Starting at the begining

Before you can take an action, you have to have a philosophy and an attitude. It took me 10 years to develop what I consider a philosophy that I can live. Note: You don’t have a philosophy; you live a philosophy.

Attitude takes much longer, only because you work at it every day. Whatever success you are trying to achieve, attitude will be the fulcrum of it. Whatever failure you encounter along the way, attitude will help you emerge from it with the proper frame of mind.


You are familiar with UNDERSTANDING/LEARNING. You know about the People, Processes, Systems, Technologies and Skills required to do your work.


You Begin with MANEUVERING@ work. You publish and be known in your comfortable periodicity. Be outspoken, don’t restrict yourself with few friends/ peers. Keenly understand the Boss’ weakness & fill the space (don’t capitalize!). Push yourself & be demanding. Make your way through a clear thought. Be convincing, persuasive through knowing the intention of the speaker (don’t reason past thoughts & actions). Take initiative; lead to finish. Be empathetic; not sympathetic. Find a mentor- someone who is successful, wise and willing. And lastly, don’t blush; don’t feel guilt at serious talk (old-ies like it, but not the mid-ies)

You Begin with MANEUVERING@ off work. Necessitate networking with workplace peers, school alumni, ex-company alumni, professional peer groups, and independent consultants. In the process know your group members- age, motive, culture (not their background!); never subgroup and move with a few. Don’t stop there by knowing them!. Request for help

You succeed by IMPLEMENTING people networking, achieving interim results, Take credit, Establishing new contacts, Increased target conversion, leading to more business and better stake-holder satisfaction

Part-3: Storyboard CEO

Here comes a CEO

“
We wanted to grow and be profitable. Effectiveness & accountability should be there in our delivery & business development operations. Carreer advancement opportunities and ability to attract best talent should be inculcated. THE ORAGNIZATION NEEDS TO BE RE-STRUCTURED.”
abridged version

A critical analysis on the present & the way ahead

- You don’t grow by retrofitting (try fitting a Maruti-Zen engine into a Optera !). You may accelerate for the growth, but that would NOT lay foundation for a sustained growth. Why?
o What is needed is to revamp, re-align and resign some, while promote the capable & talented.
o Re-engineering is a dirty word, after all!

- Understand that growth in Japanese market, means fighting the Chinese out on cost. To India based firms, market development & services to Japanese market/clients is a pain. So, you got a niche!
o What is needed to build a cost center out of the Japanese operations? Recruit; develop processes & deliver at low cost to sustain the value addition.
o Cultivate the niche, around the technology competence built. Don’t dilute.

- Get it straight that you draw a blank in the US markets
o Invest heavily on acquiring right talent, if not strategic buy-outs.
o Balance the Japanese revenue & create competition in delivery cum sales set-up with-in the organization.

- There is no culture-shift required
o Do the way you do-however manage & stress on the productivity. Emphasize ‘Performance Pays’
o Accountability & responsibility to be clear along the hierarchy

- There exist a leadership crises
o Stop! We are herds, where is our leader?
o Stop! We need a leader to follow.

- Pvt. Ltd – has its part of sorrows.
o What is the new objective? Growth at the cost of employees, is not to be enjoyed by a selective few
o What is professional attitude? Yes Sir! Yes Sir!

- Kerala- limits to growth -You know it better!

Reintegrating the business/life split

"My father imposed upon me the greatest discipline: he trusted me." Robert Galvin, Motorola

Experts from James Autry on reintegrating the business/life split

To find a balance between life and work- that's the wrong question. What we should be looking to find is a balance within, not between, life and work. The two ideas are falsely separated, part of the error of dualism.

In the days of the First Wave, people's work and life was inseparable — farming. It was uncommon to hear a farm wife say to her husband, "Honey, we need to talk. Your work is interfering with our relationship." The splitting of business from life is one of the things wrong with our lives. It legitimizes uncivilized behavior at the office so long as one is civilized at home. It is important that we find ways to reintegrate our parts into a single whole.

Business is not just a way of reaping financial rewards; it is also a way to achieve psychological and spiritual goals. It enables us to meet and work with others; to create products and services that are useful to others; and to help others achieve their goals of survival and fulfillment. Create loyalty to a purpose (not to persons, to bosses and managers). Appreciate the idea that all shares the success of an enterprise. Indulge in honest talk with others. In day-to-day affairs, amid all this willingness to be unkind, there is a paradoxical unwillingness to confront the plain truth — in the name of kindness. "It's easy to be honest with compliments, but the other side is not so easy: 'Jim, you are not doing a good job.' ". Trust is the air successful teams and organizations must breathe together. Without the confidence that your colleagues are not out to get you, you can't advance. "If you're looking ahead, there's no time to check your backside."

Our careers cry out to be about something. We need to believe that we are not engaged in a mindless, absurd rat race, that life is not a bitch and then we die. Our quest in life is not happiness but the desire to have it make sense. (Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl). The trick to balancing work and life, says James Autry, is not to avoid biting off more than we can chew; it is to avoid biting off more than we can savor.