you are justifying your KRAs. If not, make sure you let your manager know that you need help! There is really no harm to let your manager know your weakness provided you have the attitude to overcome the same. Trust your managers!
6) Attitude - Remember, "Attitudes are contagious. Are yours worth catching? " Carry attitude that has positive vibes. Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.
Ok guess, too much of gyan for the day :-)
1) Plan your day - My body is so programmed that it exactly can sense the time without a alarm system! This happens with many of you right? As soon as it is 1:00pm, you are hungry, as soon as it is 6:00am, you are awake, etc. You really do not need to look at the clock for this. Along similar lines, before you reach for office, you need to tell yourself that "Hey, these are the tasks, meeting, etc for the day and lets have timings for each one of them". Hence, every morning before you reach office, plan your day!
2) Execute your planned day - Do not try to change the planned timings at all until unless it is absolutely necessary. There is really no harm in saying "NO". Respect others timings to get respect for your schedule. Reach on time for meeting, be prepared for meeting, ask suitable questions, have discipline in the meeting and last but not the least realize that you are important in a meeting because some decisions will impact you hence be alert. Make sure that every meeting ends with a conclusive decision and a set of action items with named resources. Else the ball keeps on bouncing among people. Before the meeting, the person who runs the show should define the agenda and give enough material for one to come prepared in the meeting.
3) Task execution - All the above have been talking about meetings, now coming to task in hand. Before you execute a task (a developer to write a code), ask yourself the following:
- Who is your consumer to the task I do as in who is the end user of the task. e.g. for a corporate site, internet users are consumers (external)
- Have I heard my end users enough to identify what they want, what they do not, why they want, how they want, when they want and where do they want? If not, get answers to all the questions.
- After you get the answers, did the end user buy these answers. Get them knowing the same.
- Identify check points to inform your end consumer on what is happened till now.
- When the task is completed, inform the end user via email specifically telling the him/her what all needs to be done.
- Within the system, identify components/systems that get impacted by the task (integration points)
- Follow the same that you would have done for the end user
- Please take more time in designing rather than coding.
4) Know your role and know your KRAs - This is very important in a professional environment. Always have your role defined very clearly and know your key result areas. You will be assessed only on your KRAs. If there in less clarity, talk to your managers.
5) Get into the habit of assessing yourself to find out if you have improved and if you are justifying your KRAs. If not, make sure you let your manager know that you need help! There is really no harm to let your manager know your weakness provided you have the attitude to overcome the same. Trust your managers!
6) Attitude - Remember, "Attitudes are contagious. Are yours worth catching? " Carry attitude that has positive vibes. Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.
Ok guess, too much of gyan for the day :-)
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Frustration
Over a last few days (precisely 4 days) I have been noticing myself getting frustrated, angry and a good bit of depression. This happens with me generally in two cases:
1) When expecting some great news and fear failure
2) When things around me do not work as expected
Even one of these two reasons is enough for me to get dislocated from my mental state of mind. But this time, it is BOTH! I have started realizing that I am not been able to handle this and it is getting beyond my control. Consequences are I get extremely sensitive, feel upset about things that I am not suppose to, start doubting my capabilities and so on.
The weird part to this whole thing is I realize that this is my start of mind and also know the reason why, in-spite of that not able to help myself!
1) When expecting some great news and fear failure
2) When things around me do not work as expected
Even one of these two reasons is enough for me to get dislocated from my mental state of mind. But this time, it is BOTH! I have started realizing that I am not been able to handle this and it is getting beyond my control. Consequences are I get extremely sensitive, feel upset about things that I am not suppose to, start doubting my capabilities and so on.
The weird part to this whole thing is I realize that this is my start of mind and also know the reason why, in-spite of that not able to help myself!
Monday, March 8, 2010
Potluck in office on Women's day
On 8th March, we had potluck in our office. A potluck is a gathering of people where each person or group of people contributes a dish of food to be shared among the group. It was really awesome to see a huge gathering of people having food at the same time in the pantry and people enjoying the food to the fullest. The smile on everyone's face made my day! I am ready to do anything for only that smile ;-).
Managers !!!
When I had just started my career, I would always be thinking that it is a very simple to be a manager. They do nothing but just attend meeting through out the day and the outcome of the meeting (good or bad) is literally vomited on us! Today when I am at a similar position, I realize it is just not so simple. The biggest challenge that a manager faces is being accountable for others actions, slippages in schedule, carelessness and many more. Even to give a feedback, one has to think 10 times before letting the person know that he needs to improve. The biggest challenge to be a manager is that YOU NEED TO DEAL WITH PEOPLE (who have feelings, emotions, interpretations) which is surely not a easy job! In the past there was a incidence where I yelled at one of my team members for carelessness and lack of passion towards work. It did hurt me to a great extent as he was a very good friend of mine too. But I had to do it as I am paid for getting the work done and not for being good. I did feel real hurt with whatever followed that incidence and the effect stayed on me for a good bit of days (almost a year now). But when I think of it today, guess what I did was right! A person who cannot take feedback for improvement is really not matured and will never grow. It is this feedback that help the person to continuously improve. The other thing that contributes to growth is the ability to adapt to change (of any kind) like change of organization structure, change of your manager's mood, manager's perceptions, the company policies, etc.
And today I am sorry for thinking that "MANAGER HAVE NO WORK" in the past!!!
And today I am sorry for thinking that "MANAGER HAVE NO WORK" in the past!!!
Friday, March 5, 2010
Operation excellence means developing deep consumer connections
A very good forward from one of my friends.
So, what does ‘Operations Excellence’ mean from a Leadership perspective? For me, Operations Excellence is our ability to create deep customer connections through exceptional employee engagement consistently with a spirit of excellence. Let me share some thoughts in the reverse order: First, spirit of excellence, then employee engagement, and then customer connection because that is the sequence in which I see it getting established . It all begins with a desire to excel at an individual and team level, followed by engagement of employees leading to unique consumer connections that help build exceptional brand loyalty.
Let’s explore it in some detail.
Excellence is a mindset, it is an attitude, a habit. It is not what we do sometimes, it is who we are. It is the inner calling that each one of us have to be the best that we can be. That is why we recognise excellence in others immediately. For example, when Sachin Tendulkar scores a century or A R Rahman wins the Grammy or when we love Aamir Khan’s performance in ‘3 idiots’—we recognise it in others and get inspired by it. Excellence is our desire to be the best we can be. The challenge is how do we build that spirit in our teams? How can we light this fire within our teams? How do we grow the self-confidence of our teams and help them drive excellence?
Let me share with you how I see my son’s basketball coach instilling excellence. He believes in excellence and has a simple formula to drive it with the team—break it down/train/focus/recognise. He teaches the team to enjoy the process and the results will follow. He prepares the team for championships by breaking down the skills he wants to build in the team, trains them for it, focusses on just that until it becomes a habit, recognises it and then moves on to the next skill and continues the loop. I have seen him transform the ability and self-belief of the team with this process. Similarly, in organizations, a coach could build self- confidence of teams and drive excellence if he breaks a task down into manageable components, ensure the teams are trained to deliver against each component, focus one component at a time, recognise progress and continue the loop until the entire task is accomplished.
Next step is employee engagement. Employee engagement is our ability to build a small company mindset in a big company. Small company mindset is that of belonging to a family, it is about treating our employees with compassion and creating a culture of caring as you would do in a family. I believe that the restaurant business is a people’s business and one of the main responsibilities of a leader is to create a culture of trust and caring; a culture where the employees have a clear idea of the mission/vision/goals of the company and have a clear idea of how their own personal goals align with that of the company. It is only in a culture of trust and caring that individuals and teams will be able to unleash their full potential for excellence.
Finally, consumer connection. A customer mania mindset of Customer=1, a mindset of treating each customer as an individual with specific needs. So, instead of seeing our consumers as a mass, we train our teams to see them as individuals such as a dating couple, family, grandmother and child, executive with specific needs of romance, celebration, bonding. If we are able to then customise our service for each individual consumer and each specific need, we will elevate the consumer experience to the next level. This will happen only if the employees feel truly valued, cared for, have a clear sense of what is expected of them, are trained to execute against this and are rewarded for these behaviours.
Thus, Operation Excellence to me is developing deep consumer connections through exceptional employee engagement done consistently with a spirit of excellence . If we are able to ignite the genius of excellence in our teams, engage with them as a family and treat each customer as the only 1, we can elevate the execution of our organisations.
Article by - Niren Chaudhary, MD, Yum! Restaurants (India)
Source : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/Operation-excellence-means-developing-deep-consumer-connections/articleshow/5605354.cms
So, what does ‘Operations Excellence’ mean from a Leadership perspective? For me, Operations Excellence is our ability to create deep customer connections through exceptional employee engagement consistently with a spirit of excellence. Let me share some thoughts in the reverse order: First, spirit of excellence, then employee engagement, and then customer connection because that is the sequence in which I see it getting established . It all begins with a desire to excel at an individual and team level, followed by engagement of employees leading to unique consumer connections that help build exceptional brand loyalty.
Let’s explore it in some detail.
Excellence is a mindset, it is an attitude, a habit. It is not what we do sometimes, it is who we are. It is the inner calling that each one of us have to be the best that we can be. That is why we recognise excellence in others immediately. For example, when Sachin Tendulkar scores a century or A R Rahman wins the Grammy or when we love Aamir Khan’s performance in ‘3 idiots’—we recognise it in others and get inspired by it. Excellence is our desire to be the best we can be. The challenge is how do we build that spirit in our teams? How can we light this fire within our teams? How do we grow the self-confidence of our teams and help them drive excellence?
Let me share with you how I see my son’s basketball coach instilling excellence. He believes in excellence and has a simple formula to drive it with the team—break it down/train/focus/recognise. He teaches the team to enjoy the process and the results will follow. He prepares the team for championships by breaking down the skills he wants to build in the team, trains them for it, focusses on just that until it becomes a habit, recognises it and then moves on to the next skill and continues the loop. I have seen him transform the ability and self-belief of the team with this process. Similarly, in organizations, a coach could build self- confidence of teams and drive excellence if he breaks a task down into manageable components, ensure the teams are trained to deliver against each component, focus one component at a time, recognise progress and continue the loop until the entire task is accomplished.
Next step is employee engagement. Employee engagement is our ability to build a small company mindset in a big company. Small company mindset is that of belonging to a family, it is about treating our employees with compassion and creating a culture of caring as you would do in a family. I believe that the restaurant business is a people’s business and one of the main responsibilities of a leader is to create a culture of trust and caring; a culture where the employees have a clear idea of the mission/vision/goals of the company and have a clear idea of how their own personal goals align with that of the company. It is only in a culture of trust and caring that individuals and teams will be able to unleash their full potential for excellence.
Finally, consumer connection. A customer mania mindset of Customer=1, a mindset of treating each customer as an individual with specific needs. So, instead of seeing our consumers as a mass, we train our teams to see them as individuals such as a dating couple, family, grandmother and child, executive with specific needs of romance, celebration, bonding. If we are able to then customise our service for each individual consumer and each specific need, we will elevate the consumer experience to the next level. This will happen only if the employees feel truly valued, cared for, have a clear sense of what is expected of them, are trained to execute against this and are rewarded for these behaviours.
Thus, Operation Excellence to me is developing deep consumer connections through exceptional employee engagement done consistently with a spirit of excellence . If we are able to ignite the genius of excellence in our teams, engage with them as a family and treat each customer as the only 1, we can elevate the execution of our organisations.
Article by - Niren Chaudhary, MD, Yum! Restaurants (India)
Source : http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/Operation-excellence-means-developing-deep-consumer-connections/articleshow/5605354.cms
People need to learn what is commitment!!!
I am real upset with what all is happening around me. People join a company, get on board, stay with a company for 10 days and resign!! Do these people understand the word commitment at all! This is just not at all professional. When people join a company, they exactly know what they will get into, what is their package going to be, etc. In-spite of that, you get a higher offer and you resign. People need to realize that the IT industry is really very small and they will meet the same people some day nor the other!
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Change in my life
Had a good time yesterday chatting with one of my very good friends. Not sure if I got across her well but this is only for her....She made me realize a very important change in my life
What do near-fatal incidents and self reflection make one feel like? They both, for me at least, help to put life into perspective. Each of these offers a different view point, for example a close encounter might help us to realise what really matters to us and what isn’t worth the stress. Similarly, self reflection can help us see where we may be wasting time or opportunities and how we can improve on that. I don’t know if it is just me, but when my husband was not well, Siya was not well and when mom underwent a bypass, I cease worrying about all my little problems and stop thinking. After sitting down and pondering over this for a while, and thinking on why was this happening. I was JUST aligning myself with truth.
--> The little problems we have in life really aren’t that important
--> Our time on earth is limited and we should make the most of it
--> This is it, this is life, right now
There were more things that became clear to me, but those are arguably the most important. Once I had this realisation, I started to look at how I can apply this simple understanding of truth in my life. After all, simply telling ourselves to “make the most of this opportunity or learn from this incidence” rarely results in some continued, effective, output. I decided to look at my current situation and I formed two questions that helped me to really put things into perspective. I believe that everyone can benefit from answering these.
Question 1: What does my day look like to someone else?
Would they see you working hard at in your day job? Would they see you wasting time on irrelevant activities? Would they see you fighting with someone? Would they see you struggling and stressed out? Would they see you as someone racing with time?
I don’t know what it is about this question, but when I asked it to myself, the answer wasn’t pretty. "How you live each day is, of course, how you live your life" - Is that correct? It is only through honest self-assessment through this question that you can realise where your shortcomings may lie.
Question 2: Based on your current actions and behaviors, where would you expect to be in five years?
Note that this isn’t asking where you would like to be; this is taking into consideration your current efforts and looking at where you would expect to be. As with the previous question, answering this requires you being totally truthful. Unlike my response to the first question, my answer to this was fairly positive. It is only through giving a truthful answer to this question that I can fix my flaws, rather than living in the illusion that I’m doing my best or everything is as good as it can be.
I truly hope that everyone who has taken the time to really ponder over this has benefited from gaining a new, honest perspective about their lives. Now it’s just up to change the things that you feel you should.
My dear friend, do try this out and let me know if it makes a difference...
What do near-fatal incidents and self reflection make one feel like? They both, for me at least, help to put life into perspective. Each of these offers a different view point, for example a close encounter might help us to realise what really matters to us and what isn’t worth the stress. Similarly, self reflection can help us see where we may be wasting time or opportunities and how we can improve on that. I don’t know if it is just me, but when my husband was not well, Siya was not well and when mom underwent a bypass, I cease worrying about all my little problems and stop thinking. After sitting down and pondering over this for a while, and thinking on why was this happening. I was JUST aligning myself with truth.
--> The little problems we have in life really aren’t that important
--> Our time on earth is limited and we should make the most of it
--> This is it, this is life, right now
There were more things that became clear to me, but those are arguably the most important. Once I had this realisation, I started to look at how I can apply this simple understanding of truth in my life. After all, simply telling ourselves to “make the most of this opportunity or learn from this incidence” rarely results in some continued, effective, output. I decided to look at my current situation and I formed two questions that helped me to really put things into perspective. I believe that everyone can benefit from answering these.
Question 1: What does my day look like to someone else?
Would they see you working hard at in your day job? Would they see you wasting time on irrelevant activities? Would they see you fighting with someone? Would they see you struggling and stressed out? Would they see you as someone racing with time?
I don’t know what it is about this question, but when I asked it to myself, the answer wasn’t pretty. "How you live each day is, of course, how you live your life" - Is that correct? It is only through honest self-assessment through this question that you can realise where your shortcomings may lie.
Question 2: Based on your current actions and behaviors, where would you expect to be in five years?
Note that this isn’t asking where you would like to be; this is taking into consideration your current efforts and looking at where you would expect to be. As with the previous question, answering this requires you being totally truthful. Unlike my response to the first question, my answer to this was fairly positive. It is only through giving a truthful answer to this question that I can fix my flaws, rather than living in the illusion that I’m doing my best or everything is as good as it can be.
I truly hope that everyone who has taken the time to really ponder over this has benefited from gaining a new, honest perspective about their lives. Now it’s just up to change the things that you feel you should.
My dear friend, do try this out and let me know if it makes a difference...
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Market segmentation
Each parent would like the teachers to give personal attention to their wards. This is practically not possible. If all the children are asked to sit in the same class with various subjects. To facilitate this the class is further divided in according to the subjects. On the same philosophy , as the business or the organization cannot meet the needs of each and every individual in the market the market is divided in to meaningful, relatively similar and identifiable groups, the purpose of which is to enable the marketer to tailor marketing mixes to meet the needs of one or more specific groups.
The total market for a good or service consists of all the people and/or organizations that desire it, have resources to make purchases, and are willing and able to buy.Firms often use market segmentation—dividing the market into subsets of customers that behave similarly. The development of a target market strategy consists of three general phases: analyzing consumer demand, targeting the market, and developing the marketing strategy.
1) The firm determines demand patterns, establishes bases of segmentation, and identifies potential market segments.
2) The firm targets the market through undifferentiated marketing (mass marketing), concentrated marketing, or differentiated marketing (multiple segmentation).
3) The firm then positions it’s offering relative to competitors and outlines the appropriate marketing mix. Meaningful product differentiation is essential.
What do we do as a company?
The total market for a good or service consists of all the people and/or organizations that desire it, have resources to make purchases, and are willing and able to buy.Firms often use market segmentation—dividing the market into subsets of customers that behave similarly. The development of a target market strategy consists of three general phases: analyzing consumer demand, targeting the market, and developing the marketing strategy.
1) The firm determines demand patterns, establishes bases of segmentation, and identifies potential market segments.
2) The firm targets the market through undifferentiated marketing (mass marketing), concentrated marketing, or differentiated marketing (multiple segmentation).
3) The firm then positions it’s offering relative to competitors and outlines the appropriate marketing mix. Meaningful product differentiation is essential.
What do we do as a company?
Handling Tantrums
I am really loosing my patience handling Siya's tantrums. I wonder why does she react that way. Every time I come from office, I need to handle a big tantrum from her. I have really started loosing my patience now. Today I yelled on Siya real hard. I know I could have handled it much better but I just lost it! Now I am feeling very guilty about the whole thing. I am real sorry Siya, real sorry :-( .
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