Another weekend gone by….

Finally another hectic week came to an end with the NAMESAKE movie. Before I proceed to the movie review, first on first things first. Had been to Mumbai to attend the scholarship interview for JN Tata fund.

Basically I wanted to attend the interview more personally. The reason was to see where I stand and how I fare. The interview went exceptionally well although I was lucky to browse through few healthcare innovations recently which they happened to ask. So I can say it was a copybook interview where I was controlling the rudder of the whole interview. So irrespective of whether I get the scholarship or not, it has helped me boost my confidence a lot considering the fact that preparation was just a couple of ours.

Then it was party time first with a college friend Biswajit where we hung out at Inorbit mall checking Mumbai chics and then with my sis, bro-in-law and a cousin. Went to a cool place “Soul fry” and it was fun. The next day lunch was at another happening place of Mumbai “Hard rock Cafe”( Couple of places to go to in Mumbai) …. Me not a big hard rock fan but definitely the setup was stylish and extremely comfortable …. ambience,food…so were the prices with a burger costing 400 bucks only. And then I was back in Hyderabad…tired of traveling by bus,train and air….I want to stay at one place ---but that does’nt seem to work out…and I will be traveling again very soon…maybe it will continue till I get the visa.

Well then tried our luck for Namesake and boy – the movie is good and extremely well directed (of course as expected) . Liked the movie and would be reading the book soon .Of course another book that I am interested to read now is Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol. I would rate the movie as worth watching .

Monday Morning Leadership

Monday Morning Leadership

I am currently reading Monday morning leadership by David Cottrell . Its a thin 100 page book but the book is a must read for everyone.It has something to learn for to be and current leaders . Lot of things mentioned in the book - most of us would be knowing or doing but when it is written somewhere and you read it in a book - you start thinking.

Besides , I will start trying and putting up some of my practical experiences to it so that I can relate it to in a better way.

Session I: 
Be a driver - As a leader we need to understand the difference between a driver and passenger . This is very true in all situations. Just like the driver looses some of the freedom , a leader should understand that he does not have all those freedom as other employees have . And just like a driver he must understand that the whole team is his responsibility.

Personal Exp:This reminds me of a friend who just moved into our team recently.With this move he was expected to gradually grow into a leadership role. Besides his experience was much more than his team members which makes it obvious for others to accept him to take this role.But personally I felt he never realized this himself and never changed from the passenger to driver role. As a team member, he continued to get into chit chats which always involved scolding the management for everything that happened to him.In this new role,he continued to do so which definitely undermined the way the team looked at him and was  demotivating factor for the team.In a short time ,it was realized that he was not ready to be a driver yet.

These transitions are very tricky from an employee to a leadership role.The leadership looks at you a prospective leader but you are still part of the team as a employee.Every employee gradually growing in a organization grows through this.In such a case, you walk a very thin line between a employee and a leader.You need to always remember that although you are part of the team,you have lost some of the freedom they have as a prospective leader.

Take Responsibility -Personally and also as a leader we need to learn to take responsibility of anything that happens around us. There is no point blaming anyone for anything but its more important to take responsibility of it and then look towards the future how to deal with it.As Jeff puts it by taking responsibility we look to the future but by blaming someone we are looking at the past.

This is something that is generally pushed or should be pushed in all organization. If someone commits a mistake , never look at who committed but but try looking at how the same mistake can be prevented in future.

Talking of responsibility , it is worth mentioning here - while we take responsibility of the event ,it is also very important how we react to the event. That would decide the outcome of the event and many other events that get tied up to it.

Personal Exp:

Session II:

a) Know your main things:

                        It is very important that the whole team knows the main things that they want to achieve. That provides focus to the team and a sense of direction to what they are doing. And a focused team often provides better results.

 

So as a leader it is very important that the leader knows what the main things are and communicates them clearly to the team that these are he priorities that he wants the team to focus on.

 

Never assume that the team knows what the main things are. So it is worthwhile to ask the whole team what they think the main things are. Don’t be surprised if you get answers different from what you thought.

b) Setting up the main things:

                        These are typically my thoughts on how these should be set.

a)      They should be drilled from the top business level.

b)      They should not be things that can be achieved in a fortnight or a couple of months in a process oriented business. Once achieved that leaves the team distraught on what should be their next focus area. Besides if the leader does not communicate what next pretty quickly, the team slowly losses focus and just drift without purpose.

c)      The main things should be aligned to every individual’s goals and objectives against which they are appraised at the end of the year. So every individual knows what he is doing will benefit his growth in the organization.

c) People quit people before they quit the company

                         This is something I really liked and the more I think, the more I think that it is true.

            Most employees look at their manager to meet their needs and if the manager is not able to do so, then gradually they become frustrated about it and start scolding the manager and link everything happening in his office life to that frustration. So even very small things add to that frustration and with frustration, everything seems to look bad and immediately the other side of the garden looks much greener. One of the things that every manager should do is to get in touch unofficially with people who have left and try to understand what made him to leave. What went wrong which made him to look outside.

            Of-course there are lot of other reasons why people leave but the above reason definitely would rank very high on the list and other reasons would drill down from the top one.

Session-III

a) Get in touch with people:

                  This is very true for everyone managing any team. The manager should coach or mentor all his employees.He should provide feedback to both his superstars,middlestarts and underperformers.Gennerally it so happens that we do not provide feedback to superstars assuming that they are doing good and they don't need any feedback . What it gradually happens is that the superstars start feeling that there manager does not care about them and does not meet their needs.

 

And since they are his responsibility , so they have full rights over part of his time . So a leader should always listen to them and be open and flexible enough so that they are ready to talk with him.

 

b) Hire the best and dehire the underperformers

                All the management gurus have stuck to this and no one would deny it.Never lower the bar to hire someone just for the sake of hiring.Set a standard and then stick to that . When we lower the standard during hiring, we are basically lowering the standard of the team.A less competent person , obviously puts extra load on the rest of the team as the team balance gets disturbed.So what it ends up in is that the good competent employees end up doing more where to make up for the less competent employee.

 

Now if we do not dehire the less competent employee for affecting the balance and for doing less, by giving them decent performance appraisals, we are basically awarding them for doing less work.So this in short is doing unjustice to others who have put extra effort. So gradually more and more people enter this band where people are rewarded for doing less work and it destroys the team.

Trip to bhubaneswar

Trip to Bhubaneswar

Right now I am waiting for my first trip on Air Deccan And to be frank, I am more apprehensive traveling on Air Deccan then I was while traveling to US . I attribute this to the wonderful reputation that air deccan has created for itself. Its ironical though that in the last two years, I don’t remember of any accidents that Deccan has encountered during this period. Hopefully this holds true for 1 more day.

Well this trip, like any other trips had its share of the good and the bad. No point putting down the bad on paper as I rarely like to remember them again. And the good part was after a long time papa, mummy, nani and myself were together at home in Bhubaneswar. And then mamu landed up in Bhubaneswar for a surprise trip for a couple of days. That really cheered up aee and aja. And the center of attention as always was my nephew who came up with new activities every other day. Ikshu is keeping everyone on their toes and he is real fun to be with. 

His mama leaving him to alone in Bhubaneswar and going to Mumbai was a emotional one for everyone in the house and nani was really sad. Hopefully ikshu will get used to it and it will not affect his growth in anyways. And then me leaving again just a day after his mama, he was again hurt and was crying terribly.

As most of my trips to home, this trip also I completely stayed at home. I think when you stay out for so long ,you like to spend all the time at home whenever you are back. And also I don’t have much friends left in Bhubaneswar to roam around .

The deccan flight from delhi has just arrived and wish me a happy and safe trip back to Hyderabad.

Deccan Airlines

I travelled on Air Deccan for the first time last week . The price being almost same as 3rd AC train and the significant time saving changed my decision towards travelling on deccan even if I was apprehensive about flying on deccan. I would attribute it to the word of mouth advertisements about deccan like the flight maintainance is very bad, the flights are really dirty, the flights are overbooked ,the worst thing is the flights are never on time and above all that you would never be sure about your check in baggage which can be very easily misplaced. 

I am not sure if I was lucky because you cannot arrive at a conclusion on all the above things by just travelling once.But my experience was quite different.

To start with the flights were on time , although there was no seats reserved(which I still think is not a good idea) but there was no confusion in terms of getting seats . The flight was almost full as it was coming from Delhi. The good part is you can find a good girl and go and sit beside her. And there were some good delhi girls ofcourse on the flight.

The flight was over all clean and the maintainance if not too good but was ok - may be because the flight has just started in this sector.

But what caught my attention is the effort to get advertisements inside the plane for example the ICICI advertisement on the head rest, the NDTV advertisement on the baggage area .Well its a goodway to get some money from other means and pass the benefits of low cost flights to the customer. Deccan can look for more such options as this is a good means to get the attention of customers for a full period of 2 hours.

Besides there was some selling of consumer goods on flights which I believe should be done more intensively.The airlines should try and gauge what a consumer might buy in such a short period.One thought is lot of people would be travelling to meet their dear ones and they can have some nice gifts which people can buy for their dear ones. I believe the airlines is already involved in selling water and food material but they should not charge a premium on that. 

But the decision to fly on deccan for all the people would be driven by the same philosophy - cheap tickets. But can money alone be the only driving factor as compeition hots up.So its hould start looking at improving if it has to stay fit as a business.What deccan should do is to try and fix the small issues such as luggage displacement, over booking which are more of setting setting up a system rather then short term fixes like writing the destination by chalk which is a manual process and can lead to errors.Besides it can try keeping the plane clean and inside maintained by using part of the money from advertisers to do so.And then it should try to do some advertisement for itself on these fixes and not rely only on prices as a differentiator. And leave the word of mouth to spread right or wrong information about the airlines which might affect it in the long term as compeitition hots up.

Learning from leaders: Management tips

a) Walk the talk - Everybody needs to do what they speak . All their actions should demonstrate what they have been telling. This creates respect and trust among people which is most critical while leading a group. It is like when you are going on a war , the soldiers should have full trust on the decisions taken by the general and walking the talk creates that.

b) Remember Names – The best way to bridge the bond between two persons is to remember the person’s name and always address by the name. Jon Schlemmer had talked with me once in a round table conference – I was not even in his business – and then after two years we have a get-together. I enter into the party and people are already there . Somebody comes and taps me in the back and says “Hi Abhishek,This is Jon Schlemmer…How are you doing?”. Of course I knew him but that one line had me as his fan for the rest of the time.


c) Same side of table – One thing ,I have learned is that while you are trying to discuss or convince someone…and there is a clear differentiation of role, then the best way to make him feel comfortable and cut the gap of a leader and subordinate is to sit beside him and not across the table. This is a small thing but goes a long way but makes one comfortable if you communicate the right way.

d) Communicate – There is no substitute to this. Everybody knows how critical this is , but most of the leaders fail to do this. Your vision, goal, values have to be hit upon the employees again, again and again – till everyone speaks your language and this is shortlived. So it is critical to understand that its not over after once or twice. I have seen few companies but GE does it best. There are a 1001 ways where the GE brand, its values , vision hits you everyday…..This is again a Jon Schlemmer message where he was the only leader sending business updates globally every month and believe me its effective.


e) Never take exceptions – This is from Vinayak. It could be a matter of 50Rs or 100 Rs but if some expense is not to be reimbursed as per company policy then it should not be approved. You approve for one person and such cases never stay isolated and the reason would be sighted down the line sometime. You can tell the person, if he wants he can do it personally for him but not through company.

f) Language – As a leader , always speak the language everyone understands.


Learning from mistakes