Being people dependent seems easier to many business owners and that’s what they choose over making their business a system of (proven) systems.

Photo Credit: nDevilTV's Flickr photostream

They bank on people’s ability over systems. Dialogues like following are common in such organizations:

• If Patrik is here, he will take care of new business development, project management (and general administration also if needs be). He’s very skilled and do everything needed.
• If Maria is in the office, we cannot have problems with visa documents verification. She’s a brilliant employee who knows how to create visa processing file.
• Just because of Johan, our organization will be able to achieve 10 millions of sales in 2010.  Johan knows the ‘magic’ sales formula!
• If XYZ person is available, ABC work will be taken care of…
• Etc.

For the short term, depending on people seems easier as it eliminates overhead of creating systems for your business and you start playing to your people’s abilities very quickly after you hire them.

But over the long term, it’s painful and can hold your business back. For example, think of the situation when:

• Patrik becomes handicap of his capabilities… or
• Maria wants to leave the job and cannot give sufficient time to train new hire… or
• What if Johan has some kind of hidden agenda (which is negative for your organization’s goals) which you figure out in early 2010 and you want to kick him out of the office?

And you build your business strategies around such persons.

It’s great to leverage people’s abilities but not so good to leave your business’ success on their abilities.  To better handle such situations, you need systems.

You need systems:

• On which you can count on.
• Which are independent of persons.
• Which runs without Patrik, Maria, Johan or anyone in the organization?
• And.. you got it!

Systems are not overheads but investments – and effective systems will ensure handsome and consistent returns. That’s what businesses are for, isn’t it?

See Also:

1. Disaster-Prone Business Organizations 30
2. Do You Manage Your Offshore Software Solutions Business This Way?
3. Are You Measured By Results Produced Or The Time Spent In The Office
4. Workplace I Love As A Power-Performer (and you would too!)
5. My Happy Clients 12

1. Disaster-Prone Business Organizations 30
2. Do You Manage Your Offshore Software Solutions Business This Way?
3. Are You Measured By Results Produced Or The Time Spent In The Office
4. Workplace I Love As A Power-Performer (and you would too!)
5. My Happy Clients 12

1. Just the qualifications – But the ability to learn from anything and everything. Something beyond the current education system or known best practices!
2. Perfect family environment – It’s good if you get that, not a showstopper otherwise.
3. Your lucky shirt – Does it matter? Huh?
4. Excellent American accents – Accents are just one way of expressing yourself. Instead be yourself and communicate clearly and you’re good to go!
5. Leo star sign – Many leaders do not have that then why would you need it?
6. Millions of dollars – Nothing comes in a way if you think you will make it, not even dollars!
7. A fancy designation – Leaders make designations not designations make leaders, Lead and take everyone on your bus to the destination of success. As simple as that!

1. You never drag your feet but ready to run in pace with your goals.
2. You are ready to attack the job each Monday after a refreshing and peaceful weekend where you had gotten great time to spend with family and friends.
3. You don’t focus on in and out time at the office whenever you think you need to get a specific task accomplished, you just do it and never look at the clock.
4. You are happy to help your colleagues – always just because it gives you sense of accomplishment. You’re in a good mood.
5. You think that your workdays are short.
6. Many of your good friends are at your workplace – you often love to organize gathering programs with your office colleagues.
7. You care. About almost all the things related to your work.
8. Things generally don’t bug you.
9. You see little to zero bad corporate politics in the organization.
10. You don’t know when did you last use Sick leaves even when you weren’t sick!

See Also:

1. 15 Things That Employees Want In Order To Feel Motivated
2. Do You Manage Your Offshore Software Solutions Business This Way?
3. Workplace I Love As A Power-Performer (and you would too!)
4. Handsome And Consistent Returns That Lie Hidden Somewhere In Your Mind
5. Are You Measured By Results Produced Or The Time Spent In The Office

1. 15 Things That Employees Want In Order To Feel Motivated
2. Do You Manage Your Offshore Software Solutions Business This Way?
3. Workplace I Love As A Power-Performer (and you would too!)
4. Handsome And Consistent Returns That Lie Hidden Somewhere In Your Mind
5. Are You Measured By Results Produced Or The Time Spent In The Office

If you have few years of experience in project management, most likely you have come across agile practices. You are conducting periodical retrospectives at the end of each iteration or release. For agile practices, such retrospectives act like a compass which guides you towards true north.

Photo Credit: gothick_matt's Flickr photostream

In retrospectives, essentially you are inspecting what is expected in the specific iteration or a release. You learn through your mistakes and focus on what you can do better in the next iteration.

And, since your focus is on constant improvement, you see consistent improvements in the project. Isn’t it?

The opportunity here is to apply the same “improving by retrospection” principle in your personal life as well.  It can be applied to measure your personal performance. If we consider our life as a film, you are playing various characters in your life. Some examples of such characters are: Son, father, spouse, student, musician, friend, etc.  You can perform at your best given you have defined set of measurable goals attached with each of such characters.

So the question is how you can measure your personal performance in each of the characters you are playing?

Here is an agile mechanism to handle this:

1. At the start of every week define a set of measurable goals for each of the characters you are going to play in that week.
2. As the week passes by, record your activities in a journal.
3. In the weekend, pick a character at a time and perform a retrospective:
   • What went well?
   • What did not go well?
   • What can be improved and taken to the next level?
4. While starting the next week, align yourself with the answers you found for the above questions.

Such retrospectives enable you to align your actions and help you in going to the next level.  All you need is willingness to go to the next level and a pen and a paper!  Worth trying.

See Also:

1. Attributes of Agile Project Management
2. Twelve Traits of Dependable Project Managers
3. Directness, A Deviant Act That Is More Than Worth In Agile Project Management
4. Your Fundamental Goal
5. How To Inaugurate Effectiveness In Your Project Team

1. Attributes of Agile Project Management
2. Twelve Traits of Dependable Project Managers
3. Directness, A Deviant Act That Is More Than Worth In Agile Project Management
4. Your Fundamental Goal
5. How To Inaugurate Effectiveness In Your Project Team

You are considered an expert in your field and you have recently changed your employer for a good package.

To produce great output in your expertise area, you need to spend only a few hours a day – you don’t need to come at a fixed time and go at a fixed time but your output are just excellent.

The other persons in your organization with similar experience level and position spend the whole day (and sometime nights also) to produce almost the same (may be inferior) results. They come before the office time starts and normally go hours after the office time is over.

Now there are 2 types of organization cultures.

1. Type – A: Organizations who measure your work by results.
2. Type – B: Organizations who measure your work by the time you spend at the office.

Wonderful if your organization culture falls in Type-A, annoying otherwise.

Such annoyance may lead you to do the efforts of changing organization culture – trying to convert it to Type-A.

In your career, it would be a very costly mistake. Organization Cultures are like countries – they seldom change!

Better decision would be to find a culture where you will be valued by the results you produce.

See Also:

1. Absolute Productivity Killer – Thousand Strict Regulations And Low Trust
2. 10 Signs You Are Happy At Work
3. Do You Manage Your Offshore Software Solutions Business This Way?
4. Workplace I Love As A Power-Performer (and you would too!)
5. Are There Failures Or Just The Growth Opportunities?

1. Absolute Productivity Killer – Thousand Strict Regulations And Low Trust
2. 10 Signs You Are Happy At Work
3. Do You Manage Your Offshore Software Solutions Business This Way?
4. Workplace I Love As A Power-Performer (and you would too!)
5. Are There Failures Or Just The Growth Opportunities?

In my decennium long experience journey, I have seen organizations which have a great vision – a vision to become a world class company which is super-positive. 100% win-win for all the entities involved, performance centric, employee and society friendly, ultimate customer delight centric… the best!

But with very little actions.

Little actions lead to fewer results and thus little experience to count on.  But they have great measurability of the results.

Measurability is the lens of their vision.

The other type of organizations is “Action” centric. They do not have any permanent vision to stick with. For them “crafting vision” is an overhead. They are in fascination of actions.

High actions lead to more results and more experience to count on.  But they lack the essential – measurability.

And, anything which cannot be measured cannot be repeated with 100% surity, no matter if it is success or failure.

Actions are in harmony only when they are measured, chaos otherwise.

See Also:

1. Are You Measured By Results Produced Or The Time Spent In The Office
2. 9 Tips for Successful Outsourcing Business
3. Eleven Causes Of Superior Execution
4. Are There Failures Or Just The Growth Opportunities?
5. Absolute Productivity Killer – Thousand Strict Regulations And Low Trust

1. Are You Measured By Results Produced Or The Time Spent In The Office
2. 9 Tips for Successful Outsourcing Business
3. Eleven Causes Of Superior Execution
4. Are There Failures Or Just The Growth Opportunities?
5. Absolute Productivity Killer – Thousand Strict Regulations And Low Trust

Better if software services organizations have only a few simple and strong regulations for their people.

Regulations are substitutes for faith…faith in your people’s goodwill, faith in their competence and faith in their commitment. The more the organizations doubt their people, the more rules and regulations they impose.

Some organizations treat their software engineers like illiterate laborers of 1970 and impose pointless regulations which greatly influence them to be unproductive. For example:

• The software engineers should sit on their seat for the whole day and do work, work and work – what the heck is ‘thinking’.
• If they go out to for refreshment or a tea break more than once a day, it is not tolerated.
• If they are 30 minutes late from their regular day in-time, their half-day salary would be deducted – it won’t be considered that yesterday night the same engineer had spent 3 additional hours  to support an important client.
• Etc.

Such regulations do nothing better for the organization’s growth but make employees de-motivated and managers annoyed.

Ability to produce great results never comes from imposing a thousand strict regulations on your people. It comes from trimming out the complexities from your systems and replacing it with creative freedom and self-possession.

As an organization, do you have a mission…a long term goal that is based on specific values? Do you believe in your people? Or do you want to hide behind the list of regulations?

See Also:

1. Are You Measured By Results Produced Or The Time Spent In The Office
2. Everyday Status Meeting – An Absolute Project Killer
3. Eleven Qualities to Hunt for While Interviewing a Potential Manager
4. Are There Failures Or Just The Growth Opportunities?
5. What Can Be Termed As A “World Class” Organization?

1. Are You Measured By Results Produced Or The Time Spent In The Office
2. Everyday Status Meeting – An Absolute Project Killer
3. Eleven Qualities to Hunt for While Interviewing a Potential Manager
4. Are There Failures Or Just The Growth Opportunities?
5. What Can Be Termed As A “World Class” Organization?

3 Idiots is one of the most enjoyable Indian movies of this decade. The directorRajkumar Hirani has shown us a bollywoodified yet marvelous view of the masterpiece – Five Point Someonefrom Chetan Bhagat.

Here are nine rock solid thoughts you may love to revisit from the movie’s perspective.

1. Knowledge is just a dead thing without its timely application. (Salt water is good conductor of electricity)
2. Do whatever gives you utmost enjoyment . Do what you can do effortlessly – if you don’t enjoy whatever you are doing right now; it’s the time to revisit your goals. (Farhan with a passion for photography drops engineering and opts in for assisting a world renowned wild life photographer)
3. You need to know what you are doing. Doing without knowing leads to disasters.(Chatur’s Chamatkar speech)
4. Common sense is so uncommon.  (Definition of ‘machine’ and ‘book’ in the classroom)
5. Thinking outside the box is not common but if applied properly it can lead to new innovations. (Baby’s delivery using vaccum cleaner)
6. Don’t run after success; chase the excellence in whatever you are doing… and success will follow.(Phunsuk Wangadu!)
7. Even if you win the rat race, you end up being a rat. (Virus’ encounter with Rancho)
8. Degrees earned just by rote memorization are not valuable in real life but actual learning is.(400 patents by Phunsuk Wangadu compared to Chatur’s position)
9. Keep your heart as your foolest friend. Tell him that ‘All izz well’ and things would start becoming well…in your perceived world at least!  (many instances throughout the movie)

The best thing about 3 Idiot is, it feels like a real team effort than just to be an Aamir Khan centric movie. If you take out any character (even the character of millimeter!) and the effect would be dimmed. Watching 3 Idiots (again and again) is a rattling experience to learn how to live life powerfully and add some “meaning” to it.

See Also:

1. Eight Usual Behaviors of High-Achievers
2. Movie Review: Love Aaj Kal
3. Five Better Communication Thoughts To Get The Success You Always Wanted
4. How To Be ‘Cool’ Even In The Situations Full Of Stress

1. Eight Usual Behaviors of High-Achievers
2. Movie Review: Love Aaj Kal
3. Five Better Communication Thoughts To Get The Success You Always Wanted
4. How To Be ‘Cool’ Even In The Situations Full Of Stress

1. Domineering leadership: Leadership does not accept disagreements out of anxiety or haughtiness. “Yes mans” are climbing the wall of quick success here. High employee turnover ratio in senior management.
2. Poor evaluation systems: Inefficient feedback and evaluation systems incapable of providing correct leadership and management performance evaluation data to the top management.
3. Hidden agendas: Existence of invisible profit centres by cutting employee benefits. Hiring and promotions are based on political agendas. Hiring from personal references or relatives to pocket personal loyalty at the cost of other really qualified employees and/or organization needs.
4. Biased rewards: Promotions, salaries, perks and bonuses are unfairly linked with performance.
5. Wasteful use of resources: Resources are allocated based on favouritism and on personal agendas rather than real business needs.
6. Departments are like internal kingdoms: Department heads believe that more people they manage and employ department specific processes, they will become more powerful. This results in intense influence battles around operations and strategies.
7. Asymmetrical work distribution: One department is over-utilized while other are weighed down. Managers twist work distribution activities to satisfy their personal egos and play the push and pull game to their benefit.
8. Over management: Deep hierarchies and many management layers are in the organization which encumbers communication and results in slower execution and wide-ranging red tapes.
9. Disjointed organization efforts: Operating in own silos and turf wars between rival managers are normal which decreases transparency. Such silos almost always result in fragmented projects and budgets.
10. More talk and less work: Talks regarding ‘What Should Be Done’ and ‘What Could Have Been Done’ are in the air. Individual Image building and management is more important than work.
11. Uncontrolled and inefficient meetings: Heated cross-departments meetings with debates and focusing on scoring points rather than sharing responsibility and collaborating to solve the problems which generally end without conclusions or clear action items.
12. Controversies in unity and unity in controversy: Every person thinks of the self. Low sense of unity and teamwork.  The chief decision making criteria is “What is in there for me to take benefit?”
13. Consistent chaos: Management allows continuous chaos in place. They spend most of the time in building strategies to keep consistent pressure on execution teams and blame them for not completing the tasks.
14. Moral decline: Muted level of pledge and enthusiasm by the teams. Little or zero celebration due to internal negative competition.
15. Bad-mouthing: Bad-mouthing among the executives and managers becomes common and sometimes even public.
16. Extremely stressful workplace: Unclarity of work. Extended work hours. High rate of absenteeism and high employee turnover.

See Also:

1. Disaster-Prone Business Organizations 30
2. Workplace I Love As A Power-Performer (and you would too!)
3. 15 Things That Employees Want In Order To Feel Motivated
4. What Can Be Termed As A “World Class” Organization?
5. Five Random Thoughts On Organizational Leadership

1. Disaster-Prone Business Organizations 30
2. Workplace I Love As A Power-Performer (and you would too!)
3. 15 Things That Employees Want In Order To Feel Motivated
4. What Can Be Termed As A “World Class” Organization?
5. Five Random Thoughts On Organizational Leadership

1. Winners are smart workers: They know when to push and when to pull.  When to be at the right place at the right time. They believe in smart work rather than in hard work. They just outperform.
2. The road to the winning is usually rocky: Winners are those who have fallen many times. They have simply refused to lose. Overnight wins are generally enjoyed by those who have many years of experience in failing.
3. Winners are not born encouraged: To ignite the fire within takes everyday-commitment. Winners are those who are awake when the world is sleeping… to deliver their best when the right time calls. It is said that encouragement doesn’t last. Well, neither does your shaving! You need to get a doze of encouragement every day.
4. Three excellence of winning: A winning consists of a smart blend of the following three excellence’s. Excellent people, Excellent processes and Excellent technology.
5. Laser focus: Winners are those who have the ability to keep sharp laser focus on select areas. Excellence marries to whom who focus on only a few select goals.

See Also:

1. Excellence 21
2. 12 Words You Should Eliminate From Your Vocabulary (As Per A Distinct #Author Who Can @UpbeatNow, You!)
3. Five Random Thoughts On Organizational Leadership

1. Excellence 21
2. 12 Words You Should Eliminate From Your Vocabulary (As Per A Distinct #Author Who Can @UpbeatNow, You!)
3. Five Random Thoughts On Organizational Leadership