Learning 6

Rush to your seniors with a problem

Charge yourself up to first finding the possible solutions than just sharing the problem

You know how busy all executives are, including yourself and the

managers. Each has so much to do and lacks time. And on top of that,

occasionally you get stuck with a problem and need your manager to

guide you. And your manager is as usual, too busy.

What do you think will work better for you. Should you go and just pose

the problem or should you go with the problem and the possible

solutions? Obviously the latter. Why? You save time for your manager

by presenting the possible solutions. Else, hours would have gone by,

figuring out the possible solutions. Also, you save your boss's mind

from being cluttered with too many problems as s/he now has one

problem less to handle, considering that both of you solved the

problem there and then. Finally, if so much of time of so many

managers is saved, who gains? The company, your manager and You.

As time saved on transactional matters would now be used to discuss

strategic aspects, which would deliver higher growth and profits for

your company. That would mean more growth for you, as you are the

one who helped managers gain time.

At the end, won't the boss think: yes, this person is different . S/he

knows the problem and some methods to fix them also! S/he deserves

to be applauded/rewarded etc. Applause wins you recognition and

you get rewarded with higher responsibility.

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Learning 37

Keep newer learnings you just acquired to yourself

Share and spread the learnings and create organization wide success

In your day to day execution of your tasks, you do many times come

across some better ways of doing the same task / activity OR you learn

something new which could help you immediately in enhancing your

performance. To add on, you may find some new and novel way to

crack some problem. Quick resolution means quicker and faster

results.

Say, you are in Sales and come across a client who has some peculiar

and different requirements. You brainstorm with your production

team and arrive at a good solution which makes your client happy.

If you were to keep this new learning to yourself, you would sort of

rob the other sales guy of an order assuming he too faced the same

situation but said NO to the client as s/he was not sure of the company

agreeing to so many product changes to satisfy this client. But if you

did share, the company wins another deal.

So for every new learning / discovery, you have 2 options, one is

to keep the learnings to yourself and second is to help your peers by

spreading these learnings. Normally a weak hearted person would

keep the learnings to one self as s/he is not confident of making newer

discoveries to improve performance etc. A strong and confident

employee would share the same as s/he is confident of un-earthing

newer discoveries. And the more you share , the faster and better your

team performs and obviously management would want to share

higher rewards with you

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Learning 42

Assume full day/week/month left at any point of time

Achieve more by assuming day/week over at the start itself

Speed is essence of everything. You need to move fast, work hard, deliver fast, think fast, act fast etc.Why? As there is so much to do and also there is so much competition. And main reason for all this: the client just cannot wait. And competition is moving faster too.

All in all this means, time is scarce, so much so, that it leaves you begging for more. And un-fortunately time is one thing which is never available on loan. We all know this. Yet, many of us tend to take things so easy till the last moment comes and then we jump out of our slumber only to do them fast and in the process, commit some mistakes. So, when the week starts, we take it easy, till Thursday comes and then we start jumping to finish the weeks work. Same for the

thmonth. You take life cool for few days till 15 comes only to realize that you haven't got a single order! This reminds me of one of my conferences where I asked each person when this task would be done

thand they all said: end of the month. They meant 30 . I then asked what thif each month got over on 25 ?! And they all said, yes, we will get it by

th25 ! That meant that the company suddenly gained 5 more working days per month, which is 2 more months in a year!

So, if you want to stand out from the crowd, if you want to win, then you need to do something extra. You cannot afford to take it easy even for a day. Go for a contrarian thinking: think the day is about to be over just when it starts, think the week is about to be over when it just starts. Same for the month. This way, you would always exhibit fire in your belly. The fire would last for the entire week or the month unlike the laggards who fire up only for half the time. Even lesser!

The more the fire, the more the drive and the higher chances for success. Fire never goes un-noticed. Your fire for sure will one day get noticed by the management.

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Learning 43

Never do your task right the first time as there are others to cross-check

Show your super skills by doing it right the very first time

Do we not see this playing out daily, i.e. we tend to execute our tasks so

fast that we land up making some mistakes. Mistakes in the solution

we propose to our client, mistakes in some calculations, mistakes in

wrong commitments given to management. Infact, for all

transactional, operational and strategic tasks, we do land up not

doing it 100% right in the fist attempt.

And why does this happen. One, culturally we are used to concentrate

more on execution than planning. Even though, we very well know that

planning helps in reducing issues but we still prefer to execute without

planning. Two, we tend to rush and complete tasks at the last moment.

Three, the cost of making a mistake is very low as we are not fired but

just warned. It's like the traffic signal. You jump it without any

hesitation as the fine is just Rs. 100.00! So, whether you do mistakes

or you don't, the loss seems to be low. Four, even if we do make a

mistake, we know there is someone beyond you to cross check (your

boss or your testing / quality check team).

All these factors naturally and logically drive each of you to continue to

make mistakes. Well, there is nothing really wrong as this is a cultural

issue and who can challenge culture. But I want to make one point. Do

you want to be part of the crowd and therefore not be visible or you

want to be seen as the one standing out and being recognized and

applauded for?

If you want to be recognized, then don't follow others. Set examples for

others to follow. Plan your work. Think of all the issues and test for all

so that no bug or defect or error is pointed out by anyone. To sum up,

do it right the first time. If you always do it correctly the first time, you

will be different from the others. You would be the most wanted.

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Learning 67

Always try to wrongly impress by over committing and under delivering

Attain respect by setting expectations at correct levels

It's natural to always give aggressive dates for deliveries when your

boss asks you as you want to impress him by showing how great your

skills are. And bang comes the date to deliver only to make the boss

realize that you have not even finished half the work! What went

wrong? Your over-zealous attitude to commit and look important did

the damage.

And what did you deliver? Sadness and gloomy facts.

On the other hand, if you were not as excited and thought through all

the tasks, you would have, for sure, committed safer and realistic

dates. That would have pleased all as the work would have got

delivered around the target date. This does not mean that you become

so conservative in planning that you commit 2 months for a fortnight's

job!

So don't get over excited and commit too aggressive dates. Don't you

get irritated when the restaurant owner makes his standard

commitment of 15 minutes to deliver but actually takes more than an

hour to turn up?

So, don't rush into commitments. Think thru and commit realistic

dates. The management would love you for that. And truth is solid

recognition.

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