Receiving Feedback - Listening More and Taking Up Fierce One

If we carefully assess ourselves, we will find a reality. Most of us (including the ones who we call bravo) have a common feature in receiving feedback. We fail pathetically in receiving which is much directed and fierce even if they are constructive feedback. We always want sugar or sugar coated tablets. Not the real, hard to chew and bitter tablets. We would like to have a big session on giving and receiving feedback - a juicy presentation, quite cinematic role plays. It is so nice to call it as an art. But we aren't artist. 

We react and keep reacting until the point where the guy who is giving feedback retracts and becomes no longer interested in you. If we are attentive a bit and involved a little, there will be excellent opportunity for a great learning. Rather than listening, many of us naturally tend to react and some of us over react. Because we never wanted to appear insane even though the reality is exact opposite.

Recently, I had some excellent learning when i was meeting fresher who were so down-to-earth to listen to the feedback. They are smart enough to make on the course correction and it shows me that the world is changing a lot. But the point is - are we part of the change? The species that get along with the change and help the change will survive and the egoistic ducks will sit there and quack. Are we ready to be a one-among-stiff ducks?

How do we reach there? Why are we so insensitive to honest feedback? Why do we market ourselves differently, appear differently while we are totally different in reality - it is complete package of insanity. Why aren't we attuned to people who are honestly sitting in front of us with only one thing in mind - "you got to be a hero as you have huge potential?" We always want role plays. Some X talking to Y and we are quite quick with our observations. We want to sit in fence to watch and forget the fact that we ought to be players. No more role plays, let us not be jury of reality shows. Let us participate and go humane :-)

In the quite rapidly changing world, the way we compose ourselves, the way we "add value" through honesty and integrity is going to make a BIGGER sense than technological edge. Receiving feedback is a pinch in it that reveals a lot.

So, our true patronage manifests with the way we take fierce feedback by listening more & with honestly. It doesn't matter it is from up or down the hierarchy.

What do you think?

At the end, my Diwali wishes on behalf of Unstuck. Let us lit up the light and let the sunshine be on you

"Wish You a Very Happy Diwali"

Decision Making - Show Stoppers

Here is the list of show stoppers that hinders decision making.

1. Fear - Fear of Uncertainty, Fear of Left Behind, Fear of Depletion
2. Greed - Greediness of wanting more than what we deserve for
3. Lack of Information - Not doing proper research
4. Blind of subtleness - Making decisions based on obvious things but later paying price due to magnification of subtle things which were never considered.
5. Lack of Empathy - Lack of empathy and sympathy towards the information and people.
6. Closed Mindedness and Opinionated - Deeply ingrained in one's own perspective. Perspectives help us to make better decisions, the better we see the better we have clear "vision" followed by a good reasoning.
7. Poor Listening - It is by observation we learn a lot. Listening is a great aid to make good observation. 
8. Trying to Exhibit Force - Forcing things to happen rather than making the environment conducive for decision making
9. Treating others' ideas based on their title (but not by the merit of information). Sometimes (or most of the times), ideas/perspectives come from unexpected ones.
10. Lack of Curiosity - How does a child listen to a story teller? Absolutely curious. We were there as a child, we know how we felt.
11. Not Showing Genuine Interest - Not showing genuine interest blocks effective communication. When a collective decision has to be made, showing interest in others makes a big impact.

Workplace without Managers to Manage People

Have you thought about this - the machines do not have managers. Let us take a mechanical machine with moving parts. When there is a friction between moving parts, they just make a noise. The mechanic applies some grease between the moving parts and the noise goes away. The parts of the machine manage themselves and they make sound due to "wear and tear". (in this analogy, let us not treat this friction as conflict. think that the noise due wear and tear as natural phenomenon). Are we moving towards such a style of management - the management of working without supervision.

The world is moving towards self managed people. We have seen people especially seniors making hell a lot of noise about young generation (or Gen Y) in a hi-fi and not-so-easy-to-understand English. Well, the YOUNGistan is moving towards the realm of "self managed" and "self correcting" management. It is not only because they are highly intelligent than the previous generation and abundance of information being available to them but also due to the fact that they are brought up in a time frame of rapid changes. They adopt to the changes reasonably well (than the previous generation) and embrace it quite well.

Let me share couple of my experiences. I have been offering some guidance to an aspiring candidate and i would have spent not more than 30 minutes totally. The candidate now is a young IT professional. The most striking thing about her is that she is managing herself in every move and learning every bit through her exposure, a typical Gen Y. 

I have seen quite a few people right out of college, i would say, they are sparks and sharks. I heard a senior person having "30 years" of experience saying that this generation is a spark. That makes me to think that these people have ability to manage themselves quite well without having someone to manage them. In previous generations when there was no technological aid, the managers were teaching. Now, there is technology to do the teaching and these managers have to move up (the value chain). Gen Ys have enough skill to manage themselves and make their manager to be jobless (this will make managers to focus on some core business than mere people management).

Soon the guys are going to say - "rather than meeting over a conflict, let us meet over technology or business that makes sense to everyone". This generation and generations to come is going to put us in the orbit of "self managed" and "self correcting" style of management.

Isn't this what we want? Shouldn't we incubate such thing at workplace? 

My heart says "yes"

What do you think? yes or no or can't say :-)

Nice Videos on Entrepreneurship

Prepare to spend (invest???) good 20 minutes of your time if you are really interested in entrepreneurship :-)

Got to see this accidentally in Youtube. Real nice one on entrepreneurship.



Also, let us listen Mr. Sunil Bharti Mittal's view on entrepreneurship (listen choose fast to perfection; perfection to follow)

A Thought on Design Pattern

Few years back, i was introduced to "Design Patterns" at work. It was series of presentations from each one of us. I really feel thankful for the person who inculcated the importance of giving presentation in me (a separate post should go for that). After covering reasonable number of presentations on design patterns, there was a recap session. We were just revising all the presentations. Two of us felt that all patterns appeared the same and we shared a comment - "everything is same". There was a intense debate over that.

Even today, i feel that all design patterns are same. Yes, all design patterns abstract the problems and give us a viewfinder to view things in a simplistic way. Rather than (or in addition) the usual definition of - "proven and time tested solutions to common problems", the definition would be have been apt or more beautiful we append these words to the definition - "a binocular that helps us to see things in the ways that should have been seen". Each pattern enable us to think in a simple way. Each pattern takes one simple thing and does it well (Unix philosophy).

So, the design pattern is - "proven and time tested solution for common recurring problems that helps us to see things in simple way".

Overvalued & Undervalued and Exploitation

How many times are we tempted towards undervalued things in life? We can call it greed or feeling attracted towards undervalued thing. In today's world, the marketeers who come in many flavors like marketeers who is trying sell a product, boss coming to you to extract work from you and a butcher feeding his cattle which is going to be slaughtered. All of them have a vested interest with you buying their idea. 

They bring hot actress for selling their products and the boss gives you an illusion that he will give you better rating next time. People exploit you when you don't know how to make decisions or stumble in making decisions. They want people to stumble because only when you stumble you make worst decisions. They sell their products (which is highly priced) when you stumble. How the stumble help them? You end up feeling that "that is my mistake" and they can fly (easily?) away from the mess. Have you ever felt that you bought a TV or a thing and later realized that you shouldn't have purchased it? They have whole department targeting an individual. Mostly, the individual traps in. Either you stumble because of your ego or you being misinformed, it doesn't matter. They want you to yawn and finally give their products to you when you yawn.

That's why i say, the marketeers are here to condition you and to arrest the mobility of your thoughts. They sell their heavily priced and overvalued things to you by offering you low priced and undervalued things for free of cost. At the end, you end up paying more (you realize it in half way but your ego stops you from making corrective actions, yet again they win and you continue to lose :-)) which is an EXPLOITATION.

you are being exploited

First Online Utility - jQuery, CSS and HTML

Not much of JavaScript has been written, but it works like a wonder. I tried to put together a simple utility - a popup that will greet the users who visit my blog.

The tiny widget has following features.

• it asks for the user to subscribe through email and get connected by RSS/Twitter.
• it displays the popup bit graphically - slides down and up
• it uses cookie and remembers the users' choice.
• it pops up after X minutes of page refresh (X is configurable)

and it looks like

I used pure HTML, CSS and jQuery to develop the simple widget. The app is half done and i have hosted it in another blog where i test apps before going to production.  Hopefully the widget should go live in a week or so. Meanwhile, let me know if you need this app for your blog/website. BTW, this comes free with source code (kind of open source)

All credits should go to jQuery.

And it feels like

Please follow the link to see the apps written using jQuery. Junkyard Apps.

The Way of Taking Success & Failure

A leader, a doer, a passionate and simply guy who is obsessive about thing he really likes differs from common man in taking successes and failures.

• A doer takes successes to her "heart" and failures to her "head".
• A pathetic guy takes failures to his "heart" and successes to his "head".

What is the outcome? 

• When you take success to the heart, you become more human and level-headed but when you take it to your head, you become less human, irritating and beheaded (people say success breads complacency).
• When you take failure to the heart, you become less confident but when you take it to the head, you analyze & puncture the failure next time (this is how failures are stepping stones of SOMETHING).

And another real thing is, you know where you are. You can and only you can make those corrections.

Beat The Best

This is just a wild imagination. If this resembles anyone or anything in the real world, i can't be held responsible. See, all the thoughts originate from you and you are responsible. :-)

How to beat the best? Best in what? how do you decide what you do is a thing that you feel great when you are best at it? Is it only thing to be best at or Are there many things that are so interesting? If there are so many things why did you choose the thing you are doing and trying to be best in it? Is it choice you made or did you take it because there is no one else willing to do that or you have options? If no one else is willing, then being the best is so easy because you are the only one who is doing that. In some way, it is always easier to beat the best. Being the best in the industry for quality, being the best in the industry in X, being the best in the industry in Y and the best list goes on. These days, you ll get enough media support for creating a sensation (out of nothing).

Rather than that, be best of yourself and beat your best everyday. Evolution is nature.

Black Holes in Professional Life

Never put efforts in professional life without measuring. It is like a black hole and the size of the hole depends on the size of the organization. It drains a lot of energy from you and you never get anything back if you don't measure. If you say that it will add to your experience, my experience says 

• if you don't measure, you/others think it is easy job (but which may right or wrong)
• "no, it doesn't add to your experience" because you will be swimming deep to find that experience
• it will be very difficult to come out of highly viscous habit.
• you will lose focus and end up doing everything which has none to do.
• you will end up in staying up late to do your daytime job while you help for others in the daytime
• you will be literally struggling to put forward your assignments/results, then people take you for granted, then you lead austere life and finally write this kinda post ;-)

If someone asks you "can you do this?", ask questions and never accept until you are 100% convinced that you like the task, you will do the justice to the job, you can measure the efforts/results and in fact they will pay you back.

"True Leader" is a State

Good Morning Folks,

"True Leader" is a state and "true leader" is not something that is gotten by virtue of one's position. For example, Mahatma Gandhi never called himself a leader but yet he is one of very few people in the world who is known to be possessing the qualities of "true leader". So are Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. All these people are known to be exhibiting or being in the state of "true leader" on a daily basis. All these people were working for a vision which is liberating the part of the humankind that was in slavery. Not only that they had a vision, they were also able to stay connected with the vision always.

Does it mean that the others who were not known to external world were not  "true leaders". No. There could be or should be "true leaders" who never wished to show off. If such a people do not exist, then his world could have been destroyed with the volume of garbage we thrash at her. Certainly there are people who pick the mess that is thrown and bring in the order. They know that deed matters the most than the publicity. Good people really understand what they achieve by publicity stunt and they don't need it or do it.

I was wrong in looking people who are true leaders because such a people never exist. When i looked for people, i always missed the qualities that made them. I should have looked for people who are being in the state of "true leader".

Yes, "true leader" is state but not a person.

How to find true leaders?

True leaders are the ones who have best interest of the people and vision but not personal vested interest. Can't we find "true leaders" who live with us in home/next door, travel with in city bus and work with us.

Have a Great Day