42. More on Seven Habits

Dear All,

Thank you for coming back today.

In my last post I was ruminating about a few books I read and I mentioned Stephen Covey's book "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". I first read it when I was a school kid and found it to be a really well written and entertaining book. Really liked it but like the proverbial cock and the diamond, at that point since I could not eat (digest) it, the habits really did not 'click' with me. I hardly realized what a prized possession it was and consequently it stayed in a dusty corner of my house for number of years. Incidentally due to various reasons I also cultivated two bad habits that have been my bane till date – laziness and procrastination. There was a period of time when I used to be actually happy when someone called me lazy – but now, I really digress.

Fortunately for me in recent years I came into contact with several people (including my better half) who are tremendously hard-working. Interacting with these people I could realize the value and premium that is placed (in the work place at least) on developing qualities like perseverance, timeliness, consistency … Obviously there was an urgent need for introspection and change.

Books are good friends to have around you. They give you advice (some times good, sometimes bad) and they give it to you when you want it. If you don't feel like hearing the advice, they don't nag you. And if you don't like or take the advice they don't take it personally – they will still advice you with the same patience the next time you turn to them. So in my present predicament I turned to many books. And finally came around in a full circle to The Seven Habits …

Simply put, the book puts the context of three levels ("Dependence" – "Independence" – "Inter-dependence'). An excellent diagram is available here and this link has a very good and comprehensive summary of the message – so I will not reinvent the wheel. The essence of the book is its focus on the "character-ethic" which postulates that success is attributed to underlying characteristics (integrity, hard work, patience, …) and not merely personality traits (which may be cosmetic). The take-home for me was that "victory over self is essential before any other (public or private) victory". Indeed victory over self is by itself a worthwhile desire and goal even if nothing else is ahead of it.

So the re-reading this time was good - better than the first attempt. Yet, the thought at the back of the mind was (rather, is) that unless one has really understood, assimilated and inculcated the first three habits, there is no real need to just read beyond. This is nothing short of cleaning the Augean stables. Each of the first three habits ("Being proactive", "Defining your goals and directions", "Managing your timeliness") are giant leaps by themselves. And to reach anywhere near developing these habits will take years if not lifetimes.

I have only just started on the journey and can only hope that it is led to its logical conclusion. Perhaps in time my basic nature will take over (although I pray with all my heart against it) and lead me somewhere else again. Perhaps in future posts, I may be able to report on any progress (or symptoms of progress). Anyways introspecting on Habit 2 (Decide on your end goals) brought out some really interesting thoughts.

Without really explaining those thoughts let me just recall one story I had read about Swami Vivekananda and his Guru Sri Ramkrishna Pamahansa. Apparently Swami Vivekananda (then Narendranatha Dutta) was faced with severe financial difficulties and went to his Guru for guidance. His Guru asked him to go to the Mother's temple and ask for money, success, job, whatever he wanted. He promised that the Mother is very kind hearted and will agree to give whatever Narendra asks for. Apparently Narendra went thrice to the temple and returned. Each time he confessed to the Guru that he was not able to ask for money, job or any material desire. When asked why he replied that if the Mother is large hearted enough to give anything, how can we ask for something so trivial as money and job?

Forgive me readers, if I have got any details in that story wrong. The point is to leave you with some food for thought and hope that you come back later for some more. Have a good day …

Cheers

Gotya

41. Some readings and some musings

Dear All,

I wrote earlier about reading some interesting books across last year. Some thoughts collected from those readings ...

Perhaps, it all started when I got an article about "10X Change" and strategic inflection points. Led me to the first book "Only the Paranoid Survive" by Andy Grove of Intel. An excellent book about strategy, being aware of change potential and being prepared to deal with sudden change - even leverage it to get ahead of the competition. Was fun reading it. Absolutely recommended. Particularly in these times. But as I read it I was also reminded of another book read long ago - "Who Moved my Cheese". Lot of parallels in the stories although the later is about a few hard-working mice and managing changes in personal and work areas. But you get the idea.

Incidentally discussing about these two books with my good friend Atyab pointed me to another book, this time about operationalizing strategy - making sure we end up doing what we are planning. Not just dream about it. This was a high calorie food for thought "Execution- The Discipline of Getting Things Done" (Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan). But to be honest I did not read this completely. I could not. The book is really targeted at very senior management professionals. So it was like drinking directly from the Ganges - I was happy to fill in a small glass and sip from it. :-) The book is about lot of things - setting goals, establishing appropriate processes, selecting the right people to run these processes, leading them in the right way. Way to go for great CEOs I guess. But it underscored one very important thing for me.

Unless one is having the discipline to control oneself, there is not much point in thinking about leadership and strategies and execution. How can one 'select', 'review', 'lead' other people unless one knows, reviews and repairs one's own faults first? One does not need to lead millions of people like a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King (or a Mel Gibson in Braveheart) - it is very much sufficient (and necessary of course) to lead oneself to the light first. The one-eyed man leading the blind is only for the tales.

So some introspection brought me back to a book I had picked up when in school and read but not yet implemented. Perhaps not even understood completely yet. "Seven Habits ..." by Stephen Covey. An amazingly simple, yet truly inspiring book. I read it again - this time seeking for guidance. Again I could get no further than first three or four chapters. Let me explain why ... but in the next post ...

It will give me some breather and just so you guys will wait here for me ;-)

Cheers

Gotya

40. some reading and some introspection

Dear All

Haven't posted much in the last few months - perhaps only 2 or 3 posts in all of last year. Updated my Teletechgyan after a gap of 2 years. But all that (or most of it at least) was not due to laziness.



Part of it was of course, due to my introduction to Twitter. Twitter is the lazy man's blog - microblog to be precise. To a large extent devoid of any purpose - even aimless if I may say so - Tweeting still has its fun and is duly addictive. I believe it reflects the restless nature of the human mind. Just as it is possible for the mind to jump from one thought to another - one moment to the next - so also Twitter allows the users to tweet totally unrelated and yet connected stream of messages one after another. Just as thoughts may be entirely random and yet connected, Twitter's public timeline can be full of random thoughts, news, perspectives from all across the world - some entirely worthless while others totally invaluable. The only flaw is that it also sort of trains your mind to not collect all these thoughts and put them together. One would rather dump out those thoughts like a kid shouting at the mountains to hear his own echo than take the efforts to hear his own voice and refine it in the hope of contributing something worthwhile to posterity.



And yet, that is not the topic of today's post. While Twitter seems to be one of the reasons for not taking the efforts to blog, that was not the only reason. One of the other things were a lot of self-doubts or at least questions about the usefulness of it all. Why think aloud - for that is what this is really about - in the (almost conceited) belief that these thoughts really mean something to anyone at all? Yes there are some loyal readers who visit this blog, email me about it and also take the efforts to comment. But to be honest the visitors are my friends who visit and comment because of their love for me more than perhaps any value that I am adding to them. Of course that is a good a reason (in fact better than) as any other reason. Just to thank and appreciate that love and friendship I should take the efforts to blog. (And I will). And yet, the thoughts are still about what is the value that I can create for them? That question, alas, is still not answered.



I know this is becoming some form of a theatrical monologue but honestly, that is not where I started off with the introspection bit. Anyways since the question is now about what value I can contribute and since I honestly cannot think of something original to speak (and can't get the wisdom to be silent either), perhaps I can borrow from some interesting reading I have been up to in the last few months. But that will surely have to wait for another post, another day. Keep watching this space.

Cheers
Gotya