Leadership Lessons ( Part 2)

This is the assimilation of thoughts and ideas discussed during our leadership seminars conducted by Dr. Debashis Chatterjee(12th Nov 07 - 15th Nov 07)



Concepts Discussed

• Approach to problem solving
• Sight and Insight
• Architecture of value creation
• Politics and you
• Incremental change and leadership
  

Nov 14th 07

The big question now is, what should we do so as to improvise this understanding?
Sir said that one should try to move away from analysis and towards synthesis. The different between these two lies in the fact that analysis is of facts whereas synthesis is based on facts and felts. This is extremely imperative because all the facts based analysis is being taken over by computers, which makes you replaceable.

Rather than just breaking down a problem into smaller components and finding the root cause, those who can design an opportunity away from the core problem would sustain much longer and would create a special demand for them.

One should graduate from a critical to an empathetic mindset. Whenever we think, a protein is created in mind and this is called a thought and the source is called the thought protein. A very interesting fact brought out at this point was that even heart has neurons and can thus think. This means that there is a mind of the heart and this fact should be kept in mind while taking decisions.

“The resource of the leader is engrained in his courage”

There is a huge difference between sight and insight. The leader brings to the table the non apparent insights which are much more valuable than what meets the eye.
We discussed in details our approach to the problems. Sir gave a classic example of the SRCC principal, who caught the problem and not the people and discovered the potential in those youngsters rather than just ridiculing them for their actions. We can summarize this by saying that

“Leaders distance the person & the problem and create the architecture of value creation”

With this thought also came the importance of commitment and the sense of responsibility which an individual should feel. Sir also took the contemporary idea of hopping jobs in a few years to show that your demand is still intact in the market. But he also mentioned that one should be extremely committed to the organization, no matter how long his stint is in the company. One example that strikes me in this context is of Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Group. He and his brand is one entity. One should never forget that every business is a promise.

Every Business rests on 3 pillars:

1. Knowledge
2. Action
3. Context

A leadership mindset is nurtured only when one tries to make a conscious effort towards acquiring all the three.
While creating a context, one should be careful that that context should last for a long time to come. Create a context that is flexible enough and which can be defined again and has a meaning in the future as well.

Nov 15th 2007

Today, the session started with the discussion of the Jack Thomas case and it surprised us all with so many insights about human behavior. The ones that I could capture are as follows:

• Politics comes from the perception of power and it starts even if there are 3 people in an organization
• Capabilities, if not utilized in the right direction, goes in manipulation of truth and circumstances
• You might not participate in politics but you should always keep your ears open and understand it completely
• Human mind does not see everything, but a mirror does. Sir gave the example of Rajat Gupta in this context and told us that the true reason for his success was his ability to help others succeed. I think attaining this kind of selflessness is difficult but we can relate this to our parents. We are so close to them, trust them, depend on them, because of their selfless nature.

We did a small exercise on identifying the people that we think are leaders in different realms of life. The most exciting and the most difficult part was that we had to mention the qualities of these leaders that attract us. Interestingly, what came out was that our disposition in some or the other way was driven by those values and thus we relate to them so much.

“Incrimental Change is the greatest enemy of leadership”

While Kaizen talks about incremental improvement, we saw an example of how this philosophy can be fatal as well. Sir showed us a clipping of a frog in a water flask. When boiling water is poured over him, he jumps out immediately. But if the flask is heated from its bottom and the temperature of water inside increases slowly, the frog does not react and rather adapts to the new situation. We also keep doing wrong things in small increments and after a while forget the actual amplitude of the wrong deeds. In such a case a radical change has to be carried out so as to bring us back on the right track. Sir also mentioned the premium that has to be paid for this adaptive change.
Another fascinating example of the adaptive capacity of human beings was of the tennis court. I thoroughly enjoyed this example and learnt how the conviction of a person can help another person find tough things easy.
Sir ended the course by weaving together the most important moments from the movie “Dead Poet’s Society” in which Robin Williams does something extraordinary in one of the strictest institutions of the country. He enables his students to think for and by themselves. It is like they take their destiny in their own hands and then decide to move forward.

Leadership Lessons ( Part 1)

This is the assimilation of thoughts and ideas discussed during our leadership seminars conducted by Dr. Debashis Chatterjee(12th Nov 07 - 15th Nov 07)

Concepts Discussed:

• Human Capital
• Perception and Reality
• Passion and Energy
• Pillars of Leadership
• How mind works
• Conditioning your mind

Nov 12th 2007

House defines "leadership" organizationally and narrowly as "the ability of an individual to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward the effectiveness and success of the organizations of which they are members." Organizationally, leadership directly impacts the effectiveness of costs, revenue generation, service, satisfaction, earnings, market value, share price, social capital, motivation, engagement, and sustainability. Leadership is the ability of an individual to set rules for others and lead from the front. It is an attitude that influences the environment around us.

The session today started with some kind of a comparison between a resource and a source and specifically ridiculing the way companies today compare human capital to a resource. Sir compared source (human beings) with the spring water rather than the bottled water, which cannot be replaced easily. Well this reminds me of a famous saying by Ross Perot

“Inventories can be managed, but people must be led”

This started another exciting discussion on illusion and reality and Sir explained that

“In the world of illusion, perception is equal to reality”

The practical relevance of this statement is tremendous i.e. to change reality; you must change the perception of that reality. This reminds me of the social plague called “caste system” which choked our society for centuries. But people who were in the grip of this were doing absolutely the right thing because the perception of it was right. Hence, to change the reality, the perception of the society had to be changed about the lower caste so as to improve their actual condition.
Now, it doesn’t matter how intelligent you are, but how are you intelligent. Our social context only measures an individual performance throughout our academics, which inspires people for individual goals and aspirations. But when we enter the working arena, the context changes and along with individual work, the group achievement also takes an equal importance.

Sir says,
“Where ever your attention goes, energy follows”

We did a meditation exercise as a demonstration of this in which we were made to forget where we were and we focused our attention to something else. And yes, we could feel the transcending of our thoughts and energies to a different place altogether. Well, this happens to us many times that if we are hurt, we keep feeling the pain until we divert our attention to something else. I think that is the precise reason why success comes when your passion meets an opportunity. Your passion attracts all your energies which help you convert an opportunity into a success.
A common notion that all of us carry is that a vision should precede an action. But sir explained that Vision comes much later after you have executed something with passion. It is only when we understand something deeply enough, we can create a vision around it. We also had a discussion about the differences between vision and wishful thinking.

“A team of stars does not make a star team”

Sir gave this example to exhibit the importance of each member of a team. In business, much more than talent is required. The business acumen encircles the different mindsets that are needed to achieve the goals. It can be very well compared to playing an orchestra, in which even if one instrument does not play well, the whole tune is spoilt. It is a collective effort of each instrument and member to create a successful tune.

“While managers work within a culture, leaders create them”

Sir said that there are 3 main constituents of being a leader:

1. Knowing Yourself: One should know his strengths and weaknesses so as to play on his strengths and to complement his weaknesses with others strengths.
2. Relating to others
3. Making sense of the systems: This is about understanding the context of operation and to be able to respond according to the overall system. A good example for this can be the inappropriate oil usage in the burgers of McDonalds in India.

We concluded by looking at the video from the movie "Gandhi" and understood the importance of moving from the Egological to Ecological mindset. While egological mindset is a self driven mindset, ecological is in consideration of the entirety.

Nov 13th 2007

The first session concentrated on an exercise which revealed how different people react in different situations and how a leader takes a holistic approach in his decisions.
Today we also had an astounding discussion on the way mind operates, its states and how to take it to the pinnacle.

“Open Mind” = “facts” + “felts”

The varying degree of facts and felts that your mind processes results in altogether different perceptions of the same situation. Sir defined this as the edited version of reality.
Then we moved to the concept of Growth mindset and the stagnant/ struck up mindset. Sir said that the chronological age at times takes over the mind. But mind actually is an extremely sophisticated machine which can be tuned to outpace the physical age of a human being.

A classic expression of the same concept is;

If rate of change > rate of your learning, then you will get consumed by change

This reminds us to keep abreast of the contemporary and to move with them. A learning mind is the biggest asset that anyone can possess. The barriers to learn sprout up with age like arrogance, your experience etc. When you get typecast as someone, you tend to create a cocoon of comfort zone which reflects the same perception.
This reminds me of "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Spencer Johnson, where he describes the need to come out of our comfort zones and always move with the cheese or opportunities in real life.
This also reminds me of a small story in which a guy is in distress and goes to his close friend after years and tells him the story of his struggle to move up in his organization and the difficulty that he is facing in doing that. The friend starts to pour tea in his cup and keeps on doing that even after the cup is full and the tea starts to spill over. He asks a question that why is he doing that? And then the friend replies by saying that if you want to put something new or more into the same cup (i.e. our brain), we have to empty our cup. Then he explained the process of learning and unlearning so as to move with the changing time. This can be very well compared with the fertility of brain that Sir talks about and how important is it for us to be aware of this.
Sir mentioned about the changing modus of receiving information and processing it. The way the relevance of print media is diminishing and other forms of information are taking over.

Sir concluded this idea by saying that

“The fertility of the land determines what grows on it”