Leadership Today Requires Observation And Worldview Skills

On July 15, 2010, In Leadership today requires observation and worldview skills,

Roshan Thiran stresses that leadership today requires observation and worldview skills.

LAST weekend, while delivering an action-learning programme, I showed a video of two teams playing basketball. When I asked the class to count the number of passes being made by the teams, they all got the right answer. But no one spotted this big gorilla that walked into the court and danced for a good portion of the game.

These past few decades, we have witnessed numerous companies at the top of their industry get dispatched by unknowns from nowhere. Motorola, the ruler of cellular telephone, missed the shift to digital and was displaced by Nokia, a Finnish company producing snow tires and rubber boots a decade before they conquered cellular wireless. IBM, kings of the computing age, completely missed the PC revolution and was overtaken by Microsoft, Dell and a host of small start-ups.

At the same time, innovative companies were replaced by others that just copied. Xerox invented the photocopiers but Canon took it to a whole new level with the colour copier. Ford and GM had automobile leadership for years till the Japanese copycats came in with their high value economic cars and wiped them out. Why do all these companies get dethroned?

In recent times, the richest economy in the 16th century was Spain but within 150 years it became one of the poorest in Europe. Spain became more and more internally focused, moving from an open to a closed economy. A civil war, combined with its close-door policy, cost Spain its position of power.

Like Spain, many organisations similarly fall. Companies that close itself to the world and focus internally may miss the boat when change occurs. Just as Motorola missed the jump to digital, and IBM missed the PC revolution, organizations that stop looking outside, lose their way.

It’s the same in our personal lives. We are so busy in our work, our kids, our schedules and meetings, that we sometimes miss important changes that are taking place around us.

I recall a friend’s mother working as a secretary in the 1970s who was a great on the typewriter. But when computers made their debut in the 80s, she was made redundant and replaced by a savvier computer user. Companies face the same dilemma. When they are so busy with their internal operations and processes, they lose sight of the world and are soon replaced by new companies.

Just think of the products and services you use today. How many of these products are from companies that existed 15 years ago? We fly on AirAsia, buy furniture from IKEA, buy our computers from Dell, drink coffee at Starbucks, search for information via Google and we get leadership training from Leaderonomics!

Having a company byline that includes “established 1850” is almost a liability today. Reputation counts for nothing anymore. Shell has a home base in the UK and has a reputation as a producer of high-quality petrol. Yet, in its UK home market, the biggest petrol retailer is Tesco, a supermarket.

So, how do these companies lose their leadership positions?

One reason may be “social proof”, a theory developed by psychologist Robert Cialdini. The larger a crowd of people at the scene of an accident, the more likely no one will help the victims. If everyone is passive, everyone thinks that there is no emergency. Cialdini theory claims, “If a lot of people are doing the same thing, they must know something we don’t.”

Companies foolishly adopt this “follow-the-leader” attitude. Wang Laboratories, which established itself as a major computer force in the 80s, decided to follow industry leader IBM and forewent the PC market. Today it does not exist.

Another reason, asserts Charan and Useem, is that “a number of studies show that people are less likely to make optimal decisions after prolonged periods of success. Enron, Lucent, WorldCom – all had reached the mountaintop before they ran into trouble. Someone should have told them that most mountaineering accidents happen on the way down.”

Gary Hamel adds: “The seeds of failure are usually sown at the heights of greatness.” Once a company becomes an industry leader, defensive thinking seeps in and no one challenges the status quo. Many become insular and inward-looking. And miss changes taking place, becoming irrelevant to their customers.

Great leaders are always forward-looking and not basking in past glories or caught up in internal issues. Bill Gates constantly says “Microsoft is always two years away from failure.” Gates understands the need to be engaged with the world, its trends and market changes.

Intel is a great example of a company reinventing itself. Andrew Grove writes in Only the Paranoid Survive about how Intel faced competition from South Korea and Japan, which turned memory chips into cheap commodities. Intel quickly decided to exit the memory business entirely and become a maker of microprocessors. Grove came to this insight when he looked outside Intel and asked himself, “If I got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would the new CEO do?” The answer was clear: Focus on our strengths – high tech, and get rid of memory chips.

There were many internal Intel issues but Grove knew if he continued to play the same game, he would soon be another fallen giant. He observed that high-tech microprocessors had a premium and he had a stable of scientists which he could deploy into that space. His worldview enabled Intel to remain a giant, albeit in a different product line.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, writes: “The key sign – the litmus test – is whether you begin to explain away the brutal facts rather than to confront the brutal facts head-on.” By forcing himself to see from the outside, Grove recognised the brutal facts facing him and made the necessary change.

So what lessons can we draw from these stories?

Firstly, change happens all the time. That is not anything to be paranoid about. What we need to be vigilant about is to always be observing what is happening from the outside in. And it’s not just about in your industry but changes everywhere. Book retailers never quite understood how Amazon.com suddenly appeared and wiped them out as no one tracked the Internet revolution.

Secondly, we need to be wary when we start becoming so internally focused and consumed by tasks and to-do lists. Great leaders learn to reflect and take time off to notice the “dancing gorillas” that walk into their lives.

Finally, watch out when you become defensive and reactionary. This is the starting point of your fall from the mountaintop. Great leaders that stay at the top for long periods are usually ones who have humbled themselves to believe that learning and growth never end.

Back to my gorilla video – whether you are a leader or an individual contributor, take some time to be still and mindful of the changes that are taking place. There are many big gorillas walking into your industry and workplace and if you are too busy “counting passes” inside your organisation, the gorilla may just consume you and make you an irrelevant dinosaur.

Roshan Thiran is currently CEO of Leaderonomics, a social enterprise focused on inspiring people to leadership greatness. Join his journey and become a fan of Leaderonomics and DIODE Camps at www.leaderonomics.com

Notes: Perseverance - commitment, hard work, patience, endurance

Putting A Dent in the Universe

On February 2, 2011, In Putting A Dent in the Universe,

Leadership Lessons from Steve Jobs

“I want to put a dent in the universe” – Steve Jobs, Apple CEO

A few weeks ago, I received a book from publisher McGraw-Hill on Steve Jobs by communications coach Carmine Gallo. I started recollecting the “Think Different” Apple ad campaign. The ad was the starting point in Steve Job’s revival of a company he founded, was fired from and later brought back to turnaround. The ad was memorable because it was essentially about Steve Job’s leadership and his desire to “change the world.” The copy of the ad, read by Richard Dreyfuss, goes like this:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. And the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.”

This campaign featured Thomas Edison, Einstein, Gandhi, Amelia Earheart and other Apple heroes. Steve explained that “you can tell a lot about a person by who his or her heroes are” and his role models were people who “changed the world“.

Steven Paul Jobs has become “the most successful CEO today” according to Jack Welch, reshaping the computer, entertainment, music, telecommunications and the book industries.

Born to Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian, he was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs who promised his biological parents that they would send Steve to college. Steve did go to Reed College but dropped out after one semester.

Although dropping out, he continued attending classes he was passionate about. He worked briefly at Hewlett-Packard meeting Steve Wozniak, who would later co-found Apple with him, then took a job with Atari to save money to go to India to “find himself”.

He travelled to India and came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing. Steve began that trip wanting to “change the world” but he did not know how. During his time in India, he realised that “maybe Thomas Edison did a lot more to improve the world than Karl Marx or Neem Karolie Baba put together.” Steve’s trip to convinced him that his Indiapurpose on earth was “to put a dent in the universe through ”innovation like his great role model Thomas Edison.

Studying Steve’s leadership, I uncovered that he, like Mandela, Gandhi, Napoleon, Jack Welch and other great leaders, all began their leadership journey in silent retreat ‘finding themselves and their passion‘. In fact, interestingly, I found 6 key steps which enabled all great leaders across time to “put a dent in the universe”. The steps are as follows:

1. Take Time to be with yourself to know yourself and find out what you truly love to do and what drives you

2. Define your vision of a better tomorrow and redefine it till the vision excites you

3. Sell and excite the world with the message of your vision

4. Build a plan of execution to achieve this vision, including the mobilisation of people to ensure the vision becomes a reality

5. Say “NO” to distractions and focus relentlessly on achieving the vision

6. Execute! Execute! Execute! and keep executing flawlessly with high quality overcoming obstacles that come your way

Finding Yourself & Your Passion

Steve Jobs dropped out of college, disappointing his parents in the process. But he was always curious claiming, “the minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.” He attended a calligraphy class because he was passionate about typefaces even though he knew that this class had no “hope of any practical application in my life.” Yet ten years later, this calligraphy class was the reason that the Macintosh had beautiful typography.

Steve believes his philosophy of following his heart is a key part of leadership adding “you must have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

Then Steve went to India spending time with the surroundings and the Creator discovering his “calling.” In fact, when Steve in an interview with the Smithsonian postulates:

“I think you should go get a job as a busboy or something until you find something you are really passionate about. I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure PERSEVERANCE. It is so hard. There are such rough moments that I think most people give up. Unless you have a lot of passion, you’re not going to survive. You’re going to give up. So, you’ve got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you are passionate about, otherwise you are not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that’s half the battle right there.”

And he is right. You have got to find what you love and are passionate about first.

Define your vision of a better tomorrow

Steve always sees a future with possibilities. He looks beyond today and sees something better in everything. He saw computers as much more than dreary productivity tools. He saw the MP3 player as more than a Walkman.

On the iPhone, he remarked, “”We all had cellphones. We just hated them, they were so awful to use. The software was terrible. The hardware wasn’t very good, ” and so he challenged his team, “Let’s make a great phone that we fall in love with. We’re going to do it. Let’s try.’ It was the same with the iPad. Steve had a way of seeing a greater future.

In Gallo’s book, he cites a story where Steve was recruiting a top talent to Apple 30 years ago. This talent asked, “What is your vision for the personal computer?” For the next hour, Steve painted a picture of how personal computers were going to change the world. He weaved his vision of how it would change everything from work, education, entertainment and everything. After hearing Steve’s vision, he immediately signed up to work at Apple, a small startup then.

Great leaders have vision. According to former Apple leader Trip Hawkins, “Steve has the power of vision that is almost frightening. When Steve believes in something, the power of that vision can literally sweep aside any objections or problems.”

Articulate the Vision

One of the key leadership lessons Steve internalised is the CEO’s role as company evangelist and vision spokesperson. Leaders can dream big visions but can they articulate that vision ensuring it’s appealing, vibrant, and gripping?

How does Steve message his vision so perfectly? Firstly, he is passionate about the vision and his energy flows from this passion. More importantly, he spends hours practicing and preparing ensuring his vision is fully understood. A BusinessWeek week article notes that Steve’s articulation of his vision “comes only after grueling hours of practice.” And he communicates by simply allowing you to visualise the vision. Most leaders have visions but the problem is they don’t communicate that vision effectively.

Mobilising People to Execute the Vision

A big part about Steve’s leadership is his ability to hire people who are “inspired to make the dream a reality” (Gallo). Ultimately, people are the key to success as no single idea Steve had would have been successful had not others joined his crusade.

Similarly, Martin Luther King and Gandhi did not develop followers just by his inspiring speeches. Instead, they spent the greater part bonding, building coalitions, and connecting with communities one person at a time. Their powerful agenda moved forward as they mobilised people together on a personal level. Great leaders have powerful one-on-one dialogues mobilising people to their cause.

Focusing on the Journey

Steve Jobs seems to be all over the place with so many new ideas and innovative products. Yet, he was extremely focused and clear where his journey required him to go.

Steve said, “the people who are doing the work are the moving force behind Apple. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organisation and keep it at bay.” He ensures that he removes hindrances from the focus.

Focusing on the most important issues means you have to say “NO to 1000 things” including distractions, which is difficult to do. Steve adds, ” Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we’ve got less than 30 major products. The great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”

Steve is clearly focused on a few key items that will truly “make a dent in the universe” adding “I’m actually as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done.” Likewise, we too can learn to prioritise and focus on truly value-added vision-related activity.

Execute Flawlessly

It’s easy to execute on your vision when things go well. Usually, things never go to plan. Steve recalls, “at Pixar making Toy Story, there came a time when we were forced to admit that the story wasn’t great. We stopped production for five months.”

At Pixar, there was a ‘story crisis’ for every film. And at Apple, according to Steve, there is a crisis for almost every single major project or product. But executing flawlessly means overcoming these challenges and tribulations through discipline, as he claims, “To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of discipline.”

Every Monday, Steve has a marathon ‘process’ meeting with his team. He says, “what we do every Monday is we review the whole business. And we do it every single week.” Ram Charan, famous business guru whom I interviewed recently on the “Leaderonomics Show” wrote a book on execution. The key message is the same as Steve — execution is boring and tedious and repetitive. But it’s this rigour that ultimately enables organisations to be successful. Steve understood the power of ruthless execution.

Finally, every journey will require overcoming obstacles. At 21, Steve was the charismatic boy wonder who co-founded Apple. He was worth $200 million by 25, but was thrown out of the company he founded by age 30. Steve lost everything when kicked out of Apple and could easily have given up and thrown in the towel. But he started all over again with NeXT and Pixar not losing his passion.

Leadership is never an easy journey. It is hard work and filled with challenges. Steve recently had to fight two near-death experiences with cancer but takes the positives out of it saying, “remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”

No one said leadership was easy but it is definitely worth the journey.

————————————————————————————————————

Roshan Thiran is CEO of Leaderonomics, a social enterprise passionate about creating more Steve Jobs in our nation. To watch video interviews and learn from great leaders from across the world, login to www.leaderonomics.com/theleaderonomicsshow

Perseverance - commitment, hard work, patience, endurance;

Ruthless - having no pity : merciless, crue;

Love And Leadership Go Hand In Hand

On February 22, 2011, In Love and leadership go hand in hand,

Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It isn’t happy when injustice is done, but it is happy with the truth. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love never fails.”

Paul of Tarsus

ON Valentine’s Day, when love took centre-stage, my thoughts started to drift to my apartment in Dallas, situated near Love Field, the home of the “love” airline Southwest. The company’s NYSE ticker symbol: LUV. The largest and only consistently profitable airline through tumultuous times, Southwest’s model of success has inspired countless others, including AirAsia.

Astonishingly, Southwest founder and former leader Herb Kelleher built the entire business on love. I heard Kelleher at the tail-end of his career attributing Southwest’s greatness to love, saying, “If you seek long continued success for your business, treat your people as family and lead with love.”

He named Colleen Barrett, who started her career as a legal secretary, his successor, because “she knows how to love people to success”. Barrett claims that she spends 85% of her time on her people. Kelleher adds that “an infusion of love is an essential, but oft overlooked ingredient in any business”.

According to new research, leaders who put love into their work are significantly more successful that those who rule by fear

Interestingly, rarely is love described as a leadership competency. Yet, a lack of love in some form is generally the cause of failed leadership. We want our customers to love us and our products. We want our employees to love their jobs and their company. Yet, when we talk about leadership, we ignore love. Says leadership guru Ken Blanchard: “It might sound slightly bizarre, but one of the keys for effective leadership is to be madly in love with all the people you are leading.”

So, why is love ignored? First, love is synonymous with sex, beauty and its physical form. This makes it dicey to talk about or express love in an organisation. Furthermore, love is intangible, causing leaders to be sceptical. Most leaders fear love, believing it is about group hugs, soft mushy talk or holding hands around a company campfire singing Rasa Sayang.

But what Kelleher meant by “leading with love” means truly caring, serving and loving people both employees and customers. “We’ve never had layoffs,” he once declared. “Our people know that if they are sick, we will take care of them. If there are occasions or grief or joy, we will be there with them. We value them as people, not just cogs in a machine.”

He really loves his employees and customers, knowing all by name and unselfishly delighting in their well-being. Although Southwest is a low-cost airline, its salaries is on par with those of other airlines. Its employees’ productivity remains the highest, allowing it to price tickets low. Its pilots spent more time flying and less time on the ground. Southwest can turn around an airplane in 20 minutes while others struggle. Its short hauls are more fuel-efficient than most big airlines’ long hauls. Because the leaders at Southwest love their employees and have a “love” strategy, their employees always deliver.

Entrepreneur Mark Cuban’s love for customers ultimately led him to becoming a billionaire. When it comes to customers, the owner of NBA team Dallas Mavericks, passionately believes that customers should be happy, even if it means working 24 hours a day to please them.

Love strategy for business

According to “love” guru Patch Adams, every organisation needs a “love strategy” as it delivers a better ROI (return on investment) than any other investment. According to new research, leaders who put love into their work are significantly more successful than those who rule by fear.

Great leaders are fuelled by love. They love what they do and they love the people they do it with. Indra Nooyi , CEO of PepsiCo, reinvented Pepsi by caring for people and the planet, pushing PepsiCo into becoming a “green company.”

Most business leaders have a disinclination towards embracing love as a business strategy because they are conditioned to believe leadership means being cutthroat, aggressive and mean. In their eyes, love is for sissies, and by being nice, they risk being viewed as soft and this can result in losing their grip on leadership.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Leaders who love their people are more likely to push their employees to perform at their potential through honest feedback. They raise the bar consistently just as a parent who loves their children do, disciplining them and ensuring the children face difficulties so they can learn and grow.

My yearly performance appraisals with managers who cared were never pleasant but at the end of the day, I knew exactly where I stood. Milton Mayeroff believes love is “the selfless promotion of the growth of others”.

Love is action

Love is not what you say or feel, but what you do. Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership was driven by passion and action. He lived humbly because he loved people and wanted to engage with all walks of life.

Love is action. Love leads to positive thoughts, thoughts to words, and words to action. Negative emotions destroy organisations. Biologist Humberto Maturana notes that love is the only human emotion that consistently generates productive and intelligent actions.

Leaders cannot ignore feelings as leadership is emotional, dealing with dreams, passion, inspiration and love.

The opposite of love is hate. Hate manifests itself through fear. Fear restrains behaviour. Love liberates it. Fear freezes enterprise, suffocates creativity, and deters people from stretching and growing. Fear drives compliance but not commitment. Unfortunately, most of our leadership practices are fear-goaded and insidiously rooted in our work structures and culture.

Love brings success

Basketball coaching legend John Wooden, who won a record 10 NCAA titles, considers love the “most powerful thing there is”. The power of love powered his coaching career. He exclaimed: “Your players must know that you care for them more than just as athletes. Certainly, they understand that they are there because of their athletic ability. But when you have them under your supervision, it’s up to you to make sure that they understand that you care for them as individuals. I’ve never had one I didn’t love.”

John must have learnt from Sun Tzu’s Art of War “… he who loves them as his own beloved sons and they will stand by him until death”.

Research shows love being more effective in driving organisational cultural shifts than visionary statements or brilliantly worded goals. Even hard-nosed leaders such as Rudy Giuliani believes that “if you don’t love people, then don’t be a leader”.

In studying successful leaders, we find success driven by the quality of loving relationships within an organisation. These loving relationships are seen through behaviours like compassion, commitment, care, kindness, reflection, intuition, inclusiveness and forgiveness.

Prominent leader John Hope Bryant believes there are four laws of love-based leadership for business:

l Fear fails Leading through fear is antiquated and crippling. Love is the antidote to fear.

l Love makes money Long-term loving relationships with customers and employees make everyone wealthy.

l Vulnerability is power When you open up, people open to you.

l Giving is getting Giving inspires loyalty and confers true wealth. John D. Rockefeller, regarded as the richest man ever, was governed by love and believed it was greater to give than receive. People rallied to him because he gave. He later used his wealth to build universities and fund great causes.

Military love

Surprisingly, we find high levels of trust in military leaders. Most expect fear to be the dominant leadership style but according to retired colonel Scott Snook, it boils down to love, adding “it’s a deep abiding love and respect for one’s comrades” that matters most in battle.

A study by sociologist Shils and Janowitz attempted to understand why soldiers fought till death and they concluded that a soldier continued to fight well beyond the point when the battle was lost “as long as he gave affection to and received affection from the other members of his squad”.

Soldiers love each other and are willing to lay down their life for each other. If love can be the touchstone of leadership in a vocation as violent as the military, then why not in business?

Snook adds that even during military training at West Point, love is emphasised continuously: Love your country, love your classmates and friends, and love the future officers you will someday serve with and love the soldiers you would someday lead. Great commanders love their troops and put their well-being above theirs.

Final thoughts

Here are some questions you can ask to help you get love into your organisation and start your journey to being a love-based leader:

1. When was the last time you did something unexpectedly nice for someone at work?

2. When was the last time you thanked or recognised someone for a particular special effort for the company?

3. Whom have you not thanked who has done something really nice or been especially helpful to you recently?

4. Who goes the extra mile routinely (for example, working late or doing things technically not part of their job) that you take for granted?

5. What are things you could do regularly to add “love” to your workplace?

6. What are actions that I can take to truly “love” my customers? (Not actions just for marketing reasons)

7. What can I do to bring fun and joy to the workplace?

Decorated army Maj-Gen John Stanford, known for extraordinary loyal troops, claimed that the secret to success is to stay in love. He said: “Staying in love gives you the fire to ignite others. A person who is not in love doesn’t feel the kind of excitement that helps them to lead others. I don’t know any other thing in life more exhilarating and positive a feeling than love.”

Many of us remember the dizzying joy of being in love. We need to get that energy in the workplace too. Leadership is an affair of the heart.

Love begins with you. So, this weekend, your people need you to take a good long look in the mirror and decide that your people and your organisation deserve a leader who has the courage to stand up and love them.

l Roshan Thiran is CEO of Leaderonomics, a social enterprise passionate about ensuring love permeates across the business landscape. To learn from great leaders from across the world, login to www.leaderonomics.com/theleaderonomicsshow.

Reflection...

What house are you building?
SCIENCE OF BUILDING LEADERS
By ROSHAN THIRAN

Building a solid house can only be done through reflection.

“Keep doing what you're doing, and you'll get what you are getting. If that is good, great. If it's not, you better change.” Ang Hui Ming A FEW years ago, I heard about an elderly construction worker who wanted to quit. He told his boss of his plans to leave. His boss was sorry to see such an excellent worker go and asked him to build one last house as a personal favour.
[Image]
The construction worker said yes, but his heart was not in his work. There was no passion left. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials, cutting corners to get the work done. Finally, when the house was finished, his boss handed him the keys to the house saying, “This is your house. It's my gift to you.” The construction worker was stunned and full of regret as he knew he was sloppy working on it. If he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently.
Isn't it the same with us? Often we work hard but after a point in time, we dish out less than stellar performances. Our attitudes differ but we console ourselves by saying it doesn't matter. But in most cases, it does matter.
Each day, we build our lives, one transaction at a time. Each day counts as we build our life's building. When I worked at General Electric (GE), people always spoke about the “house that Jack built.” Jack Welch, painstakingly, for more than 20 years, built the foundation of GE, then its rooms, its roof and finally completed a remarkable turnaround. This took patience, time and
years.
When we don't get the promotion we crave, or we fail to get what others get, we are surprised. Could it be because the house we built doesn't have strong foundations or good materials? It's not just last year's performance or last week's deal that counts it is your cumulative effectiveness on a daily basis.
So, how does one ensure that you are effective daily? Based on our research, it requires an equilibrium of action and reflection. While most leaders are biased towards action, the best leader balances contemplation and action, creating daily solitude for effective action.

Ineffective leaders
Most leaders say the resource they lack most is time. But if you really observe managers for a day, you will see them rushing to meetings, constantly checking their Blackberry, dodging fires, believing they are attending to important matters.

For 10 years, Bruch and Ghoshal observed behaviours of busy managers, and their conclusions: 90% of managers squander their time in all sorts of ineffective actions and activities. A mere 10% of managers spend their time in a committed, purposeful, and reflective manner. These 10% are usually classified as great leaders.
Worst still, psychiatrist John Diamond found that 90% of people “hate their work.” They come to work to punch their time clock and can't wait to go home. The difference between leaders who love their jobs and those that don't they take time daily to re-energise themselves and focus through reflection.

Reflection
The practice of reflection goes back centuries and is rooted in numerous institutions including the Japanese samurai. Ben Franklin, one of my leadership heroes, had a rather systematic approach to reflection, which was a fundamental part of his daily life. He developed a list of 13 virtues and each day he evaluated his leadership relative to these virtues. A sincere examination of ourselves is never easy. It involves the willingness to face and acknowledge our mistakes, failure and shortcomings. Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Prize winner, believes reflection in life is critical to
leadership as it allows you to take into “account what you have neglected in thoughtlessness.”
Interestingly, a key step in the Alcoholics Anonymous programme asks participants to make a probing and courageous moral inventory. Steve Jobs went to India to reflect prior to starting Apple.
In business, reflection provides an opportunity to consider the ramifications of the services they provide and how to keep raising the bar. Business grows when they look within. So, what does one achieve by reflection and contemplation? Productive action relies on a combination of three traits:

1. Focus the ability to zero in on an objective and see the task to completion
2. Energy the vitality that comes from concentrated personal commitment.
3. Learning the ability to correct past mistakes and improve onese

lf Focus without energy results in lethargic execution or burnout. Energy without focus leads to aimlessness or artificial busyness. And not learning from your mistakes ensures you repeat them.
All three pieces can only be obtained through reflection. Procrastinators are usually people with low levels of energy and focus. Leaders with high focus but low energy never inspire and generally end up ostracising the troops. Managers with high energy but low focus confuse their employees with chaotic activity.

Reflective managers are purpose-driven with high energy levels, learning from their mistakes. They start their day in reflection to ensure purposeful execution and action.

Focus

Confucius once said, “A man who chases two rabbits catches neither!” In Star Wars Episode 1, Qui-Gon says to the young Jedi Anakin, “Always remember, your focus determines your reality.” There is an ounce of truth in that Jedi wisdom. A focused person usually attains his/her goals. At the end of a tiring day, if we focus on how tired we are, generally we will remain tired and end up vegetating in front of the TV set. If we re-focus the mind from being tired to needing to be healthy, there is a bigger likelihood we will exercise. It is easy to stray with all the distractions, TV, Internet and mobile devices that we have today. These distractions can lead us off-tangent, stealing our focusing power. Reflection corrects that.

Energy and passion
Reflection generates passion and energy. Energy comes from passion. Passion is self-generated as you can motivate yourself to be excited about what you do.
Author Bill Strickland writes: “Passions are irresistible. They're the ideas, hopes, and possibilities your mind naturally gravitates to, the things you would focus your time and attention on.”
Strickland believes that only by following your passion will you unlock your deepest potential. “I never saw a meaningful life that wasn't based on passion. And I never saw a life full of passion that wasn't, in some important way, extraordinary.”

Learning from mistakes

Reflection allows us to learn from mistakes. We all make mistakes I have done so spectacularly at times. We have all been in situations where things don't go exactly to plan. But how often do we take the time to sit down to reflect on where it all went wrong? Plato's great words “know thyself” implies that a lifetime of self-investigation is the cornerstone for knowledge. John Dewey states, “We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.”
In fact, the Kolb Learning Cycle, is based on the belief that learning for real comprehension comes from a sequence of experience, reflection, abstraction, and action. All learning can come only through reflection.

Check your attitudes daily

Living an extraordinary life is done internally through the daily positive alignment of your attitude. Your attitudes and the choices you make today build the house you live in tomorrow. Build wisely! Build with commitment, pride, joy, love and passion.
Your attitude is contagious and sets the mood for those around you. Your employees get excited when you are excited. They are energised when you are. Plato opened up The Academy in Athens at the age of 40, when life expectancy was 36. He ran this first university, training Aristotle and others, until he was 80. Pursuing focused positive dreams arms one with high energy and leads to an extended, rewarding life.

I don't have time to think!

This is a pretty common reaction: I don't have time to reflect. Which begs the question: Do you have time to make the same mistakes over and over again? Or to remain unfocused, running around like a headless chicken? Or lack energy to fulfil your dreams?
I remember an old boss once told me that I was not paid to sit around and think. On hindsight, that was probably the worst advice I received. Leaders should spend at least a quarter of their time thinking about the future of their company and reflecting on the past. It may seem ludicrous to spend time reflecting but “real work” can only be done right when you know where you are going and have the energy to get there.

Final thoughts

If we could do things over, we probably would do many things differently. And better. But the problem is, we cannot go back. We are just like the construction worker. Each day we hammer a nail, place a board, or erect a wall in our career, family and lives. Are you doing it with focus and energy? Are we improving ourselves by learning from our mistakes?
If the fire in our eyes has diminished and we are going through life in auto-pilot, with the joy of life seemingly leaked out, it is time to take stock of life and reflect.
Socrates, Ben Franklin and most great leaders believed that reflection led to a productive and fulfilling life. And don't say you don't have time. After all, as Buddha aptly puts it, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought.”

Roshan Thiran is CEO of Leaderonomics, a social enterprise passionate about transforming the nation through leadership development. For more information on leadership programmes for your organisation or youth camps for your kids, call +60122006045 or login to www.leaderonomics.com

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Your Ability Is Expandable Like A Rubber Band, It Can Be Very Elastic

Human capability is beyond one's imagination and I can say our imagination is without any limit. When we talk about limit, it is one's mind that limits one's own capability and potential. Sciences milestone such as exploration to the space (nobody ever thought human can fly to the space for a vacation before that !), creation of other advanced devices all proved that our great potential still waiting to be explored. So don't limit your capabilities and potential. The mind is tricking us what we can do.

The mind will always sabotage oneself by creating negative thought into oneself, and trying to laugh at us if we fall into its tricky trap. So remember the keywords here are "Don't Limit Yourself On what Are The Things You Can Do". Trust your guts and let your imagination flies like a firefly

Ps: Firefly (Titibhasana) is the name for one of my favourite yoga poses. It needs a lot of awareness and the right flow in order to perform it. From the physical aspect, your core muscle must be strong enough to support the body and the contraction is the key point here.
You can learn more from here.

Namaste !

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Life Inspiration

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My Favourite Quote Part I

"Just Add Faith, Believe, Effort, Pray, Consistency, Joy & Stir It Up Evenly With Good Intention, You Brew Yourself A Real Dream Latte;Nice, Bitter And Sweet With Everlasting Taste..."
- Evergreen

"Yoga Chitta Vittri Nirodha" - Taming The Consciousness

"Every age has its own rules. There is simply no sense in trying to look like a young girl"
- Isabel Preysler (International Fashion Icon)

"Physics is an explicitly 3rd-person approach to reality, whereas meditative, contemplative, or mystical disciplines are explicitly 1st-person approaches to reality."
- Ken Wilbert (Psychologist)

"To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way, good or bad. It seems almost paradoxical, yet when your inner dependency on form is gone, the general conditions of your life, the outer forms, tend to improve greatly. Things, people, or conditions that you thought you needed for your happiness now come to you with no struggle or effort on your part, and you are free to enjoy and appreciate them - while they last. All those things, of course, will still pass away, cycles will come and go, but with dependency gone there is no fear of loss anymore. Life flows with ease."

—Eckhart Tolle

"If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without."
— Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)

"Awareness is the power that is concealedwithin the present moment. … The ultimate purpose of human existence,which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this world."

— Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose)

"Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of lost in your mind."
— Eckhart Tolle

"...whenever there is inspiration...andenthusiasm...there is a creative empowerment that goes far beyond whata mere person is capable of."

— Eckhart Tolle

"..the past gives you an identity and thefuture holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whaterverform. Both are illusions."

— Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)

"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness."

— Eckhart Tolle

"Being must be felt. It can't be thought."

—Eckhart Tolle

"All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind."

— Eckhart Tolle

"Time isn’t precious at all, because it is anillusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one pointthat is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the mostprecious thing there is."

— Eckhart Tolle (The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment)

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