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.

Is Experience about adding years?

Here the thought is about something that all of us think that we possess and continue to gain every day, but rarely do we realize what it actually means – “Experience”.

The thought has been with me, ever since I came across a simple saying – “Experience is not what happens to you, Experience is what you do to what happens to you”. I have put together three examples, let’s take a look:

The management team of a retail company is sitting and trying to find out a solution to a problem. The problem is the global concern of recession. The early trends have shown that recession is here but nobody has any clue as to what level will Recession impact the company. The team sitting in the meeting is a heterogeneous team with various levels of experience and there is a lot of debate and discussion on this topic.

Abha, an executive from a premier B school, says “We need to take a hard look at all our costs and save money on them as sales are bound to fall. One of the areas of high cost in our operation is the manpower cost and we need to cut the same to manage our profits. I can only see layoffs as the way to go”. She drew a proximate sales drop chart which is expected and thus, how much costs will we need to save to reach break even. People in the meeting are obviously way too uncomfortable for this solution.

Mr. Juneja, having spent 15 years in the company objected upfront. “I have seen many ups and downs in my career. Such drastic steps at this stage are not required. We need to cut cost by maybe, reducing salaries and if required, laying off a few unproductive people. Also, we will get benefit by negotiating on rent in some of our properties. If we lose 15% sales, that can be compensated by taking these steps. I am sure all these steps will help us sail through recession period”. Everyone seemed to nod in affirmative.

After a little pause, Ashwin, another old hand, though not as experienced as Mr. Juneja, spoke up. He said, “I think besides managing the current, we should also think about the long term impacts. Therefore, we do need to understand what will be the impact 3-5 years down the line as well. First of all, it is a great time to book new properties for our stores. We will not get these prices in the near future and we will be able to command on the builders. At the same time, I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to lay off people as right now, we can retain people at the same cost but during the boom period, when we will require these resources again, the same positions will at least come at a 30% higher cost. As far as the sales are concerned, as people in various teams will now have lesser work, we can try out some unconventional methods like maybe some of our staff can get involved in institutional sales and bulk enquiries, something which we have not tried until now”. People in the room had a ray of hope on their faces.

This is how experience differs. The first case, Abha, had little experience but she was backed up with education. She believed whatever she has studied in text books holds completely true in the real world and made projections similarly. But all of us know, Education is others’ experience, but what we need in the real world is our “own” experience and way of looking at things. If the world has done things in a certain way, not necessary that that is the right way only!  She was not able to think of alternatives and did not consider implications of actions. The second case, Mr. Juneja, as much as it sounds like experience, is a case of “conditioning”. We go through certain events in our life where we have taken certain steps and we continue to do the same on every occurrence of it. This is much like the “Pavlovian Theory”, where we are conditioned to respond to a certain event in a defined manner. This case is a little better than education as the learnings are our own and the set up is more “real”. However, this “conditioning”, results in the same experience always and there’s no value addition ever. Repeating once again – “If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got!”

And then, comes Ashwin. Even though he has lesser years of going through the grind than Mr. Juneja in his career, he is “experienced” enough to react to a particular situation in his own way. He learnt that what went wrong in the last recession and is now smart enough to take the right kind of actions upon each one of them, and each action impacting a fairly long period of time. That is what is called, the real experience!

Now you need to figure out for yourself, whether you are educated, conditioned or experienced. In most of the cases, we are “Conditioned”, as we believe that what we have done once in the past and was right, will continue to be right forever and we don’t need to break our heads every time into it. Education cannot replace Experience. Therefore, there is a lot of value to the "grey hair". But if someone believes that "grey hair" alone is experience, that is where the mistake starts. This is when we deride education, get closed to new ideas because we have "experience". To repeat, most of us confuse experience with conditioning. Experience is about internalising the events that unfold and have an even better plan of action for future.

Next time you think you have the experience, think again. Is your experience only conditioning?

Do let me know what you think about the write up.

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

Communication - Gap or Chasm

This management thought relates to a commonly talked about topic, Communication Gap!

“The Single Biggest Problem in Communication is the Illusion that it has taken place” ~ George Bernard Shaw

Every individual is different and unique and so are their abilities to express and perceive. Communication, as simple as it may sound is a challenge in terms of making the other person understand what you intend to say and also understanding what the other person has to say. This is what is communication gap. However. over the two decades of my career, I have realised that often what we refer to as communication gap is actually a chasm.  In this post, I am narrating some instances of how I learnt about this chasm in my career.  I am also attempting to put down the learning that I derived out of them. However, communication improvement is a vast topic and therefore, what you will read here is definitely not exhaustive. Here we go:

1.       One of my Bosses went on a market visit. When he returned, I inquired about how his visit was and he said he was very unhappy with the Area Sales Manager (ASM), as even the basics were not followed. He also mentioned that he gave the person a piece of his mind. After some time, I called up that ASM and asked him how my Boss’s visit was. He said – “It was fine only that he gave feedback on a few improvement areas, which will be corrected!” The Area Manager clearly seemed to be satisfied with the current state of affairs. The clear learning that I derived out of this incident was that when dealing with people a couple of notches down the hierarchy¸ we must be simple and crisp in communicating! Assuming that the other person will understand jargon and complex sentences, is a mistake. Also, it may be a good idea to close the loop by asking them about their “take away” from the conversation post the download.

2.       Another one of my Boss had serious concerns with our advertising agency. He decided to communicate his issues to their MD and met him over lunch to discuss the same. After two months, there was no improvement in the performance. He then, called them to our office in a slightly larger group and discussed those issues again. This time with harder questions. After two months, when there was again no improvement, we decided to move the account and that’s when the MD realized that he had not been listening to us. I learnt that clarity of communication does not depend on the IQ or designation of a person, because most often we hear what we want to hear.  Communication gap can occur with anyone. I also believe that tough talks need to be done with eye to eye contact and in a formal setting. Very often the setting overtakes the communication objective.

3.       Once, I was upset with a colleague of mine over the low growth rate that he had taken for next year’s budget. I was so upset with him that being at such a senior level, he’s not getting company’s vision of growing big next year and was convinced on taking low numbers. On top of that, he was also trying to justify the same to me. I sarcastically told him – “If I had taken this kind of growths, I’d be holidaying in Bahamas”. Obviously I meant that the targets were very easy to be achieved and required no hard work. However, he understood it as his ABP was good enough for him and he doesn’t need to work on it any more. Learning was that sarcasm is best avoided in a professional communication.

4.       I was once told that another colleague of mine is not agreeing to the project timelines as he believes that there are certain bottlenecks in the project. But this information given to me was “off the record”. Till date, I fail to understand how can any communication which impacts our work and deliverables be “Off the record”. If I am officially not supposed to act upon it, why am I being provided with the information and if I am supposed to act upon it, how does the information become “off the record”? Official Information is never “Off the Record”. If it is, its not official information, its “gossip”.

5.       One of the most crucial aspects of communication, as hackneyed as it may sound, is about it being clear about expectation. A lot of times, “I want it” is not perceived as “I want it now” and when your team member fails to understand the priority of work, frustration comes through. I once told my Marketing Head to get an ad released within next three days. He replied that it was really difficult. I replied back “I want the ad on the required date, DO OR DIE”. Without doubt the ad was released on the required date.

6.       In one of the advertising agency meetings, I liked one of the ads, though I remarked casually that “maybe the ad would look a little better if the background was yellow instead of blue”. Genuinely, it was only a casual comment. Next day, I had the yellow background ad in my mailbox. I pitied the people who worked on it throughout the night just to give shape to my casual comment. At senior positions, it is likely that people tend to take your casual comments also as directives and act upon them without you necessarily wanting them to. Expression of purpose is the most important content of a communication.

Communication is a funny thing. How you come to know from the smile of a woman that she has fallen for you and how you don’t understand that when Boss said that the work needs to be completed “Now”, that “Now” didn’t mean a week.  Like I mentioned, perception is different for different individuals! That is what creates the communication gap or shall I say chasm?

Communication gap is inevitable and will never be able to be completely got rid of. If my secretary confuses my intent of visiting Allahabad, my  “Home Town”, as my intent to visit Home Town, the concept which is just downstairs, I will not blame her, but reflect on myself. What we can work towards, is making sure that the gap is reduced as much as possible and make conscious efforts towards it.

Would like to know your thoughts on how do you make sure that proper communication is in place in your surroundings.

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

Duplication - The Evil within the organisations

This time, the thought is about an issue which is present across organizations and if addressed rightly will result in significant increase in the productivity. It’s about eliminating Duplication that exists in the nooks and corners of our work life.

What is the most important problem that persists in all our lives? After a lot of meetings with various colleagues and industry veterans, the answer is singled out as “Time”! There is always so much to do that we are just not able to find out time for ourselves to venture into newer projects and processes in our work. When we take a close look as to where the time is going, we find that everyone is doing everything and this is where all the time is going. Seems like a silly thing to hear, but actually it is not!

There are different departments / people in an organization to perform different roles. However, over a period of time, depending on various factors like lack of trust, ambiguity in role, interest area, impatience and ego issues, we start venturing into every other department. Sample some of these thoughts. “Last time there was an error in  the Calculation by ABC team, let me do it myself this time and see if it is correct”, “Am I supposed to do this? Maybe I’ll get shouted at if I ask, Why not do it?”, “It’s exciting to do XYZ work, this time I’ll also get fully involved in the same”, “PQR Team takes a lot of time to update us on these issues, we’ll follow up ourselves”  becomes the initial point of starting to get into the works of neighbor departments. Slowly, it becomes a habit and then your “unstated” KRA. What seemed to be a proactive behavior, actually resulted in so many people doing the same work twice. Worse, if three departments don’t trust each other for the same work!

It is much  more important to understand how this problem would exist in a large organizations. As the number of layers increase, so do the chances of spreading “Duplication”. Between the different offices – Head Office, Branch Office and Area Offices, there’d be a number of activities that would be duplicated only for the simple reason of improper communication. Similarly, in the same office, the chances of duplication among various departments are quite high. It is also possible that Duplication exists within the same team where the junior person does some work and Boss cross verifies it. There is just so much of overlap all over! I have always fancied what all milestones can be achieved if all this time was spent in putting extra efforts in your work and working out on newer projects for your team.

A lot of times, we encourage Duplication to be the “check and balance’ in the system. To a certain extent, it could be right. But when it starts getting in excess of being only ”Checks and Balance”, that is where the issues arise. Also, when the “Checks and balances” start happening more often than not, that’s where bureaucracy steps in. Nobody trusts nobody else and everyone is busy pulling each other down to show how they are correct and the other person is a fool! Egos build up and all the time is spent in “proving” yourself rather than working your way up! A lot of times, this “Check and Balance” also results in people taking their work casually – knowing that the check exists and they’ll be corrected wherever they are wrong. This, inculcates, Duplication in the organization’s DNA. Sometimes, it also backfires. So,” if you have proved me wrong once, I will prove you wrong twice”, and the story continues…

Did you just realize the amount of imbalance that a seemingly simple thing like “Duplication” can cause?

To address this issue, Just a few points that I think will be helpful:

è At the onset we will have to believe that all people work for the benefit of organization. Nobody has any personal problems with anyone and human errors are inevitable. So, Trust! Do not make cross checking a habit in your work life.

è If there is any problem in sorting out who’s responsibility it is – Talk it out, There’ll be nobody who’ll want to do the work for the heck of it.

è If some of other department’s work is in your interest area – Assist, not Interfere. It’s always good to have an outsider’s point of view in any function.

è Last, but not the least, encourage “Samvaad”, rather than “Vivaad”. Blaming anyone will only result in backfire. Give suggestions, not directives. Click to read my blog on this topic!

Wonder if I am exaggerating on the evils of duplication. Ego, bureaucracy, insecurity and many others? For most of us, it is only about productivity. If you have been provoked, do ACT! ACT NOW!

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