If you Change your Identity then it is easier to Change your Habits

James Clear

While reading the book ‘Atomic Habits’ for the second time, I came across this concept of Identity Change. I didnt even knew if I had read it the first time. Maybe I was not conscious enough to notice it. If you want a summary of Atomic Habits, do click on the link here to my blog post.

It left an impact because I on the lookout for ways and means to change my habits. I am struggling with some of my bad habits and that is the reason why I picked up Atomic Habits the second time.

So it said that Habits Change comes from identity Change.

Why Identity Change Leads to Change in Habits? Sharing my Experience.

Although this concept was not new to me and I had earlier seen people do something like this but I was intrigued to learn more on it.

My Learnings are below:

We become what we say again and again to ourselves. Even if it is False at the outset, we try to mould our behaviour based on these statements. Maybe the start might be a bit bumpy, but eventually we will fall in place. In line with what we are saying.

My example comes from my struggle with habit of keeping myself fit. I have always consider myself fit. Although I have a Normal BMI, I have a ton of bad habits that might damage my future health scenario. These included munching on snacks, getting outside food whenever I am hungry or spending unnecessary time on social media in a bad posture.

Keeping that in mind, I would want myself to keep myself fit by consistently following a fitness regimen and doing things that a fit person would do.

How I Implemented It

So when I came across this idea of Identity change, I started repeating myself with a sentence ‘I am a fit person’. This sentence would repeat whenever I was about to do a bad habit. Since I knew what a bad habit would look like, it became an instant call sign for me.

I must disclose that not all the times it was a success. I can say that I succeeded 80% of the times. Overall I was quite satisfied with the idea of repeating myself this sentence and let my psychology do the rest.

One thing that I did notice was that, I did not have too many sentences at one time. For eg. I am a fit person would encompass doing exercises regularly, eating only healthy food, I limit my social media intake.

Also I didnt do too many things at one time. I am facing challenge in my writing habit, my planning habit but I didnt acted on it right away. I think by dividing my challenges in many small parts and using the identity change idea for just one part will help me deliver the results.

I hope that you would have got ideas on how to change your bad habits if you have any and using identity change to over come them.

Share it with me and I will response if I can.

Regards,

Sarathi!

P.S.: If you wish to learn more on Identity Change, you can visit this website by James Clear to know more.

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What should be the role of a CEO? What the world thinks I should do and What should I actually do?

More… Coming soon… on 12 April 2021 by 9 pm.

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Leadership is a Journey and not a Destination

Leading a team of people, I have often thought why am I not able to get the results that I desire from my team. I must confess that most of the times, I have pinned the blame on my team or the lack of resources or the lack of access to people. But is it really about other people / thing / situations?

During a session on Leadership, the Program Facilitator Sama Taneja, delved on the 5 Ladders of Leadership. These are the positions that Leaders assume while managing their teams. The 5 Ladders are:

1. Titan
2. Relationship
3. Results
4. Commitment
5. Respect

I will explain each Ladder in detail and what does each of this position mean for the Leaders. I will also explain what could be the possible results by assuming a position and pitfalls that he could face. Please note that a Leader may assume a Respect role for some employees and Titan role for others. Lets go.

1. Titan

Leaders who assume this role do not have any established relationship with the employees. Employees working such a Leader do not have a choice and it is a compulsion for them to work here. The moment they find a better job or a better opportunity they will leave. This is not an ideal role to assume. Employees give their bare minimum and are usually not involved in their work. They are a typical 9 – 5 employee who do not have any motivation to work in such an organization.

2. Relationship

Leaders connects with the team members. They often do it by either meeting them individually or connecting them in group but the purpose is to make connection. Team members understand the goal and purpose of the organization. They start giving a little bit more effort. Here, Leaders try to know the aspirations of their team members, what are their needs and wants and what are their fears. He tried to connect with them on a more personal level.

3. Results

Leaders lead here by example. The team members are inspired by what the Leaders do. The results produced by Leader is impactful and the team members up their game in this scenario. Commitment of the employees increases and they are inspired by the leadership. Leaders understand that they are the key to the results that they truly desire. They also understand that they are the bottleneck and if they want the company results to improve, it is they who must improve. The employees are disciplined because they see their Leader as disciplined.

4. Commitment

Leaders who are at this stage have established successful relationships with their team members. Leaders have produced results which has a powerful impact on the team members. Leaders strive to create more Leaders like them to lead the company. Leader are invested in the growth of their team members and works towards improving their results. Leaders help their team members develop new skills, identify new talents and assume new roles. Leaders also:

• Recruit Well
• Position People Right
• Equip People
• Prepare People for Success

5. Respect

Leader who are at this stage inspire people as they attract immense Respect. They become a role model for the team members. Leadership at this stage is Visual and Employees give their best for the organization. Examples are NR Narayana Murthy, Ratan Tata etc.

As you can see, results of an organization is not a function of the performance of the company but it is about the performance of the Leader.

After attending the session, I understood that If i have to bring in the results that I desire, instead of blaming my time, I must introspect my own performance and how could I inspire my team. I personally like to create an impact and set an example for the team to emulate. I also believe that I am responsible for the success of my team and the more they achieve success the better it is for my organization.

I do hope that you would have got some ideas and you would start meaningful conversations with yourself. Do drop in your thoughts on my Facebook or Linkedin or Twitter profile.

“Identify. Improve”

~RG~

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Optimize for Time before Money, Reach Before Revenue

I have been following James Clear and usually catch most of his tweets. I am aligned with his ideas on productivity, personal improvement.

Today, I am going to elaborate on a couple of ideas that @Jamesclear shared in his 2020 Summary Thread on Twitter. For clarity, his Twitter Thread is posted here:

In this thread, he has shared his experiences, learnings in business as an Entrepreneur. I am inspired by all rules, there are some that I will elaborate bit more. They are:

1. Optimize for Reach before Revenue
2. Optimize for Time before Money
3. Reduce the Scale, Not your Standards

Optimize for Reach

My understanding is that @jamesclear would focus more on improving the reach of products or services. Since the reach is inversely proportional to price, higher the price of my product, lesser the people would be able to afford it.

If you price it such that the product does not look exclusive in nature, more people will be motivated to buy the product. More people would mean more usage, more word of mouth and ultimately more reach.

Optimize for Time

It is usually a practice to try saving as much penny as possible. Decisions such as hiring, purchasing an asset, implementing a system would usually involve optimizing for money.

What @jamesclear suggests is to focus on optimizing for Time. Optimizing for Time would force me to improve my efficiency, to get as much work done as possible. This will force me to take decisions that gives me much time for myself.

When I have time for myself, I must spend it to build more time for me and not less. Spending a well earned time before screen to browse on social updates is not productive use. Spending time on loved ones is productive as it will enhance your relationships going forward.

Spending time on creating processes or systems for your organization is even more productive as it will reduce dependence on me and increase my time.

Never Compromise on Standards

@jamesclear wants to have high standards and aspire to apply to same standards to everything that we do. Be it your distribution, your products or communication, you must weigh them against the standards that you have set.

While improving the reach of my products, it might so happen that I get lenient on standards in order to increase my business. It might get me good business but I will suffer on my standards. If I measure up to my set standards all the time I will be able to create a sustainable brand that is clear and consistent.

End Note

My idea to curate ideas from well known authors and people of influence is to help my audience get the best of ideas at one place. Also, it would help me to dive deep into ideas and hopefully have better chances to implement them in my business and personal life.

I do hope that you would have got some food for thought from this post and you would implement them. Do let me know how you did it and maybe you can influence others to do the same.

~RG~

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Setting Goals, Planning, Executing, Tracking & Reviewing are Processes necessary for Success!

A Brand New Year and a Brand New Moment to Organize ourselves. As the New Year approached, I was faced with a question that I asked myself? How am I going to be any different than I was earlier? What new would I do to improve the quality of my life and improve my business prospects?

I started the practice of creating Yearly Goals a couple of Years ago. So I read my last years goal and starting reviewing what did I achieve.

Not expecting much here, to my surprise, I was able to accomplish a lot. There were a lot of misses but yes, there were pleasant surprises too. I ran the 10K marathon, the first ever in my life. I also started a blog. In fact I completed atleast 1 goal in all major areas of life i.e. Body, Mind, Soul, Career, Family, Society, Relationship.

Having made a great deal of progress, I decided to increase the challenge and incorporate a few more things which will improve this process.

How about increasing the frequency of this joy of accomplishment? Can I plan for Every Quarter or Every Month? Can I review Every Quarter or Every Month and find how many accomplishments did I achieve?

Given below is my way of creating Goals and tracking them.

Set A Goal

The process of planning a year should Ideally start with Setting up a goal. My goal came from my long term intent which in turn comes from my Vision.

My Vision is to be Physically Fit and Mentally Alert and my Long term intent is to have an HbA1C < 5. On the basis of these two, I have set a goal of HbA1C < 6.

On the 1st of January, 2021 at ILEAD Session, Shyam Sir explained that Vision should be such that you should say “This is impossible”. Vision should also be small as a statement (ideally single line or two line) and should not be bound by numbers or date.

After Vision, you must formulate your Intent which is usually 5 – 10 – 15 years in the future. This would have long term intent related to your vision along with a probable year of accomplishment.

After you are through with your Long Term Intent, break it down to a number which you will achieve this year. For example, I intend to do 30 minutes of Meditation practice sometime in 5 years time. A year ago, I could hardly do 20 secs. This year, I can do 6 min without losing focus on concentration. A fair goal for me would be to double this to 15 min in 1 year. A bit stretched and difficult for me but looks doable.

Set Milestones

After I have set the Yearly goals for myself. I must break this down to Quarterly or better, Monthly goals. Of course, there could be slippages, but it is good since that would give me an idea of the mistakes that I commit.

So if 15 min. of Meditation practice is my Yearly Goal, I can break this down to 4 differently Quarterly goals. Q4 would obviously be 15 min. while Q3 could be 12 min and Q2 could be 10 min. Since Q1 would cover Jan – March of 2021, I will have to ensure that by 31st March 2021 (i.e. Q1), I will be able to do atleast 8 min of Meditation Practice.

Doing 15 min of Meditation Practice would be my main Goal. However, there would be a lot of small tasks that should be achieved in order to get to my main Goal. For 15 min Meditation Practice, some of them were:

1. Choosing Time (You could start morning or evening and try which time suits you)
2. Choosing Place (You could sit on a chair or try the padmasana position to ensure you are comfortable to sit in the same place for at least 15 min)
3. Choosing the type of Meditation Practice (You can see if a guided meditation app such as Headspace)

If this would have been Sales Turnover Goal, some milestones could be training of sales staff, per sales staff per month turnover increase etc.

You can set these activities as Tasks under the Goal of 15 min. of Meditation Practice. As soon as the Activities are accomplished, it will reflect in your Milestones achieved.

Now the query is, how to ensure we are on track. For this, you must take the help of a Track-sheet. Unnati Unlimited gives out beautiful Track-sheet in the form of Cards that you can fill on a daily basis. I have already mentioned about the importance of Tracksheet in one of my earlier posts which you can find it here.

Track your Activities

So once you have broken down your strategy into activities, you can track your activities to find if it is working. For eg. if you are aiming for converting 5 new prospects every month, your activities could be to call 10 leads everyday and meet 5 prospects every day. At the end of the month, you can review your activities and decide if these activities really made sense. If it didnt, you know that this strategy does not work and that you need to try a new strategy.

By using a Tracksheet, you can divide your activities and track them on a daily basis. Once, you have achieved a milestone, say losing 2 kg in a month, by Running for 30 min, you know that this strategy works for you. You can add similar activities (cardio exercises) which might improve your goal achievement.

Tracking is a very important part of the Planning process and it must be included while aiming for a goal. But along with Tracking what is also important is regular review of your goals.

Review Progress

Let us assume a scenario where you had kept a goal for yourself at 80 kg while you are at 90 kg. I believe this to be a stretch goal and worth a try. If all your strategies work perfectly fine, you might be able to achieve much earlier. What do you do then?

Review helps us assess if we are going in the right direction and if there is any need for course correction.

Not only in a situation where you can achieve your goals early but also where you might find it difficult to come close. Here, a monthly review or quarterly review would assist you in improving strategy or worse alter the goal for the year.

End Note

This simple process of Setting Goals, Setting Milestones, Track Activities, and Review Progress helps you to plan the achievement of your goals. Of course, there are a lot of items that must be considered such as Resources required (Time, Effort, Money), Possible Threats.

I do hope that this article would have given you an idea of how I plan my year. If you have any queries, please connect with us on facebook, linkedin or twitter.

Wishing you all a Very Happy and Successful New Year 2021!

~RG~

The post #29 Planning for 2021 – How to Organize Yourself? appeared first on .

Interaction with your Customers should be Direct. Do not allow any third party to hijack this Interaction.

Mr. Razak, MD, VKC Shoes was invited to speak as a Guest Speaker at ILEAD, Delhi Chapter. I was fortunate to have a recording of this interaction.

At the outset, I am deeply grateful to Leader Kirit and Leader Akash for gracefully accepting my request and arranging for this video. This interaction happened in June 2020.

Opening Note

VKC Shoes has a number of well known brands to its name in the Shoes, Sandals & Slippers segment. Ithas factories across India and has sales presence worldwide.

It was started by the father of Mr. Razak and is now headed by Mr. Razak and his brother. VKC Shoes have more than 8000 employees and 31 directors.

Following are some of the important ideas that inspired me, hope they will inspire you too.

Interact with your Customers

Mr. Razak showed that instead of following the accepted practice of the industry to appoint big distributors in each city, his father appointed small distributors across cities.

The idea was that if you are dependent on your distributors for your sales, it means that they are controlling your business. The moment your distributor moves out, your sales for that territory would crash.

Also, appointing a big distributor would essentially make you part of a big basket and your product is one of the many products that the distributor is trying to sell in the market. Your products movement would then be dependent on your margins given to distributor, the effort by distributor to educate your retailer, making your products occupy the maximum shelf space etc.

Appointing a small distributor would essentially help you occupy the larger pie of the basket. Here it is important to note that the sales to the retailer would essentially be done by you. You should interact with your retailer, educate them about your product.

Since, you are driving sales, the small distributor would have a higher probability of sticking with you. Also, since you are controlling the sales, you would be more concerned on occupying the best and maximum shelf space of a retailer.

Sharing Success

Mr. Razak also gave this radical idea of sharing your technology know-how with new and upcoming entrepreneurs. Mr. Razak knew that it may lead to growth of many competitors but he was never concerned about them.

His idea was that by sharing your technology, you are helping to improve the efficiency of the company. This will lead to better capacity utilization, low cost, improved jobs scenario and overall development of the nation. This idea is very similar to what Mr. Prakash Varmora shared with us during the session on Wealth Creation. You can find the article on that session here.

This would also bring in synergies between different companies which might open future opportunities for collaboration. In VKC Shoes case, they launched the first ever Footwear Exhibition which helped them to explore better vendors.

Companies also collaborated on bulk buying which lowered their raw material costs and hence overall price of their products.

Improving Efficiency

Mr. V Abdul Razak was very particular about not punishing the customer for your mistakes. His belief was that if you can improve your efficiency why should you charge your customers more?

Mr. Razak explained how they improved efficiency many fold by following the latest technology, implementing novel systems that improved their overall costing of the product.

He gave an example of marking of wastage expenses into the cost of the shoes. While everywhere, it is a standard thumb rule to consider 3-5% as an accepted number for adding up as cost to your product. Mr. Razak pointed out how they know that they do not have waste more than 0.5%. This benefit is simply passed on to their customers.

And…

Mr. Razak had 2 key Mantras for us:

1. Whatever product you are giving, you should be satisfied with your offering. If you are not happy, there would be no repeat buy.
2. Bring Transparency in the organization. All 10000 employees must know what is happening in their organization.

Mr. Razak listed the core values that they adhere to:

1. Be Fair (Even if there is no competitor, pricing should be the same)
2. Be Ethical
3. Develop Trust

• Always be adaptable to change eg. Corona situation
• Always be fair to your employees. If you can accommodate, dont fire employees. Work out a Win-Win Arrangement.
• Review meeting every month
• Always look for the size of the market and opportunity where penetration is possible

End Note

I was very much inspired by Mr. V Abdul Razak and how sincerely he is managing his organization. I was moved by his simplicity, honesty and candid approach. Having seen very few entrepreneurs say that they are interested in showing their technology to upcoming or fellow competitors and sharing their knowhow.

I do hope that this article would have helped you dive into the mind of an entrepreneur whose motto is “Quality at Affordable Price”

I am hopeful that you would got some insights which you will implement in your business and your life.

Thank you for Reading.

~RG~

The post #28 Interaction with Mr. V Abdul Razak, MD VKC Shoes appeared first on .

As an Entrepreneur, I am quite attached to my business. I will always see the positive side of it. I know this business will succeed and how it will help me achieve all the things that I wish to do.

But will it pass the test of fire? After all, the idea should be first sold to the investors. Even if you are bringing up your business, at some point in time, you would need Private Equity to come in so that you can use the funds to grow.

So what does an Investor, a VC or a Seed Investor look into when they are planning to put in their investment? I read this letter between 2 VC’s (Paul Graham and Fred Wilson) discuss about investing in a new startup. Link for this conversation is available at the end of this article.

Following were some key points that I found from the article.

Team is Everything

Early on in the conversation, the push was to meet with the Team and then decide on the opportunity. This is it. More than anything else, it is what the team that matters. There might be a great idea but with a lousy team, its not going to make it.

So what do the Investors look into the Team? My guess is anybody’s guess but from what I have learned, Investors look for a team that is not afraid go out and do things that dont scale. More on this in my blog post here.

How Big IS the Opportunity?

And how BIG will be the opportunity going forward? Startups or Businesses might initially target a small market and make themselves look to serve a niche.

Investors while looking for investment are looking at the potential in a Business? They try to figure out the kind of Opportunity the business in questions might serve 5 – 10 – 15 years down the line.

If a business is into selling books online, can it sell it in the same state? If the business can do it in same state, can it do across the country? If the business can do across country, can it do electronics? If it can do electronics, can it do apparels? If it can do all this, it becomes Amazon!

Capital Efficiency

Who would like their investment to go into funding someone’s mistakes? Not me. Investors are no different. All said and done, Investors also want their funds to genuinely serve the purpose it was designed to put in the first place.

And this is where Capital Efficiency comes into picture. Capital Efficiency demands judicious use of funds with an eye on growth which is what is expected from a startup.

Initial Opportunity is not Everything

I have seen Entrepreneurs get too much attached to an idea. It comes to a point where it is difficult for them to act on any feedback. However, the two VC’s clearly mention how successful startups often claim that they started with another idea and have metamorphosed into a different one.

I am sure when Paytm started their journey, they would have just wanted to be a payment gateway. But as they went ahead, it made sense for them to add shopping carts and then Airlines and then Bus/Train ticketing. Paytm is currently valued at $16 Billion.

End Note

It was really fun reading the email conversation that ensued between 2 top notch VC’s who are investors in companies such as Etsy, Airbnb, Doordash etc.

I imagined VC’s talking about valuations and returns and what not. But what really matter to them was not valuations or returns (when the startup was at a very nascent stage), it was the team, the opportunity and their ability to create value with the funds.

The Startup in Question was AirBnB which had its IPO last week and is now valued at $87 Billion Enterprise.

Thank you for Reading.

~RG~

The post #27 Finding Opportunity – Discussion between 2 VC’s appeared first on .

This week 2 Companies got listed, Doordash (DASH) on NYSE and Airbnb (ABNB) on NASDAQ. As I was browsing through my Twitter feed, I found this thread by the Founder of Doordash, Evan Charles Moore.

The thread gave me insight into the minds of the founders of Doordash. With a formidable competition in Grubhub and Ubereats, I was amazed to learn the techniques they used to outdo the competition.

One of the things that Moore mentioned was “Doing Things That Dont Scale” which they learned at YCombinator. Unable to understand what this was all about I went to Paul Grahams (@paulg) of YCombinator who had a whole essay on this concept. You can find it here.

Although Paul has written a wonderful essay, I felt compelled to take points and present it here. I must explicitly mention here that if you are looking at a summary of Paul Grahams article on “Doing Things that Dont Scale” then this post might come hand.

What?

So what is actually “Doing Things that Dont Scale”? A Startup, at the nascent stage, must take actions which will help the company in the long run. These actions might not be pleasant, in fact downright difficult to pursue, but if done with a heart and good intention will bear fruit going forward.

These actions will help you get insights that might not have been possible by being before the whiteboard or making flashy presentation. These actions will help you grow your initial set of users, define the target market that you must serve, gaining early loyal customers, testing products.

These actions will also prevent you from focusing on activities that are low value, making costly decisions, demotivated by small numbers.

Do –

Startups and their Founders must focus on Doing things that dont scale:

1. Recruit Users Manually
2. Delighting Users
3. Giving Insane Experience
4. Become a Consultant
5. Focus on Small
6. Test & Iterate

1. Recruit Users Manually – Founders must go out into the market and do Sales. Getting your hands dirty by having first hand experience of sales will pay you in the long run. Become 1% better every day.
2. Delighting User: Focus on making the initial set of users extremely happy. There is no Upper limit to delighting your customers. Also the hustle needed to delight a customer is higher in a Startup as compared to a Large Organization
3. Giving Insane Experience: Focus on experience by your customer. Try giving Insane experience, be it Product or Documentation or your presentation.
4. Become a Consultant: Act as a Consultant to your initial customers, solve their problems, understand what works for them and what doesnt, bring the knowledge and improve your products.
5. Focus on Small: Avoid Big Launches if you can get big insights from small launches. Monitor your days and it will take care of your quarters. Focus on Narrow markets and grow big.
6. Test & Iterate: Test try your product on a small market. Make changes to your product based on the feedback and then try it again. Make small iterations until you get a good product.

I found the blog of Paul Graham extremely informative. You can access the blog post here.

Hope this small posts would give you new perspective to your business and how you approach it.

~RG~

The post #26 Doing Things that Dont Scale – Paul Graham appeared first on .

“Compassion’ is not a word often bandied about in locker rooms. But I’ve found that a few kind, thoughtful words can have a strong transformative effect on relationships, even with the toughest men in the room.” Compassion breaks down barriers among people.

I was motivated to write a post on this topic as it became a talking point in one of the books that I was reading which is Trillion Dollar Coach by Eric Schmidt.

Since I call myself a Student of Leadership, I get a lot of interests in reading different styles of Leadership. It also led me to read / watch / listen to Leaders or understand from their autobiography how they went around building their company or their country.

I personally admire the Leadership qualities of Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) of Singapore and how he pulled a whole generation out of poverty and built the city of what it is today.

I thought of Leaders as being tough and angry and fanatic about their goals. However, I found that they can be all this but in a more humane way. That I think is Compassionate Leadership.

Why Compassion?

Employees are forced to think of the management in general and the leader in particular as somebody with whom they should play hardball. It is mostly about extracting the largest pie or saving yourself from exploitation.

I dont reject this argument either. Founders / Management push their employees to achieve targets, improve efficiency even at the expense of their family life. At the same time, employees often see the managers / owners getting wealthy.

The current Pandemic has shown why this is so true as there are large scale lay-offs and employees forced to take compulsory pay cut. This has been seen especially in companies which had good balance sheets.

So how do we bridge this mistrust that comes naturally between an employee and the company? How do you inspire your team members to stick with your organization through tough times?

It is by having positive intentions for your team members and a real concern about them will you create trust. This is what I call Compassionate Leadership.

Compassionate Leadership

Compassionate Leadership is not just about Empathizing with others. It is more than that. It is about setting an example before your team. It is about influencing your team by displaying integrity (Congruency in thoughts, words and actions).

It is also about finding out what is best for your team members and communicating it to them in a way that uplifts them and inspires them to think in the best interest of the organization.

Compassionate Leadership involves the Leader to think in the best interests of the team members. Leaders might have to give some tough feedback to the employees to motivate them to beat their best. Leaders might also have to take decisions that might not be appreciated by the team but it is in the best interests of the organization.

Last week, I had the opportunity to host few Leaders from the Commune ILEAD. Leaders were kind enough to visit my Factory premises and tried to learn more about my challenges.

I posed my challenge of how to motivate my team members to improve production efficiency. Shyam Sir made me realize how everybody wants to see some role models which they can look up to. He asked me if I would be able to increase Sales which can set an example before my team.

I was pushing my team members to increase production. I was also getting angry and frustrated when the goals were not met. Also, this brought a lot of negative energy to the table.

Even if the team members try some ways to increase production, this is not something that could be sustained in the long run. Also, it might force them to push for higher wages, increased staff strength and more leeway going ahead.

By becoming a Role Model, you are indirectly communicating to them about your accountability. You are influencing them in ways that would help them increase their commitment for the greater good of the organization.

Examples

A great example of Compassionate Leadership is that of Bill Campbell, Coach for greats like Steve Jobs of Apple as well as Sergey Brin, Larry Page of Google.

Bill loved shining the spotlight on others but preferred to stay in the shadows himself. [1]

All his life, Bill showed how you can improve your success by making as many people successful. Bill believed in his teams, gave them freedom and knew when to correct them. Bill practiced compassion which led him to be so successful as a coach. [Read book ‘Seeing Organizations Differently: Three lenses on Compassion’].

Another example that I could think of is Phil Jackson, Coach of Chicago Bulls from 1989 – 1998. Phil Jackson led Chicago Bulls to their 6 League Championships having a team that consisted of greats such as Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman.

Phil Jackson gave every person on the team the leadership role and kept all the team members guided by the team’s vision. Read here to look more into the mind of Phil Jackson.

End Note

Compassion might not be the most sought after quality in Leaders as compared to Goal Achievement or Ambition. But all said and done, Leaders must work with teams that comprises of real people and not machines. And people have emotions.

So if you are unable to connect with your teams on a personal level, you might not be able to get the best out of them.

Also, Compassion leads to creation of trust and feeling of fraternity that ultimately drives people to achieve goals for the common good of the organization.

Hope this post would have brought a new perspective to this style of leadership which is what we might need in the years of come.

“Compassion. Transformation”

~RG~

The post #25 Compassionate Leadership – Why & How? appeared first on .

Change is never painful, Only the resistance to change is painful.

Do you know any habit of yours is detrimental to your growth? How many times did you realize that some of your actions are not in sync with you values? Did you fail to bring about a consistent change in your behavior?

Familiar? If you ask me, I would say 100%. I have realized this bitter truth many times over the last couple of years.

Sometimes through my friends and at other times, through deep introspection, I have realized that I am unable to remove the limiting behavior or bad habit. It looks like it has become my second nature.

In this post, I will try to articulate my thoughts on why I repeat this limiting behavior and what can I do to stop it altogether? Also, I will address why do we provide resistance to change and what can we do about it?

Identifying a Limiting Behavior

The first step to resolving a conflict is to find the source of the conflict. So, in this case, I must first identify which of my behavior is not helping me grow.

In order for me to identify which of my behavior is not in line with my goals, I must look at dissatisfaction in different areas of my life.

I can take the example of Sales for my company. My results are not in sync with the goals that I had identified for my company. I knew there is something that is not working right.

Instead of putting the onus of sales on my Sales team, I questioned my contribution to the Sales & looked at my efforts that contributed to the Sales of the company.

I found that although, I did contributed well, it was not enough to get us past the goals that I had decided for my company. Also, I knew that for my team to outperform, I must outperform first.

I digged in further only to find out that I was reluctant to do cold calling. and was not focusing on meeting customers daily. I was merely trying to get busy by involving myself in the daily production and management of the company.

Unfortunately, how much hard I work on the operations or management level, it is never going to contribute towards my top-line. I knew that Cold-calling potential prospects and converting them into opportunities would improve my chances of improving sales.

My reluctancy to not pick up the call could be due to many factors, I realized that this is something that I must overcome.

Taking Ownership

The first thing that I realized is to own this challenge. Instead of finding somebody else the scapegoat, I should know that I am responsible for my behavior.

I am past the age where I could blame my parents, my conditioning, the environment that I was brought into. Although, I know that all these could have influenced the early part of my life. They are not responsible for the current resistance to change.

Taking Ownership has forced me to become accountable for my habits / attitudes / behaviors. Taking Ownership also allows me to remove the mental agony that comes from blaming others.

Instead of trying to find fault with others, I am now better placed to focus attention on finding the best solution to this challenge of changing habits. My mind is less occupied with negative emotions and is now always on the lookout for ways to overcoming this challenge.

So, I took up the task to improve my cold-calling and thereby creating opportunities for my business. But how can I overcome this inertia?

Always Improving

I can safely say from my experience that the ability to overcome any resistance can be achieved by doing 3 things:

1. Breaking it into small achievable tasks
2. Giving it time
3. Doing it consistently by using a tracking tool

After I came to know that my Sales goal achievement would depend on my effort to call / meet / interact with potential prospect, I immediately decided to address the challenge.

I knew that my behavior to delay, procrastinate or outsource my Sales effort is doing serious damage to my organization. I decided to break this effort into small parts.

The first thing I did was to decide a fix time in my day at which I will call. For me it was 11 am. Next I decided the frequency of calls that I would make. I broke the whole effort down to just 1 call. So my effort was to select 1 person whom I should call a day before (it should be a cold call) and call that prospect at 11 am.

I knew that overtime I would get better at calling people and getting business. I gave myself time and didnt rush into things. Its ok to fail but its not ok to not give it a shot. I knew that the law of compounding would work in my favor. So slowly I gained confidence, many times my prospects educated me about my business which was great!

Soon, I started building on it and added the no. of calls that I will be making everyday. I then added another task of meeting 1 client every week. Soon, I started building over it to take that number to 9 clients per week.

Another activity that I did was to put this on my tracking tool to help me make myself aware of the progress that I am making every week. It also helped me identify if I am going back to my habits. I have already explained in one of my earlier posts about such a Tracking tool that you all can make. Click here to read the post.

More Help!

In order to make myself accountable, I created a common scoring system for all Salespeople in my organization where every Salesman (including me) would punch in their efforts at the end of the day. So for Sales, the different efforts were : no. of cold calls, no. of old leads called, no. of opportunities identified and no. of conversion done.

This helped me bring in healthy competitive spirit in myself and motivated my team to push more. It also in a way showed how accountable I am towards my work. So, from no onwards, if I introduce myself as a Salesman, everybody knows I mean business.

It also acted as a Tracking tool for my Sales team that showed exactly how much effort everybody was putting in. Of course, there were every chance that the data would be wrong but we put in place a weekly review system where all the effort will be reviewed by all members.

I was assisted by the wonderful Leaders at ILEAD – a commune of committed and motivated Entrepreneurs who are all focused on getting the best out of themselves. I would totally recommend getting in touch with an organization like ILEAD where you can get the association of like-minded individuals.

Conclusion

From my experience, I can say that Inertia or resistance to change is not rare. This is ubiquitous. Different for all. Some might be having difficultly in cold-calling like me. Others might find it difficult to read books.

What we can do is to identify the behavior and take baby steps to overcome the barrier. You might be assisted by the association you keep so do get touch with organizations or group of friends who can help you with your challenge.

Hope this was a good read.

“Identify, Build”

~RG~

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