Food for Thought

The inspiration of this blog is the amazing book by Eric Harvey, titled 'Leadership secrets of Santa Claus: How to get big things done in your "workshop"- all year long'. The author uses Santa Claus as a metaphor of terrific leadership. Santa’s number-one priority is his mission of 'delivering high-quality toys to good little children' and he makes sure his elves and reindeer understand how they connect to it. This is actually the role of the leader.   Santa Claus faces fluctuating demands, a challenging production schedule and a hostile work environment. He has to attract efficient employees and convince them to relocate to the North Pole. He also must adapt his production workshop and retrain his people annually to build the gifts that are 'in demand' each year. Despite the challenges, Santa Claus loves what his job. Santa and his team are delightful and productive because of their mission. The team in North Pole know the mission, and...

“Leadership skills determine the level of your success - and the success of those who work around you.” The above adage clearly implies the significance of developing the leadership skills for an individual. Now, one may argue that the leadership skills are innate; but, I have a different perspective to this opinion. This perspective of mine can be backed by a famous illustration as stated. A group of people was strolling through a village. When they passed an old man, one of them asked condescendingly, "Were any great men born in this village?" "Nope," the old man answered, "Only babies." The moral of the story: Although some people seem to be "born leaders," most need to learn leadership from experienced role models. Based on the book "Developing the leader within You" by John C. Maxwell, one can come up with ten basic principles to embark on the journey of leadership. Principle One: "The Definition of Leaders...

Book: 12 Disciplines of Leadership Excellence: How leaders achieve sustainable high performance Authors: Brian Tracy, Dr. Peter Chee Summary The authors describe 12 principles to succeed as a Leader. These can be developed over time by practice and experience. These are listed below: 1.  The Discipline of Leadership Excellence Current age employees most of the times look for what is in-stored for them in any work. Thus in current era, two types of leaders are more valuable as per author - charismatic transformational leaders who inspire people to do their best and transactional leaders who possess the ability to work with and achieve through others. Great leaders connect their team with the larger purpose by articulating their vision effectively and adding meaning to their team's work. As a leader one should make decisions and take actions and be accountable for the results. Leader should be prepared for adversity by planning for the worst-case scenario. Ope...

Book: 5% More: Making Small Changes to Achieve Extraordinary Results Author: Michael Alden "You can increase your productivity in virtually every aspect of your life by just 5%, and it will have long-term and life-changing benefits.” Everyone wishes for a better life; but, many fail in achieving this due to either unrealistic expectations or lack of action. The success comes by doing (acting) and not just day-dreaming about it.  The book suggests putting 5% more efforts in the direction of the goal one wishes to achieve. This may not bring-in 5% more results but will definitely take a step closer to the set target. To achieve 5% more, one must hold him/herself accountable. Start by writing down daily and weekly goals and be honest and realistic about it. (This can also be done for a team i.e. setting team goals and communicating them with the team). Incremental adjustments can be made eventually to the goals (targets). Author's colleague Brian encouraged him to ...

Book:  2 Second Lean: How to Grow People and Build a Fun Lean Culture Author: Paul A. Akers "A Lean strategy will always yield a simpler, safer and better product, and with happier, very involved employees." By adopting Lean thinking, one can reduce the stock and directly tackle two crucial maxims: cut waste and improve constantly. Running production in large batches requires lots of space, machinery and workforce, additionally, the means to move products around. Instead, if opted for ‘U-shaped manufacturing cells,’ each worker becomes responsible for producing only one item from start to finish. This process offers many benefits, such as, workers produce less inventory, make fewer mistakes and create less waste. One-piece production improves cash flow. The first thing that lean seeks to destroy is waste. As an organisation, your task is to eliminate it. There are eight sources of waste: Transport  (moving people, products & information), Inventory (storing parts,...

Women Empowerment! Such well known terminology in today's world. Each one of us may have been a part of discussion on this topic at one point or another. So, what do you think, are the women really empowered? What steps should we take for this empowerment? Is discussing the topic with peers over a cup of coffee enough? Is only government responsible for coming up with the schemes and policies to support this cause? Would that be enough? Can we as an individual do something that can support it? Too many questions, isn't it? And each of the above question can have different set of answers depending on the person's point of view. Government is doing great work for the cause; but, I feel that the Government initiatives aren't enough. And it's not that I doubt the potential of the great minds working behind the scenes to come up with the initiative. They are doing great work. But, we live in a democratic country (fortunately or unfortunately is at times a debatable q...

कहते है आज माँ का दिन है, कोई यह बताये वो कौन सा दिन है जो माँ के बिन हैं| The above two lines summarizes the essence of life. There is no day in life that can be celebrated without mother.  Mother, Mom, Maa, Amma, Aai, whatever you choose to call her, she is the most important part of every child's life. But, to her, her children are her world. Then why do we choose only one day to show our love, our respect for her? Today all the social media sites have been flooded with the quotes and messages showing love and affection for mother. All the posts/messages revolve around mom's sacrifices and her importance in our life.  Where does that love and affection for her go for the rest of 364 days of the year? Do we forget her sacrifices and her importance in our life during the rest of the days? Is showing love just for one day enough?  I think we take mothers for granted most of the times. We disrespect her at times, sometimes we even hurt her. ...