Catalyst : Chandramouli Venkatesan

Catalyst : Chandramouli Venkatesan

Read On : 22/07/2018  Rating : 7/10

Key idea in 3 lines or less :

Spending long years in a job is NOT equal to experience. Real growth comes from individual growth. Individual growth comes from doing key projects + reflecting on what one has learnt  and what one could have done better post the same

Top 5 learnings :

·         Why do some people do very well in their second half of career compared to others? It is because they have “catalysed” their experience to propel their career. Apply the Target, Measure, Review  and Reflect (TMRR) model; see where you want to be – did you reach there? How do you measure it? And what does your review tell you? What did you learn from your review of how you did it?

·         Why is it that we do not consider the time spent in activities like walking and sleeping as ‘experience’? How are we so sure that the time spent at work on sales or marketing or production automatically becomes experience, while that spent walking or sleeping does not? Time does not become experience by itself, even at work; it has to be catalysed. Do you reflect often as to what you – your team – could have done better? You are on the right path to job growth. How good is your productivity? How good is your learning algorithm? How well are you employing both?

·         To have top productivity, are you focussing all your time and energy on things that matter? On things where you can have impact? In the circle of influence and completely ensure that you don’t lose your energy on things within circle of concern? Do you continuously improve productivity?

·         Do you have great personal life – which will act as a catalyst in your work life? Do you have the right values – which again catalyses the work? Do you have the right hobbies – which again can have a great impact on your work life?

·         When you want to shift from a job, first, decide on shifting out of the current job and only then look at which job you should shift into. But when the learning starts to stagnate or when you experience a serious fit issue, you should consider quitting.

My reflections :

·         I wish I had this kind of “reflection” when I was young. Yet, the book makes a good impact on reflecting, learning and improving one’s bank of learnings thru the same.

·         I wish the author had given more concrete examples. From “productivity” to a number of other topics, while he is giving his principles, since there are very few examples, relating to all that he says becomes a tough one.

·         He does not offer any way to “test” whether one is improving one’s bank of learnings. How does one get to know? One’s feeling alone? If one were in one organization only, wouldn’t one lack the exposure of other organizations? How does one compare and learn what one lacks in?

·         I remember wondering about my learning. Wondering about whether my learning would have been much better off or worse off if I had gone to other organizations instead of working in the same organization for a longer while – which I did. I did not have any clear answers. When I came out, I realized that I had wasted my time. That, I should have come out much before. But, how does one understand this?

Other key points :

Don’t worry about what is outside your circle of influence. Especially what is there in the circle of influence.

Does that mean I ignore what is in my circle of concern? What if some of that is very important?’ I do believe that you must summon the courage to ignore what is in the circle of concern and focus all your time and energy on what is in your circle of influence.

Any major project or initiative represents a potential learning cycle.

There are those who are moderate on capability, who have a moderately developed algorithm, but seem to get things done when told what to do, follow up diligently and are very disciplined about timelines, commitments, etc. Such people are often referred to loosely as the ‘doers’. They are high on productivity but moderate on the algorithm.

Additionally, that project or initiative seems to have played a significant role in building the experiential algorithm for these successful individuals and has contributed disproportionately to their learning and real individual growth.

Summary

1. Real Individual Growth, the Catalyst for Success

Career growth = Real individual growth ± Environmental aspects

the headwinds and the tailwinds balance each other out. You have to be a very lucky person for the tailwinds over forty years to be greater than the headwinds, and similarly, you have to be very unlucky for the headwinds to be greater than the tailwinds. For most people, the two balance out. Hence, going back to our career growth equation, this means that the environmental aspects will not be the deciding factor in driving career growth.

The catalyst of career growth tends to be real individual growth. Simply put, your career will grow only as much as you are able to grow as an individual and as a professional—what I call real individual growth. If you manage to grow your skills, your knowledge, your decision-making ability, your judgement, your influence on others, your communication skills, etc., then you will experience career growth. Career growth is directly proportional to, and is a function of, real individual growth. If you stop pushing yourself at any stage, your career growth also comes to a screeching halt. Hence the equation of career growth can be simplified to: Career growth = Real individual growth

 ‘Real individual growth’ is the growth we experience in the duration of our careers—how much each one of us grows our knowledge, our skills, our judgement, our influence, our communication, etc. The second factor is ‘environmental aspects’, which covers things like the buoyancy of the job market, industry-related factors, relative availability of talent in your skill areas, etc.

Experience is not gained automatically; it has to be catalysed.

 ‘Tu karm kar, phal ki chinta mat kar’. Loosely translated, it means, ‘Focus on the deeds, don’t worry about the results.’

Productivity does not increase by itself; it has to be catalysed.

Career success in the second half doesn’t happen by itself based on success in the first half; it has to be catalysed.

2. Time Spent at Work Does Not Equal Experience

One of the greatest myths of our times is that experience at work is measured in units of time. Time is not an accurate measure of experience.

The reason we believe that the time spent walking and sleeping is not experience is because we perform these activities in a highly mechanical/thoughtless way. We do not have an active learning model associated with walking; we do not say the more we walk, the better we become at walking. It feels like we walk roughly the same way we used to years ago, with no significant improvement over time.

Having established that time spent walking is not experience, except during childhood, now let me establish that the contrary is also true. Walking is not ‘experience’ for you and me, but for an athlete who participates in the Olympics walking event with his or her eyes set on the gold medal, it surely would be counted as experience. They obviously have a learning model associated with walking, which helps them get continuously better. Similarly, take the case of someone who is a professional model and walks the ramp. They spend hours trying to perfect their walk. So walking is ‘experience’ for both the Olympic athlete and the model, but not for you and me. This establishes that it is not the activity that determines whether something counts as experience or not, but the way in which it is done. The presence of a learning model as a catalyst determines whether the activity becomes experience or not. For both the Olympic athlete and us, the activity is the same—walking. But the former catalyses that activity into experience with a learning model, while we don’t. The same can happen at work too.

 ‘How many years of experience do you have walking?’ It often draws a chuckle. Then I follow up with, ‘How many years of experience do you have sleeping?’ and the chuckle turns to laughter. Then there’s usually a serious question: ‘How many years of experience do you have in finance or sales or marketing or HR?’ and there is a serious answer, no laughter.

As we do stuff, we are continuously adding to the software, the program, trying to make it better, and that algorithm/software/program is our experience. That is what responds to situations in the future. Hence, put simply, the more powerful the algorithm, the better the response to situations in the future. This means that the more experienced person is one whose algorithm is stronger, not necessarily one who has spent more years or done more of the activity.

the Target, Measure and Review (TMR) model—the most effective learning model at work

half the time people spend at work, they do not employ a learning model, they do not have a target for the activity, they certainly have poor measurement systems and they do not review their performance to understand the reasons for it

One of the greatest success factors at work, therefore, is our ability to convert time and activity into experience (the algorithm). My view is that what differentiates more successful people from less successful people is the effectiveness with which they convert time into experience. It does not happen by itself; it needs a catalyst. The rest of this chapter describes that catalyst.

we mistakenly believe that organizational processes are equal to individual processes. I have often heard people say, ‘I have a very demanding boss who reviews everything I do every day, so my experience building is happening automatically, thanks to my boss.

I advocate adding a fourth R to TMR and making it TMRR. This fourth R is ‘Reflection’

What could I have done better

But if the question is ‘What could I have done better in this project?’ then the answers will strengthen your experience and your algorithm.

The key to building a habit is persistence in the first 15–30 reps (repetitions) of building the habit.

If there is one thing you take from this book and practise regularly, I hope it is reflection

Unleash the Catalyst Time is the single greatest investment and resource you put into your career. However, this time is not automatically converted into the experience and algorithm that will drive your real individual growth and career success. To convert time into experience, you require a catalyst, and that catalyst is TMRR: Target, Measure, Review and Reflect. To make this effective, you must build an anchored habit of reflection on the question ‘What could I have done better?’

I recently interacted with a young manager who had just completed a project. I said, ‘Let me help you catalyse that time you spent on the project and convert it into experience. Let us start with the question “What could I have done better in that project?”’ The young manager gave me a set of answers, but I felt they lacked depth. So I worded my question differently. ‘If you started the project again, with all the learning you have now, having done it once, what would you do differently?’ A clearer list emerged of what could have been done better. And then I asked another question, ‘Why could you not anticipate these areas right up front and do the project even better the first time? Were they impossible to anticipate and could they be known only after the project’s completion? Or was it that you failed to anticipate what was possible to anticipate?’ You can imagine the quality of reflection that is required to answer that question, and how that would build experience out of the time spent on this project. The young manager spent three months doing the project, but did not spend the few hours required to convert these three months into experience. A series of reflection questions like ‘What could I have done better?’ is crucial for truly converting time spent into valuable experience. If that is not done, then it is not time spent, but alas, time wasted.

3. Maximize Learning Cycles

One common aspect in their journeys is that they have all had the opportunity to be an integral, end-to-end part of a very important project or initiative or transformation

A learning cycle is any project, initiative or transformation that happens routinely in companies. E.g. a new product launch. That learning cycle starts with the process of identifying the need for a new product, building a business proposal for it, going through the product development cycle, including prototyping, researching and testing as required, building the manufacturing or service capabilities required and then launching it into the market. The learning cycle ends after the launch, when the new product has stabilized in the market, and corrective action, if required, has been taken. This whole thing, end-to-end, is one learning cycle. Any major project or initiative repr

I have observed that more successful people do these two things better than less successful people:

Successful people seemed to have participated in more major learning cycles than those who are less successful. Successful people seemed to have extracted more experience and real individual growth out of the learning cycles they participated in than less successful people.

What does it take to engender a major learning cycle in your career? There are many ways to make this happen. First and foremost, keep your eyes and ears open. Such initiatives abound in any company. See if any of these fit your skills, if you can make a contribution to any of them, and then try and become a part of that initiative. You can do this by asking, volunteering or putting yourself in a place where that initiative needs you. Another way is to conceptualize a transformational initiative as a part of your day job, and then lead that and make it a major learning cycle. E.g. if you are in marketing, you can conceptualize a significant new product opportunity, which the company finds so interesting that they give you the mandate and the resources to lead that project end-to-end, making it a big learning cycle. Or if you are heading a factory, you can conceptualize a significant capacity expansion opportunity and that becomes a major initiative for the company and a major learning cycle for you. Or if you are an IT professional, you can conceptualize a significant artificial intelligence–based decision-making process that can automate many manual decisions, and then you get to lead that initiative, making a milestone learning cycle for your career. Or if you are an HR professional, you can conceptualize a new way of incentivizing employees and then lead that initiative in end-to-end implementation, making it a rewarding learning cycle for you. Whichever way it happens, whether you conceptualize it or participate in an already conceptualized initiative, the opportunity to be a part of it, which can be a major learning cycle, is a key catalyst in a successful career. It is sad to meet people who are capable, but for whatever reason have never been part of a major transformational learning cycle opportunity, and hence have not experienced the career success they had the potential for. If you get lucky and get to participate in a big learning cycle, that is fantastic. But if you are not lucky and a major learning cycle does not come your way, then you have to make one happen in your career—it is absolutely imperative as a catalyst for success.

The second thing that successful people seem to instinctively do is seize the opportunity of a major learning cycle by increasing the intensity of their engagement and prioritizing the learning cycle over the other activities they do on a daily basis.

 ‘What could I have done better in this learning cycle opportunity that I got?’ Successful people were clearly better at applying the TMRR process in a major learning cycle and creating experience for themselves.

The third thing that successful people seem to differ in, beyond the intensity of engagement, is how broad their engagement is on major learning cycles. On a day-to-day basis, most people engage with issues at work by asking ‘What is my role in it?’ Often, we limit our contribution to what is required for the role. E.g. if you are an HR professional and somebody engages with you on a business initiative, you tend to restrict yourself to the HR part of the business initiative, i.e., the breadth of your engagement with that initiative is from the lens of your role and expertise only. What successful people seem to do in a major learning cycle is realize that it has high potential for driving their real individual growth and broaden their engagement beyond the scope of their role and expertise. They make an effort to engage holistically with that initiative. They also broaden their TMRR to beyond their lens. The question they ask themselves is, ‘What could I have done better to make the project succeed holistically?’ In contrast, less successful people keep their engagement narrow, limited to their lens, even in a major learning cycle, and the question they tend to ask themselves is something like, ‘What could I have done better in this project on HR issues?’

The fourth thing that successful people seem to do in major learning cycles is to understand that project leadership is different from thought leadership. As mentioned, major learning cycles more often than not also happen to be important initiatives and projects for organizations. Successful people seem to instinctively realize that these represent an opportunity to contribute and learn beyond the usual. One way to maximize the learning value of a major learning cycle is to try and contribute at the thought leadership level to the project.

4. Improve Personal Productivity

Real high performers, those who achieve exceptional success, are those who are good at both. They have a highly developed algorithm which they employ with the highest productivity and hence are able to deliver both high quality and high quantity of output, making them highly successful in their careers. Such people are few and far between. If you want the highest level of success in your career, you have to aim for that high bar of both, a fantastic algorithm representing the summary of your capabilities and excellent productivity to convert that algorithm into output. Productivity is the means by which you convert your algorithm into output.

success is a partnership of the experience algorithm and productivity. The algorithm is your ability to respond to a situation and get to the right answer; it is the ability to generate solutions to complex problems. In a way, the experience algorithm is the summary of your capabilities. That summary of capabilities has to be put to productive use to be able to finally create value and a favourable output. The output, then, is a multiplication of the algorithm and the productivity used in employing it. We have all seen different kinds of people. There are people who are highly capable and dazzle with insights, strategic thinking and knowledge, but at times they leave you exasperated by their lack of output and their inability to get things done and manage complexity. These are the people who are often labelled as high potential, but are yet to fire fully. They possess a high-quality algorithm but are poor on productivity

Productivity is a complex subject comprising many facets including time management, prioritization, discipline, learning to differentiate the important/urgent from the less important/less urgent, the art of delegation, the skill of multitasking and so on and so forth

The Atlas stereotype is a positive mask, but it is a mask—it simply hides the real problem, which is poor productivity. So the next time you are working your butt off but nothing gets done, you know where the problem is. Or the next time you feel that the entire company, your team and your business needs you and you are Atlas and that is the reason you work so hard, you know what the problem is. It is poor productivity

One is derived from Stephen Covey’s concept of the ‘circle of influence’ and the other is my own method of allocating time to my priorities, something I call the ‘rocks first’ method.

This, then, is my second key to productivity—that productivity is not just about productivity of time but also about productivity of energy. I realized that the productivity of energy is destroyed by spending even a small amount of time on the circle of concern, and that energy loss has an impact even when you subsequently start focusing on your circle of influence. Time in the circle of concern is like poison—it takes only a small amount to have a negative impact on the larger whole.

The other way of stating the same thing is that ‘highly productive people are those who spend all their time on things to which they can make a difference, where they have an influence’.

Equally, there are things that impact your ability to deliver results at work that are not in your influence, and those are in the outer circle, the circle of concern.

The core of the concept is that broadly, everything that has an effect on you, impacts you and is of consequence to you can be divided into two broad circles. One is called the circle of influence, which comprises all those things that you have an influence on, and the other is the circle of concern, which comprises things that impact you directly or indirectly, but which you can’t influence. These are two concentric circles—the inner circle, the smaller circle, which comprises things that you can influence, and the outer circle, the bigger circle, which comprises things on which you don’t have an influence. This is schematically represented in the drawing below:

I realized that spending time on areas in my circle of concern was producing minimal results and was an extraordinary waste of my time, the greatest productivity killer I had.

Most people feel that they know their priorities, they know what is important. However, they mistakenly assume that just because they know what is important, they are actually prioritizing it and dealing with it. That is a myth. It is more likely that you know what is important, what your rocks are, but the bulk of your time and energy is still spent on the sand.

To increase your productivity, focus relentlessly on whatever is in your circle of influence. Spend all your time on what you can make a difference to, even if in the beginning it looks small. Avoid the circle of concern like the plague. It is not about how much time you waste there—maybe you can afford to waste that time—but the more harmful impact of it is the energy it destroys, the negativity it creates in you, which then has a cascading impact even on the time you spend in your circle of influence. A question that often comes up in my sessions is—‘Does that mean I i

Are there paths through your circle of influence that lead to a solution?

A truism of life is that everything that is in your circle of concern is in somebody else’s circle of influence. In an organization’s context, it could mean a co-worker outside your team, a vendor, etc. A good way of dealing with important things in your circle of concern is to identify in whose circle of influence they are, and then strike a partnership with that person.

The second approach to dealing with things in the circle of concern is to find a path to them through your circle of influence

On one sheet of paper, I make them write what they think is important, things which, if they did them well, would create learning, lead to career success and make them feel productive. Once they have written this on a sheet of paper, we fold it away, not to be opened till later. Then I ask them what all they did the previous month—which activities they did, where they spent their time, energy and money/resources and where they got their teams to spend their time/money/resources. It’s a detailed exercise. After that, based on where they spent their time/energy/resources, we try and write down which of these could have been important. If time/energy/resources were spent on them, then these would have been considered important, so in a way, we retrospectively derive what would have been important. This list of ‘derived important’ things is then written on another sheet of paper. Then comes the most interesting part. We compare the two sheets of paper—the first sheet, what people thought was important to them, and the second list, the derived important things. I am sure you are not surprised when I say that in most cases, there is very little in common between the two lists. This is the greatest tragedy of productivity—that most people do not actually spend their time/energy/resources on what they think is important to them. This is true of life in general, but let us focus here on work. At work, people know what is important, they know that focusing on the important things will produce results, get them success, create value and learning and sharpen their algorithms. The tragedy is that despite knowing that, most people do not spend their time/energy/resources at work on those things, and hence never achieve the success they are capable of.

5. Win Where It Matters

Success in the second halves of people’s careers is largely a function of the foundation and pillars built in the first halves. This means that every person, in the first half of his or her career, must be focused not only on winning then and there, but must have a very sharp focus on building the foundation for succeeding when it matters.

The Pressure to Be the Best ‘Rat’ in the Race. Lack of Knowledge and Guidance

6. First Half Is the Catalyst Half

The first career management principle for foundation-building is ‘depth over width’.

Starting with the first, in my judgement, the experience algorithmic benefit of full learning cycles is many times higher than that of many half cycles

So it is very important, in your first half, to focus on depth in career management. Manage your career so that you get relatively long periods in roles and you acquire significant depth in some functional areas—which enables skill and algorithm-building—for these are the foundations you need to build to catalyse success in the second half of your career.

Are you taking career decisions in your first half in a way that results in you experiencing full, end-to-end learning cycles, as opposed to experiencing many half and incomplete ones? Are your career decisions maximizing the opportunity to participate in major learning cycles and to fully juice the ones you participate in?

Complete Major Learning Cycles

Get out There When You Can

So these, then, are my three principles for foundation-building in the first half—favour depth over width, complete major learning cycles and get out there when you can. The basis of these principles comes down to being clear that the objective of career management in the first half is foundation-building for the second half, as opposed to success in the first half.

Unleash the Catalyst Foundation-building in the first half is the catalyst for success in the second half. To make the right career choices in the first half, take decisions that maximize real individual growth rather than short-term career success. Focusing on career choices that favour depth over width is important for foundation-building. Depth drives skill-building, which is more important for the experience algorithm in the longer term. Length in roles also allows you to learn how to get to high-hanging fruit, which is important for success in the second half. There will be many learning cycles that you will experience in your career. However, out of these many, there would be only 4–5 major learning cycles. These will be the career-defining ones. It is important to know when you are in one of them. Always take decisions that allow you to complete a major learning cycle; never leave one incomplete. Get out there when you can. It is important to learn the nuts and bolts of business early in your career.

7. Bosses and Mentors as Catalysts

Why do bosses in foundational years make such a difference to your long-term career success? From what I have seen of bosses and managers, there are broadly two kinds. The first type of boss is one who is focused on getting results out of his or her subordinates. Their primary orientation is to get the job done, and so they follow up, support and drive you to get results. The second type of boss is one who is equally committed to delivering results, but does that so that you not only deliver results but also learn and build your experience algorithm better while doing so. This person prioritizes results, but also focuses on asking you questions in a way that makes you reflect, pushes you to get to the solutions yourself rather than giving you the answers at the first chance and has a review process that not only focuses on the delivery of the task/result but also on driving learning for you. These bosses, in a very intuitive way, are responsible for establishing the TMRR framework in you in your foundational years

A good boss is often confused with a nice person, a person who makes you feel good, is caring, speaks pleasantly and comes across as what can be described as a ‘nice, decent’ person. All these qualities are highly desirable in a good boss, but this is not what you are after in your foundational years. In those years, you are interested in a boss who builds your algorithm, who helps you expand your capacities by challenging you to operate beyond your comfort zone, who can ask you the uncomfortable question ‘What can you do better?’ and who does not allow you to get into a comfort zone. Now, in your foundational years, if you get somebody who can do this and is also a nice person, fantastic, but sometimes that’s like asking for utopia

The second thing that good bosses do is realize that major learning cycles are not just transformational opportunities for delivering superior business performance but equally transformational opportunities for developing their teams

Unleash the Catalyst External stakeholders like your bosses and mentors are tremendous catalysts for real individual growth and long-term career success. There are three things you can do, that are in your influence, to improve the chance that you get a good boss—being a good subordinate, working in companies which have a higher percentage of good bosses and hanging on to good bosses when you find them. Mentors are critical to ensuring that you make the right career decisions in an increasingly VUCA-filled business and career world. Finding the right mentor is important, and when you find the right one, cultivating your relationship with them over time is critical.

A mentor should not be in your line of authority and leadership. That’s because you don’t want the mentor to have a conflict between their allegiance to the organization, their own interests and what is right for you.

A mentor is necessarily senior to you, not a peer or somebody of similar profile, but somebody who is distinctly ahead of you in the career curve.

A mentor is necessarily someone who knows you well and hence does not give generic career advice, but gives advice based on a good understanding of you.

8. Long Stints at One Company and the Decision to Quit

Normally, when you are in a job, your experience algorithm is being built based on that role—one can call it the linear curve of building experience. But when the learning is not just limited to what you are doing at that point of time, when you are learning and building the experience algorithm from all that you have done in the past in that company, the algorithm-building becomes a non-linear, exponential curve

A single poor decision on when to quit can have a very high impact on your long-term career success.

At any given point of time, when you are in a job, you are learning from that job and your experience algorithm is being built based on the job/role you are doing. What happens when you have a long stint in one organization is that after a point of time, you are learning not just from the role/job that you are currently doing but from all the previous roles that you did in that organization

The two common ‘quit’ mistakes I have seen are getting tempted by an external opportunity and quitting without having a fundamental reason to leave and confusing short-term negative factors in your current organization with fundamental, long-term reasons to quit. In most such cases, people make the decision first and then create the reasons for the justification/rationalization of the decision. Career change decisions like quitting your current company are among the most important decisions you will make. You must not fall into a trap of poor decision-making—making decisions first and then finding the reasons to justify them. You must objectively evaluate the reasons first and then come to the decision.

If you want to quit, then you have to have the right reasons to quit, not reasons to join elsewhere. To give an analogy, one must have strong supply-side reasons to quit, not demand-side reasons of joining elsewhere. And according to me, the default mode is not to quit, it is to stay. There must be credible reasons to quit, rather than the default being to quit and then finding reasons to stay.

I believe there are only two credible reasons that can allow you to take the ‘quit’ decision—learning and fit

I still want to go back to my original premise that the decision to quit must be taken independent of the decision to join, and ideally before the decision to pursue opportunities outside your current organization

9. The Power of Life as a Catalyst

 ‘Work–Life balance’ is a much bandied about term, and often used loosely without adequate rigour. It is a term which, while being neutral in its wording, is often used to connote how work takes away from life and how, to preserve the balance, it is important to work less and have more of a life. This term has almost always been used in a one-dimensional way in which it conveys the impact of work on life. It is seldom used in a more holistic way, which not only covers the impact of work on life but also covers the reverse—the impact of life on work. In my experience, the impact of work on life is much less than the impact of life on work.

10. A ‘Passionate Striving’ Hobby as a Catalyst

By now, you must be wondering, what does all this have to do with striving sports—running, cycling, golf, etc.? That is where this narrative started. I did mention earlier that I saw a pattern of senior people gravitating to such sports and showing remarkable commitment, passion and effort at self-improvement in these sports. And if you remember, the key characteristics of these sports were that these were individual sports, not team-oriented, there is really no clear win-lose and there is a degree of passionate striving required. I tried to find the reason for senior corporate folks gravitating to such sports, and that’s when I found the connection to the pyramid of work motivations.

So to summarize, evaluate your hobby on these two criteria: Is there a degree of striving involved? Does it help meet your achievement need?

Successful senior leaders are those who manage to operate from mastery and purpose despite having an overdeveloped and hungry achievement need. One key way to resolve this paradox is to find alternate avenues to fulfil their achievement need, to find ways of feeding their hungry achievement beast outside work

Unleash the Catalyst Motivations at work is defined by the pyramid comprising achievement, mastery and purpose. The key to succeeding at leadership is to operate at mastery and purpose at work and not be driven only by your need for achievement. To operate at mastery and purpose you have to find a way of meeting your achievement need outside work. A ‘passionate striving’ hobby is the means to that. It is important to be passionate about your hobby as otherwise you would not be able to sustain the striving for a long time.

11. Values as a Catalyst

Most of us have built an implicit understanding, an implicit coding, when it comes to values. Our implicit understanding is to avoid making a mistake on values. Years of said and unsaid aspects of corporate culture have established that implicit coding in most of us—limit the downside, don’t take a risk with values and don’t breach the established code. That is what I seek to change. I seek to change your understanding on values from a coding that says limit the downside to a coding that says leverage the upside. I am a firm believer that exemplary values can be a huge catalyst to success in careers and, indeed, in life. I do need to explain my conviction and the reasons for it, which I have analysed and developed over a fairly long period of time. And that conviction comes from my understanding of the positive impact that superior values have on a person’s leadership potential.

Poor values have a downside, but the fact that good values have an upside is not spoken about enough.

One of the most important aspects of life is our values, which are at the very core of who we are. I find that people usually think of values primarily from the lens of character, i.e., they define the nature and character of a person. But to me, it is more than that. Values not only define who you are and what you do, but if catalysed effectively, can play a significant part in becoming an asset in your success tool kit. In the earlier chapters, we found the key to converting your algorithm and your productivity into catalysts for success. This chapter will help you convert your values into a catalyst for success

A leader who has hundreds and thousands of followers, who all have tremendous belief and conviction in the leader, has much greater leadership than somebody who has fewer followers or who is unable to generate a strong conviction among them. Influence is about the extent of influence the leader has on their followership base. This combination of followership and influence is what, I believe, defines the strength of a person’s leadership

This starting level of leadership is what inherently goes with the position—there is a degree of followership for each position and there is a degree of influence each position has. The more senior the position, the higher is the inherent starting-point followership and influence. The second thing that builds leadership is the content of the leader. What does the leader say about strategies, what is his or her viewpoint on issues, what kind of decisions does he or she make and which causes does he or she make their own and fight for in the context of the business and the organization?

Leadership = (Position + Content) × Values

12. Values, the Catalyst for Leadership Impact

Leadership impact based on superior values allows you to drive transformational change based on strong followership. It is transformational change that is the sign of a legacy-creating leader, and allows you to create long-term success for yourself. Superior values have to be catalysed through an improvement plan. Just living your life every day does not improve your values; you have to work towards improving them. Remember, great success requires you to drive great change, great change requires you to have great leadership impact and to have great leadership impact, you need to have great values. In effect, great success requires the catalyst of great values.

Unleash the Catalyst The bulk of the corporate culture on values is to restrict the occurrence of a breach. I, however, believe there is an upside to superior values for long-term success. For that, it is essential to change the coding of your understanding on values, from one that says limit the downside to one that says leverage the upside. The upside of catalysing values comes from the higher leadership impact that superior values can create. Leadership impact is measured by the followership and influence that you have. Leadership impact as per the VML equation is driven by position and content and, most importantly, values, which have a multiplicative impact on leadership. The values I believed in were the twin Hs, honesty and humility. The key to honesty is to reach the level of pristine honesty, which means you focus on doing right even when others are doing wrong and getting away with it. Humility is about staying grounded through cycles of success and failure, knowing that you alone are not the reason for your success.

13. Bringing It All Together

But do you know why you want to succeed? What is success the means to in your life?

All in all, a deep book, requires you to be at it, at times a little complex and dense - but I think it is worth the effort.