People Teams and Organizations

PURPOSE It’s almost always a ‘calling’. A compelling one. An enjoyable one. No matter what you are doing, in meetings, while driving, or on your desktop responding to an important mail, the tendency is to respond to that call readily & immediately. There is an un-explainable nobility to it. Is it true for your team and their work? In what ways can you create that compelling calling? What components of their work gives them energy to get up from their beds? What proportion of their work is aligned to their natural traits, values and beliefs?   It’s a great idea to have conversations with your team members on this note, once in a while, different from performance conversations.   AUTONOMY   The sole decision maker – you! You decide the depth, the stress, the angle and the strokes.   Who decides your team’s work and how it has to be done? The more you let them take a call, and decide their course of action, better engaged they are going to ...

  Roger Conners, Tom Smith and Craig Hickman have together put together a book titled "The Oz Principle".This is one book that has had immense effect on my ability to get results through individual and organizational accountability. A part of the proposed model and theory is extrapolated on the events you just saw in the video.   The boy did it, and it is very inspiring to see that happen. While we would like to identify ourselves with the boy, we must also be aware that we often play the role of others in the scene.   Let's take a peek look at what others were doing in the scene shown in the video:     1. He was waiting and watching .      2. They were confused , and were thinking tell me what to do .     3. This man is convinced that it is not his job      4.These men are clearly ignoring and denying what's going on.       5. This la...

We are face-to-face with a work environment that is uncertain and fickle almost on a daily basis. And that's good news. I will tell you how.   Uncertain and fickle nature of your organization is a result of it being in sync with the external business environment, which in itself is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA). And that synchronization is the key to sustenance of the organization, and hence the sustenance of your job & career.   There is a particular medical condition called congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP) where a person loses his/her ability to sense physical pain. That's dangerous. For example, with this condition the person would not be able to realize when his/her limb is being cut while asleep. Because of the absence of visual evidence.   All of us can recall a few organizations that existed in full glory, and now they are cut and are extinct. It's highly possible th...

“How are you doing?” This question tops the list of most frequently asked questions! Just like many of us, I often find myself answering with a ‘ I am fine’,  Whether or not I am really fine. Is there a way I could determine whether I am fine or not? Yes there is. One of the ways we could interpret that question is "Are  you fleeling fulfilled and happy?” Most often our fulfillment and happiness come from meeting some of our deeply desired innate needs.  When our needs are met, then we know that we are doing just fine. Those needs are very BASIC (Basis, Affection, Significance, Inclusion, and Control) that all of us are rightfully entitled to be fulfilled. They are briefly described as follows:   Now tell me, "How are you doing?" How many of those above things are fulfilled for you? Every time someone asks you that frequent, pertinent question, you now know what you must be thinking about: Your BASIC needs.   Here's wishing you all well. ...

In organizations and teams, when people perceive unfairness that leads to anger, a loss that leads to sadness, and a threat that leads to fear, the easiest thing for them to do is to externalize and do those things, and have those conversations that lead to something that is collectively perceived as politics! Reasonably so, because it’s a challenge to articulate and find reasons for those emotional states, in a very complex organizational context. There are usually multiple events and conversations, over a period of time that could have led to their perceptions and emotions, and hence a state of perceived politics. Hence office politics is just the symptom, and it’s not the problem in itself. And we know symptoms are important, because through them we will know the problems that need to be addressed and solved. We don’t attempt to solve politics, because we can’t, rather, we solve the problems underneath it. By the way, anger, sadness, and fear are all natural emotions. They a...

Stress does not reside in the events and behaviors of others, but it does in how we see those events and behaviors. Our interpretations. There is nothing much we can do about the events and behaviors of others, but we can certainly do something about how we interpret them. Which are those events or people's behaviors that you interpret as threat? Your spouse? Your boss? You co-workers? Some of those events at work and home? It's a good idea to make a list of them. If we interpret them as threats, the stress-response circuit kicks in, and we resort to behaviors of flight, freeze or fight. Over a period of time, they become the norms of our behaviors. Hence a progressive stress in life. When we interpret them as opportunities – for growth, for learning, for connections, for understanding, for building, for fun, for creativity, for adventure, for mercy, for forgiveness… (and the list can go on…), we become truly creative, reflective, adaptive and amazing solution finders....

There is what you see. And there is reality. Do not mix the two, yet. Many years ago, I happen to stop by a tea shop - a small enclosure made of rusted steel, under a tree, on my way to work. The tree and the knee level fence made of concrete around its trunk, with enough width for people to sit on, was an undeserved advantage for that tea business. The tree, its set up and the prospect of a hot tea was an attractive proposition for most of the passers-by.  I was one those who found myself welcomed by hot tea under cool tree shade! There were at-least 10 people who were hovering around the tea shop already. As much welcoming the tea shop set-up was, the tea-master was the opposite. With a grumpy face, and an adamant refusal to move his butt from the stool he was seated, he would respond to orders shot at him for chai, toffies or cigarettes much slower than a snail by simply stretching his hand. Customers had to compensat...