SOAR and leverage yourself more!

Today I met an interesting Executive Coach who shared with me an interesting module in how one can help discern one's career as also how to leverage one's leadership strength.

The steps are quite simple really - its called S.O.A.R

1. Situation - describe 3-4 situations you have been in that stand out for you. What was it, the background, the actors involved. In other words, what was the challenge or opportunity?

2. Obstacles - What were some of the constraints or obstacles you've had to face to resolve the issue? How much of it was within your control or outside your control?

3. Action - What actions were available to you? What were the various options? why did you select the option you did? What actions did you finally take?

4. Outcome - What was the eventual outcome? Did the issue get resolved and how well?

Do try this out. List this on a sheet of paper, and you fill find a pattern emerging. Perhaps you will see a distinct style to how you approach challenges and opportunities. If all of these have lead to success, you would be able to glean a leadership style, a competency which stands out for you.

Of course you can do the similar exercise for situations where the outcome has not been great. This would likewise point out to your developmental opportunities.

You can use this tool for others areas too: What about my job, do I like / dislike, etc.

Knowing yourself, and your strengths is a critical tool to leverage your Career. Hopefully, this small post has got you thinking about You.

What lies ahead, just around the corner….

What lies ahead, just around the corner….

It is with tentativeness that I write about the transitions that we are journeying through. Tentative: because so much has been written about it already and would this article just be one more to add to the clutter?

Let me share what I am witnessing:

Emergence of new business models – newer organizations are emerging with low ‘brick and mortar’ presence. Processes are being re-written and transformed rapidly to enable fulfilment at the touch of a few buttons. Viola! need is satisfied. 

Consumer insights – traditional segmentation is giving way: Consumers are not this and that. They are this, that and more. Studying cohorts of consumers and using predictive analysis is now the new ways of target segmentation. 

Re-defining Assets – gone are the days, when assets were visible: towers, buildings, etc. Today most organizational assets are inherent in platforms, ‘ways of working’, agile strategy, etc. Computing power has exponentially increased yet inexpensively allowing us to make breakthroughs, chief of them – breaking codes. Do you recall how Alan Turin cracked the Enigma Code?

Just in time – this was confined to logistics, now directed to the final consumer. Consumers have access to unbelievable SKU’s, and fulfillment and route to gratification is but a few digital clicks away.

New paradigms in design – we now have access to digital prototypes. Make, re-assemble, test, re-test – all done digitally. Imagine the lowering of costs, and ‘speed to market’ on innovative products. 

These are but a sprinkling of change we can see around us, which will only exponentially rise. 

Imperatives for Organisation – to survice this VUCA organisations need to scan the environment continuously, take big bets, anticipate opportunity and create the future, while continuously learning and adapting. Individuals learning is not just enough, the organsiation as a whole will require to be agile and enable an agile strategy. However, most critical it is for leaders to have an agile mindset.

This task cannot be left to HR alone. While HR responds to Business how does business respond to the environment? This requires collective awareness and a call for action. HR must disrupt itself: it must recognize and support the coming together of both the ‘dominant logic’ and the ‘dominant psyche’ of the organization: through that lens ensure all work systems, work processes, information flows, capability mechanisms, and leadership initiatives are ‘inter-connected’ for mutuality and collaboration.

I advocate small and agile squad teams: many squadrons that work seamlessly together: creating the network for new possibilities. 

Leadership pyramids that currently exist, need critical re-examination. 

The first step to Change is Awareness. 

This is Day One

Day One!

17^thSeptember was my last day at work at Diageo, having spent four years supporting a massive transformation, that included re-structuring, new ways of working and building out a high-performance culture.

Although we had a farewell party a few evenings back, on my last day the team assembled together with HR folks from the region on Zoom to say a ‘final goodbye’.

The cake was unwrapped, and it said, ‘Happy Birthday’. (most cakes come for such occasions at office). Someone apologized, but unconscious process was clearly at work: recognizably this was a birthdate for me. A new birth to a new avatar. 

Today 18^thSeptemberis day one! 

Amazon is a 21-year-old company and yet each day is a ‘day one’ experience at work. Someone once asked Jeff Bezos at an all hands what ‘day two’ looks like.

Bezos response, “Day two is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating painful decline. Followed by death.” And that’s why each day at Amazon is always going to be day one.

As the curtain falls on time that marks day one, I have a lot to feel good about. It’s been an amazing day: including a website I flagged off late evening. I have never felt so exhilarated, ever so joyful. Hundreds of messages have poured in from friends and well-wishers and I have been touched. Blessings, goodwill and support have poured in and I have been so humbled. I feel blessed, grateful and truly privileged for the love and affection I have received.  

Day one is about ambition, vision and self-commitment, I imagine. I must remember that Tomorrow never comes. Tomorrow comes as Today. Every tomorrow comes as today. For today is always going to be the first day for what will be the rest of my life. 

For what happened until today is just my history. It cannot influence my geography. The past has no power over me, no influence in how I chose to live my Today. Unless I chose to let it. 

Let me commit to lead my life, One day at a time….one day at a time….

Work is Worship, and the Fountain for happiness

Work is Worship, and the Fountain for happiness

We are all in search for that ever-elusive quest for happiness. 

Several millennia ago our Indian sages posited in the Purusharthas the blueprint for fulfilment that all persons should aim for: the fourfold path of Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha. Working with them creates a satisfied, meaningful life at the most holistic level. 

There is scores of literature that point to various aspects to gain happiness. From Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, to Clare Graves, Beck and Ken Wilber postulates on Integral theory which confirms the teleological and evolutionary stages of both moral and cognitive development, that allows for ‘growing up’.

From religion, especially more meditative spiritual practices that allow for self-realization and ‘waking up’, and which allows for the transcendental. Most religion, still get entrenched in archaic, mystical, magical and mythical symbols, and get questioned with ever expanding frontiers of science. 

From literature on EQ/ SQ, that confirms that self-insight is by itself not enough, one needs to add: being sensitive to how one ‘impacts and influences’ others. 

To modern age fads, including power yoga, power foods – all are wishing a slice to fill this insatiable thirst. 

Few have otherwise posited a recent insight I have been exploring: could meaningful work itself be the source of continuous joy? Someone said, ‘The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” Just think, if we took away the occupation of a person (his meaning), what a wretched world it would be!

Few of us realsie that work is worship: how critical it is to be engaged in something that keeps us busy, otherwise we would be busy with our thoughts – either ‘future thoughts of anxiety’ or ‘past thoughts of nostalgia’. 

Happiness is not a search for something, it is a state. Remember, the oft quoted reference to ‘the journey being more exciting than the destination’? Work provides an opportunity to put mind, heart and all the forces within to potentialise.

When there is work to do, health, wealth and relationships follow. By itself these don’t bring happiness. Work does. Keeping the inner currents moving at work, flowing in the moment, being in a meditative state at work, that is the essence of happiness. Even in physical labour, one actually stops thinking. Show me someone who enjoys his work, and you will see ‘samadhi in action’. 

No wonder the great book ever written, The Gita has us remember, ‘focus on the doing, the deserving will follow’. 

To all my readers, Continue to work with zest, and Keep walking!