What is holding you back?

This Monday Morning Question:

Mindset matters .... Your agreement with reality defines your life. (@SteveMaraboli).

And a bonus from Stephen Covey:

Rejection (and the four paths)

All of us face rejection for various reasons. What we learn from them would separate the great from also rans. Seth Godin beautifully explains the four paths we have and its consequences. Are you choosing the right one?

If you seek to make change or do something important, your work will be rejected along the way. This is not in dispute.

What will you do after that?

1. Determine that what actually happened was that you were rejected, not your proposal, and that you have no right, no standing and no hope. Decide to back off, keep your head low and do what you're told from now on.
2. Realize that what might have happened is that you asked the wrong person, who wants something other than what you want. Resolve to do a better job of seeing where your work will be needed and recognized.
3. Understand that you didn't tell a story that resonated, that your homework, your details, your promise--something didn't resonate. Figure out what it was, and learn to do better next time.
4. Assume that whoever turns you down, ignores you or disagrees with you is a dolt. Learn nothing and persist.

In my experience, paths two and three are the most likely to get you where you're going. It takes grit and resilience to avoid the first path, and the fourth path is reserved for megalomaniacs, bullies and the terminally frustrated.

Source here.

Food for thought for the Weekend (19-Aug-17)

Food for thought for the Weekend: My series where I present assorted collection of interesting blog posts, TED talks, podcast and articles I read/listened this week, some quotes that resonated with me, excerpts from my own reading.

1. Gregg Kaplan: I Wish I Had Known These Things Before My First Job - Redbox founder sent this email to his son before the start of internship. Some great advice and I promptly forwarded it to my son who aspires to start his internship next year. I also realised that even seasoned professionals might get a tip or two.

2. Prasad Kaipa: Making Effective Decisions - How can we make effective decisions? Using instincts? Emotions? Data and logic? Intuition? I've been fortunate enough to attend a few training classes from Dr. Kaipa and follow his work (including his engaging book Smart and Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom). This essay is his reflection on how folks make effective decisions.

3. Ryan Holiday: Everything You Need To Know About Confidence, Ego, And Humility Explained In One 3,000 Year Old Story - How about a bit of stoicism this week? Ryan Holiday writes exclusively about Stoic Philosophy and author of two wonderful books Ego is the Enemy: The Fight to Master our Greatest Opponent and The Obstacle is The Way: The Ancient Art of Turning Adversity into Advantage. In this absorbing post, Ryan analyses some questions like:

• Is humility a great source of strength or makes us irrelevant?
• Where does confidence end and ego start?
• Where does confidence come from? What does it mean to be humble? How can we avoid the dangers of ego and hubris?

Enjoy the weekend. Happy Gowri and Ganesha in advance.

Healthy and Unhealthy Competition

Experienced leaders are generally good in spotting unhealthy competition. Yet, it is difficult to articulate the differences, let alone propose remedies.  Not if you are Adam Grant (Wharton Professor and author of several best sellers like Give and Take: Why helping others drives our success, Originals: How non-conformists change the world and Option B: Facing adversity; Building resilience and Finding joy).

In his monthly feature Wondering where he answers readers questions on work and psychology, he has beautifully answered a question on healthy and unhealthy competition:

Can you describe the difference between healthy competition and unhealthy competition in the workplace, and the factors that contribute to each?

For me, the difference boils down to whether you’re rooting for your opponent to raise your game or trying to shake your opponent off their game. You know competition is healthy when rivals train together, go out for drinks afterward, and share a goal of making each other better. It’s healthy when the loser buys lunch for the winner, but unhealthy when the loser steals the winner’s lunch from the fridge. It’s healthy when you work extra hard to beat your opponent, but unhealthy when you hire someone to beat your opponent up.

It’s easier to get healthy competition if you…

• Make the competition between groups instead of between individuals
• Have collective goals that matter more than individual goals—like sports teams where players compete with each other during practice but band together to win games
• Start off cooperative and only introduce friendly competition after people trust and respect each other
• Put clear boundaries around competition—like IDEO does in brainstorming contests where people compete to generate the most novel and useful ideas

Please add all his books to your reading list. They are fun to read and filled with wit and wisdom. So are his blogs.

Food for thought for the Weekend (12-Aug-17)

Food for thought for the Weekend: My series where I present assorted collection of interesting blog posts, TED talks, podcast and articles I read/listened this week, some quotes that resonated with me, excerpts from my own reading.

1. "Jeff Immelt: Things I Learned" - Jeff Immelt just retired as the CEO of GE. In his last blog post to GE employees, he shared a few things he learned as a leader. Emphasising that learning is a part of every leader's DNA and asking everyone to not stop learning, he lists some pearls of wisdom - must read.

2. "Sheryl Sandberg: Develop Your Voice Not Your Brand" - Facebook's COO has some advice to all of us on how to pursue a meaningful and successful career. 

3. "Six things that Google teaches its Managers" - Transitioning from an individual contributor role into that of a managerial one is not easy. Google has researched this topic and has come up with a training. Interesting read for experienced managers too.

4. "MBTI: Psychiatrist defines 16 types, which one are you" - I had blogged about this previously, you may want to take a test and get some insights about yourself.

Advance wishes to my Indian and Indian origin colleagues on the account of 70th Independence day. Enjoy the (long) weekend.

The "Then and Now" trip

Nikhil (Deshmukh), Tanzeb, Vrishti and I, visited NIC in the week of 7/31. The primary purpose of the trip was to kickoff RFmx WLAN/BT and to have Concept Proposal meeting for RFmx 5G. Glad to report that both were successful and these projects are now in Development and Planning phases respectively. We also met with a lot of senior people including Cate Presscot, Charles Schroeder and Jason White over long meetings where we apprised them of our activities. We also bumped into Scott Rust and Tony Vento. We had several meetings with our own management, with our marketing folks and attended RF H/w team's "state of the union meeting" by Kevin Schultz. Individually, we met with several S.Es and other key R&D folks across stripes. It has been humbling to note the high credibility we maintain across the org thanks to our execution focus.  We should build further on this!

Last time the four of us visited Austin together was in Feb 2013. Nikhil was in the middle of a long trip to Austin/CA for 802.11ac and the rest of us were attending a workshop for RFmx (RFHA as it was called then, and the project was not even kicked-off). We have come a long way since then with 12th RFmx kick-off happening and several successful WLAN and BT toolkit releases. We had taken a group pic then and took one more now. I'd leave it to you figure out which was 2013 and which one is now (both shot in Towneplace, Austin, but from opposite sides).

What RamP's reading? Aug'17

Couple of travels in Aug and that gives opportunity to read. Five books is still ambitious, but all these comes with rave reviews and I therefore expect to complete it.