Are you a juggler

This management thought starts with a story borrowed from Devdutt.com (Devdutt is the chief belief officer at our group, Future Group).

In South Indian temple walls one often finds a character called Bhringi looking adoringly at Shiva dancing. What distinguishes Bhringi from the rest of the followers of Shiva is that he looks emaciated, just a skeleton in fact. And he has three legs, not two.

The story goes that Bhringi was a devotee of Shiva. One day, he came to Mount Kailas, the abode of Shiva, and expressed his desire to go around Shiva. As he was going around, Shiva’s consort, Shakti, said, “You cannot just go around him. You have to go around me too. We are two halves of the same truth.” Bhringi, however, was so focussed on Shiva that he had no desire to go around Shakti. Seeing this, Shakti sat on Shiva’s lap making it difficult for Bhringi to go around Shiva alone. Bhringi, determined to go around Shiva took the form of a snake and tried to slip in between the two. Amused by this, Shiva made Shakti one half of his body – the famous Ardhanareshwar form of Shiva. This was God whose one half is the Goddess. But Bhringi was adamant. He would go around Shiva alone. So he took the form of a rat, some say a bee, and tried to gnaw his way between the two.

This annoyed the Goddess so much that she said, “May Bhringi lose all parts of the body that come from the mother.” In Tantra, the Indian school of alchemy, it is believed that the tough and rigid parts of the body such as nerves and bones come from the father while the soft and fluid parts of the body such as flesh and blood come from the mother. Instantly, Bhringi lost all flesh and blood and he became a bag of bones. He collapsed on the floor, unable to get up.

Bhringi realized his folly. Shiva and Shakti make up the whole. They are not independent entities. One cannot exist without the other. Without either there is neither.  He apologized.

The story, like all other mythological stories has a lot to tell. Bhringi was the true devotee of Shiva and did everything possible to please his Lord. What he forgot was that his focus on "one" was so much, that he forgot to look at the other.

Have I confused you all through this story? Some of you will be quick to tell me the story of Arjuna who is considered an ideal! The story goes like this:

Guru Dronacharya decided to test his students in their skill of archery. He hung a wooden bird from the branch of a tree and then summoned his students. He asked the first one to aim for the bird's eye but not shoot just yet. He then asked the student what the student could see. The student replied that he could see the garden, the tree, flowers, etc. Drona asked him to step aside and not shoot. He repeated the same process with a few other students. When it was Arjuna's turn, Arjuna told his Guru that the only thing he could see was the bird's eye. This satisfied the Guru and he allowed Arjuna to shoot the bird. The lesson here is the power of focus.

All along we have been told that focus is a good thing and now I am saying please don’t focus or you shall be punished like Bhringi.

Very often in our lives, especially at work, when we focus on something, we, tend to deprioritize everything else and focus on it single mindedly. Can you recall the instances where you have put in all your efforts in one project and ultimately found out that all other projects in your hands are way beyond their deadline? I am sure each one of us has gone through this in various phases of our careers. We make one particular thing so important, that we forget that there are other things too, which make our work and life complete. We forget the fact that success and happiness is a result of all round performance and is never dependent on one parameter only. It does happen in our personal lives too. We chase one dream so strongly, that we completely ignore some others. Imagine putting all your money and efforts into buying a new house, that you have no money for any personal emergency. We often please Shiva and ignore Shakti. And therefore, like Bhringi, we are left with the bones, but we lose the Flesh!

You will argue that by focusing we are being like Arjuna and still being faulted? In my opinion it is incorrect to fault Arjuna for the focus. What we need to do is focus on the project on hand but manage multiple projects. So, you need to be Arjuna for a particular project but remember that you have multiple projects at the same time. What corporate world requires in today’s day and age is a juggler, especially as you rise up the hierarchy. A juggler focuses on juggling multiple balls. Like when you have to deliver on targets, these are measured in relation to topline, margin, inventory and expenses. Do you have the liberty of delivering on only one of them and still ask for a large bonus?

At times, it is definitely tough for us not to pick one out of so many things. With so many options available in our hands, it is natural to pick the one which is most important and has the most visible results to be taken before others. What we don’t realize is that focusing on only one goal at a time, makes us lose on so many other accounts. We should understand that true leaders have 360 degrees approach to any problem we are facing and whilst a few things will continue to be our focus, we must learn not to deprioritize other aspects. Balance between the important and not so important tasks remains the key to achieve your long term goals.

So, you need to be a good juggler in corporate world. Would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.

PS: You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter

Small Steps make a Big Leap!

“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.” ~Proverb

This blog got initiated with a colleague of mine writing in as a feedback on one of my earlier posts. Also, I came across some tweets from Robin Sharma, which made me initiate this topic as a weekend thought. Robin Sharma says, “Think Big but Start Small” and also that “A lot of winning is about the beginning”.  He also states that Great companies are made by a lot of nano wins than a giant win. That, did provoke me to think more about it!

Am starting with a simple, yet very effective quote – “It Takes years of hard work and perspiration to become an overnight success”. We all know that success doesn’t come easy, and yet, as soon as we are made aware of our target destination, we are in a hurry to get there and do anything possible to reach there in the minimum possible time. Often, these bigger steps result in setbacks as we are lesser experienced in the path and the base is not as strong. Through the two decades of my career, and quite a few ups and downs, I have realized that baby steps are the best way to achieve my goal.

Nisha had a busy schedule and found little time for herself. She was an ardent reader, and had a creative and expressive streak about her. So she still felt that she would do good for herself if she gets into writing. And then she decided to work on the big dream of writing a book of her own. After a lot of postponements, one fine day she decided to finally “start” writing her book. She had a couple of topics in mind, but decided to go ahead with “The Independent Woman of Today” as her topic. She started writing and after a few pages, she realized that maybe the topic didn’t have enough content. She then thought that women in India were underprivileged and it would be better if she wrote on that topic. After reading a couple of articles on this topic, she sat down to write again on the new topic after a week. Three pages later, she realized that she is repeating whatever has already been written on the topic so she should find another topic. Finally, in the long process of finding the right topic, she lost the enthusiasm and the Word Document on her comp never saw her again. She had undertaken a large task. However, she had not thought through the intricacies of this large task. As she kept getting into details she realised that the task is unviable.

One day, Manas, her friend asked her what happened to her idea of writing a book. She told him that she did not just have it in her to write a book. And then Manas suggested that why doesn’t she start by writing blogs. The idea made sense and Nisha made a blog id. She then started to write on her favorite topic – “Women of India”, which covered both aspects on women of India – the independent and the underprivileged. As she wrote various blogs, she got feedback from the readers on her writing style, what everyone liked in her writing and what they didn’t. She kept on improving and in the process, also made a number of fans and some good friends who were author of some renowned books. Today, not only has she written a couple of books on different topics, one of her books have also become Bestseller and has won her accolades.

We humans , are hopelessly positive in our subconscious minds. Whenever we move into a direction, we believe that this is the best way of getting this work done and will work out in no time. However, quite often, we stumble back, only wondering what had gone wrong. The worst part of it is, that the set back may result in you completely letting the task go undone as the motivation levels to still carry out the task go for a toss. And therefore, my belief in taking small steps gets strengthened.

Taking baby steps has its own advantages. The biggest one is the additional amount of learning that you get. Small steps are really helpful when you’re unsure whether the path you have taken is right or not. Just like Nisha in the story earlier. You get many small learnings attached to the task rather than only learning that this particular big strategy “worked” or not. Also, baby steps increase the frequency of feedback you receive, because you can bring prototypes to quick meetings. More the feedback, more is the learning.

Another big advantage of taking smaller steps at a time is Risk Aversion.  Small steps allow you to explore multiple direction parallel and you don’t need to have “one” grand idea to reach your target. Therefore, the risk involved in smaller steps are much lesser compared to the big one. Often, Big Bets are also the “Expensive Bets” and small steps are cheaper to pull off, so you end up spending less money per unit of learning, and that learning comes sooner. And it's easier to kill off ideas when they're expressed as baby steps, because there's no huge sunk investment tempting you to spend more time and money in order to save the project or your career. It also helps in taking care of the dynamism in the external scenario, as external circumstances are not constant and also not controllable. These can make any big plan fail.

As they say, “Slow but steady wins the race”, by taking a lot of smaller steps, you make sure that you are making your way to the desired destination. Sometimes large steps sap up the energy that you then tend to take rest (just like the hare in the hare and tortoise story). This rest means that you lose continuity and momentum to achieve your goal. You need to decide whether you are playing a test match or a T20. The pace will be determined by the game you play. Small steps also give flexibility to change you plan of actions based on the results achieved which would not be possible otherwise.

Just to make sure that there is no communication chasm, I want to insist that I don’t mean that you have to think small for taking small steps. We do need to think and expect big. However, expecting to get there in no time, is, more often than not a myth. To reach a far out destination, the essential ingredient is “Small Steps” and not “Big Leaps”.

It’s easier to make a comeback from a little tumble than from a steep fall. It’s a shorter road back up. Taking Small Steps is rather a habit that needs to be inculcated than an effort. Once you get into this mode, you’ll realize how easy and simple it was to win.

Do let me know what you think of this.

PS: You can also reach me out at @agrawalsanjeev on twitter.