DON’T PUNISH THE MESSENGER

I had the opportunity to attend one of the programmes of Mr.Marshall Goldsmith, the author of the popular book “What got you here, won’t get you there”.  This book talks about how people who have achieved great level of success become complacent at a point of time, when they become closed to feedback. Having tasted continued success over a considerable period of time, they tend to believe that they have mastered their art and can never go wrong. This is where they get into trouble.   They start to get the feeling that of “I Know it all” and this could cause huge damage to them.  So, he advised that no matter what height you reach in life, be genuinely interested in getting feedback, because feedback is the best and most economical mechanism available to periodically evaluate ourselves and improve upon our work.

Marshall doesn’t stop there. He takes it to the next level and talks about something called FEED FORWARD. While feedback is about looking back at the past and finding out what went right and what went wrong, Feed forward is about asking questions to people, even before an event occurs. It is continuous evaluation of yourself and your work. The feed forward technique is done by following these 8 steps.  Ask – Listen – Think – Thank - Respond -  Involve – Change - Follow up. 

For example: You just randomly go and ask someone in your family, your office or team, “Hi, what do you think I need to improve upon? How do you think, I am progressing in business? Do you foresee or anticipate a problem in my way of doing things? When you ask such proactive questions, there is a possibility of people opening up to you, with their thoughts and opinions and here is where the most challenging part lies. You should be absolutely open to hear what they say, with genuine interest rather than brushing away their comments as inappropriate or that is not for me.

Here is where he introduced a new terminology, which caught my attention. He said “Don’t punish the messenger”. What he meant by this was that when someone makes a negative comment or a criticism, don’t get angry with them, instead be grateful and thank them, because they are the ones who dare to pin point your flaws. By getting into a justification mode or getting defensive, you are not safeguarding yourself rather you are becoming susceptible to impending danger. 

A simple yet powerful example, he shared to describe it, was this: Let us assume you are driving the car with your wife by your side and she keeps telling you watch your speed, it may be irritating to you, but ultimately she is only trying to help you and therefore you need to understand the genuine intention, rather than getting angry. If you brush off, what she says by reciprocating with statements like, “Mind your business, I know what I am doing; “Don’t teach me driving, I am a better driver than you” you are only losing out on a valid input. Moreover, this type of attitude will make people stop pointing out flaws to you, as they don’t want to be shouted back. Instead if you say, “Oh, I am sorry. Thank you for pointing out. I was not aware. I shall slower the speed”, then you are showing them that you genuinely care for their opinion. By doing so you make them feel that you value their opinion and they would be willing to point out your mistakes, without fear of being punished.

Many of us have this tendency to “punish the messenger” because we think they don’t deserve to comment upon what we are doing. These messengers could come in the form of a friend, a spouse, parent, our children, a colleague or even a  floor level employee. No matter who says it, if we always have an eye to see and understand the other person’s point of view, we would gain a new perspective which would be of immense help to us.

Of course, it doesn’t sound pleasant to listen to critical comments. But if we start to look at it as constructive criticism, we would be better prepared to face the challenges, rather than being comfortable in a world of praise and then finally waking up to a day of shock. So let us be open to feedback and make sure that we don’t punish the messenger, because by punishing them we are putting ourselves in a vulnerable position.

Happy Reading,

D. Senthil Kannan

Article Dated May 2015

STOP ASSUMING, START CLARIFYING

I would like to share an interesting experience that happened recently. Few days back, I was in Chennai and I had to do some local travel. On having seen many newspaper ads and having heard from friends about Ola cab services, I thought I would give it a try. So, I downloaded the app from the Google Play store and installed it on my mobile. As I opened the app, I found it to be a quick and easy way to book a cab. For the sake of those who have not used this app, let me briefly explain how it works. Once we download the app and open it, the app asks for some basic information about ourselves, which we require to fill in, in order to sign up. Once we are done with it, we need to make sure that the GPS is kept on, in our mobile. When we open the app, we will find two icons with options: “Drive Now” or “Drive later”. If we choose drive now, the message request gets delivered to Ola team and Ola tracks our exact location based on GPS. It then searches for all the Ola cabs near our location. Once it identifies them, it sends out the request to all those cab drivers and whichever driver accepts the request is assigned to pick up the passenger. The driver is sent a SMS of the passenger name along with his exact GPS location. So, the vehicle automatically comes to the customer, wherever he is. The passenger is also sent a SMS with the driver name and car Number.

Using this facility, I too made a request and within 3 to 5 minutes a cab arrived. As I was new to Ola, I was not sure of how it works. I did not check my SMS too. I was just amazed to see an Ola cab approaching me, within few minutes of sending a request. I just got into the cab and said Adayar. The car started moving towards the destination. After few minutes of travel, I got a bit curious to know how this system works. So, I initiated a chat with the cab driver, asking how Ola is doing and how is it they are able to reach the customer so quickly.

So he started explaining the process and in the process he said, “just like you would have received a SMS from Ola giving the driver name and car number”. It was here, I got a bit puzzled. I told him, I did not receive any such SMS. He said, that I should have received it. So immediately, I picked up my phone and checked to find that it was there. So I just read out the message loud which had the car number and driver name. The driver was shocked. He said that was not his name and that was not his car number. It was then he figured out, that he has made a wrong pick up and blamed me for not checking out his name, before boarding the car. I from my point of argument said, “I am new to Ola and I don’t know how it works. It is you who should have verified the customer name, before I boarded the vehicle.” After all the finger pointing, I asked him to proceed to my destination. He said that it was possible, as the trip is monitored by the Ola team and he has to drop me back at my pick up point and pick up the right customer. I had only two options. Either I get down right there and board a different vehicle or go back to the point of pick up, where the right cab assigned to me, would be waiting. I chose the latter and so he drove me back to my starting point which was around 3 kms. He then dropped me back, where luckily the car assigned to me was waiting.

It was altogether a funny episode, but it also made me reflect on my flaw of assuming, without seeking clarity. A saying goes, the word ASSUME itself means, don’t make an ‘ASS’ of ‘U’ and ‘ME’. I realized I had just done that, by making one such wrong assumption.

Many times in life, we make some quick assumptions like this and end up in trouble. No doubt we are too busy and we act in a hurried manner, but that should not disturb us being sharp in our day to day activities. We need to pay attention to details.  We need to be more effective in communicating and make sure that the other person has clearly understood what we have told them. Does it not happen, that many a times, we give some instructions to our subordinate, colleague or family member, assuming that they have understood, but end up seeing that they have totally misunderstood and done something totally different.  Later we blame them for doing it wrong.  If we take the little extra effort to clarify our communication, we can avoid ending up in such a messy situation.

Let us stop assuming and start clarifying.

Happy Reading,

D. Senthil Kannan

Article Dated Apr 2015

What is your freedom figure?

I attended a weekend seminar called Achievers Conference, few months back at Bangalore where a number of international authors and speakers, had come and gave talks on the topics of their area of expertise. Notably, most of the topics were related to help participants create a passive income.

For the sake of clarity, let me explain the difference between Active income and Passive income.

Active income is something, whereinyour physical presence, time andskill is needed to create the income. For a job goer it may be salary, for a professional it may be his daily revenue through service and for a small shop keeper it may be his daily earnings through sales.In all the above scenarios the need for the person to be physically present become inevitable in order for the earning to be made.

Now let us say, due to some unforeseen happenings like a serious illness or an accident, the person is not able to go for work for few days together, it affects his earnings. For example, a Corporate employee may face loss of pay, a professional like a doctor or lawyer will not be able to render his service, which would translate to loss of revenue and for a small shop owner he may have to keep the shop closed, till he is back to normal. In all these cases, time loss equates to money loss.

Passive income on the other hand is the income generated, even without you needing to be physically present.Some examples of passive income is interest on deposits from banks, dividend on investment from companies, rental income from house property or commercial property, royalty income from sale of books, MLM,etc. In all these cases, even if the person is not able to be physically present for a substantial period of time, his income will continue to flow in from the respective sources.

Now coming back to the seminar, the seminar I attended had speakers, who talked about earning passive income through investing in house properties, writing book, creating an online membership site, selling e-books, investing in the equity market and commodity market.This programme attracted over 2000 people and it was clearly evident that there is a growing interest from people on creating a passive income. Taking into consideration the inflationary trends, the increasing living cost and in order to secure for a happy retirement, it is essential to think about creating a passive income. Moreover, creating a passive income also helps the family to be financially secure, in the event of death of the bread earning member of the family.

In this context, one of the speaker, talked about ascertaining something called a “Freedom figure”. He said everyone should identify his freedom figure and start working towards creating it. What he meant by freedom figure is the amount of money a person needs to have, in order to live the lifestyle he desires, even without working. Let us say, you need Rs. 1 lakh per month to live the life you desire, it means you have to create an investment portfolio, which will assure that the individual will earn a lakh of Rupees every month. That amount of investment is called the “Freedom figure”. Sounds easy, isn’t it? But if you look at it more deeply, you will understandit is a very complicated question. This is because, thefreedom figure will differ from time to time. What we may think is a good amount of money today, may look like too small an amount in a few years from now. It is because, weare never content with how much ever we earn. There are so many ways to spend money, when it comes to indulging in luxury and we will always end of comparing our lifestyle, with that of others. In this way, we can never be free. We will just end up in a vicious circle.

I think, that this freedom figure is very much of an illusion. The real freedom figure, lies in our contentment. When you know that you can adopt yourself to any lifestyle based on the family’s financial situation or the external economic environment, you have found true freedom.

It is true, that we need to build a sufficient investment base, to take care of our financial security. But that does not mean, we should cease to work or get lazy. Real freedom is in the ability to try out new things, stay innovative, follow our passion, take risks and be willing to face the consequences of our own choice.

Happy Reading,

D. Senthil Kannan

Article Dated Mar 2015

ARE YOU A VICTIM OF INFORMATION OVERLOAD???

Most of us start the day, with a plan or checklist to be accomplished by the end of the day. Inspite of all this preparation, is it not common that many of us end up doing something totally different from what we planned to do for that day?  Have you ever wondered, why?. Yes, you know the answer. It is because we get lost in a world of distractions owing to the new age problem called “information overload”.

With the amount of information coming in from all quarters of life, such as Phone calls, Text messages, Email, Snailmail, Internet, Instant Messengers like Whatsapp and Telegram, Notifications and alerts from social networking sites like Facebook and Linked In,  Newspaper, Magazines, Trade Journals, Reports, so on and so forth we seem to lose focus of what is important and end up doing things which are not important.

All the information we receive on a daily basis or not useful and we need to become wise enough to differentiate the necessary from the unnecessary. Though it is easy to say this, it is truly difficult to differentiate the important from the unimportant.

Here is where, Stephen Covey’s principle of “First things First” comes as an obvious answer. We need to classify each information we receive in any one of the 4 categories and act accordingly

·        Urgent /Important – Act immediately.

·        Not Urgent / Important – Mark it as important and make sure you follow up.

·        Urgent/ Not Important – Reply quickly and keep it short.

·        Not Urgent/ Not Important – Delete it.

Always remember: the choice of where to focus your efforts is yours to make. Once you gain this clarity, you will be able to understand and prioritize what information and communications are absolutely necessary and develop the habit of ignoring all non-essential information. You'll achieve a newfound sense of balance derived from focus.

Some tips that I think will help you to be in control these distractions

·        Allotting specific time slots to check Whatsapp or Facebook, say 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening.

·        Disable or mute notification in Facebook and Whatsapp.

·        Enabling DND Service ( Do Not Disturb ) service in mobile phone.

·        Saying NOT INTERESTED firmly to marketing calls and cutting short the call.

·        Having a ready to use SMS template, which says “Not able to attend your call at the moment. Shall call you back later”. You can use this template, to reject calls, when you are focused in some important work or in a meeting.

·        Do not give your mobile numbers or email unnecessarily, when filling up any feedback forms, at hotels or shopping malls.

·        If ever you should give your email id,  you can have a separate email id, which you check sparsely,  assigned for this purpose.

·        Create rules in your email, so that mails that come from specific email ids, goes to a separate folder, which you can read later at leisure.

·        Create rules in your email to send to spam or block a few email ids.

·        You can unsubscribe to mails, which you are no longer wish to receive.

There are many more ways, you can regain control of your time. So it is also about forming some new strategies and exercising self-control.

The choice is yours. It's 100% up to you how you choose to handle the 86,400 seconds of every day. If you keep your goals in mind, you'll find yourself making wise decisions. I hope you will!

Happy Reading,

D. Senthil Kannan

Article Dated Feb 2015

A dozen resolutions for this New Year

It has become a fad to say, let your worries last as long as your New Year resolutions, which sarcastically hints that invariably all New Year resolutions are short lived or soon broken. Well, it is quiet true in many cases and it is really disheartening when our New Year resolution end unfulfilled.

If you observe closely at a New Year resolution it is typically about stopping something old or starting something new. It may be like, you want to give up a bad habit, such as drinking, smoking etc from the start of the New Year or it may be something like you wanting to inculcate a new habit from the beginning of the New Year, like doing a daily exercise or sitting to meditate for few minutes every day. Whatever it may be, it all calls for a disciplined effort. When it comes to disciplining ourselves, it goes without saying that we need follow a fixed monotonous routine. Whatever is monotonous soon gets boring. The energy and optimism with which we created the resolution slowly fades away, as days go by and as other new interesting things come up in life, we tend to lose focus. It is here we feel an urge to take a break and as an end result our New Year resolutions get broken. And once we break the resolution, we never gather the courage to start all over again.

Well, I was just wondering of what better way there could be to make our resolutions work and an idea popped up in my mind.  I asked myself, why a New Year resolution should only revolve around starting something new or stopping something old. Why not it be something to do with doing something current, which we like to do, but never find the time to do.

It is quiet common that all of us have a lot of unfulfilled wishes and desires, but for some reason or other we have been putting it off for a later time.  We wait for the right time or right moment to do it and then later end complaining, that we could never find the time.

For example, I have a lot of pending wishes. There are books I wish to read, old movies I have been wanting to watch,places I have been wanting to visit, programmes I have been wanting to attend, skills I have been wanting to develop, friends I have been wanting to spend time with and so many other things. But because I don’t consciously allot a time for it, it never happens. It continues to be a moving target. So, I was looking at this idea of having an assortment of resolutions, which can be accomplished within a year, rather than having just one resolution.

We could probable resolve to do a bouquet of things, rather than just sticking to one BIG resolution.This makes it more easily achievable and it also would give us a satisfaction of having done many thing in the year. For example, it could be something like:

·        4 books, I will read this year

·        2 new skills I will develop this year

·        2 new places, I will see this year

·        2 family vacations, I will take this year

·        One friends reunion I will initiate this year

·        Watch one old movie every month

·        Watch a specific programme on TV every week (either live or recorded)

This is rather easy to achieve, if we take a little conscious effort. Even, if for some reason, we are not able to accomplish all, we will still get to accomplish majority of them, which will make our year more fulfilling.

I am not sure, how brilliant the idea is or how effective it would be, but something I am planning to try out this year. I invite you to join me in this experiment and let us see how we much we have been able to accomplish at the end of the year.

Let this New Year, help us realize not just one but a dozen resolutions and make this New Year 2015, truly beautiful.

Happy Reading,

D. Senthil Kannan

Article Dated Jan 2015

Before and After

One of the common advertising strategies marketers use is the “Before and After” strategy. Probably you would have come across many such advertisements. For example, companies who sell weight loss product such as weight loss supplements, depict the effectiveness of their product by offering testimonies of people who have used it and lost weight. Generally these advertisements portray the photo of an obese person (before using their product) and another photo of the same person who now looks slim (after using their product) . Similar advertisements can also be found for hair growth promoters, pimple removal cream and so on.

So, this “before and after” strategy is something that easily catches the attention of the audience. Now let me refer this to the context of effectiveness of some of the training programmes I attend. Because most of the training programmes, almost adapt the same strategy. The programme promises that at the end of the programme your life will transform to something fantastic, unimaginable, amazing etc.

I keep attending a number of training programmes, periodically as I aspire to be updated with new concepts. Quiet recently, I had the opportunity to attend an event titled “Achievers Conference” which happened in Bangalore.  The conference had an expert panel of speakers, including motivational speakers, subject experts, book authors, trainers and the like. The crowd puller for this event was the author of the bestselling book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, Robert Kiyosaki.  However, in the panel of speakers were also others, who were not as prominent as Robert Kiyosaki, but were experts in their own field.

Their speeches did create an impact among the audience. All the speakers invariably used the same strategy, which I am about to elaborate. They started with their early life of how poor they were or how much of difficult time they had come across and then talked about a defining moment in their life that dramatically changed their life for good, and how their life has been transformed ever since. As they talk about this WOW moment of their life and when the audience are totally enthralled, they gently push in this desire amidst the audience by saying. “You too can achieve this level of success, if you sign up for my upcoming programme, where I will be teaching you the techniques I adopted to achieve this level of success”. With this they end making an announcement of the programme cost and special discounted offer, if they sign up immediately.

These type of programmes that they offer, are generally very highly priced. However, these speakers sound so convincing, that at the end of their speech the audience are literally running to the sign-up counter with their wallets or cheque book, to book a seat.

Well everyone is looking for a breakthrough in their life and it is natural for us to be tempted to believe that the breakthrough in our life is going to come by attending this particular programme.The speakers are also aware of this and that is why their programmes sell like hot cakes.

Well, I am not saying that these programmes don’t work, but it is wise to consider some pointsbefore we enrol for any such programmes.

Firstly, we need to understand that, what works for one may not work for someone else. So, what worked for the speaker may not work for us. It depends upon our level of passion, commitment, availability of time and resources, family support and many other factors, which are needed to make it a reality.

Secondly, in any such programme there are two parts. The first part is the learning part i.e attending the programme and understanding the techniques and the second part is the doing part i.e what we do with what we learnt in the programme. Here is where the glitch is. Quite often, with passage of time and amidst our other priorities, our enthusiasm tends to fades away. Then we just blame that the programme didn’t work, but most often the reality is that, we did not take the extra effort to make the programme work for us.

Thirdly, it all depends upon how much we immerse ourselves in the chosenactivity. We should have fun doing it, otherwise sooner or later, it would become a stress and ultimately, we would give up. So, it is important to find out how well this programme will align with one’s passion. If it aligns, I am sure, they would discover their breakthroughmomentof their life. If not, it is just more time and money wasted.

So, never get carried away by others words or promises. Your world is very different from their world.  Don’t do something, just because everyone else is doing it. Take the time to discover who you really are and what type of work, truly fascinates you and then put your heart and soul into it.  And you are sure to discover true success and happiness.

Happy Reading,

D. Senthil Kannan

Article Dated Dec 2014

My Bali Experience

As you may be aware, PALMS has been periodically organising business tours, coinciding with some important trade fair to select destinations with the idea of helping local businessmen to enhance their business horizonand update them on the latest trends in the trade and industry.

I personally believe a lot of learning, truly happens outside a classroom setting. So no matter how much information we may be able to access on the internet or how much of classroom training we attend, going out and seeing the world with our own eyes, adds a different perspective.

Attending a trade fair is a good way to meet many businessmen of a country, at a single point.  A trade fair serves as an index of the business potential that exists in a particular country. With this in mind, we set out to Indonesia this year, as a team of 13 delegates to visit the Trade Expo Indonesia at Jakarta. What makes our tours special is that we add an element of fun to our tour by thoughtfully including a leisure destination, so that the participants find it as a welcome break from their business routines. So, when it came to Indonesia,the obvious choice was Bali.

I have heard a lot of Bali. I am aware that it is one of the favourite holiday destinations. However, it is only when I visited Bali, I knew why so much tourist flock down here. Bali is truly a beautiful place, with exotic beaches, sea sports, beautiful architecture, magnificent  temples, greenery and orchids, busy shopping streets,  aesthetically designed hotels, cultural parks, entertainment shows , a variety of international cuisine, 1000’s of spa’s, vibrant night life and more.

Indonesia is a cluster of over 17,000 islands and is the 4^th most populous country in the world. It is predominantly a Muslim country, however there is a 3% Hindu population. And surprising this 3% of Hindus seem be concentrated in Bali. In Bali 90% of the population are Hindus.

We had the opportunity to visit the Bali Museum which is set in an old Hindu temple. This place is no more a temple, but a tourist attraction which has become a scenic point of stone architecture where people come to take wedding and portrait photographs.

Later in the evening we went for a cultural show called, “Devdan Show” which depicts the culture of this country by way of dance and music. It was a scintillating performance, which left us awestruck.

We also visited a Tanah Lot temple, which is on a seafront with a mesmerizing view. As I was talking to a street vendor near this temple, I was amazed to see how much respect the local people have for the religion. The rituals from country to country may vary, but the faith they have in the religious practices is immense. The local guide Mr. Pak Sukarsawho accompanied us, was a Hindu and so he was able to share with us a lot about the rituals and practices that they follow. It was indeed interesting to hear that.

In the entire trip, what hit me most was this incident. On our return from Bali, as we went in for the check in at the airport, the way we were greeted by the staffs in the check in counter was unimaginable. The ladiesin the desk followed this ritual. They gotup from their chair, greeted the passenger with a Namaste gesture , received the passport and ticket, sat down to proceed with the check in formality and  again rose up to give the boarding pass and passport and end with a Namaste gesture. This they did for every passenger, tirelessly with a smile on their face. WOW! What an attitude, I told myself. There could be no better way to feel respected and honoured as a guest of this country.

Parallely, some questions sweeped my mind. When people abroad are following this Indian Hindu culture, why is that we in India are hesitant to practice this. Why are we not proud of our culture? Why do we subordinate our culture to western culture? Why is that we have lost the innate sense of belonging to a country with rich traditions? I was just clueless. It was just another learning for me, in my life journey.

With happy memories we returned home. Truly speaking, we did not have enough time to enjoy the beauty of Bali. There is so much to see and experience.  Bali is not just a place to see, but a place to be explored. Bali is an ideal destination for anyone and everyone irrespective of age. Whether it is honeymooners, families, friends, retired people, adventure traveller, sports lovers, businessmen or whosoever, I am sure they would certainly come back more refreshed and young, just like we did!!!

Happy Reading,

D. Senthil Kannan

Article Dated Nov 2014