Don’t Follow Routines but these 3 to not to fail

One can find numerous tips to be more productive and efficient at work from different forums. What really amazed me was that most of the top attractive posts held a title with something negative in them. They included phrases like, ‘never do’, ‘common mistakes’ and ‘ruin your career’ etc. This posed a question if we are more afraid of doing mistakes rather than trying something new.

A golden rule for productivity and efficiency has been to decide, start and finish your task. It is good but I would say that only one word can make you much more productive and that word is ‘reject’. If you are able to reject all the non-necessary rituals at a certain time, you’ll be left with the one that is most important. This would allow you to fully concentrate on that particular task. However rejecting alone won’t be of success unless after rejecting all non-necessary tasks you start and stick to the one at hand.

Many of the career coaches have been saying to burst the routine to keep our interest in career and life. They have suggested us to try different things so that we stay interested in life. Agreeing to this to a certain level I would say that we still would need some type of routine. I call this a 3 routines formula.

We must develop 3 types of routines in our every day life. First lets say our work needs something done every day like answering important queries, so we need to do it. This helps us to hold our grounds at the stage we have already reached in our life or career. If we don’t do it not only we’ll be out of touch with our existing situation and duties we may face an ultimate danger of loosing that position also.

Next routine window should be the one in which we invest on ourselves. Successful people never stop investing in them. One must use a routine to improve her every day preferably. It could be learning something new relevant or irrelevant to your career or simply becoming expert in your existing skill. Only with continuous improvement and learning one can avail more chances in life. Limited skills would lead to limited doors only. Limited skills would be like having only few keys that are of no use when another door probably leading to a better pathway appears on the way. 

Last routine interval should be the one in which one does all unnecessary tasks. It could be answering non-urgent emails or any other task less important than the ones you completed that day. This is actually a great blessing. It allows you to postpone these less important tasks instead of completing them while you were busy with some other more important tasks. Lets say that while working on some important project you receive an email or phone call from a friend, you may postpone answering it to this 3^rd routine window. Thus you reject the interrupting tones at time you were busy and dealt them later in a routinely manner. A practical way is to keep a paper and pen near you and whenever any such interrupting call of work arrives note it for the 3^rd routine window to be tackled later. This would also allow you not to pile up unnecessary but to be done tasks.

In the time left other than these 3 routine windows you may do whatever is required but sticking to these 3 routine rituals can make a lot of difference in your life for good.

Purpose of Life - Lost in work!

Few days back I received a call on my mobile from an unknown number. Although I rarely pick such calls but somehow I thought may be it is related to ‘work’ so picked the phone. The lady at the other end stated my name and said that she was calling on behalf of ‘Theater of Community without Hindrance’. She said that there would be a theater show near my place after 20 days and if I wanted to purchase tickets. I told her to call me next morning. Next morning she called at exact time we agreed and provided me some more details. All (and if any) income from the show would be spent to make life better for people with hinderances. I agreed to purchase 2 tickets and asked her if she can send tickets to my place after a week as I am going out of city.

When I was back and the day came, she called me but I was in a meeting with some high ups of the city and had completely forgotten the theater issue. Any how I apologized and said if tickets can be sent next day, to which she said it was her pleasure. I requested to call me again the next day before ticket delivery.

And today I received a call around 09:50 in the morning, a guy was saying that he’ll be bringing the tickets. I was little annoyed because I asked tickets to be delivered by 10 which was at risk now and I felt that voice of the guy was a little rude in my opinion. Any how as time passed I put coffee in my cup and started drinking it slowly, by 11 O’clock the main bell rang and I opened the door. I was waiting at the door and a guy came up.. I looked and guy was younger than me (for sure!) but he had some handicap and was also receiving chemotherapy. My all annoyance simply disappeared. I was victim of the condition related to perception and feeling as mentioned in one of my previous blogs HERE. 

I took the tickets and made the payment. My mind was at the huge task I was working on and wanted to return to desk. The guy turned back to go and at just that moment I realized how preoccupied I have become with my work during last few years. The guy’s lips were dry as fertile soil is under the burning sun. Then I realized that he had some speech problem also.. he hardly said following, ‘I had to walk 2 miles under sun to give you these tickets and if you are not annoyed can I get a glass of water, even from tap’. 

Man.. I was pitched in to earth what on hell I have been preoccupied with.. I immediately said no issue, let me bring you something to drink. When he drank he said he liked it, it was a traditional drink with rose and other herbs in it. I said no problem and wished him a good luck. He just said thank you and carpets at your home are nice, I said thank you again and closed the door.

I posted the tickets on refrigerator and came back to my desk to resume work. Then something struck me. I said to me, this guy is working under such harsh conditions to make change in life of few and I am such occupied with my own payments and work. He is doing a great job. In the morning I heard at radio show someone saying that ‘duration’ of happy moments in life of most of us has decreased drastically in last 2 decades and I agreed to it!. Then I looked out from window, sun was as bright as it could be and it must have been quite hot there and the guy had to walk back all the way! I could have easily arranged for his drop which I missed.. I took my coffee cup and sipped a little coffee but this time there was no aroma or taste of this wonderful ‘Out of Africa’ Coffee!.

So I need to ask if duration of happy moments have really decreased in our life? and Although we may help people more if we have more money but have we lost the human touch with those who are suffering? 

3 Rules of Business

Some people pointed out that most of time I stick with the figure of 3 in my writings, thats true. In fact last semester one of my students came to me by end of class and told me that she downloaded slides of every lecture and they made only 3 pages in word document for each. Strange enough is that since start of my career I have always been working on 3 dimensions. Need not to say that have 3 ladies influencing my life! But truth is I feel that a common human brain can not handle more than 3 issues independently with success.

Any how during my very recent visit outside the country I met some very professional people, like Mr. Ahmad Jawad, and some highly unprofessional. To the pity of the day the unprofessionals got much more resources than the others. What I learned and then suggested made the 3 Rules of Business.

I’ll go at organizational level although these lessons can be narrowed down to personal success level also. I define Rules of Business as ‘terms, conditions and operation modes’. An organization or a person without them can be successfull only through extreme favour of his/her luck.

The first and most important rule in this regard is to ‘record’. One must record the data about anything happening related to him (although highly successfull businesses keep an eye on irrelevant events also). This implies that any correspondence, any meeting or any decision must be recorded. A lot of meetings just end up paving the way for the next meeting. A meeting must serve its purpose. In this regard I suggest that you may read a simple and brief chapter from my book, Project Management - Anchor the Success. The chapter is about progress meetings and can be viewed by clicking at Chapter: Progress Meetings.

The second issue is to make sure what ever is recorded is correct and agreed. Many minutes of meetings or decisions do not portray what was discussed or decided. In case any modification is required the final version of recorded document must contain the original thought/discussion as foot note. Its always desirable to get the document signed by those who were involved.

Lastly the third issue is of ‘follow up’. Followup is single most important missing stone in the building of success. People or organizations which do not follow up their decisions or opportunities end up in failure. Followup may lead to closure of certain assignment but it should be done. Any such closure may free up resources of all the parties involved. Followup on the events and stakeholders involved are of equal importance. Many organizations waste their resources on projects and products which become less important for beneficiaries with time. However as the organization have not been following they face greater loss.

Below a view from a successfull business, Terminal A at Dubai Airport

Success in Life

Success in Life

3 Keys to Success

Those who still remember the use of transistor radios can easily see that there were two absolute necessities to listen to your favorite channels.  The first one was to have the power supply either as electricity or from the batteries. In case you do not have it, no matter how sophisticated and elite your transistor was you could never listen to it. Secondly in order to listen to your favorite channel you needed to be at the same frequency as of that specific channel. There were dozens of channels transmitting their programs but one could listen to his/her choice only if the transistor radio was also set at the same frequency.

In case of personal success or success in career the same two rules are valid. First of all you need to have the ‘power supply’ i.e. your skill and energy. In case you do not have necessary skills or develop them in time you’ll not be able to jump on the opportunities lying in front of you. You need to foresee the future demand and develop your skills accordingly, but in time. Once you have the skills or power supply the next move should be to adjust your frequency to the frequency of success. We may find many people around us who are quite successfull in spite of having skills of lesser degree than many unfortunates. They in fact found the frequency of success and tuned themselves accordingly. The most important way to get this frequency is to spend time with those who live by that frequency. There is a famous saying about wealthiness, ‘your wealthy companions make you rich or kick you out of their circle’. They’ll kick you out mainly because of mismatched frequency. It does not correspond that you should also be involved in some if any unlawful activities but it means that your brain also starts thinking, deciding and acting in the ways theirs do.

The third prerequisite in my opinion is to complete the tasks in all aspects. Giving an example of one enrolled in a medical school we know that he/she needs to take a certain number of courses and pass all of them also. The degree will never be awarded if any course is not taken or failed. In our lives while working on any task whether related to career or personal development we must take on all issues and resolve all of them. The trick in this sense comes from the chemical process known as titration. In this process certain chemicals need to be added with some specific amount to get the required product.

Therefore in summary, one must develop the skills required (power behind the engine), should be consistent with the success frequency (right surrounding and right attitude) and should take on all issues dealing every issue in full. 

3 Cornerstone Issues of Change Management

Change to survive or change to perish... this has been a dilemma of this subject for centuries. In history we see big empires vanishing from map of earth as they could not keep pace with the changing conditions. Some managed to survive only through changing their positions and acquiring new status. Same is true for companies, organizations, institutes as well as the people who make all these. Inefficient entity has minimum chances of survival. Whether its organization level or personal level, change management needs careful planning, implementation and followup along with modifications done on time on the route. Following are the three issues I call corner stones of Change Management.

First of all and logically you need to know ‘why you need a certain change?’. For organizations it could be change in external as well internal factors. Internal factor may include change in strategy, change in top level decision making staff etc. Strategy is the single most important issue regarding internal change. Michael Porter, the renowned and well respected scholar from Harvard puts five forces theory behind any strategical shift for organizations. I invite persons to apply it to their personal lives also, its equally good!. Coming back to the first issue, the real hard question is why any need is required? The alternatives could be, ‘can we survive without this change, for how long and in what state?’. This is silver bullet!

The second  we can say as golden rule of change management is to ask yourself or your organization ‘what will be changed?’. and changed for good and bad both. There must be side effects of any change plan so one should be aware of them as much as possible. Whether this change will bring efficiency or chaos, it would be good or bad in short, medium and long term? This can be asked at organizational as well as at personal level.

Lastly the third and platinum rule of change management is to consider an organization (or all aspects of life for a person) as a whole or to consider whole organization (or all aspects of life for a person)... Confused? let me describe through examples. 

Lets say that an organization intends to make a change in its marketing strategy. It has several departments like production, finances, HR, PR etc. The two questions would be whether the change should be made by considering organization as a whole or the whole organization. The second approach is most commonly used and its the root cause of failure of most of such efforts. In this approach (which is quite unsuccessful) people heading every department are asked to streamline their individual departments which at the end does not correlate to the planned or required change for the whole company. The right approach would be to consider company as a whole and change in one direction is applied to it.

Similar would be the case for personal change management. When people try to improve certain aspects of their life - lets say physical enhancement, they concentrate on physical exercise only. One needs to apply any change management plan to himself/herself as a whole. All aspects of his/her life should improve towards some common goal!.

Chasing the Success - for new comers

There are many beliefs about success including availability of financial resources, vision or taking the risk and most famously ‘taking right step at right time’. 

Financial resources seem to present a good advantage if someone have them but they never can alone guarantee the success. Many people who started their businesses and ventures with small loans made millions and even billions later in the life. On the other hand we have examples of people who inherited good amount of wealth and were left penny less within few years.

Vision can be considered as most important success factor in life of successfull people. However again we can see many successfull people who started with one thing and ended up with doing completely different. In fact they are in category of those who took right step at right time. Vision combined with financial resources however increases the success chances by many folds!

Taking the risks is most widely used term by successfull people. In our daily life when we speak about any successfull person we proudly say, but he/she dared to take the risk. Yes sometimes under some special circumstances taking risk has helped people to succeed. Their determination or acceptance of a certain act as ‘last resort’ helped them to climb the ladder up. However we also have many and many more examples of people who took risks and then lost, as compared to those who succeeded.

Then what could be the factor for success, luck? yes luck is another key factor but this factor can be improved through hard work and intelligent moves. In general whenever a new comer or fresh graduate wishes to start any venture he/she goes for a feasibility study. Feasibility study gives a good idea about success or failure chances of a certain project/idea. However feasibility study lacks the information about actual path. It can not tell if on the way something more interesting can come out (un expectedly)  and such and such modification in the original plan can lead to greater success. It fails to address the issue of try and see yourself. 

Many experts put up a simple formula saying, think, plan and act. This provides a good combination for success. Starting from thinking, one may need to think outside the box but without ignoring the contents of the box itself. A practical advise to new comers or fresh graduates would be to write down every single idea they have in mind, and I mean it-every single idea. The right to enter new ideas in the list should remain valid till they themselves expire. The most important advantage of keeping such a list is to implement an idea written at some time back but which became implementable at some future time.

Let the list grow on one side, they should start discussing the ideas with their friends and if possible with experts. They can search a lot on internet. They can find free feasibility studies done about different projects by government, commercial and non-government organizations. These studies even done in different countries can provide them the basic idea about success chances. 

In addition to the draft list they can always keep the following (or similar) table updated. This table should have details about ideas which has been discussed at the initial stage.

#	Main Idea	Initial Response % Positive % Negative	Main conclusion of any feasibility study	Major Success factors (in your case)	Major Constraints (as per your condition)	Decision
1
2

Next two steps very crucial for success are i. to finalize your product and ii. to identify your niche. Many people at different levels of business life are still not sure about their product. In order to be successfull, one needs to be sure about what products he/she is offering? Same for services. Advantages and disadvantages of the product as compared to other competitors should be well known to its producer or marketing person. Once you know it, then identify your niche. No matter how good a certain product is, it has no chances of success in the wrong niche. However as per marketing strategies there are two approaches in this regard, one is to find a niche and market your product while other is to create a niche for your product. The later no doubt is harder one and was the one chosen by Steve Jobs also. It requires much more courage, determination and involves greater risks. For the new comers I would say, stick to the first approach till you come up with some product/service for which you are quite sure a niche can be produced.

Once you are sure about product and niche then the most difficult but most crucial step is required, i.e. do it, implement it, ship it. Many people prepare wonderful feasibility reports, can see clear chances of success but their lack of ‘acting’ leaves the niche to someone else.