Friday Reflections

Leadership and Mental Toughness

Point to Ponder: Mental toughness is also the perfectly disciplined will and the will, gentlemen, is the character in action. 

Story Line: from the speech of Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi. 

But the most important element in the character make-up of a man who is successful is that of mental toughness, and I might say the most difficult to explain because mental toughness is so many things. For example, it is humility. Simplicity is a form of humility and simplicity is the sign of true greatness. Meekness is a sign of humility, and meekness is a sign of true strength. Mental toughness is spartanism with its qualities of sacrifice and self-denial, also the qualities of dedication and fearlessness and love. Not the love you have for your wife or your wife may have for you. The love I am speaking of is loyalty, which is the greatest of loves. Teamwork, which is a form of love and the love one man, has for another is respecting the dignity of another man. The love I speak of is not detraction. You show me a man who speaks ill of another and I’ll show you a man who is only temporarily successful. Or one who is not charitable. Or one who is not loyal. I’m not advocating that love is the answer to everything, but when I speak about the love which forces everyone to love everyone else. For example, you’ve got to love the white man because he is white or the black man because he is black or the poor man because he is poor, or your enemy because he is your enemy, but rather a love of one human for another human – who just happens to be white or black, rich or poor, enemy or friend, because heart power is your strength, heart-power is the strength of your company, heart-power is the strength of America, and hate-power is the weakness of the world. Mental toughness is also the perfectly disciplined will and the will, gentlemen, is the character in action. The great hope of society has to be character in action and we are never going to create a good society much less a great one until we once more recognize and respect individual excellence. Because if we would create something we must be something, because character is the direct result of doing. Character is the direct result of mental attitude and you cannot copy someone else’s particular character qualifications but must develop your own according to your own particular personality.

Let me say this in closing. When all is said and done – to be successful a man must exert an effective influence upon his brothers and upon his associates and the degree in which he accomplishes this depends upon the personality of the man. The incandescence of which he is capable, The flame of the fire that burns inside him, The magnetism which draws the hearts of other men to him. No man, no matter how great he may be, can long continue to be successful unless he wins the battles because the battle decides all. How you do this, I think it is essential to understand that conquests are won primarily in the hearts of men and once you have won their hearts, they’ll follow you anywhere. Man will respond to this type of leadership in a most remarkable way. Success is based on a spiritual quality; a power to inspire others, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil, sometimes for one’s personal ends, sometimes it can be partially or wholly evil. When it is evil, fortunately, while it may temporarily succeed, it always keeps within itself the seeds of it’s own destruction. The difference between a successful man and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will because the character rather then education is man’s greatest need and man’s greatest safeguard because the character is higher than the intellect. The difference between men is in energy, in the strong will, in a singleness of purpose, and an invincible determination. But the great difference is in sacrifice, in self-denial, in love and loyalty, in fearlessness and in humility, in the pursuit of excellence and in the perfectly disciplined will, because this is not only the difference between men, this is the difference between great and little men.

The entire speech can be found at

http://www.daytonagonisclub.com/vince-lombardi-agonis-speech.html

Reflection: January 1976 was my first exposure to Superbowl championship game. When Pittsburg Steelers were being given the trophy, the announcement said Vince Lombardi trophy. My curiosity led me to the local library to find out who was Vince Lombardi. I discovered that he was not just a coach but a great human being with high ethics and superb moral character. I have admired his leadership and values and learnt a lot from his life. Below is some information about Vince Lombardi. (Source Wikipedia)

Vincent Lombardi is best known as the head coach of the Green Bay Packers during the 1960s, where he led the team to three straight and five total NFL Championships in seven years, in addition to winning the first two Super Bowls at the conclusion of the 1966 and 1967 NFL seasons.

He never had a losing season as a head coach in the NFL, compiling a regular season winning percentage of 72.8% (96–34–6), and 90% (9–1) in the postseason for an overall record of 105 wins, 35 losses, and 6 ties in the NFL. 

Although Lombardi was noted for his gruff demeanor and "iron discipline", he was far ahead of his time in creating a supportive environment for gay players, and he emphatically challenged existing Jim Crow Laws, and provided leadership to break the color barrier in football. He once said that he "... viewed his players as neither black nor white, but Packer green". 

Lombardi is considered by many to be the greatest coach in football history, and he is recognized as one of the greatest coaches and leaders in the history of all American sports. The year after his sudden death from cancer in 1970, he was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and the NFL Super Bowl trophy was named in his honor.  

 

 

How good is your title?

"My job title not only represents the scope of my assignment but most importantly it represents the enormous obligation I have to deliver great value to my stakeholders."
   - Joe Z, my fourth boss, who went to become a very successful and respected executive

 

Storyline:

How good is your title? Well it depends on what you do, as Joe said in the above quote.  What happens when the focus on your title becomes more important than the focus on the value you create?  Consider the following true story:

One Friday afternoon in the late 1970s, we were having a birthday celebration and some cake with our director, "SD". SD asked Ken and I, two recent college graduates, to join him in his office for a chat. He lit a cigar and started telling us different events from his life with every puff of smoke he took. In those days, there were no smoking regulations, and as new hires, we had no choice but to endure a lot of smoke!

He (SD) was 28 years old (puff), had a Ph.D. from a prestigious university by the time he was 24 (puff), he had already become a director at the age of 27 (puff), repeated thrice that he was a director (puff, puff, puff), had a house on the hills (puff, puff) and land in an affluent area ...

Just at that moment, his phone rang. It seemed to be from his boss. As soon as he hung up the phone, he told us "My boss (the General Manager) is calling an emergency meeting. I need to go."

As he was leaving his office door, he looked at us with a smirk and said, "You guys are lucky. You don't have Friday afternoon emergency meetings at your level."

That was the last time we saw SD. On Monday morning, we were summoned to our own emergency meeting by the General Manager and introduced to our new director.

Reflection:  As our meeting with the GM ended and we were leaving the room, Ken and I had learned one of the most important lessons at an early stage of our career: your title is as good as one phone call from the boss.  What matters is the value you deliver to stakeholders.

Breaking a Rookie into the Game. Promoting an Employee to the Next Level.

Point to Ponder: In business or in sports, people are hired based on their skills. The day of reckoning is when a person is asked to perform in situations where the game is on the line with thousands of people screaming and loud music playing in the background.

Story Line: Most organizations like corporations, sports teams, studios, normally go through a rigorous screening process to select “the right” candidate for a job.

But what determines the success of an employee and/or the team going forward? There is a dual responsibility here; on the employee and much more on the manager. Assessing when to break/introduce a person in different situations is an extremely important aspect of coaching and managing.

In the early 90s, a major league baseball team needed to win the final game of the season to get into the playoffs.

For the most crucial game of the season, the manager had two reliable veterans available to pitch but he decided to go with a very promising, hard throwing rookie pitcher.

He was known for being people’s manager and possibly envisioned headline stories written about the boldness and the genius of him, and the guts of the rookie. But the experienced fans who had watched the rookie’s performance during the regular season were concerned that even though he was impressive and talented, he had not been tested in any high pressure situations during the regular season.

For those who watched the game, the rest is history. With a few hits from the opponents, the rookie crumbled. The opponents piled up a huge lead against the rookie pitcher by the third inning and the team never recovered and lost.

The most promising rookie of the year could not recover from the emotional shock and left baseball. His attempt to return a few years later was not successful.

With that decision on that fateful day, the manager did disservice to the team and ruined the career of a very promising young man.

Reflection:

I have seen such things happen several times in my career and at every level of the organization. Putting bright employees in charge of managing projects without training or coaching about people management skills and emotional readiness, asking very promising employee to present in front of a very hostile senior management without understanding his emotional maturity and preparing him for the audience, promoting good employees to the next level without necessary political savviness and emotional maturity.

I have also seen cases on the other side where young rookie employees with great potential, with good coaching and mentoring, have hit home run (did extremely well) in the big league (complex projects, interactions with senior management) in their first at bat.

This is an important lesson for managers and leaders in any field. Before promoting a person or assigning him/her to manage crucial tasks in a high pressure environment (Big League), asses if the person is emotionally/mentally ready to handle that level of challenges. If not, spend more time in coaching and preparation.

If you want to go fast, go alone, If you want to go far, go with others.

 

Point to Ponder: The relationships of heart stay much longer than the work relationships. – Pravin R Shah

August 5th is 35th anniversary of Friday Stories during evening car rides with our children. It is also 15th anniversary on internet,

Story Line: “At (company name) you become irrelevant as soon as you resign and you are forgotten soon after you are gone. It’s no longer the company you knew from the last time you were here” advised the senior person who was assigned as my buddy for smooth integration into the company. Soon after I got a dose of it when I approached a factory manager asking politely if he had a minute to talk. “Only if you have something useful to say” was the reply and he walked away.

I was a little disturbed but not discouraged. We spend more 11 to 12 hours (in some industries a lot more) in work related things during the day, and discounting sleep and other necessities, we are lucky to have two to three hours of family time. That means the time we spend with people at work is more than 5X times what we spend with our loved ones at home. Throughout my career, my associates at work have been my family there. I decided not to approach it any differently in this changed environment.

And for the next eighteen years, our global group spanning many countries and cultures worked as a team, as a well functional family, and accomplished some phenomenal results as measured and acknowledged by the Real Customers. A little more than four years ago, I said my final goodbye to the industry. However the relationships with many people I worked with have stayed strong and daily notes and many visits have continued.

The advice I got my father when I was 12 years old has worked in career and life “ Most important business relations are personal ones.”

Reflection:

Recently my wife and I visited Oregon and met some of my old colleagues there. One has retired, one has moved on to other company and others are still at the original company.

Here are a few memories of five days we spent. (Using a few lines of Barbara Bush speech at Wellesley for narration)

Cherish your human connections, your relationships with family and friends.

For several years you’ve had impressed upon you the importance to your career of dedication & hard work, and of course that’s true.

But as important as your obligations as a doctor, a lawyer, a business leader will be, you are a human being first and those human connections with spouses, with children, with friends are the most important investment you will ever make.

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, winning one more verdict, or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a child, a friend or a parent.

Friends never say "Good Bye"  They simply say "See you again."

 

 

Every Life Tells a Story

As we end the 34th year of Friday Reflection and 14th year on internet.

Points to Ponder: Childhood Memories

I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?  - Quote from the movie "Stand By Me" by Stephen King

 

My dad taught me from my youngest childhood memories through these connections with Aboriginal and tribal people that you must always protect people's sacred status, regardless of the past. - Steve Irwin

Reflection: by Analisa  (written in the year 2007)

Friday Reflections began when I was a little girl growing up in the heart of Silicon Valley. Every Friday, after dinner; my father, mother, brother and I would pile into our beat up, light yellow, 1983 Volvo to go for our weekly rides. During these rides, which would last about an hour, my father would regale us with all sorts of intriguing stories. Always, there was a little touch of humor, but there was also something a little more: a lesson to be learned. The stories were almost always from his childhood or his current life in the high tech world. My father told these stories in such a casual way that my brother and I never felt like we were in school being lectured; we just enjoyed listening to stories.

These drives continued for years and years. No matter how long my father had worked through the week, he always had enough energy to take us out on those magical Friday night rides. My father is a great storyteller. Even to this day, he can tell a story with people so intrigued from beginning to end. We loved those stories and thought he was a fun dad.

Time passed till my brother and I reached our teenage years. The time we spent at home grew less; and the ability to get all four of us together on a Friday night, even any night, was nearly impossible. Eventually, my brother and I left for college and the stories stopped completely. We had started our own journeys into the world.

One Friday night, before I headed out the door with some friends, I logged into my email account. An email awaited in my inbox. It read: Friday Reflections. It was from my father. I opened it up; and there was one of his stories told in an email, just as if I were a little girl again sitting in the backseat of a 1983 light yellow Volvo listening intently to her dad.

By 2004, Friday Reflections was being distributed to hundreds of friends over the world. In 2007, my brother Rajiv, our friend Neil, and I embarked on making these stories available to others through World Wide Web and The Book.

We only hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as my brother, I and many friends have through the years. 

Story Line by Anand: On a few occasions I have been asked how I have so many stories to share. Once two colleagues asked that very same thing. Interestingly in a half an hour conversation with them, they had shared a few stories of their own that could be Friday Reflection entries of their own. I pointed this idea out to them. I enjoy reflecting after a satisfactory encounter with any person, place or new learning experience. Almost every day I get a new story from meeting people, reading or witnessing something or with a new experience. My greatest joy is in being able to recall these experience and share them with others.  Every life has a story. Don’t be afraid to share! Because as I have quoted many times before, “Things that are given away are never lost.”

 

 

 

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.

 

POINT TO PONDER: "Why was Solomon recognized as the wisest man in the world? Because he knew more stories (proverbs) than anyone else. Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories." - Alan Kay, at Walt Disney.

 

REFLECTION: It was a late night in early November 2007 in Ireland. I had just arrived at the Maynooth station from Dublin. After a long wait, I finally got a taxi. During travel to my hotel, I noticed that the taxi driver had a long last name that ended in Coelho, his first name was Luis. So I asked Luis if he had any connection with the well-known author Paulo Coelho. He told me that the only connection was that he had read all of Paulo’s books. Luis was very well-read person and sparked conversations between us that lasted for a half an hour after we reached my hotel; us still talking in his taxi and him ignoring many calls for the service. On my last day in Dublin, Luis came to the hotel and gave me the book, "The Heart or the Enlightened" by Anthony De Mello.

 

Anthony De Mello? The first time I had heard about him was only two weeks prior when I was in Costa Rica. I was at the hotel desk, inquiring about the tour to Arenal Volcano. Lee, a retiree of the American corporate world and frequent visitor to Costa Rica, happened to overhear my question and offered some tips. That started a conversation which converged to our common interests in books and travel, and him mentioning Anthony De Mello.

 

So here is a some profound wisdom about story telling from “The Heart of The Enlightened” by Anthony De Mello.

 

STORY LINE:  "It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth in which it alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear. So the Spiritual Teachers of humanity created a device to circumvent the opposition of their listeners: the story.

 

They knew that the most entrancing words a language holds are 'Once upon a time...,' that it is common to oppose a truth but impossible to resist a story. Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata, says that if you listen carefully to a story you will never be the same again. That is because the story will worm its way into your heart and break down the barriers to the divine.

 

You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story."

 

"Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today." -Robert McKee

 

 

Independence Week Thoughts

Reflections: Your Own.....

Street Art

Point to Ponder: A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

Glasgow High Street Mural: Artist Smug (Sam Bates)

Story Line: Following Murals are from the Street of Reykjavik

Artist Guido Van Helten

Artist: Sara Riel

Artist Name: I am still Searching 

Reflection: During recent visit to Glasgow and Reykjavik, we witnessed beautiful murals on the side of buildings. It was refreshing to know that the local government in those places encourages artists to displaycreativity on the streets. Photos above are a few samples of incredible artwork in the streets of those cities.

 

 

If You Want To Be Happy, Be

Point to Ponder: The happiest people....

don't have the best of everything,

they just make the best of everything.

Reflection: It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness- Charles Spurgeon  

One Person's Trash Is Another's Treasure

One Person's Trash

Reach out and Touch Someone: Most Important Business Relations are personal ones.

Point to Ponder: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant that I could hardly stand him around. When I turned twenty one, I was amazed how much the old man had learned in seven years.” - Mark Twain   

Story Line: In the United States of America, upcoming Sunday is celebrated as Father’s Day. Many people have fond memories of their Father or a Fatherly figure or a Mentor in their lives. I would like to share one of mine.

When I was in high school, I noticed that my father spent a lot of time on phone talking and socializing with many people. I used to wonder, “This man has it easy. I have to go to school every day and then sweat over the homework and exams while this old man is having fun talking to people all day.”

Many years later, when I was working for a company in Arizona, my father visited my family. One day, my long contained curiosity prevailed and I asked, “How were you so successful literally doing nothing except talking to people; while people like me had to suffer through the years of schooling and now have to sweat every day to earn a productive living?” I wanted to know the secret of his success.

He pointed his first finger and said that the secret was right in the power of that finger. He used that finger to regularly keep in touch with people, either through dialing on phones or writing notes. Those people were not only his current business associates but also the friends from school and college days and people he met in various places (conferences, airports, trains, and previous business ventures).

He did not seem to know the modern day Network Theory terminology or the buzz words like Networking, but what he explained further as advantages of Human Relations falls right into the realms of those two areas.

Because of knowing a lot about people, he was able to quickly connect/help people (as well as get connected himself) who needed certain services with the ones who could provide those services. He used to call this his efficient Information Storage and Retrieval database. In Networking Theory terms, he acted as a Router (or others acted for his needs) and connected various Servers (people who had certain products and services) to workstations (People who needed those services). He felt that people spend a lot of time (Productivity Loss) in searching for right services or getting right customers.

Having good relationships not only saved a lot of search time but also saved relationship building (qualification) time. When you have maintained relationships with people, when you need to talk to them you don’t have to wait, sometimes for a long time, to get on their calendars. Since the other person knows you and your track record, credibility/goodwill is already established. In such cases, the matters are resolved with a quick phone call or a hallway chat.

He believed that when you keep in contact with many people, you are constantly aware of what is going on in this world; know opportunities for your talent and also about the opportunities to enhance your skills. In his opinion, this builds up a lot of confidence.

When you share your problems or dilemmas with others, you may find out that you are not the only one. They may have been through such issues and learning curves themselves. It is a great stress reliever when one does not feel isolated.

His concluding words were “The most important business relations are personal ones. Use the power of your finger to keep in touch on a daily basis. It is people who make things happen, not the machines.”

Reflection: Looking back, I appreciate how valuable this advice has been in enjoying my work, accomplishing many good things and building lifelong relationships. His other related advice has been equally valuable as well “Being able to work with people is one of the most important things in work and in life.” *

In late 80s one phone company came out with an advertisement “Reach out and touch someone. “Most important business relationships are personal ones.” Sounded familiar to me. I had heard that before. 

* Many past FR have covered real life stories on this subject and there will be many more in the future reflections.