Saturday, June 27, 2015

Focus is More Relevant than Effort !!!

A student went to a Zen master and said, “I am devoted and keen to study your martial art system. Tell me Sir, How long will it take me to master it?

The teacher looked at him casually and remarked “About Ten Years”

“But I want to master it faster than that, I will work very hard, practice twice the number of hours per day... and also slog at night" and "Sir, Then how long will it take me?”

The teacher thought for a moment and said “Twenty Years”

Simple lesson, it takes time to master something. It is not the quantum of time rather the focus and attention that we can pay that makes the difference in how much skill or knowledge gets accumulated.  

The more one focuses on the task the better is the learning.  If you tend to push through you are bound to undermine the learning. 

There is an optimal speed at which we can learn, understand and synthesize knowledge and we can get more adept at it but short circuiting it in something new we seek to learn will not help the learning any more than walking around with a dictionary makes you an expert in English language. 

Read more about the power of Focus and How It Makes a Difference in What we Do and What Gets Done.   Basically what gets focus gets attention and eventually gets done.  Read Here

Friday, June 19, 2015

When Opportunity Knocks !!

They say opportunities come knocking. Not once... but.. several times.  But we often ignore them or overlook them. As Winston Churchill said "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity while the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
This can happen only when we are aware of the opportunity. So, coming from a positivist school, I believe the world is not full of pessimists.  Then the question is why do people miss opportunities. 
First the problem of not being able to identify opportunities.  Reason can be explained as unawareness.  Did you remember someone you knew saying " I could have taken the Design Course.. but ....." or"I could easily have done engineering.....' but  or I was up for a top modeling assignment but chose medicine.... imagine what life could have been today OR the more common one among investors "I was about to invest in XYX stock.... only if I did I could have been millionaire like my friend."   One of the  most common mistakes made by students who get into the wrong course (they dislike after joining) or graduates getting into wrong jobs (hate the profession)  is they did not do enough homework preparing to understand what it meant. Most often doing some home work or some kind of scrutiny would have helped make better decisions. 
The other point about missing out opportunity is being overly cautious.    We fear taking risks, fear the unknown, fear not being able to make it, fear the hard work and thus ... miss out the opportunity.    Thus you end up giving a let go to something that you should have seized.  I remember one person telling me that he got into IIT Mumbai in the 1970's but did not go as it was too far and he preferred staying at his village and studying in a college nearby but.. the real reason when we explored more was about the fear of going to the city and competing with the boys there. 
Another reason especially among those who are talented, gifted or have some strength they never capitalized is their inherent lethargy.   Left to themselves they would prefer to chill, enjoy life as it comes and no one was there to push them to the wall and drive them.  So it is mostly talent wasted kind of situations that fall in this category. 
Next think of the dreams you had but never converted to reality.   To give wings to dreams you should have a plan.  Lack of Planning  is another way one has missed opportunities.  By the time the race had to be run you were still working on the equipment and missed the race.   
In human relationships we can often hear someone say "if only I could have made up with him / her.. Now he's no longer here..." .  This happens when we don't mend relationships or build broken bridges with someone while they are there with us but regret it later when they moved away to something new and no longer are with us or when they unfortunately pass away from this world.

In all probability you find that when people are old and enter the evening of their lives they often speak about what they did not do.... the missed opportunities. But I think being aware of how one can avoid the chance of categorizing the wrong one's and regretting them is something we should understand.   We will discuss a very simple framework in a later post.

Thursday, June 4, 2015

Contextualization and Substantive Composition Key to Successful Practices

When it comes to organizational practices we seem to live in a copy cat world.  Human Resource is one such domain where similar sounding (Yes resoundingly the apt word can only be sounding...) practices abound across the organizations.  There is  strong tendency to look at what others are doing, emulate them, follow what they do and think that we would achieve success. So if you take a dozen processes in an organization you would find they resonate across different organizations in the industry.  However there are two things to keep in mind.   First is about “contextualization” and second is about “Substantive composition”
Contextualization is about understanding the scope and context in which the process, the tool or the framework you have adopted or implemented.   Take for example that most companies have a performance management system.   How much is it contextualized.  What does performance mean in the industry. Do you need a separate framework for sales versus the consultants, or will incentives work.  How much should you bank on deferred compensation.
Second one is about substantive composition. How you implement in your specific organization is more of a cultural thing.  They way your people do performance discussions, the reliance of managers in career development framework,  the coaching tendency of your managerial staff and other leaders,  the way rewards and recognition is valued when delivered all of these are cultural.

I can give my whole process manual for performance management in my organization to a competitor but sadly it can never be implemented the way it was done in my organization. It can be copied but it can't be implemented for the same outcomes.    Our HR practices and systems are not 'freely mobile' for implementation outcomes and if they were so then every industry entity say (in IT for example) would have implemented the same kind of  processes (yes they do have similar looking one's) and would have reaped similar benefits.  But this is far from true as seen over past 2 decades.

In conclusion remember....
"It is not the form that your HR systems and processes take that makes the difference and lets them stand apart --rather it is the substance behind the form that the systems and processes take makes them so". 

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