Engagement, passion – the big WHY.

November 20, 2011 1 Comment

Only one in five employees are fully engaged. (Deloitte’s Center for the Edge: The Shift Index).

I personally view this video as a warning; the perils of over-rotating on a left-brained, rational approach to life, which removes context, meaning, and the big WHY of what we do.  Passion and vision are largely missing in the world of work, and when they do exist in doses that are sufficient to stir our emotions, we often fail to realize their potential. We don’t connect the WHY with the HOW and the WHAT.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift…and the rational mind is a faithful servant. – Albert Einstein.

We need both, not only to survive, but to thrive.

 

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Cultural Architecture

August 13, 2011 3 Comments

Last week I had the opportunity to present at Agile2011, which was attended by 1604 registered participants and over 250 talks. The conference was a wonderful opportunity to connect with old friends and make new ones.

The talk, titled Cultural Architecture was about how culture influences the way we work and interact differently depending on our cultural biases, rules and filters. Each culture presents unique challenges, and as change leaders, coaches, and practitioners, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves on how cultures influence what people do, why they do it, and how. As teams become increasingly cross-cultural and global, cultural knowledge becomes more important than ever.

Cultural architecture agile2011

View more presentations from Raj Mudhar

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Listening Tools

August 4, 2011 Leave a Comment

A great TED talk on how we are losing our listening…

Particularly interesting for me was the part on filters that we apply when we listen.  In a world where we we are increasingly broadcasting, Julian Treasure reminds us of the importance of listening, and shares five tools for improving our listening. Enjoy.

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What does it mean to have a 100% Agile organization?

July 31, 2011 Leave a Comment

This is a question that comes up from time to time and to me, it’s like asking; “What does it mean to be 100% Chinese, Indian,  German or Italian?”

If we have everyone doing Scrum, does that mean we are 100% Agile? That’s like asking, “If I listen to Italian music, eat Italian food, drink Italian wine, and live in Italy, does this make me Italian?” Maybe it does…maybe it doesn’t! If you  have read about my talk at Agile-2011 know where I am going with this. Being 100% Agile to some extent means we cannot explain why we are Agile, we simply are. Why am I Italian? I just am.

I come from a Punjabi culture. While  preparing my talk for Agile-2011, I asked my sister why we value respect and deference to our elders. Her comeback was “The culture of guilt and shame.” We laughed. She reminded me of how if we failed to accord the appropriate respect to our elders, which included our parents’ best friends, we were taken aside and admonished with, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Go say sorry to your Auntie!” Mom and Dad never explained WHY we should feel ashamed, only that we should…
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Speaking @ Agile 2011 – Salt Lake City, August 8-12 2011

April 12, 2011 2 Comments

I’ll be presenting “Cultural Architecture” at the Agile2011 Conference in Salt Lake City this August. Here’s an overview of the talk.

If our business culture was a product, how would we re-architect it? Culture influences everything. So how can we influence culture? What tools help us understand cultural influences, from the implicit, the elements we don’t even think about, to the visible, the artifacts that lead to stereotypes? Adopting an Agile culture, when it is under-laid with the cultures of the world is challenging. Reconciling cultural dilemmas drives collaboration and innovation. Culture is the core of it all. Knowing this, you can create a pull for cultural change in your organization.

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Sources of Complacency

March 8, 2011 Leave a Comment

Leading change without a Sense of Urgency… is it possible? John p. Kotter lists 9 sources of complacency. They are:

  1. The absence of a major and visible crisis.
  2. Too many visible resources.
  3. Low overall performance standards.
  4. Organizational structures that focus employees on narrow functional goals.
  5. Internal measurement systems that focus on the wrong performance indexes.
  6. A lack of sufficient performance feedback from external sources.
  7. A kill-the-messenger-of-bad-news, low candor, low confrontation culture.
  8. Human nature, with its capacity for denial, especially if people are already busy or stressed.
  9. Too much happy talk from senior management.

So now what? Kotter recommends BOLD action. He suggests:

  1. Link 50% of top executives’ pay to significant quality improvements.
  2. Find ways to get all the external customer complaints in front of everyone every week.
  3. Sell the jet and corporate headquarters and move into a building that looks more like a battle command center.
  4. Set an objective to become #1 or #2 or we are forced to liquidate and shut our doors in 2 years.
  5. Set your business targets so high they cannot be met doing business as usual.
  6. Stop measuring sub-unit performance and narrow functional goals.
  7. Use consultants to help force the honest conversations that need to happen.
  8. Use company newsletters/communication to provide not only good news, but business reality.
  9. Bombard people with information on these future opportunities for capitalizing on these opportunities, and on the organization’s inability to do so.

Over-managed and under-led cultures fail to do this according to Kotter.

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Fons Trompenaars on Cultural Leadership and Innovation

August 29, 2010 2 Comments

I’ve been a fan of Fons Trompenaars ever since I read the book “Riding the Waves of Culture” about a decade ago. See the Books page on this blog for a link. Enjoy these two short videos by Dr. Trompernaars.

Multicultural leadership is about reconciling the differences in culture.

Innovation also leverages cultural diversity.

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Servant Leadership – Follow-Up

July 2, 2010 Leave a Comment

I wrote a post  about Servant Leadership in January. Robert Gleenleaf put the principles of Servant Leadership to work while he was an executive at AT&T. He is credited with several books and papers on Servant Leadership. See the books section of this blog for a link to one of Robert’s books. Below are some short informative videos on Servant Leadership. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and several others come to mind as model Servant Leaders. What did they do that was special? You know the answers. Think about how you, as an individual, can model the characteristics of a Servant Leader.

The best leaders I have had gave me room to get my work done. They cleared the path ahead of me. They demanded excellence, but teased it out through coaching and guidance, rather than through dictum. They trusted me. They lived by principles and values, and never wavered no matter how tough the situation became. If I had an issue, I knew I could go to them for guidance and help. I always knew where they stood. Their leadership philosophy was clear and they lived it. What is your leadership philosophy? What are your principles and values? What will you do today that will start to distinguish you as a Servant Leader?
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Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!

June 5, 2010 Leave a Comment

Innovation is about challenging our assumptions. It is about challenging what we take for granted. This talk is about education, but wow! It drives home so many salient points about how to bring out the best in people! Watch this talk and ask yourself how these ideas could be applied to your organization.

Tread softly, you are walking on my dreams!

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Integrating the Opposite and Impossible

May 30, 2010 1 Comment

I’ve been reading “The Opposable Mind” by Roger Martin. The book is about how the best ideas and solutions to problems come from taking seemingly opposing views, and rather than making trade-offs, to integrate the opposing ideas to create something new. Another term that has been used for this is “synthesis”. In this context, synthesis is NOT about taking vast information and simplifying it into a few key points. It is about taking wildly differing perspectives and by holding these thoughts in your mind, finding a new solution that is not an either or decision.

Martin shares examples of some of the great integrative thinkers. Issy Sharp, the genius behind the Four Seasons Hotels, who wanted a hotel that offered a small, intimate home-like environment, but also offer the services expected by business travellers, which could only be offered in the larger hotels. A.G. Lafley, who brought innovation back to Proctor and Gamble, and created entirely new leading brands. Martha Graham, who invented modern dance and integrated sculpture, music, and dance into an entirely new experience for show-goers. There are many others, including Meg Whitman of eBay, Nandan Nilekani of Infosys Technologoes, filmmaker Atom Egoyan, and business management guru Peter Drucker, to name a few.

There’s an interesting section in Chapter 4 – Dancing with Complexity.

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