Questioning – a sure shot way to Excellence

Let us look at the following quotes

• I think it's very important to have a feedback loop, where you're constantly thinking about what you've done and how you could be doing it better. I think that's the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself. (Elon Musk)
• Religion asks you to believe things without questioning, and technology and science always encourage you to ask hard questions and why it is important in science and technology. So I was always interested in science and technology. (Vinod Khosla)
• The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity (Albert Einstein)
• In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted (Bertrand Russell) 
• He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever Chinese Proverb
• Questioning is to thinking as yeast is to bread making.Questioning is what converts the stuff of thinking into something of value.( Jamie McKenzie)

If we read through quotes from some of the eminent persons mentioned above, It becomes clear that questioning is critical for enhancing our knowledge as said by many eminent personalities from all walks of life. Most of our scriptures as well as scientific works are actually answers to questions asked by some one. So a question comes to mind that can we use this technique of questioning to improve our level of excellence effectively? I think we can!  

As we know and discussed in previous blogs, “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”  

When we want to improve our level of excellence, we need to first identify what level we are in and what needs to be done to move to higher level, then execute them to reach to the higher level of excellence. We can actually use questioning for this purpose. If we question the “status quo” in our life and ask why for the same, we will get the answers to what we need to do to improve. Whenever we feel comfortable in doing a specific activity and feel that we have achieved all the things necessary to do this activity and consider ourselves as experts or we do not find difficulty in doing the specific activity; it is time for us to question ourselves to check what can be done to better the same, what would push us to the zone of uncomfortability for the next level. As soon as we feel comfortable and being human we prefer to be in the level of comfortability, we stop improving our excellence and as the time passes, we start falling down. So questioning oneself regularly and answering the questions by being truthful to oneself provides us the way to the next level of excellence.  It is very easy to question others but questioning oneself requires courage as one feels that everything one is doing is the right and best way of doing things. Even if we question ourselves, it requires further courage to answer them truthfully. We actually know what can be done to improve our level of excellence but either do not admit it or we are lazy to take those additional efforts and continue to use shortcuts which keeps us at lower levels of excellence. So questioning status Quo and answering it truthfully surely takes us to the next level of excellence. 

Organization with a Perpetual Positive Cycle of Excellence

We read a lot about Excellence at multiple levels like individual, team, organization, etc.; talk about facets that are important to bring about excellence within oneself or an organization; attend a lot of training courses on achieving personal excellence either in general or in specific areas like Sales, Customer relations, Production, Supply chain etc. Do we see the results that seemed to be possible after attending these sessions or reading those books? Most of the times, the answer would be NO. If we ponder over the reasons, one that comes up pretty frequently is that I do not have the right settings to implement these ideas, or I do not have complete buy-in for all these ideas across the organization, or something similar. So is there any way that we can create the organization which will help us breed excellence and nurture it so that it spreads across and grows continuously? Another thing comes to mind is that I am not at a powerful position in the organization to effect the change across so how do I bring this change? There is also a fear about acceptability of the concepts as well as outcomes of the change?

There are multiple ways to create such an organization and I will be discussing one of the ways in this article. However before that, let us deliberate a little on the fear of results as well as position in the organization hierarchy to effect the changes across the organization. Fear of results or fear of acceptability will be present whenever one tries to do some change from their present stable process be it on the organization side like changing the goods distribution mechanism or on personal side like changing from personal transport to public transport for commuting between home to office. One just needs to anticipate some possible outcomes other than the expected ones and prepare oneself to face the same. E.g. you may want to stock up the distribution depots sufficiently before switching to the new method so that even if something goes wrong, you will have some time to correct without giving any problems to business. It is also observed that this fear slowly comes down as one starts progressing on the path and achieves some milestones at desired pace so start slow, plan well and implement each step on the way meticulously. Keep the tab on results/reactions you are getting vis-a-vis expected and keep on tuning the change.

Any change an organization adopts, never adopted at organization as a whole. It is typically conceptualized, prototyped, finetuned, socialized and then implemented. So when you have some idea which you want to implement, it will be first implemented small so implement it in the small team which you might be leading; show case the result and take it to the organization level in step by step manner. The acceptability of change is more if it is backed by some results at multiple levels. So if you want to create an organization that breeds excellence and nurtures it, you may want to create this in a small team working in one area and then transmit the results as seed to other teams to build their organization on same principles which slowly rise to the organization level. So although it might take a longer time to implement this change than if you were a CEO of the company, it will surely get implemented as it is showing results.

When we are setting up the organization / team we need to look at following aspects along with the established principles of organization design and do the necessary changes so that we will get the team which breeds excellence and will allow us to sustain it over long period. These are;  

FOCUS: Every team needs a focus and the focus is typically provided by the leader of the team e.g. Project Manager provides focus to Project team and CEO provides focus to the organization. When the leader provides this focus, which ultimately translates in to goals of the members at various levels, “excellence” should be part of the same. Excellence is not a onetime activity but a continuous process; the messaging as well as expectations should clearly demonstrate the same. This focus really gets translated in to desired results if the focus of individuals matches with that of the leader. If the Team focus and Individual focus is different, then the results get diluted significantly. Hence it is critical for leaders to clearly state their focus towards excellence and demonstrate the same through their actions. It is also important to have interactions with the team at various levels regularly to check on the focus at various levels and make efforts to get as cohesive focus as possible.

FRAMEWORK: Best way to demonstrate the FOCUS is through framework which will be used by the team. So build a framework in such a manner that FOCUS is clearly visible to the team, through goals, objectives, mechanism of reporting & monitoring, metrics that would be used, etc. Create benchmarks for excellence levels in different areas of work; create incentives for achieving higher levels of excellence than benchmarks. The framework helps converting focus in to reality and is defined at two levels. First at level where, you define strategies or thoughts or policies or philosophies and the second at operations level where, you define actual procedures, approval mechanism, etc. It is critical to ensure that all the excellence tenets are included in definition of the FRAMEWORK that needs to be used to operate the organization and they are respected by everyone from top to bottom. One important part of FRAMEWORK is mechanism for reward and recognition; this is one of the critical point in terms of providing a push for “excellence behavior” seen in the associates. We need to craft this mechanism diligently in order to nurture excellence.

FLEXIBILITY: Flexibility is critical for breeding and nurturing Excellence. If the organization does not allow flexibility, it will not allow experimenting new ways to do things, it will not allow people to think out of the box, it will not allow people to fail and rise, it will not allow people to do better than what has been prescribed by the framework. The organization becomes rigid and does not encourage self-improvement. So the Framework when designed, we need to keep in mind that we do create it in such a manner that we encourage experimentation, we encourage associates to think differently and improve their level of excellence.   

   

FAITH: In the organization theory, it mentions of X & Y type of associates and various organizations are designed around the belief of management in the workforce attitude i.e. whether they believe the work force is predominantly X type or predominantly Y type. I believe that we need to set up the organization with a faith that associates really strive for excellence. With this FAITH in the team, we build our frameworks, and then chances are there that we will be able to create minimum hindrance organization. Off course, there will be exceptions and we will need to deal with them but we cannot strangulate the openness as well as flexibility which is built in the framework to foster Excellence Behavior for the sake of exceptions.

FUTURISTIC: Any organization when designed or any team which is formed is formed by keeping future in mind. The leaders predict the needs or the organization based on their vision for future and assessment of the current. The type of excellence traits that will be needed in near future as well as distant future needs to be identified and translated in to creating framework for the organization.

These five factors can be deliberated in much more detailed manner however it is clear that all the five factors are pretty interlinked and needs to be balanced on continuous basis. It becomes easy for the organization to implement these things if they have flexible IT systems supporting the framework. The robust IT backbone provides impetus to leaders to implement and demonstrate what they preach and it becomes transparent for the team that “excellence behavior” is recognized. The perpetual positive cycle of excellence sets in.  

Do & Say or Say & Do

Do & Say and Say & Do are two thought processes used by us in our life for trying out something new. Today I am deliberating both of them and see which one of them will be more useful for improvement of our level of excellence.

Do & Say is a pretty solid thought process told to us by our seniors from ages. It tells us first to do the things, show the same to others before you ask others to do. It is perceived as necessary to demonstrate that what one is saying is doable, and is done by the person who is telling others to do. By doing the things one can establish the credibility to the results which it can achieve. It also provides confidence of the results to the person who is going to ask others to do the same. If one experiments and finds a success then he can tell others to do the same and achieve the similar results. If the experiment fails, then he can modify the experiment till he gets the success and he does not have to ask others to do the same till he finds a success. This approach is comprehensive and has a great convincing power.

In Say & Do approach, the person advocates what should be done to anticipate specific results and then does it along with others. This approach does not guarantee the results as in Do & Say approach but provides an opportunity to experiment together. It requires team to decide one thing together, build the roadmap as they move along and achieve the results together. Lot depends on the vision and thoughts of the person who is articulating what to do and the belief people have in him. This is pretty difficult and thus not seen as often as Do & Say approach.

So which approach will help us in improving our level of Excellence more effectively? 

Couple of things that are different in these two approaches are, Do & Say approach advocates that only successful experimentation should be shared with others, whereas Say& Do approach advocates every experiment should be shared before actually experimenting.

Do & Say approach asks for individual to do experiment in isolated manner, modify the experiments till the desired results are seen and then ask others to do the same experiments. On other hand, Say & Do approach depends on sharing of ideas / experiments that one needs to perform to expect certain results and once the team is convinced about the experiment, then perform the experiment together.

Individual perseverance is key in Do & Say approach, as one needs to continuously work on new ideas / experiments till success is achieved and this process is marred with many obstacles before even idea reaches others. Whereas Say & Do approach totally depends on idea and logic which will make every one believe that it will be a success. Once agreed, it is a team game and success and failure is together. This approach requires more courage than Do & Say as there are more uncertainties to tackle.

Typically Do & Say approach provides a guaranteed success albeit slow but Say & Do approach provides a possibility of faster but un guaranteed success.

So which approach will be more effective if we have an objective to improve the level of excellence at which we are operating individually as well as at organization level? I feel that the Say & Do approach will be more effective as it enables one to experiment more often, it requires leader to conceive new ideas along with methods to implement, build logic to convince team about possibility of success; This really takes Leader to higher level of excellence that what he is operating currently. It enables the leader to take the team together in the experiment and elevate the whole team to a new level. It will encourage the team members to think differently as the team might encounter problems while implementing a new idea as well as they can think their own new ideas for experimentation. It also enables leader to teach the team how to handle the failures. So the ideal approach could be mix of both with Do & Say approach for product areas and Say & Do approach for Process/People related areas.     

Excellence is Habit

Excellence is Habit

Will Durant, a famous philosopher and writer of the book The Story of Philosophy, has said very aptly, “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy'.

He says it very nicely and clearly that we will not wake up one day and say we have reached excellence or it is not that we will keep on training ourselves and we will achieve excellence after a certain period; but what ever we do, when ever we do defines our excellence. There is no specific scale to measure and compare against. There are no international standards / benchmarks we can refer to and try to achieve / comply. The only benchmark is ourselves and we get measured by what we do and how we do things. So we define our level of excellence through the level depicted in most of our actions. We normally will display different level of excellence in various actions we perform in our day today life. Our level of excellence is perceived at the level where we have performed the maximum time. The other instances when we have performed better or worse than this are typically discounted.

This actually means we have a habit of performing at a level of excellence (where we have performed maximum number of times). This Habit defined our level of excellence and what ever habit we have adopted for doing actions, we are at that level of excellence. I am currently in Japan for work and I am observing this phenomenon right from when I landed. Take a simple thing like greeting a person when you meet, the way a Japanese person will greet is very elaborate and respectful. Plus this is consistent, every time you meet, the greeting would be elaborate, sincere; even when you meet multiple people, they all will greet you in similar manner. This all looks very different from the perspective of a non Japanese person, and we wonder how they can do this every day and every time they meet some one. But if you look from Japanese perspective, it is just a habit they have formed from their childhood and they just do it, they do not feel they are doing anything elaborate or different than what they have been doing. You can see such things in many simple tasks which puts them on higher level of excellence and many of us.

When we are calling it as a Habit, and we know the nature of our Habits, i.e. we try to change them but they keep coming back to same level, so is it destined for every one to perform at a certain level of excellence and no more? Is there any way to break our habits of actions at lower level of excellence and get habituated to act at higher level of excellence? Lot of questions come to our mind and we look for that magic wand or magic training program or magic book or magic medicine or something like that which, when we do we can move quickly in to new habits. We also know the answers, very simple, habits change by doing things differently and consistently. The two words differently and consistently are very important; differently, we know that we need to be at different level of excellence and we do the action in that fashion to define new level of excellence for us and consistently, which is the most important thing, that every time we do this action again, we will do it at the newly found level of excellence. It takes patience to change habits and also one can not change the habits drastically at one go they need to be changed “bit-by-bit” as I have mentioned in my one of my earlier blog.  

Also when one try to operate with one set of habits in personal life and another set of habits in professional life, we find it extremely difficult. The habits are the things that come naturally to you and you do not have to make any special effort when you are doing the same. If you have to act not according to your habits, there are high chances of failure or internal stress built up, which can create failure in some other area. So if we are not acting with same habits in our personal and professional life, one must look at it and see how one can start merging these two things. This will be the first set of habits that the person will need to change and once he becomes stress free that he does not have to remember about which surrounding he is taking the action, he can start focusing on improving the action itself.    

So our habits define how we do our actions and our actions define level of excellence we operate at. Actions through habit are very natural to us and excellence is also natural to every human being. So let us get in to habit of performing each action at higher level of excellence that we are habituated to perform.   

Excellence while Multi-Tasking

Excellence while Multi-Tasking

It is observed that for an average person, he / she will have at-least three things on their mind at any time and they try to juggle their mind between these three based on the priorities he or she considers. Naturally one may be excelling in one of those three tasks and the other two will mostly be at the passing cut off levels. One feels good that he/she has not failed in any of the tasks inspite of the juggling. One moves from one juggle to another on continuous basis and settles down as some kind of level of excellence which is far less than the level of excellence one is capable to achieve.

Most of the information comes to us in the form of either e-Mail, or SMS or phone call or any connection in social media we are connected with. The information comes in completely unstructured manner and actually it comes at the convenience of the sender and most of the times it is at inconvenient time for you. The technology has enabled us to create alerts for all the incoming information in order to not to miss any of the incoming information. Many a times we believe that we must react to the information as soon as possible and we try our best.

The world we live and operate today has become fast and the speed is increasing as we move forward. It has become more connected, thanks to the technology, which is simplifying the networking on continuous basis. It has become more data oriented, data dependent for decision making as we have the technology to gather, analyse and infer from the vast data available across the world in a very short time, some time almost real time. One is expected to live and thrive in such an environment where one is connected for 24 hours of the day, one keeps on getting information 24 hours of the day, one is expected to react 24 hours of the day. This pattern of unstructured information inflow demands us to multitask continuously and perform all the tasks demanded out of us by the information received. The information inflow is so erratic and so diverse that one cannot plan for the same but one is expected to be performing at higher levels across all the tasks all the time.

Is it possible to be performing at higher level of excellence and continuously increase it across all the tasks that we perform?

Yes; we can simply do it by doing one task at a time

Let us take a situation of a meeting in an office for discussing strategy for moving forward. Let us look at the scenario just before the meeting is going to start. Most of the attendees will be senior members of the team and they are called to contribute and collaborate to build the strategy. One by one the attendees come settle down in their seat and first thing they look for is a LAN connection or a WIFI connection to connect their laptops or iPads. One simple question I want to ask here; How many of the attendees will need information through network to enhance their contribution to the ongoing meeting for strategy formulation?.  Atleast 90% + members will answer that they will not get any help. You ask another question what is the possibility that if you do not react to any of these disturbances for the duration of meeting things will turn in to irreparable damage? Mostly you will get an answer as NIL. So if you do not allow yourself to get distracted by the incoming information, you can focus on the task at hand i.e. formulation of strategy and will definitely display higher level of excellence which you are capable of. So try attending the meetings without connecting yourself with external world and see the difference in your contribution.

This is fine for meetings, but we cannot do the same at our desk, where we are connected and onslaught of information continuously distracts us; we cannot refuse a call or an email when it lands in our inbox or someone dropping by in unplanned manner. Yes it is right that we cannot refuse the information inflow but we can always regulate the outflow (our reaction to the distraction) from our side. Ideal way is to look at e-mails / messages intermittently in between the tasks you are performing and not while you are performing a task. This way you do not get distracted while you are performing your task and you do not miss any of the information you receive and that you need to respond. This definitely enables us to focus on the task at hand till it is completed and do not miss any of the information coming. Many a times, we suddenly remember something that we might have missed to do and we get distracted, we stop the current task and start the new task. Once this chain starts then we lose complete control over what we are doing and our level of excellence drops significantly. A simple method of creating a to-do list solves this problem. It is a good practice to create a to-do list and ensure that all the tasks are listed on it and we complete them without fail. So as soon as we remember any of the task in the middle of performing another task, just add this task to the to-do list with appropriate noting and continue the task at hand till its completion. Once the task at hand is completed, pick up the next priority task form the to-do list and continue performing it at your high level of excellence.  

One will feel a little odd when we start this method as we typically are addicted to respond any information at the earliest; but slowly one gets used to it and one is able to do multitasking with higher level of excellence through one thing at a time.

Proactive Re-invention for Excellence

When a person / organization starts moving up the excellence ladder and starts climbing the steps one by one, one can see that at every step, they have undergone some change, adopted something new, or done something differently, mastered some new tools & techniques, etc. which has enabled them to move up the ladder.

I think, we should turn this information upside down. We should start creating these changes ourselves proactively and then move to the next step of ladder as per our wish. This looks simple to read but has significant challenges as to how do we know that we have to change, how do we know what to change, where to change, how much to change etc.; because, the change can easily backfire and take us down the ladder. So can we do it and be sure that we are on the right track?

We need to re-invent ourselves (same applies to organizations also) periodically through formal efforts. The key here is “REINVENTION” and “PERIODICITY”. The idea is to reinvent ourselves at regular intervals. I am stressing here the word re-invent, because it is much different than reviewing ourselves at regular intervals, which many of us do it without any significant impact. According to Cambridge dictionary, REINVENT means “to change something in basic way so that it works differently”.  Here the stress is on change in basic way and this is what typically does not happen when we are reviewing and modifying in our regular review cycles. Now the question comes that can a person / organization change their basic way of working on regular basis and can it be at will or it is typically a eureka moment for some one some time, and we do not know when it will come? How frequently they can change this? will it not create a chaos in one’s life or operations of the organization?

I think we can do it we just need to be a little courageous. Let us take a situation where in you have completed an engagement and you are yet to get in to the next one; this is the right time to reinvent oneself. How do we do it? Can any one do it oneself? I think we know the process it is same as we do when we review ourselves i.e. look at what has gone right; what could have been done better; what are lessons learnt and what changes that needs to be done going forward. This is simple and well known process isn’t it? The only thing we need to do is try and question our basic assumptions about ourselves. Our whole logic, analysis, defense, actions are based on specific assumptions about ourselves. These are typically formed from mixing our perceptions and our wishes about ourselves. These may not be perfect. So question them courageously with an open mind that we can change these assumptions in positive manner. Once you figure out what change we need to do with these assumptions, we have reinvented ourselves, till that time we just keep on circling around the same thing getting same results and staying at the same level of excellence. This is easier said than done, but doable. So we need to try it out a few times before we start understanding how do we make and handle self criticism, destabilizing one’s ego, question our basic beliefs about ourselves, etc. Due to lack of these abilities, most of the times our response to such a review brings out thoughts and actions to change things external to us; we are afraid that if we admit that the shortcomings lie with us, the impact of the same would affect us adversely and thus in order to protect ourselves, we start reacting in a specific manner; but when one does self assessment with oneself, there is no one to notice, no one to know the shortcomings if you find one, and no one to punish. If you change your basic assumption as a result of this assessment, the external world only will see the positive results and definitely applaud for the improvement. This is the beauty of PROACTIVE REINVENTION, which when you do it with yourself, on your own, before any one finds the need for it and do the change before anyone feels the need. Once you internalize this process, you can continuously climb up the steps of Excellence ladder at your pace rather than any external factors pushing you to do it.   

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.