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Thursday, April 4, 2013

Timeless Leadership Sutras From Bhagavad Gita




This blog entry is rather longer than most of my posts. This is not material that you just read when you want an easy read. I would recommend reading at a time when you are able to reflect on things.

As always the blog entry does not claim any ownership of the content. This is merely plagiarizing notes that I think are useful for me to remember.

Quotes from the book:
·       “Death is very likely best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, you will gradually become the old and cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true” – Steve Jobs

Sutra 1: The warrior’s journey
Leading an organization of the twenty-first century requires more than just a firefighter’s skill of putting out fires as and when they reach alarming proportions.

The true warrior does not deplete his energy in emotional drama that binds him to self-defeating patterns of fear and guilt. He pierces through his self-created enemies with the sword self-awareness and the shield of sharp discrimination.

 Ã¼  All wars are first fought in the mind
·       All wars are first fought in the mind. Therefore, it is in the mind that all wars must first be won.
·       We have the boon of choosing and the curse of the conflicts that we must face when we have many choices. Whenever there is conflict in the world, human beings have to realize that there is no such thing as a conflict in reality. All conflicts reside in the content of our own mind.
·       Conflict arises when a mind is reluctant to get out its entrenchment in a familiar way of life.
 Ã¼  The mind is a mob
·       The agitated mind is a mob of thoughts and emotions.
·       What happens when the mind behaves like an unruly mob? It loses power to act wisely. When the mind is unruly and indecisive, the body follows through non-action.
·       When the mind behaves like a mob there are countless mutinies going on within it.
·       When a leader confronts turbulence in an organization his will to take decisive action is seriously impaired by the irresolute mind.
·       A leader whose will is crippled wonders, “What will people think about me in my organization if I act this way instead of that” He becomes a victim of self doubt.
·       A mob is an unruly capricious crowd. In a mob the individual loses the power to think deeply and act out of individual will. A mob is unsteady and its actions are no longer governed by rationality or a steady flow of individual will.
·       What most leaders do when they are caught in crisis an organization. They express their own inadequacy through worry, impulsive behavior, and unsteady will. They hold onto their own restless minds like a drowning man holding onto a straw.
·       To lead any organization, objectively in dealing with own’s mind is a crucial virtue. Leaders can acquire this objectivity only when they know how to bypass their ego when they are dealing with their own mind.
 Ã¼  Ego is a disposable idea
·       An idea is like mental tissue paper that must be disposed of when it outlives it utility. Yet we hang on to ideas as though they were inseparable from us.
·       The wise grieve neither for the dead nor for the living form.
·       Have you ever thought of war as a clash of ideas and ideals? Very often that’s how most wars begin. When old ideas are sought to be replaced by new ideas, war becomes inevitable.
·       It is also about transformation: a change of mind and heart. Very often the transformation of leaders happens during a crisis.
·       The ego cannot deal with threats to its own continuity; it cannot embrace discontinuity in its habitual storyline.
 Ã¼  Leaders embrace discontinuity by dispossessing the ego
·       To look beyond the ego is to embrace discontinuity. Life moves on discontinuously; the ego struggles to hold back. Life is multidimensional. Ego is personality centered and one-dimensional. Life is timeless and free flowing. The ego is conditioned by time, space and personality.
·       The wise person is the one who does not grieve for finite and fleeting forms. A leader who is established in this wisdom is sustained by the timeless order of life.
·       By embracing discontinuity leaders reinvent the future. The future is often discontinuous with the past. Past forms perish; old relationships fade away.
·       Old habit die-hard. A leader has to destabilize existing forms of thought and action. A leader has to learn to deal with discontinuity. Discontinuity comes with an obvious sense of loss. How do leaders deal with it? They do so by embracing the deeper continuity of the spirit underlying the fragmentation of forms. This is done through the power of internalization of one’s energies.
·       While looking inward, the leader is able to retrace the energy from the diversifying sensory apparatus to the unity of soul within. His outgoing, differentiating, and fragmenting tendencies are balanced by his internalizing and integrating and meditative mind.
 Ã¼  The secret of invincibility: The conquest of binary mind
·       The real duty of a warrior is not just to fight a righteous war. The warrior’s aspiration is to enhance his own evolutionary capacity while his is involved in the fight. He needs to engage his entire physical and mental energy while fighting. To keep his mind steady in the fight, he needs to stop wasting the energy that his conflicting mind consumes. He needs to overcome his emotional turmoil rather than be overwhelmed by it.
·       He knows that he cannot always determine whether he will win or lose – that will depend on multiple factors over which he may or may not have control. However, he can decide to go to battle with utmost intensity. He will not die in his mind many times before his death. This will make him invincible.
·       A mind that harbors dejection loses the battle even before it is fought.
·       The warrior becomes invincible when his work and his goal become one.
 Ã¼  Self is the cause; self is the effect
·       A loser is self-made, and so is a winner. The raw material for all our actions and all our achievements comes from our self.
·       In the ultimate analysis, leadership is Self-situated: you are the cause and you are also the effect.
 Ã¼  Hunting for the I
·       The warrior’s primary hunt is for the I that is whole and all-embracing. It is the ultimate quest in all forms of human conflict. The human identity is fragmented in many ways; us-versus-them; me versus-you; intellect-versus-emotion; old-versus-new; right-versus-wrong. War is merely a symptom that we are attempting to heal this disintegration. To heal is to find our “wholesome” identity in the journey.

Sutra 2: Invincible wisdom
Timeless leaders do: They reframe reality in a way that gives hope to their followers, often in the most hopeless of circumstances. 
 Ã¼  Grief, Pity and Shame: The Mind’s GPS system
·       Thoughts are like brick and feelings are like cement. Together they create the illusion of a concrete structure of reality. This concrete structure can be described as a mental model. When those shifting moods of grief guide a mental model, pity and shame the world looks like a hopeless place.
·       Timeless leaders learn to discriminate between the real and the unreal. Such leaders rise above the flood of emotions at work by means of this kind of discrimination.
 Ã¼  Creating alternative reality
·       Leadership is the art of creating alternative reality. Leaders always bring a refreshing perspective that reframes current reality.
·       To change your reality changes the mental filters through which you look – your own perspective.
·       Do not get stuck in the duality of pleasure or pain or in the though of losing or winning.
·       When one is stuck either in pain or pleasure, suffering is the result. There is a way out of this suffering. This is the way of mental equipoise or shitapragnya. In this state of mind one is not affected by circumstances of pain or pleasure or victory or defeat. One just continues to work with equanimity of mind beyond one’s immediate gain or loss. In this state of consciousness a leader begins to glimpse a whole new world beyond one’s narrow ego-slot. 
 Ã¼  Motivation and the monkey mind
·       Desire is limiting perception to focus on an object or a person we desire. Desire is a process of narrowing of perception.
·       When we narrow our perception often enough, desire becomes restless obsession. Restlessness is a symptom of the monkey mind.
·       Timeless leaders do not motivate followers; they just enable their followers so that they can inspire themselves.
 Ã¼  The leaders inspiration comes from unselfish work.
·       The timeless secret of work, called nishkama karma or unselfish work. The four facets of nishkama karma are:
o   One has to be fully devoted to the work on hand to get the results.
o   Worrying over results cannot help, as the doer’s ego does not determine the results.
o   The cause of the results is not just the selfish motive of the doer but the sum of many contributions. Therefore one needs to be detached from selfish motives.
o   Work is inevitable and no one can choose to be inactive.
·       Timeless leaders realize that the results are not separate from the process of action. When all the processes of action are right and timely, results are bound to follow.
·       Timeless leaders realize that work itself is inevitable. One cannot avoid work because even as one is lying in bed, the organs of the body and mind are still in work-mode: The heart is beating; the brain is thinking thoughts, and so on. But work that comes from the highest intent of contribution becomes an irresistible force of transformation in the organization and society.
 Ã¼  Unselfish work leads to evenness of mind.
·       The mind is carried away by the senses as a boat unanchored can be tossed by the wind.
·       Timeless leaders realize that great work happens when there are simultaneously fluidity and steadiness in the thought process. While physical work is visible external movement of energy, mental work is invisible internal movement of the same energy. 
 Ã¼  Applying invincible wisdom: Powered by the intellect and driven by Unselfishness.
·       Timeless leaders know the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is like a library; a storehouse of valuable information. Wisdom is the ability to process this knowledge and apply it at the right time and the right place.
·       All the knowledge of the world – that which belongs to the past, present, or future – comes from the sensing, feeling and thinking mind. The mind is the largest library of the universe. To a leader the world outside is merely the field of application.
·       The faculty in the human constitution that helps us apply knowledge wisely is called the intellect. The result of cultivating the intellect is concentration and steadiness of the mind. Concentration is the integrating capacity of the mind to a focal point of thought or action. Integration is power; disintegration is weakness.
·       The human mind is the executive assistant to the CEO called the intellect. The mind receives data and perceptions from its inbox tray called the senses. Then the mind classifies this information, files, it, and sends it to its CEO, the intellect, for its decision. The intellect, based on its own past experiences and its powers of judgment, make a final decision and conveys it to the mind for implementation. The mind then sends this decision to the outbox tray from where the organs of action pick up the final decision and implement it.
·       If the intellect is weak, the quality of decision-making will be poor and therefore implementation will be poor, too.
·       Work unselfishly with an inspired heart and a steady mind that is guided by the intellect.

Sutra 3: Karma yoga
 Ã¼  The warrior as Worrier
·       There are different strokes for different folks, as they say. Temperamentally, leaders may be classified: the contemplative and the active.
·       For a warrior it is a matter of shame to be unable to follow a decisive line of action. 
 Ã¼  Work and its secret: action, inaction and effortless action
·       By not performing work you will never find freedom. By giving up action no one attains perfection.
·       Merely by being inactive, by restraining the organs of action, one cannot prevent action from happening. Inaction is nothing but hypocrisy. So-called inaction in also a negative action against the dharma of the warrior whose duty is to act in the battlefield.
·       By energetic and cheerful performance of one’s duty one can move toward true Self-knowledge. Intense and conscious action unleashes the productive potential that is latent in our muscles and in our minds.
·       By diligently performing one’s obligator actions, a leader moves to the next stage of evolution at work – the stage of effortless action. As the leader begins to work with deep attention, work becomes more engaging. Attention makes any work engaging. Work we love to do never tires us.
·       In the state of effortless action, we still work very hard and yet we do not feel the drudgery as our being transcends our physical nature and we reclaim the experience of the higher dimension that is inside us.
 Ã¼  Work as worship
·       It is not the action itself but the spirit behind the action that makes the action effortless.
·       Workship literally means, “work as worship”. More explicitly, this phrase signifies that when work is done in the spirit of worship, the quality of the work undergoes a metamorphosis.
·       Workers are fundamentally spiritual beings involved in a human experience; they are more than human resources looking for a paycheck and a pat on the back. There is an autonomous self-existent spiritual dimension to the human constitution. Our body-mind-senses frameworkis but a partial expression of our spiritual wholeness.
·       The measure of individuals – and hence of corporations – is the extent to which we struggle to complete ourselves. Our value, then, can be described as the energy we devote to living up to our complete potential. 
 Ã¼  Discovering the timeless cycle of work
·       Timeless leaders do not see their work as mere activity but rather as a calling. For them work is a means of transformation of consciousness.
·       Timeless leaders have a clear comprehension of the spirit – they give before they take. By giving without expectation they spontaneously create space for receiving from a bountiful and interconnected universe.
·       By forgetting their own narrow concerns and in being of service to others, leaders begin to live in their consciousness the timeless cycle of work,
·       The sacrifice that we are talking about in the context of leadership work does not diminish the self but extends the boundary of the self by giving up the lower for the cause of the higher.
·       Character and credibility acquired through sacrifice do not diminish over time like material resources. They obey the law of abundance by growing in time and spreading in space.
·       Have great purpose to work for, a purpose larger than your personal agenda. This is the way to make life significant. When you work in the spirit of yajna your contribution will overflow the span of a lifetime and survive even your physical death.
 Ã¼  The case for righteous action work as a means of realizing who we are
·       The privilege of leadership comes with enormous responsibility. Leaders have to live not only for themselves but also for others who choose to follow them.
·       You are what your deepest nature is. As your nature, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny. – Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
 Ã¼  Work as a means of realizing who we are.
·       Dedicate the results of all your actions to a higher consciousness.
·       The immortal self is nothing but our soul. The mind is subtler than the body, and the intellect is subtler than the mind, but the soul is the most subtle aspect of our identify.
·       When we are able to dedicate our work to a higher cause we get the strength to work with peace and calmness.

Sutra 4: Timeless leaders pursue purpose as source of supreme power
 Ã¼  The leader as a sage
·       Timeless leadership tells us that exercise of power that is not in harmony with the greater purpose of life is fraught with danger.
·       Power devoid of purpose inebriates the holder as well as the beholder. The leader who holds power often forgets that this power is help only as a trust on behalf of the followers.
 Ã¼  The many faces of the supreme power
·       The supreme power therefore makes itself available to a leader in a measure that is in keeping with the temperament of the leader. Power is not just a function of the position that a leader holds but also a function of his mental disposition.
 Ã¼  Twenty-four-hour leadership
·       Timeless leadership is a lifelong journey, not toward power but toward perfection. In this journey a leader must ceaselessly deal with the rigors of self-conquest.
·       Leadership is an evolving process that embraces the whole of life. An office boss is a static portfolio of competencies; a leader is a dynamo of evolving life. A leader is like magnetism or gravity, which works 24 hours a day without fail.
·       When a leader is humble he does not think any less of himself. He just thinks of himself less. He annihilates his egocentric actions in the perennial fire of self-awakening.
 Ã¼  The return of the rishi
·       Organizations often fall prey to their own inertia and become directionless. In these hard times we have seen a rishi leader come forth and transform such an organization into a vibrant entity. It is the leaders characteristic humility despite high performance that underlines the rishi consciousness.

Sutra 5: Leadership is the art of undoing
Be totally engaged in whatever you have to do but detach your ego from the illusion of doer-ship. The ultimate goal of detached engagement: a state of being in the zone of equanimity and unshakable equilibrium even in middle of hectic activity.

 Ã¼  How anchors of past hinder performance
·       Past performance, past glory, past habits – all of them have the potential to destroy our work. While we are help captive by our past we are not able to move on and be fully engaged with the work at hand.
·       If one needs to take a step forward, one must lift one’s foot. One can do that only when one is awake and liberated from one’s location in the past.
 Ã¼  The art of detached involvement
·       Our sense has a tendency to be easily attached to the most trivial of things. But that is not really the problem; the real problem begins when we are not able to detach our senses with equal ease. When leaders are able to govern their sense by withdrawing the needy acquisitive mind from sensory engagement, they practice detached involvement. Leaders achieve this through the regular practice of reflections. Reflection brings about equality of vision.
 Ã¼  Evolving to the equality of vision
·       Timeless leaders strive constantly to equalize their vision. This is crucial if one wishes to succeed in leading people. When leaders do not have equality of vision they end up promoting partiality, prejudice, and cliques, which ruins organizations. Followers expect their leaders to be fair and just in their treatment of them. Each time a leader betrays a bias toward someone or a certain class of people, he violates the trust that people have placed in him.
·       Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu – we are people through other people.
 Ã¼  The art of undoing
·       As change agent leaders have to embrace the constant tug-of-war between the past and the future. When a leader’s personality is programmed by his past actions, his energy is trapped in time. His future becomes only a recycled past.
·       A timeless leader refuses to get bogged down by mental chatter that is corroding his vitality.
·       Most leaders in organizations are evaluated by the quantity of their actions, whereas they should be measured rather by the quality of they do.
·       When leaders move up in the hierarchy of their organization most of their problems turn out to be not technical but behavioral. The source of all behavioral problems that leaders face can be traced back to the ego, which conditions and clouds their awareness by giving to it the false notion of being the doer. Timeless leadership is the reversal of the journey of the doer. This can be achieved only by the progressive elimination of ego-centered activity and the practice of selfless and dedicated awareness-centered actions.

Sutra 6: Leaders are masters of their mind
 Ã¼  Separating the self image from the real self
·       Many of our problems are self-created. The source of self-created problems is the fact that we mistake the self image for our real self.
·       He should elevate himself by the power of the real self, not degrade himself; For the self is its won friend and its won worst foe.
·       Timeless leaders know that self image is nothing but the projection of ego, which is subject to endorsement by the world outside. Thus the ego’s position constantly changes in order for it to adjust to the world’s opinion. The ego projects many fanciful notions of the real Self. The ego-self is bound by those emotions that make leaders feel insecure and separate: Fear, Jealousy, hatred, and false pride are the accompaniments of Self -image that the ego tried to defend. Self image is guided primarily by the instinct of psychological survival
 Ã¼  Mastery of the mind
·       Just as an expert learns to master his craft, a leader learns to master his mind. A leader has to work with many minds. Before he can command others, he has to know how to command his own mental forces.
·       The only way to harness the mind is through practice and dispassion. The practice of meditation results in dispassion. Dispassion creates a space between you and your though flow. Your perception of though flow affects and regulates it like a traffic cop regulates the flow traffic. A dispassionate mind is aware of diversity and differences of forms without getting overtly judgmental about them. Such a mind does not get caught in the external appearance of forms and is capable of seeing the intrinsic value of each form.
·       Action is the means for a learner who seeks to mature in discipline; tranquility is the means for the one who is mature in discipline.
 Ã¼  Disciplines of mastery: concentration, detachment, and transcendence
·       Concentration
o   Concentration is the process through which the leader can access the subtle ability of the mind to remain focused on an object or a thought for a sustained length of time.
·       Detachment
o   From whatever cause the restless and unsteady mind wanders away, from that let him restrain it, and bring it back under the control of the self.
·       Transcendence
o   Transcendence is the final step when the mind and its movements are completely interiorized. At this point the body and the mind are united in one state, free from the fluctuations of thought waves. Transcendence is the ultimate disciple of the mind. It is the realization of the minds inherent unity with its conscious source and its environment.
 Ã¼  The power of stillness
·       Stillness is strength. Stillness is the power-point behind the intense action. The eye of the cyclone is an intense stillness at the center of the storm.
·       Timeless leaders succeed only by the application of stillness. A mind that is restless, anxious, and nervous always missed the mark. Only a steady, controlled, almost machinelike hand can shoot the arrow that hits the bull’s eye.
·       The journey toward self-realization involves the disciplines of silence and solitude. Silence frees us from the noise of externalized consciousness and allows us to probe our inner voice. Solitude enables one to be intimate with oneself.

Sutra 7: Leaders are integrators
 Ã¼  Journey from ignorance to wisdom
·       Timeless leaders realize that knowledge is required to make a living while wisdom is necessary to live a fully functional and evolving life.
 Ã¼  Time leaders integrate people and process
·       One of the fundamental tasks of leadership is the task of integration. Leaders do not take sides in the case of a conflict; they often bring the two sides together. Leaders integrate the world of diversity and differences into a unity of purpose. Leadership is the search of synergy, symphony, and symmetry in a world of conflict and disorder.
·       Leaders with integrity attract followers spontaneously, even beyond their lifetimes. For such leaders life becomes one song-a universe-of though, feeling, and action. Integrity is another expression for this one song. Integrity is more than just socially sanctioned, conditioned behavior. It is a spontaneous life force that connects all our life’s experiences in a unique wholeness.
 Ã¼  The leaders world: A reflection of unmanifest dharma
·       In human form everyone can experience the manifestation of our dharma in three observable states: inertia, dynamism, and illumination.
·       Those leaders who live dharma rather than speak about it understand that the power of dharma comes only when you practice it.
·       Action has no power in itself. It draws its power from the unmanifest purpose or dharma behind it. That’s why action backed by the right cause is important. A leaders action bears the signature of the justness of a great cause.
 Ã¼  From ego-centered to spirit-centered leadership
·       The ego is like a tragic hero. It is delusional. A leader caught in the whirlpool of the ego fails to see a world beyond power, privilege, and petty perquisites that come from occupying a position. An egocentric leader experiences the feelings of victor or victim. When success comes, such leaders act like the victor. When failure stares them in the face, they hide behind the façade of the victim.
·       Very often, egocentric leaders fail to recognize the real intent of the people they are leading They get caught in the trap of flattery and suspect the motives of those with dissenting views. When established in the spirit centera timeless leader begins to develop greater empathy and insight into human nature. Timeless leaders are quick to discover the unchanging core of spirit that is deepest and highest human aspiration.
 Ã¼  Leader liberate themselves and others from suffering
Timeless leaders liberate themselves and others from suffering of the following types:
·       Those in distress
·       Those looking for fulfillment of their personal desires
·       Those yearning for knowledge
·       Those seeking wisdom

Sutra 8: Timeless leadership
 Ã¼  Timeless leaders explore the meaning of life
·       If business becomes merely the means of living then it loses meaning for us. Work becomes a chore – a means of making a living at the expense of the meaning of life. Such a business eventually becomes demeaning. The real question we must ask while we are in business is: What is the meaning of this work for me? If we find an answer to this question, the business and business of life become one and the same.
 Ã¼  The multidimensional meaning of life
·       This is the world of the physical nature of objects and events that we all can touch, taste, see, hear and feel. Krishna describes this as Adhibhuta. Second, there is the inner psychological world of experiences know and Adhiyagna. This is the world of thoughts and emotions – human actions and interactions. Third, the ultimate governing principle is like transcendental being who regulates the relationship between the physical and psychological world with being part of either.
·       To know the imperishable reality the leader must learn to convert the energy of thought into the energy of understanding. While thought results in neural noise, true understanding happens when this noise dissolves in the depth of silence.
·       When our work is tied to the selfish motive of gaining advantages for ourselves we lose the perfect understanding of our real nature and succumb to our apparent reality. When you put a fence around human being you get sheep. The fence of selfish work makes us prisoners of our herd instincts.
 Ã¼  Creation is sacrificing the smaller for the sake of the greater
·       Our life, on the contrary, is an organization of energies moving from the higher to the lower; from the macrocosm to the microcosm; from the subtle to the gross. A leader must understand the science of life and live according to this organizing principle of life: the subtle and higher energy drives the gross and lower energy.
·       Leaders caught in the trap of ambition become vulnerable to flattery by their subordinates. They squander energy by being too possessive about their position and power. Ambitious leaders often use people as steppingstones up to their own pedestals. Ambition binds them to lower-order emotions such as fear, jealousy and passiveness. The arc of ambition takes us upward in a misleading curve and then brings us down with a thud.
·       Aspiration makes leaders dream of a better organization, country, or world. In our psychological universe aspiration creates greater energy than ambition does. Ambition is gross; aspiration is subtle. The most successful leader of this world, such as Buddha, Christ, or Gandhi, gave up personal ambition for a higher aspiration. They created a nuclear explosion of consciousness that continues to influence the world of our thoughts and actions today real meaning of life is contained in life itself.
 Ã¼  The real meaning in life is contained in life itself.
·       The real meaning of life is contained in just being the whole of who we are. What are those attributes of being that together give meaning to life? Being has three attributes:
o   Truth, which gives meaning to our existence
o   Consciousness, which gives meaning to our experiences
o   Bliss, which gives meaning to our action in the pursuit of happiness
·       When a timeless leader relentlessly pursues the path of truth, she is able to realize that all that she needs to know already exists in herself.
·       Consciousness is the knowledge that we become. When a leader is fully conscious he steers clear of secondhand knowledge and third-party opinions and makes decisions from the authenticity of his being.
·       It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else! A timeless leader, despite all his materialistic hunger, places immense value on the intrinsic nature of happiness. However difficult the journey, the source of happiness has to be found inside. Timeless leaders lead people to their inner source of happiness rather than to external rewards.
 Ã¼  Meaningful work: A synthesis of reflection and action
·       One fundamental role of a leader is the ability to see patterns and detect relationships between events and activities within and outside the organization. In this role a leader is a pattern seeker and meaning maker. The greatest asset to a leader as he seeks to control the variables that confront him in globalized world is his flexibility of mind. A leader needs an open mind that is not conditioned by repetitive thought and predictable action. Such a mind will be capable of making sense of fast-paced socioeconomic changes that affect his organization. The opposite of an open mind is closed mind, in which thinking and action are limited to the immediate local and temporal condition. A leader with such a closed mind is bound to fall prey to myopic decision-making and short-term activities that will ruin the organization in a long term.
·       Timeless leaders solve problems by placing them in wider context. When we widen the context the problem gets resolved at its source.
·       Most of our work in our organization is reflexive rather than reflective. When leaders engage in reflexive action the context of their work is narrowed down to habitual patterns and meaningless chores. Sooner or later such work becomes tedious and wears us out. Timeless leaders like Krishna rescue us from the mental rut and bring us into the infinite cosmic source from which our work derives deep meaning and significance. Krishna thus enables us to synthesize reflection and action in pursuit of work. Such becomes truly evolutionary.

Sutra 9: The sovereign secret
 Ã¼  Sovereign self and the path of unity
·       Timeless leader use expanded consciousness to see the world in themselves rather than seeing them in the world.
·       A timeless leader resides in the organization of form and phenomena as an unseen intelligence that both includes and transcends the structure of the organization.
·       The real presence of a leader is often determined by his absence. The value of a leader in an organization can be experienced in the unseen dimension of intelligence that he leaves behind when he is not there.
·       The leader who is able to devote himself to the pursuit of this intelligence discovers the capacity of Self-rule.
 Ã¼  The governance of the ego: the path of disintegration
·       The governance of the ego breeds the need to grasp rather than to give. The tyrants that ruled the world over the ages were all obsessed with personal acquisition at the expense of the common good.
·       The ego is the central organizing principle around which we grab clutch onto experiences that bring us fleeting pleasures and momentary sensations.

 Ã¼  Self-organization: when organization becomes community
·       What exhausts us at work is not the work itself but the worry and anxiety that we associate with our work. These cause psychological wear and tear and drain our energy. Our horizontal relationships produce friction in the form of role conflict and lack of role clarity. In the absence if vertical relationship with an ideal to which can offer both our failures and our successes, we become emotional wrecks.
·       An organization achieves both horizontal and vertical unity through a community. However, the horizontal relationship between members derives their value from a vertical relationship with the leader. The leader is therefore vested with the responsibility not only of leading the organization but also of being completely integrated with the principles on which the organization is founded.
·       Timeless leaders hold communities together on the basis of trust. 
 Ã¼  The law of giving: being and becoming
·       Timeless leaders are defined not so much by what they do but by who they are.
·       This give-and-take between being and becoming, between the unmanifest and the manifest, is the very basis of our Self-organizing universe. Everything in our universe follows the law and logic of an open system. An open system continuously exchanges energy with the environment outside its physical boundaries.
·       “Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)

Sutra 10: Leadership is an adventure of consciousness
 Ã¼  Leading consciously
·       A timeless leader does not deflect his energy by making the present moment a steppingstone to an imagined future. He lives completely in the moment in the moment. His thoughts, feelings, and actions are synchronized to the one point of attention. This kind of living in the moment has the power the potency of a seed that contains the mystery of a whole forest.
 Ã¼  Silence: The language of timeless leadership
·       The state of silence is not merely emptiness of sound; it is fullness of unspoken intelligence. Silence is the pure potentiality of language.
·       Silence can be harnessed when we learn to be observers rather than interpreters. When a leader observes without the urge to judge or interpret, he is bringing his whole attention to whatever he observes. This whole attention is silence.
·       Timeless leaders apply the discipline of silence by learning to be observers. Observation is the art of seeing without judging, naming or measuring.
·       Freedom of expression has two dimensions: freedom of speech and freedom of silence. Freedom of silence enables us to explore the deeper voices within us that speak to us without inhibition.
·       In speech, energy fragments into verbal silence, energy is integrated into noiseless awareness. If one holds back the urge to talk from time to time, one will experience a surge of energy in the nervous system. Silence is energy conserving. Therefore, a timeless leader consciously cultivates the discipline of silence.
ü  The dynamism of indivisibility
·       The ethos is the collective script of the organization. It signifies the values that the organization stands for. Ethos gives meaning and wholeness to the organization even while dealing with various parts of the organization a timeless leader has his conscious attention attuned to the ethos.
·       Timeless leaders have an intuitive grasp of the ecology of the organization. They view the organization not as a totality of commercial assets but rather in the wholeness of its connection with the larger society, community, and environment that it chooses to inhabit.
 Ã¼  The pursuit of excellence
·       You shouldn’t be looking for people slipping up, you should be looking for all the good things people do and praising those.
·       A timeless leader must examine with the eye of excellence everywhere he looks and everything he perceives. Excellence is a result of developing quality of mind through constant awareness.

Sutra 11: Timeless leaders have integral vision
 Ã¼  Integral Vision
·       Integral vision kind of sight involves foresight – the gift of being able to see something before its time. Foresight gives us the power to creatively reconstruct our universe by connecting the dots that are visible in the present.
·       One of the virtues of timeless leadership is the ability to recognize patterns based on inadequate or insufficient data points. The minds of these leaders work like radar screens scanning the environment for data and constructing patterns of intelligible information.
·       Timeless leaders have an integral vision of the changing faces of reality. They are able to sense a turning of the tide and to transmit this sense to their followers.
·       When timeless leaders see the big picture, their thoughts and actions become synchronized in a manner that serves the larger purpose of their work.
 Ã¼  Sight and Insight
·       The fighter fights with his sight; the warrior fights with insight. Insight comes not from memory but from unconditioned awareness. Insight comes not from programmed thoughts but from the underlying source of all thought, which is consciousness.
 Ã¼  The pangs of plurality
·       When leaders are able to discriminate between the real and the apparent they are free of emotional turmoil.
·       When leaders get caught in the illusion of their own separateness in the battle of life they suffer the pangs of plurality. They cannot fight without vengeance, fear, and attachment to their turf. When leaders perceive only plurality without the underlying unity in plurality they become unnecessarily combative. The real test of an evolving leader is the ability to function in a fiercely competitive field and yet nurture the cooperative and compassionate nature within him.
 Ã¼  The Leader as servant: being an instrument of the whole
·       The timeless leaders have to conquer the army of thoughts and emotions commanded by their ego.
·       Gandhi wrote in his autobiography, “the best way to find your self is to lose yourself in the service of others” A timeless leader can discover his sovereign and essential Self when he is able to let go of his preoccupations with his own body and mind. He can then be an instrument of the whole.
·       A perfect instrument makes no claims to glory and takes no credit for the best of accomplishments.
·       Timeless leadership comes not from control of material resources but from serving the very human source that creates those resources. Leaders who demand authority in return for favours done or who rent out their power to subordinates in exchange of subservience cannot lead for long.
·       Servant-leaders do not start with the intent of charming of influencing people. Instead, they start with the intent of being as perfect an instrument of the whole as possible. In the process they become integral part of the very source of what it means to be human. This is the basis of their influence.

Sutra 12: Love is leader’s essence; Love is leader’s presence
Do not try to manipulate the result of your work in the direction if what you alone would like the work to be. Do not dedicate your attention the urges of your ego. When you renounce your need for censure or praise from the outside world, you will acquire a silence and steadiness of devotion to your work.
 Ã¼  Leadership is love made visible
·       A true devotee works independently of the world outside and draws his inspiration, equanimity, and ecstasy from the source within himself.
·       Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit on the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work only with joy – Gibran Kahil
·       Timeless leaders know that if work is creation, then love is the creative impulse behind it. Such leaders trace the mysterious source of love not in the world of approval and disapproval but within their own hearts.
·       Timeless leaders realize that while work is external to our state of being, love is an intrinsic state of our deepest human nature. One can be truly devoted to work on a sustainable basis only when one can do so from the state of love.
·       The greatness of the effort actually comes from the intensity of love, which is the spirit behind the action. Timeless leadership is the manifestation of the invisible energy of love expressed through the visible medium of action.
·       Love is not merely about recognizing the objective value of a given task. Rather, it is the process of creating value from the inside out in any work we do. Paying attention to detail, giving greater energy to process rather than the output, and being fully present in the work are foundations of love in action.
ü  Devotion: Art and practice of leadership
·       Ordinarily, our minds are fixed on our likes and dislikes. Whatever we like engages us and what we dislike repels us. Most leaders spend time doing what they like to do rather than what should be done.
·       A three-step way out of messy mind-state:
o   Surrender to the highest intelligence that controls your mind and intellect.
o   Dedicate all that you do to the intelligence that governs the universe and keeps the might planets whirling in their orbits.
o   Trust this might intelligence to guide your mind and intellect in the most effective and efficient way.
·       Timeless leaders see love as the common value present in both competitive and cooperative frames of reference. In competition, love becomes merely the means to achieving an end, as when we love our work because it will fetch us greater rewards than our colleagues. In cooperation, love becomes an end in itself, as when we love doing work for our families for no other reason than the sheer joy of sharing our lives with others.
 Ã¼  Attributes of leader as devotee
·       The path of devotion is not about emotional excess. It is rather about dropping the emotional baggage of the mind toward a singularity of purpose. Devotion means discovering that creative source in our heart rather than acquiring the approval of the world.

Sutra 13: Leaders command their field with eye of wisdom
 Ã¼  The leader as a knower in the field of knowledge
·       It is not a great CEO but it is actually a great fit between a CEO and a company’s contextual needs that builds great organizations.
·       Leadership is an integral feature of an organizations social system. Leaders are influence by and in turn exert an influence on the social and organizational contexts that they command. A leader not only grows within a culture but also carries a culture within himself.
·       A leader pursuing true knowledge has to learn to be an observer not only of “the world out there” but also of all that happens “in here,” inside his own mind.
·       In course of a day a business leader has to go through a dizzying array of situations and an unimaginable variety of contexts. Given the dynamic nature of his business setting, a leader needs the conceptual depth that will help him understand and deal with ambiguities and inconsistencies.
·       The knower, with pure and limitless awareness, is thus able to comprehend ambiguities and reconcile contradictions in the field
 Ã¼  The dimension of the field and the knower of the field
·       A timeless leader achieves this detached engagement through the power of empathy. Empathy is not a mushy emotional state where the leader gets lost in pleasing everybody. Rather, empathy is a detached and objective appraisal of how another person is feeling. Through empathy, a leader is able to rise above his own emotional isolation and connect with a follower.
·       The timeless leader as the knower is perennially alive and alert to whatever physical modifications and psychological distortions happen in his universe. Such a leader remains humble and rarely seeks the spotlight.
 Ã¼  Seeing with the eye of wisdom
·       Timeless leaders have the ability to see the invisible. Behind visible universe of objects and events there is the invisible universe of beliefs, perceptions and emotions.
·       12 qualities of a leader who has truly integrated the head and the heart:
o   Humility
o   Non-injury
o   Unpretentiousness
o   Forgiveness
o   Uprightness
o   Service to one’s teacher
o   Purity
o   Steadfastness
o   Self-regulation
o   Absence of egoism
o   Even-mindedness
o   Seeking periodic solitude and silence
These qualities give the leader those subtle eyes that reflect reality without mental distortions and biases.

Sutra 14: Leaders harness the dynamic force of nature
 Ã¼  Nature’s Manuscript: The three forces
·       Inertia, dynamism and illumination – these three qualities of nature bind and embody the indestructible soul in us.
·       Inertia is the state of passivity; it is the seed form of physical or psychological action.
·       Dynamism, the second process is the movement from non-action to action and from passivity to passion
·       Illumination, the third process, represents another dimension of evolution – the evolution of consciousness.
 Ã¼  How leaders harness the three forces of nature
·       A conscious CEO allows some problems to remain undecided because he is conscious that a certain amount of inertia is more useful in solving a problem than premature and aggressive action.
·       Leaders discover that the secret of right action is to allow the action to unfold at the right time rather than to force it ahead of its time.
·       His solution to problems will be based on a correct appraisal of reality.
o   A mind guided by the force of inertia obscures reality and veils it.
o   A mind guided by the force of dynamism projects reality through the ego and distorts its.
o   A mind guided by the force of illumination discriminates and perceives reality correctly.
 Ã¼  Transcending the dynamics of nature
·       Those who transcend their own nature are not disturbed by the actions of the forces of nature. They know that is these forces of nature that act and that the soul self within is a mere witness to those actions. They therefore remain unshaken and abide within themselves.

Sutra 15: Timeless leaders discover their invisible source
 Ã¼  The tree of life
·       The imperishable tree of life has its rots above, its branches are below, and its leaves are its expressions of knowledge. Those who know this know the whole truth. Our sensory work is a topsy-turvy world like the tree of life where we are so obsessed with the effect that we do not investigate the cause.
·       The tree of life has no stability. It changes its patterns and appearances faster than the human mind can grasp. The leaves of this tree multiply like many desires. These desires chase sense objects and indulge in repeated actions. Actions repeated from habits that bind a human being to his world. When the life in a human being is driven by personal will and habits of self-aggrandizement, he isolates himself by his petty desires and forfeits his access to the wholeness of life.
·       A timeless leader has to cut asunder and detach him from the roots of addictive material attachments. Only then can he reclaim the magnificence of his invisible Self.
 Ã¼  The invisible leader
·       The most significant role of a leader is to make the invisible clearly visible. Inspiration is invisible but inspired action is visible. Trust is invisible but trustworthy behavior is visible. A leader has to constantly cross the bridge between what is unseen and that which is seen in order to connect with his followers.
·       Electricity is not designed for the bulb. Rather, the bulb is designed to obey laws of electricity. When a narcissistic leader obsessively things about his physical appearance and his image in the organization, he becomes like a bulb devoid of the power of electricity. He is cut off from the unseen self and the divine source that has created him. A wit once said that the difference between a god and a narcissist is only this: The god does not believe that he is a narcissist!
·       Timeless leaders, however, derive their power from unselfish service rather than servility to their ego’s demands. Unselfish service frees the hold of the ego on the Self.
 Ã¼  From the perishable to imperishable: quest for the supreme self
·       Timeless leaders see that behind the perishable forms of nature there is the imperishable unity of life that sustains nature.
·       When leaders behave like demigods, when they grandstand and intimidate others through fear and exclusion, they are just like caricatures of life’s real face. When the same leaders see their actions in the mirror of the timeless they understand their follies. Such leaders see through their illusions. To be completely disillusioned with the illusions of the senses is the first step towards returning to the unit of life.
 
Sutra 16: Leaders negotiate the crossroads
 Ã¼  The crossroads of leadership: the devine and the devilish
·       The divine qualities in a human being lead to freedom; the devilish to bondage.
·       Being forgiving or being truthful is valuable to these leaders not because someone told them that these virtues are valuable, but because they have realized in practice the value of these two virtues.
 Ã¼  Toxic leadership
·       There are seven types of bad leadership. The first three types represent ineffective leadership:
o   Incompetent
o   Rigid
o   Intemperate
A leader and his followers who lack the will or skill to sustain effective action characterize incompetence. In rigidity, the leader and his followers are unwilling to accept any new ideas or adapt to change. Intemperate represents leaders and his follower’s lack of self-control.
·       The next four types represent unethical leadership:
o   Callous
o   Corrupt
o   Insular
o   Evil
Callousness comes from an uncaring or an unkind attitude toward people. Corrupt leaders and their followers are given to deception, stealing, or cheating. Insular leaders disregard the welfare of their followers.

Sutra 17: Leaders follow their faith
 Ã¼  Faith: The deep structure of leadership
·       Faith is the deepest driving force that shapes human beings values and beliefs. It is faith that shapes one’s destiny. When he has deep faith in some ideal or course of work, the leader becomes fairly autonomous. He rarely needs an endorsement from the outside world when his faith has become truly abiding.
 Ã¼  Three kinds of faith
·       Serenity, good-hearted silence, self-control, purity of nature – these together are called austerities of mind.
·       “In working out any plan or idea, I use what you might call the intermittent method. I hit the problem hard, then leave it for a while, and later come back. This method permits me to bring to the particular problem many ideas that come from mature reflection” – Julie Fenster.
·       Austerity of speech:
o   The least evolved way of speaking is speak lies.
o   The second kind of speech is dynamic
o   The third and the most evolved kind of speech is the one in which the leader is illumined.
Speaking words that are truthful, pleasing and beneficial – this is austerity of speech.
Before he acquires the gift of his illumined speech, the leader has to go through three kinds of mental austerities, in a manner similar to security checks that the air traveller has to undergo. The first check comes from the security officer, who says: “You can go ahead with your speech provided it is truthful.” If it is not truthful, the speech is best not allowed to go. The second security officer says, “It is truthful al right, but is it pleasant? If it is truthful but unpleasant, its best you go back!” The third and final security question is, “It is both truthful and pleasant, but is it beneficial to the one you are speaking to. If it is not beneficial, you cannot let it go.”
 Ã¼  The art and science of self-giving
·       Whatever is done without faith, whether it is sacrifice, austerity, or gift, is unreal. Such actions have no real significance either here or hereafter.
·       Three kinds of gifts:
o   The first comes from an illumined mind. It is a gift given without thought or return on investment.
o   The second kind comes from a mind that is dynamic – passionate but not illumined. This gift is given with an expectation of the results it will produce for the giver – whether it is name or fame or material benefits.
o   Third kind of gift comes from an ignorant mind dominated by inertia. This giving happens at an appropriate time, under unsuitable circumstances, and to an unworthy person. This gift of ignorance is often given with disrespect or contempt.
·       The leader who gives something to a follower, whether praise, power or promotion, has to be sensitive to the context in which such gifts are given. Praise or promotion given when they are not deserved creates a swollen ego in the receiver as well as loss of morale in the ranks of others who are denied such privileges.
·       The purest gift that a leader can give to a follower is the gift of self-reliance. Self-reliance is nothing but faith in the larger self beyond one’s physical body and ego.

Sutra 18: Leadership is transcendence
The fighter seeks success; the warrior pursues perfection that sustains success. Success is a temporary state, whereas the quest for perfection is timeless
 Ã¼  The source and resource
·       Leadership is about setting the right direction.
·       Timeless leaders understand that whereas the spirit of the source, al of matter is the resource.
·       When you are source the world exists in you. When you are a resource you exists in the world.
·       When the leader thinks, acts or feels from a true source, whatever he sends out into world comes back multiplied. This is the creative and transformational potential of the source: it can transform a resource.
·       When a leader expresses him from the source of pure potential he is able to transform his followers. The followers are released from their restrictive neural chemistry of fear and guilt, which makes them feel like small and isolated entities. A timeless leader enables followers to get out of their own restrictive though processes and emotional maps.
 Ã¼  The algebra of attachment
·       Appropriating to the ego what belongs to the larger reality of nature is the entire game of attachment.
·       When we are not attached to the source, our mind becomes addicted to whatever makes the ego perpetuate its story.
·       Timeless leaders help followers detach their minds from egotistic pursuits and go about their business in pursuing a purpose beyond their own personal cravings. This is how great wars are won and great organizations take shape.
 Ã¼  Renunciation and regeneration of the leader
·       You cannot hold onto anything for too long without suffering the consequences.
·       Timeless leaders realize that the renunciation is not merely about letting go; it is just as much about the regeneration of energy in a decaying system. Three ways of doing this are
o   Renouncing old habits: Conscious restraint of the habitual flow of the mind toward sense objects – taking a break from the Internet, for instance.
o   Renouncing emotional outbursts: To be patient and forgiving even when perceiving a small injustice done to yourself by another person. This means not cursing when another driver cuts you off in violation of traffic laws.
o   Renouncing personal aggrandizement: Not appropriating credit for what one has not actually done. Many corporate leaders are tempted to steal the limelight for what others have collectively accomplished. To give to other credit where it is due is the renunciation of doership.
 Ã¼  The path of transcendence
·       Transcendence is the art and science of being real. How does one access reality? Reality unveils itself through the following steps: Facts à Truth à Reality
·       Timeless leaders lead followers to ultimate reality of the source self. Then they lead followers to strike at follower’s organized mental defenses against engaging in the war. The leader leads followers from their delusional thoughts to tranquility of wisdom. He inspires followers to rise from non-action to the freedom of spontaneous action. The leader instills in the follower the power to awaken from fantasy to deep devotion to real goal of all wars: the realization of our larger identity – our source Self.
 Ã¼  The unity of two wills: the fighter and the warrior
·       An organization is not just an assembly of systems and structures but alchemy of the collective wills of its people. When people within and organization perceive the system and structures – both social and psychological – as barriers to realizing their potential as source Self they become fighters. This goes on until a leader comes along and makes them evolve from mundane fighters to true warriors.
·       Fighters fight with their swords and shields. They become victims of their binary minds: fight of flight; offence or defense. Hey see organizational structures and systems as physical barriers that they must overcome. Fighters depend on their limited physical and mental effort and their ego-propelled will. Fighters are doomed to fail like a fragile twig in raging storm.
·       The true warrior does not travel the path of the divided binary mind. Before he takes up the fight, the warrior first surrenders his will to the will of the source, which is ultimate reality. He draws his arrows from the focal point of his source Self. Just as the fighter cannot win, the warrior cannot lose.
·       The unenlightened leader binds the follower in the vicious cycle of insecurity, expectation and dependence. The timeless leader gives the follower the freedom to choose.


If you have made it so far on my longest blogpost ever, you probably agree with me that this was time well spent reading the 18 sutras of timeless management from the Bhagavad Gita.

On the search for next great read now…

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Importance of end goal in a conquest

This is a short excerpt from a book I am reading. This is a pretty powerful concept - slow down and try to think about the end goal of your conquest.

So here is how it goes:

Alexander the great was camping in the Indian subcontinent. There was a sage who was meditating near Alexander's camp. For several days, Alexander saw this age seated in a lotus position while looking toward the horizon. To Alexander, this sage seemed like a lazy man, a recluse who had dropped out of everyday life. One day, the great warrior unable to contain his curiosity, approached the sage and asked, "Don't you have anything to do besides sitting and dreaming?"

The sage sat there unmoved.
"I see you every morning, evening and afternoon in the same place. You have not moved an inch. You must be a terrible fellow!"

The sage did not speak a word.
"Tell me, what is you goal in life?" demanded Alexander exasperated.

The sage smiled a little and said, "Great warrior, you must first tell me about your goal in life before i tell you mine."

Outraged, Alexander thundered, "Don't you know I am Alexander? I am out to conquer the world."
"What do you want to do after you have conquered the world."

"What do you want to do after you have conquered the world?" the sage asked.

"I will then possess all the gold and all the elephants and horses in the world," said Alexander, his lips curling in disdain.
"and then?" the sage asked.
"Then I will have all men as my slaves."
"and then?"
"Then I will have all the women to serve me"
"and then?"
"Then I will sit on my throne, relax and enjoy myself"
The sage smiled. "Sir, that is precisely what I am doing right now," he said. "Why are you bothering me? Please leave me alone and go ahead with your conquests."

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

I usually blog about the books I've read and just write out my notes from the book. However, this blog entry is going to be very different. First of all, it is about a documentary I saw: Jiro Dreams of Sushi and its not going to be only the quotes from Jiro but my analogies to working as knowledge worker.

A little bit about Jiro: He is an 85 year old sushi shokunin who loves making sushi and perfecting his art everyday. His restaurant probably is the only one with 3 star Michelin rating. The restaurant has a tiny reception a bar with about 10 seats and the restroom are located outside. This is important to note when you compare it to other 3 star restaurants: Michelin 3 star

The following are quotes and my analogies (and that is why the documentary was so motivating):

Opening quote: " Once you decide on your occupation, you have to immerse yourself in work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate yourself in mastering your skill. That's the secret of success... and is the key to be regarded honorably"

Looking at the fame and success that Jiro has gained by dedicating himself to the one thing and only one thing - making sushi and improving day by day; it is an observation that I want to take back as a knowledge worker. These days its all about trying luck and moving on if it doesn't work but the real reason should be working on something you like to work and keep working.

Simplicity: "Ultimate simplicity leads to purity"
Fresh out of school kids today graduate with buzz words on their resume. Guaranteed there are a few you can count who are really smart and build the next generation innovations, but to be honest most are mediocre and they forget the simplicity and honesty will let the actual curiosity flourish and help them gain true knowledge. This knowledge helps them build a platform on which they can perform and gain audiences for their own thoughts and ideas. But simplicty is important.

Jiro simplifies, "It really comes down to making an effort and repeating the same thing everyday and improving on it"

Skill set building: One of Jiro's vendors explains the new generation mentality: " These days first thing people want is an easy job. Then, they want is have lots of free time and then they want lots of money. But they aren't thinking of building their skills..."

My mentors have always taught me that love your job and not your company. Keep focusing on new and transferable skill set, it doesn't matter if you have to work on a low paying job or an office without windows for it. When you are a mid level manager in your organization and want to become a leader these transferable skills and experience will be the things that will get you that opportunity. So nothing comes quick and easy.. and there isnt a shortcut 99% of the times... everyone has to struggle hard to earn it.

Self Improvement: More than often people tell you that everything is perfected and you can really improve anything. A knowledge worker should always keep working for self improvement. If you compare yourself with someone else you are insulting yourself. The following quotes from Jiro explain why it is important:

"We came back to work after World War II. The masters said that the history of sushi is so long... that nothing new could be invented. They may have mastered their craft... but there is always room for improvement"

"All I want to do is make better sushi. I do the same thing over and over improving bit by bit. There is always a yearning to achieve more. I'll continue to climb, trying to reach the top... but no one knows where the top is."

Above holds true because the measures of today are not good for tomorrow. Thus the fundamentals on which these measures are built keep changing and thus demanding improvement. If you are already having a mindset to improve the current measures then you are ahead of the curve.

One of Jiro's fish vendor says, "Just when you think you know it all, you realize that you're just fooling yourself...and then you get depressed"

Note on service delivery/Food critic: Masuhiro Yamamoto identifies the top qualities of a good chef, these qualities are really that any knowledge worker could evaluate themselves against as the qualities are for a professional in service industry. The 5 qualities are:

  1. Take work seriously, consistently perform at higher level
  2. Aspire to improve their skills
  3. Cleanliness : Attention to details. It is essential to check every detail
  4. Impatience/ Sense of urgency: This brings out the innovative person and shows capability to take initiatives
  5. Passionate: Of course, you cannot do any of the above if you are passionate about your work.
While the above are personal qualities the service provided by the individual to their company or clients should always be evaluated to the following three standards:
  1. Quality
  2. Originality
  3. Consistency
Mr. Yamamoto says, " It is never a disappointing experience at Jiro's. That's not short of a miracle"
As consultants/knowledge worker one should strive for a similar solution and service delivery.

I believe that I would like to think about service just like Jiro thinks about food by his statement, "In order to make delicious food you must eat delicious food. You must develop a palate capable of discerning good and bad. Without good taste you cant make good food. If your sense of taste is lower than that of the customer, how will you impress them?"

As a consultant/knowledge worker you are paid to know more about the solution or service and thus one should strive hard to know more than the person paying for your service.

When you eat at Jiro today, he develops a daily course of meal, there are no options to pick from and you pay $19 per minute for that course. Mr. Yamamoto says that it is like listening to Jiro's symphony the course has a cadence to it and lets you experience the food better. A consultant should strive for similar things while delivering service or solutions to their clients.

Example of the meal course Jiro had in the documentary:
HIRAME - Halibut
SUMI-IKA - Squid
AJI - Horse Makerel
KOHADA - Gizzard Shad
HAMAGURI - Hard Shell Clam
SHIMAJI - Striped Makerel
KURUMA ABI - Wheeled Shrimp
SAYORI - Half Beak
TAKO - Octopus
SABA - Makerel
UNI - Sea Urchin
KOBASHIRA - Bay Scallop
IKURA - Salmon Roe
ANAGO - Salt Water Eel
KANPIO-MAKI - Dried Ground Roll
TAMAGOYAKI - Grilled Egg

As my manager says, "Dont show up and throw up". Have a plan like a symphony or orchestra and unravel the cadence with the right tempo.

Treating your peers correctly: As a knowledge worker your peers are essential to accomplish the project at hand. The work passes multiple people and thus each one adds value and makes sure that the service is delivered correctly. 

Like Jiro says,"When we have good tuna, I feel great while I am making sushi. I feel victorious"

This is possible because of the good fish vendor picks. So if you are up the stream worker make sure that you do the job right.

Resources in any organization are like natural resources, so do not wear them out because of your lack of knowledge or improper work. As Jiro's son talks about vanishing fish and how that affects his fathers dream of making good sushi, "Business should balance profits with preserving natural resources"

Managers should also ensure that knowledge workers are treated right as they try to balance profits.

Random note on lean organizations: There is no specific reason why I draw this analogy, maybe just because I've worked with lean organizations and have learnt that there is no space to hide in lean organizations. Jiro talks about tuna and that resembles lean organizations "Each tuna has its own unique taste. But it is the leaner meat that carries the essence of the flavor".

In today's fast moving world organizations rely on their partners and source work and this allows them to build fast reacting organization for the new world. Jiro relies on the fish suppliers from the market. Jiro states, "We are experts in sushi but.. in each of their specialties the vendors are more knowledgeable. We've built relationship and trust in them." 

Life Lessons by Jiro
  • Studying hard does not guarantee that you will become a respectable person
  • Always doing what you are told doesn't mean you will succeed in life.
  • Always look ahead and above yourself. Always try...to improve on yourself. Always strive to elevate your craft.
Being Lucky: A lot of people blame luck. Jiro was 9 years old when he left home and never looked back. He did not teach his kids that if things don't work out you can come back, he told them there is no place for them to come back. Jiro never got a chance to see his father after he was 7 and couldn't even be by his deathbed.

Jiro says," I didn't want to have to sleep at the temple or under the bridge...so I had to work just to survive."

There are probably many people out there who would kill to be in the position that you are as a knowledge worker and thus the only way is to work hard and go up. Never dishearten yourself by the amount of work, just keep working and improving.

When do you stop: Quote by Jiro: " When to quit? The job you worked so hard for? I've never once hated this job. I fell in love with my work and gave my life to it. I don't feel like retiring" (Jiro is 85 years old)

Monday, January 21, 2013

Dhando

Just finished reading Mohnish Pabrai's book: Dhando

Lot of copying from Warren Buffet's value investing principles but at the same time telling how innovation doesn't always lead to competitive advantage. Interesting read - boring if you already have read Ben Graham's Intelligent investor.

Wanted to document the principles of the Dhando value investing.


Key principles of Dhando:
  •          Invest in existing businesses
  •          Invest in simple businesses
  •          Invest in distressed businesses in distressed industries
  •          Invest in businesses with durable moats
  •          Few bets, big bets, and infrequent bets
  •          Fixate on arbitrage
  •          Margin of safety—always
  •          Invest in low-risk, high-uncertainty businesses
  •          Invest in the copycats rather than the innovators.
      Not very insightful notes like my other posts but if you are thinking of a business then you could evaluate it with the above principles and you will find out if there is a moat of competitive advantage for the business.

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Jugaad: Innovation


Just finished reading a book called: "Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, be flexible, generate breakthrough growth" by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja. I picked the book just after reading the word Jugaad, as it holds special meaning for me having grown up in Mumbai. The following are notes I took from the book. All ideas and thoughts are purely owned by the authors. As always, my notes are for me to read again and I recommend reading the book rather than thinking of my notes as a replacement to this good read.

From the foreword:

"My Mantras unfold like this: be purpose inspired; change comes from the edge; devote yourself to world-changing ideas; emotions lead to action; creativity overcomes scarcity; in tough times, you need to win ugly." - Kevin Roberts

"Having crazies with purpose on your side is great;having unguided crazies is not" - Kevin Roberts

Notes:

The book lays out the following principles for cost effective innovation practices -
1) Seek opportunity in adversity
2) Do more with less
3) Think and act flexibly
4) Keep it simple
5) Include the margin 
6) Follow your heart

Some quotes from the book:
  • "It has done me good to be somewhat parched by the heat and drenched by rain of life" - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • "If I had one dollar to spend, I would invest in solving the biggest problem today - the economics of scarcity." - Jeffrey Immelt
  • "One cannot alter a condition with the same mindset that created it in the first place" - Albert Einstien
  • "I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but i would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity" - Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • "We need a system of inclusive capitalism that would have a twin mission: making produts and also improving lives for those who don't fully benefit from market forces" - Bill Gates
  • "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary" - Steve Jobs

Now, some of the noteworthy thoughtful sentences from the book:
  • Jugaad: is quite simply, a unique way of thinking and acting in response to challenges; it is the gutsy art of spotting opportunities in the most adverse circumstances and resourcefully improvising solutions using simple means.
  • The structured approach for innovation is too expensive and resource consuming
  • Structured approach for innovation lacks flexibility. Factory processes are like a straitjacket: once you get in, you are stuck, and when things start to change, you can't move. Positively deviant behavior and ideas are what actually drive game-changing innovation.
  • Structured approach for innovation is elitist and insular. Innovation is not invention, its the conversion of new idea into consumer delight and ultimately, into revenues and profits. If an idea or technology cannot be successfully commercialized, its not an innovation. In an interconnected world powered by social media, the intellectual property that one can buy isn't the only source of new ideas. Finding, sharing, and integrating globally dispersed knowledge among all levels of employees is just as important.

Principle One: Seek opportunity in adversity
  • Instead of giving to the problem, jugaad innovators focus on finding a solution to it.
  • These are some ways Jugaad innovators seek opportunity in adversity
  • A hard environment nurtures resilience: When confronted with adversity, they don't retrench but embrace the difficulties and learn from the experience. Armed with resilience, perseverance, and a willingness to learn, jugaad innovators strive to respond to the harsh world they face and find opportunities for growth and expansion in it. In doing so, they are able to create a better world, not just for themselves but also for their communities.
  • Reframing the half empty glass as half full: Jugaad innovators find opportunity in adversity in three ways: reframing challenges as opportunities for growth, making constraints work for them, and constantly adapting to a changing environment by improvising solutions to challenges they face along the way. Jugaad innovators don't find opportunity in spite of adversity; for them, adversity often is the opportunity. They perceive constraints not as a debilitating deterrent but as a creative stimulus. Indeed, their creative juices begin to flow when they are confronted with a seemingly insurmountable challenge. The second way jugaad innovators find opportunity in adversity is by making constraints work for them rather than against them. Third way the jugaad innovators seek opportunity in adversity is by being quick to act in response to the opportunities they see.

Why Structured Innovation processes fail to seek opportunity in adversity?
  • The processes fail to notice or ignore adversity until its too late.
  • They try to tackle adversity head-on, rather than seeking to leverage it.
  • They address new problems with old frames of reference.
  • They think small (six sigma) when facing big challenges.

How can structured processes be changed to capitalize on adversity and use jugaad innovation as complimentary tool to the existing processes?
  • Recognize that glass if always half-full: The key to doing so is being able to reframe challenges as opportunities and use constraints as a spur to innovate
  • Realize extreme conditions are fertile soil for extreme innovation.
  • Build psychological capital to boost confident resilience: The true value of a company is no longer its tangible assets or even its technological processes: it lies in its human capital and underlying psychological capital - neither of which is open to imitation. Anyone can buy technology or obtain money from financial markets but we cannot buy motivation, engagement, confidence, resiliency, hope, optimism.
  • Approach big challenges with a growth mindset: This is critical because when leader face adversity with a fixed mindset, their minds are clouded by fear or pride, they tend to innovate incrementally, and their efforts yield limited results. A growth mindset instead helps leader approach even big challenges with optimism and curiosity - enabling them to generate breakthrough innovation that delivers more sustainable results in the long term. Specifically, those with a growth mindset are willing to let go of old business models and embrace new ones to maintain long-term success.
  • Tap the power of networks to tackle big market threats: Rather than deal with adversity by relying exclusively on internal resources, corporate leaders can benefit from working with customers, parters, and even competitors to cocreate innovative solutions.

When you listen to customers, you merely engage with customers, you merely react to needs; when you empathize with customers, you anticipate their needs; but when you truly love your customers, you surprise them by introducing them to products they couldn't even fathom.

Principle Two: Do More with Less
  • Scarcity is the mother of invention: To even a casual observer, the most string thing about jugaad innovators in emerging markets is their frugal mindset. These entrepreneurs and managers - whether they come from Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Kenya, Mexico, or the Philippines - are constantly looking for new ways to do more with less and deliver greater value to customers at a lower cost. What makes this mindset so fundamental to jugaad innovators, and why are they so good at getting "more for less"? Such a mindset is a rational response to pervasive scarcity in their environment. For jugaad innovators being frugal is not a luxury - its the key to survival.

Being resourceful in a resource scarce environment:
  • Jugaad innovators are able to get more from less by applying frugality to every activity they perform at every step along the value chain. They are frugal in how they design products, how they build them, how they deliver them, and how they perform after-sales maintenance. Their frugality shows up not only in their parsimonious use of capital and natural resources but also in how they maximize their limited time and energy: rather that doing everything themselves, they rely extensively on partners to perform various operations, thus saving time and energy. The following approaches employed by jugaad innovators to gain more from less:
  • They reuse and recombine: Rather than creating something entirely new, from scratch, jugaad innovators are more likely to reuse or seek new combinations of existing technologies or resources both to come up with new solutions and to commercialize them in markets.
  • They remain asset light: A second strategy that jugaad innovators use to get more from less is to leverage the capital assets of others to scale up their business model. Thus, instead of owning of owning physical assets, they rent or share them. This approach not only makes their cost structures lean but also allows them to quickly scale operations up or down to meet shifts in demand without investing in additional sales.
  • They leverage existing networks for distribution: A third "more with less" strategy that jugaad innovators use is focused on solving the "last mile" problem - that is, the difficulty of reaching far-flung customers in an economical way. Rather than investing in expensive logistics networks, jugaad entrepreneurs leverage existing networks to cost effectively deliver their products and services to people in hard to reach markets. In particular, they reply on grassroots partners in local communities to reach more customers and personalize their offerings for them. These grassroots distribution partners are often micro-entreprenueurs themselves. By building on already developed and trusted social networks in emerging markets, jugaad innovators can compensate for the poor state of the physical infrastructure there. More important, by enrolling grassroots entrepreneurs as their channel partners, jugaad innovators drive their own financial sustainability while also creating new economic opportunities in local communities.

Helping customers get more value: Unlike their counterparts in the west, they do not typically focus on wowing customers with products that have cool features or the latest technologies. Instead, they pursue functionally minimalist solutions that offer superior value to customers - often transforming their lives in the process. Simply put, they help their customers get more value for less cost by offering them quality products and services at highly affordable prices. Also, rather than considering these questions in the abstract in R&D lab, jugaad innovators spend time in the field, observing and interacting with potential customers to identify their latent needs and requirements. Only then do they zero in on the essential features of a solution that most relevant to their unique customers.

How western companies can find abundance in scarcity:
  • Tie senior management's compensation to frugal performance: One way to do that is by linking senior executives compensation to performance metrics aimed at driving frugality for betterment of people, planet and profit.
  • Senior management must challenge R&D to do more with less: This will happen only when engineers and scientists are offered challenging projects that give the incentive to do more with less. The guidelines should be of more with less for creating modern, reliable and affordable products and services.
  • Marketing executives should create separate brands for their affordable offerings.
  • Create incentive systems for salespeople to sell affordable products: companies can address this issue by reorganizing their sales forcer along brand lines, with different salespeople responsible for low-end and high-end segments.
  • Design affordable solutions from ground up.
  • Engage eco-aware consumers in the sustainability dialogue: Frequently, participants in the user communities are young frugal, and environmentally conscious. They aren't just looking for a deal; they're searching and willing to champion products that fit into personal value system. These consumer communities can help build brands they favor, or cause the demise of brands they disapprove of.
  • Partner Extensively: Partnering with key external players offers a powerful way for companies to get more out of their limited R&D dollars. Partners can cost-effectively bring companies better ideas than they already have, help companies develop existing ideas more efficiently, or enable them to commercialize these ideas more extensively and at lower cost.

Principle Three: Think and Act Flexibly
  • Jugaad innovators adapt to survive: The sheer diversity, volatility, and unpredictability of comic life in emerging markets demands flexibility on the part of jugaad innovators. It demands that they think outside of the box, experiment and improvise: they must either adapt or die. In many ways, this diversity, volatility, and unpredictability also enables flexible thinking and action on the part of jugaad innovators.

Some of the ways jugaad innovators act flexibly are:
  • Jugaad innovators think the unthinkable: There is mind boggling diversity in emerging economies. The heterogeneity of populations in these markets demands unconventional, non linear thinking. Jugaad innovators therefore dare to challenge many ingrained beliefs and turn conventional wisdom on its head.
  • Jugaad innovators don't plan - they improvise: Emerging markets are characterized by high volatility. Eominic circumstances are constantly changing. Growth rates are often in double digits, and the competitive landscape is often shifting. New laws and regulations are constantly being put into place, and policy is constantly evolving. So jugaad innovators need to experiment as they go along and be willing to try multiple options, rather than adopting one approach at the start and sticking to it thereafter. Jugaad innovators do not attempt to work everything out in advance or rely on a business plan to determine the mid-to long term roadmap for their new ventures. Instead, they improvise their next course of action as circumstances change, and they do so from within a framework of deep knowledge and passion. Given their propensity for improvisation, jugaad innovators don't reply on forecasting tools like scenario planning, as many western companies do, to assess future risks. They believe in Murphy's law - anything that can go wrong will go wrong - so whats the point of anticipating every single obstacle that might appear down the road?
  • Jugaad innovators experiment with multiple ways to reach a goal: Jugaad innovators may have a single minded vision of where they want to get to, but they must be willing to try different paths to get there. Specifically, they must be willing to keep experimenting in order to attain their goals - and they must be flexible enough to quickly switch from one path to another along the way.
  • Jugaad innovators act with speed and agility: By demonstrating agility, jugaad innovators can deal with unanticipated challenges faster and seize unexpected opportunities - such as changing customer needs - more swiftly than their competitors.

Learn to improvise:
  • Break rules and shift values when necessary: Even conventional beliefs and values have a shelf life: there is nothing eternally wise about them. Breakthrough innovation occurs when commonly held beliefs and values are challenged, not reinforced.
  • Don't let inflexible investors and customers dictate your innovation agenda: Because external stakeholders often tend to be conservative or lack the perspective to appreciate vision of foresight, it is probably best not to seek their validation for bold new products and services.
  • Create time and space for employees to improvise and experiment: Companies can hardly expect employees to thin flexibly while they maintain their regular routine and operate in their usual work environment. To be able to think and act flexibly employees need dedicated time and an inspiring sale to experiment new ideas.
  • Get outside your comfort zone to gain new perspective: To truly think flexibly, managers need to be taken out of their comfort zones and exposed to new situations that challenge them differently.
  • Partner with flexible thinkers: Sometimes the best way to develop a new mindset is to seek inspiration from outside your company. Thus one way to nurture flexibility is to partner with other companies that are already flexible and agile.
  • Experiment with multiple business models:  Often companies become to attached to a successful business model and find it nearly impossible to let go of it, let alone to explore alternative options. But competition can spring from unexpected corners and disrupt your business model overnight. Flexible thinkers keep all options open and experiment with multiple business models simultaneously.
  • Fail cheap, fail fast, fail often:  A corollary of the willingness of jugaad innovators to continually experiment is their willingness to fail cheap, fail fast, fail often.

Principle Four: Keep it Simple
Practical benefits of simplicity: Simple products offer three advantages to jugaad innovators
  • They are cheaper to make and therefore more affordable
  • They are easier to install and maintain
  • They can satisfy wider audience

Jugaad innovators follow Albert Einstien's exhortation to "make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler" In other words, jugaad innovators don't necessarily try to simplify the nature of the problem the customer is facing. Doing so runs the risk of producing simplistic solutions, ones that may appear simple in the short term but prove ineffective in the long run. 

How to simplify you products and your organization
  • Redesign entire organization around simplicity:  A customer may love the ease of use of a firms products but hate the convoluted sales process she has to go through to but the product. Companies must therefore simplify every interaction with their customers throughout the product lifecycle - from the initial purchase to the actual use and even to the products disposal by streamlining not only their R&D and manufacturing but also their sales and customer service processes.
  • Distill customer needs to their bare essence and design simple products around them:  Simplicity advocates insist that "user centric design" boosts the ease of use of products and services.
  • Design simple offerings from the ground up:  Rather than stripping down existing high end products that is, defeaturing them - companies need to design and build products from the ground up so they trull embody the spirit of simplicity.
  • Embrace the universal design philosophy to boost the usability of offerings:  Universal design is a philosophy that celebrates humanity's diversity and exhorts companies to design products that are usable by as many people as possible.
  • Get engineers and industrial designers to work together:  Companies must recognize that incorporating simplicity upfront during the product conceptualization phase is several times most cost fictive than doing it as an afterthought in later stages of development process.
  • Simplify product architectures and reuse platforms across products:  R&D engineers are like craftsmen: they often like to create their own technologies or components from scratch, even if comparable technologies or components are readily available in the market. But this "reinvent the wheel" approach often leads to long product development cycles and results in expensive, overengineerd products.
  • Make it simple, not simplistic:  Simplicity if often the most powerful antidote to complexity. But simple does not necessarily mean simplistic - realistically, complexity can be neither ignore nor avoided. Rather, innovators must embrace the complexity of a problem and then find a simple way through or around it.

Principle Five: Include the margin
  • Inclusion: A moral imperative that makes business sense: There is an upside, however, to this widespread scarcity: millions of excluded citizens equals millions of potential customers. For entrepreneurs willing to rise to the challenge, the choice to include the margin promises many potentially lucrative opportunities to build entirely new businesses. Exclusion cannot be addressed with one-size-fits-all approach - wherein, for example, a single product or service serves the majority of the population - an approach that is often favored by large corporations. Instead, inclusivity requires an approach to innovation that is sensitive to individual differences and local circumstances. The intellectual and creative challenge of serving the diverse needs of a large number of people in an economical way is a great spur to jugaad innovators. Deepening interconnectivity in emerging markets both amplifies the sense of exclusion and offers interesting ways to reduce it. This ability to see what the world has to offer drives them to aspire for better and more things.
  • Co-Creating Value with the Margin:  Jugaad innovators know how to employ for-profit business models to bring about social change. Jugaad innovators work with these traits to successfully reach the excluded in the following ways:
  • Approaching marginal groups as whole new markets:  Jugaad innovators don't merely treat marginal groups as one more segment on which to dump their existing products. Instead, they approach marginal groups as whole new markets that need to be server with entirely new business models.
  • Helping everyone climb up Maslow's hierarchy of needs:  Jugaad entrepreneurs recognize that even low-income consumers have high aspirations and are eager to climb up Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Jugaad innovators do not, therefore, short-change low-income consumers on quality: they know that although these consumers are lowe earners, they are high yearners. As such, jugaad innovators strive to offer marginal segments products of value that are nonetheless affordable.
  • Cicreating value with customers and partners throughout the value chain:  Jugaad innovators don't view customers as merely passive users of their products and services. Recognizing the diversity of customer needs, they invent new solutions from the ground up by working closely with marginal groups to identify their unique needs. They then engage local communicates and partners to set up a grassroots value chain to locally build, deliver and support their solutions - making these solutions in turn affordable, accessible, and sustainable.
  • Scaling up personalized solutions with technology:  Jugaad innovators cleverly employ technology - especially mobile computing - to reduce the cost of delivering services to marginal segments.
  • How to make big margins by including the margin:
  • Carry out social inclusion with a business mindset:  Non profit CSR programs that serve marginal groups are redundant if your company is also string to meet the needs of the same groups using a for-profit business model - just as jugaad innovators in emerging markets are doing. To avoid such corporate cultural schizophrenia, Western corporate leaders need to pull the plug on their CSR efforts and get serious about social inclusion by making it a strategic business imperative for all their departments and senior managers.
  • Cater to the expanding low income western consumer base: The economic downturn is set to keep the financial squeeze on middle-class Americans and Europeans for some years to come. This hollowing-out of the middle class means that western companies that traditionally served this mainstream market will need to radically shift their innovation strategies - or lose out to low-cost rivals. Rather than spending R&D on premium products with high end features, these companies will need to create value for money products that are accessible to the growing low income consumer base in the US and Europe.
  • Create an inclusive work culture: Companies must strive to foster and open and inclusive culture anchored by a participative management style. This helps to foster a creative and motivated workforce, on that can tap into different domains of expertise in devising new products and services and that feels empowered and encouraged to do so.
  • Recognize that marginal segments are not marginal minds: By labeling marginal customers and employees "too poor" or "too old", companies lose an opportunity to tap into the rich knowledge and wisdom these marginal groups might contribute to the organization.
  • Use technology to lower the cost of inclusion:  Just like jugaad innovators in emerging markets do, rather than invest in expensive brick and mortar delivery infrastructure, western companies need to harness the power of social media, cloud computing, and mobile telephony to cost-effectively deliver their products and services to marginal consumers.
  • Partner with non-profit organizations:  A new generation of non-profit ventures is willing to work with businesses to cocreate for profit business models that improve the lives of marginal citizens while also generating a profit.
  • Secure C-level buy-in to drive systemic business model changes:  Given that inclusivity requires fundamental and systemic changes in how companies operate, top managements commitment is vital to enabling and sustaining such business model transformation within companies.
  • Adopt and adapt proven best practices from emerging markets: As we described earlier in this chapter, emerging markets - because of scarcity, diversity and interconnectivity - are increasingly a breeding ground for solutions that include the margin.
  • Embrace inclusive design principles:  It is easier to factor in inclusivity up front, during the design phase of innovation, rather than to try and retrofit or reengineer existing products and services to appeal to marginalized segments of the market after the fact.

Principle Six: Follow your heart
Jugaad innovators in emerging markets rely more on their intuition than on analysis to successfully navigate and highly complex, uncertain, and unpredictable environment. They use their gut intelligence and innate empathy for customer needs to innovate breakthroughs that defy conventional wisdom. Their undying passion acts as the fuel that sustains their efforts to make a difference in the lives of communities they serve.
  • Your heart knows what your mind doesn't:  The heart is the seat of passion, intuition and empathy. Jugaad innovators in emerging markets possess these qualities in abundance. The challenge is twofold: how to develop these qualities in the first place and then how to nurture them. We have found that several key aspects of the complex environment in which jugaad innovators operate make them particularly passionate, intuitive and empathetic. Whatever they may be, these extreme conditions arouse the empathy of jugaad entrepreneurs, who feel they must do something to improve the often harsh conditions around them. Thus jugaad innovators don't just sit around after witnessing others pain; rather, they convert their compassion into passion by seeking solution to alleviate the pain. Another reason why jugaad innovators follow their hearts - more than their brains - is that they are forced to think on their feet all the time. Its hard - even counterproductive - to logically analyze a highly complex situation and make rational decisions when things are changing constantly. Emerging markets are fast paced and volatile. Confronted daily with do-or-die situations, jugaad innovators have learned to make decisions on the fly, using their well honed intuition rather than relying solely on analysis and logic. The harsh conditions in emerging markets kindle jugaad innovators creative empathy and passion, and the unpredictability of the local environments forces them to make rapid fire decisions based on intuition than rational analysis.
  • Why do industrial era business practices keep hearts locked out:
  • R&D: Isolated and disconnected from real world customers:  R&D engineers who operate in isolated labs do not spend time immersed in the world of customers and thus cannot empathize with them.
  • Firms often seek refuge in numbers and shun innovation:  The business world abhors surprises and craves predictability: forecasts, plans, and budgets are all meant to "control" the future and confer a sense of stability - leaving no room for intuitive improvisation.
  • Marketing executives don't emotionally connect with customers:  Age of now it is all about the mastery of emotional communications; not manipulation, but of having relationships. In the age of now its all about the single question consumers ave of you: 'How will you improve my life?' Answering this is to deliver priceless value.
  • Outdated human resource management doesn't engage next generation employees:  Companies continue to rely primarily on financial incentives to motivate their employees rather than giving them the space and time to pursue their passion in a constructive manner.
  • How western firms can follow their hearts?
  • Send senior management to "empathy development boot camps":  Empathy is like a muscle; it can be developed in senior executives by exposing them to diverse perspectives.
  • Ignore market researchers and investors to innovate radically:  C-Level executives need moral courage to follow their hearts and this often entails ignoring market researchers and investors when it comes to disruptive innovation. Specifically, to avoid getting caught in an inflexible web of structure and demands for data, senior executives shouldn't rely solely on the approval from external stakeholders when launching truly disruptive products and services.
  • Embrace customer centric design principles:  R&D engineers and scientists need to get out of their labs and immerse themselves in the environment that surrounds their customers, to truly understand their needs: this is the basis of customer-centric design.
  • Engage your customers in a heart to heart conversation:  Researchers in fields from nueroscience to psychology, behavioral economics to marketing, all agree that emotions are as powerful a driver of consumer behavior as rationality and calculations. In many cases emotions may even be the only driver of consumer behavior. In others, they may be more dominant. In still others, the emotions may play a complementary and reinforcing role to that of reason. All this has profound implications for CMOs and marketers more generally. In a world where brands have achieved parity on features, price, distribution and even design, engaging customers' emotions becomes a crucial way for marketers to differentiate their offerings from those of others.
  • Create "Center of passion" across your organization:  Firms must empower employees to publicly share and discuss ideas they are passionate about - however controversial and disruptive these ideas may be. And to bring those ideas to life, they must help build communities of customers and partners around them.

All of the above are good principles and the authors did not suggest that companies should completely shift to jugaad innovation but compliment the innovation process with Jugaad thought process. Places where jugaad will work for sure are:
  • Markets with rapid changes
  • Markets with resource scarcity
  • Markets with frugal and diverse customers
  • Markets with industry immaturity
  • Markets with exploding interconnectivity

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Analysis nugget: SEO/SEM Conversion Optimization

Create a process for maximizing search campaign conversion and traffic. Focus on specific target sites and keyword campaigns. Analysts can easily chose a single domain and set of keywords and generate reports on demand to assess the impact of bidding strategies before rolling out the strategy to other web properties.

Identify top-ranking SEO keywords that also have high corresponding SEM ad spend and watch onscreen in real time the impact of modifying bids to lower levels. With continuous monitoring and analysis the analysts can confirm the impact on total conversion and revenue resulting from changing SEM bid rules and repeat the process for all integrated keyword portfolios, across sites and domains. Once keyword campaigns are optimized, marketers can watch for emerging website traffic trends, increases in conversions, and conduct customer pathway analysis to further refine campaigns to be more relevant and drive higher conversion.

Addition: In response to the comment. My post wasnt suggesting that SEM is not required. This was just one of the many ways of performing analysis and improving conversion.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Commander's Intent

Why is Commander's Intent So Hard to Implement in Business?


This is a snippet that I am plagiarizing from the book: Repeatablility.
How can it be that hard to align the front line around the core ideas of the business? the same as the management team? Here are some key obstacles that seem to get in the way of shortening the effective distance between management and the front line that is serving the customer:
  • "The customer is a number, not a person." Insulated by phone menu options and distant call centers, senior management can easily spend less and less time interacting with customers, and especially ultimate end users.
  • "The thin blue line of customer care." When customer care and after-service is viewed as an expense to be managed down you have a problem.
  • "Sales are the other guys." Some businesses have cultures that devaluate the sales and service roles, as opposed to exalting it as the eyes and ears on the ground, as the intelligence function about customer needs and competitive offerings.
  • "Tyranny of fuctions." In some companies, internal functions become service centers for other internal customers, creating an entire internal ecosystem with a life of its own independent of the customer and the value that these functions actually create that the customer would pay for. If you are having too many internal meetings, and if this accounts for more than 10 percent of your time, then you might have this problem
  • "Myth of stakeholder priorities." When customers become one of a long list of stakeholders in the queue of competing company priorities, customers can become undervalued, and the gap between senior management's mentality and the market reality at the front line increases.
  • "Layered organizational complexity." Organizations add complexity when they grow, especially in absence of repeatable formula. Addressing complexity with complexity has effect over time of disconnecting top management from the front line and turning major decisions into a fuzz ball of committees where no one really knows who decides. This is how complexity kills speed, responsiveness and ultimately growth.