Rules vs Principles

My first job was with a company (now called Sasken) that had only 20+ employees when I joined and I  witnessed it grew to 1000+ over the next 10 years. Being one of the early employees, I had a great opportunity to participate in framing the policies as the company grew from a "start-up" to an established one. I had a great fortune of learning directly from the founders and some very senior executives on building and sustaining culture, governance, ethical behaviour at all times and I've been able to use these learning later in my career when I built teams from ground-up and even running large teams in established MNCs.

One of the key learning of those early days was the striving to make decisions based on "principles". Infact, one of the apt repeated question was "what is the principle behind it?". Sticking to principles removes any biases one might have towards a particular person or an idea. I continue to ask this question when we struggle to make a decision or there are multiple competing choices - each favouring one or the other aspect. Once the discussion moves from this vs that to agreeing on a principle, the natural decision or the outcome becomes clear and obvious.

I also frequently run into folks that act as bureaucrats (one definition that I like is "a bureaucrat is a person that believes his job is to say NO"). They'd be very well and perfectly operating within the rules and seem to believe they are doing as expected and getting needlessly blamed. Such people do not bother about the spirit, but really go with the letter. Principles are "spirit", Rules are "letter". How to spot them? These people:
- add more non-value adding work to colleagues
- have their first instinct to usually deflect the work to someone else citing the (correct) rules
- cannot (or do not want to) distinguish between routine vs emergency
- are pretty good in telling everyone "not my job" (and they'd still be right)
- do not understand the concept of (internal) customer or more precisely
- are quick to escalate "deviations" by other colleagues who might be bending the rules, but operating within the principles
- do not understand the concept of being of "service" to someone
- insist on sticking to "rules" even when rest of the world agrees it is stupid to do so.

etc., etc., (all these while strictly being within the rules)

Now how do we deal with such people?

There are some standard ways - provide direct feedback in STAR/STAR-AR format detailing how such an attitude is creating problems, talk to the person's manager and seek help, provide formal feedback via survey offer to mentor etc.,

However if you are in a leadership position and such behaviour is counter-culture, one cannot escape responsibility from setting it right. Remember culture is not a set of beliefs, but a set of actions. When not corrected quickly the org can quickly degenerate into a huge bureaucracy.

I'm not suggesting we bend rules all the time. If we can do justice to both letter and spirit it is great. However, sticking to rules for the sake of it and at the cost of principle is grossly incorrect - foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, said the great Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Next time when you instinctively say NO or quote some rule, think whether you are acting from principles or against it.

Food for thought for the Weekend (26-Oct-19)

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, and excerpts from my own reading.

Articles:

Culture is not a set of beliefs, Its a set of actions - A podcast with Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz (@bhorowitz) is a cofounder and general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and the upcoming Harper Business book, What You Do Is Who You Are, available October 29th. He also created the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund to connect cultural leaders to the best new technology companies and enable more young African Americans to enter the technology industry.

In this podcast, Tim Ferris talks to Ben Horowitz whose new book "What You Do Is Who You Are" which is creating waves. In this podcast, Ben talks about management and leadership, advice for first time executive, tools and techniques Ben found useful for leadership, self-talk, sharpening the contradictions, and many more things.

Creating the Habit of Not Being Busy - Leo Babauta (ZenHabits)

Most of us have used this “too busy” rationalization, because it feels very true. It feels absolutely true that we’re too busy. And there’s a corollary to this: if we want to be less busy, we have to get all our work done first (and be more busy in the meantime). Is it true? Or can we develop a habit of not being busy, even with the same workload?

In this blog post, Leo talks about a more focused and meaningful way to work and some tips to put together all the learnings.

Bonus:

Here are couple more interesting articles from Leo:

How to not believe your ultra-persuasive rationalizations

A magical way to work with our habitual patterns

Resource:

TED Talks on fighting Imposter Syndrome

Quote to ponder:

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.” ― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

Food for thought for the Weekend (19-Oct-19)

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, and excerpts from my own reading.

Articles:

Mastering the "Infinite" Game of Leadership

Simon Sinek has introduced the concept of Infinite Game Mindset. So what does it mean to play the infinite game as a leader? It means you leave something behind that outlasts your finite presence or contributions. An infinite leader builds a culture so strong, that when the leader is no longer there, the culture lives on. Infinite leaders commit to their just cause. The work produced by striving for that just cause has the indelible fingerprints of the leader, and lasts far beyond the time of the leader’s tenure. Here are the five must-have components of will if we are to succeed in the infinite game:

• Just cause: It’s the passion or hunger that burns inside that compels you to do what you do.
• Courageous Leadership: Playing the infinite game requires leaders to prioritize the just cause above anything else.
• Vulnerable Team: invested the time and energy to build a culture in your organization where people feel safe to be themselves. 
• Worthy Adversary: In the infinite game, adversaries are acknowledged and treated with respect, but our success or failure isn’t measured against them. Ultimately we are competing against ourselves, and our success or failure should be measured against our just cause.
• Open Playbook: Having an open playbook means leaders and organizations are willing to have flexible strategies and plans that change as needed to pursue their just cause. 

5 strategies to deal with imposter syndrome

It is now understood over 70% of us suffer from Imposter Syndrome at some point of time in our life. Ed Latimore, a professional boxer and a veteran of United States Army National Guard and now a popular blogger on self-development offers some scientifically proven ways to deal with Imposter Syndrome:

• Realize that your wires are crossed: One can un-cross the wires by learning from mistakes, doing more newer things and refusing to believe you cannot do or not-do something.

• Remember that you’re not special: Seven out of ten people feel or have felt the way you do. Some of the most accomplished people in the world have struggled with imposter syndrome. Chances are some of them are even your role models.

• Keep a journal of your daily accomplishments, both small and big: Imposter syndrome is an internal experience, not an external reality. By keeping a journal of accomplishments, eventually, you are going to start internalizing your accomplishments. The things you focus on become your reality.

• Change your expectations: do like the tech bros in Silicon Valley and focus on creating something that meets the minimum criteria of “good enough”. Once you have that, you can start improving on it.

• Seek out social support: At the end of the day, everything’s a lot easier when you’re not going it alone. When you feel like you have a lot of social support, you find more productive ways to deal with your impostorism.

Bonus:

If you liked the above article by Ed, you might like the following too:

Not caring what other people think is a super power

Why am I so unhappy?: Five possible reasons

Resource:

Adam Grant lists 20 new books on behavioral science, Leadership and Life. Excellent recommendation.

Quote to ponder:
“To a disciple who was forever complaining about others, the Master said, ‘If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth.’” — Anthony de Mello

What RamP's Reading: Oct'19

Holiday Season and travel is giving me an opportunity to catch up with some books I always wanted 

to read.  As I gear up to lead large scale agile transformation initiative, it is only natural that such books are dominating.

 

On Writing Well: Re-read. So many authors that I regularly read (continue to) recommend this book, as one of the best in non-fiction writing. It teaches brevity, simplicity and core essentials of writing well - an email, an article, a blog post or even a book.

Clean Architecture: Martin’s (Uncle Bob) Clean Architecture doesn’t merely present options. Drawing on over a half-century of experience in software environments of every imaginable type, Martin tells you what choices to make and why they are critical to your success. This book talks about:

• Learn what software architects need to achieve–and core disciplines and practices for achieving it
• Master essential software design principles for addressing function, component separation, and data management
• See how programming paradigms impose discipline by restricting what developers can do
• Understand what’s critically important and what’s merely a “detail”
• Implement optimal, high-level structures for web, database, thick-client, console, and embedded applications
• Define appropriate boundaries and layers, and organize components and services
• See why designs and architectures go wrong, and how to prevent (or fix) these failures

Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results: 

Toyota Kata gets to the essence of how Toyota manages continuous improvement and human ingenuity, through its improvement kata and coaching kata. Mike Rother explains why typical companies fail to understand the core of lean and make limited progress―and what it takes to make it a real part of your culture.

Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale: How well does your organization respond to changing market conditions, customer needsand emerging technologies when building software-based products? This practical guide presents Lean and Agile principles and patterns to help you move fast at scale—and demonstrates why and how to apply these methodologies throughout your organization, rather than with just one department or team.