Overcoming Obstacles Key Part Of The Leadership Journey

1. Nullify your “hostage” or “victim” mindset.

- The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

2. Reframe obstacles into opportunities.

- Obstacles inspire the desire to solve dilemmas. Obstacles are a miraculous opportunity for innovation and charge.

3. Break down the obstacles into smaller achievable chunks.

- Obstacles are like mountains not likely to move themselves. You must take action to overcome it, not sit at the foot of the mountain hoping it will suddenly vanish.

4. Learn from the obstacles but keep the focus on your big goal.

- Learning is what differentiates leaders. Obstacles provide situations for us to learn.

- Coelho states that before you can reach your dream, you will be tested by the very same universe. Obstacles are part and parcel of life. We need to embrace it as an opportunity to learn.

In shorts:

-         There is a saying that goes, ”The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

-         Champions are made from something they have deep inside them ~a desire, a dream, a vision.

(The Star - 27 Nov 2010)

Hong Kong Trip Coming Up

My Hong Kong Trip Coming Up...

Tragedy In Dapsy Nibong Tebal (Kisah Benar Berat Sebelah)

 

Yang Bermahalaja ialah Negeri,

Yang Dipersalahkan ialah Pusat;

Yang Berkuasa Mutlak ialah Seorang,

Yang Dikorbankan ialah Keadilan Bahagian;

Rakyat Mahukan Perubahan,

Yang Berubah ialah Nilai Suci Parti;

Kalau Inilah Balasan PengorbananMu,

Saya Rela Ia Tidak Pernah Berlaku....

(DAP-sy putra Time Bomb)

Start Sharpen Our Axe Now

The Star 15 May 2010 (Saturday)

A very strong and skilled woodcutter asked for a job with a timber merchant. His boss gave him an axe and on his first day, the woodcutter cut down 15 tress. His boss was pleased and said: “Well done, good work!” Highly motivated, the woodcutter tried harder the next day, but could only fell 13 tress. The third day, he tried even harder, but only 11 tress were chopped down. Day after day, he tried harder but he cut down fewer trees. The woodcutter thought he must be losing his strength. He apologized to the boss, claiming he could not understand why. The boss asked: “When was the last time you sharpened your axe?” The woodcutter said: “I had no time to sharpen my axe. I have been too busy cutting down trees.” He sharpened his axe and immediately was back to 15 trees a day. Since then, he begins the day by sharpening his axe.

Moral of the story

1. Most leaders are too busy doing and trying to achieve, that they never take time to learn and grow. Most of us don’t have the time or patience to update skills, knowledge, and beliefs about an industry, or to take time to think and reflect. Many assume that learning ends at school and so sharpening our axe is not a priority.

2. Dr. Steven Covey, who popularized the term, believes it means “increasing your personal production capacity by daily self care and self-maintenance.”

3. Most people fail to understand what it means and mistake it for taking a break or vacation. If you’re overworking yourself and your productivity drops off, take a break.

4. However, that isn’t sharpening the axe; that’s putting the axe down. When you put down a dull blade and rest, the blade will still be dull when you pick it up.

Sharpening the axe is an activity. We too can sharpen the axe of our life. Here are 10 ways:
a) Read a book every day
b) Get out of our comfort zone by changing jobs. A new job forces you to learn
c) Have a deep conversation with someone you find interesting. Sharpen your axe through that interaction
d) Pick up a new hobby. Stretch yourself physically, mentally or emotionally
e) Study something new
f) Overcome a specific fear you have or quit a bad habit
g) Have a daily exercise routine or take part in some competition
h) Identify your blind spots. Understand, acknowledge and address it
i) Ask for feedback and get a mentor
j) Learn from people who inspire you

You’re so focused on your task at hand with no time for discussion, introspection or study, you’re not really moving forward.

The Management Mythbuster author David Axson believes most organization still rely on outdated management strategies. Unless we are sharpening our axe daily by observing the changing world and changing ourselves accordingly, we risk becoming irrelevant.

Andrew Grove reinvented Intel and oversaw a 4,500 times increase in market capitalization by his daily habitual “axe-sharpening” ritual of understanding global changes and taking advantage of these to ensure Intel remained relevant.

Employees at Japanese organizations like Toyota believe it’s a crisis if they do not create improvement each day. The “Kaizen mindset” means that every day, whether you’re a line worker or executive, you find ways to learn something new and apply it to what you’re doing. This forces employees to be alert, mindful and constantly improving.

Many of us do just the opposite. By staying in the same job for many years, although we become experts and our roles become easy, our learning flattens.

We don’t like changing jobs as there is pain and struggle in taking on new roles. But the more we struggle, the more we learn.

Our natural inclination to be mindless as mindlessness is our human tendency to operate an autopilot, whether by stereotyping, performing mechanically or simply not paying attention. We are all victims of being mindless at times. By sharpening our axe, we move from a mindless state to a mindful state; from “blindly going with the flow” to thinking and “breaking boundaries.”
When there is a crisis or financial situation, the first thing that gets slashed is training programmes for employee. Yet, in a crisis, there is a greater need for employees to have sharpened axes to deal with issues. Crisis often helps companies to become great because they finally take time to sharpen their axe by relooking at their current strategies and reinventing their industries, sometimes through painful reforms.

Of course, too much or aimless axe sharpening can become another form of procrastination. Many like to attend training courses and classes but end up never using the axe. After sharpening the axe, use it or all is in vain.

How are your various blades doing? Your skills, your knowledge, your mind, your physical body, your relationship, your motivation, your commitment to succeed, your capacity for growth and your emotions etc…

Lincoln once said: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening my axe.”

Do you know who YOU are? Leadership

The Star (Saturday 17 April 2010)

1. Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee in their book, Primal Leadership, refer to ‘CEO disease’ as the information vacuum around a leader created when people withhold important (sometimes unpleasant) information.
2. Unfortunately, we see numerous instances of ‘CEO disease’ in Asian organisation. This happen when the CEO is in denial of the real state of the business and is not open to criticism or bad news. In fact, in some organisation, the board of directors are filled with cronies and others unlikely to be critical of the CEO’s performance.
3. The CEO is unlikely to be offered much in form of constructive criticism needed to improve performance. He will have significant blind spots that he will never know exist.
4. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them, says Colin Powell. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care.
5. The antidote for this disease – self-awareness. No one welcomes bad news about themselves, but self-aware leaders not only accept feedback, they even seek it out. They do so because they want to keep learning and growing.
6. Self-awareness is simply being conscious of your strengths while acknowledging what you still have yet to learn. This includes admitting when you don’t have the answers and owning up to mistakes.
7. Example, we promoted a high performance individual to a managerial role, his strength in process rigour and execution become his weakness as he micro-managed instead of empowering his team.
8. Get started in Self-awareness – The Johari Window, 4 major quadrant:

a)      Open self – What others know about you and which you know too.

b)     Blind self – What others can see about you, which you can’t see.

c)      Hidden self – What others don’t know about you. In other words, your secret.

d)     Unknown self – What others don’t know about you and neither do you.

9. The Johari Window encourages us to enlarge our Open Self while shrinking our Blind Self and unknown Self, enabling you to be in control of yourself.
10. The best way to shrink your Blind Self is to get constant feedback and there are numerous tools including the 360 multi-Briggs Type Indicator or even a strength assessment. It can be accelerated by honest feedback from others.
11. We are all going to struggle with negative feedback, but if we are unaware of how people view us, we will never be effective.
12. The reality, as Harvard Business School professor Bill George puts it, ‘is that no one can be authentic by trying to be like someone else. There is no doubt that you can learn from the experiences of others, but there is no way you can be successful trying to be like them. People trust you when you are genuine and authentic, not an imitation.
13. Focusing on yourself, regardless of mistakes or strengths, yields improvement, but zooming in on your strengths is significantly more beneficial.
14. ‘If you want to know your past, look into your present condition. If you want to know your future, look into your present actions’ – Start thinking about yourself.

Brain Power

The best leaders have healthy brains

a) A leader’s ability to manage emotions is critical as emotions can compromise or sabotage your ability to make effective decisions.

b) Your brain has the capacity to continue to develop and grow. A growing brain keeps mastering the competencies of leadership – everything from self-confidence and decision making to empathy and persuasion to running effective meetings – until it gets it right.

c) Our brain thrives on change and challenges. But in most cases, people resist change because of the pain of change. The brain’s main function it to keep you alive and resist pain.

d) There is usually huge resistance to the change and failure. Leaders who leverage brain-power will understand the need for engagement and employee participation in any change effort.

e) Many leaders still hold on to the old adage of leadership by command and control. Instead, empathy and social intelligence is the way forward. A newly discovered brain neutron, called the mirror neuron, enables leaders to learn empathy.

f) So, a leader’s action is more important than his words. The brain thinks in pictures not words.

The MBA - Is it still relevant? (The Star)

MBA - Is it still relevant? (The Star)
a) Many MBAs not well equipped to make good judgements, and didn't have enough good sense to take corporate social responsibility to next level.

b) Still, greedy appetites in a 'corrupt' eco-system can overpower even the best management education.

c) It was a time of market liberalisation.

d) This new preoccupation with quantitative methods and mathematical models, including the use of advanced analysis, unfortunately gave MBAs the illusion of being able to control financial risks. Moreover, their teaching was flawed by ignoring a good sense of ethics and impacting lots of moneymaking knowhow.

e) Ooverheard this at MIT-Slogan last summer: ’In physical science, three laws explain 99% of behaviour; in finance, 99 laws can explain at best only 3%.’

f) Actually, MBA training helps understand the ecosystem and master developments. The education as two elements – one is about business and economics and the other, management and leadership. The first looks outside the firm to its context (customers, suppliers, regulators, markets), while the second looks inside the firm to its effectiveness, efficiency, planning and implementation. Both are important to the success of individuals in a leadership position.

7 resolutions that organisation should adopt:

Just sharing from The Star today...
7 resolutions that organisation should adopt:
1. Take the selection process more seriously - for goodness sake, stop hiring staff that will create more problems that they solve...
2. Develop an on-site development programme for your staff team - less than 20% of 'True development' can be attributeed to offsite training (workshops,team building camp); 80% at workplace itself...
3. Be honest with your staff evaluations - Do you want your staff to start growing up and take responsibility for their work and their potential? Then stop treating them like children...
4. Identify the ambitious of your staff...
5. Start an employee-assistance programme...
6. Encourage people to disagree with you - If you want your company to be sharp in its decisions making, then once and for all kill off the culture of 'Yes Man'...
7. Bring psychology graduates into your team...