How would your top 3 friends describe you?

"Self-awareness" as a key ingredient to personal leadership is gaining prominence (just google "self-awareness and peak performance"). Many times we just simply are not aware how our actions are perceived, the effect it is having on others, our delimiting beliefs and even more importantly our strengths (or genius points as Robin Sharma puts it).

So, I've a simple question this Monday:

• "How would your top 3 friends describe you?". 

I sincerely hope you'd like the answer. And if and when you have time, just think about how your boss, spouse and a few of your peers that you closely work, might describe you.

Have a great week ahead.

Amazon's Leadership Principles

I've been Amazon.com's customer almost for 2 decades now, a very keen follower of their vision, strategies and thinking, and hold their founder Jeff Bezos as one of the sources of inspiration, I hold them in awe and always try to learn whatever I can. Of course I do shop a lot from them too, and so loyal that I don't even look into options like flipkart.com.

As a part of my reading of Amazon, long time ago I had come across their famous 14 principles of leadership. I re-proudce it here and hope that you get enough to learn. Note that being a leader has got nothing to do with title, experience or your relative position in the corporate ladder. Its about a mindset. Companies thrive when there are leaders at all levels. Chances are you might be following many of these things given that there is no dearth of leaders at  NI. Here's a chance to look at a few other dimensions on your journey of leadership. Happy weekend!

Customer Obsession

Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.

Ownership

Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job". 

Invent and Simplify

Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here". As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time.

Are Right, A Lot

Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs.

Learn and Be Curious

Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.

Hire and Develop the Best

Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice.

Insist on the Highest Standards

Leaders have relentlessly high standards - many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and driving their teams to deliver high quality products, services and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed.

Think Big

Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

Bias for Action

Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking. 

Frugality

Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size or fixed expense.

Earn Trust

Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

Dive Deep

Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. No task is beneath them.

Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit

Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly.

Deliver Results

Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.

Fear setting: Why you should define your fears instead of your goals

Came across this very interesting concept by celebrated author, blogger Tim Ferris. His latest TED talk (embedded) explains this concept in detail. I'd be trying over the weekend. Remember in most cases that it is the "fear" (fear of failure, fear of change, fear of getting found out etc.,) is what is stopping us from moving forward.

He talks of 3 simple steps for fear setting:

1. Identify your fears in the context of a goal. Find out how you can prevent it and then if it really happens what is that you can do to "repair" the damage.

2. What might be the benefits of the attempt or even a partial success?

3. What is the cost of inaction? (emotionally, financially, physically etc.,) and in 6months, 1year, 5year etc,

The video is just about 13mins, do watch it.

From the TED page:

The hard choices — what we most fear doing, asking, saying — are very often exactly what we need to do. How can we overcome self-paralysis and take action? Tim Ferriss encourages us to fully envision and write down our fears in detail, in a simple but powerful exercise he calls "fear-setting." Learn more about how this practice can help you thrive in high-stress environments and separate what you can control from what you cannot.

4 simple keys to productivity

I'm reading a beautiful book "Barking up the Wrong Tree: Why Everything You Know About Success is (Mostly) Wrong". The author proposes the following simple keys to be very productive, drawing the lessons from stoicism. Here we go:

• Protect your time like your money: You can get more money.
• Manage emotions to better manage time: Feeling too cranky right now; I’ll explain this later.
• Important beats urgent: Getting a lot of unnecessary things done is not productivity; it’s stupidity.
• Focus on effort, not outcome: You can’t control whether it ends up as a “robbery” or an “attempted robbery”, just focus on executing the heist in a way that would make mom proud.

You can read more about the above here (same attached).

Responsibility

What responsibilities are waiting to be taken and what is stopping you from taking it? What would you become if you indeed taken them up?

Teaching and Learning

Here are two questions to begin a new Monday:

• If you weren't afraid of change, what could you learn?
• And if you weren't afraid of rejection, what would you teach?

Each of us is becoming, becoming something better or something worse. And we become what we teach and what we learn.  (Source: Seth Godin)

When your boss says "I hope ..."

The fired ex-FBI director Comey, in his hearing said that when the President (his then boss) told him "I hope you'd ...", he took it as an order that the boss actually expects him to take that path. There has been a fascinating debate on how to interpret it. This article gives what bosses "usually" mean when they say things like:

• "I hope you'll do this" 
  
  • “I expect you to know well enough on your own to take care of this. Please don’t make me ask you directly.”
  • “You should really stop doing that other thing and do this instead.”
  • “If you don’t do this, I’m going to be disappointed—and there might be consequences.”
• "Let me see what I can do about it" 
  • “Yeah, no—never gonna happen.”
  • “This is me politely telling you that’s a terrible idea.”
  • “I’ll do the absolute bare minimum to be able to say I looked into that for you.”
• "We are going in a different direction"
  • You messed up with that one, and the grown-ups are taking over from here.”
  • “We’re eliminating your role, sorry. Your last day will be Tuesday.”
  • “Nice work on that pitch—it bombed.”
• "I'll take that into advisement"
  • Uh huh, I know - I already considered that
  • I haven't made up my mind yet, and that idea if yours isn't helping me
  • I hear you, but I;m still not taking your advice
• "Lets table that for now and revisit later"
  • I'm done discussing this. Don't bring it up ever again
  • No hard feelings, but that idea is dumb
  • I'm going to let that proposal die a slow death by ignoring it indefinitely

There are a lot of different tones, phrases, and grammatical moods in which bosses deliver orders and express their wishes. If you have a boss (come on, everyone has a boss), make sure you are interpreting the intentions correctly and if you are the boss, please be aware how your words could get interpreted.

What RamP's reading: Jun'17

Expecting a hectic month as we have several visitors. Modest target of just two books for Jun: