Confessions of a frustrated soul!!! - Handle it or Quit your choice

Well its not a rocket science... but it is definitely a science, an art and a lot of commerce... if you mix them up, you would definitely be able to handle frustration easily... Alrite coming back to the important part... we all being humans leaving those smart mon chips there who claim that frustration cannot run their way... we have to learn, definitely learn and practice the ways to handle frustration... like in our earlier post we know that a lot of times frustration comes up linked to competition and growth... remember it can very well positively contribute to ones growth...

Once when the speaker of Loksabha Mr. Somnath Chatterjee got frustrated with the Members of parliament shouting all over the house, he found an answer to the problem.."No and that was not suspension" He bought the noising members to desk and targeted questions to their regions be discussed in the question hour.. a lot of them eventually got quite.

So... handling frustration positively and effectively is just not the thing you can do with a cup of coffee.. we you may need a few more of it and of course shared ones... here is how I tackle frustration..

1. Speak it up

A lot of times the reason to get frustrated and angry is not speaking up. Most of the times not speaking leads to piling up things and our dirty minds then keep on adding negativity into the brains to add up to the frustration. Try to find a way to get the stuff frustrating you out.. discuss it with relevant people who can help you out with it... A previous colleague chose never to speak to anyone at work in situations where he was most frustrated... it was only known when he decided to leave the company on why he was frustrated and why he left, the reason was he was no more wanting to work during night shifts, only after he left he came to know that the Management was thinking of shifting many of people to daytime hours.

2. Take some time off

Usually the situation comes where you are in the routines and that brings up frustration to you even if you dont want to be. Its important that the time off is taken regularly to keep you energized and motivated and thus you can always come back with new flavors and new spirit. Once my 7 yr old asked me during a cricket match on why did the drinks come after every 30 minutes in cricket and why not even once in football. Apart from the logical shorter time game I could not think of another reason until when the commentator claimed that he always used the drink breaks to reset his mind set. Yes imagine a batsmen on the crease for 5 hrs waiting on the other side of the wicket to see how his partner just lets the ball go without scoring... enough to frustrate? Yes... that other batsmen, fielder and bowler need time off from the routine to rethink what they need to do...

3. Do what you like best

This is the time when you are tired of doing what you are doing.. and this is the time when you would want to do what you like the most to keep yourself motivated. A frustrated salesman who could not do any major sales in a full quarter was just about to quit when he was asked to take a break during which he did what he wanted to do best networking, social networking... he logged into his profile of social networks and started connecting to people... accidentally or with coincidence he was able to generate a couple of leads from the old school pals who were in business... Having said that this is the time and task that can let you bring your focus back, motivated with the spirit of accomplishment.

4. List down the reasons

Majority of times we dont know why we get frustrated, even if we know we dont know what to do with them. I remember a story of a scientist who while working on a very critical project had posted hundreds of post its in his bedroom... once his son entered the bedroom and started reading them .. words like "Did this approach of XYZ ever worked, what is the best way to do it?" blah blah all confusing for the kid, the kid left... he came back a month later to only find hardly few posts on the walls he asked his father "Where did all the post notes go?" Scientist replied... every time I get frustrated "I write a not about what frustrates me and post it on the wall" every day I enter my room I see them all around... I think over them and eventually get an answer to my frustration.....

Yes.. if you list them down , you may get time to rethink over them and find solutions or discuss them with others....

5. Identify the areas

As mush important it is to find the items that frustrate you is important to find the areas where you get frustrated.... A thing may frustrate you once, but if the same thing frustrates you always... my friend, its time you think over it... it is thus important to list them out and then create a pattern if you are usually "Frustrated Soul" A married man who had to go shopping with his wife every weekend realised that shopping with wife frustrates him, he had quarrel and fights with wife.... the wife never understood what was the reason to his frustration.... she once choose to change the shopping list and took the man to a lingerie shop, what happened to frustration was unknown?

6. Leave the brain and mind and different locations and Focus

Focus is key in this state. Keep your brain involved so it does not remind you of the items that frustrate you and let the mind be doing things that it likes so you dont remember what was frustrating you.... As long as you focus and remain positive the frustrating state is going to go off...keep calm, drink water, exercise and try to keep focus on positive and nicer things...

OR

Quit

Yes, if you can't handle your frustration, you are nothing but a looser... so Quit.

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Ownership - The Beauty spot

Nobody washes Rented cars - So how do you expect employees to own things they dont think they own?

Your Team members are owners of what they do? Do they call themselves owners? do they own what they do? Is there enough ownership in your Team? You know where I am getting at with these questions don't you?...

Ownership is that action which comes from you and your team when you give an all out effort and commitment to what can lead you succeed. Ownership... Yes, the beauty spot of the Team... its that dimple on the rosy cheeks of success that every Manager wants to see. So do you see the scar of not having ownership within your Team? Or do you face problems getting Team own something? Or commit to Ownership? Yes? My dear friend you have a problem in Management then.

Managers who fail to generate a feeling of Ownership in the Team, fail to succeed in building great teams. The feeling of Ownership cannot be forced on the Teams and Managers who think they can do that eventually lead the Teams to fail. Yes, this beauty spot is not something that can be enforced on employees or Team members.. If you want to have your Teams possessing at-most levels of Ownership, then you need to go dig some ground and build the foundation of it... this foundation is made up of certain crucial elements that help Ownership feelings takeover the minds and brains of your Teams and Employees. So what are these elements that let you bring Ownership in your Team?

1. Fun

A lot of organizations lack this element, which is a prime element in building the foundation. If you come to work and sit around 50 frown faces, that dont even smile at each other.. you are going to miss something very important. And you are going to miss it badly even if you are doing good. This is a element driven by culture, so if you can bring fun in your workspace , in your team, in your behaviors.. you are going to let the Team members enjoy what they do.... and did Adam and Eve tell us that they did what they enjoyed the most????

Add fun to your teams :

1. Have casual times in the work hours so that the Team can crack jokes, feel the humour, enjoy, relax...

2. Dont leave any opportunity to discuss topics that are on and off works with the Teams.. let a crowd be involved in such discussions so they realize they are learning something....

3. Have team building events

4. Small Stress Busting games once a month

How does this help????? Well if they enjoy where they are, they would enjoy what they do....

2. Challenge

A lot of times our jobs get boring... routines you know what I mean? Build this element into your culture that you get challenged and you challenge... I honestly mean that ask Why??? this can help the Team develop a spirit to handle anything that comes to them.. questions , issues , problems and solutions. If a developer says that he is scared of something, throw him a challenge covering some risks. A few months ago YN (Yogesh Nimbalkar) one of our prominent developers told me that he was not so sure about UI development... we threw him a task to build a slide show , he came back with a cool charts functionality. If your culture promotes challenges, you are sure you would have the Team members looking forward for more coming there way.

3. Connection

You come to office at 8

You drink COffeee

You work on your desk

You have lunch at 12

You drink coffeee at 3

You leave office at 5

Is that all you are meant to do? Do you know if your colleague sitting beside you is wearing a new shirt today? Or why your product had a downtime yesterday? Or why your boss is looking sad today? Or why your pair was off yesterday? Or where he is going for the weekend party? Well connection is needed to get this feeling of ownership. If you are not connected to the people you work with, your product , your work , your machine how would you show ownership? A strong connection has to be built, your culture has to let it build so that people can remain connected and improve the connection with everything they do.

4. Love

If love can get a blind man see the world through imaginary eyes, love can also create a feeling of very strong ownership. If you love something you would care about it, you would fight for it. Yes let your culture promote love... for the Product you work on, for the workplace , for the desks they sit on, for the people they work with, for the job they do, for what and how they do it..

1. Max is a terrific developer, he loves technology. Thus he builds great stuff.

2. Max is an amazing person, but he hates programming. Can he make a great developer?

Let your Teams love everything that is linked to your work. Managers, Collegues, Work, Product , Technology. If they love it, they will like it too ;)

5. Collaboration

Improve on collaboration. Dan today told me that he is amazed the way we communicate and collaborate in our Teams.. Collaboration leads to inspiration... people with different mindsets coming together and trying to achieve common goals ends up inspiring and motivating each other. Today we are a global company with teams spread out in France , UK , Germany , US , Wales , Pune , Chennai...just for what we do... even if there were a few more locations and more developers every where we would have being communicating and collaborating more and effectively?

Let locations, people , Teams and team members collaborate.. create an opportunity for them to collaborate.. for instance a travel together for 2 people who speak limited with each other. Or an off topic task where these 2 people have to speak to each other. Easy way on a picnic ask these guys to pick each other up? Do come car pooling? Well all are mechanisms of collaborating.. try em out.

6. Choice

Zaheer a long time ago collegue of mine always wanted to be a Programmer.. he hated what he did.. which was inventory Management and web design. For a long time (3 months) he kept on doing the same with a lot of hatred... Yes he did not love what he did... We then chose to tweak what he did.... we gave him a choice of doing the Web Design with some programming to ease up his job.. which would mean writing automated scripts to handle inventory management at the same time do the web designing. He happened to deliver both ahead of time and quality. Sometimes its about choice, understand the choices of your teams when you speak to them, if they are asked to do what they prefer to do... they would own what they would be doing.

7. Goal and Results

Isnt it important to let the Teams know on what is expected after all? Well if they know the Goal and the outcomes of what they are doing.. they would definitely like it. If you tell your Team that you plan to build a web that will rule the future of internet like Gooogle is doing... do you think people will not want to own what you want them to do? or what they are doing?

Some scared mouses may run away, but anyways do you need people who are not committed to organizational goals?

8. Opportunity

Give opportunity every single time you can... Make the Max do the trickiest elements of development, Let Max handle strong modules independently, Let the Max decide what technology to use for the product development. Given an opportunity creates a feeling of rhythms and growth and employees and Team members like the fact very much... they thus commit themselves to what they do.

If your best developer is always developing, he may unlike what he is doing after a while. But if your best developer is doing different things in different ways every time he would take it as an opportunity. Let them travel whenever you got a chance... they would have a feeling of reflective investment and thus they would want to contribute more than what they could have.

9. Failures

Let them taste failures and stand by them when they fail. Though the objective here is to not let anyone fail.. but in professional lives it is important to fail. Its failure that teaches them on how best to do things next time.. you can be there to help them fail on smaller things so they can succeed on larger things.

Max started to build a feature , he failed miserably doing so. His Manager stood by him and they worked out the best way to make it work in future. Result Max built the same thing with enhanced capabilities.... 2 reasons that contributed that....

1. Feel of failure invokes lust for success.

2. Backup in bad times gives more confidence..

So.. do you think you do any or all of these? If not think of ways to get these elements imbibed in your culture... if you are building a product for future with a Team that will define this future... this investment is necessary... atmost necessary.

Lets Own what we do! What our Teams do !!!

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What keeps you Motivated?

A few posts from me on Motivations and Rewards and Rewards and some humor affecting motivations and then nothing after? Well yes the truth is that I am not motivated enough to write on motivations these days... the simple fact been that there has been lack of Intrinsic Motivation off lately...

Well that also made me think on what keeps me motivated? I feel everyone we work with is bonded by the fact that intrinsic motivations work... somewhere and somehow and such factors really affect the growth and downfall of talents... In reality the downfall is seasonal and the growth is continous, specially due to the fact that anyone who is not motivated (Or on a downfall) tends to switch to either another job or a role or open the disaster doors... and this leads them to the begining of the growth... isnt it?

Yes. I thought I would share with you on what I feel keeps me motivated.. and maybe it applies to you as well...

1. Challenged and Challenging Job: I think this is the biggest motivation to anyone... If you are not been challenged in a job you take it easy and when you take it easy it is no more helping you. I have seen highly productive engineers performing bad just becuase the challenges were not thrown at them... Now wonder why Deepesh , Amit , YN, Savio and Rhushi always need to be kept on their toes?

2. I need to be listened? Yes.. If you are not implementing what I say is still OK but at least listen to what I want to say? The de-motivation of anyone begins when we dont listen... Recently I went through a phase analaysis where one persons Ideas were rejected in and out analysed the reaction and it appeared that the moment this happened the person started to look for a change.. He was off for a few days attending interviews?

3. Where is my share? Everyone wants to be recognised, human nature. Its Managers duty to ensure that everyone doing better is recognised in an appropriate way. This recognition should also be linked to the Business results for instance: The 4 Quarter delivery we achieved is yielding us to a another bigger contract with the customer, This is due to the hard work from Rama, Yogesh , Deepesh, Savio , Rhushi , Nikita , Ani , Saket , Natwar and many more...

"Congratulations guys, Your efforts are getting us through a bigger more contract and this will definitely help us in achieving broader and bigger goals for the next few quarters"

4. Pay me peanuts?
This is a sensitive and a bigger part of Motivations, Top talent always wants to be paid appropriate. You pay to what they do and contribute. Usually top talent is over looked and this really causes frustration. The compensation is also linked by the talent to the goals they achieve... for example when Nikita last time told me that "My average appraisal mean that I will get a average compensation change" it showed that a person contributing value to the growth expects an at par growth for what they are making in terms of money.

5. Where do I go?
Uff... The Roadmap.. I need to advance... I want to grow.. I want to change the direction of myself and my organisation. I want to fire missiles from the bullets that my organisations has given me. All of this means that I need to see how I can grow with the people I work with and the organisation I am into. It is important that a timely and frequent review of growth options is discussed with top talent or to that matter every mammal that can be motivated.

6. Too much in the office - Too less in socials
Some balance should be maintained. Lot of hard work also means lot of frustrations and lot of road blocks. People who work hard , smart and effective also needs time to have a good social life... I have seen several people who leave the organisations when they are growing or are on a better growth path, just becuase after a few years they are frustrated becuase all of a suddent they realise that they did not have any social life for the time they were with the organisation. I feel that people who work long hours in office and on weekends will have a average 1-2 year relation with their organisation as opposed to people who balance their lives well who may stay for 4-5 yrs.

Now do you think its important to ask people not to work on weekends and also leave office early everyday?

7. Love each other
A healthy environment is required where team likes to work with each other. The fact that it is very important not only to have better Team compositions but to also have better understanding and chmistries between the Teams to deliver at peak. Team members that value and love each other.


Now can you tell me if there is anything more that keeps you motivated?

I am sure everyone of us wants to grow.. and

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How to loose your Best Guy?

OK with reference to my earlier post on How to loose you best guy... My mentor has finally decided to go... It was his last day yesterday and one of the most vulnerable days of my life... Not closely working with a mentor is like not been with your family... and the respect I have for Kari as a mentor and as a friend cannot be just sentenced here....

on How to loose a guy like Kari from your team here are the tips:

1. Keep him away from work and people for long
2. Drive all his ideas into Trash
3. Do not let him do what he is Best at
4. Do let him do what he does not like
5. Help him loose his confidence by doing things that a Data Operator can do
6. Do not let him learn and earn experience from the bigger brains

follow a few or all of this and it wont take more than moments to loose such a Gem from your Team.

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How many Projects do you manage?

Reading Johanna's post about How Many projects are you managing? gives a clear touch to what Me and Kari had always been talking about... If you want to complete a project or to that matter anything that you want to do in life thing with quality and standards you should keep focus on it. the moment you manage more than one thing you tend to pull down both... No wonder we have a whole bunch of Managers who think that doing multiple things will save them or keep them in the highest positions where we feel that doing multiple things will probably not let you focus on any one thing...

How vulnerable it is to say that "This thing Project is not a Quality becuase I was managing another Project?" Sometimes I dont wonder why multi tasking OS ($Soft at least) tends to crash more times than anyother OS. I believe when you manage more than one project or thing you just manage them... you dont lead them. And as Johanna said in her post :
1. You are not checking what it means when it is said done.
2. You are not there for the Team when they need you.
3. You are not with the Team to help them manage it well.

Gosh!!!!! God change these managers from being Damagers of the Industry

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Not much Blogging as I am on MARS these days

Dont get surprised.... I still havent won the trip to NASA from Aamir Khan its just that I have moved to a new place called MARS. I am sure your eyebrows are stretched but if you havent met me or spoke to me since last week its OK I can answer you. After our company got acquired a few months ago I happened to move to a new workplace where the acquiring company works from and this place gives me a feel of MARS or rather a Alien nation. Luckily I had some not good experiences lately and saw 2 movies concerning Aliens and I am sure I am in a Alien nation.

To justify this I read a few qualities of Alien's and am just trying to match them up here:

1. Who George Bush?
Means that Aliens dont know who is with them and who is around... Either no one cares about no one or No one want to care about no one.

2. Everyone is scared of Everyone?
Well last when I was in US a friend of mine told me that since the 9/11 everyone is afraid of everyone... cause you dont know who will do what to you.... the same thing applies to aliens and the same I feel out here.... I see many worried faces from the Aliens as if they are going to be killed.

3. Yada yada yada lada mada kada ...Did you understand ? No? I just used Marsisi
Well Aliens dont care whether you understand their language or not, they just want to be themselves and talk what they and no one else understand. Well it was better in Germany when people were talking in German but made sure that the eyes speak in English.... Veda and Kari I understand what you must have been feeling ;)

4. General -> Kernel -> Major -> Leiutinant -> Soldier -> Ardali -> Sweeper... its all about hirarchy
Aliens only know that the one with a gun in hads is their boss... so when they dont see guns they run crazy chickens... and ask whos got the gun ;)

So what to do when you come in the land of Aliens?

I will make up some points and meanwhile revise myself over the weekend... you be ready to read what you can do to make'em humans...

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In Search of Authenticity

So finally the quest for Authenticity begins....I had a call and an invitation to the Lead India Group discussion for their initiative effort to find a better leader from the mass. Ofcourse I am excited to be there and see how the process is going to take place and how the leader would be found simply becuase my definition of leadership in the past few days had been shattered completely.

To me leadership had always been a strong character who had a drive and passion to achieve something with the help of the vision that was shared and action that involves making the hands dirty and all of this without expecting that the fame and money will come to you. While I still believe that all of the above with several other things can make a Strong leader I am still in a dilemma over the authenticity of those leaders who are away from these things in reality however pretend to be great leaders...

So how will we authenticate the best and not consider the toxic leaders ... who just want to go high with a COMPLETE SELFISH ATTITUDE and are no where close to the fact that leadership is generating success and not acquiring it?

There are ways to do this specially... and in the past I have done this and I for sure have removed several people from my "Ideal Leaders" list..

1. Do they have a vision that has meaning?
Many leaders specially the hybrid leaders talk about the vision that is more of theory and stolen ideas... These type of leaders always create a vision that is not showing enough visibility to anyone including the visionary himself. The easiest way to track is see if the vision is ready to be shared...

2. Do they build Trust or enforce it?
A Variety of commodity leaders try to enforce trust by faulty promises , mis use of authorities and by touching the soft corners at personal levels to build trust... well these things are good as far as sales are considered but not leadership... A leader builds trust based on what he lets his Team do by letting them do what and how they want to do it.... trust is built in the formal case it is enforced belief.... for instance XXX is the best person in this office doesnt build trust but a fear.... leaders believe in trust yet dont like people to be afraid of them...

3. Do they empower?
Well empowering is been mis-understood by many, several occasions I have seen leaders under the name of empwoering really want to keep control and direct what one should do and in what way... empowering needs trust not only from the leader but also from the person who is getting empowered..... The least of the belief I ahve seen is empowering is misunderstood to be an opportunity... a leader who sells empowering with opportunity is a salesman and not a leader.... empowerment requires compassion, sensitivity psychological insight, trustworthiness, consideration, and the ability to teach, evaluate and coach.

I wont talk more of the important tasks of Authentic leader here like Management, Vision, Trust, Action, Politics and feedback.... I will leave you to define on each front how would you like to find the authenticity making use of the expected characteristics of the Ideal leader....

several other factors and characteristics of the leaders can be used to trace the authenticity... but before you look for authenticity of a leader be sure that you are looking at the right guy...

In search of authenticity you would really like to evolve yourself whether you need to be a leader yourself or follow the right leader.... and If I am not mistaking the worlds greatest sinners were also leaders.... its upto us to decide whether they are commodity leaders or reality leaders...

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