Leading

My Inspiration wall

/ svik88 / 2 Comments

A few weeks ago I bought this wall Decal and I’ve put it up in my bedroom – to be the first thing I see when I wake up. Soon after I started adding post-its to just note some thoughts through the days. It’s been quite fun to go back and read the wall.

On the top I’ve added the 4 L’s – Love, Laugh, Learn, Live it loud. I am looking for my 5th L – perhaps a Large Biryani. 🙂

Here are some of the notes on the post -its:

  • Words must be from the heart not from the mouth
  • Secrets and lies often have underlying unhappiness
  • Err on the side of warmth. Warmth over competence
  • Consciousness about actions: Perhaps the best way to practice deliberate practice. Be conscious of inputs and then observe the output.
  • Be honest, Be vulnerable, Be silly, Be loving, Feel loved
  • Going to give up? Not going to work? Will you regret this a week from now?
  • It’s better to shit your pants than die of of constipation. Don’t be afraid.
  • It’s funny how people put away urges – the very thing that makes life worth living. Without extreme emotions life is but a mediocre ride through the uninteresting.
  • Truly care for every person who comes your way. People should leave a conversation feeling loved. There lies a great power to help each person achieve their dreams.
  • Jump in and enjoy the ride
  • Best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. What did you plant today?
  • When something goes wrong in your life, just yell “Plot twist” and move on.
  • The dichotomy between idealism and realism – Idealism only works when you have the latter.
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Delegation & Micromanagement

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Micromanagers can be painful. Previously I had only thought about micromanagement as a disease and suggested ways to get around it. I thought of autonomy was the way to go – empower people to do their work.

This matrix puts things in a slightly different light. Autonomy happens when you are working with a High Skill + High Will person. In other case you need to manage differently. My big mistake was to expect and to provide autonomy on Day 1. I’d provide some support wheels but it definitely centred around autonomy. Often though, this autonomy gave the person some high initial motivation & when things went sour they move into a very low will quadrant(“I cant do anything right”). This meant that micromanagement would start & we’ll have to build upwards from there.

Useful to realize that micromanagement has its place – perhaps on route to autonomy.

Preventing micro management 

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Easiest way I think is to just so much to do that micro management is impossible.

If you are the micro manager- give yourself more work when you find yourself intruding too much. Or go to the gym!

If you are the managed- ask your questions or point out other things that you were not able to do 🙂

What’s your job? 

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I’ve been interacting with a lot of new joiners and I realize that we do hiring fairly wrong.

The job is sold as the thing to do and the company as the place to be. People show up and find they were sold a heaven that doesn’t exist. The bad thing is this means the new employee hates the company within the first few weeks. I like how zappos pays employees to quit in the first couple of months. That might work.

When there are new joiners, the team doesn’t always have a fixed onboarding plan. The new joiner feels lost for a while and this gives the impression that the team doesn’t care. Should human resources check in with all new joiners after 3 months?

Finally, I think it’s important to not just tell the new joiner what their job is, but also tell them why they were hired. Why did we put in effort and take the risk on you? I think this will give a better foundation to a hopefully – very long relationship.