Simple Recipe for Excellence

This is holiday season and one thing we definitely do during this season is pamper ourselves with a variety of delicacies. This is the time when we put on some extra pounds but we do not mind as we work hard for the same all year long. I was thinking about food and various recipes and a thought came to my mind; if there is any recipe for excellence? which is simple, easy to make, any one should be able to do it, should be made from the ingredients available anywhere, etc., etc. So, any one, from grandson to grandma, can prepare it and enjoy the excellence that they will experience. Looks like it is my lucky day today and I have stumbled upon one very ancient recipe which I want to share.

This is very simple and it satisfies all the conditions which I was thinking before I started looking for one. It has only one ingredient, available with every one, which when mixed with anything you are doing, it improves your excellence level and you start enjoying the superb taste of excellence. The ingredient is “Ownership”. Just mix your ownership to everything you are doing and you will get an amazing taste.

I want you to do two things; one, look back and remember the tasks where you feel you achieved excellence and those where you have not been able to demonstrate excellence to the level you wanted or the one you normally demonstrate. Be truthful to yourself and analyze. It is more than likely that you will find that when you had owned the tasks, you have demonstrated excellence and where you were kind of doing it because someone has told you to do it but you did not really own it, results were opposite.   Second, observe the people whom you consider that they always demonstrate excellence in the things they do and see how they look at things, how they react to the external disturbances, what kind of efforts they make to resolve problems. Do they take action, reach out people, try and identify alternatives or they just update their boss and wait for instructions. You will mostly find that they would be doing lot of things on their own proactively and are able to find out better solutions and better results. You will see that they take ownership of the task they are doing and want to do it successfully. They do not shy away from any additional work that might come to their plate in order to ensure the successful outcome of the task they own. You can find these people in the organization easily; people say that if so and so person is doing the task it will get done or you will observe that for all complex and critical tasks few set of people get selected. This is all because, they display ownership in all aspects.

What does this Ownership really mean? How can we add it in every task that we are doing?

I believe that Ownership is state of mind, which gives rise to our thoughts, which translates to our actions, which we undertake in day today life, which give us the results. It comes from within, so one needs to work on oneself to build this thought process. One will need to observe oneself more closely; what thought process goes on in the mind when various tasks were performed and seek reasons why we were not able to own a specific task. It can be that you were against it and you had to do it because your superior made you do it; or it can be that you had information only of a part of complete task and no idea of the complete task and many times you do not get it inspite of you asking for the same; or it can be that you are not really aware of how the outcome of the specific task is going to create an impact on the organization level or some similar situation on personal side. These situations are pretty common and found all over, so can we prepare the ownership recipe?

Yes we can!!  

If we encounter any such situation, we should look at the task on its own merit independently, try not to connect any past emotions to them, understand what outcome is expected from you and tell yourself that you will ensure that the specific outcome will be achieved and then go on doing the task, do all the things that are necessary during the course and observe yourself delivering the outcome at the desired level of excellence. This is a slow process and one needs to persevere. One needs to observe oneself continuously. It is difficult to get complete success in one go and one needs to be at it, experiment with oneself, observe the results, learn from them and improve the experimentation. I am sure we can build the ownership trait in our self and enjoy the great taste of recipe for excellence. 

Three steps to Excellence

Is excellence a bastion of few? or any one can achieve it? This question appears in the mind of many and when we read various contradicting opinions expressed in many mediums create confusion rather than clarifying the doubts. Can someone live using excellence as life guide?

A simple three step approach applied would take us on the road to excellence for sure. The steps are Courageous Vision, Comprehensive Planning and Relentless Execution.

Courageous Vision; we all know that to achieve anything we need to have a vision, it is not sufficient to have a wish but VISION. There is a lot of difference between wishing something and having a vision about something. When we call something our wish, we typically depend on someone outside us to fulfill the same and hope that things outside us will fall in place fulfilling the wish. However when we call something as our vision, then there is a lot of involvement from self to make it happen; significant mindshare is given by the person who is visioning a specific thing. One plans actions to make it happen, one connects with external world to explain the vision and makes positive efforts in obtaining their support to achieve the final outcome. I have added Courageous adjective to vision and believe that it is very important. If our vision is easily achievable, it really does not inspire us to do any special efforts; it does not challenge us and does not help us to increase the level of excellence. e.g. if the organization has a vision of continuous growth but at a much less rate than what competition is growing; then although the vision emphasizes that we need to grow continuously, this typically can be achieved without really changing current level of excellence. Hence we need to express our vision in the form that questions status quo, it challenges us to achieve more than what we are achieving today, it should provoke our thinking to do the things differently and it should compel us to do the things at a higher level of excellence. Expressing vision to do these things actually takes the person to a very uncomfortable zone and needs a lot of courage on his part to express and commit to this vision. That is the reason why COURAGEOUS VISION is the first step to improve your level of excellence.

It is not sufficient just to express the vision; it needs to be understood, interpreted and operationalized for its realization. These things do not happen automatically and lot of planning and execution to the plan, goes in with the same. PLANNING COMPREHENSIVELY is the key for a better execution and improves the probability of success significantly. It allows us to get to the details, understand possible problems in every step and prepares us to avoid them or enables a plan B in case plan A fails in some unforeseen circumstances. Many times we plan at high level and try and address the situations on the ground as and when they come mostly in the reactionary fashion. We hope that everything will fall in place and we are not really prepared for many of the possible distractions/diversions that might occur on the way. As soon as one such thing comes to our notice, we try and figure out what is the action we need to take to avoid the distraction; many a times we need to do a compromise and deviate from our final outcome or throw in a significantly large quantum of resources (than desired) to achieve the final outcome. We will not be able to increase our level of excellence as desired. If we plan with great details on all aspects, it really helps us to identify the possible diversions/distractions and keep our actions ready in case such a distraction occurs and we are able to achieve the outcome improving excellence to the desired level (better than the current level)       

It is important to have a challenging vision, it is necessary to plan your actions, but it is extremely important that we execute on the comprehensive plans based on courageous vision. Unless we are able to execute; no matter what ever obstacles we encounter, no matter what ever diversion we may face, no matter what ever wastage gets created due to unknown things; we will not be able to achieve our vision. We need to build that rigor which will help us build the rhythm of execute-monitor-correct-execute. As described in my earlier blog, we can internalize this rigor through a bit-by-bit process and execute the plans relentlessly. I am sure when we will reach the goal post and look back, we will observe that we have been operating at higher level of excellence automatically. I have taken an example of an organization, but the same is true at individual level also so just remember three steps Courageous Vision-Comprehensive Planning- Relentless Execution and you are on path of improving excellence

Allow the people to Perform – Simple mantra for Excellence

“Allow the people to perform” was one of the few things which I learnt in my early days of career. Thanks to Mr. Saibabu, my senior during early stage of my job, who mentored me in those days and provided insight on many aspects to become successful. This was one of the one-liner which has stuck with me and I find it incredibly effective. I feel if we absorb the essence of this one liner, implement the same in our day to day life, be it personal or professional, it automatically helps individuals / teams to achieve higher levels of excellence.

Allow the people to perform, looks very simple and naïve statement. It does not depict any hint as to what a vast transformative potential it has and thus gets ignored easily. So how do we use it? Let us take an example where you are leading a team of people and you need to complete a project along with this team. What we normally do is, make a comprehensive plan, distribute the work amongst the team members and members complete their work according to schedule using the framework defined for them. You as a team leader monitor the progress rigorously to ensure that everyone is doing their tasks correctly and timely. In this whole process, we tend to build rigidity in the process through creation of structure, processes, and framework. Detailed monitoring at higher frequency brings in more rigidity in the whole game. Although we have seen quite a few benefits from this, we have a significant downside i.e. the team gets bogged down with framework and their tasks that it tends to overlook the improvement aspect. The team does not apply its mind in terms of how they can improve, how they can do a specific task in better way, or how they can improve the overall level of excellence that they want to operate. The project works with level of excellence defined by one brain i.e. of Project leader and other brains are not used for this purpose. Many a times it happens that one of the team members does not do a work in correct manner and brings it to us. What do we do? We correct his mistake, tell him what is the correct way, ask him to do it the way we have told and complete it fast. The team member goes back and completes the work exactly as we have said and brings back the work. While we are going through the same, we realize that there is another simple thing if done, it can improve the work significantly so we ask our team member that why he has not done this simple thing? We get an immediate response that I have done whatever you have told me to do. Here again it is clear that the rigidity with which we run our project stifles the thinking ability of the team members and project as a whole loses. Sometimes our team members do not do the work correctly and instead of telling them to correct, we ourselves correct it. We are thinking in mind that this task needs to be completed fast and we feel that even if we tell, team will not do it correctly plus we do not have energy to train the team continuously. Once we are used to do this, we observe that there are more and more cases, where our team members are bringing in the work which is not complete and you tend to spend a lot of time completing the same. The team seems to have stopped learning and improving, they are depending on only one person to perform effectively.     

One of the prominent reason for this is we do not allow them to perform. We build such a solid structure that removes flexibility from the picture which is essential for any one to think differently and experiment and come out more effectively. Also the rigorous monitoring or micromanaging prohibits their thinking process. Through micromanaging, the team leader in a way enforces his thinking on every small activity in the project which again stops team to look for more effective ways to do a specific task and they are rather happy to do what has been told to them by their manager. So every time they have a problem, instead of thinking themselves they tend to come to manager and ask for solution. Manager happily gives the solution and team implements; in this process team stops learning and improving. More and more such team members in the team, the level of excellence the team can achieve comes down.

So how do we enable people to perform? Few simple things like

·         Build robust plan but leave some flexibility down the line for each of the team member to maneuver.

·         Encourage team members to come out with improvements, show willing ness to change and set a few examples right in the beginning.

·         Do not micromanage

·         Guide the team members to find solutions themselves rather than providing the solutions and be ready for allowing some time to the team members till they get the solution

·         Lastly, believe in your team members to find solutions to complete the project on time and have patience with them 

Excellence through Say-Do ratio

Say-Do ratio is a simple yet effective tool to achieve excellence. It is a common ratio used by various agencies to depict that they adhere to the commitments made by them and is used to build customer confidence in the service provided to them. The same ratio if used on the personal side, it provides great insight on the level of excellence one has achieved. It also acts as tool for self-motivation. It is very simple to use and easily understood by everyone. The beauty lies in how does one use it and benefit from the same. For the starters, they can start with small daily agreements. Just note down the agreements made with others in one notepad or any other tool and keep it handy so that these commitments are always in forefront of our thoughts. Start ticking once the commitment is adhered to. Check your ratio (commitments adhered / commitments made) on daily basis and use the same for motivating oneself to reach 100% consistently. Another simple way is to use the daily task list, which is prepared by many of us. Prepare this list as to what all things one wants to accomplish in the day and take the ratio at the end of the day. Ponder over the things which you could not achieve and see if there is a common thread which comes out.

This is just beginning to get warmed up and to understand the power of say-do ratio. Once we are able to monitor ourselves using this ratio, we shall look at the higher level of commitments one has done with oneself regarding improving the behavioral traits, improving specific skillset, etc and the timeline associated with the same. Monitor our progress using this ratio—we will get a good insight in terms of how to give commitments, are we too aggressive or too conservative while giving commitments and how can we change the same, how do we give commitments on individual behalf as well as on the behalf of the team.

Adherence to commitment forms the basic building block of the excellence. The other things that decides the level is, have we used best possible efforts from our side while adhering to the commitment and  have we been able to give the best possible results with the best possible efforts. Then comes the aspect of are we improving on continuous basis; have we given better commitments then previous and have we given better results than last time. For measuring our performance on personal as well as professional front, Say-Do ratio is extremely useful tool and one can experiment and share the same with all.  

Experimentation - a sure shot way to excellence

There are various books we read or seminars we go for improving our level of excellence, be it at personal or organizational level. We feel good after attending these and also think that the techniques told are very simple which can be undertaken anytime so that we can march on the path of improvement in our level of excellence. However the reality shows that, for many, this does not happen and we tend to attend these sessions again and again or read new books as and when they hit the stands.  The cycle continues. The prime reason for this is related to absence of trying out the techniques or ideas understood; either as the ideas seem to be too different from our thought process or we are not sure of the possible outcome in the situation and not ready to disturb the equilibrium (Comfort zone) in which we are operating. Many a times we cannot convince others to join us in the newer movements and the situation remains as it is.

There are three types of fears which one needs to overcome to be successful in his desired endeavor to improve/excel. The first one is FEAR OF CHANGE, second is FEAR OF FAILURE and third is FEAR OF SUCCESS.

At any point of time, we are in an equilibrium state with our surrounding, which includes animate and inanimate things. We attain this balance and are happy to remain in this state as it provides a comfort zone to each one of us. Our life feels more predictable and thus easy and satisfying. We dread to disturb this equilibrium even though we know the law of equilibrium i.e. if there is a disturbance to any equilibrium; it remains for short time and we will achieve equilibrium at another level. So even if we get disturbed, we will get in to the comfort zone with our life in a short span of time. The same is FEAR OF CHANGE, where we do not know if we use the new technique / method discussed during a seminar or in a book, what disturbance it is going to create and what will be its effect and how long it is going to take to come back to the equilibrium again. Many a times if the ideas that we want to adopt are radically different than what we are living with, then we fear magnitude of disturbance it is going to create in our lives e.g. we have to change the way of thinking or we need to become inclusive or pluralistic in our approach when we are not used to it, etc.  This is the biggest hurdle for everyone to overcome. We have proverbs like “Do not change if it isn’t broken” which is quoted many times to avoid the disturbing the balance. If we want to improve our level of excellence, it becomes mandatory for us to create that positive disturbance in the way we are doing a specific thing and slowly settle at a higher level of equilibrium. It is up on us to decide the type /level/extent/scope of disturbance we need to create and our perception about what we can handle and create it. This is where experimentation plays a significant role. Controlled experimentation allows us to overcome our FEAR OF CHANGE  

FEAR OF FAILURE is pretty much known to everyone. On one side it enhances the performance compelling one to perform to best of ones abilities and push the envelope beyond; on the other hand it stops us from trying. It is the perceived impact at physical, psychological and social level that prevents us from taking that one big step. So the question now is how to convince our mind that is it necessary to be unmindful of the possible impact when you want to try out new idea/method as well as prepare for the actions if the desired result is not achieved. It requires a little mental training and experimentation at smaller scale before doing the BIG thing. Experimentation at smaller scale creates impact, both positive and negative, at a smaller scale which will not disturb the equilibrium significantly but gives us an opportunity to understand negative impact and breadth as well as depth of damage. It helps us to create mental mechanisms to work around the psychological as well as social impacts in addition to providing clear ideas to build contingency measures to be taken before the next experimentation. We need to tinker the experiment based on our experience with earlier experiment and conduct it at a higher scale. Once we are able to do this, the FEAR OF FAILURE does not act as impediment to traverse the path of excellence. We fail, we learn from it and again try till we are successful. In this process one improves oneself significantly. If we need to excel beyond what we are today, we need to chart the uncharted territories. There is always a chance of failure hence it is critical to overcome FEAR OF FAILURE. If one inculcates a habit of experimentation then this fear does not remain a fear but becomes a tool in the path of increasing level of excellence.

The reverse might happen that we implement the new idea and it is successful. We can showcase tremendous results. These results will change the whole level at which one operates, it suddenly expands the role with addition of new responsibilities. The game shifts, it becomes big and different and one needs to adjust to new paradigm quickly. The stake holders are different, thought processes are different and expectations are different too. Are we prepared for this or having FEAR OF SUCCESS. Although this is a good change, but it is significant and definitely shakes the equilibrium with which we are comfortable at that moment.  This fear is a good fear but it should be at such level that makes you prepare rather than avoid trying out new ideas. Again experiencing the success and their positive effects on our equilibrium at smaller level prepares us to play at bigger level when the opportunity knocks the door. Doing small experiments gives us this opportunity and one should continuously strive for the same.        

Here, Experimentation spiral comes to our help.  It leads us slowly and steadily to the level we want to achieve.  It also helps us to manage the problems we thought we would encounter if we implement the newer ideas directly. It goes like this; there is a new idea, one is not sure of getting implemented on the scale one wants so he experiments at much smaller scale wherein he finds some supporters for the idea. If the results are not in line with the desired; we fine tune the parameters of experimentation and perform the same again. This tuning circle continues till we become successful. By the time we achieve success, we would have made several changes to our original experiment and have found the right balance of all aspects which would be necessary to take the experiment on the higher level. This success acts as trajectory to take the level of excellence to a new level and new set of experiments need to begin to take us to our ultimate goal. So this experimentation spiral takes us to the desired level step by step.

 

Excellence Bit by Bit

I was in conversation with some of my friends during week end and someone talked about this urdu poem 

"Khudi ko kar buland itna, ke har takdeer se pehlay
Khuda bande se khud puche, bata teri raza kiya hai"

There are various interpretations to this beautiful poem and a different note stuck me when I was interpreting this in the backdrop of excellence. It can be interpreted as, you take your level of excellence to such a level that Khuda, who is supposed to be the epitome of excellence, will take your permission to do his work.  This again talks about a continuous process of building excellence and personal commitment to it. Someone has also said that “you take yourself to such a high level of excellence that no one can ignore you” which echoes the same aspect. Excellence is a personal thing and relative in nature. It is on each one of us to decide what level one wants to achieve. The goalpost is set by us and it is perfectly normal to keep on moving the goalpost and this is applicable to activities not only from professional side but on the personal side also. Let us take a simple example of “driving”; most of us drive either four-wheeler or two-wheeler; for simplicity we will stick to a four wheeler driving in day today life (not racing or rallying etc.) and I am assuming that we want to be excellent driver to take this discussion forward. The process starts with one talking to oneself regarding what would be the benchmark to be used at that juncture e.g. if a person is just started to learn driving, the benchmark could be choosing of correct lane on the road, giving correct signals, driving in the center of the lane, using the appropriate gears while driving, etc. you are focused to achieve this desired level of excellence and you are happy and satisfied if you are able to do these things while driving. At this juncture you do feel that you are an excellent driver in your league. As you gain experience and get deeper understanding in to driving, your benchmarks start changing such as you need to be able to do a parallel parking between two cars, you should be able to drive comfortably on steep and winding roads, you should be able to drive with maximum fuel efficiency, the ride should be a comfortable on any kind of road, no tickets for traffic rule violations, etc. and you no more feel you are an excellent driver but think that you need to learn a lot to become the excellent driver. So you work on your driving, experiment and get understanding and at the end you feel satisfied that you have reached the desired excellence. Again the cycle starts after some time and the process goes on and on. It becomes evident that One defines what one means by excellence, one commits to reach the level, once you reach the level, typically one checks the definition of excellence and finds the definition is changed and one again works to achieve the same. This is true of all activities and all people whether it is personal or professional or organizational activity.

Observation of self and interaction of self with all entities other than self is extremely vital for a student of excellence. If one observes one self and his/her journey from birth till today, one can see so many examples of similar nature happening continuously in our life. It is critical to be cognizant of these little things and channelize them in such a manner that we are able to build excellence to such a height that we become benchmark for others.

Excellence Defined

The dictionary meaning of Excellence is “the state or quality of excelling or being exceptionally good; extreme merit; superiority”. So what does it really mean – is it being better than others or is it best amongst the population under comparison or is it best of individual abilities? It is subjective and leaves a lot for interpretation and deliberation. It also creates confusion in mind for a student of excellence as to assess if he / she has reached a level which can be called as excellence. It also becomes difficult to build a curriculum or a framework to identify the levels of excellence and define methods to step by step improvement of the same. Excellence has remained in the realms of perception vis a vis a benchmark used by the person. The literature on excellence more or less is either focused in a specific area where in author is able to define excellence and then build a model around the same so the frameworks mentioned are applicable to the specific area and not all. Some authors take a different route by considering excellence as a personality trait and talk about how do we nurture and improve this trait. There is another thought process as expressed in the quote by Colin Powell “If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude” so it talks about excellence in every small thing we do and automatically we will do large things with excellence. Aristotle says “We are what we repeatedly do, Excellence, then, is not an act but habit”. Sometimes we hear in our offices instructions like “this is a very special customer and we must be excellent in our performance and not like customer B for whom you can relax a bit” so the question arises “can we be excellent doing a specific work for one customer and not excellent doing the same work for other customer” and if one does display this type of behavior, can we say that he/she is excellent?

I feel, Excellence is the commitment one makes with one self to continuously do better than what one has done previously in the entire activities one performs on personal and professional life.  The benchmark is oneself and it is continuously moving upwards. There is not end as to final level of excellence

Excellence

In our life, we revere our heroes in various areas, be it professional side like Steve Jobs or Spiritual side like  Sai Baba or religious side like Lord Krishna or Personal side like one’s own father or teacher etc. We try to understand how they have achieved what they have achieved and see if we can emulate any of these things in our personal life. These personalities are icons of excellence in their own fields and we are not. We all want to be successful in life in our chosen field and only way to reach there is through achieving excellence. I think excellence is not something that one needs to do specially but we will need to imbibe excellence in our daily life and each activity that we do. I want to discuss various aspects of excellence and thus this blog and look forward to your feedback, ideas, thoughts so that we can achieve excellence in our chosen fields.