The Theory of Procrastination: Ten Principles to Overcome Procrastination

Procrastination is the act of putting off or delaying action on something which requires immediate attention and action. Procrastination is often confused with postponement. Both have in their meanings the words ‘putting off’ or ‘delaying’. Postponement is the act of putting off or delaying an originally planned one to a later date. Postponement is relative to a plan, and indicates de-prioritisation, merited or not. Procrastination, on the other hand, is relative to the need for immediate attention. Postponement is often linked to a reluctance to bestow effort, either due to laziness or otherwise. Postponement on certain occasions tends to be benign, and on certain occasions, life threatening. Postponement has many times a financial motive; individuals would like to postpone expenses and advance incomes. Procrastination and postponement are interrelated.

Procrastination is postponing something needlessly and mostly indefinitely, without regard to time, effort, resources or results. Postponement, on the other hand, tends to be tactical opportunism to conserve effort and resources. Both make one lose time, in essence, and delay or totally avoid outcomes or lose results. Procrastination is said to be the thief of time by Benjamin Franklin. Mahatma Gandhi said, “The future depends on what you do today”. Procrastination, it is said, is often due to fear of failure. Here again, what Mahatma Gandhi said is relevant: “To do what we fear is the first step to success”. Dick Cheney, former Vice President of USA is reported to have said, “I think I was able to survive five heart attacks because I never postponed going to hospital when something didn’t feel right”. On certain occasions, postponement provides unanticipated results, like landing on a better job relative to the one in hand.

Procrastination is universal

It is imagined that procrastination strikes only certain people who are wired to be procrastinating. The truth is that even apparently productive people tend to procrastinate. People who seem to multi-task effortlessly or seem to be putting every idle minute to productive use (for example, working on laptop while waiting in the airport lounge) could also be procrastinating on a few vital things. In fact, such visible fury of productive working could be a subtle cover for the ongoing procrastination. Procrastination would well have been left to an individual’s choice but for the adverse impact it has on one’s own and others’ lives. While occasional procrastination may be inevitable, regular procrastination as a personality trait could have underlying behavioural implications.

There are three principal causes why people succumb to procrastination. At one end of the spectrum, an individual could be so opinionated that he or she is unable to judge the importance of the action he or she must take as well as the rewards of taking the action and the pitfalls of not taking the action. Some of the critical lifestyle issues, like doing proper exercise or taking proper diet, fall into this category. At the other end of the spectrum, an individual could be so obsessed with perfectionism that he or she would never embark on anything for fear of outcomes being not to expectations or receiving criticisms. Most people fall between the two ends of the spectrum, weighed down by a whole range of issues relating to time management, emotional burdening and mood swings.

Loop of procrastination

Procrastination is a continuous loop which takes hold of an individual the moment he or she enters the loop once. The usual entry point into the loop is delay in acting on something due to a lack of awareness of its importance, and the essence of timeliness. As one avoids taking action on the matter, the negative consequences of inaction start becoming apparent, both by comparison and by self-evaluation. A student putting off studies or a software engineer putting off the testing of his code fall into the same category. As the hopelessness caused by the delay becomes evident, the individual slips into a negative mood which could lead to one of the three outcomes; he could entirely give up with total nonchalance or helplessness, he could try to complete it by leaving everything else with total burnout or do what he can with a low level of self-worth. In any of the routes, the emotional consequences are negative.

Procrastination typically leads to more procrastination. A student who burns midnight oil to cram everything prior to the examination deadline would be leaving out all other extracurricular activities, and even may be skipping the day classes. The software engineer who defers testing to the penultimate day may fumble to remediate even small errors.  As the negative emotions start taking charge, one would start distancing oneself from peers and others, and avoiding carrying out even daily chores, be it reading a newspaper or checking an email. The feeling of guilt associated with not being oneself only worsens the mood. Depending on the emotional personality of the individual, the feeling of guilt could be manageable or unmanageable. When procrastination starts weighing down on one’s life, one must start taking external help for structured approaches to break the loop of procrastination.

Ten helpful principles

This blog post proposes ten principles which are fairly simple in logic but complex in terms of behaviour for an individual to control, overcome and eliminate procrastination.

Openness

The first step in beating procrastination is being open; open about the required actions and the likely consequences. Openness also includes taking a broader view of life than a myopic view of just one event. For example, starting an exercise regimen should not be seen allocation of 30 minutes a day but rather as a component of total lifestyle. We tend to receive inputs all the while. One should be open to receiving them, analysing them and absorbing them, including those that seem to be critical. 

Reflection

The second step in overcoming procrastination is being reflective; understanding one’s own reluctance to apply oneself to the task even though the requirements and consequences are known.  One must figure out whether it is a question of time and effort or of mood and ambience. Figuring out the reasons for procrastination is the most important step towards conquering procrastination.

Clearance

The third step relates to carefully identifying the obstacles in the path that are related to one’s own body, mind and personal ecosystem. Releasing greater time out of the limited time available could be the most effective way to overcome the barriers. Uncluttering of one’s assets, be it home, desk or inbox could be one way; in some cases, becoming an early morning person could be the solution, and in some cases being a night owl could be the answer. In all cases, being ahead of the curve in terms of time and effort is the key.

Dive-in

In most cases, the unknown does give trepidation, even to the otherwise accomplished individuals. Learning to ride a bike or drive a car is a simple example. Until one faces the challenge of balancing on two wheels or driving through a crowded street, the first move is necessary to address the concerns squarely. The moment the first step is successful, trepidation leads to exhilaration, and exhilaration leads to further execution.

Perseverance

Not in all cases, dive-ins help; in a few cases there could be failures leading to deepening of negative emotions and moods. Perseverance backed by an evaluation of what went wrong and execution of a remediation plan is the answer. However, it is easier said than implemented. This is one area where help from the immediate environment would be very helpful. Openness to seek help would be important, though.

Right-sizing

Failure is often related to aspirations being far more than what resources can support. Having more on the plate than what can one chew is one of the primary triggers for procrastination. One would be better off doing a few things right rather than staring blankly at a long laundry list of things to do. Unmanageable projects intimidate any person. Researchers eventually discover that a simple pilot experiment or a synopsis of the research project provides greater confidence than trying to execute a mega experiment or script a thesis right away.    

Celebration

While activity is never an achievement, celebrating key activities reinforces one’s ability to overcome procrastination. As one sets about constructing a huge website, developing a homepage itself deserves a celebration. Celebrations linked to successes trigger the androgen, serotonin and norepinephrine receptors in one’s brain to elevate one’s mood. Positive mood is the most important aid to overcome procrastination. Celebrating results is, of course, the ultimate success in overcoming procrastination.

Optimization

Perfection has a place but not everywhere, every time. Perfection is also contextual. In the early phases of conquering procrastination, perfectionists would need to reappraise their penchant for perfection. There is an insightful quotation in journalism: “You can edit a bad page, but you can’t edit a blank page”. An optimized result that can be celebrated is worth more than a perfect aspiration which may never see the light day.

Self-motivation

Self-motivation is the last of the final two steps in decisively overcoming procrastination. Ability to forgive oneself for one’s failures and motivate oneself for next success is important in the fight against procrastination. As Mahatma Gandhi said thoughts become words, words become behaviours, behaviours become habits, habits become values and values become destiny.

Ecosystem

The ultimate support and insurance for eliminating, and even avoiding procrastination, is an ecosystem that supports all the above principles. Having right friends and right colleagues who operate in an environment of decisiveness, timeliness and goal orientation is an extremely important determinant. At times, one would need to move to a better environment as a systemic antidote to procrastination.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on May 08, 2016   

Humility-Arrogance Relational Matrix (HARM): Individual-Institution Culture Model

In human interactions as well as human-organization interactions we encounter, all the time, individuals and institutions displaying diverse traits, each at different points of a respective spectrum. For example, we may encounter individuals who are optimistic or pessimistic or at some point in optimism-pessimism spectrum. Similar positioning could be true of institutions as well; institutions that would never abandon growth path despite adversities and those that immediately downsize at the first sign of demand recession. The number of such traits on which individuals and institutions can be so classified are many. However, two traits that govern the relationships within and between individuals as well as institutions are extremely critical to individual and institutional development.  

The two traits that are particularly important in this context are humility and arrogance. These two traits are the visible or felt expressions of how individuals and institutions think or behave with and among each other. While these are fairly commonplace words, they are also commonly misunderstood; it is, therefore, worthwhile to recall their essence. Humility is the endearing way of thinking and behaving that comes from considering that one is not necessarily better, smarter or more important than other people, whether one actually is or not.  Arrogance, in direct contrast, is the insulting way of thinking and behaving that comes from believing that one is better, smarter or more important than other people, whether one actually is or not. Like all positive and pristine traits, humility is hard to ingrain while like all negative and crude traits, arrogance is easy to embrace.

Fusion, diffusion

Ironically, behaviour and action patterns that are so dissimilar as humility and arrogance are built on common foundations. Perceptions of knowledge, capability, competence and accomplishment usually drive one’s own as well as others’ belief of what one is. It is human nature to continuously evaluate oneself and others on these aspects, and position oneself to be superior or inferior vis-à-vis others. It is easy to feel egoistic (which is just a step away from arrogance) in the context of one’s superiority and feel defeatist (which is just a step away from worthlessness) in awareness of one’s inferiority. In contrast, it requires a special kind of personality disposition to be humble in spite of superiority and strong in spite of inferiority. This challenge is compounded as one receives continuous feedback, direct and indirect as well as genuine and timeserving, from one’s network.

These traits are independent of scaling in competence. For example, a teacher is naturally required to be highly knowledgeable compared to the students. That does not bestow any right to be arrogant on the part of the teacher because that differential capability is the fundamental basis of such teacher-student relationship. On the other hand, a great teacher remains humble by believing that he or she needs to learn more to teach better, and even accepts the occasional brilliant repartees and queries from the students. Similarly, a manager or a specialist by virtue of his or her experience ought to know more than his or her staff but, by no means, it is an unnatural accomplishment that should make the manager or a specialist even a wee bit arrogant. On the other hand, a great manager or specialist always looks to expand his or her frontiers of knowledge besides welcoming the fresh thoughts of youngsters.

Trending, branding

Institutions have a different set of influencers. Their competence is reflected in terms of their market share and profitability. As a result of their achievements on these two dimensions, they trend as performers, and as performers they get branded too. Most start-ups and young firms achieve this by being capable as well as humble. However, with positive trending and branding, they keep acquiring scale. Most institutions as they grow in scale face an inflection point, unique in each case, from which point they start behaving and acting less vulnerable and more invincible. Akin to the individual recount earlier, this also represents a humility-arrogance tipping point. Scale often leads to distance; between employees and the management, within employees, and more importantly between organizations and their customers.

At and from such an inflection point, an institution starts believing that it knows what is right –for itself as well as its employees and customers. The level of functional specialization and sophistication of data analytics may well sustain the institutions on performance journey but radically alter how they are perceived in terms of their relative humility and arrogance. For example, an increment letter that arrives in the mail box of each employee of a one-lakh employee strong company as immediately as the day after performance year close, despite its efficiency, would be perceived to be shockingly impersonal (which is a step or two away from arrogance). If in that organization, the increment letter, duly signed by a CXO, is personally handed over by the manager to each employee (even if with a few days of delay), the act would reflect continuing institutional care (which is a shade or two closer to humility).  

Interlays, interplays

Adding complexity to the situation is that humility and arrogance are capable of being faked. An individual or institution may be intrinsically arrogant but may make it appear as aggression (which is considered a surrogate for competitiveness!). Others may cultivate humility as a means to an end, notwithstanding not so modest views of themselves. Some individuals or institutions may take humility to the extremes of perpetual silence and acceptance leading to doubts on intrinsic capability (also, as surrogates of passive aggression). Others may alternate between flashes of arrogance and swathes of humility to reconcile their inner contradictions. Given that human nature is not perfect, having humility inside and faking aggression outside or vice versa is hardly an appropriate state of individual or institutional thought and action.

The ideal ecosystem would comprise interactions on three dimensions; between individuals, between individuals and institutions and between institutions. In terms of levels of endowments or competencies, the players can never be equal but the relationships can certainly be equitable. Individual level collaboration, between the competent and not-so-component, is the foundation of building humility in organizational ecosystem. Collaboration between individuals and institutions, howsoever seemingly giver an institution is and receiver an individual is, constitutes the foundation of social ecosystem. Collaboration across any value chain constitutes the foundation of industrial ecosystem. An Original Equipment Manufacturer(OEM) could be endowed with better marketing and financial power than a small component maker but the former ought to be cognizant of the essentiality (and not the optionality) of the component maker to the OEM.

Gross, subtle

When concepts such as humility and arrogance are discussed, the focus tends to be on the visibly gross or misleadingly subtle aspects of the concepts. Just as being silent is not being humble, being in an agreeing or obsequious mode does not constitute humility. Similarly proposing or communicating an alternative way of thought or action does not reflect lack of humility (let alone display of arrogance). Humility is the ability to convey what is correct and appropriate to context and content in a manner that does not reflect superiority, and in a manner that the recipient is inspired to absorb the context. Humility is the ability to learn as much as possible and relevant from other individuals and institutions. In the ultimate analysis, humility is the ability share, spread and enhance knowledge in a collaborative and inspirational manner.

In a similar manner, arrogance does not mean only insulting way of thought, expression or action. Arrogance can be very subtle too. When sales executives in a retail store of iconic brands chat amongst themselves for minutes without connecting with customers it is nothing but subtle institutional arrogance. When members of organizations, private or public, provide inadequate responses or take inordinate time to serve stakeholders that too is institutional arrogance. In several cases, the line between individual and institutional arrogance is rather thin. Humility needs to be a key anchor of family and organizational culture to be able to nurture humility and eliminate arrogance even when they are in the respective subtlest forms,

Off harm’s way, through HARM model

While we have all grown to accept humility as a rare sparkle and arrogance as a common inevitability of high-stress life, we need to take a break, and recognize the insidiously harmful effects of lack of humility or exertion of arrogance, gross or subtle, on enhancing stress levels in the society. We should aim to develop greater and more perceptive understanding of these commonly misunderstood concepts and reflect on them through a Humility-Arrogance Relational Matrix (HARM).  Fundamentally, being humble knowing one’s limitations is a source of strength but being humble with all the awareness of one’s competences is an even greater source of strength. Similarly, forsaking ego despite the weaknesses of others is a source of strength but eschewing ego despite the awareness of one’s superiority is an even greater source of strength.

Four combinations are possible. Individuals can be humble but institutions can be arrogant – especially commercially and rapidly successful organizations; it requires individuals to persevere even as it behoves key decision makers to launch a culture journey in institutions. Individuals can be arrogant but institutions, especially service oriented and non-governmental organizations can be humble; it requires individuals to reflect and remediate even as the organizations persevere on their path. Both individuals and institutions can be arrogant – this could be a concomitant of a despotic culture which smothers creativity and demands servility; mercifully such combinations are few but unless they are transformed the overall national ecosystem can be destroyed. In the virtuous grid, the individual as well as the institution would be competent and capable; such individuals and institutions would paradoxically render a great service to the nation by being less modest about their uniqueness and imbibing other individuals and institutions with their implicit drivers of humility.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on April 10, 2016     

Job Fulfilment: Highway Cruise or Oil Exploration?

Job fulfilment is the precursor for job satisfaction. Given that more than 50 percent of a 24 hour day and more than 80 percent of the wakeful part is spent on the job or job related activities, job satisfaction is a must for peace in life. Deriving fulfilment on the job is essential for pace in life, therefore. Job fulfilment cannot be defined in terms of either title or compensation. It is more in terms of doing what one enjoys and what one’s natural aptitudes and talents play for, and finally the impact one makes through one’s job on the people and organization. In some cases, job fulfilment occurs immediately while in some case, it takes years to happen. In most cases, what was fulfilment at the start gets overwhelmed by greater accomplishments later in life but in some cases, the later day’s greater successes trigger greater satisfaction from the initial fulfilments too.    

For a teacher, for example, job fulfilment occurs when he or she is able to coach his class to high scores in examinations. The real job fulfilment, however, comes when the teacher sees his students occupying high positions and becoming successful in life. The teacher, in the process, starts getting more fulfilled from the teaching process, the long term implications of students getting high scores, and their bringing credit to the teacher and the alma mater in the years to come. Today’s competitive landscape pressures executives for immediate performance, much like examination results, and ingrains a mind-set of seeking immediate fulfilment through rewards and recognitions. While there is nothing wrong in this (except for the accumulation of stress), the flip side is that executives, no longer, are able to await and relish the long term results from the seeds they sow.

Jobs make careers

Most advertisements for recruitment no longer emphasize the job; they speak of careers. Most recruiters emphasize how careers can be built up through the position in question. A company that lays attention on talent mapping and succession planning can, indeed, assure a fulfilling career through a series of fulfilling jobs. Such companies are characterized by their frontline executives growing to occupy CXO positions eventually. It is, therefore, unnecessary and even misplaced to distinguish between jobs and careers. If jobs make careers for individuals, and both mean fulfilment for them, it is important to realize that companies also have their own jobs and careers to fulfil for the society. In fact, it is only within the aegis of a company that individuals can find fulfilment.  While individuals can find jobs in any company, successful or not so successful, they can find careers only in successful companies or making not so successful companies successful with their jobs.

Like individuals, companies also have jobs to perform and careers to make. A company has a job to do in terms of delivering the products and services. However, the company also has a career to make (even if it is somewhat inappropriate to describe so) in terms of maintaining a continuity of products and services that are ever more beneficial to the customer. Just as an individual gets to change a job in search of fulfilment or career, companies also get to churn their products and services (and even employees) in their quest for a “career” in the business landscape. While these similarities are easy to appreciate, the interplay between jobs and careers as well as individuals and companies (in permutations and combinations thereof) is not understood by either the individuals or the companies. Perceptive business leaders and human resources leader not only appreciate this interplay but work in partnership to address this complex issue.

Defining fulfilment

Many people see and seek fulfilment in terms of how their talents impact the jobs that they carry out. One is apt to make statements such as “I completed my assigned project which was appreciated by my boss” or “I made a presentation that the audience liked”. Fulfilment through such feelings and perceptions is misplaced. True fulfilment occurs when the job impacts positively and meaningfully others in the organization and one feels invested in the company’s future through the job one is performing. Again, it is not a matter how many people one leads but it does matter how much interaction one is able to have with other relevant internal and external stakeholders. True fulfilment also occurs when one is able to experience, on a first hand basis, the results of one’s work.

Typically jobs (especially in mature established organizations) tend to stay static while talents (as defined by a combination of education and experience) may improve. Fulfilment becomes elusive when jobs trail competencies. There would also be cases when jobs (especially in turnaround situations or sunrise industries) require new skills while talents (as required by new requirements) remain static. In this case also, where skills trail job challenges, fulfilment becomes elusive. Fulfilment, on the whole, is a dynamic concept which can work only when jobs, as they are designed, manned and performed, lead to growth of businesses. This is not merely a human resources responsibility but the responsibility of the entire leadership team of a company at one level. It is also, more importantly, the responsibility of the individuals themselves at another level.  

Economic view

It is impossible to discuss job fulfilment without considering an economic viewpoint. Typically, companies extract consumer surplus when they market their products or services at prices higher than costs. Consumer surplus obviously varies based on the product-market segments. In a similar fashion, companies seek to derive (‘extract’ could be a negative word, here!) employee surplus by deriving higher value from their services than the salaries paid to them. The laws of growth and competition not only legitimize the relevance of consumer surplus and employee surplus but also seek to reduce consumer surplus per product or service. Companies try to counter this by maximizing employee surplus but this may not always be feasible in a skill-scarce and talent-constrained economy. The only way this riddle of economic fulfilment is solved is through sustainable and profitable growth.

The economics of fulfilment for individuals, in their twin roles as customers and employees, and for companies, in their multiple roles as producers and sellers, and as employers and optimizers are important. Growth economics, in fact, is a bubble. Population demographics is a reality. The bubble has to be sustained to meet the reality. Unless economic growth stays continuous and consistent, social fulfilment becomes elusive. When viewed in this perspective, job fulfilment can never be a matter of individual joy or disappointment, and not even of job design and talent deployment. It is a matter of finding business and economic solutions for challenges of growth. Job fulfilment occurs when the role of an individual is appreciated by the role designers and the individual is able to appreciate the role as part of a larger socio-economic paradigm.

Cruise or exploration?

When this socio-economic perspective is understood, frontline executives as well as their employers start assessing objectively whether job fulfilment is a matter of immediacy and surety as a highway cruise is, or is a matter of uncertainty with sporadic abundance as oil exploration is. The answer is rather simple. The concept of a career highway, however desirable it is, is rather a desire than reality in organizations. There are far too many variables in the process of interactions of individual-business-environment that there can never be a pre-set path. It is unclear, for example, if the conventional synthetic medicines will be dominant a decade hence or biologic medicines or genetic engineering would be dominant. Taking the example of automobile industry, the future automobile could be a digital machine. Career highways based on current business models and current skill-sets could be misleading.

On the other hand, job fulfilment is more like oil exploration. Not every field, whether on-shore or offshore, offers potential for oil, and not every field with potential for oil ends up providing an unending gush of oil. Job fulfilment for aspirant executives arises from a process of identifying the right companies and persevering with their job roles and career paths with grit. As with exploration, the operating circumstances tend to be challenging but when the right role is struck, the rewards could be plenty. Like oil exploration, exploration of job fulfilment tends to be a combination of hardware, soft skills and the entire organization working together. While the simile may seem extended, the underlying concept that job fulfilment is a larger enterprise-wide challenge is a reality. Does the individual have an easy path then?

Aligned fulfilment

The solution for job fulfilment lies in aligned fulfilment between the company and the employees. The company must have a larger purpose and mission which must have the buy-in of the employees. The company and the employee must have a clear view of how the dynamics of industrial competition would impact the economics of consumer surplus and economic surplus. Just as the company feels justified in deriving a consumer surplus based on the perceived value of its products and services to the company, the employee must feel a broader purpose in providing the employee surplus to the company. A good job for a competent person pays well. A great job which is derived from a sense of purpose for the company and covers its employees inclusively leads to fulfilment for them as well as the company.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on November 8, 2015  

Robin Sharma Teachings: Using Time, Lasting Learning and Humble Mastery

Robin Sharma is a passionate and committed speaker who shares several of his thoughts pro bono. Amongst various teachers of management and coaches of leadership, there is probably no one else who renders his advice freely in both transactional and monetary senses of the term. He also rather walks the talk. It is not uncommon for him to make and release videos of his teachings even when he is on tours. In a recent multi-country tour, for example, he has released a video (The Princess + The Bentley) on how to achieve success and remain successful through certain precepts. While one may say that all of these constitute a carefully crafted global brand building exercise, one cannot deny that there could be nuggets of wisdom that could appeal to, and influence, persons with an open mind.

Interestingly, Robin seems to believe that activities which do not add value in terms of personal and professional success need not, and should not, be performed. For him, intellectualizing one’s mind is more value adding than entertaining it. He, therefore, comments in the recent video that rich people have large televisions while successful people have large libraries. It is, of course, a moot point if success and richness are not correlated with each other! He even goes to the extent of rebuking Angry Birds game watching although viewed from another angle Angry Birds is a stupendous example of how creativity can result in great success in today’s Internet driven world. Be that as may, the author of this blog post felt that three of his teachings in his recent video resonate well with his own views.

Using time

Robin says, not merely in the latest video but in many of his others, that every moment of time is precious. According to him, the value of time is realized by a person when he or she has a purpose in life. Without purpose, one may seem to be doing many things but more often than not they could all constitute nothing but a meandering way of life. Very recently, history has been made by Telugu (an Indian regional language) director, S S Rajamouli when he completed the most magnificent and expensive movie epic “Baahubali” and released in over 4000 screens globally to rave reviews. Anyone who tracks his directorial life can see the purpose in his life of being differentiated and distinctive in terms of each of his directorial ventures to date. Importantly, each has been more unique than the previous one.

Again very recently, another Indian made history when Sania Mirza won the Wimbledon’s Women’s Doubles title. Her life too was one of purpose, from the time she displayed her tennis prowess in regional tournaments. Time is a great enabler and calibrator of continuous improvement. A purpose as great as scaling the Mount Everest cannot be accomplished in a day; rather it requires continuous efforts and improvements, day after day. Each morning and each evening, we need to appreciate what we set out to achieve and what we have achieved, respectively. A mighty production like Baahubali may take two years to make but the whole process has an embedded higher purpose and ceaseless mastery. Time is a silent enabler and relentless critique of our purposefulness in life. There can be no better mirrors for transformation than a calendar and clock!  

Lasting learning

Robin says, very rightly so, that one can never finish with learning in one’s life. This is what Indian scriptures teach us too. Continuous learning and unceasing practice lead to mastery but mastery has no limits. The last year’s neurosynaptic chip or the latest 7 nm chip of IBM chip demonstrates how new and nano technologies have provided tremendous computing push to chips. Apparently, and in reality, there exist no limits or boundaries to knowledge. While certain fundamental laws could be immutable and timeless, experimentation and development would result in continuous new learning streams. Continuous learning leads to all-round benefits, even as it ushers in new ways of doing things and makes a few redundant, if not obsolete. As Japanese society demonstrates, taking personal and round the clock care of impaired elderly is a must but the task can now well be performed by humanoid robots, programmed for the purpose.

Learnings may not always be new. In fact, several lifetime lessons may simply be embedded in oneself without immediate deployment. One must be thoughtful and mindful as well as introspective and reflective to rediscover, revisit and redeploy them as new occasions demand. Learnings become virtuous when they are reinforced by neural triggering processes. For example, this blog post itself is triggered by Robin’s video, triggering a combination of Robin’s teachings with author’s own beliefs. The ability to keep mind free, as Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore held, is an important facet of continuous learning that lasts a lifetime. It is left to the individuals to as to how open one would keep one’s mind free to be able to absorb continuously learnings even as one is required to being decisive.

Humble mastery

Mastery brings a rare capability and recognition to masters as they are recognized to be distinctly superior in their field or craft. Yet, masters who are humble have consistently won better acceptance than masters who are egoistic or arrogant. Robin holds that arrogance spells failure to masters. The concept of humble mastery is important as mastery brings name and fame which could lead to certain egoistic states in masters. Here, the awareness that as with learning there is really no end to mastery could make masters feel humble. Also, masters being in the company of other masters or coaching bright disciples who could be shining new angles on existing knowledge could help masters stay humble.

Mastery over the domain has to be accompanied by mastery over one’s self for ultimate humility. As ancient Indian scriptures say, the capability of Sthita Prajna, as defined by Lord Krishna in the epic Bhagavatgita, connotes a stable wisdom that is primed by an ability to control oneself by inner thoughts and be unmoved by either attraction or repulsion as well as by happiness or remorse is the ultimate state of self-control. While mastery in a domain could be a purpose, mastery over one’s own self is also an essential purpose of life. Humility as a trait is a good shadow to have for one’s personality even as it evolves over several learnings of life.

More sharing

Like Robin Sharma does, this author shares several of his perspectives on his weekly blog post cadence. Not all would be felt relevant by all and for all situations. Nevertheless, the author believes that the more one shares intellectually the more the society benefits collaboratively. There would be anecdotal hyperboles occasionally like the sales manager of Bentley cars flying to Volkswagen factory to get a paint that is an exact replica of the world’s only one unique nail polish possessed by the princess. As with all anecdotes, the underlying moral is more important than the visible message! So is it with all passionate and positive initiatives of perspective sharing in the author’s Strategy Musings! 

  

Posted by Dr CB Rao on July 12, 2015

Educated and Experienced versus Instinctive and Intuitive: From Conflict to Synthesis of the Four Leadership Essentials

The author of this blog, in an earlier blog post titled “Thought, Expression and Action (TEA) Positive: Triggers and Filters in One’s Mind”, discussed the thought-expression-action linkage in human or organizational behaviour and brought out the importance of staying positive in the three essential aspects by understanding the triggers and filters - Reference: Strategy Musings, March 15, 2015 (http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2015/03/thought-expression-and-action-tea.html). The emphasis of the blog post was on reaching and positioning oneself in a positive state in terms of one’s thoughts, expressions and actions. Every head of institution, be it the head of a family, the teacher of a class or the chief of an organization has a responsibility to be TEA Positive and make others TEA Positive.

A feedback on the blog post has been that all humans are conditioned, over time, to think, express and act in a particular manner and that being naturally TEA Positive, as proposed in the said blog post is next to impossible. The feedback also referred to specific personality types (for example, assertive and stressed), leadership styles (for example, task oriented or authoritarian) and competitive growth pressures (for example, earnings and profit growth) that make the TEA Positive a difficult state of equanimity to accomplish. While granting the difficulties, the author would propose that the solution would eventually lie in understanding oneself and what drives one’s competitive behaviour. This blog post proposes yet another supplemental framework for understanding one’s TEA profile, with more particular reference to leadership.  

Four essentials

There can be no two opinions that education and experience shape a leader. There are, however, no set principles of the levels that are required of each in the leadership journey. While education and experience are not tradable, there are instances of college dropouts making it big in the leadership arena. On the other hand, high levels of education make for stature in certain entities like universities and domains such as research. As a guidance, higher education helps individuals gain more from experience. While formal university education ends at one point (early twenties or late twenties) and experience commences thereafter, experience also teaches an individual a lot. Education provides theoretical knowledge and experimental perspectives, and instils logic and rationality in a leader. Experience adapts and reinforces knowledge and overwrites experimental perspectives with experiential learnings. An educated and experienced personality, without doubt, constitutes a twinned leadership essential.

Leadership, however, is not simply following pre-set procedures, although certain aspects of leadership such as safety, quality, ethics and values require evangelical advocacy and unremitting compliance. Leadership is largely made up of aspiration and anticipation as well as shaping a future with inadequate resources and uncertain execution. Leadership is also one of agility and timeliness in choices and decisions, all the time. Textbook knowledge of what it takes for an individual to lead needs to be supplemented by two very fundamental factors that vary from individual to individual – instinct and intuition. Instinct is a natural tendency for people to behave in a particular way using the knowledge and abilities they were borne with rather than thought or training. Intuition is the ability to know something by one’s feelings rather than on facts or evidence. An instinctive or intuitive way of thinking, expressing and acting is one based on one’s instinct or intuition, respectively. As contrasted with education and experience, instinct and intuition tend to be fundamentally personal attributes.

Instinct

Individuals are governed by multiple instincts, of which the need for survival, security and growth are paramount from a leadership point of view. These are inborn instincts but are conditioned as one develops in life, especially through the early years with the family. This does not mean that the instincts of the parents are automatically imbibed by the children. In many cases, the contrarian instinct gets rooted. A child, who sees his parents fighting for survival may develop an instinct for growth rather than security. Similarly, a child who is witness to unbridled drive of the parents for growth may develop an instinct for security. Siblings in the same family may develop and display different instincts. The instinct for security, for several individuals, is a golden mean of the basic instincts of survival and growth. At a basic level, fear triggers the instinct for survival while greed triggers the instinct for growth.

The human mind constantly weighs the options, instinctively so to say (!), by trading off the perceived (or experienced) result of one instinctive behaviour over the other. An individual who is driven by survival instinct may not fear jumping across a chasm of two metres if that is the only way he or she can survive from another imminent danger.  An individual who is passionate for growth may not wager his riches on a new project if extraordinary volatility emerges in the external environment. The instinctive response is often moderated or amplified by the conflict and collaboration of instincts in one’s self. The conditioning influence on the intrinsic instincts of an individual comes through the bars one sets on each of the instincts. As one pursues a leadership journey, the instinct for survival tends to get overshadowed or overridden by the instinct for growth. The challenge between the two instincts probably goes on a roller-coaster until one attains the age and maturity to settle for the golden mean of security.

Intuition

In contrast to instinct which is a natural human characteristic, intuition is a blessing one receives in a differentiated manner from the Creator. The processes of instinctive behaviour have been rather thoroughly researched in recent years, including through brain mapping using sophisticated imaging techniques. The processes of intuition have so far remained beyond clinical analysis. It is hypothesized also that despite some empirical or scientific basis of disciplines like astrology and numerology, the relatively successful leaders in these domains make successful predictions, powered by their intuition. While all individuals may possess intuition only a few are blessed to have an intuition that helps them see the future. Ordinary individuals may, often, mistake their bias as their intuition. In case of several individuals intuition is weak enough to be overridden by data and logic. In some leaders, however, intuition is powerful enough to override data and logic. When data, logic and intuition are aligned, a winning combination emerges.

Intuition often acts as the overlay once the conditioned instinct comes to the fore. Intuition is willing to be subject to review against data and logic but unlike instinct would refuse to be conditioned by these. Highly intuitive individuals may be persuaded to consider various factors but their intuition would simply refuse to go away. While many may assume that the leaders’ assiduous work towards a challenging goal is driven by their willpower what actually drives such leaders is their intuition that the different future they see is what would actually materialize. Intuition, like instinct, would propel individuals to accelerate or delay their purposeful actions. Intuition needs to be viewed differently from premonition that individuals experience on a selective basis as to some bizarre or surprising event that could take place in their lives.  To sum up, individuals are differently blessed by the Creator in terms of their intuitive faculties, and intuition serves its purpose best when it is free of bias, premonition and works independent of data and logic.

Synthesis

The fundamental hypothesis on genuine and authentic leadership is that it is committed to enhancing the value of the organization. This requires that the leadership faculties are put to the most efficient and effective use. Clearly, education and experience teaches many leadership lessons and genuine leaders tend to be in a state of continuous learning. The challenge lies in understanding and leveraging the natural instinctive behaviours and the differential intuitive capabilities. Some of the most valuable companies, Apple included, have been built on positive leadership instincts and intuitive powers of their leaders. Instincts work under pressures of internal and external environmental systems while intuition works under the vacuum of the empty space of the future. When an automobile leader recalls millions of cars, the instinct is one of safeguarding the reputation. When the same automobile leader persists with a hybrid car in an apparently indifferent market, the decision is powered by intuition.

Instinctive faculties come into play each day, and the conditioning and collaborating mechanisms need to be ever present in a leader. Intuitive faculties are called upon to play only when certain critical decisions of a future state are made; it could be selection of a future leader (or leaders) as part of leadership succession (or expansion) or development and commercialization of a new innovative product ahead of anyone else, and sometimes even when unaware of the requisite details of the product or the market. The author, in his long experience, has not only experienced the powers of instinct and intuition but also seen highly educated and experienced leaders becoming more effective or less effective based on how their instincts are leveraged and conditioned and even more importantly by drawing on the power of intuition. For leadership that seeks to create a sustainable future, the four essentials are: (i) education that inculcates a learning approach, (ii) experience that enhances wisdom, (iii) instincts that are contextually collaborative, and most importantly (iv) intuition that inspires a unique feel for a creative niche in an uncertain (or simply unknown) future.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on May 10, 2015

Ratio Analysis: A Relevant Tool for Emotional Fitness (Too!)

Ratio Analysis is known to students and practitioners of business, more particularly of finance, as a simple but insightful approach to measure and comparatively benchmark the state of business and operations of a firm. There are basically four ways of constructing ratios, classified as (i) coverage ratios, which are measures of a company’s ability to satisfy or meet particular obligations, (ii) return ratios, which are measures of the net benefit relative to the resources expended, (iii) turnover ratios, which are measures of the gross benefit, relative to the resources expended, and (iv) a component percentage, which is the ratio of a component of an item to the item. Wise leaders would never look at absolute numbers as indicative of performance, good or bad; ratios are vital ways to assess performance in relevant perspectives.

Specifically with reference to a company’s operating and financial performance, there are six types of ratios which constitute an essential analytical framework. These are (1) liquidity ratios, which provide information on a company’s ability to meet its short term or immediate obligations, (2) profitability ratios, which provide information on the amount of income from each rupee of sales, (3) activity ratios, which provide information on a company’s ability to manage its resources or assets efficiently, (4) leverage ratios, which provide information on the ability of a company to satisfy the fixed financing obligations, (5) investor ratios, which describe a company’s ability to satisfy shareholders investing in stock of the company, and (6) return on investment ratios, which provide information on the profits, relative to the assets deployed to produce the profits.

Universality

There is probably no analytical tool in business that is as universal as ratio analysis. Contrary to popular fixation that it is a finance oriented tool, it can be used to describe the state of affairs in respect of any type of functional performance (for example, number of exiting employees to total number of employees in an organization) or any type of physical performance (for example, units exported to total units sold). There can also be crossover ratios covering physical and financial numbers (for example, value added in rupees per employee). There are probably no absolute prescriptive levels for ratios, they being influenced by the age and market standing of the company, nature of industry, quality of management, nature of investors and the state of economy. They are, however, extremely useful as comparisons with other firms in same, similar or differentiated industries and as trends over time. Interestingly, ratio analysis can be applied to an individual’s operating and financial performance as well, equally effectively.

As an example of applicability to an individual, liquidity ratios are very insightful. Given the relatively non-liquid or volatile nature of investments that individuals tend to make, measures like quick ratios (current assets less money tied up in equities and bonds to current liabilities) are more helpful and cautionary. Similarly, those steeped in equity and investment culture must deploy profitability ratios consistently across their sectors of investment to judge their relative performance. They can utilize leverage ratios to assess their short term and long term financial viability. They can also follow a physical framework in terms of hours spent on social networking to hours spent on studies etc. The purpose of the blog post is, however, different; it seeks to adapt and apply the insightful framework of ratio analysis to analyse, judge and improve one’s emotional well-being.

Emotionalism

While emotions are a perfectly normal part of human life (even all life, considering how birds and animals are also emotive), emotionalism is an overwhelming and controlling state of mind and heart. Emotionalism may be defined as a strong or excessive appeal to emotions, either all by oneself or by one to another. It would include unwarranted expression or display of emotions in day to day settings. Emotions themselves are several but one can consider nine emotions (Nava Rasas as per Hindu fine art tradition) as core or root emotions. With certain liberty for the purposes of this post, these are tweaked and expanded as synonyms-like feelings as follows: love (also, affection or collaboration), happiness (also, optimism or energy), compassion (also, caring or pity), anger (excitement or revulsion), fear (also, anxiety or disquiet), disgust (also, revulsion or irritation), courage (also, adventurism or risk taking), wonder (also, surprise or fulfilment), serenity (also, equanimity and sobriety).

Positive leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela exemplified positive emotions such as love, happiness, compassion, courage, surprise and serenity while negative leaders like dictators feed on negative emotions like anger, fear, disgust and courage (of a different kind, though). The occurrence of emotions is not only related to personality types but the circumstances faced by the personalities. An emotionally driven person is not only overwhelmed by the above core emotions in varying degrees but also tries to dominate others through his dominant emotions. The way to avoid emotionalism is by seeking an emotional balance. This, of course, varies widely between individuals. That said, certain emotional ratios are relevant to understand one’s own emotional health better and work towards a healthy emotional balance. Six emotional ratios are presented below.

Emotional liquidity

Happiness is the most fulfilling emotion. Some people are spontaneously happy while some are happy only upon accomplishing their goals. A basal naturally spontaneous happiness level, superimposed by a variable happiness level related to goal accomplishment, is the best state. Alongside the asset of happiness, the liability of unhappiness or sadness also exists. Happiness tends to be short-lived while sadness tends to be long lasting. For example, a person who loses out on an exciting promotion is likely to be saddened (with respect to the specific promotion goal) till the next annual performance review cycle while he could still make continuous achievements, and hence derive continuous happiness, all though the year. An emotionally liquid individual has assets of happiness, optimism and energy that are several times over the sad liability of unfulfilled goals. An emotionally liquid person is one who is an energetic and optimistic seeker of happiness.

Emotional viability

Life is difficult and challenging, especially if one sets for himself or herself higher order goals that are not easily achievable. Usually, aspiration or goal motivates one to attempt achievement. Yet, one is beset by fear of failure or anxiety of slippage vis-à-vis the goals. The counteracting force for this fear is courage, peppered by a bit of adventurism and risk taking. The ratio of one’s courage to one’s fear has to be a significant number for one to be emotionally viable. Additionally, another ratio reinforces one’s emotional viability; it is the ratio of one’s affectionate emotions to one’s revulsion hot points. An ability to naturally be loving, affectionate and collaborative overcomes the tendency to be repelled by negatively surprising or irritatingly disgusting developments that one encounters. The former, if endowed in a person in a rich measure, helps him or her to achieve and sustain emotional viability. 

Emotional turnover

Everyday activities bring their own joys and disappointments even as most daily chores tend to be emotion-neutral. That said, just as one saves money for anticipated and unanticipated expenses, one must accumulate an inventory of happiness that can compensate for sharp spikes in unhappiness. Happiness needs to be viewed not as a momentary pleasure but an accumulation of good moments and memories that keeps one’s ship of life well protected when buffeted by sudden storms. Ideally, at any point of time one should be in a position to have happiness that outlasts disappointments of two quarters. It is more particularly true for corporate executives who battle the assessment rigour of corporate quarterly performance by the Street every quarter and also for the layman who is perplexed by loss of market capitalization or spike in inflation every quarter!   

Emotional leverage

Amongst all financial leverage ratios, debt-equity ratio is the most meaningful and popular indicator of financial health and stability of a firm. Investors and financial institutions provide capital to companies to develop as equity and debt respectively. The higher the proportion of debt the higher the leverage. Individuals have their own emotional debt-equity ratio as well. The broader society encourages individual development through two instruments - trust and goodwill. Trust is situational and contextual and, much like debt, needs periodic servicing, Defaults could lead to poor rating of individuals. In contrast, an individual in his or her lifetime can gain goodwill through successive positive actions. Much like equity or risk capital, goodwill remains undented despite occasional minor issues. Like debt-equity ratio being ideal at 1:1 for optimal leverage, an equal proportion of trust and goodwill bestows serenity on an individual.

Emotional return

Businesses cannot be expected to provide usurious returns continuously; eventually firms converge towards an industry average rate of return. The businesses are measured by earnings per share (EPS) and by return on total investment (ROI). In a loose sense, earnings are nothing but revenues less expenditure. The nine emotions comprise the positive emotions (PEs) of love, happiness, compassion and serenity, and non-positive or negative emotions of surprise, anger and disgust (NEs). The difference of PEs over NEs represents the net positive emotion (NPE) of an individual. This is modified with multiplication by the emotional viability index (EVI) of courage divided by fear (C/F). An EVI which is a natural number greater than 1 enhances the NPE of an individual. The net emotional return for an individual thus is a clear arithmetic of differently classified emotions as discussed herein.

Reservoir and dam

We have seen that emotions are complex feelings and spontaneous expressions at play but also have an intriguing and inspiring arithmetic. Emotional ratio analysis as outlined in this blog post is a tool for every individual to understand his or her own emotional profile and to achieve favourable emotional ratios. For that to happen, we need to understand two other characteristics of emotions as follows.

The first is that contrary to a common misunderstanding, emotions are not transient or fleeting feelings and expressions that are triggered by isolated events. Emotions tend to accumulate and are triggered into flow by individual triggers. Emotional reservoirs are a fact of life for every individual, however much one may deny. It is this characteristic that would enable one draw up emotional statements for a period and also as at the end of a period, much like income statement and balance sheet, respectively. While this being subjective, the analogy helps one semi-quantify one’s emotional income and expenditure as well as emotional assets and liabilities.

The second is that while all emotions are like rivers flowing into, and as, reservoirs of different capacities depending on one’s emotional propensities, there is one emotion - serenity - that would act as a dam to all the other eight emotions. With age, experience, maturity and wisdom, one is able to build higher heights of serenity that can check the inevitable build-up of emotional reservoirs that happens over time. Serenity discriminates in terms of moderating any overflow of emotions. Serenity is the master emotion that one needs to develop to be able to achieve an enhanced NPE. Serenity is also the quintessential ultimate emotion that arises from a healthy fusion of one’s body, mind, heart and soul.    

Posted by Dr CB Rao on April 25, 2015