I have many times wondered as to why “How” is important as long as are able to achieve the “What” in life. I am sure many of you have the same dilemma. Why is it important to focus on how we do something as long as we achieve what we want to accomplish in life ?

I am reminded of an incident almost three decades back when I started my career. I had a colleague who used to sit next to me and was quite ill behaved to say the least. Our team members were scared of him because of his position but hated him for his antics. I used to sit next to him and sometimes wondered as to why people don’t take me seriously as much as they took him. I felt I was very nice to everyone around me and he was not that well behaved and was used to throwing his tantrums around. Sometimes, I almost came to a conclusion that if you have to have an impact on others, it may be necessary to throw your weight around.

However, as years passed by I realised that people remember you for your behaviour and not for your results. Whenever I visited that site again even after years of my leaving that place, people welcomed me with love and affection. My colleague whom I thought was more impactful was hated and forgotten. Nobody bothered to enquire about him.

Many a time as managers we tend to focus on the results and not on the process. The Japanese have always taught us to fix the process and forget about the results. It will come by itself. I also believe that we need to focus on the way we do something more that what we want to do. If you have to grow as a leader it is very important to remember that the way we treat our team is as important as the way we accomplish our goals through our team members.

On a lighter note I also remember once when I was leading a team to define a process in ISO, we had a lot of fun for three hours but we did end up defining the process. One of my team members told me that although we accomplished our task, we should not have had so much fun. But most of the other members felt that we accomplished our task ahead of other teams because we had a lot of fun. So the way you do something has a huge impact on your results as well.

One of the ways of measuring our impact on our team is to ask how many of your team members enjoy coming back to work on a Monday morning. If the majority say yes, it means that the way you go about leading your team is as good as the way you accomplish your goals. On the other hand, if you realise that many of your team members do not enjoy working with you, it may not be because you are a hard task master or you do not accomplish your goals. It means that the way you treat them is not ok.

Many organisations have also realised the value of “How” and hence have tweaked their performance management systems to measure the behaviour (how) and the results ( what) and given them equal weightage in assessment.

If we recollect, Gandhiji had taught us quite some time back that ” The means to an end is as important as the end itself” . So, it is high time that we focus on “How” we accomplish our goals as much as “What” we accomplish.

Let us start today.

S Ramesh Shankar

Today was yet another day in my life. However, I got an insight for me to improve myself. It was the birthday of a great colleague of mine at work. It was the wedding day of a relative I attended today at Mysore. In the evening, I lost a dear classmate, who died due to kidney failure.

God balances our life by giving the good and the bad news in equal measure. I felt good in wishing my colleague on her birthday. I was happy to attend the wedding of my relative since his father has supported me a lot during my childhood. However, in the evening when I came to know about the sudden demise of my college mate, I was shocked. I knew he had been admitted to a hospital last week and was undergoing dialysis. I knew from the my classmates, who had visited him that his condition was not good. But to hear the sad news of his death out of the blue in the evening numbed me.  

I saw a lot of good qualities about him being showered by classmates in our whasapp group. He deserved every word of appreciation. He was modest, shy and reticent. All of us admired his noble qualities. But, it suddenly struck me after reading all those wonderful words of praise as to why do we need to wait for someone to die to share what we admire about them. Why are we reluctant to notice, admire and share all the good qualities of our friends, colleagues and relatives while they are with us on this earth. I am guilty of this reluctance and may be some of you too.

 Is it possible for me to resolve to day to myself that I will never miss an opportunity to observe, admire and share my appreciation of all the goodness I see in all my colleagues, friends and relatives. I will not wait for them to leave Mother Earth to share what I liked about them. It may look silly but for me it was a great insight. I could be stingy in criticism of others but can be more than generous in my praise of others goodness.

Life is short. Let us make it sweet.

S Ramesh Shankar

   One of the things which troubles a lot of people in life is when they don’t get what they want. This may be true in work and personal life. Let us start with our work life. We may have a great idea and we may be jumping in joy as if we have invented a new theory on gravitation – to be the Newton of this century. When we present this idea to our boss or to the leadership team of the organisation, they are not very enthused. So, from a high, we end up in a low. It naturally disappoints us. Why does this happen to us ? If I look back, this happens because we tend to get emotionally attached to the idea. Then we think, there can be no better idea or no other perspective to our idea. When someone looks at our idea and either picks holes in them or throws water on our head we feel disappointed. This is point to reflect upon. Our idea may be genuinely a good one. But we look at the idea through our own lenses. When the same idea is looked through different lenses of multiple people, they see something, which either we don’t see or miss to observe. So, this may be a new perspective, which we may have missed, while thinking of the idea in the first place.

   What do we do when something like this happens to us ? Most of us sulk. We go into a depression and feel that the world is not understanding us. We sometimes may think that the world is not able to catch up at my speed. This may be true sometimes. But, it may also be true that we are missing something, which we do not realise. It may be a good idea to accept things as they are rather as we want them to be. This requires a lot of courage. How can I give up on something, which I think is the best thing to happen in my work life as an idea ? We need not give up. But, we need to realise that no idea is good enough unless we are able to sell it. Selling an idea is our responsibility and not that of the receiver or that of my manager or anyone else in my life. If we are willing to be open to suggestions to our idea, we may be able to build up on the basic idea and then make it more powerful than the original.

   A similar thing happens in our personal lives. A common example is when you want make a life decision. Let us take for example you do not want to marry at a particular age to a particular person. Your parents have the opposite view. When a discussion happens within the family circle, it generally ends up in disagreements and unpleasantness to the say the least. While you present your view, your parents are all out to convince you how the opposite is good for you. The only alternatives in such a situation is that either of you is right or both of you are wrong. But, we tend take a stance and refuse to listen to any alternate view. This leads to a deadlock and many a time in strained relationship between you and your parents. It may be worthwhile to consider the alternate view points before you make a final decision. Let us assume that you are right in deciding not to marry at a particular age to a particular person. It is not good enough for you to say no to your parents but it is worthwhile to listen to their perspective and then convince them through conversations as to why you want to decide what u want to. This means more time, more efforts and and more conversations. But the reality is that the winner in life is always the one, who is able to sell her or his idea and the loser is one who’s sulks to do so.

    So, the choice is with us. We have to decide whether we want to be winner or a loser in life ? And the responsibility to sell my idea is mine and not that of the receiver or any other person in my life.

    Let us try to be a winner from today.

 S Ramesh Shankar