CHANGE

When organisations want to bring in #change, it is extremely important that they plan properly and consider all five elements that matter and bring them all together. 

These five elements are: Vision, Skills, Incentives, Resources, and Action Plan.

Even if one of the element goes missing, it will not ensure a smooth transition and create more hurdles in reaching the final outcome.

Open that Jam Bottle to enjoy its Sweet Taste

Have you ever been in a situation where you were keen to enjoy the taste of jam from a jam bottle that you were trying to open, but somehow you were not able to enjoy its sweet taste once the bottle was opened? 

Source: https://www.graphicsfuel.com/2016/01/jam-bottle-mockup-psd/

Now before you start imagining what I am trying to say, let me give you two scenarios: 

Scenario 1: You have guests over at your place and at the breakfast table, you decide to open a new bottle of jam. Imagine that you are using all your strength in twisting the lid of that jam bottle. You are huffing and puffing, your arm has started to pain and yet that lid does not open. You look around and hand over the bottle to the person sitting next to you, requesting her or him to open the bottle. She/he now applies a similar tactic like yours and Voila! Within a few seconds, the lid opens; there is a smug smile on the face of the person who opened the bottle. Everyone around applauds the effort of that person and looks at you sympathetically with a presumption that you do not have the strength that is needed to open a jam bottle. What you nor does anyone else know, is the fact that with all your efforts, the lid had started loosening from the neck and if you had persisted, you would have been able to open the lid within another a few seconds. 

Scenario 2: You are busy applying your strength to open the jam bottle and someone comes and offers help. You gladly hand over the bottle. As expected, the bottle opens soon. The person who helped you now starts telling the entire world that it was he or she who opened the bottle and not you, even though it was your job to open the bottle. They take the entire credit without bashing an eyelid. 

Does this sound familiar to you? Has it ever happened with you? 

In life as well as in organizations, this common situation happens to many people. Some people learn fast and avoid such situations while there are others who keep falling in the same situation repeatedly. 

Here are a few simple tips and suggestions that can help you to open that jam bottle and enjoy its benefits completely: 

1. Do not give up: This one is easier said than done. I do understand that there would be situations and times when you think that you have tried all possible solutions and yet you are not able to move forward. That is exactly the time when you need to draw your utmost inner strength and continue finding ways to achieve a task or overcome a problem. Remember, there are chances that the lid has started loosening from the neck. You do not want to miss the great tasting jam at this stage. 

2. Be careful of who you seek help from: If you have been a victim of your jam bottle credit being taken by someone else, then you should know who are the people who will happily open the botte and give it back to you without even mentioning it to anyone. These are the ones who deserve genuine thank you. You would also know the ones who would love to help in a situation, but would then let the entire world know. You should not be asking for help from them at all. 

3. Give enough visibility of your project milestones: If your project has high stakes which means, that if delivered it can help the company move forward in a significant way, then there are chances that people will come forward to help and soon they will be talking as if they are the ones leading the project. To avoid such situations, it is extremely important to share key milestone achievements of the project with various stakeholders at different stages of the project so everyone knows who the commander of the ship is and how you are steering the ship forward even though the other person might claim credit to the project. 

4. Confront the person: If a person is repeatedly doing this to your projects, it is best to sit down and confront the person. Understand the reason of their behavior, their concerns with you and let them know your discomfort. You will be surprised that sometimes they may not even realize what they are doing and how it is affecting you and just bringing it to their notice can work. 

What I have mentioned above is quite simple and obvious but sometimes it is the simple and the obvious that gets missed out in the chase of the complex and difficult. I hope that these suggestions help you to enjoy the sweet taste of your jam more often. This is not an exhaustive list, and depending on your circumstances, you would discover other ways and means of enjoying your jam and I would be happy to know some of the suggestions that you may want to offer.

Respect - What It Means

Respect. It may seem like a simple seven letter word, but it is powerful enough to be seen as a complete sentence as well. Respect condenses within itself the power to sustain many relationships, it contains within itself the ability to show other people your emotions about how you feel about them, about a situation or even about someone you may not know personally. 

Let me explain myself a bit. One of the foundations of any relationship is the presence of respect in that relationship. Right from our childhood, we are taught that we need to respect our parents, our teachers and our elders and those are the building blocks of our relationship with them. Respect is the adjective that you use when you want to address people from stage. It could be “Respected Guests” or “Respected Judges” and that is the badge value of respect. 

Go deep into the healthy relationships of any couple and they will tell you that the reason our relationship is so strong is that we respect each other. Many broken relationships occur because one of the partners did not respect the other. 

In a professional set up, respect as a value comes into play once again and people like to work for organizations and bosses that respect them.

The beauty of respect is that it does not differentiate between strangers and familiarity or between gender or hierarchy. You could respect someone you do not know as much as how much you would respect people you know. When you react to a video of a friend who has done something that is admirable, you show respect for that. Similarly, when a soldier of your country shows an act of valour to protect you and your borders, you show respect for that as well, even though you may not know the soldier personally.

Respect is something that needs to be earned and one has to work hard for it. Often, our heroes earn our respect because of their acts and deeds, and sometimes they earn this respect at different stages of their lives. No one knew Malala Yousafazai when she was a young student until the time she got shot by the Taliban and then became a Pakistani activist at a young age. The world started respecting her from then on. Nelson Mandela become a worldwide respected personality only after he was sentenced to life imprisonment at the age of 44. 

              Respect is for those who deserve it and not for those who demand it.

While it is difficult to earn respect, it is extremely easy to lose respect. We see this many times when our heroes and our idols fail us and our first reaction is “I have lost all respect for him or her.” World famous cyclist Lance Armstrong lost lot of respect of his fans when he confessed taking drugs to improve his performance.  

They say that knowledge is power but it is respect that defines your character. A true character of a person gets reflected when he speaks ‘respectfully’ not only to his seniors or people who are higher than him in the economic society but also to his juniors and to people who are lower than him in society. So you may be very successful in life and maybe earning a lot of money but if you do not have the respect of others and if you do not show respect to others, then you are still very poor.

Another aspect of respect is that it is not only outward driven, but it is also inward created. That is what self-respect is – the respect that you give to yourself as an individual and that is a sacred wall that no one can trample on, because when people trample on that, it causes lot of hurt.

As the saying goes:

               Respect is earned. Trust is gained. Honesty is appreciated. Loyalty is returned.

While you may be a trustworthy person, a loyal person, an honest person but you would never call yourself self-good, self-loyal or self-honest but you wouldn’t shy away from calling yourself a self-respecting individual. That is the power of ‘Respect.’

Become Mediocre or Open the Eyes of Others to Mediocrity

Imagine a few conversations like these in various organizational set-ups:

Conversation 1 between two employees

Employee A (Senior Manager): This is outstanding! I think this approach is what we should be taking hence forth. It is effective and gives us the results. Don’t you agree M?

Employee M (Reporting to A): Yes A, this is a great way to do things. But this is something that I had done two years back. I thought you would know that it is not new and we have doing something like this in the past. 

Conversation 2 between two employees

Employee B: There is this new way of doing marketing. There is a case study that exists out there. You should check it out. 

Employee M: You are getting amazed by this new way? I thought you would be aware of this new way since a long while and hence I never even discussed this with you. 

Employee B: No, this is new stuff for me. I wasn’t aware. This is quite cool. 

These are just a few examples of a few conversations. There would be many more that would be taking place on a regular basis in some of your organisations. 

While lack of awareness of a new tool or a new way is understandable and different people get to know about it at different times, but the problem starts appearing when one of the employee uses a certain tool or way of doing things and assumes that it is no big deal and not worth talking about, whereas the same tool or approach then gets lauded by various people in the company some time later when someone informs about its utility and how they have leveraged such a method. 

The question that comes to mind is ‘Who should be blamed? Should it be the employee who did not talk about his new approach and make a big hoo-hah about it or should it be the other employees who suddenly express surprise and amazement at an idea or a method that the other employee has been using and implementing for quite a while without bothering about talking about it?’

The fact of the matter is that there is so much of mediocrity all around the system that everyone delivers and works basis that standard of mediocrity, and then that standard or approach becomes a norm. This norm then gets broken by two kinds of people:

1. A person who is above the mediocre level and who doesn't follow the norm but rather does certain breakthrough ideas that go beyond the norm. For him, these breakthrough ideas also appear to be so obvious that he forgets to even talk about them or sell his approach to the organization. 

2. A mediocre person who picks up one of the breakthrough idea from somewhere, quite a while since it has been in use and them is amazed at the results that he achieves from such an idea that he tells everyone about this idea. 

A person who is above the mediocre level gets frustrated at two points:

1. When he sees others around him living, thriving and enjoying the mediocrity without bothering to change. This person then goes ahead and implements his ideas to get results, but even these ideas seem so obvious that he forgets to make a story about it. 

2. When he sees a mediocre person, suddenly waking up to a new and better style of working and then taking the appreciation of all his peers and seniors for changing the norm and style within the organization. It is usually this person who walks away with all the adulation, promotion and the tag of being a ‘Genius.’

If this person wants to get out of this frustration trap, he has two choices: Either to become mediocre like everyone else or open the eyes of others to mediocrity by showcasing his ideas, his approach and his style to the world. 

What that also means is that, if he is a genius who thinks that what he is doing is nothing but mundane, which everyone ought to be doing anyway, then he should stop thinking of his work as mundane and project and sell his work to the organization so that this malaise of mediocrity can be ridden of, and this genius can get what he ought to deserve.

So here’s to a new year of 2015, a year where the mediocre move up and the genius move down so that the entire organization benefits!