Friday Reflections

Until You Start Believing In Yourself

POINT TO PONDER

"We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves."

                                                                                                   - Malcom X

STORY LINE

  

 

REFLECTION by Rajiv Shah

It's easy to point the finger. To blame. To make excuses. When it's always someone or something else's fault, then we no longer have to take responsibility for our actions. When we make deflect responsibility or bemoan the world around us - we no longer have to look at ourselves. 

I watch this video whenever I feel things don't go my way. When I want to point the finger and make excuses. Then I realize that the world will always put obstacles and hardships in our path. When we focus on the problems instead of doing everything possible to find a solution, what we are communicating is that deep down we believe that we aren't capable of surmounting those challenges. And that has everything to do with the value we place in ourselves. 

As Rocky tells his son, "Now if you know what your worth, then go out and get what your worth, but you gotta be willing to take the hits. And not pointing fingers - sayin' you ain't where you wanna be because of him, her, or anybody." 

The Good In You

POINT TO PONDER

"Let you look sometimes for the goodness in me, and judge me not."

                                                    - Arthur Miller

 

STORY LINE  *(Reprinted from http://wemustknow.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/how-an-african-tribe-deals-with-crimes/)*

I was recently told of an African tribe that does the most beautiful thing.

When someone does something hurtful and wrong, they take the person to the center of town, and the entire tribe comes and surrounds him. For two days they’ll tell the man every good thing he has ever done.

The tribe believes that every human being comes into the world as GOOD, each of us desiring safety, love, peace, happiness. But sometimes in the pursuit of those things people make mistakes. The community sees misdeeds as a cry for help.

They band together for the sake of their fellow man to hold him up, to reconnect him with his true Nature, to remind him who he really is, until he fully remembers the truth from which he’d temporarily been disconnected: “I AM GOOD”.

 

REFLECTION by Rajiv Shah

This story has been floating around the internet for some time. It landed in my inbox this week. When I first read the story, I questioned whether it was true. Something inside me sounded off, not believing in it. I went to Snopes.com and typed in: "African Tribe Ritual: I Am Good." Ultimately, I came up with nothing confirming or denying the legitimacy of the story. 

Then while sitting in front of my failed Snopes search, it dawned on me - it did not matter if the story was true or not. The whole point was to encourage us to find good and expand our capacity for forgiveness for one another. My resistance to the story was telling and revealed that I didn't believe in the "good" that this tribe (or this story) was seeking to find in our fellow humans. 

Then my mind did another funny thing. It created scenarios to debunk the message even if it might have been true. I reasoned that a murderer in this village would be outcast and sent away if not put to death entirely. It seems ridiculous to think that a murderer or rapist deserves any such forgiving treatment, that there is no "good" in these types of people. So of course this story really deserves no merit...

Then it saddened me that I didn't believe that this type of forgiveness existed. Or rather, I chose not to believe. Because believing in goodness and forgiveness is hard. It requires that you set aside the past. It demands forgiveness for one that did not earn it. It needs you to find the "good" in someone who has done wrong. It makes you vulnerable because you open yourself to being hurt by that person again. And at the core it forces you to chose between love and fear - the products of possibility/hope and our deepest doubt. 

Back to the Pack

POINT TO PONDER

"When we get caught up in the busyness of the world, we lose connection with one another - and ourselves."

                                    - Jack Kornfield

 

STORY LINE by Rajiv Shah

    A couple of years ago, I had started to disengage from my peers and friends. I started to focus on work, spending more and more time in front of the computer and the internet. The more strain I felt, the more I poured myself into my job. And the sense of accomplishment I felt as I completed assignments gave me a temporary reprieve. It drove me to do more. Yet the initial feeling of satisfaction eventually wore off and I felt like I was back where I started - disengaged.

I was mentioning this to a friend one day and he confided that he often felt the same way too. He said that what helped him was, "going back to the pack."  He likened it to tribal times when members of the tribe gathered around a fire to tell stories or perform ceremonies together. They did so because it reconnected them. Today we often get too busy with work and our own lives that we forget to reengage with others outside of work and the internet. The world moves extremely fast and we are often trying to just keep up and survive. Often we forget to engage with the people around us. "Going back to the pack" is a friendly reminder to walk back to the fire, take your seat among your tribe, and spend some time among friends and family.

 

REFLECTION

The Innovation of Loneliness from Shimi Cohen on Vimeo.

 

 

People Don't Just Buy Things - They Buy Expectations About Performance and Service

PARAGRAPH TO PONDER

User experience is not just about products. It needs to be prevalent in all aspects of your enterprise/brand; after sales service, your personal interactions outside and within your organization, how you treat individuals and even simple things like how you answer phone calls. Even seemingly mundane things like how you deal with the audience after you have come down the stage where you gave an exciting speech about “User Experience” has a lot to do with  the user experience.. It needs to be in a person or an organization’s genes (culture).

 

STORY LINE by Anand Shah

    During my recent trip to Asia, I stayed at Mandarin Hotel in Manila, an establishment I have known since my expat days in the early 80s. During my previous stop in Penang, one of my colleagues was curious why I chose to stay at the Mandarin as it is not in “the middle of the action” (near shopping malls, restaurants and malls) as my colleague used to say. 

 

The last time I had been at the Mandarin was in 2008. As soon as I arrived, the guard in the driveway greeted me, “Nice to see you again.” I happened to recognize him too but wondered how he remembered me when he must meet hundreds of people every day. Plus, the last time we met was in 2008 and this most recent visit in 2013. It was a genuine exchange and one that had me walking in feeling pretty good about being back. The staff at the check in counter were new but were extremely courteous. So far so good.

Let me share two of the many great experiences that followed:

 

Later that evening, I went to the downstairs café for dinner. I was surprised to see a long list of North Indian dishes featured. My curiosity prevailed over my initial hesitation and I took the risk of ordering an Indian meal in Manila. The server also seemed to recognize me from my previous stay and I did recognize him too. Noticing that I was enjoying the delicious food - and with me confirming that it was real and authentic - he told me that they had a special Chef flown in from India. He also informed me that occasionally the Chef also cooked South Indian dishes for breakfast. A few minutes later, the Indian chef came to converse with me. It was a special evening. The next morning, I found that the chef had made a special and extremely difficult  South Indian dish for breakfast! WOW! 

It only got better. While having breakfast on the next day, I was having casual conversation with another server about benefits of vegetable juices. Now they had only fruit juices in the breakfast bar but a few minutes later, she brought me the carrot, apple and ginger juice that I was talking about. In the follow up casual conversation about vegetable juices, I mentioned about benefits of cucumber and pineapple juice. Guess what? They did not have cucumbers in their kitchen at that time but later in the day, when I went to the restaurant again, Cucumber Pineapple juice was waiting for me and soon after the man from the juice bar walked to my table to ask if it was OK. My colleague informed me that he had noticed that the original server had gone out and brought cucumber from another restaurant in the hotel or nearby market.

 

I have mentioned only two of the many experiences I have had with the employees of that hotel but service across any job function (room cleaning, servers, cooks, receptionists, managers, spa, front door personnel, restaurants) seemed consistently outstanding in terms of customer experience. There were smiles, genuine care, establishing personal rapport, and going the extra mile for customers. It was not just about the rooms, amenities and food but about the employees that service them.

 

REFLECTION

    As a normal practice, whenever I experience good service or a product, I sent the appreciation note and identify that special person or two. My dilemma this time is how do I begin to tell this story and include everyone that were so amazing to me during my stay when there were so many of them all across. Plus, I had only caught the names of only seven of them. Customer service is so ingrained and reflected across the organization that I must recognize their overall organizational culture and every one of the people that are a part of it. So just the way this article started (the title), I also end with the quote from Walt Disney.

 

“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.”

 

This experience also reminds me of two stories about user experience I have shared previously.

 

http://fridayreflections.typepad.com/weblog/2011/07/-if-its-tuesday-it-must-be-taipei.html

 

http://fridayreflections.typepad.com/weblog/2011/08/-what-good-is-the-ability-to-exceed-customer-expectations-if-it-cant-be-delivered-consistently-throu.html

 

When I Had Nothing Left To Lose

POINT TO PONDER

"If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm."

                                        - Vince Lombardi

STORY LINE by Samuel George

    I arrived in the Bay Area during the summer of 2000 and witnessed one of the most exciting times for high tech companies. As a recent college grad, opportunities were abundant and I felt quite confident of continuing my success from school to work. However, things did not go smoothly (does it ever?).

After the 2001 dot com crash, a number of companies struggled financially. Exactly 1 year after I joined my first company, I lost that job. After that I joined a startup company where I wore a lot of different hats and put in a lot of hours. But as this company’s product was an optical switch (and telecom bandwidth was aplenty) the startup had to retrench a lot of employees, including me.  Having lost 2 jobs in 2 plus years was humbling to say the least. I started wondering why I couldn't deliver in a business environment.

A couple of months later, I got a job in a mid size company and I felt I may have turned a corner. However, a year later my manager took me to his office and said the dreaded words again, “your position will be eliminated.” At that time there was a state rule that if a company laid off a certain % of employees, they would need to give a 60 day notice to the employees.

So, now I had to face the uncertainty again and look for a job to keep my immigration status intact. It would have been perfectly normal for me to start missing work in order to start searching. In fact, if I asked anybody they would recommend just that. However for some unknown reason, I felt that I should respond differently. I made a choice to do the best work possible in the 60 days that I had left. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do a good job and let the powers that be feel stupid about letting me go. 

So with this new resolve, I started working “fearlessly." Previously, I was quite timid during my interactions with colleagues and never challenged them when I thought that something was not right. Since I only had a limited time in the company, I was aggressive in meeting my deliverables. At the same time, I started approaching other managers in the company for opportunities. As it goes, one of the Sr. managers I met was the original hiring manager for my current boss. He asked me a few questions and I gave my answers upfront. The “fearless” behavior was very helpful.

Now, I was in the last week at this company. I achieved a lot of what I had in mind with my current deliverables and felt quite happy with that. I had a couple of job opportunities in the works, but the probability of success was low. As I was having lunch on a Tuesday afternoon, my manager stopped by and asked me to come to his office. I felt that there might be some routine company procedures which needed to be completed before I left. So, I walked into his office.

He stood up, closed the door behind me and said he had some, "news to share." He had heard from his previous manager after my interview and had given positive feedback about me. Armed with this, my manager spoke with a number of my stakeholders about my recent performance. He was impressed with my results and got enough confidence from the feedback that he met with the VP and was able to get my job back. As soon as I heard the news, I could not believe my ears. I was able to finally break my jinx.  Ten years later, I still cannot believe this actually happened.

REFLECTION

Looking back, there were a couple of lessons I learned from that experience. Since I lost jobs previously, I was constantly working under the “fear of failure." This was actually a self fulfilling prophecy. I felt quite weak due to this thinking. However, when I  had nothing left to lose, the real “me” emerged and I actually prospered in my job. Another key lesson was in approaching others when in need. If I had not tried to knock on other doors, I would never have met the gentleman who put in a good word to my manager!